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aresaphrodites · 7 years

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Wicked Games Chapter Twelve

(this is my third time trying to upload this because my laptop sucks holy shit)

but anyway!

so sorry for what you guys are about to read.

thank you to my girl, @itstenafterfour, for always fixing my trash and making it better. i adore you.

Betty spends five hours in the police department. She’s questioned by several different detectives, because now she’s front and center in the murder investigation of Veronica Lodge.

She’s asked, right up front, if she had any motive to kill Veronica after their very public fight. At first it had been a complete insult to her and she had yelled and cried as they accused her of killing her best friend in cold blood. Then, when she calmed down, she began to answer their questions in a cold, calculated voice. She told them the entire truth, about her stalker and everything, and now they were one step closer to finding the killer. At least that’s what they said. She knew they were full of shit. They weren’t going to find Veronica’s killer. They hadn’t been able to find Betty’s stalker this entire time and it was the same person after all. She wonders if they ever even took her case serious or if it only now phased them because there was a death.

The detectives look at her throughout the interviews with gazes like they don’t know whether they should feel bad for her or not. Betty doesn’t want them to feel sorry for her; not anymore. This is all her fault. Veronica is dead because of her. If she hadn’t walked away from her, or if she had followed her into the cab, or called her a little earlier, or gone over to check on her when she didn’t answer any of Betty’s calls; if she had done any of that then maybe Veronica would still be alive, but she didn’t. She didn’t do anything and now Veronica’s blood was on her hands.

“Are you ready to go home?”

She’s only half startled by Jughead’s steady voice and the hand he places on her shoulder. She’s currently seated on a chair outside of Officer Ruiz’s office, a pudgy man with a beard that reminds her of a grizzly bear.

“They’re releasing you,” Jughead tells her, taking in her questioning look. “They’ll call you if they need anything else from you, but they don’t have any reason to hold you anymore.”

Betty nods and stands up. Jughead immediately wraps his jacket around her shoulders as he leads her out of the station’s lobby. He keeps a protective hold on her, like he dares anyone to come up to her and Betty is thankful for it.

“There’s a crowd outside,” he warns her. “There wasn’t anything we could do about it. Just ignore them.” It’s not a comforting sentence and she almost wishes she could stay inside of the police department all night. She’s not ready to face the world. She doesn’t know if she ever will be again.

“Betty!” She whirls around at her name being called and sees Office Chris Matthews walking towards her, a card in his hand. “This is my personal number,” he tells her as he gives her the card. “I want you to call me if you ever feel like you’re not safe or if you feel like you’re around someone you can’t trust. Send me a text, call, whatever. I don’t care what time it is.”

He’s so kind to her. He’s always been so kind to her and it makes her almost want to cry. She needs someone to yell at her right now, to tell her all the things that she’s currently thinking about herself.

“Thanks,” is all she says. He takes a step towards her and holds his hand out like he wants to touch her, but Jughead yanks her back and away from his grip. Officer Matthews looks at him in shock but Betty doesn’t even question it at this point.

“I’m here for you whenever you need me,” he tells her but his eyes are hard and he’s looking at Jughead instead of Betty. “Be careful who you trust.” He stares at Jughead for a beat longer before giving her a nod and leaving. She looks down at his card in her hand and flips it over before tucking it into the back of her pocket.

“You’re really going to keep that?” Jughead asks. His voice is strained, like he wants to say something else but he’s holding back.

She just shrugs. “It can’t hurt.”

Jughead doesn’t say anything back. He just leads her to the front entrance of the building. She can already see everyone with their cameras and recorders and her stomach clenches at the sight. Jughead must see the way her face completely changes because he holds her closer to him.

“Just ignore them,” he tells her again. “I’m right here with you.” The words should make her feel a sense of protection or ease, but they don’t. They’re just words.

As soon as they step outside, the cameras flash at her and the questions begin.

“Betty, how long have you had a stalker?”

“Is it an ex boyfriend?”

“Is this all an elaborate PR stunt gone wrong?”

“Did you kill Veronica Lodge?”

The last one startles her and she stops in her tracks before Jughead tugs her along and urges her to sit in the back of the car. The words echo back in her head. This is what people will think of her from now on until the real killer is found. They’re going to think that Betty killed Veronica all because of a stupid fight they had outside of a Whole Foods Market. It doesn’t matter that statements have already been released saying otherwise. People need someone to blame and right now Betty is all they have.

Cheryl’s in the car and Jughead goes to sit up front next to James. James just sends her a pitiful look through the mirror and Betty looks away. She doesn’t want anyone’s pity anymore.

“I’m sorry,” is all Cheryl says.

“You hated Veronica,” Betty tells her, voice monotone as she stares out of the window at all the reporters. “You’re not sorry.”

“I might not have liked her, but that didn’t mean I wanted her to die,” Cheryl says and she sounds insulted that Betty would even suggest something like that. “I’m sorry that you have to go through this. No one should have to go through this, but especially not you.”

“Is there a reason you’re here?” She sighs out, finally looking over at Cheryl. The redhead looks upset at her question and Betty almost feels bad. She doesn’t want to be mean to Cheryl, the last friend she really has, but she doesn’t feel like faking her feelings right now. And truth be told, when she looks at Cheryl all she can think of is how her agent had told her that she was glad Veronica was finally out of her life. It’s like she knew what was going to happen. Betty shakes the thought away as soon as it enters her head. She can’t think that way about Cheryl. Cheryl hasn’t done anything wrong. She just wants someone to blame. Right?

Cheryl pulls out a box from the bottom of the car floor and hands it over to Betty. “They were for the Golden Globes next month but you don’t have to go anymore. No one is expecting you to.”

Betty pulls the top off of the box and looks inside of it. The pair of Ralph and Russo shoes she’d been pining after for months are staring right back at her. She reaches out and touches the rose gold leaves on the pumps, enamored by the beauty of them.

“I got them for you as a present,” Cheryl says a bit shyly. “You’d been saying how much you wanted them and well, you really deserve them. You’ve been through a lot, and I know a pair of shoes can’t fix your problems but retail therapy helps sometimes. You can just save them for whenever you decide to step back out again.”

The Golden Globes are a little over a month away. Do people really expect her to be hiding out even then? Probably so. Everyone’s probably expecting sensitive Betty Cooper to completely give up and shut down after everything she’s been through, but she’s thinking the exact opposite.

If the cops won’t do anything about it then she’s going to find out who this person is on her own. She’s tired of letting everyone else deal with her problems. She’ll find whoever’s doing this and she’ll kill them herself. Not for her, but for Veronica.

There’s a funeral, close family and friends only. Really it’s only Veronica’s parents, Betty, and Archie plus a few other family members. Veronica’s mother is sobbing so loudly that Betty has to scream in her head just to drown out the noises. Mr. Lodge stays stoic and completely still. Veronica had been his baby girl, his entire world. Veronica was such a daddy’s girl, it makes perfect sense for this to hit him harder than anyone, but Betty doesn’t think he’s truly processed it yet.

And Archie.

Archie looks so lost, so broken, and so alone. Halfway during the funeral, he starts crying silently, and Betty walks over to him and intertwines their fingers together as she holds his hand. He doesn’t look at her, he doesn’t even acknowledge any of it until finally he squeezes her hand back tightly.

She gives her condolences to Mr. and Mrs. Lodge who both thank her for being a good friend to Veronica. It’s almost as though they’re unaware of the fight, as though they don’t know. She wonders if telling them is the right thing to do. She wants to tell them not to thank her, she doesn’t deserve it. Because of her Veronica is dead. Veronica is six feet in the ground all because she didn’t follow her after their fight. She didn’t take care of Veronica the way a friend should.

She sits in front of the newly dug grave for a long time after that. There are things she wants to say, but she can’t find the words.

“No one blames you,” a voice says gently from behind her. She turns around and sees Archie standing with his hands in his coat. He looks so small for someone who had always seemed a bit larger than life. “This isn’t your fault.”

“I didn’t follow her,” Betty whispers as she touches the ground beneath her. It’s a lump of dirt. This is all Veronica is now; a lump of cold dirt. “The last things we said to each other…”

“She loved you,” Archie says. “She loved you so much. She was worried about you and you know how she got when she worried.” He laughs softly, but Betty can’t laugh because he’s saying everything in the past tense and she doesn’t know how to handle any of that. “I talked to her that night. I guess it must have been before… everything, but she told me she was worried you were going to hate her for all the things she said. I told her she just needed to call you and apologize and you’d understand. She said she’d call you in the morning.”

Betty closes her eyes tightly as a lone tear falls from them. If she had just gone to Veronica’s house when she didn’t answer the phone then she might still be alive right now. Betty could have prevented all of this and she didn’t. Veronica’s blood was on her hands and nothing anyone said could change that. She didn’t do the killing but indirectly she had a hand in it, and Betty couldn’t fathom how she’d live with that.

“We’ll find out who’s doing all this,” Archie promises as he places a hand on Betty’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself.” And then he’s gone and Betty’s all alone.

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers to the grave, tears making their way down her cheeks and falling onto the cold dirt. “I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t know why she apologizes. It doesn’t change a damn thing.

She’s sitting with Jughead on their couch, watching a game show, when she gets a call.

“Hello?”

“May I speak with Elizabeth Cooper?”

“Speaking.” Jughead gives her a questioning glance, but she just stands up and walks over to the kitchen. “How may I help you?”

“Hello, Miss Cooper. This is Detective Reyes.” She remembers him. He had been a bit of a hardass while grilling her with questions, but she could respect that. “We usually don’t do this, but since this case connects to you as well, I’ve been given the okay to fill you in.”

Her heart begins to slam against her chest as she thinks about what he could possibly have to tell her.

“A piece of hair was left at the crime scene and it doesn’t match Miss Lodge’s DNA. We ran it through the system and came up with a match for a kid who was arrested whenever he was seventeen, some street fighter, gang banger nonsense. We can’t release his name to you due to him being a minor at the time, but he’s our first stop.”

“What color was it?” She asks, needing to know. It doesn’t matter that they might have the killer in their database, she still needs to know.

“A dark brown, Miss Cooper. It was curled too so we’re looking at someone with dark, nearly black curly hair now. That’s really all I can tell you at this moment.”

It’s a start. After months and months of chasing absolutely no one, they now have a lead. It’s more than she could have ever dreamt of. The idea that they might have the killer locked up soon is too much for her to imagine. It’s also a little too easy.

“Thank you, Detective Reyes.”

“We’ll let you know when we bring him in,” he says before hanging up.

She pulls the phone away from her ear and stares down at it for a good while. It’s a big city they all live in. There are four million people in Los Angeles alone and she knows that over half of those people fit the description that she now has. She wonders who the person in their database is and why he’s doing all of this.

“Betty?” Jughead calls out. She turns around and looks at him. “What happened?” He pulls on the dark curl that’s always falling into his eyes. Betty tilts her head at him, studying his movements, before answering.

“They found a piece of hair at the crime scene,” she tells him. “A piece of black, curly hair.”

“Do they know who it belongs to?” He asks, as he stands up from the couch and walks over to her.

“Yes,” she says, not believing the words that are coming out of her mouth. “They think they do, but even if it’s a mix up… it’s all I need.”

“All you need?” He scoffs. “Betty, you can’t go after this person. You’re already in enough danger. We know this stalker is capable of murder, which means you could be next! You need to leave this to the professionals.”

“Yeah?” She asks, sarcastically. “Because they’ve been doing such a good job, right? If I leave it to the professionals then someone else ends up dead. Me, you, Cheryl, the next person who looks at me ugly; it doesn’t matter. I won’t have another person’s blood on my hands.”

“So what? You’re just going to go out and find this person for yourself and kill them?”

“If I have to,” she says as she turns away from him. She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she can’t look at him and his condescending face right now.

“Betty, come on,” he reaches out and grabs her forearm. “You’re being irrational. You’re hurt and you don’t know how to handle it. You can talk to someone, you can talk to me. We can go back to Riverdale like you wanted. Cheryl will let you.”

“I don’t want to go back to Riverdale!” She yells at him. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I talked to all of you in the past and where did that get me? Nowhere. Talking to people doesn’t help. I’m not running away from this person anymore. If they want me then they can come and get me.”

He looks at her, torn but Betty doesn’t care. She means everything she is saying right now.

“You can go,” she tells him. She watches as his eyes widen in shock and then narrow in confusion. She didn’t mean for it to come out so harshly, but it’s something she’s been thinking ever since Veronica was killed. She can’t have anyone else in her life get hurt and that includes Jughead.

“What?”

“I’m firing you,” she says with absolutely no emotion in her voice. “I don’t need you anymore.”

“Fuck that!” He yells at her, eyes ablaze. “You need me now more than ever!” She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t move. Jughead grows angier. “You can’t fire me. Even if you wanted to, I’m your boyfriend, Betty! I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t need you anymore,” she says, repeating the words again. They hurt more than anything she’s ever said before. This hurts more than when Jughead had turned her down the first time. Her heart is breaking inside of her chest, it’s the first real emotion she feels since finding about Veronica and it sucks, but it has to happen. She’s an omen of the worst kind.

She forces herself to stay calm and stoic as she looks at the way Jughead’s face falls as he begins to let go of his anger.

“What are you saying right now?” He asks, voice losing the fire it had held just seconds before.

“You need to leave.”

“Don’t do this,” he begs her, eyes watering. She hates herself for doing this to him, but she has to. She needs to. “I’m here for you, let me be here for you, Betty.” He tries to grab ahold of her hand, but she tears it away from him.

“You can’t fire me,” he tells her, but he doesn’t sound so sure anymore. “Cheryl’s the only one who can do that.”

“I know,” Betty says. “She just did.” She had talked it over with Cheryl earlier and while the redhead hadn’t understood Betty’s reasoning, she agreed. Betty knew she only agreed because she wasn’t about to tell her no after everything she had been through lately, but it didn’t matter. She’d take what she could get.

“Betty,” he tries once more, voice just as broken.

“I’m not trying to break up with you,” Betty tells him. “I don’t want this to be the end for us, but I need you to understand where I’m coming from right now. I need to do this by myself. I don’t want you putting yourself on the line for me, not anymore.”

“If something were to happen to you and I didn’t do anything to stop it, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself!”

“I need you to trust me,” she says as she puts a hand on his cheek. He closes his eyes and leans into her touch. A part of her realizes that this is the most vulnerable he’s ever been with her and she wishes that it could be under different circumstances.

“So what,” Jughead says with an uneasy laugh, “we’re on a break or something?”

Betty smiles. “I need you to be my boyfriend, not my bodyguard. If you want to help, be the kind of person I need right now.”

She knows it’s a lot to ask from him. She can see it in the way he looks at her, completely torn. Does he even know how to not be her bodyguard? She doesn’t know, but they can work at it together.

“I never cared about the paycheck,” Jughead says randomly. “You know that, right? It was never about the money for me.” The conversation with Veronica comes running back to her. “It’s always been about you.”

“Then let me do this by myself.”

Jughead seems to be thinking it over before he finally nods.

It shouldn’t feel like she’s finally free, but for some reason it does. She doesn’t have anyone holding her back anymore and with that in mind, she turns away from Jughead and walks out of the apartment; one destination in her mind.

She turns off her phone as soon as she leaves. She doesn’t need anyone trying to get ahold of her right now. She’s finally in the mindspace she needs to be in and she can’t risk anything pulling her out of it.

She’s dropped off in front of the building and takes a deep breath, feeling nervous for some reason. She knows what she’s doing could definitely be marked as stupid, but she doesn’t care. She needs to do this. Jughead had refused to teach her how to do this, so she has to go to someone who will help her out.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees someone take a picture of her and she has to refrain from smiling. It’s just what she had wanted.

She enters the building and walks up to the front desk. The man standing behind the counter widens his eyes at her and she can tell that he recognizes her.

“I need something small but powerful,” she tells him. “And I need you to teach me how to shoot it.”

She leaves the shooting range with a brand new Desert Eagle and a sense of power. She knows she’ll have to hide the gun from Jughead; he won’t be okay with any of this. She needs to prove that she can take care of herself and that she doesn’t need to rely on others, so she’ll keep it from him until she knows he won’t freak out over it.

When she gets back to the apartment, Jughead’s locked up in his room and she doesn’t feel like bothering him so she puts the gun away in her bedroom and then goes to the kitchen to find something to eat. She settles on making herself a bowl of fruit and is in the middle of cutting up a pineapple, whenever there’s a knock on her door.

She answers it and is surprised to see Officer Ruiz and another cop standing in front of her.

“Good evening, Miss Cooper,” Officer Ruiz nods to her. “Is Forsythe Jones in the vicinity?”

Betty looks at him in confusion, not understanding what he needs with Jughead, but she nods either way. At that exact moment, Jughead comes out of his room, hair bushy and eyes lidded. He must have been asleep.

He pauses as he takes in the sight before him and gives Betty a confused look.

“Officers,” he greets, uneasy, “how can we help you?”

Before she even knows what’s going on, Officer Ruiz nods to the younger cop by his side and the man walks over to Jughead and clasps his hand around his arm.

“Forsythe Jones, you’re under arrest for the murder of Veronica Lodge.”

“What?” Jughead yells out as the cop reads him his rights. He looks at Betty, eyes crazed, and Betty just stares back at him dumbfounded. “I didn’t murder her! I didn’t do that!” He tries to tear his arm out of the cop’s grip, but it’s no use.

Betty turns to Officer Ruiz in disbelief and he gives her a pitiful look.

“He was matched to the hair we found at the crime scene,” he tells her regretfully.

She shakes her head slowly. There’s no way. There’s no fucking way. That doesn’t even make sense. No… She looks over to Jughead who is still yelling at the cop. She looks at his hair; the lone curl of his falling into his eye as he thrashes around.

“Betty,” he yells out, breaking her out of her trance. “Betty, I didn’t do this! You know I wouldn’t do this. You know me!”

She locks eyes with him, but doesn’t say anything. He’s pleading with her, practically begging her to listen to him and she can’t.

“Why was he arrested before?” She asks Officer Ruiz even as she stares at Jughead. He gives her a broken look and shakes his head, begging her not to press the issue, but she has to know. If it was for theft or breaking and entering, then it doesn’t matter. Jughead wouldn’t do this. He couldn’t have done this.

“Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”

All of her breath leaves her and she watches in horror as Jughead’s dragged from the apartment and this time when he tries to talk to her, she turns around and shuts the door in his face.

#bughead fanfiction #Wicked Games Fic

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