BOOK 4 of the ORPHIC Series
DISENTHRALL
/ˌdisənˈTHrôl/
set free.
~~~~~
When Lucille 'Lucy' Opal Baker starts adjusting to a world without Captain America and more government therapy sessions...
Context: Lucy has been living at the Avenger's Compound to aid SHIELD agents. She's been putting on some weight, and this is how she deals with it.
{ inspired by lack of nutritious food on college campuses and a reflection on my own unnoticeable (but noticeable to me) weight gain }
[ Also trigger warning, implied binge eating, damaged body image, starving ]
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"Food is what fuels the body."
New York, March, 2025
IT WAS A SATURDAY NIGHT when Lucy noticed a difference in her body. It had been a few months since she and James had decided to help the new SHIELD recruits with intelligence training. Technically, Sam wanted them to take a long vacation for the sake of their health. He might've cracked an old age joke here and there, which Lucy laughed at. So she let loose a little– she didn't really track what she ate, nor did she exercise as often as she used to.
So, when Lucy tried to pull on her favorite pair of jeans, she found herself horrified by the realization that she simply could not button them. She tried her best, inhaled as much as her stomach would allow her to, and tried to bring the button over. But she failed time and time again. It took her a good five tries before she gave up, standing dumbfounded in her bathroom, staring at herself.
That was when she really saw it.
There was a little bit of fat hanging onto her stomach. Where there used to be a faint line of abs, there was only soft and pudgy fat. She poked at herself like she was some sort of alien. It was not an alarming amount of fat, by any means, but it was something she'd never seen before. Her body had obtained fat for the first time in nearly a century.
And she felt disgusted.
She tugged her pants down, grabbing her comfort shorts. She pulled them up to her hip and grabbed her phone off the bathroom counter. She shot Sam and James a quick text—she wouldn't be going out with them today. He and James could have some time to themselves while she sorted out whatever this was.
Her eyes wandered to the mirror again.
She hesitantly looked down at her stomach and—
Yeah, it definitely looked a little bigger than it had been for the past few decades. She was no longer muscle and bone. She was covered in a layer of fat that she was starting to feel suffocated in. It was only a little weight, she reminded herself carefully, and it would be gone if she just dieted for a little while.
