Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 2

Off the Deep End (Rogers x reader)

Warning: Depression, Anxiety, Nightmares

Song: Deep End by Ruelle

                   

Where can I go?

When the shadows are calling?

Shadows are calling me

What can I do?

When it's pulling me under?

Pulling me underneath

When you woke up, the sheets were wrapped tightly around your body, holding you in a tangled mess, constricting your movement just like a restraint that had been burned into your memories from the past.  It was an experience that you had thought you had successfully buried away in your mind, but somehow it was resurfacing with a vengeance.  You filled with panic and tried to kick them away, only to feel them growing tighter; your fright built with the sensation and you couldn't even free your arms to wipe the sweat from your brow before it was rolling into your eyes.

"Hey, wake up, you're okay," Steve whispered gently, wrapping his arms around you to try to help release the constraints until you came to your senses and realized what was happening.  "It's just a dream, doll.  I'm here."

"I'm sorry," you panted with shallow breaths, "I didn't mean to wake you, I'm sorry."

"Shh, don't worry about that.  Are you alright?"

"Yeah...yeah," you sighed, rolling yourself free of the constrictive sheets still wound around you, "I'm okay."  You pushed up on an elbow and struggled to look past him to see the clock on his bedside table, groaning in absolute frustration when you realized that you had been asleep for a mere thirty minutes.  "You've got to be kidding me."

"What can I do?" he asked quietly, allowing you to all but fall against him in your exhaustion and desperate need to find a way back to sleep.  He felt completely helpless, being the one who could fix most anything, and to have you be the one that he couldn't help made it so much more intolerable.

"I don't know.  Just...just go back to sleep, Steve," you sighed.  "Maybe my brain will get the hint eventually."

Even after the slow and steady sounds of sleep had quickly taken him over, and you followed right behind, an hour later the pattern repeated and your eyes shot open, desperate to stop seeing the terrible scenes that your mind was replaying over and over.  "Dammit," you murmured quietly, "maybe not."

It's getting close

I lose control

It's taking over

~~~

It pissed you off to no end that even after you trained as the team psychologist, you couldn't even help your own mind, unable to find a way to stop the torment of nightmares that had plagued you every night for no good reason.  The images that kept showing in them were of something that had happened so long ago that you thought you had forgotten.  You searched your mind for the source of their return, coming up with only one answer; you had been working with Bucky since his arrival to the team after Steve all but begged you to help him, and the discussions you were having were terrifying and traumatic even for you.  It wasn't enough to stop you from the work, but it was definitely taking a toll on you in the process.

It was taking such a toll that you were becoming the walking dead, floating through each day in a haze of exhaustion, but too afraid now to sleep.  You felt as if you were losing a little piece of your own sanity each day.  Even as you sat and gave it every ounce of energy that you had to focus on your work to further Bucky's progress, your mind wouldn't stay on task.