Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 11: Literally the Man with the Wings

Depression is a many-tentacled thing, much like HYDRA, and those bastards ruined everything. After making it home from India, Bucky didn't get called in for another assignment for what felt like ages and it was all due to the fact that every assignment involved HYDRA in some way or another. Rhodey and Steve weren't taking any chances, making sure to keep Bucky and Elena as far away from those squid heads as physically possible. Honestly, not working was making Bucky antsy. He had nothing to do but stay at home, watch soccer, wrestle with his mind, and sit grumpily across from Raynor while she tried to break down his firmly built walls. 

As much as he enjoyed the comfort of his apartment and being alone, in reality, it was his worst enemy because it meant he had far too much time to think about all the terrible shit he had done in the past. Work was all Bucky had to keep his mind off of those things. Assignment, debriefing, recovery, home for a few days, back to the compound, train a bit, assignment, rinse and repeat. It was all very planned, controlled, and calculated even though it was tiresome it was all he really had. 

Those two weeks sitting at home with nothing to do made Bucky feel like he was crumbling even as he pressed on with the menial routines he created to occupy his time; work out, clean the whole apartment, organize the forks, go for a run, shower, eat, rinse and repeat. That didn't stop him from dwelling on everything, on all the missions and all the fights, the ones he fought for the greater good of the world and the ones he fought against himself. Bucky was tired of the nightmares and the constant road he wandered down to get his life back on track.

Maybe it was just the toll of his task; the one to make amends. He had come face to face with five different people on his list since the spring and each encounter thrust him deep into a cavern that he was struggling to climb out of. Not even the medication Dr Raynor had prescribed him was helping and apparently, the doses were strong enough to kill a normal person but again, the serum complicated things, and more than once he gave up on them much to her annoyance. It just didn't seem practical to keep upping the dosages when in all likelihood they wouldn't work. It took twelve painkillers just to stop his leg from hurting after jumping out of the Quinjet and fourteen to put him to sleep. 

His body just didn't process things the same way anymore, not pills, cigarettes, alcohol, or even coffee, though he still indulged in the last two because he liked the taste.

The only thing that did affect his body was food and it didn't help that his damn teammate was a food goblin. Bucky envied the way Elena stayed relatively unchanged with all the heavy noodles, rice dishes, grilled meat, and pastries she shoved in her face whenever they were on assignments. To be fair though, she never went back for seconds, she just ordered a shit ton of food and ate it in one go but still never as much as Bucky ate. She couldn't down two pizzas in one sitting, or three to four burgers at a time though did try one one time. Thankfully, Elena never once judged his eating habits even as he got a bit doughier around his midsection but that was probably because hers were just as bad. 

Yes, Bucky was just a depressed, sleep-deprived, overeating trainwreck ready to roll into the next station and hopefully not come back from it.

He made the terrible mistake of saying that to Steve one time which led to his friend becoming overly concerned that Bucky was going to kill himself. His solution was to start ignoring Steve which only led to arguments and Bucky hated those arguments because he always lost. It wasn't that he was upset with Steve, he just got really frustrated because the do-gooding blonde was constantly pestering him: are you eating, are you sleeping, are you drinking enough water, how are you feeling today, when was the last time you spoke to Christina? 

It was irritating beyond belief because Bucky was always hungry and therefore always eating, also yes he was hydrating, he wasn't dumb. As for sleeping, well that wasn't actually happening but he wasn't going to admit that, and for the most part, he was always feeling like shit and never wanted to speak to his therapist.