From full-length jeans to makeshift cutoffs — one bare leg catching the light — Daisy stood in genuine bewilderment. Was this standard S.H.I.E.L.D. combat technique? That was absolutely brutal.
The jeans had torn through first — then the belt snapped under the strain and took half the fabric with it. Hill landed hard, picked herself up from the floor with her teeth clenched, the torn denim still in her hand. She looked at it, looked at Daisy, and fought back a laugh. "There you go. I told you to change into proper gear before a session. Rookie mistake."
A ripped pair of jeans was barely worth mentioning. But the whole unshakeable master image? Gone entirely.
"Gurgle." An extremely ill-timed sound from somewhere in the training ground.
Daisy cut a glance at Hill. The deputy director's gaze drifted somewhere neutral.
"Hungry?" Daisy kept her voice magnanimous. "Let's order delivery." She found a spare pair of training pants in the locker, changed, and pulled out her phone.
Hill was, in fact, quite hungry. It was the first time she'd truly understood why Daisy had always eaten like she was making up for a famine — the power drew on you in ways that didn't show up immediately. Refueling wasn't optional.
"They run on different energy systems," Daisy said, "but the amulet still draws on your reserves. Don't let the deficit build up."
Hill accepted this without argument, then proceeded to put away three pizzas and two oversized burgers.
"Hm. Everything tastes better than usual." Hill had sauce at the corner of her mouth. The only witness was Daisy, and the two of them were long past performing for each other. She didn't pretend.
Daisy sat cross-legged across from her and ate with absolutely zero ceremony — no pausing, no pacing. The food simply vanished.
A warm, well-fed contentment settled over Daisy and put her in a less-than-innocent mood.
She wiped her hands. "Come on," she said, looking at Hill. "Round two."
Hill was still running on ordinary human metabolism at the core. The food needed time to convert into something the amulet could use. She stood, stretched, and shook her head. "I can't. I ate too much."
Daisy's tone was perfectly even. "Your muscles are past their load threshold. I'll work out the knots."
Hill ached everywhere — the expected consequence of an extreme burst workout crammed into a short window. She'd been planning on a hot shower. Daisy's offer was genuinely tempting. But she remembered enough recent history to feel something complicated about it — anticipation and resistance, wound around each other in a knot she couldn't untangle.
She tried the question carefully. "Just a massage? Nothing else?"
"Relax. I promise. Strictly professional."
The phrasing was simple enough, but Hill found herself nodding despite the voice in the back of her head that knew better.
Daisy had once told some minor acquaintance that you could never trust a beautiful woman's word. The principle had never been more precisely illustrated than right now.
Just a massage, nothing else. Technically untrue. But perhaps Hill understood that and had chosen to look the other way; perhaps she hadn't. Either way, it didn't matter — what mattered was that she'd found a way to get along with Daisy again: keep work out of it and only talk about their powers. The distance that had opened between them closed around that, and held.
Hill was sharp enough to know what came next. She simply declined to acknowledge it, and let things move where they moved.
They set aside the friction. They set aside the competition. And in a different direction entirely, they found their common ground again.
Over the next several days, they slipped back into something close to ease. Hill had a week of leave, and five of those days she spent at Daisy's place. They trained together — which mostly meant Daisy systematically dismantling Hill's guard, occasionally allowing a hit through as a diplomatic gesture. The rest of the time was eating, fighting, and playing a certain very fast-paced game consisting primarily of faster, come on, faster—
The question of who would eventually sit in Fury's chair still floated between them, unresolved. But Fury was alive and showing no signs of stepping down, and from a purely strategic angle the two of them still had every reason to keep cooperating. The future could handle itself.
Enjoy today. Deal with tomorrow when it arrives.
A week later, Hill shipped back out to the Iliad.
Daisy put on something professional and walked into Stark Industries. The supercomputer installation had been frozen ever since Obadiah Stane's removal — the contractors had gone dark the moment the payment schedule stopped moving.
She knew her way around the building. She went straight to the CEO's office.
"I'm so sorry, Daisy, genuinely — things have been completely overwhelming and some things fell through the cracks, I'll get it sorted as fast as I can." Pepper Potts was apologetic and earnest, and Daisy found it genuinely hard to press her.
Especially considering that Obadiah had voided the original down payment before everything collapsed. She technically hadn't paid a single cent yet.
"That's fine. You're busy. I'll leave you to it." She turned to go. Pepper stopped her.
"Wait — Daisy."
"What?"
Pepper's expression shifted slightly. A faint undercurrent of something guarded. "Tony said if you came by, he wanted to talk to you."
Daisy read it immediately. She knew these people. Pepper thinks there's something between me and Stark.
She waved the entire idea off at the wrist. "You have nothing to worry about. There is nothing between Stark and me. If he asks — you never saw me."
But loyalty won over suspicion. Pepper collected herself and managed a smile. "He really did ask for you specifically. Twice. In all the time I've been his assistant, that almost never happens."
Daisy asked a couple more questions. Pepper genuinely didn't know what Tony wanted.
The video call connected almost immediately.
And Stark's request left her genuinely flat-footed.
"Fight me," he said, completely serious. "I want to see where my gaps are."
"You want me to beat you up?"
"Obviously not—"
Tony Stark, as it turned out, was not sitting around bored looking for someone to hit him. He wanted a proper session. In the armor.
"No interest," Daisy said flatly. "I'd lose." There was no performance in it — just fact. Relying on gear wasn't much of an accomplishment anyway, but that wasn't even the issue. The Iron Man suit was genuinely formidable. Greater strength, greater speed, superior firepower across every category. She had zero desire to walk into that.
"I don't know what you need the supercomputer for," Stark said, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, "but I'll waive the mid-stage installation fees, the calibration costs, and all the materials costs — everything. One real fight. That's the deal."
He smiled. The smile of a man who had already decided what her answer was going to be.