[[ In a far corner of Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe, Jughead Jones sat alone in a booth with his head down, and his fingertips flying across the keyboard of his laptop. Every now and then he would glance up, watching the people of Riverdale coming and going, picking up orders and meeting friends at their favourite hangout spot, and then he'd turn his attention back to his writing… ]]

✧･- * -･✧

Every town, whether they realise it or not, has a girl who is unceremoniously crowned as the town's Princess. A girl who is known by all, and though not always loved, she is powerful and an influencing presence in anything that she does. Sometimes this girl's royalty is self-proclaimed, something she decided long ago that she deserved, and that others have simply learnt to accept. Other times the monarch is appointed, by order of the people, this Princess tends to be more popular amongst the masses – although has every ability to be just as ruthless and formidable as the first.

Riverdale was a town, just like any other, but unlike any other town Riverdale was the home to not only one, but two Princesses. The town was split, near enough down the middle, into the North and the South sides. On the North, head of the cheer squad and the most popular girl in Riverdale High was a self-proclaimed Princess by the name of Cheryl Blossom. Whilst on the South, there was Aspen Mills, a girl who was appointed by her peers to the role, who lived and worked in the Whyte Wyrm and who wore her serpent emblazoned leather jacket with pride wherever she went.

Aspen Mills was aptly named by her parents after their favourite serpent - the asp. Throughout both dynastic and Roman Egypt, the asp was seen as a symbol of royalty, which made it the perfect namesake for their daughter, who was the young princess amongst the hordes of Southside Serpents with whom she had grown up. Whilst the asp was regal, its bite was also lethal and legend has it that the Pharaoh Cleopatra committed suicide by asp bite after the death of her lover Antony. Much the same could be said about the blonde serpent, she was both beautiful and deadly.

John and Lettie Mills – her parents - owned and worked behind the bar at the Whyte Wyrm, a place which had become the unofficial home base for the group of bikers, ex-cons and rapscallions known as the Southside Serpents. Aspen herself had spent her entire life at the bar, growing up around foul mouthed and violent men. In this unique environment, she'd quickly learnt how to take care of herself, how to use her pretty face to hustle anyone that dared take her on at pool, how to get blood out of near enough every material and how to pick drunk men up off their asses. She'd passed the initiation into the gang aged just fourteen, and had done so three minutes faster than Sweet Pea who was both her peer and one of her closest friends. Aspen Mills, much like her parents, was a serpent through and through.

11TH JULY 2017

The sound of a gunshot caused Aspen Mills' eyes to snap open and she sat bolt upright in her bed, pulling the covers up against herself in a feeble display of self-preservation. She blinked as she looked around her darkened bedroom, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light cast only by the moon that crept through the gap in her curtains. Her breathing remained slow and Aspen herself was remarkably calm for someone who had just heard gunfire in her home, as though it wasn't all that alarming to her, as though it were a somewhat regular occurrence.

She waited, listening to the muffled voices that drifted up the stairs from the basement, through the - now empty - bar, and up into the apartment above. She couldn't make out what they were saying, or really who it was that was talking, but she listened nonetheless. The voices got progressively louder, as the owners of them became increasingly frustrated with one another and soon, there was a bang as the door from the basement that led out into the parking lot was slammed closed in what Aspen could only assume was a dramatic exit.

There was silence for a moment, and then heavy footsteps climbing the stairs to the apartment. The front door was unlocked with a key, opened and then closed almost soundlessly. The footsteps crossed the hallway, bypassing the den and the kitchen, and walking straight past the master bedroom and the bathroom before coming to a stop outside Aspen's door.

In the dark, Aspen watched cautiously as the door handle moved and the door slowly creaked open until it was wide enough that she could make out the figure of a man. He was tall - well over six foot - and muscular, his once dark beard was now peppered with grey flecks and his hair was slowly going the same way. He wore dark jeans, black boots and a leather jacket, the back of which was emblazoned with an image of a snake and the words 'Southside Serpents'. At the sight of him, Aspen instantly relaxed, dropping the covers and instead pulling her legs up against her chest, resting her chin on her knees as she looked the man dead in the eye.

"Did we wake you Princess?" He asked, his voice soft and full of genuine concern. Aspen nodded a response but otherwise said nothing. A frown creased John Mills' forehead as he crossed the floor of his only child's bedroom, perching himself on the edge of Aspen's double bed. He wasn't frustrated with her, no, he was much more frustrated with the two men he'd discovered in his basement, and the fact that their complete lack of grace or decorum has woken his little girl in the early hours of the morning. "I'm sorry Aspy," John sighed, running a hand across his face and scratching at the area of his beard where the stubble was the shortest and most irritating. "FP is sorting it though, you won't be disturbed again."

Aspen shuffled across her bed, re-positioning herself so that she was cuddled up beside her father, John instinctively wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders as she did so. "Is the basement still off limits?" Aspen knew that she was pushing her luck asking that question, but she also knew that the basement was where the Whyte Wyrm housed it's very best stock and that they'd had a number of unhappy customers this past week because their favourite barmaid hadn't been able to get the 'good stuff' from downstairs.

John stared at the wall opposite Aspen's bed in thought, he was silent for a short while before he nodded. "For now…" He said, not really answering her question but giving her enough so as to put her off pressing him further. With Aspen appeased, somewhat, he pulled her closer and placed a gentle kiss to the top of her blonde head. "Now get some sleep Princess, we've got a crazy couple of weeks ahead of us."

A/N: It's me, ya girl ally. Back on my BS with another fic. This time Riverdale...it'll be set in Season 2 eventually, just getting the lay of the land with this short prologue. I've got a new tumblr URL but you can find everything Aspen related (there's a lot) over there at chlobenet DOT tumblr DOT com/aspen mills

Please follow/review/fave and all those sorts of things because they are encouraging and nice to read. I really hope you guys like this idea and Asp as much as I do! Ally x