It had been several months since they'd last seen each other. Daisy had been wrapped up in the Stark rescue mission, then helping Fury put on a show, then chasing down the Weapon X angle — she hadn't had a free moment. Hill had been on the carrier Iliad the whole time, captaining the ship.
Now that Hill was sitting across from her, a thick sense of unfamiliarity settled between them. The relationship should have felt close. But here, right now, neither of them quite knew what to say.
Daisy had the sharper social instincts — months of dealing with politicians and HYDRA operatives had seen to that — and she opened first.
"What's it like out on the water? The Iliad?" She kept her tone light, almost careless.
Hill took the opening and ran with it, describing coastlines and port stops: Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, all the way along the Indian Ocean to South Africa — the full patrol circuit of the Iliad. She picked out a few good stories, and Daisy nodded and smiled at the right moments. The tension eased, slightly.
"Was Stark really in that bad a shape?" Hill asked, bringing up Afghanistan.
Daisy stared at her. Stark? That unpopular? Even composed, precise Maria Hill wanted to hear about him being miserable?
I should've stayed longer and taken photos. A missed opportunity she'd never forgive herself for.
She leaned in with zero guilt and no mercy. In her retelling, Stark got systematically beaten up by Ten Rings militants, barely crawled his way out, ran straight into a pursuit team, and would almost certainly have died if S.H.I.E.L.D. and the colonel hadn't shown up in time.
"You're making things up again." Hill had seen the mission brief. She knew Daisy's habits. She filed the performance away under entertainment value only.
Something seemed to cross her mind. Her expression shifted into something slightly odd — a faint edge to it. "Your new subordinate, Bobbi — she's quite… impressively built."
"Is she? I didn't really notice." Daisy was absolutely not going to mention that she'd spent a noteworthy amount of time in the showers admiring Mockingbird's physique. Though honestly, the ex-gymnast did have an exceptional figure. Marginally below Daisy's own, but solidly in the same league as Hill and Sharon — definitely top-tier.
Right now, however, she was committed to her story: Saw nothing. Noticed nothing. The conditions were terrible, we didn't shower for three months.
Hill clearly didn't believe a word. But it had been an offhand comment — and besides, she understood perfectly well that female soldiers and agents sharing shower facilities in the field was entirely normal. She'd already moved on.
She thought about where they stood. Some things needed to be said plainly. Between her career and a relationship that hadn't had enough time to deepen, she would choose her career. She started choosing her words.
"I think we should probably…"
Daisy talked over her before she could finish. Once certain words hit the air you couldn't take them back. And she wasn't trying to save anything — it wasn't about that. She'd simply seen Hill reduce everything to ambition, to the exclusion of everything else, and it had turned into something close to an obsession. She wanted to give her a different road to walk.
She reached into her bag and set a jewelry box on the table in front of Hill.
"For you. You'll have use for it."
"For… me?" Hill assumed it was a gift in the ordinary sense — which, in a way, it was. She considered declining. The words formed, then didn't come out. She decided she'd at least look first. She could always return it.
She opened the box.
A necklace — technically. If you were being generous with the definition. Simple to the point of crudeness.
Inside the box sat the White Tiger Amulet: a tiger's head in silver-white, and two claws that seemed to carry a cold edge even in still air.
Hill looked up at Daisy, question written all over her face. She had no idea why she'd been given something like this.
"Come to my training ground. I'll show you what it does." Daisy's eyes were steady, no hedging.
Hill didn't have a way to say no. She followed her out of the coffee shop.
They drove to Daisy's training facility. Daisy pointed at the amulet. "Put it on. Feel what real power is like."
No ceremony, no build-up. Completely direct.
Extraordinary power. Even Peggy Carter — who had seen everything and clung to very little — could resist that kind of temptation. Maria Hill could not.
She lifted the amulet and, under Daisy's quietly encouraging gaze, put it on.
The White Tiger Amulet had no objections whatsoever to a new host. Frankly, its previous arrangement had been deeply unsatisfying. It and Daisy had barely interacted directly, and once she'd received the blessing of the cheetah goddess, the two of them had been fundamentally incompatible — if the amulet had a physical form, it would have demanded a serious conversation with her long before now.
A new host was good news. A host without her own overwhelming power was even better news.
In the spirit realm, the White Tiger's preferred manifestation was enormous — a Bengal tiger the size of a mountain range, silver-white, resting with absolute stillness, as immovable as a peak.
"Are you a god?" Hill looked around the spirit space, wide-eyed. Her first real brush with something beyond the physical. Her heart rate was doing things she preferred not to acknowledge.
Daisy had apparently been edited out of the equation entirely — the same way Viper had once looked at Daisy's vibration power and simply declined to be impressed. Hill saw the ten-meter tiger and the rest of the world faded out. That's actual power.
The tiger cleared its throat with a certain dignity. It had standards.
"I am not a deity. But I can offer you strength."
Hill's agent instincts surfaced immediately — her brow furrowed, her suspicion awake. This has a catch.
She was standing in her own mind. The tiger moved quickly to clarify. "I provide strength only. You remain entirely yourself. If you doubt me — ask your companion. She was my previous… host."
The tiger's phrasing around previous host went briefly, visibly strained.
Daisy's name settled Hill's instincts somewhat. Whatever competition existed between them, Daisy wouldn't set her up for something harmful — Hill was certain of that. She even suspected that if she ever moved against Daisy first, Daisy would retreat rather than strike back. No evidence, just instinct. But she trusted it.
She worked back through the logic, sorted it out, and looked at the tiger with genuine curiosity.
"I don't think I've ever seen her use your power. Did she ever?"
The White Tiger said nothing for a moment.
It clearly wasn't a question it wanted to answer.
Bound by the rules of the amulet, it had no choice but to answer. The massive head, heavy as a boulder, moved slowly from side to side.
"Why not? What kept her from using it?"
The tiger answered with the look of something being forced to speak an embarrassing truth.
"…Because her own power is approximately equal to mine."
Hill hadn't seen Daisy in nearly six months. She genuinely had no clear sense of where Daisy's abilities sat. She knew they exceeded normal human limits — but by how much, she'd never had a good read on.
The tiger, sensing Hill's polite skepticism, suppressed a weary sigh. It would have to keep explaining.