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He finds himself in the community center, after—not because he used to live there, or because it feels like home, but it’s Pop’s, and in Riverdale, it’s kind of always been the only place to go when you’re lost.
It’s closed for the day; Tabitha is one of Betty’s bridesmaids. Archie lets himself in through the back and locks the door behind him. He makes himself a cup of coffee behind the counter—Tabitha never minds, because Archie pitches in whenever she needs the extra help and he happens to be around. She might mind, now, because Archie’s certain she would never take his side over Betty’s. Which is fine. Objectively, he’s the one in the wrong here. It’s not really a matter of opinion.
Jughead’s in what used to be his old favorite booth, the one that would go in front of the second window over from the door. But it can’t be him, not really; Jughead’s probably with Betty right now, convincing her that Archie would never leave her at the altar. She’s most likely got her mind on the handgun she’d told Archie she was hiding in her dress in preparation for a Riverdale wedding, on the verge of pulling it out and threatening anyone she suspects of kidnapping him.
Or maybe she thought he’d do something like this. Maybe—Archie gets a flash of Betty in white lace, gun in hand, behind his eyelids. But he knows it isn’t real. He’d never seen her in her wedding dress.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” he says first, retrieving a ceramic cup from under the counter.
“I know,” Jughead says. He sounds slightly different than usual, but Archie can’t quite pinpoint why.
“How’d you get in here?” he asks. “I thought I…”
“Oh, I’m not.” He gestures to himself. “Your Jughead. Isn’t really my forte.”
“Okay,” Archie says, for lack of a better response. He wishes he was more surprised, but it’s Riverdale.
“Maybe I should have phrased it differently,” he says. “I’m still Jughead. Just not yours. I can’t just look like anyone.” He shrugs. “If you were looking for Betty or Veronica-shaped advice, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”
“What makes you think I’m looking for advice?” Archie asks.
“Who leaves their wedding knowing exactly where to go next?” Jughead says. He leans back against the booth as Archie takes a seat across from him. “Come on. Tell me about it.”
Archie doesn’t really have a lot of other options, and he’s already been half-avoiding saying what he means all day. “I can’t marry Betty,” he spills out, all of a sudden. “Not today, I mean. Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that,” Archie says. “I just had a feeling. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Sure it does,” Jughead says, matter-of-fact. “You’ve realized you’re not as in control as you thought you were, and now you’re back to questioning Betty versus Veronica, et cetera…” He looks incredibly bored by this statement, like it’s a concept he’s been over a million times.
“Well, I mean, they’re both beautiful, and amazing, and…” Archie sighs. “We’ve never talked about girls. This is weird.”
“You’re telling me,” Jughead says. Not-Jughead, whatever.
“Well,” Archie says hesitantly, “I just… what would you do?”
“I’ve never loved anyone,” he says, “I wouldn’t know.”
“You haven’t?” Archie questions. He thinks of Betty then, and Tabitha now, and whoever else in the seven years they’d been strangers. Surely one of them counts.
“Oh, no, I’m not really interested in women,” he says. “I’m too involved with my work.”
Archie wouldn’t call himself the most informed person in the world, but it’s not hard to understand what he’s saying. “No chance you could find a different subject?” Jughead shrugs.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m not the writer. I just tell the story. In his defense, though, you’re really entertaining.”
It’s what everyone wants to be told, of course, that they’re entertaining to an entity they don’t quite understand, like a particularly striking bug under a microscope. Archie feels somewhat like Jim Carrey in that movie Jughead made him watch years ago. He can’t remember the plot, or the ending, for that matter. He wonders if he ever really watched it at all. “If you’re not the writer, then can you at least ask him to write me a different one?” he asks. “Look, I don’t… It can be Betty, or Veronica, or someone else, but I want it to be clear, and my own free choice, and not… fate. Or destiny. Or whatever it is.”
“Everything’s fate,” not-Jughead says. “I don’t think you want a different story. You want the absence of one.”
He really has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but. “Sure,” Archie agrees, “yeah, I don’t know what the right words are. Just… no destiny. Or anything like that.”
“Well, you kind of have to choose,” he informs Archie.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Archie responds, indignant. That’s kind of his whole point.
“I mean that it’s Betty or Veronica and nothing else,” he says. “There aren’t any other outcomes.”
“So what happens if I don’t marry either of them?” Archie asks.
“Isn’t possible.”
“Humor me.”
“Universal collapse,” not-Jughead deadpans. “Kidding! Not.”
“That’s stupid,” Archie says, because it is. “How am I supposed to be happy knowing my life was just one of my possible predetermined paths?”
“Predetermined,” Jughead echoes. “Nice SAT vocab.”
“Shut up,” he returns automatically. Then: “If I just leave Riverdale, if I just choose to not make a choice, do you think it’ll… stop working?”
Something about this suggestion seems to make Jughead uncomfortable. (He’s not Jughead, Archie tells himself. This is a fact he needs to keep reminding himself of, because there were a couple times junior year that Jughead got so cryptic about the future and the so-called secrets of the universe that Archie started to suspect he wasn’t the only person in Riverdale going crazy. This is like that, a little bit. Not completely, but still. A little bit.) “You shouldn’t leave. It’ll mess up his writing.”
“Look,” Archie says, “if you know so much about him, why can’t you just…”
“I’m not a writer,” Jughead repeats. “Just the narrator. It’s really above my pay grade.”
“Jughead would,” Archie tries instead. He’s not so sure it’s true, because it’s only been about an hour since Jughead basically told him to get a grip and just go through with this wedding, but he likes to think that if he understood, he would.
“I’m not him,” he reminds Archie. Archie knows that. He thinks he could even have told the difference at first glance if he had to. The narrator is too unabashedly interested in a way Jughead always tries not to be—or maybe he just hides it better. “What’s in it for me?”
“I’ll be happy,” Archie says. “On my own terms.”
“It’s a better story if you’re not,” not-Jughead tells him. Archie thinks of the seven years he’d spent fighting for a country he’s not sure if he believes in, in a war he doesn’t actually know the name of. It’s not that he doesn’t remember growing up, because he does: he can recall his childhood easily even now, seeing Betty through their second-story bedroom windows, listening to Jughead’s stories in that old treehouse of theirs. But there are some things he doesn’t remember as clearly as he should—he doesn’t remember being attacked by a bear, just the dream he had after it where he killed himself. He remembers his battalion better as ghosts than as men. Sometimes, the traumatic afterwards is the only part he remembers, as if what he’d been through to get there wasn’t real—like it wasn’t important. It’s a better story if you’re not. That’s one way of putting it.
He covers Jughead’s hand in his own, his fingers wrapping loosely around his wrist. “Please,” Archie says instead.
Maybe he’s not Jughead, but he looks at him like Jughead used to, before everything, back when the only nightmares in Riverdale were the normal ones. Archie had always pretended not to notice, then. It was easier than asking about it.
“Okay,” he says finally, because Archie had been right and he’s not all that detached from the man whose face he’s wearing. “I can try my hand at writing to buy you some time, I guess. I’ll need my laptop, though.”
“Not the typewriter?” Archie asks.
“If I’m writing a whole new story,” he says, “I’ll probably need the backspace key.”
“I think I can make that happen,” Archie tells him, and not-Jughead smiles, stealing the cup out of Archie’s other hand and taking a sip from it. Archie tries to imagine what life outside of Riverdale looks like and finds that he can’t really picture it. He thinks it’s probably a good sign.