Author's Note: I wasn't going to publish this one this early because I put the other one up like two days ago (or so - it's summer so don't expect me to keep track) but I wanted to give you guys something new.

Clint and Steve watched the purple eyes flutter open lightly for a moment before closing heavily. Steve grabbed one of her hands, lacing his fingers through hers. Clint held the other one. Captain America and Hawkeye waited with baited breath. She was battered and beaten, scraped up, bleeding. Her hair was a mess and her clothes were the same ones she'd been wearing when she'd gone missing a year before—or at least, they assumed they were. No one had seen her the morning she'd gone missing. It looked like an outfit she'd wear though—Natasha thought she might have seen it in Violet-Sky's closet once.

Violet-Sky felt her mind clearing. The fog was lifting and she could hear Disney playing in the background.

"Head… hurts…" she muttered. Her mouth was dry—like there were cotton balls in her mouth. "Are my wisdom teeth out now?"

"Hahaha, very funny Vi," Steve snapped.

"She wasn't joking," Clint remarked.

"My mouth's sore," Violet-Sky groaned.

"I know baby," Clint murmured. "It's okay. Come back to us." Steve clutched her hand tighter.

"Come on, Vi. I miss you. I love you, sweetheart," Captain Rogers whispered.

"Okay. Okay. I'm up. When does class start?" she muttered sarcastically.

"In two hours. So get going!" Tony remarked sarcastically, strutting into the room with a sparkly pink shirt on. "Thought I'd give you a bit of a show for your first morning back in a year!" Apparently that got Violet-Sky interested enough to open her eyes for good. She started giggling, cringing.

"Careful," one of the doctors scolded. "She has three cracked ribs and a small tear in her large intestine's wall. She can't afford to laugh, just yet."

"But she's healing rapidly. Almost… inhumanly so," another doctor put in.

"She's not Inhuman," Clint told them. "She's ordinary."

"Not anymore," the first doctor said. "Whatever HYDRA did to her… she's not the same as she once was. I'm sorry. We'll let you talk before we order her to get some rest." The medical team filed out of the room as the other Avengers squeezed in. Violet-Sky looked around at all of them, eyes expressing a hundred swirling emotions but mouth staying shut. Staying silent. She watched carefully for several moments before she dared open her lips.

"Is this real?" she whispered. "Or is this another hallucination? Another dream of happiness—of being found—to cope with the pain?"

"It's real, Vi. We're all here. For you. We found you out in the Mojave, unconscious," Clint answered. "And you're safe now. You're alright. We're never going to let you go, ever again." Violet-Sky gave a single burst in lieu of an appreciative chuckle.

"Don't worry," Violet-Sky muttered, irritated. "I'm not particularly inclined to leave as of right now. My legs hurt."

Her family and friends laughed at her attempt at humor.

A few days, and a couple stories about the Maximoffs, later, she was allowed to leave the hospital wing of the Avengers Tower and get back on her feet. The first thing she did was run. Run through the hallways, up and down the stairs. Racing Captain Rogers. At first, she did what she'd always done—fall far behind with no hope of catching up.

But then the distance between her and her boyfriend got smaller and smaller.

Soon they were running hand-in-hand. Steve gave her a very confused look when she laced her fingers with his. "What the—?" he demanded. Violet-Sky laughed heartily. "You're not supposed to be fast enough to reach me!"

"Well too bad because I'm here now!" she exclaimed. They skidded to a stop at the beginning of one very long corridor. "Race you to the end?" Steve grinned and nodded. "Okay. Three… two… one!"

They took off. Violet-Sky closed her eyes for a moment, feeling her heart pounding and her legs pumping. Her arms were pushing madly at her sides. When she opened her eyes, she felt her breath in her lungs and the air moving through her eyelashes. A smile pulled up her face. She ran harder. There was no way she was going to lose right then. She was going to win against her boyfriend. She wanted to run. She'd never felt it so strongly before—but she had felt it once, a very long time ago when she had first joined SHIELD. Before Tristan would let her train on her bow, she had to run for hours and hours before she could do anything interesting. It was during that time she felt the urge. It had been powerful. Hurry, rush, run, go! Her blood sang with the adrenaline—harmonies and all.

She was feeling it again. And it felt good.

"Lock her up!" a voice suddenly shouted. They were in the hospital wing. Steve grabbed her around the waist and the knees. "She's dangerous! Something's not right!" It was the voice of one of the doctors. In her soldier's arms, they stopped.

"We're not locking her up!" Steve snapped, curling her closer to him.

"We have to! We don't know what they've done to her!" the doctor argued.

Violet-Sky jumped out of Captain America's arms. "I do," she replied calmly. Steve's eyebrows raised.

"And you didn't tell us?" he demanded.

"You didn't ask. I thought it'd be the first thing out of your mouths but… no one asked what they did to me. Not while I was awake anyway. So I decided to wait until you asked."

"CLINT!" Steve shouted, voice carrying to the intercom and across the whole Tower.

"Yo?" the archer's voice crackled from the speakers.

"Violet-Sky knows what they did to her."

"WHAT?!"

"Get down here and I'll tell you," she retorted sassily.

Only moments later Hawkeye burst out of the elevator and grabbed Violet-Sky's shoulders. "Why did you not tell me, kiddo?" he demanded forcefully. Violet-Sky shrugged and rubbed her nose.

"You didn't ask," she repeated.

"Well… what did they do to you?" he asked, gentler this time.

Violet-Sky lifted up the baggy basketball shorts she was wearing, revealing small, almost indiscernible pock marks on her thighs. Repeated injections from hypodermic needles. Clint bent to look at them. "Remember Pietro?" she inquired calmly.

"Yeah…" Hawkeye and Captain Rogers chorused.

"They did the same thing to me," she told them.

End Note: Dun-Dun-Duuuuuunnnnn! Sorry-not-sorry for the cliffhanger! I'll see you guys soon!

Thank you for reading!

~Cass