Something to believe in

When Abigail Yates advertised for a post-doctoral researcher position in her lab at the Higgins Institute, she had no idea that her life will be forever altered by the applicant leaning against her doorframe. When Jillian Holtzmann found a still smoldering book in a dumpster outside of Columbia University, she never dreamed she would be applying to work in the lab of the woman who wrote it. Yet here they are.

Apparently, I am now addicted to writing Holtzmann stories thanks to all the positive responses on my last (also first) story! I am such a Yatesmann-shipper and I had the idea for this story while listening to Young the Giant - "Something to believe in". That title will make sense at some point... probably. I thought this would be a one-shot but it got REAL long. This is also partially and accidentally about women in academia and Imposter Syndrome. I'm a postdoc currently and every single academic woman I know has some serious imposter syndrome going on in spite of how brilliant they all are. So this get's real inner monologue-y as they cope with their feelings of inadequacy. All of the inner monologue pieces are in italics. PS. Both a bird with a baguette and a weasel have both actually shut down the Large Hadron Collider at CERN at some point.