@mademiistakes hit the heart for a starter
They talk sometimes, on the phone. Why? Well Gladys is oldschool that way, isn’t she? They fill each other in on the big stuff, the small stuff. Whatever it takes to ignore the shittiness of the day to day. When she first asks Cheryl Blossom to be her girlfriend, it’s Gladys that she tells. When Jughead takes to the jacket, it’s another call patched through. Maybe it’s weird to some, but in her eyes, it’s only natural - after all, the brunette was the one to step in when Toni’s own parents went in when she was only 12. Funny that, how the children weren’t allowed to play together, but the mother in her wouldn’t allow Toni to rot on her own.
But the town’s on lockdown now and even though calls are cut off. It’s enough to make her mouth feel dry, here last few conversations just a brief touching upon the fact that she’s been sick, that there was a mass seizure at school, and she was caught up. The quarantine means there’s no communication out of here, and while she isn’t sure how the hell Hiram Lodge has done it, they’re cut off.... and with it, goes that last motherly relationship that she has out here in the big bad world.
Does she know what’s happened? Did Jughead make it out to Toledo? There’s a warning that she gave, because the boy ran off before the world went to hell. With fingers in her pink hair, she tries at the radio again, different frequencies, always, like a shout into the void. “HELLO?” her voice crackles, with the static. “Is anybody out there?”
