Angel's Sojourn: Hannibal x Reader x Will

Chapter 2. Coq Au Vin

The bitter smell of sickly sweet solvents and dry canvas wash over you as you open the door to your studio apartment. The smell is familiar, bringing you back to cozy nights hunched over canvas stretchers, surrounded by wood shavings and oil pigments. You conserve aging paintings for a living, a trade you learned from your Father after apprenticing with him for a few years. Now you have your own studio and a thriving business. You step inside, letting yourself take a deep breath before dumping your bag on the floor and shrugging out of your coat. Enveloped in the dry warmth your old space heater in the corner provided you slide off your shoes and make your way to the kitchen.

Ever since your appointment with Doctor Lecter, you have been feeling far away- it's almost dreamlike. You float through your apartment, his words marinating in your head the entire time. You put your keys away, turn on the coffee maker, take off your socks, change into warmer clothes, and feed your cat. It is like a dance, one that you've repeated countless times before, practiced, and mastered. Finally settling into an armchair with a cup of hot chamomile and honey you allow yourself to accept the feeling of security and safety that your things around you steadily provide.

That was until... you hear a knocking at the door, and boy does that wake you up.

It's 7:30 on a  Sunday night, so who the hell would be knocking on your door at this hour? There is one idea that pops into your head as you make your way to the deadbolted door, but you push it down deep inside and look through your peephole. Unlike what you immediately thought, it is not a crazed serial killer, but your good friend Beverly Katz.

The two of you had bonded as soon as you met, quite uncoincidentally on the same day as the gruesome murder you had witnessed only three months before. Seeing Bev's face sends a shock through you, launching you back to that night where you first met.

~Flashback~

You were sitting down on the cold wet concrete, a heavy wool blanket draped around your shoulders. The EMTs had tried to get you to stand and sit in the ambulance, but you had refused to budge, insisting that you weren't injured. This, of course, was a lie. You had sustained what at the time felt like a major head injury, a twisted ankle, and more than a few broken ribs, but still, you stayed firmly seated on the ground, just watching.

Your eyes trailed from the spilled puddle of red to the slumped form a few meters away from you, now crawling with detectives and special agents. taking samples, close-ups, scraping, rubbing, leaving no part unscoured. You watched as they placed little yellow markers with numbers on them all around the crime scene. It struck you then that that is what this place is now.  Pictures of the blood-spattered alleyway would soon be floating all around the news, from phone to phone, shared, retweeted, and forwarded until it was painted vividly in everyone's minds. Your face would soon be all over the big screen, and headlines lit up in front of your eyes as you imagined it. "The lone survivor, poor girl" you could see it now. You could feel the heavy weight of their eyes, long before their gazes had even been cast upon you.

You felt a hand on your shoulder and when you turned, were met with a pair of brown eyes set in a kind looking face surrounded by a waterfall of black hair, dark as night. She gave you a shy sympathetic smile before introducing herself.

"Hi, I'm Beverly, a pathologist for the FBI. Your name is Y/N?" Her voice was soft and comforting, and you immediately felt like you had a friend here among these strangers. You nodded, almost too scared to use your voice, as it was raw from screaming.

"Yeah, I'm Y/N." She slowly sat down on the wet ground next to you, It must not have been too comfortable, but you could tell she was just trying to keep you as calm as you could be at this moment. This surprised you, and yet made you feel more comfortable, being close to someone like her.