Chapter Text
The rain tails off with one final, spiteful burst of wind. Overhead clouds scrub the moon clean until it peeks out: a sulky child behind heavy curtains. “Hey,” Jughead says. “Hey there, Moon. Bet you’ve never seen such a sorry sight as this, a skinny kid who’s lost his ticket home. And his best girl. All in one night.”
Sorry, the moon seems to say. Suck it up.
Jughead coughs and covers his mouth with one fist. In the swirly silvery light, he can see coins of blood on his skin, crimson and black. “Don’t suppose you happen to have a key to the other side by any chance? To my hometown?”
Fresh out of keys. Moon’s face is sad, maybe feeling Jughead’s desperation. Want some dust instead?
“Only if it’ll get a message to Betty,” Jughead slurs. Reality is shivering away from him, and for a moment he feels as though he’s about to fall down a dark and endless well.
Who?
“Betty,” he repeats. “Betty. Betty. Betty Cooper.” And when the moon doesn’t respond, Jughead shouts her name again with the very last of his strength. “I won’t be here much longer,” he adds. That’s for the moon’s benefit.
Nothing wrong with being dead, the moon replies. I’ve been dead all my life.
It’s true. There’s no life on that hunk of rock, no color, no movement, no air, nothing green at all. As for Jughead – what does death even mean? Can he die? Has he ever actually been alive at all? Between the panels of stories others write for him, does his existence persist into the spaces between them?
Into space itself?
If he’s gone, he doesn't have much to leave behind him. A t-shirt with the letter S, a hat, an old cigar box filled with cash, and the memory of a girl.
This has to be the end, Jughead mumbles. If I’m thinking about this Jean-Paul Sartre stuff instead of cheeseburgers and pizza pie, then I’m truly a goner.
Just… he wishes that he could have one last sight. Of her, of the girl. Betty.
#
Someone’s calling his name, except Jughead’s certain it’s a trick, one final daydream before all the ink turns black. “…head,” he hears. “Jug. Jughead!”
Coming to reality, Jughead scrabbles in the grass and shale until he’s able to sit up. He knows that voice. “Betty?” The word comes out like a sob, like a prayer.
“Juggie!” She tumbles onto his lap, golden hair spilling over their faces. “What are you – why are you here? I thought you were back in the – but what happened? Oh God, your nose is bleeding, were you hurt? We have to get you to a doctor. Now.”
His eyelids flutter, and Jughead is able to see more clearly even through a haze of pain. She’s there in his arms, and yet…
“You’re not her.” His heart begins to drum furiously in his chest. The girl looks just like his Betty Cooper: bouncy ponytail, neat sweater, wide mouth that will melt his heart when she smiles. Still, it isn’t her, and Jughead isn’t certain how he knows. Maybe it’s a different scent, or the feel of her skin, hair a shade darker, eyes slightly greener than the Betty Cooper he knows.
“You’re not him,” the girl says at the same moment. She starts back, eyes wide and pupils darkening. “What the hell? Was there Fizzle in that Fresh-Aide? I’ve never seen – you must be – you look just like him. My Juggie. But you’re not. Is this another mindfreak? Are you Edgar or Reggie or…”
Betty Cooper 2.0 begins to stand up, but Jughead uses the last of his strength to catch her hand. “Please,” he begs. “I’m from another place. Came here with Betty – my Betty. She was able to return but I got… stuck. And this world is, it isn’t, it’s…”
“It’s making you sick,” she finishes gently. The girl sits beside him once more, searches in a purse the size of a postage stamp, and produces a pack of Kleenex. With the softest of touches she wipes his face. “How can I help?”
“Probably you can’t.” Jughead closes his eyes, reality slipping away like low tide, and indicates the abandoned backpack. “Unless maybe you could give that to Nana Blossom.” The old lady could use the money, he thinks. It would pay for some of the hotel room, at least.
Riverdale's new Betty picks up the bag. Her forehead puckers in thought, a look he recognizes in his own Cooper. “You know Nana Blossom? Never mind – you need help first. Maybe – maybe a little of this would help…”
Something rustles, and a plastic straw is inserted in Jughead’s mouth. Instinct makes him drink. It’s sweet and cold, the unmistakable flavor of Pop’s strawberry milkshake popping with real fruit and ice-cream. The drink seems to flood through him, serving a jolt of strength that helps Jughead to open his eyes and sit up. “Wow,” he gasps. “That might be the best medicine ever. Well done, Doctor.”
“Think you can stand up? Maybe we can figure out a way to get you home. How did, uh, your Betty get back?”
Jughead takes her hand and climbs to his feet. “You’re not going to believe this, but we rolled a bowling ball into the old alley there. It opened a – a road or a portal for her, I guess you could say, but when I tried to follow it was closed.” He shakes his head. “I know this sounds crazy.”
“This might be one of the saner things I’ve heard today.” Betty the Second looks around. “Well, maybe if you roll another object in there it will open another path for you – woah!”
In his excitement, he bear hugs her. “Of course! Why didn’t I – but what? There’s nothing here but old beer bottles, and I’m pretty sure they won’t work.”
“Let’s see.” Betty 2.0 looks around the deserted lot with an intent expression Jughead recognizes, the same determination as the girl who has already returned to a very different Riverdale. “There has to be something that’s round, right? The essential part is rolling, like a bowling ball. Anything spherical…a rock? Nah. A tin can? Hmm. I’ll put it in the maybe pile.”
“The maybe pile,” he repeats. “Sounds mighty organized. Oh, and hey! We could check out this backpack. Betty – my Betty – had a whole crime laboratory in here.”
Betty 2.0 mumbles something about that sounding familiar. He plucks out various items: cans of tuna, a notebook, the cutest little compact ever made. One large and warty object gets in his way, and he pulls it out with a sharp little pang. It’s the gargoyle head Betty insisted on buying. The way it stares sightlessly at Jughead under brooding brows and curved horns, teeth curving up over a sneering upper lip, evokes the store where they bought it. He can smell the tang of incense, hear the annoyed voice of the woman from the back room, see the sharp and considering intelligence in Betty’s eyes when she held up her prize.
“I – where did you get that?” Betty picks up the gargoyle’s head and weighs it in one palm. “After we left Quiet Mercy, I never saw it again, yet here you are with it in your backpack.”
“Betty’s packpack,” Jughead corrects automatically. “And quiet mercy, uh, what’s that exactly?” But his vision narrows to a long tunnel with the girl at the far end, and he feels as though he’s about to faint.
She catches Jughead and props his arm around her slender shoulders. “Never mind. There’s no time. You need to get back as soon as possible. Looks like being here is killing you. And you know what? If my gargoyle head ended up here, by the law of Pavlov’s Gun it’s going to get you back to where you need to go.”
“Do you really think so?”
Betty 2.0 ignores him. She drags him to the bowling alley door and presses the grinning head into his grip. “Go on,” she urges.
Jughead manages to stand upright. With the worst bowling form known to mankind he brings the thing back, totters forward, and rolls it through the back door of the bowling lanes. One horn catches on the door, but then the head rolls inside and up to three pins by an abandoned bench. In hideous slow motion, one wobbles and brings down the other two.
The universe seems to shudder. There’s an audible pop, followed by the tinny sound of the speaker: Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine…
Wheeling around, he looks down at Betty 2.0. “It actually worked! I think the passage back just opened up. You’re a genius!”
“Well, hurry up before it closes.”
She gives him a tiny push, but he takes one moment to cup her chin with his palm. “Tell that guy who looks like me to take care of you,” Jughead says.
Her cheek dimples. “He always does. Now, and I say this with love, get the hell out of here.”
#
“Hey! What are you doing back there?”
Covered with dust and his own blood, Jughead turns from the 11 bowling pins to see Midge at the other end of the lane. Her arms are folded across her chest, the very picture of indignation. “No one’s supposed to be messing around with the … Jughead Jones! Are you hurt? What happened? This has been the strangest day ever.”
“You have no idea.” He limps down the side of the lane, nearly skidding on the slick surface. The bowling alley is no longer the dark upside-down version of itself. Jughead can smell pepperoni pizza from its snack bar, hear pop music on the loudspeakers instead of Clementine, and …
Midge. She’s real, alive, no longer buried under a lonely tombstone in an alien world. A lock of hair falls over one cheek, and her fishbone earrings jingle as she shakes a large blue can marked Anti-Fungal Spray.
Jughead lurches forward and folds her into a quick hug. “Sorry about my dreadful bowling etiquette,” he slurs.
“Watch it, Jug. Moose is picking me up any minute, and if he sees us like this…”
She doesn’t need to finish. Jughead knows all about Moose’s temper when it comes to Midge. He leaps away as though she were hot lava, and in that moment he realizes he’s back. Truly back.
Jughead is no longer in the alien version of Riverdale. His life has returned with all its color and personality and – and rules. There are steadfast rules in his universe, just like the one about Moose. You don’t hug his girlfriend. You don’t stay home Friday nights. You spend summer at the beach, autumn in school. It’s a simple life made even simpler with clear laws.
And he’s about to break one, perhaps the most important rule of all. “Uh, Midge,” he begins. “Did you happen to see Betty?”
“Oh, yeah!” Midge’s pixie face crinkles into a frown. “She was nosing around here, you know how she does sometimes, and then ran out calling for Archie.”
Jughead feels his heart actually sink. Up until now he’s always felt that’s a metaphor, but inside his body there’s the sensation of falling as though his organs have become stone and are pitching over a cliff. “Archie?” he croaks.
“Yup. So, I have to get back to my shoes before closing.” Midge waves the fungal spray in his direction, but Jughead is already running to the exit.
He wrenches the door open and bounds onto the sidewalk. Overhead the sky has purpled with oncoming twilight, and knots of teens are gathered on street corners. There are Toni and Cheryl, heads bent over a phone. There’s Dilton, nose stuck in a book as usual. Reggie’s on the corner checking out Cheryl’s booty shorts.
And there stands Archie, talking to Betty Cooper. Jughead’s best friend speaks to her in a low voice, dark brows twitched together. Her eyes never leave his face. Their conversation looks unbearably intimate.
The internal gravity in Jughead’s guts forces him onto the sidewalk. He sits with a sudden bump, joy and hope whooshed out of him with an invisible giant’s fist. What the heck is wrong with me? he wonders. I’m the bored guy on a hammock watching everyone else blunder in and out of love…
“Juggie!” The scream spears Riverdale’s main street, making Jughead and everyone look up. Before he can react, a flying blond bundle of denim and large kitten sweatshirt barrels towards him, plonks on the sidewalk, and wraps both arms around his neck.
“I thought you were gone,” Betty sobs into his neck. “Archie and I were just trying to figure out what our next move would be to get you back. We were thinking Dilton, time machines, Sabrina – crazy stuff.”
Archie? Jughead knows a guy called Archie, except right now he’s not important. Ignoring his own impressive list of wounds, he turns and plants a big one right on her lips. The force of his kiss drives them both backwards onto a little knoll of grass and elicits a surprised squeak from Betty.
His Betty. Not Betty 2.0. Jughead’s own beautiful, brave, bubbly girl.
A long wolf-whistle brings him to his senses. Jughead looks up and realizes he and Betty are lying in the center of a ring of people, all the friends he’s known forever. There’s Midge, both brows shooting up to her hairline. Archie, freckled face wrinkled in shock. Reggie, with an expression of grudging respect. Toni’s lips are pursed with humor as she hoots, “Oooooooooooh!” in the rising tone of a dramatic operatic soprano.
“We’re making a scene.” Betty scrambles to her feet and holds out one hand.
“Sorry.” Grinning like a loon, Jughead lets her help him up. He’s definitely not sorry.
Archie’s frown deepens. He looks like a red setter being shown the ‘Disappearing Owner Behind the Blanket” trick. “Are you two, like, together now?” he demands.
Betty tilts up her chin and thrusts her arm through Jughead's. “Yes, we are. Anyone have a problem with that?”
The crowd as one man backs off. Toni winks and says something along the lines of It’s about damn time before slapping Cheryl on the back and proposing milkshakes all round. Slowly, the Riverdale cast disperses, leaving Jughead and Betty alone in the center of their little universe.
“Did you mean that?” he blurts. “That we’re together?”
“Yes.” Her lips curve. “If that’s okay.”
“Hell yes, that’s okay.” He’s dirty, exhausted, and covered with bruises, but Jughead has been living for this moment. With great care he cups her face, intending to kiss her until she’s breathless.
At that moment, the air shivers and the temperature drops. Betty’s eyes widen. “Oh no. No no no no,” she laments. It’s the start of a new storyline.
“Betty.” Jughead grits his teeth and draws her closer. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to us now, but when – when it’s all over, will you meet me again? Please?”
“Meet you where?” Her voice is husky, maybe from unshed tears.
In their last moments together, he bends and whispers in her ear. “You know where. In the space between the comic frames.”
Perhaps she nods in agreement, but he can’t be sure. All he knows is the achingly familiar scent of her, like old books and spilled ink.
Thunder rumbles overhead, and a vast bolt of lightning splits the sky.
For now, their time is up.