Riverdale (TV 2017)
Some Sort of Saint
by hitchcock_blonde
Hal and Alice stood on opposite sides for their wedding photos.In one of the pictures, Forsythe Jones was between them like a dark-eyed, stubble-chinned shadow. He had his arm flung around Hal (on the right), and their strained buck-toothed grins matched. Between Forsythe and Alice (on the left) was a blank space. Alice_Forsythe&Hal. It was a lying picture. Everything about it was a lie.When Polly was born, Hal hissed “you need to scream” in Alice’s ear. “You have to scream. They always scream.” She kept her mouth glued shut. Not a sound came out.Polly was born crying. Neither Hal nor Alice knew how to calm her down. It took time for Alice to find the right way to hold her and stroke her hair and whisper, “It’s not over yet. You need to hold on. We’re not out yet.”Betty was a silent baby. The first thing she did was curl her hands into tight little fists. It took her a week to learn how to open them. By the time Betty was born, Polly wasn’t crying anymore.Seventeen years later, they sat on either ends of the table and waited while the sun set and the world went dark around them. He never met her eyes.Or: Alice takes a stand, and every action has an equal opposite reaction.