Ward nodded. "That happens too," he said with a wry little smile. "But it's part of what we signed up for."

"Yeah," Autumn agreed. "Besides, I like my assignment. I enjoy working with the X-Men."

"Sounds entertaining." Ward shook his head a bit. "At least they have some battle training."

"'Some' is an understatement when you take Logan into account," Autumn said dryly. "He's vicious."

"He's in a league on his own," Ward said dryly. "We've all heard of him. Don't envy you having to deal with him."

"He's not so bad, once you figure out what sets him off," Autumn replied, grinning. "And he's actually really protective of the younger kids."

Ward grinned briefly and nodded. He knew how that went. He did snort when FitzSimmons looked over at them briefly before going back to Sciencing.

Autumn saw them glance over and grinned.

"Don't ever let them realize that Alexis looks after the Avengers," she advised Ward jokingly. "Stark would never be able to get rid of them, if he didn't adopt them as pets first."

Ward snorted. "Stark would never let them go," he agreed. "I'll keep them away from her and Stark."

"Good plan," Autumn replied. She stretched her leg a little, grimacing. The stretching was good, but it still hurt.

"No running yet?" Ward guessed based on the grimace. He looked sympathetic.

"I'm lucky I can hobble," Autumn replied ruefully. She gently dug her fingers into the muscle around the wound. "No running for a while yet."

Ward grimaced. "So you're not even supposed to be on active duty yet."

"Not at all," Autumn agreed. "But this is kind of an emergency situation, and I'm the primary connection to a rather sensitive group. So I had to answer the emergency message."

"Considering everything's going to hell right now, I'm glad they didn't assign someone else as a temp handler," Ward said with a grimace.

"They wouldn't anyways," Autumn said as she hobbled over to sit down on the nearest flat, stable surface. "I made a note in the asset file. The X-Men, and most of the students at the Institute, prefer not to have temps. They would rather deal with me."

"Switching handlers is hard," Ward said. "They all have different styles, and once you get used to one, switching to another isn't much fun."

"Yeah, I know," Autumn said. "I've heard horror stories of assets rejecting new handlers. Sometimes it has to be handled very delicately."

"If Alexis is working with the Avengers, I'm surprised she lasted. Didn't they go through a few after Coulson?" And no, Ward didn't feel bad at all about stealing Coulson.

"Yeah, no thanks to you guys," Autumn said, grinning. "But they like her. It helps that Coulson personally endorsed her before you all stole him."

Ward shrugged with a bit of a grin. "He put the team together," he pointed out. "I wanted nothing to do with it at first."

Autumn grinned.

"And now look where you ended up," she said.

"There are advantages to having a team," Ward agreed. "Like when there's no extraction plan." And yes, he was still a bit sore about that, really.

Autumn made a face.

"I know teams like Strike Team Delta never had extraction plans," she said. "But not everyone is as good as Barton and Romanov. It bothers me when assets aren't given extraction plans. Probably why I deal with the X-Men now."

"It bothered Coulson, too," Ward said. "Especially since they didn't tell any of us." He paused. "Of course, Sitwell was involved with it, so maybe they were just trying to get us out of the way."