Day 4 Part 2

She had worked through lunch trying to fix some stupid font problem on the brochure. The poster was fine, everything had gone off without a hitch, and it was now proudly displayed in her little cubicle; but the freaking brochure would not format itself correctly.

She hadn't been able to figure out why text wrap wasn't working, and she'd spent the last two hours working on it; it had turned out to be a layers problem that she felt insanely stupid for not realizing; but now she couldn't find the correct file she needed.

Everything on this damned project was labeled incorrectly.

"No, I don't want to the God damned logo," she muttered furiously, clicking away at the files- what the hell was SmileTeeth01? And why were they using .jpg? Hadn't they created the files themselves? Shouldn't they be using Photoshop format so they weren't losing any of the quality?

This entire piece was bullshit, and she was at the end of her rope.

Heaving tiredly, she told herself to make it through the last page, just one more, and she could go home. Tomorrow would be all about spot-proofing to make sure there were no stupid mistakes made; nice and relaxing. Hopefully.

OOO

"Hey, we missed you during lunch," Hodgins greeted her when she showed up in the lab.

"Aww, thanks. After the day I've had that makes me feel loads better. Of course, by miss, you really mean you were hoping I would have brought the cookies today, yeah?" At his wide smile she shook her head. "Sorry guy, my stove broke. You'll have to wait until Monday for them. I hope chocolate chip is good enough for your refined taste buds, because that's all you're getting."

"Man, and here I was hoping for something decadent, like refried gold," he replied, and she laughed, not really expecting it from him.

"Do you know where Angela hung my blouse? I came by to exchange shirts and stop looking at me with that lesbian daydream look I don't appreciate it," she continued in one breath. When he smirked at her she made a face at him and decided to try and find Zach instead. "Fine. I'll just leave you to it. Have fun."

"Zachs! You around here somewhere?" She called out, feeling very much like she was playing a game of Marco Polo.

"I am in here," he replied, and she barreled into said room without thinking about anything.

"Hey Zachs, you wouldn't happen to know where Angela placed my blouse, would you?" She asked, before pausing, and letting out an excited, "oooh! What are you doing in here?"

"No, I do not know where Angela has placed your shirt. And I had assumed my actions were self-explanatory, but for the sake of clarification, I am reconstructing the skull of Mary Whiteland," his voice had taken on a different timbre, and Shilloh was thoroughly entranced. She was finally able to see Zach concentrating fully on something.

"I knew what you were doing, though I didn't know it was Mary. I was merely attempting to draw you into conversation and expressing an interest in said activity," she clarified. The way Zach spoke didn't bother her, she was very good with words- it bothered her teachers to no end, since she was usually able to weasel her way out of things with well thought out arguments and the properly placed words. Talking to Zach was like placing together puzzle pieces, only using words; and she was also very good at puzzles.

"Forgive me, I believe I may have come off as rude again," he said to her; she tried not to laugh as he continued to speak in the voice she was starting to recognize as his concentrating voice.

Instead of trying to continue the conversation, she slipped off her shoes, leaving them in a careless pile by the door; she then padded quietly over to the table and stood on the opposite side of him, not saying anything, just staring down at all the pieces that used to be Mary.

She continued to look at the bone fragments themselves for quite a while, trying to visually place them together herself, before getting bored with not knowing if she was right, and opted to watch what Zach was doing.

It was fascinating, watching him move pieces around the table, pushing them together and then pulling them apart, deciding that no, they did not belong together. She didn't know how he knew, they looked like they should go together to her, but she supposed that's why she was paid to make pretty pictures all day and he was paid to solve crimes.

The best part was watching him glue the pieces together. She had tried to do a couple 3d puzzles once, but they all wound up collapsing in on themselves (even the Earth one, and she had finally smartened up and decided to use glue with that one. She still wasn't entirely sure how it had collapsed; to this day her sister still made fun of her, occasionally calling her Atlas just to be spiteful. It was meant to be ironic or something, but Shilloh thought her sister just wasn't very original). So how Zach was able to piece together bits of something so important was highly impressive to her.

She didn't want to say so, however, because she figured he already knew it was pretty awesome. Most likely not with that word choice, though.

She had been watching for close to forty-five minutes when she finally saw two pieces she thought might fit together; she really wanted to say something, but she wasn't exactly certain on the protocol. This wasn't her field; would it be rude of her to ask if they fit together? Would Zach think she was taking Mary's death too lightly? She wasn't, but she still really wanted to know if she was right.

"From your posture and the way you are fidgeting, I am going to deduce that you have a question. Am I correct?" Zach didn't look up from the bone fragment he was putting in place, which she was thankful for, because she felt put on the spot as it was.

She was going to ask him; if he thought she was a horrible person afterwards, oh well, she had a feeling he didn't much care for her as it was anyway.

"I do indeed have a question. I've been staring at these two pieces for a while, and to me they look like they fit. I'm not trained or anything, obviously, but I would still like to know if I'm correct," she leaned over the table slightly, extra careful not to touch it, and stretched her arm out to point to a piece that was to the left of Zach, and then straightened out and pointed to a piece that was directly in front of her.

She looked up at him, and he was looking back at her with a blank expression, the bottle of glue in his hand.

"I'm sorry. Was that rude of me? I'm not trying to devalue you, I just really like puzzles. Oh! And I'm most certainly not saying that all Mary is is a puzzle anymore, she's still very important, but, really, she needs to be fixed in order to find out what happened to her. And… Well… I apologize," she forced herself to stop talking, and stared down at her feet. She could have continued on for quite a while still, but she was trying to break the habit of rambling. She really hadn't thought she would care what Zach would think when she asked if the two pieces fit, but then he had gone and looked at her blankly, and she had been afraid he was disappointed in her.

She couldn't stand disappointment; she would rather if he didn't like her than that. She wiggled her toes and tried to think only of the feel of the metal against her bare feet.

"They do indeed fit together. There is no need to apologize, I found nothing offensive," Zach's voice made her look up, and she smiled widely when she noticed him gluing the two pieces together.

She didn't know it, but he wasn't really supposed to glue them until he'd found where on the skull they were supposed to fit; she had simply looked so upset with herself that he had thought it would be the simplest way to make her not upset.

"There you are! Hodgins said you came in a while ago to trade shirts, why didn't you come to my office?" Angela entered the room, surprised to find the girl so obviously enthralled with the skull reconstruction process.

"Ah, right. I actually forgot where your office was; like I said earlier I'm really bad with directions. Hodgins was being a perv, and so I came to find Zachs instead, only I got distracted. Angela! I found two pieces!" Shilloh smiled excitedly, pointing them out, and Zach obliged her non verbal request by holding the two glued pieces up for inspection.

Angela raised an eyebrow, but smiled anyway, "that's great; hey, we're all going out for dinner tonight. You should come with, especially since your shirt isn't totally dry yet, and wearing a wet shirt home wouldn't really be what I would consider fun."

"I don't know of anyone who would think of that as fun, Angela," Zach said, once again combing through bone pieces.

Shilloh laughed, really hard. She had to hold her side and step away from the table to keep from accidentally bumping it. Angela didn't really see what was all that funny, Zach made comments like that all the time; she glanced over at Zach to see a very subtle smile on his face as he continued to place pieces together.

"I'd love to go to dinner, but I can't spend the money right now- I've already promised some of the girls I work with I'd go to dinner tomorrow, and it's not in my budget to go out twice a week. I'll come next time though, I promise," Shilloh said, after calming down.

Angela nodded, and then said, "alright, well let's get over to my office, then. Try to remember how to get there this time. If you don't though, skip asking Hodgins and go directly to Zach. He doesn't get what Hodgins thinks is so hot about lesbians," she said, as she pulled Shilloh out of the room and towards her office.

"Is that why he thought the delivery lady asking for your signature was hot?" They could hear Zach asking from behind them, and they both laughed, even though Shilloh didn't know the story behind it; she was filled in on the short trek to the taller woman's office, and they both started laughing again.

"So how did you know Zach was joking in there?" Angela asked, trying to remember where she had placed the shirt. She glanced over at Shilloh, who was lightly touching a circular scar that just barely peeked above the tank top.

"His voice changed," she glanced over at Angela who was giving her a secretive smile, and she exasperatedly cut Angela off, before she had the chance to say anything, "don't you dare try and play matchmaker. I'm good with words. Really, really good with them; I notice not only where they're placed in a sentence, but how they're said- how someone is intending to use them. He was trying to be funny. Granted, it wasn't the funniest sentence in the world, but it was hilarious that he was trying so hard. Made me feel oddly proud- like the first day my sister was actually able to utter an intelligent insult," Angela was still smiling, and Shilloh rolled her eyes.

"Hey, I'm not going to play matchmaker; I'm just noting that it's adorable how well you seem to be able to understand what he's trying to say already, that's all," Angela really wasn't trying to play romantic matchmaker. She just wanted her most socially reclusive friend to finally find someone he could connect with without trying too hard; someone who would find it easier to shove him into other social situations and groom him into a more normal human. Which sounded horrible in her mind, but that was what Zach really wanted- to fit in, and Hodgins and Angela were really trying, but they weren't quite able to get him to where he needed to be.

"Good. I'm not looking for anything right now. Especially since I'm not even going to be here for an entire year," Shilloh was satisfied that Angela wasn't going to try and hook her up with anyone, let alone Zach, and so she looked around the office.

"Did you paint all these?" She asked, stopping before each piece to inspect the brush strokes used and admire the blending.

"Yeah. Here you go, it's dryer than I thought," Angela tossed the shirt to her.

"They're very good," Shilloh praised, her voice muffled as she pulled the tank top off, "what medium do you prefer?" Her voice muffled once again as she yanked the blouse on. It wasn't wet anymore, but just damp enough to make putting it on uncomfortable; she tried not to shiver as the air around her suddenly felt cold.

"Mostly acrylic, but I do a lot of work with pencils and the computer for work," Angela replied, holding back her comment on how cute it was that Shilloh was folding the tank top before giving it back.

"Yeah, I wanted to ask you earlier, what is it that you do here? You don't seem lame at all, especially when compared to that Jack Hodgins," Shilloh said, unable to resist making fun of the man even when he wasn't present.

"Thank God! I have been worried I was turning into a squint for the longest time," Angela took the tank top back and flopped it on top of her bag. "I mostly do facial reconstructions- they give me the skull, I tell them what the person looked like. I also do drawings from eyewitnesses."

"That is so cool," Angela felt herself puff a little with pride, "man; I wish I had known about something like that when I went in for my degree. Then again, maybe not; I'd have spent more time trying to decide between the two then getting any actual schooling done," she looked over at Angela and finished with, "and you are quite possibly the least squinty person I have ever met."

This girl was positively adorable.

"Well, we won't be going out until Brennan gets back, do you want to hang around until then?" Angela asked, hoping that she wasn't pushing too hard to try and be sociable with the girl.

"That sounds like fun; my apartment's pretty bare-bones right now, so there's nothing to go back to, anyway," Shilloh admitted as they left the office.

"So you're saying that it's between an empty apartment and the lab?" Angela asked, pretending to sound hurt.

Shilloh squinted up at the ceiling and played with her lips between her teeth, she then deadpanned over in Angela's general direction, "yup. Pretty much."

"Ouch, Ange, shot down by the pipsqueak," Hodgins called over to them as they came within earshot of the platform.

"Ok, two things- one, I don't know what you're so happy about, since you were also just barely chosen over an empty apartment; and two, I am not so short as to tolerate being called a pipsqueak. Heed the intended warning and don't do it again, or there will be very creative justice wreaked in the near future," Shilloh was distracted as she was talking; she had just noticed something was missing. "Hey! I forgot my shoes in the other room, be right back guys!"

"How exactly do you forget shoes?" Hodgins yelled after her, not bothering to correct her when she turned right instead of left like she was supposed to- the only way for her to learn her way around was to get lost. At least, that's what he was going to tell her when she confronted him later about why he didn't inform her she was headed in the wrong direction.

Both Angela and Jack exchanged amused looks when she returned a moment later, striding confidently to the left; they had to stifle laughter when she returned shortly after, looking highly confused.

Seemingly haven given up on trying to find the room by herself, she yelled out for Zach, who didn't respond right away.

So, she tried again, "Hey! Zach!" When she heard a call somewhere off to her left, she did a small twirl and flounced off, stopping every several feet to call out again.

"When I first met her, I didn't believe she really was as horrible with directions as she said; but how anyone can have a hard time finding a room they were just in I do not know."

"Yeah, she mentioned she met you by asking for directions," Angela said, a smile in her voice; Shilloh looked so young that she was often times reminded of awkward and gangly middle schoolers. "How old is she, anyway?" She asked Hodgins. Now that the thought of her age had appeared, it wouldn't leave.

"You know, she never said. If it weren't for the fact that she has an apartment I'd say she was seventeen. We should ask. Do girls get offended by those types of questions when they're so young?" He asked Angela, who looked at him oddly before lightly rolling her eyes.