[ the silence is awful. in the andrews’ household, they talk everything out. every resentment, sorrow, and awkward moment. it’s enough to drive any private person up the wall but by now, archie doesn’t know anything else. not hashing it out, hiding things from the people he cared about, it put him in a bad place once. jughead’s loyal and more than that, he isn’t a cruel person. he expects him to react emotionally, explosively, but there’s something underneath it that he’s suppressing them for.

there’s a weird knot in his stomach that comes from looming over his friend and so he sits down carefully, perched on the edge of the couch. the comfort of being in good company is gone, not because he’s being thrown out but because he thinks he deserves to be. ]

Yes. [ he replies with a nod. ] Whatever it takes to save the people we care about. [ but also, yes, he understands the concept of what the daemon had told him. why he was here, how he’d agreed to show up because the world was coming apart at the seams ( and he’d believed he was going to die, anyway. ) ] But not that and not with Betty.

[ archie isn’t so oblivious that he can’t connect the same dots jughead is drawing lines across. he intends to keep his word, regardless of the pressure from everything else. ] I already told Betty that I'm going to do anything it takes to save Riverdale. [ the world, he guesses, but archie doesn't have personal ties to the world. ] But I won't get between the two of you.