Many thanks to @kittileepdx for the beta.
The first time Jughead sees the cabin, he doesn’t really see it so much as smell it, woodsmoke and rosemary, garlic and cinnamon. His hand is covering his eyes, the lids almost soaked shut with blood.
His knee is bleeding too, his elbow is dislocated. Every hunched step forward results in pain spiking up his body.
He doesn’t knock on the door, he falls against it, when it opens he sprawls forward onto a wood floor.
Most people would scream, but whoever opens the door doesn’t. He can see hints of who they are as they drag him over to the bed. He can see long blond hair, a hint of lips. Not enough of anything to determine gender, but they are smaller than him. Their breath is labored as they carry him.
He’s just glad they’re helping him. He blacks out in their arms.
When he tries to open his eyes, he can’t. Or rather he can but he sees only darkness, heavy cloth binds them and he can see nothing through it.
He hears singing, smells bread baking in the oven. Before he can speak, he’s unconscious again.
The next time he wakes, he’s staring at the ceiling. Nothing is covering his eyes. The ceiling is beamed with dark wood, made whole by plaster.
His body feels like his body again, healthy and strong. There’s no hint of wolfsbane in the bloodstream.
There’s a woman sitting by his side, her hands pressed against his chest. He sees now that she’s beautiful, her eyes the telltale green of witch.
She looks like she’s his age, but she couldn’t possibly be. That’s not how witches work.
“I’m Betty,” she says.
“I’m Jughead.”
“I figured. You had some notebooks on you. I didn’t read them, but that name was on the front page of all of them.
“Thank you.” The words seem so insufficient now.
“You’re welcome. Are you hungry?”
The only answer to that question is yes. Betty helps him out of bed and to the small table she has in the kitchen. There are only two chairs. She ladles soup into a bowl and then sets it in front of him.
He eats sloppily. She doesn’t talk, taking careful bites of her soup, none of the liquid dripping. The silence is comfortable, because even without talking they know they have something in common.
They are outlaws. Both their kinds are illegal in this country. Killed on sight if possible. He wonders how she’s managed to keep her cabin, while he’s busy hiding in underbrush.
“I can leave now,” he says, pushing back from the table, his third bowl of soup finished.
“You don’t have to. It’s safer to travel in daylight lately and it’s nearly sunset now.”
“How do you know that?” Jughead asks.
“I’m part of the network. They tell me such things.”
Jughead knows about the network, but he’s never met a member before. They’re an organization of supernatural creatures that help other creatures get to safety outside of the United States.
He’d wanted to join when he first heard about it, his whole pack had, but they couldn’t find anyone to tell them more, to connect them. And one by one their pack was picked off. Others might have survived that last attack besides Jughead, but it was unlikely.
“Can I join?” and in that moment he asks, he’s not even thinking about Betty, that asking to join means seeing her again. Instead, he’s thinking of the last sound Jelly made before she died, how badly he wants to avenge her.
If he could kill President Honey himself, he would.
“You don’t need to. Canada is an hour’s walk from here, I can help you get through the border.”
Jughead can tell by her tone that she’s helped others. This isn’t new to her.
He’s always been shit at smelling magic, but he can tell she’s powerful. He’s living proof of that.
“How old are you?” he asks. He’s not sure why.
“I was born during the war of Independence,” she says with a shrug. For a witch she’s young. Younger than Jughead’s mother had been when she had him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve moved people across borders.”
Jughead hopes it will be the last. “I want to help.” It’s more than want really, he needs to be able to help others. The more creatures that help support the network the better the odds there are that innocents like Jelly will survive.
Betty seems to understand all that he does not say and she pulls out a cellphone. In the cottage, old fashioned in every way, it seems impossible that such technology exists, yet she uses it the same way he does.
The person she talks to on the other side of the phone is named Peaches, and Jughead feels like he better understands why she didn’t react to his name.
Peaches arrives in the morning. Jughead’s sipping coffee and devouring a scone, when she climbs in through the window wearing leather, eyes blue. Not a witch or a were.
Jughead takes a sniff and is horrified to realize she’s a Vampire. Peaches laughs at his reaction. Like it’s a joke.
Later, once they’re good friends it seems like a joke to him too. Later he realizes how many strings Betty pulled to get Peaches to come in through that window.
Over the next few months Jughead trains so hard, his body becomes capable of the impossible. The toughness he was automatically granted through birth is increased through work.
Only after training does he start to go into the states and bring creatures to safety. He learns not to discriminate. It takes a while.
It’s a full year before he’s in Betty’s part of the states again. He’s tougher and stronger, a group of five foxes are following him when he knocks on Betty’s door.
This time he notices the soft pink blush of roses that bloom outside her window, the side garden, full of tomatoes and herbs. This time he doesn’t have a scratch on him.
She smiles when she sees him. She leads the foxes down to a secret room for the night. Before pouring him a glass of tea and whiskey.
He doesn’t realize how much he wanted to see her again, till now. Just sitting across from her makes him want to tell his whole life’s story to her. Even the parts he’s never spoken out loud before.
“You like me?” she says, a gleam in her eye. He doesn’t know if it’s teasing or surprise.
“I do,” he says. His father always told him one couldn’t hide anything from witches.
“I’ve seen our future,” Betty says with same casual tone that she offered him tea just minutes earlier.
“And?”
“Give it a year.”
He sees her three more times before that year is out, all in the context of ferrying people to safety. Each time they talk. Each time they grow closer.
A year later President Honey’s ousted, the laws he implemented are overturned, and Jughead crosses the border, a law abiding citizen once again.
He heads straight to her door, on a motorcycle instead of on foot. She opens the door before he can knock. She kisses him first, powerful and soft at the same time, and he can see in that moment their lips touch, what she has been seeing this whole time - their future, unfurled like a string of Christmas lights.
There’s dancing, apple picking, puppies that are really children, beeswax candles, and the slow rocking of a chair. There is love in every moment.