Chapter Text
Levi winced as he felt it move inside of him again. He shifted against the cell wall he was leaning on, sitting on a cot that the guards had thrown against the wall, not even bothering to put it on a frame.
His hands, which where tied tight behind his back, was almost as uncomfortable as the gag in his mouth.
He did not complain. He didn’t even say a word when they restrained him and put him in this cell.
The soldier who had restrained looked a bit wary as soon as he was done tying his hands, and asked the other solider if she should still gag him.
“Don’t pity him,” The alpha spat, and snatched the rag from the beta soldiers hand. “This isn’t Humanity’s Strongest anymore.” He twisted the fabric and waved it in front of Levi’s mouth. Levi made eye contact, glaring for a moment before opening his mouth reluctantly, defeated. The alpha tied the rag at the base of his neck and then roughly grabbed Levi by his chin. Levi did not once look away.
“This is just some knocked up whore.”
-
Levi was huddled in a small, damp alley way deep within the underground, his hooded brown cloak concealing his face and most of his body.
He couldn’t risk anyone recognizing him, so going back to his roots and prostituting himself for food and shelter was absolutely out of the question, even if he didn’t have his protruding stomach.
Instead he did what mostly children and only the truly desperate did.
He spotted a man: a middle aged looking alpha, of medium height and build with a balding head walking in a group of 3 others. They were drinking and looked rowdy but tipsy, all talking over each other about what kind of omega they wanted when they got to a brothel.
Levi hauled himself up, walking slowly behind the group until he caught up to them, walking directly in back of the alpha.
He thought about all the times he had done this before, and about the pain deep in his stomach and the dryness of his tongue from months without a proper meal, steadily gaining enough courage to do what need to be done.
It then happened in a matter of seconds: He distracted the man by bumping into the middle if his back with his shoulder at the same time slipping his hand into his pocket and pulling out a small bag of coins.
Muttering an apology for walking into the man, he turned to walk in the other direction of the crowded road when someone suddenly grabbed his arm. The shock of it threw off his center of balance, causing him to jerk away, tripping and falling hard on his side.
Gasping at the pain traveling up his side, he scrambled to get up, but before he could limp away the man grabbed him by the back of the cloak.
“Fucking rat! You think I’m stupid enough to fall for that-”
Levi felt the hood of the cloak being pulled off as he struggled with the alpha, pounding on his chest with his small fists and stomping on his feet, only stopping when he heard everything around him grow quiet.
His once clean and short undercut had grown down to graze just under his chin over the last months, and his skin had paled to a sickly color, and the bags under his eyes worse than they had been in years but it was almost impossible to not recognize him from the wanted posters littering throughout every corner of the walls, even in the darkness of the underground.
He dared to turn his head, to see that every eye was on him, everybody stopping whatever they were doing to stare in shock.
He turned back to where the man was still gripping him from the back of his cloak, right when the look of confusion painting the man’s face turned, going to a look of understanding, then fury.
“It’s the fucking runaway Captain.”
He said it in a somber tone, like he still couldn’t believe it, turning his grip from Levi’s cloak, to fisting it in his matted hair, the other looking close to pulling the cloak off completely-
“S-stop!”
Levi watched the cloak pool around his bare feet, eyes fixated on it, the gasps, accusations and proclamations of reward money sounding far away and dream-like, and he struggled to understand what just happened.
He had been caught.
Everyone would know.
Erwin would know.
Levi did nothing as his head was dragged up to face the man that just ruined the rest of his life, the smell of booze and his rotting teeth infecting his nostrils and making him dry heave as the alpha asked him if he knew how much money he was worth, how much money he was worth now.
He wanted to die.