Steve sometimes wondered about his life and the decisions that had led him to where he was now. Usually, he came to the conclusion that letting the government experiment on him for fun and profit was maybe not one of the smarter decisions he’d ever made. Granted, the serum had done him a lot of good; there were a myriad of benefits it had bestowed on him. Being able to hear clearly was pretty great, and he hadn’t realized how much color he was missing until he came out of the vita-ray machine and he was like Dorothy emerging into Oz. He was eternally grateful to not deal with the grinding fatigue that came along with the pernicious anemia and respiratory problems he’d had, or the constant ache in his back from the scoliosis.
He of course understood that all these improvements came with a price; he knew what a Faustian bargain was when he saw it. His body was now a top-rated machine, and machines like that blew through fuel like nothing else. He’d learned to compensate for his increased metabolism, eating more, not just in sheer quantity, but in caloric density. He ate more for breakfast than most people consumed in a day, and his diet plan looked close to that of a hobbit: wake up, have a banana and yogurt, go for a run, come home for first breakfast, shower, change clothes, have second breakfast, and so on. He’d often consumed over 3000 calories before he even hit lunch, and that was on a light day. If he was being especially active, or if he was healing from something, his required caloric intake skyrocketed.
Normally, this wasn’t an issue. The food at Stark tower was plentiful beyond anything he could have imagined while growing up, and after working with a SHIELD dietician, they’d formulated a daily food plan that would ensure he was feeling his best, with contingencies for when his metabolism ticked even higher.
The real problem with this, Steve mused, was that nobody had informed his captors of his dietary needs.
Steve had woken up from being captured to find himself in what he’d come to think of as a pretty standard ‘bad guy’ cell- cool, damp, dark. There were bars along one side of the room, and solid stone walls making up the other three. Whatever he’d been dosed with had been strong enough to knock him out, and he made a mental note that when he was rescued he should get Bruce to try to find out what they’d used, if only so that SHIELD medical would have something strong enough to keep him under if and when he required surgery; there were some medical procedures you just didn’t want to be awake for.
Steve got up and tried pulling at the bars, but whatever they were, they were strong enough and reinforced enough that he wasn’t going to get them to budge. He was stuck until someone opened the door.
That had been a few days ago.
The people who had taken him, some offshoot of AIM, were surprisingly and thankfully not that imaginative when it came to torturing people. He’d have thought with all that technology at their fingertips they’d have come up with something a bit more innovative than just beating someone or breaking bones, but it seemed they preferred the classics. And again, this wouldn’t normally be a problem- Steve could, and did, heal from the injuries at such a rate that by the next day he was healed up enough they could start over, which they did. And it meant he wasn’t dealing with all the injuries piling up on each other.
But.
They hadn’t increased his caloric intake any, feeding him what they probably thought of as normal prisoner rations- single pieces of bologna and processed cheese between two slices of white bread, an apple, and a small carton of milk. For most people it wouldn’t have been comfortable, but it would have been sufficient; for him, the cumulative calories for a day of those meals barely constituted a snack. The most annoying part was he was pretty sure they were starving him on accident. His metabolic needs weren’t well advertised, and it was entirely possible they thought they were treating him humanely, torture aside, which left him with a conundrum: Did he tell them he needed more calories if they wanted him to remain alive while they had him, or did he keep it to himself so it couldn’t be used against him, and hope he was rescued quickly enough for it not to matter?
By day three, Steve was really starting to feel the lack of food. He was healing, but not as quickly. The ribs they’d broken the day before hadn’t healed all the way before they came at him the next morning, and were re-broken in the process. The whipping in the afternoon was new, and yet another experience he could have lived without, but he was nothing if not stubborn, so while he yelled and cursed, he didn’t tell them any of the information they wanted to know. All of which was unpleasant, and he’d have been able to muddle through, for the most part.
But then dinner never came.
And neither did breakfast the next morning.
When lunch on the fourth day failed to appear, he realized he might have a problem.
He didn’t know how close he was to rescue, and he didn’t know how long he could reasonably go without eating. If his captors noticed that his healing factor was stalling, or that he was growing gaunter by the day, they didn’t mention it. He tried filling his stomach with water from the spigot in his cell, but that only helped so much, and never for as long as he’d like. For the most part, his stomach remained in an unhappy snarl that brought back memories from when he was growing up, though usually Bucky had been able to find them something to eat, even if it was in questionable condition.
Another day went by, and Steve was having trouble standing on his own, the world tilting and spinning when he tried. When the head goon came for him the afternoon of the fifth day, he looked Steve up and down with a smirk.
“Ready to talk yet?”
Steve scowled at him, and forced himself to his feet, head high, even if he had to hold onto the wall for balance. “You kidding? I can do this all day.”
That afternoon was especially bad; it was another whipping, and he didn’t have the strength to stay standing, and he ended up hanging from the chains on his wrists. After a certain point, one of his shoulders dislocated, but he could barely feel it over the raging agony in his back. Afterward, they tossed him back into his cell with no regard to his injuries, and he started to worry that maybe they just didn’t care whether he lived or not, that at this point they were only torturing him for fun, and for the bragging rights for having been the ones to break the almighty Captain America. That could put a wrinkle in the whole ‘getting out alive’ plan.
The morning of the sixth day dawned, and he was close, so close, to asking how much information he’d have to divulge for them to give him something, anything, to eat, he didn’t even care what, when he felt more than heard the rumble of an explosion. It was followed a moment later by another set of rumbles, and Steve let himself sit back against the wall of his cell with his eyes closed. His healing had slowed to the point that some of the whip marks from the previous day were still sluggishly bleeding, and he’d only barely been able to pop his shoulder back in before tumbling sideways, feeling dizzy and sick. If his rescue was imminent, he was going to quietly wait for it show up. He knew once he was feeling better he’d be bitter about it, but at the moment, he just did not give a single fuck.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but then there were quiet footsteps coming down the hallway. They stopped in front of his cell.
“Well you look like shit.”
Steve snorted a laugh, and opened his eyes. “Thanks, Natasha.”
She quirked a small smile as she unlocked the door to the cell and then stepped through. “How about we get you out of here, huh, Cap? Get you to medical, maybe get you a cheeseburger. Stark tells me it’s tradition now.”
Steve heaved himself up, and Natasha stepped in to help support him when he threatened to fall over. “Is that so?”
Natasha nodded as she helped him make his way to the cell door. “Mmhmm. Captivity incident means hamburgers. Battle against aliens means shawarma. He’s got a chart started. It’s all very scientific. But let’s get you home first, then we can worry about dinner.”
“Yeah,” Steve said, sparing one last glance back at the cell. “Home sounds good.”