AN: Hey, here's the first chapter of a two shot to keep you satisfied before I get to work on the next big story in the series. So this is set after Spas or Bones, and A Change in the Line Up, I would suggest that you read those first, or this won't make any sense to you at all. Anyway, carry on!
Doctorate Announcements
The easiest way to get Willow to tell you the truth about something is to ask either when she first wakes up in the morning, right before she goes to sleep at night, or when she is focused on something else. When focused, Willow loses her mental filter, and will tell you the absolute truth, at least, the absolute truth as she knows it. This is how, of course, the Jeffersonian team came to know of Willow's doctorates.
Four months after she began working with the team, Willow was working diligently on the skeletons kept in Limbo at the Jeffersonian. Willow felt that they all needed a face and a name, they needed their humanity back, so every free moment she had while at work was spent with one skeleton or another in Limbo. It was a Tuesday afternoon that Jack had gone looking for Willow to ask if she would babysit Michael so that he could take Angela out to a nice dinner that night. The man in question found Willow hunched over a light table with a skeleton spread out before her.
Willow hadn't heard him come in, nor had she noticed him stop beside her.
"Uh, Willow?" Hodgins asked hesitantly, he didn't want to scare her, but he needn't have worried, Willow barely reacted.
"Yes, Hodgins?"
"Are you busy tonight?" He asked when he didn't get yelled at for disturbing her.
"I have to work on my research for my dissertation. And grocery shop, I don't know what I'm going to eat for dinner tonight." She answered while examining the skeletons sternum intently. There was a slice in the sternum between where the second and third ribs would be attached.
Hodgins nodded. "Your anthropology dissertation?"
"No, I wrote that when I was sixteen. My psychology dissertation, I've been working on it for a few months now." Willow answered still looking at the slice. "Does this look like a knife wound to you?" She asked the man as she held the sternum out to him.
"Yes, I suppose it does, it would take a lot of force to cut the bone like that though. Did you say you already wrote your anthropology dissertation?" Hodgins squinted at the young woman before him.
"Yes and my archeology dissertation." Willow set the sternum back into its place and picked up the vertebrae that are located directly behind it to see if there were any corresponding wounds. Using the lighted magnifying glass to look closely at the vertebrae.
"Are you telling me you have not one, but two doctorates? At nineteen years old?" Hodgins asked incredulously.
"That is in fact what I am telling you. I'm also working for a third. But I ran out of scholarship money so I needed a job." Willow nodded and then moved the magnifying glass and vertebrae so that Hodgins could look though. "Does that look like a small puncture? It seems to be lined up with the slice."
Hodgins stared at the girl for a full minute before he looked down at the bone. "Y-yeah I guess it could be." Hodgins shook his head. "Who all knows you already have doctorates? Everyone calls you Miss Payne or Willow."
"Dr. Saroyan and Wendell know. Wendell was an accident. They put my title on my locker at first. I wanted to have my impression first, and have people come to their own conclusion about me without knowing that I already have doctorates. It makes people uncomfortable when someone so much younger than them has one. Let alone has two." Willow answered then paused. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened a little. "You can't tell anyone!"
Hodgins eyed Willow. "You've been here four months; you've made your impression. You have to tell them."
"I know, but I…" Willow trailed off and looked away with a heaving sigh.
"The longer you wait, the harder it will be. You've already helped a lot! You've helped with every case that's come through here and you've given seven, eight of these people their identities back?" Hodgins argued.
"I know, it's just… how do I say it now?" Willow asked looking slightly desperate.
"Like this. Put Stabby away, and come with me."