Re-uploaded! Not sure what happened there with the formatting, but thank you so much for letting me know and for sticking with me. :)

I appreciated the feedback. After reading the reviews to date, I have indeed decided to expand the story from a oneshot. We'll see where this takes us — I honestly have no idea! Hope you enjoy this new chapter.

"We found him, Tash. And I'm going to kill him for what he did to you."

The voice belonged to Clint, that much was certain. Relief washed over her: that meant she was safe. But the hoarse, heavy pain in his voice puzzled Natasha — saddened her, even — and she wondered what had happened to make him feel this way.

Did something happen to Laura? The kids? Or is it me?

She slowly opened her eyes, bracing as much against the light as she braced herself to face what the hell had happened.

A momentarily stunned Clint stared, wide-eyed and mouth agape, at Natasha before breaking into a wide grin. "Hey there," he said gently, bringing one hand to gently meet the hand that was already resting atop her own.

There was the quick flurry of nurses, the checking of vitals, the glowering of Clint in the corner keeping watch and refusing to budge from the room. She followed the light with her eyes, nodded 'yes' and 'no' to all the right things, and was told in no uncertain terms not to even think about using her voice for 7-10 days. She nodded, in information-gathering mode, but added that tidbit to the list of things she'd pry out of Clint as soon as the nurses left the room.

Fury arrived as the nurses were finishing their evals, cutting her hopes of an unfiltered debrief from Clint short. She stole a look in his direction every few moments, trying to discern the Director's thoughts as watched, head cocked to one side. She wished he'd arrived just a few moments later, knowing full well that he'd heard the nurse's line of questioning about her memory. Her nods to those questions — Do you remember anything about the events that led to your hospitalization? Do you have any memory regarding the sustaining of your injuries? — were mostly 'No's.

Fury lingered for a cursory debrief — nothing intensive. She knew it was SHIELD protocol to determine her fitness and status. Had she, at least to her knowledge, compromised any SHIELD information or agent identities? She nodded a hesitant 'no' to every question. She may not have her memory just yet, but Natasha knew — and knew that Fury also knew, but had to ask anyway — that she would never give up classified information under any circumstance. After a few moments longer, Fury exited, giving Clint a curt nod as he exited the room.

Clint returned to his chair by her side.

For a moment, things felt okay — familiar, at least. They'd both been here before, one injured and unconscious, the other holding vigil by their side and driving the doctors crazy until the other awoke. She returned the smile, intending to reply with her own "Hey", and his smile widened at hers as he gently squeezed her hand. But the attempt to use her voice was in vain — it brought on pain and a series of chest-wracking coughs. She broke the comfort — and their contact — to bring her hand in a fist to cover her mouth as she coughed.

He didn't waste a moment, pouring her a glass of water and gently holding the nape of her neck to help her drink it. "Slowly, Tash." She tamped down her eagerness and tried to sip gingerly, but it didn't do much to soothe the ache and swelling.

"Easy there, kiddo." She picked her head back up, signaling that she was done with the water for now. She didn't need words to relay a playful annoyance at his choice of verbiage.

"I know, I know, just wanted to get a barb in while I still had the advantage." She could tell he was trying to revert to their normal, competitive banter as if things were normal. Hell, she would have done the same in his shoes, and she appreciated the effort. But something felt different about this hospital visit, and she could tell that things were not normal.

"Docs say you won't be able to use that —" he gestured vaguely at her throat — "for a while. Between the surgery and intubation tube, you're still healing up. But don't worry," he leans slightly to the right as he fishes into his back pocket, "I brought loads of this."

He proudly displayed a small tube of chapstick and plopped it into her lap. "When I got that freak strain of tonsillitis from raiding that weaponized bio center, chapstick was a game changer. Thought you might use some, too." He looked at the tube in her lap and his enthusiasm seemed to suddenly dim.

He shook his head. "Stupid," he said in a lower tone and looked her into her eyes. "You wake up, and I'm excited to give you a tube of chapstick." He swallowed deeply, "I literally spent hours with Pepper picking out this tube. Literally. She wanted to kill me, I could tell."

Natasha raised her eyebrows, signaling her evaluation that his behavior must have been bad if he had managed to make Pepper annoyed at him.

"But the hunt kind of consumed me while you were out. I guess I needed something stupid to focus on so I wouldn't drive the docs to the brink of quitting while you were out."

She eyed him disbelievingly and, this time, her smile reached her eyes.

"Okay, okay maybe I did still drive them crazy." He returned the smile, and she let her gaze wander out the window. They drifted into a comfortable silence. The sun had started to set, giving the room a warm, pinkish glow. They passed a few moments that way before he cleared his throat and leaned closer.

"Listen, Tash." She looked back at him expectantly, wishing he would just come out with it already.

"I think we need to talk about what happened." He corrected himself quickly. "Well, I know you can't talk, which is obviously not ideal. So I have two questions for you. One, do you remember anything?

No, she thought, Nothing at all. She gazed upward before meeting his gaze again to nod 'no.'

"That brings me to my second question. Do you want to know now? Or would you like a little more time to get situated, see the others, get your voice back?"

Her eyes caught the whiteboard that she had seen when she first awoke. Then, it had read 1/21. Now, the date read 1/24. She raised her chin and pointed toward it, signaling for him to grab it. He scrambled to pull it off of its hook and placed it gently on her lap.

She used the side of her hand to wipe the date off of the board and unclipped the dry-erase marker attached to the top of the board. Gripping a marker felt strange — Nerve damage, or just fatigue? — but she scribbled a few words before holding the board up to Clint.

"Tell me everything."

Thank you so much for the reviews so far! Please continue to review and let me know what you'd like to see or what you think happened.