Maria Baker was getting tired of this bullshit- this was the fifth time she had tried to call Shilloh's cell, and still no answer.

How were you supposed to keep tabs on people when they wouldn't respond to your calls? Worse yet, how in the hell was she supposed to make sure Shilloh wasn't dead somewhere, lying in a ditch because some meth-head had stuck her up for her shoes?

What kind of a world were they living in, when people didn't even have the common decency to answer their damn phones?

She decided to try a different tactic, and shuffled some papers around until she found the number she was looking for.

"Jeffersonian graphics department, Shilloh Phillips speaking, how may I help you?"

"Jesus Christ, finally got you on the phone!"

"Maria? Why are you calling my work phone?" To say Shilloh was surprised that her best friend was calling her was definitely and understatement; she hadn't given the woman her work phone, so she was past surprised. If asked, she would say she was settled somewhere in incredulous.

"Because you weren't answering your cell, that's why- speaking of, I called the other day, too. In fact, I've been calling all week, and no answer; have you been avoiding me?" Maria was now apparently satisfied that her friend Shilloh was not being accosted by packs of druggies, and so she decided to feel offended at the fact that her oldest friend had been potentially screening her calls.

"What? No, look, I can't talk, this is my work phone; I'll call you back in a few," and then Shilloh hung up. She sighed deeply, deciding that now was as good a time as any to have lunch, and quickly turned her cell phone on to call her friend back while she walked towards the lab.

She was still exceedingly tired from the brochure fiasco, so she had been running on autopilot the entire day. Before Maria's call, she had been staring blankly at her computer screen, trying to remember the details of the new assignment Cherryl had given her just moments before.

She had actually been dangerously close to falling asleep when the phone had startled her awake, so in a way she owed a thank you to Maria- not that she would ever say so, though; her friend would just use it as an excuse to call her at work again, and then she would get in trouble.

"Shilloh!" Maria greeted excitedly, as if they hadn't just had a brief conversation seconds ago, and then continued with, "so have you been avoiding me?"

"I haven't been avoiding you, I've been busy," and on the trek to the lab she complained about her coworkers, and how her mentor had dumped such a huge workload on her.

"Who're you on the phone with?" Hodgins asked as he let her into the lab.

"My best friend Maria- she thinks I've been avoiding her. I'm just explaining to her that I'm half way across the country and so I can't really be avoiding her," she said, talking over her friend who was now talking about her dog.

"Stop ignoring me- it's been two entire weeks without you, I need attention. When can I come over to visit? Who was that just now talking to you? First and last names, please," Maria said, and Hodgins stared pointedly at the phone, trying to tell Shilloh he could hear the entire conversation without actually having to say anything out loud.

"Mar-bear, I don't know last names, and even if I did, I wouldn't need you checking up on them for me. Look, can I call you back later, I'm on my lunch break right now, and I'm really super tired so I'm not much of a conversationalist right now as it is," without waiting for a reply from her friend she hung up.

Hodgins gave her a weird look, and felt mildly insulted- he wasn't a creeper that her friend needed to check up on; still, it was nice to know that Shilloh had someone who cared enough about her to want to make sure she wasn't associating with the wrong kind of people.

How exactly her friend would know if he was one of those 'wrong kind of people' with just a first and last name was something he would have to ask another time- Shilloh looked so tired that he seriously doubted he'd get a coherent answer out of her today.

"You know my last name," he pointed out as they made their way towards their lunch spot, passing Zach along the way.

Shilloh stopped a moment, looking over at their friend, and Zach made no move to join them; he seemed oblivious to the fact that either of them were standing there waiting for him to finish his work.

"I know, but she's scary when she decides she needs to make sure I'm safe, and I figured I'd spare you. I already know you're crazy and like your conspiracy theories- what else could she dredge up that would be worse than that?" She said, then got tired of waiting for Zach to notice them, and hooked an arm through Zach's, forcing him to stop working. She attempted to pull him away from the autopsy table with very minimal success, and made a face up at him that amused Hodgins.

"Come on Zach, I think she wants you to join us," Hodgins said when Zach looked down at her with an expression that clearly said he was judging her mental state.

"Jesus Zachs, not only are you freakishly tall, you're practically impossible to move, too!" She complained, keeping her arm looped in his and tugging at him when he didn't move to grab his lunch fast enough.

"While it is true that I am a little above average in height, I believe my 'freakish' status derives from your abnormally short stature," he said, looking down at her to make his point.

"I'm not that short!" She said, but knew he was right- standing next to him now, if she looked straight at him, she'd get a good view of his neck, and it made her sad to know that her current height was only attained through high heels. "Yeah, ok, I'm short." She amended when he opened his mouth to correct her.

Zach was forced to sit next to her, as she had refused to let go of his arm until they had sat at her favorite couch; Hodgins had complained that he was being ignored until she had pointed out that she had spared him from a very awkward twenty-questions in the form of one Maria Baker.

After the reminder he settled on making good-spirited grumblings throughout lunch, which prompted Shilloh to laugh a couple times at his odd remarks (there was something about ducklings once, she could have sworn, but he said it too low for her to hear it properly)- and to eventually throw a carrot stick at him to get him to stop glaring at Zach, who was beginning to think that Hodgins really was mad at him for something.

"No, Zachs, he's not mad at you, if anything he's mad at me because I'm being more friendly to you than him; but really, he's just joking about it," she said, and then picked at her sandwich while Hodgins tried to make the misunderstanding up to his friend by initiating a conversation that he thought Zach would enjoy.

Shilloh tried to follow along, but wound up completely lost- and for the first time in her life, she wasn't bored by a conversation she couldn't understand. It was heartwarming watching her two friends' faces animate with excitement over some shared revelation about some anomaly or some-such thingamajig.

She peeled the crusts of her sandwich off, nibbling at them while she tried to dissect words she'd heard once in biology; and she scooted herself into the armrest further while trying to remember her amino acids with literally no success.

By the time she had started to eat the lettuce on her sandwich she had given up trying to understand anything they were saying, and settled with entertaining herself by continuing to dissect her sandwich. Normally she would have asked clarifying questions, but she was too tired today to really form a sound question, let alone be able to understand the intricate explanation she no doubt would receive.

So she let her mind wander (let was a nice way of putting it; in reality her brain did what it wanted and she put up no fuss, knowing she would lose the battle). And it decided to head back home.

It had only been two weeks, but she was already having a hard time remembering the smell of the pine trees, and that was very unfortunate. She liked DC, as much as anyone could for living in a city after such a short time (after all, she was still essentially just a tourist), but she didn't much care for the big-city smell.

She supposed it had something to do with the animals; while DC didn't bathe itself in trees like her hometown, she was still convinced it was the animals.

They had squirrels, and raccoons, sure. But where were the deer? They were a nuisance in Spokane, something you had to scan the sides of the road for when you reached the furthest outskirts of the city, but they were still enthralling to watch.

And then there were those cute low-lying animals. She frowned, not being able to remember their names. It started with a 'p' she was certain, but other than that, there was nothing.

Interrupting the conversation that the boys were having, she said, "I can't remember a name, guys. It's an animal, and it sounds kind of like these two words- pineapple, and pinecone."

They both looked at her, and she realized then just how much she had let them into her life already. This was a conversation she would only ever have with Maria, who had known her since third grade- Maria, who usually knew what she was going to say before she even said it.

And she had asked these two men before her a Maria question. Was that a good thing?

"Porcupine," Zach answered confidently, and Hodgins started laughing.

"Yeah! I can't believe I couldn't remember the name," she said, ripping her sandwich in half before taking a bite out of what was now just a turkey and bread sandwich.

"How did you get porcupine out of that? It's lucky he was here, Shilloh, because otherwise you'd be stuck with me guessing every 'p' animal I could think of. Starting with pine beetle."

Shilloh felt happy, truly happy, for the first time since leaving home. She had asked a Maria question, and Zach had been able to answer it- and Jack, he had been willing to go down his no doubt expansive list of animals. Because she was an idiot with a horrible memory that was exacerbated by a severe lack of sleep.

She was positive that the smile she had on now was going to split her lips, but she couldn't make herself stop.

OOO

"Maria- I'm thinking of an animal. It sounds like pineapple and pinecone," Shilloh said later that night, back at her apartment.

"Porcupine," she replied, her tone of voice conveying that she knew she was right, and there was no need to Shilloh to confirm it for her.

Shilloh laughed, feeling very much like the two nerd-boys had just passed some sort of test, and then flipped a pancake. She had decided that breakfast would be a delicious dinner, and she could reheat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. The best of both worlds.

"So I don't like this Cherryl lady. But what about your coworkers?" Maria asked, changing the subject without any form of preamble. She tended to do that a lot, and sometimes it was hard for Shilloh to keep up.

Shilloh hummed slightly, recognizing the judgmental tone her friend was using, "Naw, they're not all bad. There's this guy I work with- Bob, he makes the worst lunches, they stink the entire office up. I eat my lunches elsewhere, so I'm not around for the brunt of it, but it's still pretty bad. I think I'm going to start wearing perfume to try and counter-act it or something. Then there's Stephanie and Megan, they're ok, I guess. They're both passive-aggressive, but mostly towards each other, so for the most part it's kind of entertaining. Just so long as they don't complain to you about their problems, that is," she said, plopping chocolate chips into the pancakes before fishing around her fridge to see if she had purchased any bacon.

"So who do you eat your lunches with then?"

"The forensic anthropology people. Not all of them, mostly just Zach and Jack, and lately Angela, although she wasn't there today- I wonder why," Shilloh trailed off, almost burning her pancakes due to her lack of concentration. "They're really nice, Jack's a total loon, he's their bug and slime guy, and he's really easy to make fun of. Angela's great, she's going to go clothes shopping with me once I get my check from the airline; and Zach's a sweetheart, but he takes everything very literally," she said, listing off character traits. She knew Maria wouldn't be satisfied until she was convinced that no one was going to try and do something weird to her.

"They sound nice," but she didn't sound convinced, and Shilloh tried not to groan, hoping that her new friends would pass Maria's inspection, because being on Maria's 'bad' list wasn't a good thing.

OOO

She hadn't felt pretty in a while, and so when she woke up that Friday, she decided to wear her white dress and a light amount of makeup. Not a lot, but enough to bring out the green in her eyes.

She also decided to wear her totally awesome robot earrings; a friend had made them for her as a birthday present several years ago, and today seemed like a good day to wear them.

Forgoing the gray hoodie, she slipped on a pair of red heels and scooped her short hair into two equally messy and tiny side-buns.

There; today, she felt very much like a girl.

And apparently others thought she looked like a girl, too. Or at least one person did, because she was asked out on a date on the shuttle ride to the Jeffersonian by one of the nice boys over in paleontology- she politely turned him down, but it had made her day.

OOO

"Angela, I gots me some shopping money now!" She said first thing, skipping up the steps towards the platform; it had been two weeks, and she felt she was already improving greatly at walking in heels. Until she tripped and had to grab the railing to keep herself from falling down the stairs.

"Be careful; when do you want to go shopping, then?" Angela asked, being the one to let her into the lab today.

With a shrug Shilloh replied, "I guess it doesn't really matter, but I am going to have to go this weekend to get clothes. I simply cannot keep wearing the same things constantly- it's annoying and disgusting and just plain unprofessional," she replied, playing with an earring as they waited for the boys to finish up what they were doing.

"Those are adorable, where did you get them?" Angela commented, noticing the earrings Shilloh was playing with.

"Thanks, a friend made them for me, actually," Shilloh replied with a wide grin, as they all made their way up the stairs.

"Can we talk about something other than clothes, please?" Hodgins asked, and both women gave him scathing looks, before Shilloh smiled widely again and looked over at Angela.

"I was asked out on the shuttle this morning," she said, not even attempting to keep the pride out of her voice; and both Angela and Shilloh grinned when Hodgins groaned.

"Really? Do you know who it was?"

"Yeah, Ray, from paleontology," she replied, and both girls shared a smile- Ray was very attractive.

"Paleontology, really?" Hodgins interjected, disapproval in his voice.

"What is your problem with paleontology? Last week you called them psychos, this week you are clearly being negative of them. I don't get it," Shilloh frowned over at him, and before he could say anything else, she continued, "you know, I actually wanted to be a paleontologist for the longest time. If it hadn't been so impractical for me, I would probably be studying to be one right now, Jack Hodgins."

"I knew it! I knew you were a squint!" He cried, and Shilloh wasn't entirely certain, but she thought there might have been pride in his voice as he said it.

"How was it impractical?" Zach interjected, watching as the robots swung about, hitting her neck softly as she turned to face him with a new smile; one he didn't quite know how to label. Smiles were supposed to be happy, but this one seemed to him to be more like a frown. Or how someone should look when they were sad.

"I'm not all that great with science, of any form, and so spending money on classes that I was most likely going to fail, well- it just didn't seem practical. So I took something artsy, instead. Because that's what I'm better at," and he wasn't certain, but there seemed to be something rehearsed in what she was saying- like it had been said to her.

Her smile turned to the one he knew as dismissal, and she changed the subject, "Cherryl gave me another project; I am to create a poster for the fundraiser the Jeffersonian is doing next month. Should be fun, actually," she said, reaching for her lunch on the table.

"Really? Do you know who gets to do the flyer for the Halloween ball?" Angela asked, picking around the walnuts in her salad.

"Bob Selznak; at least I think that's his last name," Shilloh paused in the arduous task of undoing plastic wrap from her sandwich, and then nodded to herself, deciding she had gotten the name correct.

"Augh, no! He did it last year- covered the entire thing with spider-web font and cats; it looked like a third-grader invitation," Hodgins lamented, and Shilloh made a face before laughing at him.

"I'm very sorry for your dilemma, Jack. Rest assured that if I were to ever be put in charge of the flyer, I would use blood-splatter font for everything, and there would be clip-art ghosts and witches decorating every white surface there is," they both nodded approvingly at each other over her design choice.

"I don't understand. That sounds worse?" Zach said, trying not to sound mean; it looked as if Shilloh was proud of her fictional Halloween flyer, and he did not want to hurt her feelings- but it truly sounded worse than last year's.

She laughed, which eased his worry that she would be upset with him, and replied, "I was being mean, just then. I really shouldn't have been, though- Jack and I were making fun of the flyer Bob made last year," she explained; and Zach, now understanding that it was a joke, was able to place the parallels she had been making between the two flyers.

He smiled at her to show he understood, and she gave him a humorous one in reply- humorous because her cheeks were bulging, since she had just taken a bite out of her sandwich.

"Well I don't have anything going on tomorrow, so would you like to go shopping, say starting around ten?" Angela changed the subject, and Hodgins tried not to show his displeasure at the conversation- he had just gotten them away from the subject of clothes.

"Yeah, sounds good, where should I meet you?" Shilloh replied, dropping her plastic spoon on the floor.

Angela consciously forced herself not to grin when Zach picked it up for her- Zach was a nice boy, who never complained about helping people. But he usually had to be told to help others, and so Angela was very excited that he was making this progress by himself.

"I'll just stop by your place, it'll work out easiest, I think," Angela replied, and Shilloh agreed. She took the spoon from Zach with a slight smile, and then placed it on the table where she stared at it solemnly.

"Augh, my contacts are really bothering me today," Shilloh commented, and then grabbed at her bag, rooting around in it for a minute. "Here we go! After what happened earlier this week, I decided to start carrying my glasses with me," she said, before taking out her contacts and placing her glasses on.

"If being told you wanted to be a paleontologist didn't prove you were a squint, this definitely does," Hodgins commented, and Shilloh scrunched her nose at him before grabbing her apple sauce.

"Don't listen to him, they're very cute," Angela defended, watching as Shilloh remembered that her spoon had fallen, and so she was no longer able to eat her apple sauce.

"But come on, Ange, they're so typically geeky! Square and black- perfect nerd fodder," Hodgins continued on, the small note of pride in his voice not being lost on Angela.

Shilloh, meanwhile, was completely ignoring Jack as he continued to mildly poke fun at her; she had decided to fold the lid of her apple sauce over and use it as a make-shift spoon.

"Shilloh, while that's a very creative solution, you're going to get food all over yourself," Angela said, and was once more amused when Zach finally took notice of what was happening.

Looking mildly amused himself, (although Angela couldn't tell if it was at Shilloh's ingenuity or the fact that she was still attempting to eat her apple sauce even without a spoon) he grabbed the spare spoon that came in his pre-packaged utensil pack, and handed it to her.

"Well, now I feel foolish," she commented to no one in particular, before thanking Zach and resuming eating her food.

"But seriously- how nerdy are you? Do you watch Battlestar Galactica?" Hodgins asked, not really seeing anything unusual with using your lid as a spoon.

"No, but I do watch Doctor Who. Now stop making fun of me, it's not nice, and if you continue to do so, I won't make you cookies again. Not even if you ask really nice," she said, looking over at him pointedly.

There was about ten more minutes of idle banter between Hodgins and Shilloh, with Zach cutting in once to say that Firefly was very worthwhile (to which Shilloh had agreed and Hodgins had laughed).

After which, Shilloh reluctantly explained that she had to leave, "Cherryl said I was sending her the PDFs wrong, so we're going over that," she forced herself not to roll her eyes, and waved goodbye before throwing her trash out.

It took the rest of lunch before anyone noticed she had left her messenger bag behind, and it was decided that if she didn't come back for it before the end of the day, Angela would just bring it over the next day.

So it spent the rest of the day sitting quietly by Hodgins' desk, until Zach caught him looking though it. Then it had spent the rest of the day tucked up under the autopsy table, directly in front of Zach, where he would be sure that Hodgins wouldn't get to it.

"Come on Zach, I was only looking for some gum!"

"You were violating someone's privacy," Zach countered.

"I wanted to know if she had any left-over cookies."

"You were searching through her bag," he said, not relenting in his stance that it was wrong to look through someone else's things.

"Alright, fine. I wanted to see if she had any photos of her family," Hodgins said; and now Zach was curious, too. The bag still spent the rest of the day at his feet, though.

OOO

"Did I leave my bag in here, guys?" Shilloh asked several hours later. When she reached the top of the steps she noted with amusement that Hodgins was glaring at her bag, which was flopped over on the floor by Zach, who was completely ignoring his friend.

"Yeah, it's in here," Hodgins replied, letting her into the lab.

It was around the same exact time that both Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan showed up, arguing about- it sounding like they were arguing about psychology to Shilloh.

"Hello Agent Booth, Dr. Brennan," she greeted, as she bent down to grab her bag, wiggling herself underneath the table. She turned herself around, sitting on her knees underneath the table, and looked up at them from her position on the floor. "It's very nice to see you again," she said, making no move to get up. It was actually very comfortable underneath the table. And she was close enough to Zach to feel some of his body heat, which was nice, since the lab was cold when you were wearing something that didn't have sleeves.

"Hey kid- Shilloh, wasn't it?" Booth greeted, a smile in his voice. Shilloh guessed she had passed some sort of test with him, and was glad. She nodded up at him, and then stretched her legs out in front of her, deciding to make herself comfortable.

"It is nice to see you as well," Dr. Brennan greeted, but seemed distracted, and quickly moved away from both Shilloh and Agent Booth, towards her office.

"Well, guess I'll be seeing you around, then" Booth said by way of parting, and left to follow his partner. Shilloh smiled after them- they would be very cute together.

"What are you doing under the table?" Zach asked, continuing his work on Mary Whiteland. They had solved the case earlier, but the body needed final preparations before it could be returned to the family.

"Honestly? I'm comfortable down here. And also, it's kind of cold in the lab, and you're warm," she replied, hitting her feet together while adjusting her hair.

"We have extra lab coats you cold borrow," Hodgins offered, and Shilloh was going to take him up on it when Angela came up the stairs, a smile on her face.

"We're all going to the diner tonight to celebrate. Shilloh, you coming?"

"Yeah! I'm starving, and it'll give me an excuse to talk to Dr. Brennan- she is coming, isn't she?" Shilloh asked.

"Of course she is," Angela replied, looking down at the petit girl who was still tucked up underneath the autopsy table. It made a very strange visual, but Angela had to concede that it was also cute.

So there you have it, guys- I've got two, maybe three more chapters before we get to the one I'm most excited about (The Man in the Fallout Shelter). And those three are: The diner chapter, the clothes shopping chapter, and possibly one or two future-shot chapters.

Sorry it's taking so long to set the characters up, I honestly didn't believe it would take this long; rest assured that I have lots of fun little things planned for the future!

And also, Maria was kind of hard to introduce, but she does wind of coming back a couple of times- she winds up to be important, because she really helps explain Shilloh's past, since Shilloh won't tell anyone herself. She's a pain like that.