An Unlikely Romance - The Avengers (Part 2)

Friendlier Rivalries

Learning about the fates - the real fates - of the others in the cells around you made you nervous, even paranoid about what you were, and what was waiting for you to let your guard down. Just because you hadn't died from what was done to you yet didn't mean you never would. What happened if one day you injured yourself while training, and during your body's attempts to recover, you over-compensated and a broken bone suddenly expanded and eviscerated your entire limb?

Somewhere in your mind you knew the thought was pointless, and also pretty unlikely. Not only would it make no sense for your body to suddenly lose the stability that you had seen so far, and that Fury was so certain of, but even if it was going to suddenly destabilize... how would you know? Better to live your life as you would, take advantage of the gifts you had, and put the consequences like your lost memories and the strange nature of your nearly inhuman physiology aside for the moment. Living in the fear of things that might never happened seemed foolish...

However, putting things aside was hard to do when most of your day was spent relentlessly binging whatever daytime television was on for poor souls like you without work to distract them from the monotony of life. After so many hours of trashy dramas, trashy courtroom shows, and trashy gameshows, you eventually grew tired of the sedentary lifestyle. So you spiced things up by adding in a physical regimen to your everyday lifestyle.

It started as more of a curious thought - you had already seen remarkable improvement on your abilities during training, being a bit sharper witted and faster to respond to Clint and Natasha as they drilled you. How great could you become if you pushed yourself harder? They had always done an excellent job of exhausting your mind and putting you in enough pain to make you feel like you'd finished a hard day's work, but your body wasn't always fully exhausted itself. Without proper weight-lifting equipment stamina was really the only thing you could work on besides basic muscle tone and ability anyway.

So you devoted yourself entirely to basic exercise, which mostly consisted of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, running in place, and unweighted squats. Probably not the most effective, but it was enough to make you feel a bit tired when you later trained with Clint and Natasha, so it was probably having *some* kind of effect, right? You weren't so sure at first, honestly... but then Clint and Natasha began to react to your efforts...

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"You've been working out, haven't you?" Clint asked as he stood across from you again. You were trying to disarm him using the technique he'd showed you, but unlike most other weeks he was not slowing himself down at all for you... and yet you were still coming closer than you thought possible to matching the highly-trained agent's movements.

"Huh? I mean, I've been keeping myself in shape, but Fury keeps telling me he won't deliver any weights for me to use," you admitted, caught a little off-guard by the odd question. "So not really a 'workout', more just staying active, I guess?"

"We should work out together sometime... with results like these I think we could both learn a thing or-"

Clint cut himself off as you nearly stole the bow from his hands, but he pulled away in time to slap your wrists - literally slap them, bringing one arm of the bow down across your wrists in a quick motion. You winced and pulled away from him, running your hands lightly over your reddened and sore skin.

"-two," he finished, quirking an eyebrow at you. "You sure you're just doing fitness exercises?"

"I did pushups, situps, and I drank plenty of juice, I guess?" You offered, shrugging.

"Damn," Clint said, laughing a bit too loudly, "I need to get me some of that juice. How about we call it here for today? I'll need to think up some better ways to test you."

You agreed, somewhat hesitantly. Clint was always pretty chill with you and the idea that you were closing some kind of gap between the two of you was intense, but his casual acceptance of it put you at ease.

However, only a few days later, you encountered a similar issue with Natasha, flavored in an entirely different way...

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"You seem to be taking care of your physical aspects pretty well," Natasha noted as you climbed up from the floor for the seventeenth time that afternoon - and yes, you were <I>definitely</I> counting.

"Are you sure? You still seem to be kicking my ass just as soundly," you grumbled.

"I'm damn sure. So we're going to shift you to tactical expertise for now. No more sparring... we need to worry about your mind, make sure you're staying sharp for future missions."

"Wait, seriously? But if I'm improving, why are we moving away from what I'm getting good at?"

"Because being good isn't enough," Natasha explained, striding over to her bag. She pulled free some sheets of paper, a very thick pad that seemed daunting if only by the fact that it was crammed full of printed text, and she slammed it down on a nearby table without ceremony. "You need to be able to anticipate and react to any situation. Get over here and tell me how you'd handle these encounters. Retreating and regrouping is always a viable option."

"This is a *very* sudden shift," you noted. Clint's casualness felt like he was trying to re-evaluate how he was going to train you... Natasha's casualness came off as a deliberate distraction from how prepared she was with those papers.

"You have to be prepared to adapt in the field, too. We're keeping your training focused narrowly for now, but in time we'll start running mission simulations, on paper <I>and</I> in a controlled environment."

"Yeah but... why such a sudden shift? Shouldn't we at least do a little sparring so I can stay in shape?"

"Clint is going to take care of your maintenance workouts," Natasha said easily, sliding into a chair by the table that she'd placed the papers on. "We have a lot of experience training up SHIELD recruits, trust us. Your situation is a little different, and we aren't training you full time just yet - we have to focus on one thing at a time."

"You sure you're not just afraid I'm going to beat you?" you prodded, raising an eyebrow. She shot one right back at you.

"Ever stop to think that we're stopping the physical training because you're getting too cocky?"

"Nah, I've always been cocky, this isn't new," you said, fighting the urge to smile back. Despite her words, she was clearly playing along with you - she had a smile on her face that looked more honest than usual... and yet, somehow, less sincere.

"True that. Fury's almost gotten to your wit, but you're lucky - Clint broke him in for you on that front a long time ago. Normally he wouldn't let a prisoner get away with that much lip."

"Think a bald guy with one eye would be used to getting ribbed every now and then," you said, sitting across from Natasha. "Then again most of them probably can't disappear you to a government blacksite."

"Or kick your ass seven ways from Sunday. Don't underestimate Fury; he might look a little older than the average SHIELD agent, but he trained most of the top agents. He's got plenty of fight in him, with or without a weapon. I can probably talk him into a demonstration if you don't buckle down and start focusing on these scenarios."

You were enjoying this, even as you began your adult equivalent to homework. Between her being so friendly and actually bothering to joke around with you the past few days, and the little drinking party between the three of you, you were actually starting to feel like Natasha could... well, maybe like was a strong word, but she was at least tolerating you. Hell, sometimes she was downright friendly. It was pretty much the best thing you could've asked for from the agent after your disagreements in the past...

So why were you having such a hard time relaxing around her? Her demeanor was calm, she was half-smirking, she was sitting in a comfortable position, hardly ill-at-ease... yet you almost felt like prey before a lion. A mouse before a trap. You couldn't even pinpoint what it was, but it was the same feeling you got that made you so angry with her before when she was very clearly playing with your emotions...

You smiled through the discomfort, and focused instead on what you were supposed to do when an enemy agent was holding one of your allies at gunpoint.

Somehow that was easier to deal with than the mysterious Agent Romanov.