Chapter Text
Sometimes Betty forgets the war is over. The snow makes it easier, somehow. It makes this month seem different from the last. It makes the armistice stick. The whole winter was bone-cracking cold, but it’d taken till December for a proper snowstorm to hit Riverdale, and now, in January, the flurries have settled into something peaceful. Beautiful, even. The first morning she’d woken with the world all white she’d thought – God has thrown a tablecloth over the earth. It was uncharacteristically poetic of her. She’d told Jughead about it at breakfast, and he said he’d write it down.
She’s been spending more time with him this winter. Or at least near him. Sitting in the same room, perfectly domestic. Like a real husband and wife. But this morning she’s at Veronica’s, and how strange that it’s become Veronica’s, to her, and not the Andrews’ anymore. Mary is still there, of course, and all of the remnants of Archie and Fred, but Betty only goes there for one reason.
In a week it will be six months since she and Veronica started – well. She doesn’t have a word for it. She does not know if such words exist. Time is so strange – next week, six months since then. Last week it was two months since the armistice.
“Mary says that the ladies are boiling over,” Veronica says from where she is sitting at the vanity, squinting at her mirror. Betty is sitting on the bed, dressed in yesterday’s clothes. She needs to move some of her things to Veronica’s, she thinks, and then shakes herself. She’s been stuck in her head since she woke up, and mustn’t get caught in logistical plans right after Veronica speaks. She’s been a terrible conversationalist as of late.
“Boiling over?” She asks.
“Because the boys aren’t home yet,” Veronica says, smoothing her hair. She isn’t going anywhere today, but she likes to look neat. It’s charming.
“But they have to understand it will take ages to get everyone home again?” Betty says.
“Oh, I imagine they understand on an intellectual level. But it’s one thing to understand they can hardly ferry home an army in a month, it’s quite another to accept the notion that your darling boy won’t be home for Christmas.”
“They’ve already missed Christmas,” Betty says, “Or – you don’t think they’ll be held up till next year?”
“No, of course not. But the women in the clubs have worked themselves into hysterics over the notion that they’ll never come home again. Or that they’ll get the flu and die overseas, even though the war is over.” Veronica scrunches her face at the idea.
“They can get just as sick here as abroad,” Betty said. “Think of poor Mrs. Mason.” Midge Mason, nee Klump, had died of influenza two weeks before, leaving behind a husband and an infant daughter.
“Of course – but people want to bury their darlings on the family plot.”
“Of course,” Betty murmured, thinking very suddenly of the Andrews family’s corner of the cemetery. Fred next to his father and mother, and then the tiny grave for Veronica’s daughter. Nothing for Archie. Mary had spoken, once, of making arrangements, but had abandoned the idea in that very conversation. There was nothing to bury. No body, not even in France.
“Do you want breakfast?” Veronica asks, standing up and smoothing her skirt. “Do you have a certain time you must leave?”
“Not today,” Betty says, “and I’m starving.”
They go and eat bread and bacon at the dining table, and the sun is twice as bright through the window, bouncing off of the white ground. Mary is in the parlor, having already eaten, now taking her tea while reading. Mary has accepted Betty’s presence in her home, whatever her misgivings may be.
The two of them have nearly finished eating when the doorbell rings.
“I’ll answer,” Mary calls, and Betty can hear her walk to the front door and open it, and then she hears her cry out as if struck. She and Veronica glance at each other worriedly before arising from the table and rushing to the entrance.
Betty is in front, and so sees him first. His arms wrapped around Mary in a tight embrace, his uniform as neat as if it never saw the front, his red hair gleaming, his –
He pulls away from his mother, and Betty sees Archie Andrews’ face.
-
“You must tell us everything, everything!” Veronica says, on the edge of her seat in the parlor chair. Betty is sitting in the chair beside her. Archie is across on the sofa, next to his mother, his bag at his feet. The shoulder of his uniform shirt is dark with Veronica’s tears and snot, from where she threw herself into his arms. Betty has not yet touched him. She feels like Thomas if Christ never offered his hand.
“Why didn’t you write?” Mary asks, “We all thought – why didn’t anybody write?”
“I sent you a letter from the hospital in England,” Archie says, “as soon as I was back to myself. I figure it must have gotten lost – and the one I sent yesterday from the city as well. It was all very fast – they were always moving us POWs very quickly, as soon as they got us back. I suppose I’m here earlier than any of the other fellows from town?”
“P O – you were kept captive, then? I figured it must have been something like that, you wouldn’t have –” Veronica’s voice is still pitchy and fragile. Betty wants to grab her hand, rub a reassuring thumb over her fingers. Months ago, she might have. She can’t now.
“I’ll tell you everything, Ron, I promise,” Archie says, “though it’s a pretty long story.”
“I’ll make you something to eat,” Mary leaps to her feet and rushes to the kitchen, ignoring Archie’s noises of protest.
“I’m so sorry, Ronnie, I am,” he says, quietly. “You all must have been so worried.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.” Veronica looks like she still can’t believe he’s real.
“I do,” he says firmly. “I wasn’t here for you, with the baby.” He looks around, curiously. “Is he a boy after all, like I thought? Did you call him Fred? I suppose you could have gone with Winifred, for a girl, Winnie is a lovely name.” He laughs a little to himself.
Veronica blinks once, twice. Her hands shake in her lap.
Archie’s brow furrows. “I mean, you could have named him anything! Or her! I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl, really. I just feel so awful that I’ve missed so much.”
“The baby didn’t make it,” Betty says, because Veronica isn’t saying anything.
It takes him a moment to process, and then his look of mild confusion collapses into one of abject despair. He trembles as if he might cry, and Veronica produces a frustrated, guttural howl, and throws herself out of the chair and onto the sofa next to him. They curl into each other like the cut halves of a worm, seven hearts split between the two of them.
Betty realizes that she ought to leave. She shouldn’t have been at the house to greet him in the first place. There is no place for her here. She rises from the chair, and rushes for the door, nearly running into Mary as the poor woman emerges from the kitchen.
She catches her breath on the porch, clenching her fingers together and apart, together and apart. She needs to go home and tell Jughead, or maybe her mother, or maybe the first person she sees on the street. What an occurrence! What a miracle!
What is she meant to do now?