Angel's Sojourn: Hannibal x Reader x Will

Chapter 7. Osso Buco

Entering the pathology lab in the basement of The Federal Bureau of Investigation at Quantico Virginia, can only be described as taking the first plunge into an ice cold bath, and those who do not at least hesitate outside its large frosted doors are less than human. Will politely gives you a moment to gather yourself and take a deep breath, averting his eyes before he opens the door for the both of you. You can't decide if this is for your benefit or his own.

Inside it is cool and dry, the chill is like a long fingered hand creeping its way up your body, settling with its palm on your lower back, pushing you farther into the sickening white and gray. You hadn't stepped foot inside the collection of subterranean rooms in a little over a few years, yet still the feeling of the close stone walls pressing in around you is just as unsettling as it always had been. Not much had changed at all, and as you walk down a familiar stretch of hallway lit by unnaturally bright fluorescent lights you think to yourself how bizarrely institutional it is. You feel almost like a child headed to a dreaded dentist appointment, waiting for the inevitable tooth to be pulled.

As you walk down the hall you pass multiple rooms encased in glass, horrors exposed to any unfortunately curious onlookers, yourself of course cheif among them. You glimpse for a fraction of a second a post mortem in progress, a chest cavity being scrutinized by what appears to be a team of eager white coats, seemingly delighted by whatever answers they had found by opening up the poor stranger lying on a slab between them. You see a man in a long lab coat gesture excitedly to the dead man's chest, his hand disappearing and reappearing from inside the cavity to then point at a spot on the X-ray screen above their heads. The others in the room nod synchronously, looking away for not but three seconds to scribble down his analysis before raising they're hands with what you assume to be theories of their own. Probably students, you think. You look again, sure now that you are the only one who noticed the dull smudge of red the mans finger had left behind on the screen.

Will leads you to a room in the very back, past the morgue with all its shining metal "lockers", (as the trainees and instructors affectionately liked to call the refrigerated holding cells for bodies and organic evidence.) to a room shadowed by large filing cabinets with one large desk and an especially ancient-looking computer. He looks around rather awkwardly before producing a folding chair from the corner to place it next to the one in front of the computer. Everything looks quite dated, and as he goes to open a dusty file cabinet you realize how different this room is with from the rest of the department. It's like you have just walked through the threshold of time, and stepped into the 1980's. You look skeptically from the dinosaur of a computer to Will, who chuckles when he spots your expression.

"I know what you're thinking, and it does actually work." He rummages around in the cabinet for another moment, biting his lip, making your face heat up. He pulls out a collection of manila folders, held together by a large rubber band. "We won't need it though, not with these." He lays the folders on the desk, and turns on a desk light, bringing its focus to illuminate the name scrawled across the cover. Charlotte Green.

You had memorized all the names of the Minotaur's victims, not out of guilt you told yourself, but simply because you felt it was your obligation. But this woman's name is foreign to you, and learning the horrors of her death feel almost wrong somehow. Your fingers move on their own however, sliding the file closer to you, ready to expose its secrets. You take a deep breath, not noticing Will's eyes on your face as you prepare yourself for the images you are about to see. The life and death of a woman you had nothing to do with. Will's hand covers yours before you can flip the cover, and you look up to see his eyes on yours. His mouth hardens into a thin line and he tilts his head to the side slightly, perhaps measuring your sensitivity to what you are about to see.

"Are you sure about this?" He asks softly, the dim lights in the room casting shadows over his face, darkening his look more than it would have been naturally. You nod, grateful for his concern, but ready to get the first look over and done with.