AN: I've been on a Sebastian Stan kick recently, after watching Civil War. Which meant of course, that I had to go back to what first introduced me to our brooding Winter Soldier. When I was younger, I saw Chase Collins as a blindly evil antagonist. Watching it as an adult, I've sort of developed a bit of a soft spot for him. So this was born.
"Did you see my problem here? I like to use... a lot. Only... no one ever told me about the... effects, the damage, the addiction."
No One Ever
On the sixth of March, Chase Collins came into his power at exactly five thirty-two in the afternoon. He was cutting through a back alley in his sleepy town of nothingness when the first wave hit him, hot like a live-wire as it flooded his veins. At first, he thought maybe he'd been struck by lightning. After, he ached for days, but his foster parents were good people, and he didn't want to worry them with the throbbing, aching sensation in his chest.
The first time he used his powers was a week later, and he shoved a bully down the stairs. It freaked him out so badly that he feigned the flu for three days.
The second time, he sought out to try it and ended up fixing the breaks on his bike. It was the coolest thing he'd ever done in his life, and the next six months went in a haze of stunts and adrenaline and fun.
Until he was sixteen, and his dog died. No amount of power flooding his veins could bring the animal back. He was so angry that he sent a wave of energy at the man that hit him with his Jeep. He hadn't known what it was going to do, but the pacemaker in the man's heart shorted out, leaving him dead on the pavement.
It was the start of something terrible. It was the start of something fantastic.
He was eighteen when he realized something was wrong. He was in the back of his parent's station wagon, listening to some scream-o CD on his Walkman when it happened. Lightning flooded him again, his power screamed in his veins, and when he came back to himself, his parents were dead.
He ran, burning through power like fall leaves. He ran to escape what he'd done at first, but then, he ran because of the endorphins, the rush in his veins, the fear propelling him forward. He found his real father a handful of weeks later, wrinkled and falling apart at the ripe old age of fifty.
The warning came too late, and with the addictive song in his veins, his father told him why he'd stayed away, why Chase had grown up without knowing. No one ever told him that he was going to get this power at thirteen. No one ever told him that he was going to kill people with his anger. No one ever told him that he was going to flood with energy at eighteen. Most of all, no one ever told him it was going to be addictive.
"No one told me," he muttered, sitting down hard on a bench across from his father.
"I can make it better, for a while," the man said. "I can give you my share of the power, and you can use it to make them pay for not finding you."
"Why would they find me?"
"Because they knew you were alive. They knew that you'd suffer on your own, and they let you." It felt like poison flooding his veins, but so much hadn't been told to him through his life that he latched onto it tightly.
"Make it better," he said, agony and fear swelling in his chest.
His father didn't tell him that it would make it worse, didn't tell him that it would kill him. Didn't tell him that the power would pull him to the rest, call him in and demand for more. It was a heroin-song in his veins, in his head, and he ran with it.
Except at first, no one ever told him that it would feel good, smiling and joking and laughing. No one ever told him that he'd almost feel badly about it at first. Of course, that was before the addiction caught up with him.
As the power swept through Caleb Danvers as he ascended, he couldn't help but think that no one ever really told Caleb what was coming. He knew there was addiction and hardship, but no one told him this...ache would live with him always. Again later, as the extra power flooded him, he almost felt bad for the kid. No one told him that the extra share would burn him out faster, make him want to claw his way through his skin.
As Chase flew backward into the burning Putnam barn, he smiled.
No one ever told him either.