CHAPTER 2
He wanted to be annoyed with his sister forcing him back into therapy again, but he understood why she wanted it and didn't feel like he could do much. Chuck was only seventeen and still her responsibility, so if it made her worry less then he would do it. Of course the moment he was eighteen and heading off to Stanford therapy ended. She didn't have to worry about him anymore, at least not more than she normally did. He'd find a dorm and take as much pressure off her as he could. Heck, if things went like he hoped then by the time he graduated he'd be able to help pay off her student loans while she was still finishing up her residency and he'd be on his way to becoming Charles Carmichael.
Despite having always found it fairly easy to get along with people, Chuck had been struggling to meet another real friend until that day he was sat on the bench with a highlighter cap in his mouth looking over a paper when another student asked, "You're in double-E one thirty one?" And Chuck Bartowski met Bryce Larkin, who told him the next millennium belonged to the geek and took him to the quad to meet Jill Roberts.
Suddenly he wasn't alone again. For years he had Ellie and Morgan but now he was separated from Ellie he had been telling himself he would be alone, but he didn't have to be. Bryce wasn't Morgan but he was a friend, and Jill sure as hell wasn't Ellie, but she was a girl he cared for.
Of course he was still alone in his secret. As good a friend as Bryce was and as much as he was sure he loved Jill, they couldn't know about his other life. Not when the Piranha was wanted by every agency in the United States, two in South America and three in Europe, not the mention a few cartels.
In High School it had been a way to test himself, but a week after they moved to Echo Park was the first time he hacked into a government database with a purpose, running a search on the camera footage from the pier to try and find the man who had killed Morgan. He looked through hours of footage and thousands of mugshots but couldn't find him.
The first time he went vigilante was when he saw a report on people sent to the hospital after being caught in a shootout involving the LaRosa cartel. It wasn't hard to find out Anthony LaRosa was their patriarch, nor was it hard to drain the accounts of him and a dozen of his lieutenants by making private donations to thirty hospitals across the US. Technically it was a crime, but much like Jake the Stank, he didn't feel too bad about it.
Since then he'd technically stolen somewhere around ninety million dollars, though all of it had been donated to pay off funerals and bills or make donations. He'd never taken a cent of it and despite having eaten Top Ramen for two months straight when he chipped in to help Ellie pay for her car repairs. He didn't want their money. Knowing he was helping people and hurting bad guys was enough.
There were times he thought about giving it up, but then he'd dream of walking along the pier as shots rang out. He'd grab Morgan as he fell over, then watch as his mother and father glared at him and ran from him while the shooters turned on the crowd walking around him as if his best friend wasn't dying in his arms. He couldn't stop them. Chuck couldn't stop the people on the news from killing people, but he could ruin their lives and help put them in jail.
He'd taken Jill to Ellie's the night The Piranha first made the news. Neither women saw it, Ellie was too busy interrogating Jill to notice Chuck's brow sink as he saw the reporter talk about how a hacker had posted security footage of Franklin Ramirez beating his wife online with links to other videos of him with his mistresses as well as evidence of him using campaign funds to buy prostitutes, one of whom ended up in the hospital after one of their dates. Apart from paying the hospitalized woman's bills and making a trust for her son he left Ramirez' money alone figuring his wife's lawyers could handle draining it later.
But all of it felt hollow since he couldn't find anything of the man who had killed Morgan. The police had said the man who died on scene was a member of a cult who thought that their savior had been sent from a planet in the Orion constellation, but Chuck didn't believe a word of it. He'd seen the men who held them at gunpoint, they weren't crazy, they were determined, cold.
He'd tried looking up Orion, but couldn't get far. He was still struggling to make sure no one could track him apart from when he shredded sites on his way out. It was hard enough getting into government databases to look through stuff manually, running an automated search was still too much of a risk. Maybe if he had cutting edge equipment, but he barely managed to piece together his 'dark box', the laptop he'd crafted specifically for hacking and using the deep web.
Though it was stressing to know that the government and cartels were looking for him, Chuck couldn't help but find a certain joy in it all sometimes.
"I'm Batman," he said to himself one day while Jill was busy with a project and Bryce was in Fleming's class. It had left him laughing for a solid minute thinking of himself as a broke Batman, imagining himself dressed in a pair of pajamas he had ages ago while behind the keyboard. After that he often added wearing a faded Batman shirt to his routine along with his thinking juice.
At times he mused that if he was Batman then there was no doubt that Bryce was Superman. Bryce was great at everything. He'd taken to calling Ellie's boyfriend Captain Awesome but even he seemed to pale in comparison to the Ubermensch that was Bryce Larkin.
But Superman wouldn't have betrayed Batman like Bryce Larkin did Chuck Bartowski, and he'd taken Chuck's Poison Ivy with him. Jill sure as hell wasn't Wonder Woman, she wasn't Selina Kyle-well maybe the shit Frank Miller version-but she was damn sure no Vicky Vale.
It was in the wake of his expulsion and the betrayals that Chuck came closest to crossing a line he'd told himself he wouldn't. A burning, angry part of him knew that he could ruin their lives. He could erase their social security numbers, wipe out their bank accounts, put them so deep in debt they'd never escape, but he really couldn't. As blurry as it seemed since he'd started his avenging there was still a line. He'd already crossed the one that made him a criminal but he was still a good guy.
Batman technically broke the law, but he didn't go after people because they hurt him. He didn't wear a cowl to get revenge. He always let Joe Chill go. No, Batman did what he did because it was the only way he could help people. So that was what Chuck tried to do… when he could muster the energy.
Most days he just felt alone again. Ellie and Devon were there, but that just made things worse most days. He loved Ellie and really liked Devon, but him living with them was this constant reminder of how wrong things had gone. He'd hoped to make his first payment toward Ellie's student loans within a year of graduating, but he could barely pay his share of the bills until he was made the Nerd Herd Supervisor.
He'd failed Ellie. She was so great and he'd been such a disappointment. It felt like the Bartowski Curse wasn't about that house, it was him. Chuck was the Bartowski Curse.
Chuck was the reason Mary Bartowski abandoned her family. Chuck was the reason Stephen Bartowski lost his wife and left his family. Chuck was the reason Eleanor Bartowski lost her mother and father and was left to care for her loser younger brother. Chuck was the reason Morgan Grimes was murdered on what should have been the best day of their lives. So of course Chuck was the reason Bryce betrayed him and Jill left him. Why would anyone want to be around him?
March sixth was the first time Chuck considered taking money for himself. He had given his part of the rent, helped Ellie pay for another repair on her car and had to replace parts for his normal computer. It forced him to dip into his savings, which were barely past three digits, yet days before he's transferred four million dollars from Jaime Guirez's bank accounts to six charities and sent a dozen reporters emails with evidence of his blackmailing a senator.
Bruce Wayne didn't go out and put the Riddler in Arkham only to go home having to drain his savings to chip in his share of the food bill. He could just do like college and eat Top Ramen for the month, but Ellie wouldn't have it and he didn't want her to worry, so it wasn't worth the trouble. Batman probably never even tasted Top Ramen, so why the hell was Chuck trying to be him? Why couldn't he figure out some way to get his hand on some of the money he dealt with? The only ones who would miss it didn't deserve it.
Ellie found him sat in his room sat at his desk with his head against the desk. "Chuck?"
His head shot up and he found her wearing a frown as she leaned against the door frame. "What's up, El?"
"You okay?"
"Late shifts catching up," he said with a laugh. "How about you?"
Ellie snickered. "Same. Devon's on my shift tomorrow, so it'll be nice to see him around the hospital."
"That's great! You guys can sneak off to lunch or something."
"Yeah I hope so." She stepped into the room, a somber smile on her lips as she brushed a stray curl from his brow. "You need a haircut, little brother."
"I'll make sure I put a bag over my head until I get to a barber," he said with a laugh.
Ellie clicked her tongue and swung the side of her fist into his shoulder. "Chuck, why don't I ask around the hospital and see if maybe you and some pretty nurse can go on a double date with me and Devon."
"I appreciate it, El, but I'm sure I can find some poor woman to pity date me if I try."
"It's not pity!" That punch stung his shoulder harder than the first. "You're a great guy, Chuck. You're so sweet, and caring and cute and compassionate and considerate-"
"Stuck on the C section, eh?" Ellie shot him a playful glare, so he held up his hands defensively. "I get it, El. I'm your sweet, adorable little brother."
"Exactly."
"An overgrown eight year old," he said hiding his bitterness behind a victorious smile.
Ellie looked at the posters, comics and figures around his room, settling her gaze on him with a shrug. "Honestly it's hard to deny."
Chuck leaned back laughing, settling into a smirk as he shook his head. "Look I really do appreciate it, El. I do, I swear, but I'm just…" Worthless. An albatross on your life.
Ellie knelt beside his chair with a solemn nod. "I know it's been rough, Chuck, but I know you'll get through this better than ever. We're Bartowskis. We don't give up, we come back stronger."
He fought off the urge to say one of them does, instead just giving her a nod. Watching her get up and start to leave he held back a smirk asking, "You heading to the store soon?"
"Yeah, I forgot the broth."
"Think you can pick me up some earplugs if you see them?"
"Ear plugs?" Ellie blinked, turning to him. "You going swimming?"
"Well if Devon's on your shift you usually bring him home, and I want to try something besides going to sleep in headphones."
Ellie's brow rose, reaching over to grab his pillow and throw it at him as he laughed. "Uck. That's disgusting, Chuck."
"You're not the one who has to hear it!"
"Maybe if you got a girlfriend I'd need a pair of my own," she called back laughing.
Staring at the empty door frame, Chuck leaned back in his chair. "Who'd want to be with me?"
Looking into his closet he saw his batman shirt folded on a shelf and sighed. He could never be Batman. For all the good Batman did, Bruce Wayne still mattered. He wasn't just a billionaire playboy, he ran a company, had charities, helped Gotham. Bruce Wayne was a pillar of society even without the cowl.
A bitter laugh escaped him as he thought Bryce was only a letter off from Bruce, and he'd probably make just as good a Batman as he would a Superman. He'd definitely make a better one than Chuck because no matter what the Piranha was, Chuck Bartowski would always be a loser. It was his curse, he just had to accept it.
AN:
So this is the end of what I'd consider a kind of prologue. Next chapter is the first episode of the show. The way I'm handling them for most of the first season is essentially if the scenes are close enough to how they aired I'm glossing over them, but some I do if there's a significant shift in the undertone of the scenes, etc. I'll expand on it where necessary if I can.
Styles will shift a lot too as some episodes will be condensed to parts of a chapter while others will be stretched over multiple. For season one the timeline of events should generally be the same in the sense of characters being in places at certain times, etc. Once we're past the Marlin however, I'm going to play with timelines a bit more.
I'm also avoiding original characters. I generally dislike OCs in anything, and always opt for bringing in existing characters into new roles over making my own. The biggest example will probably be the villains, but I might do that for some goodies as well.
R+R if you can.