Chapter Text
The wife grabbed him by the ear and shrieked, “Did you take my earrings?! Did you?!”
“Look here, Larna,” the husband said. “You can't take it personal. He doesn't know better. How could he?"
Vila wriggled and thrashed, as the old lady’s fingernails dug into his earlobe, like a bee sting that just wouldn’t end. “AH!” she screamed, after he bit down as hard as he could on her other hand. She cast her hand out to grab him again but he had already dashed halfway across the room by the time she realized where he’d gone.
The wife cast herself dramatically down on the bed. “Oh, Tekker—I thought I’d be a good citizen, a good woman, and take in a needy orphan and show him a loving, Alpha home. But it’s just too hard,” she said, breaking into tears, “it’s just too hard!”
“Steady on, Larna,” the man said, stroking her back. “We’ll find him a place at the children’s home. They’re good people, professionals, they know how to deal with this sort of thing.”
Children’s home. The phrase grabbed Vila’s stomach by the throat (as his auntie used to say). He knew what that meant. That really meant hostel, which really just meant prison.
Maybe if he hadn’t played the fool for that lady that day, putting on his sweetest, most harmless smile, maybe if he’d just been able to bear it on the streets for one more day he would still be free now—free of money and food and clothes, to be sure, but still free.
Maybe he would have gotten picked up and taken to hostel anyway, but then again, maybe not. What was certain is that the week and a half of good food and clean clothes and trips to the All-Federation Planetarium was not worth this new development.
And, if he were fully honest with himself, it hadn’t been just a scheme. He had really liked the lady at first, she had a nice smile and those pretty furs and had seemed to genuinely care for him. And the man was so clean and his clothes so neatly creased, not like the ragged, drunken bums Vila was used to.
Well, that’s what you get for trusting Alphas. Stupid, stupid, naïve, Vila. He should have listened to Yakar. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Well, it had been worth a try, Vila told himself. You never try, you never know.
The man stood up and grabbed Vila by the wrists, and this time the grip was far too strict to wriggle out of. “Come on, young man. We’re going to take you where you belong.”