The next two days were a bit of a blur. Steve was still in quarantine, and had yet to regain consciousness, but at the end of the first day, he was taken off dialysis, as his kidneys started filtering his blood again, and at the end of the second, the staff had swapped the ventilator for an oxygen mask.

He was still being sent for scans every few hours and those who went into his room had to be fully decked out in Hazmat suits, but for all intents and purposes, he was improving.

"The scans are looking more and more normal," said the doctors, and even Clint, with his utter lack of medical training, could see that Steve's brain was lighting up in smaller areas with each scan, instead of the wildfire it had been before.

Some Greek doctor whose name Clint had forgotten had said something about Steve's brain having to rewire itself after doing it originally to maintain the symbiote. It made sense if Clint didn't think about it too hard, so he left it at that. Honestly, he was just glad the number of machines in Steve's room was dwindling.

Despite the doctors insisting Steve should truly be isolated, the Avengers were sitting with Steve in four hour shifts encased in Hazmat suits of their own. The doctors had been less than pleased with this arrangement, but Bruce had planted himself firmly in their collective paths and calmly informed them that Steve being around his team might help bring him back. The doctors had hemmed and hawed for the better part of an hour, but had eventually agreed, as long as protective gear was worn, which left the Avengers in their current rotation.

The team's individual improvements were less obvious than Steve's, but as the days wore on, it became more and more apparent that they all were healing too.

Clint had gotten some help from Fitzsimmons who had been looking for a subject to test an ultrasonic device that was supposed to promote bone growth. The device had done even better than the two scientists had hoped, and based on Clint's last X-ray, they suspected he'd be able to have the wires removed two weeks early. The rest of his injuries were significantly less serious, and despite how painful they were, there was nothing anyone could do but let his body heal itself.

After the swelling in her knee had reduced enough for an MRI, it was discovered that Natasha had a bucket-handle tear in her right meniscus that sometimes kept her knee from fully straightening. Clint knew this because he'd gone with her to her follow-up appointment, their past experience dictating that she, much like the rest of the team, had a tendency to ignore certain bits of medical advice. The doctor, Jackson, had put up her scan, shown the tear, and immediately suggested surgery to get her back in the field faster. To Jackson's (but not Clint's) surprise, Natasha had refused. Confused, Jackson had continued to press, until Natasha had very sharply cut him off and threatened to walk out unless they moved on. Clint knew Natasha didn't go for public shows of affection, but from the other side of the room, he began tapping out reassurances in Morse Code. It was only the briefest of looks that she'd shot him that let her know she'd picked up on them.

Over the past few days, the distinctly finger-shaped bruises on Tony's throat had turned a dark, vibrant purple. Yet, during one of the team check-ins, he'd reported it was hurting less with each passing day. Clint, however, knew that was a bunch of bull because the night before, he'd accidentally overheard Tony calling Dr. Han for a refill on his throat spray. Since he was eating nothing but soft foods for the foreseeable future anyway, Clint always made sure he made plenty of extra, and strategically placed them for when Tony went foraging between meetings or lapses in ideas. The cool and soft liquids, necessitated for him, would also soothe an angry and swollen throat.

He wasn't trying to be subtle about it, but someone else (or maybe more than one someone) had picked up on his plan and almost overnight, the fridge in the common area was filled with soft, palatable foods from soups and smoothies to curries and parfaits. Last night, there had even been a Tupperware of Clint's favorite borscht which he had no compunctions about taking to his floor and refusing to share. The increased number of soft, ready-made meals ended up benefiting the entire team, who despite being off active duty, were strapped for time between appointments and shifts with Steve, or who like Sam, didn't have the mental acuity to make a well-rounded meal.

Speaking of Sam, he was no longer constantly nauseous—or, so he said, the slightly green tint to his face said otherwise—but he was still having problems concentrating, couldn't look at screens for too long, and slept almost as much as Steve had when he'd first returned to the Tower. Despite all that, Sam still insisted on taking his shift with Steve at the hospital, though one of the other Avengers was conveniently around, if and when Sam fell asleep too. His recovery was slated to be the longest, second only to Steve's, if he listened to the doctors and took his healing seriously, which in typical Sam fashion, he would absolutely do.

Bucky, once he'd fixed the plates in his arm, had been officially seen by Dr. Han, and to no one's surprise, he was hiding a handful of other injuries that needed medical attention. Thankfully, though, they were far less serious than his arm. Clint only knew this because he'd offered to go with Bucky to the appointment; to this day, he was still surprised by how quickly Bucky had accepted. With that all situated, Bucky was almost a constant fixture in Steve's room, wanting to take more shifts that the rest of them and having to be practically threatened to get some rest of his own.

After having the third such discussion in two days, Tony looked about ready to move a second bed in there and call it a day, before Natasha had said something to Bucky under her breath. His expression changed in a flash and he nodded, then allowed his shifts to be reduced to six hours instead of everyone else's four. And if he doubled up with Sam too, it was a battle no one had the energy to fight.

Seemingly indifferent to Steve fighting for his life, the rest of the world went about their normal business. Literally everyone who could be tied to the events that caused the mystery assassin to acquire the alien tech and use them to fire on President Garcetti, had been arrested and charged with varying degrees of criminality. It was now up to the courts to decide who served time and who walked.

Doris Toomes and her daughter had been found innocent on all counts, and the last Clint had heard, she was planning to move their family to Oregon for a fresh start.

Jesse had volunteered to testify against his family in exchange for a clean slate and a new beginning of his own. It hadn't been an easy decision, and he'd actually called Clint via Hillson's encrypted satphone to talk through it. As painful as the decision was, it was the right choice for him, and afforded him a chance to live his life free from the sins of his family. He was a promising young comp sci student, top of his class at the local college, and Clint had no doubt Coulson would be finding a place for him at New SHIELD after he graduated.

Garcetti, much like the Avengers, had stayed silent throughout the affair, though he'd quietly had the Andrades back to the White House and brokered a deal for Costa Grava to become a territory over the next few years. This news was finally enough to break the cycle of the media haranguing the Avengers. For about a day. Then, late Saturday night, just hours after Natasha had sent Tony home, a bystander had gone to TMZ with footage of the fight in the White House from a different, and clearer angle, and the public had collectively lost their minds again.

Do not engage, came the text from JARVIS. Stark Industries Public Relations will handle it.

What JARVIS failed to mention was that the person who would be handling it was Tony. He hadn't said a word to any of them, but had showed up on Sunday's morning news, standing behind a podium outside Stark Tower.

Clint had needed no translation to know that Natasha's string of Russian wasn't flattering. As the conference looked to be starting, he'd waved his hand at her then pointed to the television screen. Thankfully, she'd quieted, but he could feel the displeasure rolling off of her in nearly tangible waves.

"Thank you for coming," Tony had said. His voice had sounded practically normal, which Clint knew meant he'd doubled, if not tripled, up on his dosage just for the event. As usual, he had been dressed to the nines, and someone had done an excellent job hiding the bruising on his face and neck. "I have a statement to read on behalf of the Avengers, and will not be taking questions."

He'd paused for a minute, and looked out at the crowd, waiting for them to quiet before he continued.

"In case it wasn't made clear by the White House's statement Thursday night, the man who attacked President Garcetti was not Steve Rogers."

"Then where is he?" someone had interjected.

Tony had ignored them, and had continued reading from his cards. "Early Wednesday morning, the real Steve Rogers was seriously injured in an altercation between him and the man who would go on to try to assassinate President Garcetti. Again."

"You can't seriously expect us to believe that!" one reporter had scoffed, while another jumped to her feet. "What is Captain Rogers' status now?"

"Healing," Tony had said. "He, and the rest of the Avengers, ask for some privacy during this time."

"Then who tried to kill President Garcetti?" someone else had demanded.

Tony had cleared his throat and again waited for the man to take his seat before continuing. "As I was saying, the man who bears a remarkable resemblance to our Steve Rogers is named Clarke Robinson, who was tragically killed in the ensuing fight to save President Garcetti."

What the Avengers would later learn was that Clarke Robinson didn't exist until Saturday night, when SI had first received wind of the new footage. They'd decided against the truth to avoid a widespread scare about aliens taking over random people at will, and in a few short hours, the PR team and a few dedicated… programmers… had constructed an entire background for Robinson: yearbooks, photos, sound bytes, certificates, library cards, mortgage, W2s. To someone who didn't know better, Robinson had really existed.

"By you?"

"By a member of the Secret Service," Tony had replied, and then looked pointedly back down at his cards as someone muttered something behind the stage.

"We want to see his body!"

"That is all I have to say. Thank you for your time."

The media roared forward, but Tony just nodded and quickly made his exit. The team group chat had started up almost immediately.

What the hell was that? Bruce.

Why didn't you tell us? Natasha, but with a few stronger words conveniently lost in translation.

I didn't want to worry all of you, Tony had finally responded.

Litrel latew fr thar now. From Sam, his meaning surprisingly clear behind the typos.

There had been a bunch of dots blooming at the bottom of Clint's screen, then a simple, Thank you, from Bucky appeared. And the rest of the comments from the team were lost into the aether.

Despite the amount of effort that had gone into fabricating Robinson's background, it had really come down to whether people would buy this story. Within hours of the press conference, the media had started interviewing people who swore they'd gone to school with Robinson, and were sounding off on what a strange, quiet kid he'd been even back then. Footage had been uncovered of him playing sports for school and club teams. Electronic copies of his diplomas from mid-level universities had been plastered across every screen.

Sure there had been dissenters, but there just wasn't enough evidence for them to prove that Robinson didn't exist. Those who had come out to say that they didn't remember him, were shown footage or pictures of them interacting with him. Even though these edited assets directly contradicted the copies that the interviewee had brought with, the public seemed to believe that those original works were edited, and not the ones blazing across the news. Those dissenters typically didn't make it back for a second interview. Once the situation was likened to a Berenstein/Berenstain Bears situation, it began to fall out of news cycles, in favor of the court cases for those who were still alive and involved.

Thankfully, the story that had persisted was those wishing Steve well, and now the public was waiting for any information about his recovery. Somehow, someone had found out what hospital Steve was staying at, which forced both the hospital, and Happy by extension, to double guards outside the points of ingress, and station a pair outside the entry to Steve's quarantine unit. With those changes, the doctors seemed less interested in holding the Avengers to standard visiting hours, which was the single good thing to come out of this whole mess.

The team was mobbed entering and exiting, no matter what doors they used, but as instructed, they kept their collective heads down, and went about visiting Steve or spending their time away at the Tower, out of the public's prying eyes, until this all blew over.

Now, mid-day Monday, Clint was sitting beside Steve, messing around on his phone, when the monitors began to beep more quickly. This had happened a few times over the past day, but just in case this was the time Steve well and truly came around, Clint was on his feet in a second and peering down at his friend. Unlike previous times, Steve's face was scrunched in pain, his eyes screwed closed, and a beat later, he began rocking back and forth in bed, struggling against something unknown.

Unable to reach for his phone, Clint opened his mouth as much as he could and told JARVIS to call Bucky. He then laid his gloved hand gently on Steve's shoulder, trying his best to hold the supersoldier still.

"Translate," he said to JARVIS, then began signing furiously with one hand.

"You're okay, Steve," the AI intoned. "You're safe. At the hospital. I need you to calm down."

At the sound of JARVIS' words, Steve stilled. His eyes continued fluttering though, and a few long minutes later, he managed to crack them open, revealing two beautiful slits of blue.

"Hey man," JARVIS translated. "You back with us?"

Steve stared up at Clint, and his brow furrowed.

"Sorry about the get-up. But it's me—Clint. Bucky is on his way."

The lines in Steve's forehead only deepened.

"Hey, just stick with me. I'm going to call a doctor, okay?"

Steve just continued staring at Clint's face, almost as if he wasn't seeing Clint himself. Clint hurried over to the glass wall of the quarantine unit and banged on it, frightening the nurse who was walking by.

"He's awake," he signed, and JARVIS repeated. "Get a doctor."

Clint hurried back to Steve's bedside, and found Steve still awake, but staring into the space Clint had vacated.

"It won't be long now, okay?" JARVIS translated.

Behind the oxygen mask, Steve's mouth was moving. Clint very carefully pulled the mask away, leaving it close enough for the oxygen to still flow. He bent down slightly, and was only barely able to hear something like, "you."

"You?" he asked Steve. "You what?"

Steve turned to look at Clint in a brief moment of clarity. "'re you?" he said, as his heartrate picked up and he began struggling to get away from Clint. He threw himself into the rail of the bed, sending the whole apparatus skittering across the floor.

Trying to both be comforting and keep Steve from hurting himself further, Clint grabbed Steve's wrist. It was only as he felt himself sailing through the air and crashing into the far wall that he realized that had been the wrong choice.

"L'me go!" Steve was slurring, more animatedly, as he threw himself against the remaining rail of the bed. "L'me free!"

Clint had just pulled himself to his feet when a horde of doctors and security surged into the room, pushing him out of the way.

Steve was speaking much faster, unintelligible, and struggling hard against an unseen foe. Someone else went flying before Clint caught a glimpse of metal near Steve's IV port. A long moment later, Steve's breathing began to calm down and he slumped down in bed.

The doctors enveloped Steve, talking about things Clint couldn't make out, but probably wouldn't have understood anyway. Then, they were wheeling Steve out of the room, leaving Clint all alone.

The silence was momentarily disorienting after all the chaos, and as Clint dropped back against the wall and reached for his phone, he signed something which JARVIS, still under protocol, voiced.

"Shit."

"Where the hell is he?" Bucky demanded, ten minutes later, as he sprinted out of the stairwell. The evidence that he'd literally dropped everything to be here were littered all over his body: the collar that was half-tucked under, half sticking straight up; the one shoe that was a sharp step away from untying itself; his hair, which had been hastily pulled back, but missed a section just over his ear.

"Scans," Clint signed.

Bucky swore loudly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I texted you."

"You did not," Bucky retorted as he pulled out his phone. In a different situation, Clint would have reacted smugly to the blinking notification light, but after everything that had happened today, he was too drained to make the words go.

"What the hell happened?"

"He didn't recognize me."

"Could just be the drugs," Bucky replied, but it was far too fast and light for Clint to believe that was what he actually thought. "What'd the doctors say?"

"Could be the drugs, could be lingering effects from the symbiote." Clint shrugged to emphasize the doctors' utter helplessness. He knew the next part had to be handled delicately, but if he were Bucky, he'd want to hear it straight, without any fluff. So he took a deep breath and said, "Steve didn't know where he was, and was trying to escape."

Bucky's metal fingers curled into a fist as he cursed again. "I knew I shouldn't have left. I told you he was going to need me."

"He was himself," JARVIS translated for Clint. "Blue eyes and all. Just confused."

Bucky cursed one last time but then relaxed his shoulders… slightly. "Did he hurt anyone?"

Clint shook his head. His collision with the wall had radiated through his jaw, which was smarting now more than usual, but he hadn't needed a medical professional to tell him that his back was at worst bruised. The other nurse who had been thrown had collided with a colleague first. Both were fine.

Relief washed over Bucky's face before he asked, "They say when he'd be back?"

Clint shook his head, then signed, "sorry man."

"Not your fault." With a deep exhale, Bucky sank down in the seat next to Clint. "Just when I think we're finally getting ahead of this thing, you know?"

"The doctors specifically told me to not let you freak out," JARVIS said for Clint. "Apparently this wing just got redone last year."

Bucky muttered something about where they could stick their suggestion, and clicked on the screen of his phone. "Did you tell everyone else?" he then asked.

"I was going to wait and see what the scans said first," Clint signed.

Bucky said something else under his breath, too soft for Clint to catch, then slipped his phone back into his jacket, and settled in to do just that.

One long hour later, Steve was rolled back into the quarantine unit. The oxygen mask had been downgraded to a nasal cannula, but he was still connected to an assortment of IVs and other assorted monitoring equipment.

The scans had come back with even more improvement, which left the doctors cautiously optimistic that Steve's confusion was temporary while his brain patterns continued to normalize. As usual, they tacked on their usual disclaimer that this was way outside of their field of study and that they were really only guessing, before leaving the room.

Bucky waited until they were gone before shrugging on his Hazmat suit, entering the quarantine unit, dragging his chair over to Steve's bed and cautiously resting his gloved flesh hand on Steve's.

"I always hated this part," Bucky said softly, shifting then so his hand slipped under Steve's. "Waiting for him to wake up. It was worse though, back then. We didn't have all this." He didn't need to point to anything specific to convey the wonders of modern medicine. "And what they had, Mrs. Rogers couldn't always afford."

"It must have been rough."

Bucky nodded, and out of the corner of his eye, Clint, who had dressed and followed Bucky into the room at a normal human's pace, could see his friend wasn't really focusing on the room in front of him anymore.

"He always made it through. The stubborn jerk." Then Bucky shook his head and looked back at Steve. This time, his expression was laden with things unsaid.

Clint pretended to yawn dramatically and notice the time on his watch while his hands were in the air. "What do you know, my shift is almost over," he signed to JARVIS. "Mind spelling me until Natasha gets here?"

"You're ridiculous," Bucky said, though he didn't look away from Steve.

Clint just tipped his head to acknowledge the point, and walked out of the quarantine unit.

Later that night, long after Bucky's shift was over, he crept back into the hospital, past the guards, slipped into a spare Hazmat suit—which, for the record, he thought was totally ridiculous, but he wasn't taking any chances with Steve in his current condition—and walked into the decontamination walkway. He held up the item he'd acquired during his break, to make sure it was thoroughly cleaned as well, before the inner door slid open and Bucky stepped in.

"Hey, Steve," he said softly. Not unexpectedly, his friend didn't react. In fact, Steve hadn't regained consciousness at all since that afternoon. Sam was sitting with him now, but as usual, had fallen asleep in his chair, head pillowed into a mound of sheets by Steve's hand. Someone had slung a jacket over his back, and Bucky pulled it a little higher to cover the back of Sam's neck as he passed.

On the other side of the bed, he quietly pulled up a chair and lowered himself into it.

"I remember when you had pneumonia that one winter," Bucky began as he leaned back in the chair. "And all you wanted me to do was read to you. So that's what I'm gonna do.

"And if you're gonna wake up and laugh at me, now'd be a great time."

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, Steve's eyes remained closed, and his heart rate continued its slow yet regular rhythm against its monitor.

"Okay, you asked for it." Bucky paused to crack open the cover of the hardback book he'd bought at the store around the corner, then began, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…"

Regarding the bears: I would put good money on the fact it was Bernstein (neither of the above two options). Unfortunately the books I had as a kid have long since been given away. If anyone has proof of this glitch in the matrix, I'd love to see it.

Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!