Jemma Simmons is a terrible liar (needanewplan) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-08-14 08:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !partner thread, clint barton (hawkeye), jemma simmons |
Who: Clint and Jemma
What: Random Run In
When: Recently
Where: The Agency
Warnings: Low
Status: Partner Thread | Complete
Clint was starting to understand what Natasha meant about the dreams doubling over. He wasn’t sure if the first set had actually come to a conclusion, but the new set… Well they weren’t much better truth be told. The stuff with Loki was still rattling around his head, along with half the things from before, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t somehow get over it and power through.
Powering through meant work, and Clint was tossing his focus into work and getting through all the crazy. He still needed to meet up with Tasha, see if she actually needed anything, so he could stop twiddling his thumbs for a little while.
At least he’d blame that for not really paying too much attention to anything else around him for a while and ending up in the wrong damn place.
Jemma didn’t want to admit it, but everything with the Framework was throwing off her perception of reality even here. In the dreams she kept repeating that none of it was real, that it was an artificial world and that they needed to save their team and return to the real world before AIDA completed its goal. That even if she wanted Tripp to be real, he was nothing more than a bunch of 1s and 0s. The longer they were there though, the harder it became. She was good at compartmentalizing, generally able to separate dreams from reality but now that she was an in artificial world in a dream world in the real world? It was giving her a headache.
But no matter. She did what she always did and focused on her work while at the Agency. Which was what she was doing now. At present, she was the only one in the particular lab, running tests on samples and making notations. At least, that was the plan, however she was aware of someone walking in and as she was at a place where she could stop, she paused and looked over her shoulder.
Agent Barton. One of the people she had shared dreams with yet hadn’t met in them. Seemed to be a common theme for her, meeting the Avengers here while only knowing about them in the dreams.
“Can I help you with anything?” She was fairly certain she’d remember if she had a meeting with anyone scheduled, she wasn’t that thrown off because of the dreams.
The din of noise actually caught his attention, Clint automatically picking up lip movements before trying to process the noise. He was not meant to be in a lab. Why was he in a lab? A glance around told him definitively that yes, this was a lab.
“Um… maybe?” He was so off balance lately that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to attempt going to the range -he didn’t need to blow anything else up after all. “Help a guy out, yeah? I have no idea where I am or where I’m going.”
It’d been a hell of a long time since he’d done something like that too. He’d worked out the Agency building layout as easily as he’d memorised Avengers Tower in his dreams, and then the Helicarrier and Triskelion in his next set. This? This was probably just his distracted brain kicking his ass.
“Of course.” If there was one thing Jemma could be, it was helpful. She might be blunt and miss the point of things, but she did like helping people and doing what was expected of her. She may have become more hardened from the bright eyed optimist she’d been when she first arrived, but that was to be expected, the core of her hadn’t changed.
“You’re in Lab 4. Where are you trying to get to?”
Between running the Science Division, randomly being called in for autopsies and injuries when Martha wasn’t available and then her training with Natasha, Jemma was all too familiar with the building and how to get around.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Clint sighed briefly, “Okay, lab four.” He had no idea what lab four was, or that there was four labs, or more than four. So that didn’t really help on the scale of where he was. Clint really needed to stop zoning out and walking, it clearly was not working well for him.
“Nat’s office, let’s shoot for that general direction and hope for the best.” If only so that Clint could pester her into giving him something to do that wouldn’t drive him crazy enough that he’d blow something else up. Distractions and Clint were usually fast friends.
It did seem like a lot, but sometimes when major projects were being worked on, it was necessary. And thanks to being in charge of rebuilding and running the SHIELD Science Division after its fall and Hydra’s reveal, well running the Science Division at the Agency wasn’t that much of a stretch for her.
“I can certainly help you with that.” Smiling, Jemma closed the notebook she had been working in, “Let me just lock everything up.” Lab safety after all. There, that done she turned her attention to Clint and motioned so that they could head to Natasha’s office.
“Have you been here long? I confess I rarely get out of the lab so I don’t really know most of the other agents here.”
Clint made a point in angling himself so that what he couldn’t catch by way of lip reading, he’d at least get the general jist of with limited hearing. It was probably a little weird to constantly stare at people’s mouths after all.
“Um, about a year? Little more. I’m not usually confined to the building though.” Technically he wasn’t currently confined either, it was just difficult to figure out what kind of jobs he’d be able to take on since his hearing was that much more compromised. No one needed assassinating lately, which was a shame, really.
“And I very rarely wander aimlessly into labs. Sorry about that, if I interrupted anything important, y’know.” Hopefully not a method of cloning people.
Jemma nodded some. How had she missed him in the year he had been there? Well right, she was usually confined to the lab and he apparently wasn’t usually in the building. That would certainly add up to her missing people as she knew she tended to mostly interact with those under her command, Martha and Natasha.
“That would certainly do it.”
As for the comment on rarely wandering into labs, Jemma shrugged with a smile.
“It’s perfectly all right. Nothing that can’t wait and it was a good stopping spot anyway.” Jemma had no plans on trying to create a clone. There were a number of ethical issues involved, even if her girlfriend didn’t dream of being a clone who had synthetic blood that was copyrighted. No. There were definitely lines that should not be crossed and that was one of them.
Most of Clint’s experience with lab stuff was Tony, and his lab was just organised chaos of little tinkers and half finished plans, possibly a scorch mark or two. He usually needed to pull Tony away if he was doing something and had hit the 30 hour no sleep window, but that was what bros were for. So a natural stopping point seemed like it would’ve been the best time to interrupt if he had to do it anyway.
“Oh, I’m Clint, by the way. I sort of forget to introduce myself sometimes.” He’d usually blame it simply on his tendency to enter conversations, and relationships, midway through. Even meeting for the first time, Clint had a habit of treating it like the fifth or sixth time. Familiarity was just Clint’s way.
Jemma was well familiar with working at Stark Industries and she herself had a very bad habit of forgetting to eat when she was caught up in her work. There were reasons Cosima had set alarms on her phone to remind her to take a break. Still, she was definitely much more organized than Tony. She might not alphabetically organize files (don’t be ridiculous, it was done by subject and date, plus colors depending on what was needed to be organized), but it was much more than the chaos of Tony’s labs.
“It’s quite alright, I’m Jemma Simmons.” While she was much more used to being called by her first name here, she was also used to Simmons because of the dreams.
“Is it safe to assume you’re part of a science squad?” He tried not to make those assumptions, because so many of the Avengers from his first set of dreams were ass kicking members of the science squad; hell, his ex-wife was a biology nerd and an ass kicking superhero too.
“Or do you just like the lab coats?” Another viable option, and Clint would only judge a tiny little bit.
“I actually run the Science Division here. I suppose rebuilding the SHIELD Science Division in the dreams helped prepare me for that at least.” Honestly, sometimes it was like dealing with children. Some of the assistants in her lab at any rate.
That and it was a way to say that they shared the same dream world, with all the messy complications that came from it. However, she stood by the ideals even when she’d been undercover at Hydra. (Great idea, Coulson, really, put the agent who was notoriously bad at lying undercover.)
“Really? Cool.” He knew that SHIELD were largely responsible for an array of his arrows and the quiver specially designed to carry those arrows. So most of the science team devised just what Clint would need for his missions. “I couldn’t imagine trying to rebuild that, really.” Although Clint didn’t think he’d inflicted too much damage to the hellicarrier during Loki’s breakout. “Between the departments and the crackpots in there.” Clint was not one of them, he did not encourage it.
“It was...quite a challenge after Hydra came out of the shadows, but we managed.” Somehow. It had been stressful, and then dealing with what was initially Garrett’s betrayal and then Ward’s and everything after? Jemma had just thrown herself into it in the dreams to have something to focus on, to fix.
“Here it’s not so bad though. Then again after rebuilding in the circumstances from the dreams, pretty sure most things would seem easier.”
To the elevator and up to Natasha’s office next.
“Yeah, I think unless you learned that secretly Director Carter had been the Red Skull in disguise, nothing is quite going to be like that.” It did give Clint a little pause to think about, because so far he hadn’t learned much in the way of Hydra being in the forefront, just all shadows and the past. Where they most certainly should stay.
“Then again, I think anything is better than some of the dreams.” Apparently if Clint wasn’t being killed by teammates or deafened by bad guys, then he was being controlled by psychotic demi-Gods.
“That is a terrifying image, but thankfully untrue.” Hydra being within their ranks and high in government? That had been bad enough. If Director Carter had also been? Jemma would have been even more crushed as she idolized the woman. It was just something that had happened, that should have been prepared for but also made sense for Hydra. Even knowing they had gone back further, though by different names and incarnations in order to bring it to Earth. Bloody Hive.
“On that we definitely agree.” As much as she loved her work and the knowledge she got from the dreams of different scientific advancements and theories, the accompanying trauma was something she would gladly forgo. Something that seemed to be generally agreed upon.
“Well, here we are.”
Thankfully very untrue. Clint had heard stories about Peggy Carter, frankly if she’d been on the other side, he wouldn’t have bet too much on their side winning at all. Given how fundamentally involved in setting things up that Carter had been, it stood to reason that they had to wait a hell of a long time to show any sign that they weren’t just as obscure and minor an issue as some might’ve presumed.
But arriving at Natasha’s office, thankfully not that far for Jemma to go back to her work, so Clint didn’t need to feel too terrible about interrupting her. “Seriously, you’re a lifesaver.” Well, maybe just a timesaver, because Clint would probably have eventually worked his way here, it might’ve just took an extra couple hours of aimless wandering.
Which was more risky for him.
“Glad to be of help. Have a nice day.” Smiling, Jemma gave a small wave before turning and heading back to the lab.