Work Text:
Another failed meeting at the church. But, of course, that can be expected—they may have the common goal of saving Riverdale, but they are all focused on their own little personal lives to actually contribute to achieving, well, anything; even though they pledged to do something about it.
Ghoulies still crawl all over town and infest the remaining houses; Jingle Jangle enjoys its newfound popularity amongst the river-tweens; Riverdale High slowly returns to its former decadent self as Toni spends her maternity leave away and no one cares; the Bulldogs keep losing games save for that one miraculous one; Hiram still twirls his invisible mustache; the prisoners may be locked up but remain in the town’s memories; and more and more women vanish by the minute.
It might even be worse than when they started out.
Everyone hurries out. Nobody wants to address anything—not their failure, not their personal lives, not the things unsaid between them.
Including Betty and Veronica.
They are the last ones left: everyone had half the mind to grab their things as fast as possible, and had already raced through the door, keeping their eyes straight ahead, to continue on their own separate ways from each other.
Not them. Too many issues to focus on the one person they wanted to avoid; each other.
Betty takes her time packing her things up, one by one. She hopes Veronica came with Archie, and will turn around and just go; she’s managed to dodge this conversation too many times to have it now, and not only on her account.
Not after The Trash Bag Killer, not after Glen, not after Chick, not after Archie, and definitely not after Polly.
But Betty feels Veronica’s stare stay on her.
And Veronica really doesn’t move. She stands in front of her own seat, the one two spaces away from Betty, and keeps on studying her.
Betty throws a nervous glance, and adjusts the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “I have—I have to go, um…”
“See…” Veronica takes a step closer. “I don’t think that you do, Betty.”
She wears a bordeaux bodycon dress and high heels, her lips are tinted a dark shade, and her hair is straight again.
Not too different from the very first weeks of sophomore year. Betty still remembers it as if it were yesterday.
Yet it’s been ten years.
Three years of both intense and lukewarm drama, seven years of absolutely no contact but still occupying an occasional thought in each other’s minds, and a few months of malevolent gazes thrown at one another.
The course of a war.
But Veronica’s eyes are as sharp cut as they always were.
“Excuse me?” Betty asks.
“You don’t have to go.” Veronica crosses her arms. “You’re just avoiding me.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for years now? Avoiding each other?”
“Yes,” Veronica admits. “And I think it’s time we talked about things.”
“Oh, really?” Betty scoffs. “You think that? Then we have to talk about it, V.”
Veronica sighs. “Well, don’t we?”
“Well, as apparently you put it,”—Betty points to her—“the past is the past.”
Betty keeps her sight on Veronica. She wants her to know that yes, she knows this was the big sell-line of her reunion with Archie, and that even if Veronica thinks she can just stab her in the back however often and whenever she wishes, it does get back to Betty one way or another.
Veronica furrows her brows. “How—”
“Kevin and Archie are friends. They talk. And Kevin is still my friend.” It comes out more as an accusation—and you’re not. “We talk.”
“I was—it was after… the party,” Veronica explains. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t thinking of anyone. I wasn’t thinking of you.”
Betty bites down a laugh. “At least you can admit that.”
“I know I haven’t been the best.” Veronica shrugs. “But I don’t have anyone left except for Archie—”
“Such a surprise.”
Veronica moves ahead, and she is in front of Betty. “I may not have made the best decisions but I wanted to protect myself.” She stares into her eyes. “I need you, Betty. I want us to go back to where we were. I want us to be friends again—to be best friends again.”
“Oh, cut the bullshit!” Betty exclaims and rolls her eyes. “We’ve never been best friends, Veronica! We never have been!”
“Oh, is that so, bestie?”
“Yes, it is. It’s—you and I—we’ve always been all teeth and tongue and spit, chasing victory and backstabbing and lying and one upping each other!”
“What are you even talking about?!”
Betty freezes. She’s always thought it was obvious. There’s no way Veronica Lodge—Luna—Gekko—Lodge, Queen of Manipulation doesn’t know.
But fuck it, she will say it out loud. “Let’s face it. We were always in competition for Archie. Even when I was with Jughead, even when I loved him only, we were.”
Veronica looks down, and then away.
Oh. She knows.
“It was just the—the idealistic nature of youth for us to even think we could be friends!”
It feels so good to finally say it. And in a way, it’s true. Their unlikely friendship has dissolved into nothing over the years, and they can barely remember what was there in the first place. Maybe the desire to prove everyone wrong, maybe a certain level of like. No one can say anymore.
“That’s not—we were friends.” Or she wishes they were.
Maybe. Sometimes. When she comforted Veronica about her dad. When Veronica drank posion for her.
But she wants to prove her wrong—it’s one of the things Betty’s ever wanted to do. From the moment that first kiss happened. When Archie first chose Veronica over her.
“When you first kissed Archie, my heart got stomped on. I never got over that! I always hated you for that! I just didn’t want to be stereotypical loser who hated you for stealing him when I’ve never made a move on him!”
In all honesty, she expects Veronica to do something—tell her she is a loser, she is a psycho, she is her father, only a weirdo could love her; grab onto her; pull on her; slap her; something. Anything at all.
But nothing. And if Veronica’s just gonna let her say whatever she wants, she’s not gonna hold back.
“Oh, and when I kissed him while you were together?” Betty pinches her fingers together. “The exhilaration I felt in that moment I can’t even describe to you.”
“Well,”—Veronica tears up but doesn’t actually cry and instead raises her voice—“that’s a new vile level of feminism, bitch!”
Bitch. Bestie. Betty. That’s all her.
“Have you ever thought that maybe I don’t know how to be friends?” Veronica retorts. “That maybe this is the only type of friendship I know?”
Betty has. She’s had the time, and it’s the only conclusion she could ever come to on those sleepless nights when she lay awake in bed, trying to figure out what really went wrong between them. The lack of communication and the fact that this was uninhabited territory for the both of them that they never managed to navigate; a close friendship with another girl.
A woman now.
It’s both their fault, really. It’s easier to blame the other for it, though.
“It doesn’t matter, Veronica. It really doesn’t.” Betty says. “He still went back to you. You win,” she laughs, as if she were mocking her. “And in the end, that’s what really matters to you.” And then, her expression turns sour. “Not our friendship.”
Neither of them say anything—they let it hang in the air.
It’s bitterness, it’s cruelty, it’s apathy Betty’s never anticipated.
It’s bitterness, it’s cruelty, it’s apathy Veronica’s never anticipated.
“I wish I never met you.” This time, Veronica wipes her tears. “I wish I could take the night we met back.”
“That makes two of us,” Betty agrees. “I wish I never set foot in Pop’s that night.”
“I wish you’d never showed me around school.”
“I wish you’d never kissed Archie.”
And so, Betty kisses Veronica. It’s weird but it comes naturally—just like the first time, way back before everything went down; just as they both remember it. Betty softly cups her face and as their lips touch, Veronica’s hands settle on Betty’s waist. She pulls her closer out of instinct, and instead they slide on the small of Betty’s back.
And it’s right. So right. It’s also the only thing true between them. The only possible solution to their past, to their conflict.
Betty breaks the kiss to abandon her bag, and even though she sees the desire clearly in the slightly dilated pupils of Veronica’s eyes, she asks, “Do you—”
“Yes,” comes Veronica’s husky reply.
Betty wastes no time; she lowers Veronica to the floor, bodies ecstatic and hearts bouncing, hands never letting go. And for one evening, on dirty holy ground only, they are a different kind of teeth and tongue and spit.