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and I've lost who I am/and I can't understand/why my heart is so broken/rejecting your love/without love gone wrong
"Snakes don't shed their skin so easily."
But she was no longer a Serpent. She was no longer the tough girl from the trailer park in Sunnyside, trying to survive day by day, fending off her mother and her good-for-nothing man, whom she so loftily called her boyfriend. She wasn't the rebellious girl who used to sneak out to play Gryphons&Gargoyles at school at night, carved her initials into the windowsill with a knife, and who got pregnant with the most wanted boy in school’s child at seventeen.
But now—now she wasn't even the Riverdale version of the Northside Stepford wife, with the perfect husband, perfect kids, perfect house, manicure, haircut, smile, and job. Now she was still the wife of a multiple murderer who had been terrorizing the whole Riverdale for a long time. An infiltrator into a community that was pompously called the Farm. They were indeed reaping bountifully. Just not the crops in the fields, but human organs. She had survived every touch of Edgar Evernever, a man whom she loathed, even the strong hits of his fists—that was when he discovered she was not a faithful follower of his twisted preaching and beat her unconscious.
Despite all that, despite everyone telling her she was incredibly brave... she felt like a nobody. She moved on with her life, for her daughter and son—she already knew she'd lost Polly and her grandchildren, though the truth stung like a red-hot poker against her skin again and again—but it was empty. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she didn't see a woman. Just a lost existence, wandering around the hometown, looking for something. She couldn’t even figure what it was supposed to be.
Hal was rotting in prison, and God, she hoped she'd never see the face of the man who'd forced her to give up her child, her firstborn boy, who had formed her for twenty-five years to be exactly the obedient wife he wanted her to be—a man who wanted to kill her and their daughter. She hated him. In a different way than Edgar, but that burning anger was anchored deep within her. And she hated herself with the same passion, for allowing all that happened during their marriage, for not defending her child, for not defending herself, for not recognizing his nature and for sharing one bed with a serial, cold-blooded killer...
Alice didn't know who she was. A shattered, torn, broken, desperate, destroyed human being. Maybe. She wasn't sure about that either. But she knew for sure that she didn't deserve to have someone try to put the pieces that once made up Alice Cooper back together. What do you do when you break a mug? You still have a lot of them in the cupboard, and anything glued back together doesn't hold as well as a new, undamaged piece anyway.
but I know, all I know/is that the end’s beginning/who I am from the start/take me home to my heart/let me go and I will run/I will not be silent
Despite how broken she was, there was one person who wanted her. With all the scars on her body and soul, with all the demons in her head, a wolf's heart, wailing and howling, nightmares and much more.
FP Jones. The man of her life.
It was so ironic. The Serpent girl, who wanted nothing more than to disappear from the Southside and ideally from Riverdale at all, in the end, by some will of fate, returned to and ended in the arms of the Serpent boy. Thanks to him, she understood that she should be proud of her origin. He was the one who showed her that there really is a way of life in which she doesn't have to pretend anything, hide her true self behind some mask, put on a smile in addition to makeup... FP simply loved her.
Despite all those years of fighting for the Serpents, of pretending to hate personally him (and eventually convincing herself that she really couldn't stand him), despite she shot a human, despite she suddenly became a guest in her own house, which was now his house.. . Even despite the look she saw in her own eyes as she stared at herself in the mirror for the hundredth time a day. The expression of a person who went through the seven circles of Hell and never fully managed to come back.
He didn't mind that her hands were often shaking and she had to sit down when, during the normal activities of the day, she suddenly became anxious, dizzy, scared, and everything around her began to spin. He didn't complain when she woke him up with her screams and tears almost every night, and he soothed her until she fell asleep in his arms, mentally and physically exhausted. He didn't mind when she wasn't sure where she put something, forgot to salt the dinner, or got the days of the week wrong. She was so ashamed of these episodes, even though the psychiatrist assured her that it was only short-term because the Farm had done a lot of damage to her subconscious. But FP always just smiled, gave her a hug, stroked her hair, or kissed her forehead, and that was it.
She often wondered at night how it was possible that she hadn't drove him away yet. Before, when she was raining fire and brimstone on him, and now, when she was a wreck, just a shadow of the Alice that the whole Riverdale knew. How much longer could he enjoy such a life? FP was a handsome man. Women who didn't know him or his origin (because those snooty city wiwes wouldn't even rub their shoes on someone from the Southside, and Alice couldn't believe she'd been one of them for years) would fall head over heels at the sight of him. A windswept, tanned sheriff with stubble on his face, a bright smile, a leather Serpent jacket and kind eyes. And even though he only had to get outside the city limits and he could have practically any woman he pointed at... He chose her. He brought her aching heart back home.
"Ali," the voice of the man she was thinking about spoke behind her and she flinched.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," FP apologized, putting a hand on her shoulder, which was covered by a satin robe. "What's happening? Why are you here all in the dark?'
Alice glanced at the clock. Past one thirty in the morning. The last time she looked it was before midnight.
"I got lost in thoughts," she replied quietly. FP was standing behind her so she leaned her back and head against him. She felt him plant a kiss on the top of her head.
"Come on, let's go to bed." He took her hand and led her to the upstairs. They had barely gone two steps when Alice's throat tightened. What if this is their last night before he realizes that living with her is just a waste of time?
“Will you stay with me, FP?” she blurted out suddenly.
"Of course. I have no plans to move to the couch,” the sheriff smiled.
"No, I mean—I mean with me."
FP understood. He turned to face her and cupped her face in his hands. "Of course I will. We've waited long enough to be together for me to pack up and leave now. I know I've screwed up a lot of things, but I’m certainly not fucking up this one.“
"But I'm not..." Alice began, but his finger on her lips stopped her.
“I know, Ali. Me neither.” He raised her head with his index finger. "I love you. And that's all we need to know.'
The blonde closed her eyes, and against her will, tears slipped from under her eyelids. FP wiped them away.
"I love you too," she whispered softly. Together they climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Just before Alice fell asleep in FP's arms it occurred to her that she might be shattered to tiny pieces, but stitches that could hold her together are his hugs and smiles and kisses and love.
She still had a long way to go. Maybe so long that she won‘t have time to finish it before her last day would occur. But for the first time in a very long time, she was looking forward to the sunrise, the next day, and waking up with him next to her.
all is lost, hope remains, and this war’s not over/here's a light, there's the sun/taking all shattered ones/to the place we belong/and the love will conquer