Chapter Text
September 1st, 2019
By the time the calendar flipped to September, the heat had broken and the wind carried whispers of cold.
They talked in circles for weeks.
Dilton argued logistics. “We don’t know where that signal came from exactly. We don’t have the fuel. We don’t have the firepower. What if it isn't Jughead and the Serpents?”
Nick, surprisingly, agreed. “It could be a trap. Could be a whole crew of raiders dressed in leather, baiting survivors with old high school lore.”
Josie had been more compassionate but firm. “I want it to be him, too. But if it’s not? You’ve still got us. You’re still risking what little we have.”
Even Joaquin, ever the Serpent at heart, had paused. “If I were out there… I’d want to be found,” he said one night, quietly. “But I wouldn’t want someone I loved to die trying.”
And always, beneath it all, the steady pulse of Hermione’s decline — not worse, not better. Her good days were fewer now.
“We don’t abandon people,” Archie said one night, jaw clenched, refusing to look at anyone in particular. “We don’t.”
Veronica hadn’t spoken up during the final argument. She didn’t need to. Archie’s eyes found hers across the room and held them, searching, like he already knew she understood what the others didn’t.
And maybe… she did.
He was gone before sunrise.
The note was wedged beneath the dials of the Airstream radio.
It was Archie’s handwriting — all blocky letters, rushed and uneven. Veronica read it sitting on the little lawn chair outside, the early morning sky painted with cold blue and streaks of gold.
I had to try.
I’ll be smart. I’ll be safe. I’ll come back.
If it’s him, I’ll bring him home.
-A
The breath caught in her throat. For a long time, she just sat there, the note crinkling in her hand, the sky growing brighter by the minute.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t wake the others. She didn’t call him stupid or selfish.
Instead, she sat very still, watching the road vanish into the horizon like it always had — stretching out far beyond what they knew, what they feared, what they still dared to hope for.
“I hope you find him,” she whispered.
September 9th, 2019
The storm on the edge of the horizon, which they all watched for days, never came.
It just… loomed.
Thunder cracked through the sky like the world was splitting at the seams, but no rain ever fell. Heat lightning lit up the clouds at night, painting them in flickering, unnatural shades. It was like the heavens had teeth and were grinding them.
The wind had gone still. The kind of stillness that made every creak of the school building feel like a warning, or the kind of stillness that made your skin itch like something was about to happen.
But nothing ever did.
And that was worse.
The kittens had vanished to high corners and under furniture — all except Finch, who paced the hallway windows at night like a silent sentry, tail twitching. Even Quark was unusually quiet, curled beneath Dilton’s desk with one eye open. Moth hadn’t come out in two days.
Joaquin stood by the side door, arms crossed, watching the sky with a haunted expression.
“This weather ain’t right,” he muttered.
No one disagreed.
Even Dilton had stopped trying to explain the atmospheric shifts with science, and Josie — always the one to lighten the mood — had gone quiet, sitting long hours by the boarded-up windows, strumming chords she never finished.
And Veronica… Veronica just wanted someone to hold her hand and say it would all be okay.
But no one could do that.
That night, after most of the group had gone quiet, she slipped down the hall to where her mother lay curled beneath a patchwork of thin blankets, her face paler than it used to be, but still impossibly familiar.
Hermione opened one eye as Veronica climbed in beside her.
“You haven’t done this since you were little,” her mother murmured, voice paper-thin.
“I don’t care,” Veronica whispered, curling close. “Just for a minute.”
Her mother’s arm draped across her shoulders with the weak heaviness of someone who’d loved too long and fought too hard.
Veronica closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would feel like to wake up twelve again. No thunder. No apocalypse. Just clean sheets and lemon-scented laundry and the hum of central air.
She tried to pretend Archie was still here.
That Jughead was already on his way.
That Betty was still alive.
But when she opened her eyes again, the ceiling above her was cracked. The air tasted like metal. The world hadn’t reset.
And somewhere out there, Archie was still gone.
September 13th, 2019
Archie came back looking like he’d aged five years.
His clothes were scorched and dust-worn, one sleeve torn, his boots caked in mud and blood. Banjo, his puffball of a cat, clung to his shoulder with claws dug in.
Veronica saw him first, just a blur at the tree line in the last light of a dying day. Her heart lurched. She ran, her chest heaving with relief.
He didn’t speak until they were inside, until someone handed him water, until he sat down, and Banjo finally jumped off and curled up beside his boot like nothing had ever changed.
“I found the place,” he said, voice flat.
Everyone leaned in.
“It was ruins. Just… fucking ruins.”
He paused. Swallowed.
“There was a school bus, turned on its side. The bridge there had been blown apart. And the bodies…” He blinked hard. “God, there were so many. Hundreds. Piled. Like someone went through and slaughtered them. All of them.”
Joaquin’s breath hitched in his throat.
“I think it was the Serpents,” Archie added. “Or maybe... someone else. Some of them had jackets. But they weren’t… people anymore. Just meat. I couldn’t tell who was who. Couldn’t find any faces I knew. No Jughead. No Betty. Nothing.”
He stared at the floor like it had betrayed him.
“I thought I’d get there and there’d be something. A sign. A message. A tag. Something that said, ‘We made it.’” His jaw trembled, then clenched. “But it was just wreckage.”
Veronica knelt in front of him, hands braced gently on his knees. “Archie…”
His eyes locked on hers—and cracked open.
“I miss him, Ronnie,” he said, voice splintering. “I miss my best friend. Every day I think about the way he’d laugh at the dumbest shit, or how he used to carry a damn notebook like a weirdo, or how he’d never let me give up, even when I wanted to.” His breath shook. “I feel like I’m holding onto him with my fingernails, and every day a little piece of him falls away and I don’t know how to stop it.”
Veronica pulled him in.
He buried his face into her shoulder and cried—not the sharp, panicked sobs of someone afraid, but the low, broken ones.
She didn’t say it would be okay. She didn’t promise Jughead was alive. She didn’t say anything at all.
She didn't think there were enough words in the world to say anything that would make him feel better.