It took exactly twenty-one hours for Clint Barton to wake up from the surgery he didn't want.

Immediately after he was placed in the Intensive Care Unit of SHIELD's state of the art hospital, Natasha wouldn't leave his side. Bruce Banner, Thor, and even Tony Stark came by to sit with their archer after he was brought back from surgery. No one had seen Steve Rogers since he was arrested by SHIELD for turning Clint over to the enemy.

Clint looked miserable, but with the amount of bandages covering parts of his body, everyone believed the procedures the facility had performed on him had been reversed. There was a thick white bandage wrapped around the top of his head, covering his ears. The archer's right fore arm had been operated on again and bound in a dark purple cast, and there were bandages scattered all over his body. Their teammate also had a total of three IVs inserted; two in his arm and one just under his left collarbone.

For the first several hours after surgery, Clint would make attempts to wake up by twitching his closed eyes, slightly moving his oxipulse covered pointer finger, and somewhat coughing, although the breathing tube shoved down his throat was making that rather difficult. Natasha would use the edge of his hospital bed's white sheet to wipe the excess drool that dribbled out from the edges of his mouth. Seeing her best friend's wrists and ankles strapped down with padded cuffs made her sick, but it was for his safety and the safety of whoever tried to treat him. According to the staff, Clint had regained consciousness as they wheeled him into the operating theater, scared and confused. He had lashed out at the nurses trying to explain where he was and why he was there, so once they got him under control, they restrained his wrists and ankles.

At one point, Bruce had taken over the role of being the archer's nurse. He had asked the post-op nurse to borrow the stethoscope so he could see how Clint was doing for himself. Tony rolled his eyes as he watched the scientist press the disc against their teammate's gown-covered chest and abdomen before laying it down by the man's thigh and moving on to check the pulse inside his wrist.

Natasha looked up at Bruce with a smirk. "You know he'd kill you if he knew you were calling the shots right now."

"That's why I'm taking advantage of the time to examine him now. Call me crazy, but I don't trust the doctor who just recently tried to kill him." His tone was sarcastic, and Natasha just rolled her eyes. Bruce pulled a penlight out of his shirt pocket and shined it in Clint's eyes. "I'm gonna make sure he's getting pain meds pumped into him before he wakes up."

"Then go get the meds for him, Nurse Banner..." Tony joked, taking a seat in the plush chair in the corner of the room.

Moments after Tony sat down and shut up, the monitors surrounding Clint started going haywire. They watched as Clint unconsciously arched his back and tried to take in a deep breath of air that was impossible to catch.

"His vitals are out of control!" Bruce shouted as he rummaged around the cabinets to find a medicine that would stabilize him. "We need a doctor in here!" The monitors continued to blare, and soon enough, there were SHIELD doctors and nurses rushing into the room and surrounding him. His teammates were pushed away as they worked to stabilize him. The team was forced to watch Clint's chest rise and fall rapidly as his head jerked side to side. Simmons was the one to quickly inject a serum into one of Clint's IVs that would eventually stabilize his vitals.

"He just went through an unconscious panic attack. It sounds strange, but Clint has seen a lot on the field and in the facility. Sadly, we expected to happen at least once." Simmons tried to explain before tightening Clint's wrist and ankle restraints as he thrashed around.

"Come on, Barton. You've always made your own luck. Don't stop now." Tony coached, trying to make himself heard over the deafening sounds of the screeching monitors. He was standing up now, but knew better than to get in the way of the doctors. The mechanic doubted Clint could hear anyway with a thick bandage wrapped around his head and covering his ears. He reassuringly placed his hand on the archer's calf for a second before pulling back.

The Avenger continued to struggle for air for thirty more seconds before his back collapsed against the mattress in exhaustion.

"You're okay, Clint...fight it." Natasha wanted to cry as she soothingly placed her hand on his forehead and ran her hand back through his hair until her hand hit the pillow behind his head. "You're okay..." Hawkeye's head angled toward her; he was still unconscious and miserable with the breathing tube protruding out of his mouth.

Thankfully, the numbers on the heart monitor turned from red to green as the blaring sound became steady beats. Natasha continued to soothingly run her fingers through his hair as the numbers continued to drop. "He's been through too much. He would've died if SHIELD hadn't caught that damn doctor..." There was a long pause. "You know what?" Natasha turned her head toward the other Avengers. "That's it. We quit."

"Hang on a sec." Tony took a step toward her, glancing at Barton's stabilizing form as he did. "Quit...what?"

"The Avengers. We're two out of thousands of SHIELD agents across the globe. Lay down some money on a pair of inhumans. We quit, Tony. I'm not letting him get back out there and get himself captured and tortured again. We may go back to SHIELD and work as pilots or trainers...I may go back out in the field, but he's done. I'll tell Maria Hill to delete his field agent status...and in the meantime, Laura's already offered a room to me. Once he's out of here, we're leaving the tower."

21 Days

Simmons made the call to remove Clint's breathing tube and replace it with a clear oxygen mask eighteen hours after surgery. The Russian assassin had questioned the decision because she knew Clint would never leave the mask on, but she allowed Simmons to remove it. Clint automatically coughed once after she had removed the tube, but immediately went back to being silent. Her friend's condition remained stable after the removal of his breathing tube. After Natasha had informed Bruce, Tony, and Thor she and Barton were leaving the team, no one spoke a word to each other. Tony had gone back to the tower to be with Pepper, Thor left to deal with an unexpected mission on the coast, but Bruce stayed behind with the two agents.

"W-when do you think he could wake up?" Natasha asked nervously as she kept her eyes trained on her best friend. She gently brushed her thumb across his cheek as she watched his chest slowly rise and fall.

The scientist sighed and glanced out the glass door to see Jemma Simmons talking to some of the technicians at the nurse's station. "I don't know, but Jemma would know the full story. I think she's about to come check on him..." He turned back to Natasha for a second before his eyes went directly to the door again.

Agent Phil Coulson, the Strike team's handler no one had heard from since they were rescued from the facility, had knocked on the doorframe. "Can I come in?"

"Coulson..." Natasha looked at her handler in shock, but she remained seated by her friend's side. "What are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to stop by and see how he was doing. Doctor Ashlocke was taken back to SHIELD after surgery for interrogation." Coulson's eyes traveled from Natasha, to Clint, then back to Natasha again. "How is he?"

"He's...his average self. We've told him to wake up, but you know how he is with orders..." The Black Widow forced a smile as she tried to joke. Tears stung her eyes.

Coulson smiled softly, but it did not last long because he knew the situation was tearing her apart. He motioned to the thick cast on Barton's arm. "Who chose the purple cast?"

"There's something you're trying not to tell me, Coulson..."

"Tony tells me you're leaving the team."

The assassin wasn't surprised Tony had told Coulson everything she had said. "I'm not letting him go through this alone. I-I'm gonna be there to help him recover...and then we're going radio silent."

Coulson pulled the second bedside chair next to Natasha and sat down. "Did you already talk to Barton about this?"

The agent froze for a moment. "On the Budapest mission...he...he told me that if anything happened to him, I need to make the decisions I feel are best for him. This...this is one of those times..." She gently combed her fingers through her friend's hair before running her hand down the side of his head. The psycho nurse back at the facility had actually done a fairly decent job with keeping the hair on the sides of his head even. It surprisingly blended well with the longer hair on top, which was now damp with sweat.

"And you think leaving the team is what's best for him?"

Natasha seemed upset by his concern. "It's better than seeing him die. I shouldn't have just sat there. I should've moved faster. If I had moved quicker, he would've never ended up in that damn facility."

Coulson gently placed his hand on her shoulder as he stood up from the chair. "That wasn't your fault."

Natasha ignored him, keeping her eyes on her partner as she ran her hand through his hair another time. She moved her hand back up to his hairline to carefully run her thumb over a swollen bruise. "He doesn't feel well."

"Natasha, he's asleep..."

"He doesn't feel well." Natasha snapped at her handler after she turned her head toward him. The agent gently placed her hand on her friend's forehead for a second before reaching over him and grabbing the thermometer laying on the table beside him. She was quick to turn it on and swipe it across the archer's forehead.

Clint made a soft sound of protest in the back of his throat as he turned his head away from her.

His sound of protest alerted both Phil and Natasha, making them lock their attention on Hawkeye. He was struggling to wake up, so Natasha dropped the thermometer on the bed sheet and gently squeezed his left hand, minding the bandage wrapped around it.

Clint was clearly aware of the padded cuffs chaining him to the bed now, so he used his left elbow as a prop as he tried to find any way possible to break out. The beeps from his heart monitor picked up the pace.

"Hey, take it easy. You're safe..." She released his hand and soothingly raked her fingers through his hair again. "You're safe."

Her partner stopped struggling, so the machine's beeps slowed to a steady pace again. He cracked his eyes open. The world was blurry for a moment before the world focused around him.

Natasha smirked and drew her hand away. "Welcome back, hot shot."

"'T-Tasha..." His voice was raspy from the tube which had left his throat raw. His warm breaths fogged up the oxygen mask strapped over his mouth and nose. Natasha reached out and pulled the mask up over his head and placed it in his lap.

Coulson helped him comfortably sit up a little, keeping one hand on the back of his neck as his other hand held a paper cup of water to the agent's face. Hawkeye protested by shooting a glare at the supervising agent. Clint absolutely hated help with simple tasks like sitting up and taking a sip of water, but with the cast and restraints holding him down, he had no other choice.

The archer slowly took a small sip of water before turning away from the cup and coughing.

"You need to drink all of it. It's not much..." Coulson just watched as the glare in Clint's eyes never shifted away from him. The supervising agent frowned as he put the cup down. "Can you hear me?"

No response. Just the same glare. Coulson let him lie back down in the reclined bed.

"Look who's awake and already being disobedient."

Coulson and Natasha turned their heads toward the door to see Simmons standing there with the archer's chart in her hands. Clint looked toward her too after watching Coulson and Natasha spin around.

"He won't be able to hear until we remove the bandages and turn his implant on. The original plan was to get him back to his old self, but the facility doctors who performed his ear surgery were sloppy." She sighed. "No hearing aid would be right for him, so we used a sort-of cochlear implant Fitz had designed for him roughly six months ago. Barton had no interest in the implant at the time, but Fury advised us to save what we could and give him the implant now."

"What all happened during surgery? Or does Fury have that classified?"

"Well, the sedative we shot him with before surgery didn't last long enough, so after we fought to put him under, we opened up and examined every surgical scar we found on his body. The poisonous substance he had been given had damaged his gallbladder, so we had to remove it. Well, we had to remove parts of his stomach, large and small intestines, and his liver. His right arm was not set correctly, so we went in and repaired the damage with some pins, and then you know about the situation with his hearing. He also had a tracking device implanted in his left hand, so we took the time to remove it. Let's not forget about the bullet wound in his shoulder we had to clean up. Lastly, we used a procedure called micro-surgery to remove wire implants he had attached to his brain stem. It was done by a robot, so he does not have much scarring from it."

"When can he go home?"

"We'll keep an eye on him for about a week before he's allowed to go home. He'll be on mandatory bedrest for another week, and I suspect you'll be staying with him, Agent Romanoff?"

"Yeah, I promised Laura I'd help babysit him until he has completely healed." She let a small chuckle slip. "You know how he is. If he's left alone for a second, he'll find some way to escape."

Clint shot a glare at his best friend now, having read her lips. Natasha caught his glare and rolled her eyes in response.

"Perfect. I just need to check his lungs, throat, and some incisions before I go. There will be a few nurses in here later this evening to redress most of these incisions." Simmons pulled a tongue depressor and penlight from the cabinet on the wall before walking over to Clint's side and holding the stick in front of his face.

The archer looked at the stick, then Simmons before shaking his head.

Coulson waved his hand in front of Clint's face, getting his attention before he signed for him to open up.

Clint shook his head again as his hands began to tremble with nerves. They shoved a drug down his throat every time he'd open his mouth at the facility. He wouldn't trust anyone now.

The doctor reached out to force the agent's mouth open with her other hand, but Clint immediately thrashed out and tried to head-but her as an act of defense. Simmons moved out of the way nanoseconds away from getting a nasty welt on her forehead. "Coulson..." Simmons looked at the supervising agent for assistance.

Coulson stood up and carefully, yet forcefully, pinned Clint's shoulders back against the bed to immobilize him. Natasha had tears in her eyes as she held his head down. Clint struggled to move his head and break out of his restraints, but nothing was helping him. He whimpered as Simmons forced open his mouth and pressed the stick down against his tongue so she could get a good look at the back of his throat. "It's raw. Very raw. I'm going to have to add a few days to his all liquid diet."

"Can you hurry this up?" Natasha snapped, feeling terrible about holding Clint down. He was terrified. She used her free hand to sign 'OKAY' several times in his open palm. Clint was too nervous to understand what she was signing, so he continued to squirm. He squirmed more when Simmons tested his gag reflexes.

"Just hang on, Clint. Hang on..." Simmons threw the tongue depressor down on the bed and immediately pulled her stethoscope from around her neck. She put the ends in her ears, leaned over the struggling agent, and pressed the disc around on his chest and abdomen. The cold disc made him flinch, which the doctor quickly apologized for.

"I need to listen to his lungs. Get him on his side or help him sit up." Simmons instructed, looking between Natasha and Coulson.

Clint had no interest in sitting up again, so turning him on his side was the last option. Once they let him ago, he turned his head and looked at the bucket sitting on the bedside table. The archer signed 'BUCKET' with his non-casted hand and nodded toward it. Natasha picked it up and held it up for her friend, who got sick immediately after he was given the bucket.

After he was finished being sick, Simmons unbuckled his left side's restraint so they could move him. He tried to lie back down, but Coulson and Natasha were quick to help him lie on his side instead. Their actions earned more vocal protests from the man, but he reluctantly allowed them to shift his position.

"Feel free to give him more pain medicine," Coulson said as he watched the pained expressions on Clint's face as they moved him. "Agent Barton will have to have a severed limb before he even asks for pain relief."

"Natasha, you know the most ASL here, can you tell him to take a deep breath?" Simmons asked after placing the disc to the archer's back.

Natasha waved her hand in front of Clint's face to get his attention, then had him read his lips, instead. "She needs you to take a deep breath."

Clint stared at his friend, but he followed through with what she asked him to do. Natasha smiled in response. He was perfectly fine for the next three breaths she asked him to take. Once Simmons was finished, they allowed him to lie on his back again. The doctor was quick to work the restraint back onto Clint's left wrist.

"You're going home soon, Clint..." Natasha sat down and ran her fingers through his hair again. She watched as he blinked a few times, trying to fight sleep.

"Nat..." His voice was raspy and quivered as he spoke. "I-I'm sorry..." He was speaking barely above a whisper because he couldn't hear how loud he was. "I'm sorry..."

"Take off his restraints..." Natasha knew he was too weak to fight back.

"Natasha, you know this is standard protocol when it comes to Barton's medical care. You watched him lash out at Simmons...and that was with the restraints on."

"If I'm here, I can hold him down. Just let him be comfortable for once!" She snapped, her eyes as red as her hair.

Simmons released his right wrist as Coulson released his left before they moved on to his ankle restraints. Both the handler and the doctor panicked as Clint shifted himself around on his own, but it was only to turn partially on his side and face his best friend. He trusted her, plus she was the only one he fully trusted. She had helped him break out of a SHIELD hospital before.

"Starvin'..." Clint mumbled into his pillow. "Chik-Fil-A..."

Natasha smirked. This was the Clint she knew. She signed, 'ENTIRE LIQUID DIET. WANT JELLO? LUKE WARM SOUP? PUDDING?'

"I'll have a number three..."

"It's the pain medication talking." Simmons smirked and rolled her eyes.

"No, actually, it's just Barton," Coulson chuckled.

"I-I love Nat...s-she's very, very, very smart...and s-she saved me." Clint gasped, clearly under the fuzzy feelings of the pain medication now. He looked at his restraints, utterly confused. "The elves tried to tie me up again! But I escaped! Tony Stark is their leader!"

Natasha turned around to face Coulson. "Can you get him some pudding? Chocolate or vanilla; he likes both. It'll probably feel a lot better going down his throat. Well, once the pain meds die down, he'll be back to his groggy self."

"I'll bring him a cup of both." Coulson walked around Clint's bed and walked out of the room.

Natasha watched as her friend slipped into a light sleep once Coulson left the room, then looked up at Simmons. "Will he be able to hear and communicate at Steve's trial next week?"

"He'll be fine. We'll hopefully be able to turn on his cochlear implant in a few days. He won't like this, but he'll need assistance with walking, getting dressed, and possibly eating. Also, until he gets the bandage off his left hand where the tracker was located, he'll need help showering."

"I know what you said!" Clint was laughing as he watched Simmons, having read her lips. "Nat cleaned me up yesterday because I can get really messy...but I hate baths...my pants were really wet after, too. D-Did I pee my pants?" He sounded serious and ridiculous with his questions. The doctor and Natasha couldn't help but smile and try to restrain their laughs.

The Black Widow cleared her throat. "Helping him with getting dressed and showering will be something he'll hate, but they won't be a problem."

"I'll come by to check on him again in a few hours. Good luck, Agent Romanoff." Simmons left Natasha alone with Clint until Phil came back. She made her friend-turned-four-year-old lie down and rest as they waited for Coulson. He had protested, but all she had to do was say and sign that Doctor Simmons would come back and give him a sedative if he didn't go to sleep on his own. This version of Clint was deathly afraid of needles and cried for two seconds before going to sleep. She had it on video, so she would show it to Laura later.

Natasha rolled her eyes. She would be a terrible nurse.

21 Days

Natasha nudged Clint's shoulder once Phil came back into the room, wanting him to wake up. The archer whined, but opened his eyes and looked at his friend and handler. He watched as Natasha peeled open the chocolate pudding cup after Phil handed it to her. She dipped the spoon into it, then sat it on the table before she moved to help Clint sit up. Clint attempted to sit up by himself, but once his left hand felt pressure, he yelped and fell back.

He was irritated by needing help with a simple task like sitting up, but what really upset him was when he couldn't even hold the spoon with the puffy bandage on his dominant hand. When Natasha tried to help him eat, he turned his head away from the spoon like a kid refusing to eat something he hated.

"Come on, Clint. I know you like this stuff." She watched Clint stare out at the busy city behind the window. Natasha know he felt humiliated by needing spoon fed just a day after surgery, but it wasn't his fault he couldn't use his hands. She tapped his shoulder, making him look back at her. "You'll go home sooner if you eat."

She figured he must have listened to her by reading her lips because the next thing she knew, he was taking a bite of the pudding. After he finished the cup, he lied back down.

"You're not living on pudding or jello for a week; I don't care how much you want to. I'll go down to the kitchen and make you those protein shakes I drink." Clint didn't bother reading her lips. He just wanted to sleep off the rest of the anesthetic.

Natasha sighed as she watched his eyes slide shut. Once his eyes were shut, she picked up the oxygen mask and placed it back over his mouth and nose so he could have a steady flow of oxygen again.

It was over now, right? Are they finally safe?

Long chapter for you guys! I hope you enjoyed hyped up on pain meds Clint.

I'm hopefully going to update again this coming week!

No flames, please! Sorry for any mistakes!

One more thing:

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SUPPORTED THIS STORY IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM. THE STORY JUST REACHED 17K VIEWS AND I COULDN'T BE MORE PROUD OF IT!! YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING!!!!