“Whose bright idea was it to put you in the field.” It wasn’t a question. She rubbed at her face, trying to decide if it was worth the headache to keep prying, or just let go. She couldn’t — well, it’s not like he needed help, obviously, but something felt off and she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe it wasn’t him. That was possible.
“You can’t be that shaky and be a genius engineer.”
He just about said whose bright idea, indeed, but he caught himself short. There was need-to-know, and then there was really need-to-know. If her clearance was high enough, she could probably piece things together, everybody else had, but he knew better than to get on Coulson’s bad side. Again. “Put me inside of a nuclear reactor and I would be calm as a clam. But outside of a lab, or a science-y building, I can’t be expected to know what I’m doing — I get told to examine things, I examine things. Bullets fly, I’m hiding under my work bench.”
Summer let a slight edge into her voice. Still calm. “You can’t be expected to know? No wonder you almost got killed. Your task may not be shooting back but everyone on a team needs to know the drill when the weapons come out. Who is it, you? Who doesn’t expect you to know. That’s a hell of a limitation to put on yourself.”