I

Like the dust that would've had the chance to accumulate had her absence been longer, Betty's gaze fell over everything she could see of her bedroom from its doorway. It looked the same.

"I bet she snooped through all my stuff while I was gone," she concluded, stepping into the room.

"At least she didn't seal it up and lock the door as if you had died," Jughead offered morbidly, following her in carrying her overstuffed overnight bag.

"You've found it," Betty pretend-complimented, glancing over her shoulder to smile ironically at her boyfriend, "the one level of parenting that exists below my mother's."

"At least she let you move back in."

She laughed.

"Yeah, notice how eager she was to help me pack up my stuff at your dad's trailer and yet where is she now to help me unpack?"

"In her defense," Jughead started, plopping Betty's bag down on her chair, "you brought a ton of stuff."

"I did not," Betty argued, somewhere between embarrassed and offended as she watched him unzip her bulging luggage. Jughead hefted something from its depths.

"Oh, do you always travel with the collected works of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontё?" He waved the volume at her before standing it upright on her desk.

She lacked a good excuse. It wasn't worth drawing out the look Jughead was currently giving her by saying something like 'you never know'. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers.

"Poe."

He straightened up and rotated to give her his full, braced attention.

"What did you say?"

"Poe. It would be a different story if I'd packed the collected works of Poe. You'd never mock him."

"I hope you're pronouncing that 'him' with a capital 'H'," Jughead demanded, running his tongue along the front of his teeth and tsking her. "Poe masterminded horror for the intellectual."

Betty snorted, dropping her purse to the ground in order to cross her arms.

"I don't know if you can call it masterminding when Mary Shelley did it first. Poe just―"

"Don't you finish that sentence." He levelled a warning finger at her.

"Why not?"

"Because there's nothing you can say that I will want to hear that begins with 'Poe just'."

She opened her mouth and he took a step towards her.

"Don't you finish it."

"Or what?"

"Or I leave you here with your dirty laundry and your Brontёs."

Jughead was already breaking; Betty could see him struggling against a smile like a cracked dam against a river.

"That's fine with me," she retorted coolly, using only her eyes to dare him to come closer, "I think I'd prefer to spend a little time with Heathcliff." Jughead shook his head slowly and Betty went on, just to push him even further. "Or maybe Mr. Roches―" He seemed to tilt towards her and then his lips closed over hers, abbreviating her list of fictional suitors.

A few seconds later, they pulled apart, laughing. Betty rested a hand on her boyfriend's shoulder.

"That was good," she complimented with a congratulatory nod. "I think practicing our snappy arguments will really help us in the student council debates."

"I think I'm getting better at thinking on my feet when you spring the argument on me. Although…" he gave her a now, now, Betty admonishing look, "… Poe was below the belt."

Betty shrugged and turned back to address her unpacking situation.

"That's politics."

"Ruthless." He let out a laugh behind her. "I knew I picked a good mate."

"Running mate," she distractedly corrected, fishing her toiletries bag out from under her raincoat (at this time of the year, it was better to be prepared for any type of weather). Turning towards her private bathroom with her hairbrush in one hand, a fistful of bobby pins in the other, and a shampoo bottle tucked up under her arm, Betty halted suddenly.

"Oh, god," Jughead groaned in what sounded like mortification. "I know, I didn't mean to say it like that."

"What?" She looked back at him, eyebrows jerking together.

"I…" His eyes darted side to side as he trailed off. "What were you going to say?"

"Walking towards the bathroom just made me think of Chic." Betty stared hard at the floor, remembering the day Polly's usurper had strolled so casually from her personal space wearing only a towel. One of many things he'd done to torture her while living in her family's home. "It's bizarre how quickly he came and went from our lives."

"Don't start feeling nostalgic, Betts." Jughead's expression became very closed off. "No offense, but that guy was a nightmare."

She sighed, relaxing her posture as the memories were sucked back out to sea on her mind's tide.

"I'm not quite nostalgic. At least not while I still have one awful reminder of him."

Suddenly restless, she went into the bathroom and began hurriedly putting her things back in their places. Jughead appeared, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe.

"Are you going to leave me hanging? I need a follow-up on that last news item."

Betty, crouched at the cabinet under the sink, rose slowly, eyes fixed on Jughead's until his started to look concerned.

"I need to tell you something," she said softly.

"I hate it when you use those words in that order."

Her gaze abandoned his and she made herself small to squeeze past him back into her bedroom. There it was on her desk. The laptop. And in the laptop the camera. And on the other side of the camera, the men she'd seen and sat there half-naked for in her stupid, shiny, costume store black wig. All of that combined to make up the messy, dangerous thing that Chic had left behind, like he'd planted a homemade bomb in her bedroom and walked out with his finger on the detonator, smirking that unholy smirk at her that said destroying her life wouldn't even come close to making the shortlist of awful things he'd done. Betty knew, she just knew, staring at that laptop, that a part of her half-brother was still here with her, just as present and threatening as that night he'd described to her after the fact. The night he'd come into her room while she slept and stood over her bed. Watching. Watching like she'd allowed herself to be watched through the webcam. She shuddered.

"Betty?" Jughead touched her arm, circling around to stand in front of her. "What's going on?"

Author's Note:

I'll be adding just one more chapter to this story, a chapter which will necessitate a rating increase. Hope you're all having a pleasant Easter weekend. I'm off to gnaw at a solid chocolate rabbit. Thanks for reading!

XO ForASecondThereWe'dWon

To be continued...