Mine (a Riverdale fanfiction)

Her Not-So-Perfect Long-Lost Brother

Betty sat at Sunday morning breakfast with her family—perfect pancakes, perfect parents, perfect inquisition of her not-so-perfect long-lost brother.

Well, inquisition wasn't quite the right word. Betty's father kept firing off questions at Chic, and her mother kept lobbing them back, as though they were playing some sharp-edged version of tennis.

Chic eventually was brought to admit that he was a male prostitute, the news falling flat onto the table in silence, although having seen where he lived, Betty couldn't be entirely surprised.

He gave his explanation in a monotone, not looking at any of them. "I can go into specfics, if you like. I've also got a pretty good collection of scars I could show you."

This was something they had in common, something that Betty could use to show him that they weren't so different, he and she. "I have scars, too. Crescent moons on my palms."

"From digging your nails in." He knew. He understood. Finally, someone who understood. "Yeah, I used to do that, too."

They looked at each other in silence, a bond beginning to grow between them, before Betty's mom hastily broke the moment by passing the syrup.

After Kevin did some digging on Betty's behalf—and possibly on his own, although she didn't want to dig too deeply into that—he told her that Chic was a webcam prostitute, someone who enticed people through the internet. Kevin clearly thought she should be upset by this, and she was, on Chic's behalf ... but some part of her was also ... curious.

Unsettled by that, and over her misgivings, she gave her permission to Jughead to do a story on Riverdale history for The Blue and Gold that would lay bare the truth of the town's founding, and the actions of local hero Augustus Pickens. She hoped he would be sensible about it ... but Jughead was hard to say no to any day, much less when he was fired up and interested, and she was distracted.

Betty went home and tried to focus on homework, but the quiet of the house was interrupted by Chic slamming his way in, coming back from trying to collect his things and finding they had been thrown out. He blamed Betty for the loss of his laptop and camera, his livelihood, because she had maced his landlord and dragged him out of there.

"My entire life was at that hostel!" he shouted at her.

"Like my mom said, you can stay here as long as you want."

"You don't think this is long-term, do you?"

"I don't know; maybe it can be." To keep around the only person other than Jughead who could help her work through the darkness inside of her? Betty would fight for it if she had to.

But Chic didn't see it that way. He gave her a derisive grin. "Wow. Wow. If you believe that, then you're even crazier than I thought."

And he disappeared up the stairs, leaving her alone, and probably crazy.

That night, alone in her room, she made a decision. Knocking on his door, she left her extra laptop in front of it, apologizing when he came out. Without a word, Chic picked up the laptop and returned to his room.

Betty went back to her own room, feeling lost, somehow. Alone.

The next afternoon, as she continued to go through the motions of being some perfect student, Chic came to her room.

"Why'd you buy me that laptop?" he demanded.

"Oh. Um, I didn't. It was just an old computer I had from The Register."

"Why'd you come back to get me?"

"You're my brother." Which sounded entirely too Pollyannaish. "And my mom was depressed."

"No. Sorry, everything is a transaction. No one, not even you, is that nice. So why do you care, Betty? What do you want? And careful—I'll know if you're lying."

For some reason, she didn't want to lie. She wanted him to know. "To figure out why I am the way that I am. There's a darkness in me that I don't understand. That scares me." She waited for a response, but there was none, so she went on. "And I thought that maybe if you had it, too, which I think you do, you'd be able to help me make sense of it."

Chic rolled his eyes and turned away.

"I know about the webcamming," Betty told him. "That's why I got you the computer. So if you ever want to talk about that, or compare scars—"

"No, thanks. I'll pass."

He left again, but Betty felt better. They were making progress, getting closer. A little bit more and maybe she could find the answers she'd been looking for ever since the Black Hood's first phone call. Farther back than that, if she was being honest with herself.

At the town's celebration of Perkins Day, her father charged up to them armed with the knowledge of who Chic was and what he did for a living, trying to use that to get Betty and her mom to throw Chic out. Instead, they stood up for Chic, and Betty's father stormed off again.

Their family drama was overshadowed by the town drama, as the Serpents marched into the middle of the celebration with a demonstration, following up on Jughead's article, which had, indeed, been as divisive as Betty had expected it to be.

That night, Betty was considering whether to reach out to Jughead to talk about the whole situation, a blank email in front of her ready to be composed, when Chic came to her room.

"Betty, I have a confession to make. The first night I was here, I came into your room while you were sleeping."

Whatever she had expected, it wasn't that. "What?"

"I kept waking up that night trying to understand 'Why would this girl go back to that place for me?' But I think, maybe, I understand now. You're alone here." He came and sat down on the bed next to her.

Betty tried not to flinch away from him—after all, this was what she had asked for. But there was truth in the old adage to be careful what you wished for, and she couldn't help wondering if she was about to learn that truth.

Instead, Chic smiled at her. "We'll start with why I webcam. One of the reasons is to make money. The other reason is to escape."

"To pretend to be someone else." She thought of herself in the black wig, of the power that had swept over her when she didn't have to be Betty Cooper.

"Yes, but ... more than that ... it's a way of getting away from the darkness I feel inside me, too."

Betty opened her hand, which she hadn't realized she was clenching, and looked at the line of half-moon scars there. "Can you show me how to do that?" she whispered.

Her brother smiled at her and reached for her laptop, opening it. Betty moved closer, letting the screen light both their faces, watching intently.

To escape. To be someone else. To get away from the darkness, if only for a moment. That was what she wanted. What she finally had the chance to do.