Chapter Text
The first thing he recognized was the cool air being blown directly into his nostrils, making his nose itch. Phil wrinkled it, attempting to alleviate the itch. He tried to lift his hand, only to have it come up short with an IV pulling on the back of it.
“Easy there, Cheese,” he heard and cracked his eyes open. “Can you hear me?”
Phil tried to talk, but it was like trying to breathe through a throat full of sand.
“Hang on.”
The blurry form of Nick Fury leaned over and came back with a plastic cup and straw, which he held to Phil’s chapped lips.
“Drink this.”
Phil slowly drew the cool water past his lips and felt it trickle down his throat, loosening up the dry bits. He coughed and hacked, clearing his throat before taking another sip of water. When he couldn’t handle any more, he leaned back, taking a deep breath. Nick set the cup on the table beside him with a quiet click.
“Where am I?” he asked, voice raspy from disuse.
“The Retreat,” Nick answered. Phil looked around as much as he could, recognizing the rough wooden walls. He was in a small bedroom, dark wood shelves along the wall and a plush chair in one corner. His bed was made of dark wood, and he was surrounded by beeping machines.
“How?”
“You died,” Nick said bluntly, leaning back and crossing his arms. “In my damn arms. I couldn’t have that, so we brought you back.”
“Always so stubborn,” Phil teased, a small smile ticking up his lips.
“I can’t have my best agent going and dying without my permission,” he responded with a matching smile.
“How long has it been?”
“Almost a year,” Nick responded. “You’ve been in a medically induced coma.”
“That… is a very long time.”
Nick hummed in agreement. Phil closed his eyes, even this small interaction already draining his energy.
“How are the Avengers coming along?” Phil asked after a moment, hopeful.
“They’re fine. Scattered but alive,” Nick answered back with a “what can you do?” shrug. Phil felt a pang that the team had fallen apart but held out hope that now that he was back, he could unite them again.
“What about Clint and Natasha?”
“You know them. In the wind, but they can take care of themselves.”
Phil strongly disagreed. “Sure.”
Phil felt his eyelids growing impossibly heavy.
“Rest up, Phil,” Nick said, patting his hand. “You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”
Phil slipped into a dreamless sleep.
It took Phil a few weeks to be able to walk more than a few steps without completely running out of breath.
“Come on, Phil, you’re doing great,” Joseph, his physical therapist said. Phil let a breath squeeze through his teeth. He was lying flat on his back in the living room, where they had pushed all the furniture to the walls to make space for their activity. He had one leg extended as he raised and lowered it. It was infuriatingly frustrating how exhausted he got after just a half hour of light exercise.
“Is that what you call this?” Phil asked as he lowered his leg, craning his neck to look at Joseph sitting beside him. “Because it feels like I used to be able to run for hours on end and now I can’t sit up without losing my breath.” He shakily wiped his face with a towel. His whole body ached, his joints feeling rusty and his muscles sore.
“It won’t always be like this,” Joseph promised. “You’re already making great progress. You’ll get there, just give it time.”
“I suppose it could be worse. I don’t know how they managed to keep most of my muscle mass but at least there’s that.”
“There you go, always look on the bright side.”
It took him another two weeks to not need a nap halfway through the day. Nick, when he visited, kept hinting at a potential asset to recruit and an underground organization to thwart, but after coming so close to death, Phil realized he had some other priorities to sort out first.
While laid up in bed, Phil had begged a computer from the rotation of nurses that stayed with him at the Retreat. It was spring, and the cabin where he was recuperating was surrounded by mountains and trees.
He had convinced the nurses to let him sit on the swing on the front porch, bundled into a thick robe and surrounded by a soft blanket, laptop perched on his lap and a steaming mug of tea at his side. They were all charmed by him and let him stay on the computer longer than they should. With it, Phil started digging into the dark corners of the internet and had an inkling of where he could find Clint. And it was in… Idaho?