#tw:hostage

[ms-maj]

Vermilion

So a few days of creeping on here left me terribly inspired. October’s kind of my month so I figured what better way to get back into fandom than diving in, and songfic has always been my jam. Many thanks to @paperlesscrown for inspiring this challenge; I can’t wait to catch up on all the incredible writing this fandom has to offer. 

Hard to say what caught my attention,

Fixed and crazy, aphid attraction

Carve my name in my face to recognize

Such a pheromone cult to terrorize

I won’t let this build up inside of me…

Vermilion-Slipknot

At least it’s here, I’m here, I’m home. Most people didn’t find spaces in their high school that they considered home. Most people also didn’t find the family they would make in high school either but Betty was lucky. At least in that regard.

She didn’t think too hard about it, to be honest. Naturally, they were drawn together— always had been—but in the confines of these four walls, it had been different. Passing glances turned to lingering stares. She’d learned to tolerate the disorder because he needed the chaos to thrive. And they did. Together. In here they’d built a home, seen it come crumbling down around them and pieced it back together.

It wasn’t easy, that wasn’t their nature. If at first, Betty had only tolerated the disorder, she grew not only to embrace it but to find her own power within it. She lived to dissect the madness that swept their slice of archaic Americana, to stitch the unraveling tapestries into something new, follow every last lead to uncover every last piece, no matter the circumstances. 

She’d gotten in her fair share of scrapes before with that attitude. A handful of bruises, a smattering of stitches, a patchwork of scars on her body and mind before she graduated. 

That was three years ago. While they’d made it back to Riverdale a couple of times, they liked being away more. College was just that. College. Term papers and final exams and cliche over-caffeinated nights in the library praying for a snowstorm that shut the city down for a day or two.  Not that they didn’t still dabble in Scooby-ing. Jughead always needed an outlet for his insatiable curiosity and Betty was double majoring in Criminal Justice and Psychology—not that she thinks if she’d known more about her father or the Farm she’d have been able to stop them—but maybe she can stop the next Black Hood or Edgar Evernever before they get their poison into too many hearts and minds. 

Not that any of that education was helping her now. The tape tightly bound her hands in front of her, her legs to those of the chairs, the bandana stuffed in her mouth tasted of sweat and oil and no one knew where she was. She told FP she was going for a run, which was all she set out for, she only went into the school for a dose of nostalgia. She found so much more than that.

The voices were louder, angrier, than an empty school on the first Sunday following a holiday should be. The front doors had been locked, not that that should have been unusual or did it deter her in any way, but she wondered then where the voices could be coming from.

Betty knew she should’ve just gone back home, crawled under the covers with Jughead and enjoy their reprieve from academia, but that deep-seated yearning, that pull toward truth won out and she found her legs carrying her down the hallway. 

They could have been anywhere else; Riverdale High was a big school after all. But they were in her room, their room. It was as close to sacred as she’d ever get. The old computers and printers still sat under dusty covers, the lingering smell of musty paper and old ink still pervaded the air, and from her haven, the cacophony arose.

She tried to stay quiet in the hallway, out of sight, hopeful she’d be able to figure out what was going on before hightailing it back and telling FP. What she hadn’t counted on was her phone ringing, though connected to her headphones, the vibration was enough to startle her into dropping it in an attempt to silence it. Just a few strides down the hall was as far as she got.

She woke on the chair, bound but not gagged—not yet—surrounded by faces she did not know. Two men were impeccably groomed: bespoke suits and thousand dollar watches, the other man looked as though he were an extra in Night of the Living Dead; gaunt, haunted, covered in dirt. 

They didn’t say anything. Just watched her thrash against her bindings. Waited until she’d screamed herself hoarse before the zombie pulled the bandana from his back pocket and shoved it into her mouth. Tear stained and nearly fainted, her eyes managed to catch another figure in the room. 

Dark jeans, too tight and worn came into her line of sight. Betty’s eyes fixated on the waist, a woman’s waist, the belt buckle that looked vaguely familiar and so did the voice coming from her.

“Gentlemen, did you realize that this was the one person who could absolutely not see what was happening here? That she could, and would, bring this entire operation down like that?” The older woman said, snapping her fingers dramatically. 

Obvious mafioso number one scoffed. “This slip of a girl?”

“That ain’t just any girl. She’s connected. To everyone in this wasteland.”

The woman’s boots scuffed against the linoleum as she got closer to Betty. Mafioso number two grabbed Betty’s face between his meticulously manicured hands. “She’ll be easily disposed of.”

“Can’t do that either, chief. Well, not like you like to do.” The man moved when she approached and when Gladys Jones kneeled in front of her, cold, and empty eyes met hers. “We gotta make this special.” Gladys trailed her hand down Betty’s cheek, wiping away the newly formed tears that had begun to fall. 

“Do you know her, boss?” The zombie asked, moving behind her.

Gladys nodded. “Oh yeah.” She stood, shaking her head, nearly black locks barely contained by the cap she was still sporting. “You two go down to the basement and clear out what you can. We’ve got to find a new base of operations. Honey will have to deal with it; we’re burnt. You will be too, Princess. At least you won’t have to be awake for it.”

That was the last she heard before the darkness engulfed her. 

She had woke with a start. Large, mouthfuls of acrid air seeped to her lungs and she knew at least the gag had been removed. A small mercy, she thought, as she fought against the tape that still bound her to the chair. 

There was little hope, she knew, tied to a chair inside of a building set alight. The smoke wasn’t bad, yet, a slight haze in the room and the smell of a campfire burning across the way. Maybe there was a chance after all. She had to have been gone long enough to raise some flags. FP didn’t know her normal route but Jughead did, and her being incommunicado without prior knowledge would surely be enough to at least make him realize something wasn’t explicitly right. 

Swallowing thickly, the smoky air and no small amount of fear, Betty tried to scoot her chair closer to the door. With every inch she’d move, she’d scream, make as much noise as she possibly could, hoping that someone—anyone—would find her. After nearly an hour of scooting her way toward the door, she’d moved maybe ten feet. Out of breath, tired, the fire creeping ever closer, she felt that glimmer of hope extinguish entirely. She went back to work on the tape, twisting her hands and feet in hopes it would give, and she would be free.

Her voice wouldn’t serve her anymore, gone from screaming and the much thicker smoke. Scream as she might, no one could hear her, she could barely even cry anymore. This was it. In the room where her life truly began. She was going to die. No more late-night take out. No more hushed I love yous as dawn broke. The future they’d quietly planned, the ring resting on a chain under her shirt...

  Refusing to resign herself to death without giving every last bit of herself to the fight, she pushed across the expanse of linoleum, flames licking the underside of the door. She thought she heard voices, though mildly delirious now, she used what little voice was left to scream again. The chair lifted and slammed back on the ground, anything she could do to draw attention to her predicament. But she was met with silence. 

The tears flowed freely now, her breathing heavier than before, there was a flash of light and then, nothingness. 

[ask-reed-detroit]

Have you ever been in a situation where you failed to save someone’s life?

“Yeah… Yeah, I have. More than once. It sucks a whole load of ass.” He let out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair. “I think… the worst time was probably this hostage case. There was a guy taken hostage and there was a bomb. We were several stories up and time ran out… Long story short: there was a window, I grabbed him a leapt out, I got away alive with a pretty severe concussion and a lot of future scars, he… wasn’t so lucky. It stuck with me for years.” He grimaced, remembering when the news was broken to him that the guy didn’t make it - how he’d endlessly beaten himself up over it, blaming himself for his family’s grief. If only he’d been a little bit faster.