Work Text:
Chase stared solemnly through the window pane at the still figure lying on the hospital bed, with tubes running all across his body and medical equipment strewn about all over him.
It had been just another weekday evening, with him just arriving home from his night shift at SDN. He had been minding his own business, putting the tv on in the background and shuffling over to the kitchen to make himself a drink when a breaking news segment hooked onto his eardrums. Then he read the headline.
Mecha Man explosion rocks LA. Body recovered with critical injuries. Saw the explosion on his tv screen. Chills ran down his spine and his old heart began pumping fiercely, a sensation he hasn't had in years since he retired as a hero.
He rushed to find whatever information he could about the hospital they were staying at. After his own efforts proved futile (hospitals aren't too keen on revealing the whereabouts of injured heroes with secret identities after all), he decided to call in a favor with Blazer to help locate him. Her voice on the phone was also distraught, but after some quick phone calls with the right people she managed to pinpoint the location.
The 30-minute drive was excruciating. There wasn't much traffic at this time of night, but his aging eyes and slowed reflexes meant he had to drive slower than he liked if he wanted to actually make it there in one piece. He cursed his condition. If he had been ten years younger he would have just fuckin' ran to the hospital and been there in ten seconds flat.
Now, having arrived at his destination and successfully convinced the receptionist that he was a close friend who needed to see him, he stood outside the room where Robert Robertson the Third had been put in. Emergency services did a good job of escorting him away from the crash scene quickly enough so that the media hadn't had enough time to arrive and chase after them, so there wasn't a crowd of reporters at the hospital. Thank fuck for that.
He open the door to the hospital room and stood at his bedside, examining him more closely. Life support machines hummed and the heartbeat monitor beeped steadily. The doctors told him his condition had stabilized. Not good... but stable. Right now, he was in a coma. And no one knew when or if he would come out of it.
The man who lay on that bed was not the same boy he knew 15 years ago. He had the same freckled face, the same messy auburn hair. But he looked so much more world-weary. There were deep circles under his eyes. Chase could only imagine the quality of sleep Robert had put up with every night, not to mention the stress of taking over the role of Mecha Man at such an early age. And the scars... Fucking hell, the scars.
From what he could see that wasn't covered up by the hospital blanket, you'd be hard pressed to find a patch of skin on his body that wasn't covered in bruises, discoloration, or cuts. They weren't your average boo-boos either; one particular scar on the left side of his chest looked like the cut ran deep - deep enough to be life-threatening at one point.
He'd been busy as Mecha Man, that was for fucking sure. That was Robert's way of living up to his dad's legacy. But he had neither the training, experience, or support network of Mecha Man Astral, as far as he could tell. He was just a kid, on his own, figuring things out as he went. And that meant a lot of fuckups. Hard lessons learned. Lessons that were marked all over his body.
"Life's been real fuckin' tough on ya, huh kid?" Chase whispered somberly to himself.
A fresh wave of guilt washed over him as he watched Robert sleep. His chest rose and fell steadily as the oxygen mask helped him breathe. They always say people looked more peaceful when they were sleeping, but the only thing Chase could think of when he stared at that tired face was how fucking haunted it looked.
Part of him wondered how his old man Robbie would have reacted if he had been alive to see what his son looked like now. The toll his legacy had left on his only child. Anger momentarily surged through his weary old bones. He knew Robbie loved his son; he had enough late night conversations with the guy to know that much. But he sure as hell didn't fucking make it apparent, that was for fuckin' sure. Most of the time he was busy putting all his energy into being a hero, and the few times he was home was usually spent berating the poor fuckin' kid for little mistakes or dumb kid moments. Moments of real affection between the two were few and far between.
Tough love, he always called it.
Yeah, real tough love, huh Robbie? Woulda been real fuckin' nice to give the kid a break once in a while too. Maybe then he wouldn't have been so fuckin' obsessed with playing hero on his own like he's got a fuckin' death wish. Maybe he wouldn't have been so fuckin' hellbent on getting revenge on Shroud. Maybe he wouldn't be stuck in a fuckin' hospital bed right now...
Chase sighed deeply. As much as he wanted to lambast Robbie for the state his son was left in, part of him knew it wasn't right to put all the blame on him. Of course, Shroud was the one who put him in that bed in the first place. Him and his dumbass vendetta against Robbie, over that damn fiasco about being let in to the Brave Brigade. A dumb fucking argument that seems so irrelevant in hindsight. And now the Brave Brigade is a relic of the past, having long been disbanded since the death of Astral. But also...
Goddammit. It's his own damn fault for not being there for Robert.
Yeah, Robert cut off all contact with him after his dad died. Refused to answer his calls, didn't answer the door, and all that. But he could have still fucking been there. Maybe been a little more persistent in reaching out to him, or brought some dinner to his doorstep once in a while, or hell, mail him a fucking box of Twinkies. When he noticed the house had been sold off he could have tried harder finding his new place. Hell, if it really came down to it he could have even dropped some rent money in the mailbox. It would have been a small price to pay for a kid he knew was struggling.
Maybe he could have rushed in to help Mecha Man fight crime. There were a few close calls that he just barely got out of by the skin of his teeth, after all. He could have used the support when Chase was still active. Especially when Chase started noticing the rusts and dents slowly accumulating on the suit. Robert was struggling to maintain it to the same degree his dad had.
Robbie was an engineering prodigy, capable of inventing new gadgets and refining old systems for the mech suit at an astonishing pace. But Robert? He was just a kid, struggling to keep up with all the engineering crash courses his dad dumped on him any chance he could get. He was the little brat trying to understand the intricacies of hydraulics systems and electrical wiring, while at the same time being too scared to tell his dad that he flunked his 8th grade math test.
He knew Robert had been struggling to fill big shoes his entire life. And what did Chase do when he needed him most? He fucking gave up on the kid.
And you know what the cruelest part of this whole thing was? It wasn't even the first time he had failed to protect a Robertson.
He clenched his fists in a moment of wistful self-reflection. No, he thought. Robert's not done yet. He'll make it through this. He's always been a tough kid. And when he does wake up, I'll be there for him this time. I'm done running away. I might not be Trackstar anymore, and I don't know what a fucking grandpa like me with bad eyesight and early-onset osteoporosis could possibly do to help Mecha Man, but I'll find a fuckin' way. I just need to think...
Chase took a moment to glance down and noticed he was still in his work clothes. In his rush to get to the hospital, he had forgotten to even change out of that drab sky-blue SDN work shirt he wore under his favorite yellow cardigan.
SDN...
He froze as if lightning had struck him. Now there was an idea he could work with. He knew Blazer better than anyone at the office, and he knew she was a sucker for helping out poor saps like Robert. All he needed was to find the right time to ask... And for Robert to wake up.
When Chase walked over to the door of Blonde Blazer's office she was sitting at her oak desk, attending to a mountain of paperwork stacked high like pancakes. A cup of coffee was steaming on her desk, no doubt to be soon forgotten as she worked the hours away. A nervous sigh escaped her mouth, before she quickly reached for a button on her office phone and put on her usual professional tone.
"Coming soon... DND Night every Thursday at 7 PM! Contact Matt to join the campaign!" Blazer paused, then quickly added, "...Huzzah!"
Immediately after it came out, the painted smile on her face dropped and she facepalmed. "Oh god... How do I redo that..." She muttered to herself, pressing a button on the office phone to end the recording.
Chase suppressed a laugh, amused. Blazer was recording another one of those dumb employee updates. Did anyone even care to listen to those? He sure as hell didn't. A quick clearing of his throat and the gentle rap of his knuckles on the glass-paned door brought his presence to her attention.
"Morning, Chase," Blazer swiftly recovered to beam a smile at him. He swore her cheeks were a little pink. "What can I do for you?"
Chase wasn't sure how anyone could be as cheerful as her all the time, especially this early in the morning when the first thing that greeted you was a pile of spreadsheets and legal documents. Must be another one of her superpowers.
"Just wondering if you had time to talk," he remarked. "Though, I wouldn't want to interrupt your work. You seem to be having a real swell time doing... whatever the fuck you were doing." He gave her a crooked grin.
She replied with a short chuckle. "I swear I'll give you a raise if you pretend you never heard that," she joked. "And I've always got time for you, Chase. Half of this pile is just HR reports from Z-team anyway..." Blazer ran a hand through her blonde locks before letting out an exasperated breath. "I've... gotten used to cranking them out. Though at this point I really should be hiring an assistant..."
Chase helped himself to a seat in one of the plush chairs across from her desk.
"Oh, and if this is about Z-team's shift today - don't worry about it," Blazer hurried to clarify. "Galen's covering the morning shift and I've made time in my schedule to cover the afternoon."
Chase raised a brow at her. "You do remember the last time you tried to work as their dispatcher, right?"
"Y-Yeah, but well, what happened then could have been a one-time fluke, and it's also been a while since I last handled calls, a-and in my defense, no one could have known sending Flambae to the oil refinery would have resulted in a massive... oil fire..." She gave him a sheepish grin, seemingly trying to reassure herself more than she was reassuring him. "But, until we find a new dispatcher for them, we'll just have to take turns covering for them. Sorry..."
He crossed his arms. "Actually, that's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Listen, Blazer, I got a favor to ask you."
Chase had known Blazer longer than anyone else at the Torrance branch. In fact, he was the one to give her the onboarding tour when she first arrived there as the acting manager. He guided her all the way throughout her endeavor of transforming SDN Torrance from the mismanaged, rat-infested shithole that it used to be into something actually respectable. To this day, she still frequently came to him for advice. That was clearly apparent as he was her go-to fill-in for Z-team's dispatcher whenever those stupid fucks inevitably drove the new hire away, much to his annoyance.
The tone of his voice piqued her curiosity. Whenever Chase needed a favor, he didn't ask for it this way. He usually just did whatever he felt he needed to do, and Blazer trusted him enough not to question his calls. "This sounds a lot more serious than what you usually ask from me. What is it?" She asked.
It had been four months since the "death" of Mecha Man. Chase had learned that Robert had woken up just 2 weeks ago and checked himself out of the hospital as soon as he could walk. The bastard just couldn't let himself take it easy for once, even if it's waking up from a coma. And just last night there had been an announcement on the news that Mecha Man would be giving a press conference tomorrow morning to "discuss the state of the mech suit and the future of his superhero work". It didn't take a rocket scientist to piece the clues together. Robert was out as Mecha Man, and he planned to announce that to the public tomorrow.
Now was the best and only time for Chase to make his case - the case he'd been silently building these past four months.
Chase leaned in, palms tightly gripping the cushioned armrests of his seat. "What would you say to recruiting Mecha Man to SDN as our new dispatcher?"