Worlds Apart

Chapter 22

Considering she was only two and half months into her studies at SHIELD, Max was surprised at the amount she'd managed to learn in that short of a time, and even more surprised at the fact that she was already allowed privileges to be in the lab with the Tesseract.

She was only allowed to be in there with supervision of course, but within the last few days, her studies had begun to include data that SHIELD had compiled from the cube. She wasn't doing research of her own yet, but considering how long it took her to get to where she was from when she'd first joined, she was shocked at how fast her studies were moving along.

It didn't matter to Max that she was only getting to study past data for the moment, because even though she knew that she was only scratching the surface of the knowledge she had yet to learn, what she could currently see and had access to thoroughly fascinated her. If she wasn't in such a rush to learn as much as she could as quickly as she could, she knew she could have spent countless hours happily pouring over all of the data that SHIELD had collected over the last few decades.

The only downside to all of this was that looking at all of the data for hours on end for what was now her fifth day in a row was making her head hurt, and the words on the computer screen were starting to blur together. With a frustrated sigh, Max forcefully blinked her eyes shut a few times before deciding to switch to some of the printed files. Maybe giving her eyes a rest from the screen would help settle them and then she could go back to it later.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to help in the slightest. The words on the printed page were just as out of focus as the ones on the screen. Max groaned in frustration and exhaustion as she leaned her elbows against the desk and let her head fall into her hands. She sat in silence, rubbing the tips of her fingers into her temples until she was startled by a voice from behind her.

"You alright?"

Max felt like her soul had jumped out of her body, but in actuality, she had barely even moved. She took in a deep breath and let the adrenaline fade from her system.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," the voice said again. Now that she was calmer, Max realized that she recognized that voice.

Max looked behind her and at first saw nothing, but then when she looked up, she saw Clint Barton sitting in the rafters. At first she thought it was weird, since she had been fairly sure that she'd been alone, but after thinking about it for a second, she realized that she was stupid for thinking that could be the case.

For one, there was no way Selvig or her other tutor would have left her alone in the lab, even for something as quick as using the bathroom (especially when her permission to be in the lab was contingent upon her having someone with her at all times). She'd just been so in the zone when Selvig left that she hadn't given it much thought and assumed she was by herself.

Besides, she knew that Clint liked to hang around up in the rafters. Even if she hadn't known that fact from watching The Avengers, she'd seen him do so a lot in the few days she'd had access to that room. If Max had to guess, Selvig probably saw Clint hanging out up there and knew it was safe to step out for a few minutes. That was the only logical explanation that Max could think of for why Selvig would leave her alone.

Though the initial adrenaline had begun to make its way out of her body, Max's heart rate picked up at the sight of him. She'd gotten fairly used to seeing Clint from a distance over the last few days (though it was still a bit nerve-wracking at times, especially when she noticed his gaze on her), but to have him this close and talking to her? This was a little more than she was prepared to handle.

"I-It's okay," Max replied. "I guess I didn't realize I had company."

Clint nodded slightly in acknowledgement, then kept staring at Max like he was waiting for her to talk. Oh, wait, he was waiting for her to talk. He'd asked her a question.

"Sorry, yeah, I'm fine though," she quickly answered. "Just tired. My head is starting to swim from looking at all of this data."

"Why don't you take a break, then?" Clint suggested. He stood up from his spot in the rafters and began to make his way down to the ground.

"I can't," Max said. "I still have a ton to do, and only three more hours left in this room."

"I've been watching you work in here since eight AM this morning." Clint remarked as his feet hit the floor. He lifted up his wrist, pulled back his sleeve, and read his watch. "It is now three PM. I think you're due for a break."

Max sighed and blinked a few times. "That's okay, I think I'm okay."

"That wasn't a suggestion," he said, crossing his arms and fixing Max with a stern expression - the kind that her own father would've given her if she was doing something she knew she shouldn't have been doing. "Go take a break. Eat lunch. Something. I'll fill Selvig in when he gets back."

Max finally conceded, shooting Clint an appreciative smile. "Thank you."

She placed her files neatly on the desk and pushed herself from her seat. Clint turned to go back to his spot in the rafters and Max turned to exit the room, but after she'd only taken a few steps, a thought popped into her mind and she turned back around.

"Hey, have you seen Fury or Coulson today?" she called, causing Clint to stop in his tracks and turn his attention back towards her. "It's just, usually one of them would have come to check on us by now, right?"

There was one day this week when Coulson had come later on in the day, towards the evening, but most days one of them would come around noon or so.

"They're not here today. Why? Did you need one of them?"

Max knitted her eyebrows together in confusion. "Neither of them are here?"

"They got called away," Clint explained. "Fury needed to be there, and Coulson was...well, I'm not supposed to say anything just yet, but let's just say he's too much of a nerd to ever dream of missing out on this."

A nerd - what? What was that supposed to mean? And what did that have to do with anything?

Accepting that as an answer (as much of one as she was probably going to get, anyway), Max shrugged and turned to continue her way out of the room. As much as she really wanted to continue her research, she knew that Clint was right. She needed a break if she was going to make it through the rest of the day.

She just wished she didn't have to walk all the way back to her unit to do so.