There were times, generally in the hours between the witching hour and dawn, in which the entire Compound went quiet, the calm deceptively peaceful, lulling all who slept within and most who did not into a state of near serenity. Or not. A sharp pinch to the bridge of Chase's nose eased a small portion of the lingering dull ache despite the heavily laced cocktail at the healer's elbow, but did nothing to chance the circumstances which had left him with a migraine of epic proportions.
Since the helicopter had delivered him back to the Compound, chaos had remained the order of each passing hour, and Chase found himself at a loss how to proceed. To find that certain members of the team he'd picked, hand-fucking-picked to deal with the possibility that Subject 12 would show some sign of inheriting his father's powers had run amok in a futile effort to gain the notice of the Three had been a flood of cold water in the face. The sadistic idiots dealt with mercilessly, Chase was left with a skeleton crew of healers to aid in cleaning up the mess left behind, namely Subject 12 himself...itself. Far, far easier to avoid sentimentality and the risk that one might come to think of the Subject as anything but a potential weapon.
Sharp features thrown into sharper relief by the sickly blue glow of his tablet, Chase forced himself to watch the synoptic record of the "experiments" conducted in his absence, muting the sound to end the terrified screaming, a wince occasionally twisting a mouth set in a thin line as he scrutinized the video for anything, anything at all that might prove of use. The white wires that linked man to computer unnecessary, Chase pulled his earbuds free, letting the tangle lay where it fell, as he levered off the couch to pace the darkly paneled room, glass remembered in passing, dangling from skeletal fingers that could work magic as powerful in its own way as any blue fire that sizzled and fried.
"Growing up, I never knew what it was to envy, to covet what someone else possessed, something they'd accomplished." Speaking conversationally, Chase stood at the window, the room in its entirety reflected in the expanse of glass. "Disneyland, birthday parties, ponies, ski holidays, sports cars, cheerleaders, prom... frivolity never had a place in my life, and I was content. I'm not playing brave soldier either." Scotch downed in one go, Chase licked at the roof of his mouth, savoring the bitter of the herbs in combination with the peaty undertones. "It wasn't until I came here that I learned to envy... to want something that lay beyond my grasp with a fire that steals sleep and fuels action."
Thick carpets silencing his step, the man turned to measure the width of the room once more, pausing to check the drip of saline that marked the passing of each second, the pure fluid replacing the drugs that had long held his audience of one captive in a healing sleep. "To watch the three of you... and those who came before you, the joining of minds... the secrets that bind you together, the machinations that spur change, real change for the good of humanity ... that woke an envy in me so great that it overwhelmed me." Long fingers curling lightly around Three's wrist, Chase nodded once at finding the strong pulse steady and true, a confirmation that his confidence that he could treat and heal a god was not unfounded. "For the first time in my life, I no longer wished to be left alone, I longed to be part of a whole, and from that moment, I have dedicated myself to more than my work and my personal aspirations. I am a member of a society, the Society, and in that, I earned an all together new level of contentment."
"That being said, however." Scotch flowed smoothly into the bowl of crystal, and Chase returned to the surprisingly comfortable couch upon which he'd spent the majority of the thirty-six hours that had passed since he'd begun flushing the last of the drugs from Three's system, its length enough to accommodate long legs crossed at the ankle. "I have never envied you personally than I do right now as you sleep like the proverbial baby, because I stand upon a precipice with a pack on my back that could contain a parachute or nothing but dirty laundry, and I would hit myself in the face with a shovel if I believed it would actually gain me a few hours of something akin to sleep." Pouring the scotch down his throat, Chase covered his eyes against the dim glow of the machines monitoring Three's bodily functions, muttering to himself as he fell back into work mode, mind racing a mile a minute to formulate some plausible way of dealing with the issue of Subject 12 that didn't involve destroying what they'd waited so long to have within their grasp. Alcohol and sleep deprivation combined to allow the slurred accent of his Southern youth to soften normally clipped tones, the vernacular borrowed from a father left behind years ago.