protect_and_survey | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's very early morning at SHIELD headquarters - or very late, depending, and for Jemma Simmons it's a little bit of both. She did doze off while the spectrometer was running the latest sample, but she hasn't actually gone home yet, so she's breaking out the 'end-of-the-world' coffee brew. Fitz is still down in the lab, half-buried under a slew of schematics and wiring.

Early morning light filters through the cafeteria windows, and Jemma scrubs at her face, wondering if there's time to catch a quick shower downstairs in the gym.

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Melinda walks into the cafeteria. She looks like it could just as easily be the middle of the day.

Melinda pours herself a mug of coffee, and spends nearly a minute picking through the cold pastries, before making her way to Simmons' table.

"Morning," she says, smile at the edge of her mouth. She sets down her coffee and a ginger-lemon scone, sliding in easily across from her. The bear-claw ends up in front of Simmons.

She lights up, pushing scattered read-outs from various machines into a somewhat sorta not-even-a-little-bit tidy mess of a pile in favor of sugar, because hi, thank you, biochem, sugar is integral to the key biochemical cycle of life and bear claws are the best form of sugar.

Duh.

"Good morning! Do you know if we'll be leaving soon? It's just that there's so much new data from the artifacts retrieved after the Battle of New York and some of it may be useful for things we're doing... for example," She fishes through the pile hastily to pull out a mass-spectrometer reading, already scribbled on in five different inks (in two different hands), all of the notes both in short-hand and in geek-speak (and some of them in actual-facts different languages because sometimes that's useful). "This one, I think if it were combined with the right catalyst the retrograde DNA synthesizers could convert the latent code into a paralytic neurotoxin... or it might explode. A bit."

Melinda tilts her head, not pausing in dissecting her scone. She pops a piece of it -- slightly too stale -- into her mouth, and chews.

After a sip of coffee: "Wheels-up won't be until 0900. The flight crew's got their hands full right now." She snorts quietly. It's lucky Coulson went and got himself murdered; that sort of thing seems to hold a lot of sway with Fury and Hill.

"You'll need better predictions before bringing it to Coulson," she says, with a slight smile. "You get any sleep last night?"

She leaves off the ', kid," but just barely.

"Well yes," There's a tone there, a 'I do happen to know proper safety protocols, we're not all Tony Stark' tone that she keeps more on a leash than, say, Fitz. "There's no sense going that far until there is a proper plan in place with usage and drawbacks."

The question about sleep just earns a slightly shifty look, and she avoids answering by eating. Because talking with your mouth full is rude.

Melinda raises her eyebrows, but says nothing.

Her scone is rapidly disappearing.

"I did have a nap." She protests, collecting scattered almond flakes and making a neat pile out of them.

"In the lab."

"While the quantitative PCR was finishing, but it's all very important research, and I couldn't just leave Leo down there alone..." At least not until she'd realized she was seeing double and really needed some coffee if she was going to make any sense of these numbers.

She watches Simmons gather the almond flakes, half-listening to her explanation. There's always something important going on in SHIELD, but field agents don't have the luxury to chase after every lead they see at the expense of their health.

Coulson's the boss. It's not her place to bring them to task. She takes the last drink of her coffee. She'll feel better after tai chi.

"All right." She stands. "Tell Agent Fitz that I expect to see both of you on board by 0830. And," she adds, already at the side of the table. "Simmons?"

"Yes?" She looks up from her almond-pile building, wide-eyed and just a little bit wild from a night of scientific exploration (seriously, the labs are like Disneyworld, just better). She knows that pulling an all-nighter probably wasn't the wisest move, but... given the chance to do it over, she probably would have stayed up anyway, and that knowledge lends contriteness to her expression.

Her face softens.

It's not that she's old, it's that everyone else is so damn young.

"Have a good morning."

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