Worth It

Thirty Six

It was late, almost everyone had gone to bed. Tony, Pietro, Loki, and Peter were still waiting for (Y/N) to get out of the operating room. Pietro was told that he needed rest but he refused to leave so he was sleeping in an armchair. Tony was nervously bouncing her leg and Peter was trying to stay awake.

"Peter, you need to sleep." Tony sighed.

"Sleep is for the weak." Peter spoke hoarsely .

"Hear, hear." Loki agreed which caused Tony to roll his eyes.

A few minutes passed before Pietro jerked awake, his eyes were filled with panic before he realized where he was and relaxed. Tony noticed his behavior and became incredibly worried. It was obvious that Pietro's treatment was no where near as severe as (Y/N)'s so if this is how he's acting, Tony could only imagine how (Y/N) would react when she woke up.

"Are you okay?" Tony quietly asked Pietro.

"I'm fine." He clearly didn't want to dwell on it.

"Are you sure?" Tony pushed.

"If I weren't fine, I would tell you." Pietro snapped and Tony quickly shut up.

The three men and Peter noticed a doctor walking in, clearly exhausted. They stood up quickly.

"Is she awake? Can we see her?" Loki asked.

"We have good news and bad news." The doctor spoke. "The good news is that she is healing quickly. We did a blood test and found traces of the super soldier serum, similar to that of Sergeant Barnes. She'll likely be awake in a few days."

"And the bad news?" Peter inquired.

"The serum isn't the only similarity between her and Bucky. She's clearly suffered severe damage to her amygdala and hippocampus, meaning when she wakes up it will take some time before she remembers everything."

"How long?" Pietro asked.

"There's no way to tell. Not as long as it took Bucky but it could be a few days or a few months." The doctor spoke calmly.

Tony nodded, just happy to have her back.

"When can we see her?" He asked eagerly.

"Now." The doctor answered.

•••

The next few days, (Y/N)'s hospital room was almost always occupied by at least one avenger. Some read to her, some reminisced over fond memories, and some just sat next to her.

At one point, Bucky brought Alpine down to sleep on (Y/N)'s lap. Tony was surprised by the fact that Bucky had kept his cat a secret for the past few years but he still teared up at the kind gesture.

Natasha had miraculously convinced Tony to finally get some sleep while she sat with (Y/N). Whether or not he listened was a mystery.

If there's one thing Natasha Romanoff is known for, it's keeping her emotions deep down, very few ever got to see her open up. That's why the words she uttered to an unconscious (Y/N) were that much more meaningful.

"Hey," she spoke. "I don't know if you can hear me or not. I kinda hope you can't, you'd definitely use what I'm about to say as blackmail." The redhead chuckled to herself. "I know that when you wake up, you're gonna be scared and confused and it's gonna break your dad's heart. I'll pretend to be fine. Bucky probably will too. You know us, strong and silent with our dumbass counterparts." Natasha smiled before sitting back in her chair, wiping a few stray tears from her face. "I know I don't show it as much as I should but I really care about you. You filled a space in all our lives we didn't even know was there. You being gone broke me, it broke all of us. God, you should've seen Loki. He never left his room, never spoke to us. The worst part was that we could tell how truly hurt he was. That man is a close second when it comes to bottling up emotions and let's just say that we could all read him like a book."