Chapter Text
It had been two months since the FBI had broken up the sex-trafficking ring; two months since Josie McCoy sang like a canary after figuring out the only thing keeping her from life in prison was names, she had. And, it had been two months since Betty slept properly. Jughead was up with her most nights, when her nightmare bled into the living and she woke herself up screaming, crying out for help that didn’t seem to want to come. Jughead was always there, though, wrapping his arms around her in a comforting manner and letting her cry into his chest as she remembered the way Peter had assaulted her and abused her body. The dick was dead so he couldn’t touch her again but on Betty’s worst nights, that wasn’t enough.
“He’s dead, Betts,” Jughead murmured into her ear as she felt his own tears warming her neck. She knew the whole ordeal of the trafficking ring had been hard on him too. In fact, it was the trafficking ring that got them talking again in the first place after ten, painfully long years. She knew better than to think that they had solved all of their problems over the course of the past couple of months, but she also knew better than to think that they hadn’t made any progress. “He’s dead and he can’t hurt you again. We – you and Sweet Pea – shut down the trafficking ring. You’re so fucking brave, baby.”
She let his soft and soothing voice lull her into a relaxed mindset, knowing that she needed to be up in a couple of hours to start getting ready for another day at the bureau. She nodded into his chest, biting her lip anxiously as worry permeated the inside of her stomach. “I’m sorry that I just can’t seem to get past this. The first time was just as hard, and I don’t know how I managed to deal with it on my own.”
“I know,” he murmured, pressing a brutally gentle kiss to the crown of her head. “I know. I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. I won’t give you the opportunity to push me away again.”
She laughed wetly, knowing that the only reason he had been absent from her life for ten years was because she had pushed him away. She expelled a soft sigh as her tears slowed down and her heartrate returned to normal. “I’m good now.”
“Even if you weren’t, that’s okay, too,” he murmured, pressing his lips against her temple as she cocooned herself inside of him, melding into his gentle hold on her as he wrapped his body around her. She was safe. She was so safe. It was perhaps this thought that got her to stop crying altogether. Taking a fortifying breath, she pressed a kiss to the base of his throat before peeking up at him through dainty eyelashes coated with crystalline tears. She nodded her head, pressing her lips to his in a warm and gentle kiss.
“Thank you,” she murmured against his lips, breath fanning out over him as they were separated by mere millimeters. Jughead kissed her once more before crushing her into his chest and pulling her down on top of him.
“Think you can get a couple more hours of sleep, baby? You’ve got an early morning at the office,” Jughead said, tone gentle, and Betty knew he didn’t want her to think he was telling her what to do.
She sighed. “I don’t think so. I – I can still feel Peter on top of me; still feel his breath hot against my ear. I think I just want to go ahead and get up now. Make some coffee. You should go back to sleep, though. You’ve got to meet with Joaquin.”
The Serpents had moved to Washington – the ones who Jughead considered inner circle, at least – and Jellybean, FP, and Alice had moved there, too. Jellybean was currently enrolled in Washington University and going to therapy once a week, trying to make sense of what had happened to her. Alice and Betty went out to lunch every Sunday as they worked on their fragile relationship. It wasn’t as bad as it once was, not after they both put in the work to fix it, and Sweet Pea and FP went shooting every Saturday at the gun range. They were making it work.
Veronica and Sweet Pea had ended up growing closer while Veronica ruthlessly grilled Josie on her involvement in the ring. Cheryl, Betty’s cousin, had flown out to Washington to spend two weeks with her and, much to Jughead’s displeasure, she kicked Jughead out of their apartment, and Jughead had been forced to spend the two weeks with Joaquin and Kevin Keller, an old friend from Riverdale Betty hadn’t realized how much she had been missing. Veronica and Sweet Pea were now trying to tentatively date one another, and it made the most sense, as the both of them knew their hours they worked and knew when the other needed to be comforted or needed to be left alone.
Betty and Jughead were much of the same way and more times, often than not, Jughead was good at reading when Betty needed to be held and when she needed space. They hadn’t slept together yet – at Jughead’s request. He wanted her body and mind to heal completely from the trauma they endured, and so told her that he wasn’t going to rush anything. Betty appreciated that but she also wanted to see just how damaged she was. They had had an earth-shattering fight about that; about her thinking she was damaged goods, and she didn’t know who had been madder, her or Jughead. Then Jughead sat her down in front of the mirror in their room and discarded her articles of clothing, piece by piece. Each time he exposed a new patch of skin, he kissed the scar, or the birthmark, or the freckle that littered it and made it anything less than cream and roses, and he told her how much he loved her.
Of course, she cried indefinitely after that and held onto him, finally breaking down and telling him she was scared about not being good enough for him. The way he held her so gently; the way he whispered, “baby”, in her ear so comfortingly…Betty knew she had nothing to fear in that moment.
Jughead swung out from underneath the covers and stood up from the bed when she did. “Yeah, that’s not how this works, Betts. If you’re awake, drinking coffee, then so am I. We’ll be awake together at this ungodly hour.” His tone was warm, and his eyes were soft, cluing Betty into the fact that he wasn’t upset by their predicament. She smiled at him and made her way out of their room and into their kitchen, laughing as Jughead butterflied kisses to her neck as she did so. Once in the kitchen and under the light, Betty refused to look at her body, knowing the scars were still there. Knowing that Peter had manhandled her badly enough that he left his mark on her. She hated feeling like she was owned by him – even in death – and worked on it twice a month with her therapist. She wouldn’t sit in any other sessions and rarely let herself cry about what she went through in front of Matthew, her therapist. She was too stoic for that.
Turning on the coffee maker, their kitchen soon filled with the aroma of the roasting beans as it percolated into the coffee pot. It was a feeling of warmth and security for Betty, and she wore it like a blanket. Jughead looked at her. “You going to be okay to go into work today?”
She sighed, rubbing a hand down her face as she thought about his question. Would she be, okay? She didn’t know because she was running on little sleep these days. So she knew a big portion of her would be tired and there wouldn’t be a damn thing that she could do about it. At least, if she acted like a raging bitch, Sweet Pea would shut her the fuck up with food and tell her to go home. He always had her back when it came down to it. “I think I’ll be okay. Besides, it's not like Sweet Pea is going to let me be a bitch to everyone at the office.”
Jughead chuckled as he poured their cups. Bringing his cup to his lips, he took a sip, eyes sparkling. “No, he definitely won’t. He’d kick your ass before you could even complain.”
Betty laughed after swallowing her own mouthful of coffee. “Him and Ronnie both.”
“How’s that going?” Jughead asked, not being as close to Sweet Pea and Ronnie as Betty was.
She shrugged a shoulder. “Good enough for now. They’re just taking it slow. They know the trials of dating a colleague. It helps that Veronica runs the IT department at the bureau and isn’t often put with Sweet Pea on cases.”
Jughead nodded, taking another sip of his coffee. “And the letter you guys got last week?”
There it was the million-dollar question. The FBI had gotten a letter – a puzzle, really – made out of newspaper clippings. It was a riddle of sorts, baiting them into finding a young boy who had gone missing. They were still looking for him and Betty didn’t know who could have taken him. He was an orphan, and no one had reported him missing, which led her down to hunt through the orphanage he was living at. Why hadn’t the owner reported one of her boys was missing? Who had taken him? The questions were limitless, and Betty had a headache just thinking about it. “I don’t know. We’re still stuck on ground level for it, Jug. We’re looking into it but since it was sent via newspaper clippings, Veronica has no digital trail to trace. This is out of her jurisdiction almost as much as its out of mine.”
“You’ll solve it, Betty,” Jughead said warmly. “You always do.”
She nodded, staring unseeingly into her coffee mug. She had a long day ahead of her.
XXX
Once at the bureau, she spotted Sweet Pea standing in his cubicle, leafing through some files and she made her way there. Knocking on the wall, she smiled at him as he turned to look at her. “I brought you coffee.”
“Thank fuck,” he exhaled. “It was a long night.”
“Yeah?” Betty asked, eyebrow quirked. “Veronica kept you up?”
“Well,” Sweet Pea smirked slyly. “She certainly didn’t want to sleep. We found other…activities to per sue in bed.”
“Gross,” Betty snorted, smacking Sweet Pea on the shoulder with the back of her hand. She took a sip of her own coffee she had brought and looked at him. “Any more cryptic letters?”
“Glen didn’t have any to give me when I got in this morning but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been one delivered since then,” he replied.
Just then, Glen stuck his head out of his office that was across the hall from Betty’s office. “Cooper and Connor, get your asses in the meeting room. Now.”
Good morning to you, too, Glen.
Betty followed Sweet Pea down the hall to their meeting room, spotting Veronica already sitting in there, and she grinned at her. “Hey, Ron.”
“Hey,” she replied, nodding at Betty, and then smirking at Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea rolled his eyes but smiled back and sat down next to her, with Betty taking the seat across from him. Glen walked in moments later.
“We’ve got another letter,” he said abruptly, no greeting beforehand. Betty sighed. She had expected something like this and looked at the projector as Glen pulled up the message on the power point.
From the looks of it, the boy had been murdered, and now they were supposed to figure out where his body was.
“Shit,” Sweet Pea hissed as Betty closed her eyes. That was not the answer she had been wanting. She licked her lips, looking at Glen inquisitively.
“What are we looking at here?” Betty asked.
“I think a cult following of some type,” he murmured, eyes on the note depicting where they could find the boy’s body.
“Christ,” Betty sighed. Sweet Pea looked at the note for a minute.
“What are we going to find when we find his body?” Sweet Pea asked Glen directly.
“I don’t know,” Glen begrudgingly admitted a few moments later. “I don’t know the type of cult we’re looking at.”
“Okay,” Betty said, nodding her head as her eyes fell back on the note too. Sadly, she knew they had the answer to where the boy’s body was. They were just too late; they hadn’t made it there in enough time. “Let’s handle this with care, people. If we have a cult in Washington that’s resorted to murdering innocent kids, they’re pretty much telling us they’re willing to do anything. We need to figure out what the cult is following and who’s behind it but we need to do it discreetly. I want all hands on deck for this.”
With that, they went their separate ways, ready to jump headfirst into their next case.