Lost save file when redownloading game? Any way to recover?

I was playing crisis core on my steamdeck, and it kept crashing randomly, so I thought I'd try removing and redownloading the game. Never lost save data when removing a game before, and never had any issue between pc and deck keeping consistent data, so it didn't occur to me that that could be a problem.

But as soon as I reopened the game, there's no trace of my save data. Any way to recover this? Or does steamdeck suddenly delete save data when you remove a game download? I've always played online, always had "keep game's saves in the steam cloud" turned on.

Not sure what happened or if I just killed all my data by uninstalling. I was only 4 hours in, but I'm still upset about it. Any help would be appreciated!