Christmas and he was on duty, as usual, wishing he'd get the chance to pull a Bruce Willis and save the day. Saving the day had a whole new meaning now that he was on the bottom of the food chain with most of the other cops. A couple years ago when he'd been deployed everything seemed so much easier. Find target. Eliminate target. Celebrate as long as you could til the next one rolled down the line.
What were they doing now? Sitting back watching the rest of the city engulf itself and spit out what was left every month over and over again. A lot of the cops couldn't handle it... they transferred to new cities and said their pleading wives and husbands convinced them... or they dropped out of the force altogether. Chase wondered what war would have been like if people could just drop out when the going got rough. Run back to their wives and their husbands and hide.
He didn't hide from anything.
Much as he gave who he considered to be the softies - like Finn - a rough time... he respected them. They stood here in this city in their uniform when the danger was on and they were nothing more than a cute backdrop or scene extras to be thrown around on the movie that was Supers.
It wasn't like he wasn't a piece on the board of this war, though. He may be human but he was still playing for a side and he'd never really left the battlefield. That's probably what saved his mind, the reason he didn't get the nightmares or the loss of purpose that he saw a lot of his old buddies going through. He never stopped fighting, never stopped being a hero, and that was all thanks to Arkin.
Wasn't it like that? Everything in his life these days came back to Arkin. He couldn't spit in this city without hitting someone the man's influence had touched and by proxy someone Chase had to be careful around. He was a double agent, fighting for humans and supers alike by pretending to be something they hated. But they shouldn't hate Arkin or his weird ass methods. He was just trying to save the world the way no one else had the balls to do. He took supers by their horns and put them in their place the same way Chase had been put in his place in boot camp.
That's how he thought of it. Supers were just being drafted into a war and some of them needed to be crafted a little first. At the end of everything they would thank him and Arkin for helping their names go down in history, helping them become the heroes of his story that no one even knew was unfolding all around them. The end of days.
Some of the guys were talking about some nerdy ass shit near his desk and he heard them stumbling over something "You know it's like... you either live and you're a hero or you...die..." the other cop slugged the first in the shoulder "You're an idiot it's not like that it's like... You're a hero until you die but then people will make you into a villain cause--"
Chase cut them off "You're both dipshits. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" He corrected them easily but the quickness that the quote came to him made him pause. Chase didn't read comics, maybe he saw or heard the quote once in passing. Everyone looked at him first in surprise and then in a relative unease as the mood in the room was tainted by Chase's uncertainty.
He wondered what Jazzy was up to, if she ever got remarried after him or if she still talked to his parents. Lord knows he didn't. His phone rang... It was Arkin. Looks like he had some Christmas presents to deliver to a few unsuspecting super candidates. For the first time in a very long time, if ever, he hesitated before picking up.
Someone turned up the tv as he slipped out of his chair and out the office door and all he heard was, "Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals."