Author's Notes at the end.

Chapter Three: Dead-man Switch

Watch them Fury said.

Who, sir? Hill had asked, because he was dumping the entire agency in her lap for eleven entire days and she did not want this, and honestly, she wasn't sure if Fury meant Hydra or the techs digging through the rubble at Western Division or the Avengers as a whole –

But Fury gave her a look that meant don't be more of an idiot than you can help and said, "Barton and Romanoff are still SHIELD assets. Don't lose track of my people, Agent Hill."

So she'd saluted and watched Fury walk away to his "off-site" with the ISC – which she did not envy him at all – and then the whole of the responsibility of SHIELD lead came down on her shoulders. And she might have forgotten about Barton and Romanoff for a day or two, because they weren't actively blowing things up, unlike a number of people both on and off the helicarrier. So when she catches up on the immediate emergencies and comes around to checking up on them, it is nearly midnight Zulu time, and much too late to be making any sort of informal calls. The next day is more of the same. She resigns herself to doing the checkups remotely and dials up the surveillance tapes and the phone records, finding the first sparse and the second non-existent.

There's a note from the surveillance tech guys, rambling and cranky - Stark has done something to the cameras in Stark tower, so the only available tapes are the feed off the gym. She doesn't think Fury meant, check how many hours of physical training they put in, but that's what she's got.

The answer is: hundreds. Literally, the two agents are spending above fifty hours a week, each, in training and conditioning. Hill's in good shape, and she knows it – the average SHIELD marathoner is Olympic class – but she's nowhere near this level of sweat equity.

She's seen the personnel files, of course, and she checks again, and there is no mention of this sort of intensity in previous reports on either Romanoff or Barton.

If Coulson was here, she could ask him.

The indoor range is on a different floor, and while she could track the range utilization done there with a combination of body heat monitoring, ammunition consumption and sub-sonic impact tallies, it's frankly more effort than it's worth to get the surveillance team to hack out the algorithms, and she's tired of listening to sleep-deprived techs whine about inelegant solutions to monitoring problems, and besides, Barton puts a wrench in the works when he switches to the bow. Which, apparently, he does more often now.

The techs can't get the cameras going there, and this annoys Hill, because she's sure that Fury would be interested in any change in marksmanship scores. But the tech guys are involved in some sort of coordinated effort to hack Stark's AI, which even Hill has to admit would be far more useful than a stack of random tapes of Romanoff practicing pistol shots.

So Hill makes do with eavesdropping on their workout sessions in the main gym, the one with the fully padded walls and the thick mats on the floor and mirrors all down the east wall (she watches with a schematic of the Tower keyed up beside her) and spends her late evening hours watching Barton and Romanoff sling iron around, do ab workouts for an hour at a time, and spend entire afternoons in handstands.

She watches most of it on fast-forward, because repetition is the key to strength and speed, evidently, and the two agents – when they are in the room together, which is not always – do. Not. Talk.

Not when doing strength training or cardio. The conversation meter quivers at the bottom of the range as they run on the treadmills, scale the climbing wall, and throw medicine balls at each other.

Sparring, evidently, is different.

They fight every nearly day.

There's a pattern, but damn if Hill can make sense of it. Some days, they start by wrapping up and warming up with throws and punches and blocks, before transitioning to the hard stuff. Other days, they lift for ninety minutes, stretch for twenty, and then spar for an hour. Rarely, they both show up at the gym fully suited up – Romanoff has a different sort of wrist wrap, Barton's arrows are duds, but that's all – and they go at it hammer and tongs for four hours straight.

And they talk, the whole time.

Hill picks up on the repeated words first. It's only later, watching with the sound off, that she begins to understand the pattern of motion.

"Come on, come on, harder, damn it, quit hitting like a girl," Barton taunts, his breath whistling between his teeth. "Limp wristed commie -" and he shuts up then, because Romanoff spins into an attack that Hill can't follow, but it always ends with a blow to Barton's solar plexus that has him bending over and gasping for air. What Romanoff says in return is in Russian, and Hill's conversant in Russian, but not this Russian, it's an old accent, and muttered thickly around the fat lip that Barton's given Romanoff, and Hill can't follow, but she thinks it has to do with Barton's mother and a sheepdog.

Romanoff continues in Russian as she steps in, knee and fist following the first strike, and then another that Barton blocks with a body blow that should send Romanoff sprawling, but she turns it into a roll and a pounce straight back at him.

Barton only grins, shifts his grip on the bow, and uses it like a staff. Romanoff ducks it twice, but not the third, and the lower curve hits her temple hard. She folds, goes down like a dropped box of paper reams.

He stands over her. The angle is bad and Hill can't see his face. His voice, when it comes through the speakers, is tinny and flat. "Yield?"

Romanoff nods, coughs, spits. "The hell with you." She reaches up a hand, and Barton pulls her up, against him. For a moment, they stand like that, suspended, foreheads leaning together.

"You can do this, Tasha," Barton says, and it is so quiet that Hill can hardly hear.

"You know I can," Romanoff says, and it is only a whisper. "Tell me you will." He shakes his head against hers.

"Not yet."

Romanoff steps back, raises her hands, guarding her face. "Then bring it on."

Barton…Barton smiles, and they close, trading blows quick and fast and blocks that are blinding, and Hill can't tell who is faster, who is winning, until the blow with the bow-arm repeats and Romanoff is down, on the mat, is on her side, right arm trapped under her, and Barton has his hand in her hair, jerks her head back –

holy shit

- against all the regulations of SHIELD gyms and practice rooms and common goddamn sense, he has a live blade in his hand, living steel that glints in his hand and he is tracing a line across Romanoff's throat.

Romanoff slumps down, slaps the mat in defeat, and the knife goes spinning across the room.

Barton gathers her against him and Romanoff turns her face into his shoulder. They remain like that for a moment, both of them breathing hard, shoulders moving as they gasp for air.

"Okay?"

"Fine." Romanoff's voice has a ragged edge, but steadies. "Do it again."

"Again?" And there is doubt, now, in Barton's word.

"Two of three. Or you buy the vodka."

"Right." And like that they rise, and begin again, and this time Hill knows the pattern, she recognizes this. Tape, it was another tape – and then she places it, in the mass of files that they sorted through, after Loki.

Barton is using every trick he has – the bow, his height, his weight, his strength – against her, but Romanoff stays inside his reach as though she were born there. She turns to let a jab move past her, steps back in to hyperextend his elbow. He wrenches free - male upper-body strength, Hill thinks, her stomach tight – and Romanoff steps back, lets him recover. They trade blow for blow, and Barton's weight and reach prove overwhelming, and his knife is tracing a pattern over her jugular veins, when Romanoff stomps her heel on his instep and sets her teeth in his wrist in the same motion. Then she has Barton off-center, and spins him around, before setting up her arm as a clothesline and dropping him down.

Romanoff follows him down, slamming her knee into the mat beside his throat as she stabs her fingers at his eyes. She stops and holds, and the cameras aren't that good, but Hill would bet her last paycheck that Barton's eyelashes are fluttering against Romanoff's fingertips.

They stay like that, frozen, until Romanoff's arm relaxes.

"See?" Barton says, "Knew you could."

Romanoff rises, a single motion. Barton comes with her, smooth and fluid and it is hard to tell where he ends and she begins. "Clint…" There is warning in her voice.

"And you'll do it again." Barton's voice is gravel, blasted free of grief. "Tomorrow. And the next day, until we get it right."

If Romanoff says anything, it is beneath the range of the camera mics. They release each other and walk away. Romanoff snatches up a bottle of water; Barton opens cabinet doors until he finds a pair of clean towels. They sit in silence, side by side on the benches, and wipe their weapons clean.

After they leave, the lights in the gym cut off. Hill blinks, fumbles for the next day's tape. This time, the sparing is light – blocks, rolls, a few throws. Then some signal passes, and Romanoff has Barton's left elbow in an arm bar.

He breaks out of that, throws her against the wall and when she comes up snaps a kick at her throat. She rolls out of the fall, impossibly, and closes. This time, the arm bar holds. Another twistHer next strike takes Barton across the throat and she slams her knee down as he falls.

One of them laughs, low and jagged. The hair on the back of Hill's neck rises.

The next day, they do it again. And the next.

At her station on the helicarrier, in the witching hour, Hill presses a finger on the tracking screen. The sparring figures pause, sharp edges blurred with motion, voices abruptly stilled.

She does not know how to report this to Fury.

She wonders if it will be news, or if he knew all along.

end

Title: Contingency Operations (Part 3: Dead-man Switch)

Summary: "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." Three ways SHIELD keeps momentum going. Post Avengers movie, some spoilers.

Category: Gen, Bob. Pepper/Tony. Some Blackhawk.

Characters: Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, OFC, OMC.

Disclaimer: Not mine, and I swear, they were broken when I found them. Thanks to Flora for beta.