Work Text:
Prologue
When he's researching it's sometimes like he's at a too-rich banquet, and he's gorging himself until he feels sick, scooping up new ideas with his hands and shoving them into his mouth. They feel thick in his oesophagus, like a frog in his throat, and his brain flickers with a brief panic, like he's going to choke. He keeps scooping, keeps filling his cheeks with words and names and dates like they're going to take the chance away from him at moment and he's gonna be banned from the buffet. Kids like him didn't get to eat like this. Not poorly kids who were too made of bird bones to go to school in the first place, made of tissue paper skin and sallow eyes and gums that drew up away from the pillars of his teeth. He could feel his brain fill out like he remembers his body filled out when they found The Serum, The Cure, always in capital letters in his head. A magical answer for the thing they never thought they'd find and certainly never have a name for. And this research body - SHIELD - all glossy surfaces and acronyms, they wanted to stretch out every inch of him and test all his resiliences. So after they'd pumped up his body and stretched his bones, they sought to see what had happened to his mind. He had never been stupid. But his body had required most of his brain's energy - had made him tired, slow, fogged. They needed to know the psychological ramifications of what had happened - could a super serum mean a super body mean a super intellect? - and while he felt he had always disappointed them in that respect (he could punch a sand-filled bag across the room but he still had to add and subtract on his fingers) he was smart in his own way (and it felt good to do at least something his own way) and after they sent him off on a couple of tours they agreed on this. That he could come back to the institute, to the university, and feast on this buffet, gorge on his own research and that of the best minds of the country, and catch up on everything he missed when he was so frail, so tired, so ill, like being frozen in ice for decades. His brain was slowly defrosting, and he feasted.