When it All Comes Crashing

Chapter 6

I pulled out the campstove in the morning and rummaged through the cooler. Not a tremendous number of options, we needed to hit a market so I could properly shop for feeding a super metabolism again. I had a few eggs and a bit of chorizo and I found a couple of potatoes to throw in. I took out a reasonable portion for myself and Lo, then pushed the rest of the pan to Jack with some tortillas.

"That's so much food... I'm supposed to eat all that?" It was honestly half what I would feed Steve. I was starting him slow.

"Don't think about it in normal people terms. You're enhanced. Technically, you should be eating for about three people."

"You make it sound like I'm pregnant."

I chuckled. "But, today I'll settle for one and a half. We're working you up, remember?"

He filled a tortilla. "Cap would really eat this much?"

"Steve would finish that and ask where the rest was hiding. Six eggs, a half pound of bacon, and about eight pancakes is a light breakfast for him. He'll usually hit some fruit and a protein smoothie after that. You don't have to eat it all, Jack. Remember, this is a practice in listening to your body's cues about what it needs. But, this time, I would like you to eat until you feel full, rather than until you aren't hungry anymore."

He still looked a little skeptical.

"Jack, how did they feed you when you were in the program? When they would take you out of cryo?"

"This thick, awful drink. Or these bars that taste like sawdust and make your jaw tired."

I nodded, frowning. "HYDRA fed Bucky on that shit, too, and I know they'd even send Steve into the field with those bars for emergency rations, since otherwise he'd need about eight MREs a day. The nutrition slurries and bars have so many calories packed in that you don't need to eat as much as you would normal food. But, they don't bother to add anything that would make it taste reasonable, either. That would be inefficient."

"So, I was eating that many calories the whole time, but my... appetite didn't know?"

"Exactly." I remembered what Bucky had told me in the letter he left me. My brain was so broken I couldn't even understand why someone was bringing me real food and not a nutrition slurry or protein bar, or why you would try to talk to me at all. "Your satiety signals are all off because you've been on soylent forever." I shuddered. "I've read the formulas for those slurries and bars. I can't believe they make humans eat that. It's cruel."

"It certainly wasn't good," he finally agreed between bites. After a while, and about half of his food, he spoke again. "So, if he was fed the same way I was, did you do this for Bucky, too?"

"Bucky's situation was different. He was still pretty deep in the programming when I first met him in the Tower. I didn't know everything I know now about the Winter Soldier program, obviously. I just took him meals that were proportional to what Cap would eat, and he ate it because that's what was put in front of him, so he was never malnourished. But, he did bulk up some when he started eating proper food, I assume because HYDRA only ever fed him the bare minimum for maintenance."

It made me think about the first time I'd met him.

Steve asked me to deliver lunch to holding. He'd been trying for days to get Bucky to talk to him and nothing was working. He hadn't been eating either, according to Steve. I'd always remember those eyes, pale gray ice and steel, too far away to see the blue in them through a curtain of unwashed, unkempt hair. The way he just stood in the center of the holding cell, hands flexing, every line of his body tight, staring at Steve through the clear barrier. Rage was the only word that came to mind. And then maybe Fear. Steve looked Frustrated. Angry. So Worried it bordered on fear.