Filing The Attack

Angelo wasn't used to people opening his doors without warning, so when Aedan did he abruptly jumped in his seat, his back straightening as his hand dropped down.

Old instincts died hard.

When he saw that it was Aedan, the tension eased a bit, and Angelo settled back into his seat.

"Uh, sure. Come in, I guess," Angelo said, even though Aedan was already partially inside anyway. Even so, Aedan didn't quite look so good, and after a moment he squinted.

"Are you alright?"

Angelo wasn't prepared for what he got. Angelo was expecting I'm not sure what I want to do with the police or do you have advice on if being a cop is a good job. Instead he got something he could never have expected, something so big that Angelo couldn't even process it right away. He simply stared at Aedan--super soldier experiments weren't a dime a dozen or anything, but it wasn't the first he'd heard of--but the idea that he was an assassin was something entirely new.

Considering that Angelo himself could have been considered an assassin, he'd come to the right place.

Even so, what Aedan had told him was brief, and the file was anything but. Angelo's eyebrows knitted together as he reached forward, retrieving the file from the desk and flipping it open, starting to page through.

Angelo's eyebrows went up and down repeatedly, bouncing between shock, confusion, and absolute horror.

As much as Aedan had just dropped a bomb in his lap, he'd still somehow managed to understate the entire situation. Assassin wasn't cutting it. The Orphan Maker--a name big enough that Angelo had even heard of it--was practically a full on serial killer.

Angelo suddenly felt woefully unprepared. Every detail only made the whole thing worse--the fact that he was an orphan, the fact that he'd been at it for years--and the giant cherry on top of the shit sundae was that he'd been attacked on the island.

"Alright," Angelo said, trying to compose himself. "Alright. Everything else--everything in this file--is important. It's something that is going to take time to go over, and process, and handle. But this is important. It's serious stuff, and the fact that you were attacked--I mean, that any of this happened is bad, but the fact that you were attacked on the island is even worse--means you're in danger. The fact that you had to fight back, the fact that you had to kill people to defend yourself - this has escalated so far beyond -"

Angelo had to stop himself, momentarily overwhelmed. It was too much. Way too much, and the fact that he was only hearing about it then was bad enough.

"What matters first is protecting you. Everything else came second. You did the right thing coming to me--we'll make absolutely sure you're protected. Making sure you're safe comes first, but we'll absolutely get this guy."

"You came to the right person," Angelo said firmly. That much he was confident of. Other people probably would have gotten caught up in all the background details, but Angelo had his own experiences, and it meant he wasn't going to jump down Aedan's throat just because he'd killed people before.

Hell, Angelo had killed people himself in the past.

"It's not really about what we do. It's about what I do, and about what the police does. I know your first instinct will be to try and go out there and defend yourself, but it's the exact wrong thing to do. You need to stay safe. You're lucky that you're attending school--the security there is good, and it means you won't have to have a twenty four hour guard detail posted outside your door. I'm not entirely clear about how protective custody works on the island, but I know you'll be safe," Angelo said firmly. "Once that is in place, we can work out everything else. You need - hell, you need a lot of therapy. Anyone who was brainwashed would, but you... especially you. Therapy's not anything to be embarrassed about, and it can help a lot."

Angelo was so, so far over his head. He wasn't a therapist, and while he had personal experience, his personal experience wasn't at all similar to Aedan's own. He hadn't been brainwashed. He'd known what he was doing. He was just raised differently, and even right then he couldn't quite say he regretted it, even if it was probably the correct thing to say.

"Your grandfather was an idiot, if you don't mind me saying so," Angelo said, which was definitely not the correct thing to say. "Ignoring problems doesn't solve them. If you ignore them, it just creates this idea that you should forget, that it's something you should be ashamed of."

There was nothing to be ashamed of. He hadn't made those choices, and bottling it up wasn't going to do any good.

"You don't live on campus?" Angelo said, momentarily taken aback. He'd assumed as much, and the fact that he didn't complicated things. "That's fine - we can temporarily move the both of you into school housing where you'll be safe."