To Bleed a Thorne // Chapter 21 - Hinge
Pairing: Levi Ackerman x female oc reader (Attack on Titan) 18+ explicit content
Genre: canon-divergent, hella slowburn, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological
Warnings: 18+—proofread and edited once, no beta reader chat, profanity, mentions of death, psychological tension, distress, self-loating, manipulation, power dynamics, injury, mentions to blood, blade, implied homicide, reader has very low self-esteem, negative self-talk, potential missed warnings idk, idk canon-typical aot stuff
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Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3
The Confessional is colder.
The same fire burns, but it does not warm the room when you return. It merely illuminates it—casting sharp lines across the stone walls that have heard every order given, every confession dragged from trembling mouths.
No different than yours tonight, as Damon reports to Silas. You stand behind him, completely overtaken by his shadow, as he chronologically details the fight between you and Morin. Though you’re not touching him, you feel steadier with him at your front, creating space between you and Silas.
You don’t have it in you to sit—to look any smaller than you feel right now. Sitting implies comfort, and you are anything but.
You feel pathetic as you stand before him.
Your throat is bandaged. Not carefully. Not like the only other time you fell unconscious, after you were the victor of fifteen consecutive matches in The Pit. This time, it’s patched just enough to stop the blood from marking Silas’s floor, and the shirt he bought for you. Your wrist is also wrapped tight, bone set back into place with brutal efficiency. Your ribs ache in protest every time you breathe, but you don’t let your shoulders slouch before him.
You can't. Not after your failure. Not as disappointment and self-loathing creep into your mind and begin their relentless taunting.
He doesn’t even look at you. Rather, he studies the unlit cigar between his thick fingers instead, rolling it slowly as if the outcome of tonight will be any different if he wills to be. He lets out a heavy exhale, and Damon stops talking.
“That’s enough, Damon,” Silas says at last, eyes still fixated on the thick cigar between his index finger and thumb. “What of the shipment?”
“The shipment passed,” Damon answers.
Silas nods once, approving. His eyes look beyond Damon’s figure—without more than a few specks of dirt on it, notably—and settle on you. You’re filthy, mud splattered about your skin, Morin’s dirty bootprints littering your clothes, dirt littering your hair and the inside of your nose and ears. Dark bruises are noticeably blossoming across your visible skin.
You freeze, and draw a deep breath in through your nostrils. Your ribs wail.
His question drags the fight back up from where you’ve already begun trying to bury it. The taste of your own blood in your mouth. Morin’s possessive hand around your throat. Damon moving from behind your back to save your life.
Damon already laid your failure at Silas’s feet for inspection, and now Silas wants to hear you bleed it out yourself.
You scoff. “I believe Damon told you that part, Silas.”
He looks wicked. His eyes darken slowly, something cruel being brought to life behind them, his tongue dragging across his thin lips. You cannot decipher the look he gives you—whether your failure disgusts him, or if seeing you broken before him pleases something far more cynical.
Does he want to punish your failure… or consume it?
“I want to hear it from you,” he affirms.
The wound on your throat pulses beneath the bandages. This sick bastard already knows, and he wants to hear you say it anyway.
“Engaged, then withdrew,” you reply.
Silas’s eyes finally lift to you. They are not soft, and you watch them narrow into calculative, analytical, slits as they drag over your body. Over the wrap on your wrist. The bandage on your throat. Before they finally settle on your eyes, his piercing gaze slicing through the atmosphere and directly through you.
Is he looking at the damage, or something he finds beautiful?
“Withdrew…” he repeats slowly.
He reaches for the breast pocket of his tailored suit coat. He fishes in it for a moment, then pulls out a box of matches. He strikes the end of the match against the box and it ignites, the sound cutting through the silent room. The walls greedily swallow it.
He doesn’t move to light the end of his cigar, eyes instead fixated on the small, flickering flame. His lips curl into a slight smirk, amused.
“And why did he withdraw?”
Herein lies the fracture.
Because Damon moved. Because if he didn’t, I would have died.
Your lungs fill slower this time—more shallow, carefully measured against the sear in your ribs.
“He overcommitted,” you respond, disconnected. It isn’t entirely a lie, but it isn’t the truth Silas is looking for. The one he senses you’re shielding from him.
His gaze doesn’t leave you.
The match flame flickers out between his fingers. He drops the charred stick into the tray beside him without his eyes so much as flickering away from you. You don’t think he’s blinked.
“Overcommitted,” he echoes.
The smoke from the fire is growing suffocating. Your nostrils begin to burn again.
Damon doesn’t move from in front of you. But he doesn’t entirely shield you from your fate with Silas like he did with Morin.
“He underestimated me,” you state, feeling the need to defend yourself before Silas.
Another partial truth. One Silas doesn’t appreciate.
“And yet,” he murmurs, calmly, “you stand here wrapped like a casualty.”
His words don’t sound cruel, they’re merely observational, but they sting as they seep into you through your open wounds.
His gaze drifts down the line of your bandaged throat, the tight wrap around your wrist, the faint way your breathing tests your ribs. He watches you sulk in the confession, your eyes showing the self-loathing you’ve been berating yourself with the moment you regained consciousness in the dirt, Damon’s rough hands and deep voice rattling you awake. His gaze is slow and unhurried, deliberately cataloguing every ounce of disappointment you have in yourself.
He’s never seen you this way before, never so hesitant, never so guarded, never so pathetic, and he intends to milk every last drop of it before swallowing it whole. It’s another part of you, one he intends to learn and memorize and control.
“I thought you were certain that you were ready,” he says. It is not a question.
Your spine straightens instinctively, pride yearning to defend itself in front of Silas.
“Are you no longer?” he asks.
The trap he set is subtle.
Your pride flickers, but you swallow it before it can speak for you. You know Silas knows you feel it trying to claw its way out, and the only option you have is to not let it control you. It’s the only thing left you can do that proves you’re still worthy of his investment. That you can still be useful.
“I was ready for him to fight,” you answer slowly, carefully. “Not to end.”
Damon remains still as stone in front of you, his form hardening before your very eyes.
Silas’s eyes narrow slightly, seemingly a mix between annoyance, disbelief, and amusement.
“And why,” he begins, “did you prepare for a man like Morin to settle for anything less?”
The truth is that you believed he would measure you first. That he would savour the exchange. That Morin was a man who would like to carve his meals slowly, savoring the taste of the carnage he greedily absorbs. You thought he would enjoy the dance.
Instead, he chose execution the earliest chance he got.
“I thought he would want to make an example,” you explain. “Not a body.”
Silas studies you in the long, suffocating silence that follows. His gaze sharpens, and he clenches his jaw. His cigar is long forgotten between his fingers.
“Men like Morin do not need to make an example,” he replies. “Only erasure satiates them.”
Damon shifts before you—you feel it against your front. It’s not in movement, but in presence. A subtle flexion of his muscles that respond to the tightening in the air.
Silas rises from his chair. Damon steps back until he is at your spine in the same way he was mere hours ago, and Silas settles so close before you that you can feel the heat from his heavy exhales. He doesn’t touch you, but occupies your breaths. His shadow stretches across your boots, flames from the fire wildly flickering from behind his large, towering frame.
“You wanted to be seen as an opponent,” Silas says quietly. “Morin saw a threat. And threats are swiftly removed.”
Silas shifts slightly, his gaze peering over your left shoulder to Damon. His movement is small, but the gravity in the room responds dramatically. Your lungs grow tighter. Inhaling begins to feel like you’re breathing through a straw. Your heart accelerates. Your fingers vibrate in response to your weary hands. What is happening?
“And was that threshold real,” Silas asks Damon, sounding borderline accusatory, like he’s trying to evaluate something, “or imagined?”
Damon’s jaw has been set from the moment you both entered The Confessional, and it does not grow slack now. Not even in the face of Silas, who does not hide his evaluation.
He inhales a sharp breath before he continues.
“She would have died, Silas.”
Silas’s gaze does not waver. He stares intently at Damon, seemingly weighing the answer as carefully and methodically as he does with all the currency that passes through his hands.
“And you are certain?” he presses.
“Yes.” Damon’s answer is cold, detached, and blunt, as they usually are. There is no pride or heat, just undeniable, irrefutable, objective fact.
Silas watches a moment longer. His lips purse. Then, he nods. It’s curt, but decisive.
“You followed instruction. That’s good, Damon.”
Damon tilts his chin up to Silas.
“Useful as always,” Silas says. “I can rely on you.”
His gaze shifts back to you. His eyes are slightly lighter this time. Almost tender. Slightly concerned. Relieved.
“And I am glad that she remains alive,” he adds quietly, spoken like an afterthought he may not have intended to share. His statement sounds sincere.
Silas turns away and reclaims his seat at the head of the table with unhurried precision. The chair thuds as he sits in it. His eyes find Damon again.
“You intervened at just the correct moment. Precise as ever.”
The most praise you’ve ever witnessed Silas bestow upon Damon. And Damon accepts it the same way he accepts everything: without reaction. Nonetheless, you feel his presence behind you steady. It does not need pride or possession to operate, but it seems to value unambiguity.
Silas’s gaze returns to you, and whatever warmth existed in his voice evaporates before your very eyes.
“You got to command,” he begins, “and now you understand what commanding costs.”
His eyes hold yours long enough to ensure the lesson has carved itself deep enough in your skin to last a lifetime.
“Do not let it happen again,” he orders lowly, voice deep and steady. A warning, undoubtedly.
“I won’t,” you manage to exhale.
Silas studies you for one final, long moment. You feel watched by him. Like how you did when Morin had you on your knees, knife dragging down your body. He’s looking into you, exploring the depths of your darkness for an answer that matches the expression on your face you try so hard to conceal.
It’s not fear. Nor humiliation. Not even pain.
It’s something quieter. Unclear. Unresolved.
Silas’s eyes narrow slightly.
The image of forest green against stone flashes in your mind. That other feeling of also being watched… but in a different way. Measured. And what bothers you most of all—you don’t know why.
You hesitate enough for Silas to notice, though you don’t intend to.
“People were observing,” you say at last. “From a rooftop.”
Silas stills, and the temperature in the room drops once more. You expected him to have a reaction, and the fact that he says nothing—eyes locked onto yours, fingers still pinching the fat cigar—is chilling.
“I think they saw everything,” you continue.
Damon’s presence tightens into alertness behind you.
Silas finally blinks. “Did you recognize them?”
He hums. “And yet you noticed them,” he murmurs. “What did they look like?”
“They were too far to see clearly,” you begin. “There were three. I could see only their top halves. They wore forest green cloaks."
Silas’s gaze rounds your hairline before it settles on your lips. He licks his, and smiles faintly.
“And you, Damon?” Silas asks, his gaze still not leaving you.
“I did not see anything, Boss,” he tentatively replies. “But it seems like you are not the only one who gathers data around here.”
Damon’s implication makes the air shift, and you suddenly feel strange.
He turns away and waves his hand.
And you do. You turn on your heel in sync with Damon, and wordlessly trail out behind him.
As the door to The Confessional closes, three certain truths clarify in your mind:
Another unknown, faceless, nameless ghost is on your trail,
And Silas has not made it clear whether he decided you did.
An hour later, the street is quieter here than most places in the Underground.
It’s not the brittle quiet that settles over bars when a blade is drawn, nor the tense hush that crawls through alleyways cast in shadow when a deal turns sour. This quiet is softer—more apprehensive—worn tender by years of small, quiet lives trying very carefully not to be noticed.
A small house sits at the end of the rugged street, the framing long since surrendering its shape to time. The mortar of the brick stoop is crumbling in some places, rusted hinges barely keeping the ancient door upright. One of the front windows is patched with cloudy glass that softens the glow of the lanternlight inside into a dull haze, dark colored curtains framing the figure just beyond the window like a painting.
There’s a sort of cozy, homey energy that exudes from the house. It’s the sort of place that nurtures the last of the humanity in the Underground, keeping it safe from the criminality, drugs, prostitution, and boozing that has long since dimmed a once unique way of living.
A man stands across the narrow street for a moment that stretches longer than it needs to, his gaze lingering on the crooked doorframe, the weak light behind the glass, the quiet evidence of a life lived carefully in a place that does not reward care. There is no gang of men at his back, no blades flashing beneath the torchlight that cowers in his presence, no warning shouted from alleys before he spills blood into the dirt.
The street does not yet understand the weight of what has arrived. It continues to exist as it always has—slowly, cautiously, and small—the way it learned to in this place where survival depends on remaining small and insignificant.
The curtain stirs behind the cloudy glass, the soothing lanternlight shifting with it. The figure beyond it is a bit clearer now—the slow, frail old man sat comfortably in a chair reading literature.
Across the street, the other man watches. He chooses not to rush the moment—rather, he lets it bloom like a flower soaking in the warm rays of the sun upon the first warm spring day.
The faint ache in his ribs reminds him of the girl. The way she moved reminded him of a stubborn fire that refused to extinguish even as the breath was stolen from her lungs. The memory of her curls somewhere deeper in his chest—a darker place where the ache has not reached. It warms him like a small, amused flame.
So this is where she emerged from.
The man is sharp with focus.
His gaze is fixated on the house. The soft lantern glows, the fragile warmth spilling from its windows and onto the streets. It defies everything the Underground has spent decades becoming. Here, in this little house that looks more caved in than structured, that warmth seems to push back against the rot around it, however quietly. As if tenderness, when protected long enough, might begin to soften the harshness around it.
He crosses the street without hurry, the dirt of the stilled street stirring beneath his heavy boots. The torchlight nearest to the house flickers once in the draft of his passing, then settles. By the time he reaches the stoop, the whole street seems to have grown sparse, every caved pillar and darkened window holding its breath as it draws away from him.
The man stands before the door for a moment. He exhales. Then he lifts his hand and knocks softly.
Far too soft for what it intends.
Inside, a floorboard creaks. The blurred shape behind the window shifts, then disappears from the man’s view. A moment later, footsteps approach. They’re slow but not apprehensive—foolishly unguarded by the familiarity of someone who believes home is allowed to remain familiar once night has fallen.
A bolt slides free from the inside.
The door opens only a few inches at first, warm light spilling through the narrow seam and cutting across the dark, a small chain stretched tight between the frame and the door. An old man fills the small opening, boney shoulders barely filling out a worn sweater, age gathered into his features. There is caution and exhaustion in his eyes. The kind of someone who has lived long enough in the Underground to know that it does not manifest on your doorstep and knock without reason.
His gaze falls onto the man before him and his face tightens into a mix of disappointment and annoyance.
“It’s quite early. What is it you need?”
The man on the stoop does not answer immediately. His eyes move over the old man's face with patience that should not exist at this house, tracing the age in him, the strikingly mirrored features, the weariness, the flicker of something that had obviously been hope before the door opened and the Underground stole it.
The man’s mouth softens into something meant to be unthreatening. Neighborly. Faux tenderness laces his voice and conceals his intent.
“I have news about your girl,” he says.
The old man stills. Not fully—not in the way prey stills when it sees a starving predator—but in the smaller, sadder, more shocked way of a heart being struck with hope despite itself. Despite years of wisdom and experience trying to contain it. His fingers tighten softly around the frame of the door. He does not speak. His eyes search the stranger’s face on his doorstep, looking for a glimpse of something trustworthy.
The man effectively suppresses a smirk.
The words landed exactly as intended.
The man lowers his voice, as if he speaks too loudly, the lie will reveal itself.
A breath leaves the old man so quickly it is soundless, the only indication of the words escaping his lungs is the way his diaphragm caves in on itself. The relief that washes over him is fast and unguarded—a genuine response. One so intense it could not be contained, even as the old man’s logical suspicion follows close behind, slower but wiser.
The old man’s features draw tight once more.
The stranger’s gaze does not leave his.
“Someone who found her in bad shape. She told me where to bring word. She’s not in any shape to make it back tonight.”
The lie is smooth. Not because it’s pretty, but because this old man is practically milking it out of the stranger, seamlessly fabricating something out of nothing. It tastes sweet as honey on the man’s lips as it spills from them.
Something in the old man’s face shifts at that. It’s not trust—not yet. But enough yearning to wound the quiet enticement of sound judgment. And enough fear to squash it.
The man lets the question exist in the space between them for a beat too long before he performatively sighs.
And in that hesitation lives the man he once was before fatherhood, grandfatherhood, when age hollowed his joints and softened the ferociousness of his hands. The smuggler who spent years slipping goods between the surface and the Underground does not vanish simply because his back aches now when he rises too fast, or because his mornings have grown quieter.
But his hope has been starved long enough.
It weakens him now in ways famine never could—after she left and never looked back.
The old man still remembers the rattle of the doorframe when she slammed it shut, his wife’s quiet gasp, the tremble in his own voice when he asked if they should call after her. The worry that it would be the last time he ever saw her—alive, anyway.
The old man’s shoulders grow slightly slack and his fingers loosen against the edge of the door. His eyes soften—just barely—as something unbearable pathetically crosses his face at the suggestion that his beloved granddaughter is near and breathing and wants to come home and is delayed merely by injury instead of absence.
And the stranger watches it happen. He watches love overtake the honed instinct of a now quiet old man who once was the Underground’s most skilled and tenured smuggler in his prime. He watches the judgement bend, then cave, then entirely reshape itself beneath the old man’s longing.
“If she’s hurt,” the old man says carefully, steadily, as if he’s doubting the resolve in his own words, “why did she not come herself?”
The stranger lowers his gaze just slightly, shaping his expression into something quiet. Respectful. The sort of face people wear when delivering news to a beloved they know will leave them wounded.
“She tried,” he begins, his voice quiet and low, faux sympathy soothing. “But she’s in no shape to be moving through the streets. ‘N’ you know it’s unwise for her to travel without being able to defend herself… not after the enemies she’s made, as you might’ve heard.”
Fear deepens the lines already carved into the old man’s face. It’s a helpless kind of fear—the kind reserved for the people one cannot protect anymore.
“Safe for the moment,” the stranger replies.
The man believes his words may be poorly chosen, too vague. He should have been more prepared to enter a verbal bargain with this old smuggler, but mindgames are a skill rendered underdeveloped in his criminal mind that has only needed to rely on brute force. He never needed to be smart. Only strong and fierce. Always the first to draw the blade and pierce the skin of his enemy.
But he sees something shift in the old smuggler’s bones, some instinct that has outlived his youth and bloodshed and the decades spent carrying contraband through roads where one wrong step meant lifelong imprisonment or death. It stirs now, faint but persistent, desperately warning the old smuggler to not open the door any wider.
But hope—now given the footing of a shape, a name, a face—is relentless.
And the love for his granddaughter—that kind of love makes fools of men who know better.
And so the old man closes the door a bit and reaches for the chain, metal softly scraping in the quiet of the Underground where noise rarely exists as the beast absorbs it.
He opens the door and steps aside.
And the door shuts behind them.
hiiiii my lovely readers! i survived the semester and am back from my hiatus woohoo! i hope you all enjoy this chapter, i honestly think it's one of my better ones. feedback is welcome :)
i think time away from the story has cleared my head in the best way possible. coming back to this chapter with a fresh mind helped me a lot during the editing process, and i was able to make this chapter transform into something much better than the original draft. i won't yap about the details too much, but i will leave yall with this: a lot more is coming, and baby it's coming soon!
i hope everyone's doing well.