- Rating: T
- Categories: M/M
- Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
- Relationship: Zuko/Kuei
- Characters: Zuko, Kuei
- Additional Tags: Ficlet, First Meetings, Pre-Slash, Pre-Relationship, AU - Fairy Tale
- Status: Complete
- Wordcount: 3008
- Published on AO3: 2021-08-16
Notes: For KuZu Week 2021: Day 2 - Horror
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender or any associated trademarks.
There is a monster in a palace, and no one ever goes there.
Zuko hears about it for the first time when he's in the upper ring after his uncle's teashop has just been opened. The customers—dressed far more extravagantly than those in the lower rings—mill between the tables, gossiping loudly about whatever stupid things they can. There is no silence here; only the incessant talk of sharp tongues judging far more than they have a right to. They talk and they laugh and they point and they forget entirely about Zuko's existence, speaking as if he is not there. It makes his blood boil, makes his fists clench.
But it also lets him hear far more inside knowledge of Ba Sing Se than he has since they arrived in this accursed city. Like the story of the monster.
They say there is a monster in the palace, and no one ever goes there.
Zuko's blood is boiling, his expression thinning and his eyes darkening the more stupid things he hears. He doesn't believe them—why would there be a monster in the Earth King's palace? Such a thing would never be allowed to stand. If his father knew even he would do something about it because it undermines his authority. If he learned that the city the Fire Nation has repeatedly failed to conquer has a monster walking its palace halls, he would be enraged.
But they keep talking about it, whispering about it under breaths too loud. Over and over again, from a dozen different people, he hears the tale. The tale of how the monster was cursed for his arrogance, for his folly, for his ignorance. The monster is cursed, they say, and so can not leave the palace.
This means the only way for Zuko to find out the truth is for him to go there. Go to the palace and see for himself.
(It can't be true, but. But it doesn't hurt to check.)
Going in the middle of the night is the obvious choice. Sneaking away from his uncle is both harder and easier than anticipated; he goes when the older man is sleeping and is terrified with every snore he hears that he'll awaken and see what Zuko is doing. But he just wants to know. There is no monster in the palace, there can not possibly be. But nobody speaks of the Earth King, and he wonders.
Something is wrong with this city, he knows. Ba Sing Se is a sinkhole of miasma, a trap that locks you in and won't ever let you go. Zuko has seen shadows leaping over rooftops, had customers mysteriously vanish and no one ever speaks of it. There is something wrong, and he thinks... the palace might hold some answers.
So he breaks in.
It's actually not that hard? Zuko has broken into harder places, has barely gotten away with his life on some occasions. Compared to those times, the Earth King's palace is a cakewalk. And once he's in, he simply follows the hallways.
They're long, these hallways. Wide, too, with high ceilings and murals on the walls. Zuko is almost tempted to stop to get a good look but he doesn't want to be here another second longer than he has to. He's simply going to find this monster, and he knows the best place of the palace to check is the middle.
The middle, where the floors are covered by dust, where the drapes have been consumed by spiderwebs.
Zuko walks on eggshells, his body wound tighter the further he goes. His mouth dries, seeing the claw-marks on the floor, the walls, the windows. Licking his lips does nothing, his flame burning hot inside him. The marks are too high, too low, too wide and inconsistent in size. Like whatever made them was playing, almost. The spiderwebs are old and deep, poison dripping from them and acid eating into the floor below. The dust is suffocating; unending, squeezing its way into his nostrils and attemtping to strangle him.
He pinches his nose shut to hold off a sneeze. Shaking his head slilgthly, he sheathes his sword and climbs a pillar to get to higher ground.
There can't possibly be a monster in the palace, but an animal is not unreasonable. Although, why an animal would be allowed to run free in here to the extent they'd even cut off all normal accesses to this part of the palace... this, he can't know. So higher ground it is.
After much trawling through the spiderwebs and dust, thoroughly ruining his uniform, Zuko finally reaches an end to his journey.
There is light up ahead, just a weak, splintering thing flickering weakly in the wind. Zuko stops on the beam he's sitting on, gazing down to the door only partly cracked open and the light beyond it. He strains his hearing, but is only met by silence.
He hasn't seen a single person since he reached this part of the palace. Hasn't had to hide from Dai Li agents, hasn't had to avoid the gazes of the servants. There is only the nearly unnoticable sound of his own footsteps, the sound of his own breathing, joining him here. He is alone. But there is a light up ahead that he can see flicker and there is door not even fully shut, and there are animal tracks in the dust leading to it.
Tracks he doesn't recognize, but that are unedniably non-human. Something is in there. Something that can make light. And Zuko is a fool of the highest order, a fool who feels curiosity stir in his gut instead of trepidation.
There is something in there.
He drops to the floor, his feet striking it silently. For a second he waits, his brow furrowed as he listens for a reaction to his presence. There is none. And so he recalls all his training in walking without making a sound as he approaches the door, keeping his breathing light and steady. At the door, he gently curls his fingers around the door's edge and holds his breath. Nothing happens. He pushes at the door, frowning and lying his weight on it when it refuses to budge.
Finally, the door opens enough for him to slip through. He exhales softly and creeps through, his eyes immediately gluing themselves to the candlelight. It's a single candle on a table by the wall, a wick steadily burning down. It flickers from the gust of wind moving the door produces and he winces.
He eyes the rest of the room. It's a bedroom, he quickly realizes. The bed in the middle of the room is comically wide; green curtains covering it entirely. He can't see if there's someone inside, but the tracks lead right to it.
There is less dust on the floor in here, but the spiderwebs are in every corner still. Zuko walks up to the candle and studies it for a moment, but can't find anything strange with it. It's an ordinary candle, the common design that Ba Sing Se favors. The walls are covered by a layer of dust and grime so thick that he can't make out the pattern it, but he vaguely makes out the gold color buried beneath it. All the furniture is big and stately, the chairs uncommonly wide.
Zuko turns to the bed.
It's stupid. His uncle would never approve. His sister would laugh at him. His father would—not do anything good. But Zuko got this far and he wonders.
(There is a monster in the palace, they say, and no-one ever goes there.)
Zuko's fingers grip the curtains, and he shivers at how cold they are. His eyes narrow, his tongue licking his lips. He inhales sharply and—pulls the curtain back.
"Oh," he breathes, his hands falling to his sides. "How—" he mutters to himself, taking a step closer. His knees hit the bed's edge with a soft thud and he climbs on, crawling up until he's sitting on a threadbare pillow next to the monster's head.
Sitting still with his hands digging into the meat of his thighs, he stares at it. In silence, the seconds ticking on like a clock in his head. The monster breathes softly, splayed out widely on the bed with its large limbs thrown in every conceivable direction. The head alone must be twice the size of Zuko's, and the rest of the monster is likewise bigger than him.
It explains the bed's size, at least.
The dark fur is thick and covers every inch of it. The light in the bed is weak and the candle does no good where it is and this is a monster anyway. And Zuko wants to be able to see it properly but he fears walking away will reveal this all to be a dream. And this is a monster. No-one will believe it if it tries to rat him out.
A spark lights up right above his palm; a small light still casting a much better view than the candlelight. It doesn't flicker, because something small as this is something he could do in his sleep.
He holds the light up to the monster's face, leaning over it to get a better view. Like this, he can see the gigantic eyes and the eyelids with its thin fuzz of fur covering them. Can see the monster's chest move in time with its breaths. When he counts them he frowns—they're too slow. A normal human breathes twice as fast as that, even when they're just sleeping. With every widening, he scoots even closer, holding the light up above the monster to see better.
Despite everything, the monster looks humanoid. It has two limbs resembling arms—there's even an elbow joint. Two legs with flat feet and ten toes in total, the normal five fingers on each hand. The tusks in its mouth are a little unsettling, yes, but Zuko has seen a lot of things in his life. He's not going to flinch at just this.
For a couple of minutes more, all he does is study the monster. It twitches occasionally, turning over and switching positions but it's easy enough to get out of its way. He watches sedately as it moves, watches it burrow deeper under ratty covers in search of warmth. Its breaths are like tiny growls, the sound reverbating through its chest cavity. Zuko stares, his eyes wide and unable to switch directions.
It feels like a dream.
All of this. The spiderwebs, the dust, the clawmarks matching the sharp claws this monster has on its feet and hands. The dig into the sheets as he watches, tearing holes that are only a few among many. The candlelight that lured him here, the whispering of the public as they gossip of things they have too much knowledge of. The wind beating through the long, lonely corrdors, the shadows seeping in through the cracks in the paint. It is a dream, Zuko thinks. It doesn't match everything else he knows about the Earth Kingdom, about Ba Sing Se, and so it cannot be real. Something like this can not be real.
It puffs out a breath and Zuko follows. He sits back on his hunches and curl in on himself, the light easing into something weaker. Something that'll attract less attention if somebody were to happen to come by. And just for safety's sake, he pulls the curtains shut around the bed like they were when he arrived.
Like this, it's like they're in a bubble, a world of their own.
Zuko gulps, the sound loud in the silence.
He pulls his hand (and his fire) back from the monster. Instead, he crosses his legs and wonders what time it is. Wonders if uncle has discovered that Zuko's missing yet. Wonders if the guards have found the entrance he used. Wonders if the Dai Li has seen his tracks in the dust.
Wonders.
The monster turns over again, facing Zuko this time. Zuko only looks at it, his heart beating too fast for him to process anything.
There is a monster in the palace, they say. And no-one ever goes there.
The monster's eyes blink open. Zuko can't read its face, but it stares at him with constantly widening eyes. (The eyes, too, are at least twice as big as Zuko's.) "Who?" a hoarse voice croaks, the sound half-a-growl.
"Zuko," he answers, waiting for the monster to attack him. Zuko can beat it, he knows. He's faught the Avatar, he's not going to get beaten by some monster in Ba Sing Se of all places. That's not how he'll die.
The monster shoots up, looming over him. "You're Zuko? I'm Kuei!" Then the eyelids lower and it peeks at him with a disturbingly human gaze. "But what are you doing here? People aren't allowed here."
"I broke in," Zuko confesses.
The monster gasps and leans away from him, the clawed hands coming up between them like preparing for a fight. Zuko eyes the claws, his hand slowly inching toward his sword's sheathe. He's not going to die here, in Ba Sing Se. Not going to allow himself to die on foreign soil, still unwelcome at his home. No, Zuko is going home. Uncle might be content to waste away here, but Zuko isn't going to be forgotten in another country, abandoned by his own nation.
He's going home.
"They say there is a monster in the palace," Zuko says, glaring at the monster with narrowed eyes. The monster rears back, as if struck. Zuko contiunes, "Are you the monster they speak of?"
Kuei (the monster who sleeps alone in an abandoned wing, who walks through the halls with claws leaving tracks on the wall; the only proof of its existence) swallows audibly. "I do not know of what they speak," it points out, strangely reasonable for an inhuman monster.
"A monster is in the palace," Zuko repeats. He leans forward, glaring at the beast. "A monster that should not be here, that doesn't belong. A monster who no-one ever wants to see. Are you that monster?"
Kuei licks his lips, his long tongue catching on his tusks. "No," he breathes, lowering his gaze to the linnen. "That's not me."
Zuko nods. He pulls his sword out of its sheathe and holds it out. (He's not going to die here. Not going to be trapped in the fog Ba Sing Se is buried in, not going to be caught and lead to his uncle's (his only family now) death. He won't allow it.
There is a monster in the palace, they say.
And no-one ever goes there.)
"Let's find a beast," Zuko says and presses the sword into Kuei's hand.
Kuei's fingers slowly clsoe around it and he looks at Zuko with soft, soft eyes. Eyes that are watering, and it sniffles and turns away and brushes its hand over the eyes. "Why?" it asks, the voice gentle.
Zuko thinks of his father, thinks of the palace he was cast out of, thinks of the pain he's caused his uncle. Thinks of the damage he's brought to everyone he's ever loved, and the damage everyone who's ever loved him has caused him. Thinks of his father's hand burning him, and no-one stopping it. Thinks of the look in his uncle's eyes when Zuko asked, shortly after they set out to sea, why Iroh didn't help him earlier.
Before all this.
Thinks, and doesn't say.
"Some monsters don't leave tracks of clawmarks," he says instead. Zuko's hand swings by his face and he fingers his now short hair. He's gotten used to it, he supposes. (But that just makes it worse.) Zuko wets his lips and continues, ignoring Kuei's intense gaze on him, "Some monsters are too high to reach, and so you must drag them down to you in order to kill them."
Kuei closes its eyes. Zuko turns away, not wanting to upset it. He just gave it one of his swords, after all. And while he can fight just fine with only one sword, he doesn't want to risk making too much of a commotion. What if the Dai Li hears? What if they come running and find Zuko at the heart of the Earth King's palace? What if they see and they realize and they catch him? No, he can't risk that.
"Long Feng..." Kuei starts, voice breaking in the middle. It takes a deep breath and visibly forces out, "Long Feng won't let me out."
Zuko smirks, trying to channel Azula. "I got in, didn't I?" he points out, gazing back at the monster. The monster who startles, who jumps, who squints at him and stares at him. There were only animal marks on the way here, Zuko remembers. No hint of any human presence.
How long...
"Okay," Kuei says. It takes the sword out of the sheathe, just a tiny bit, and stares with unblinking eyes at the shinig metal. It swallows and says in a heavy voice, barely more than a mumble, "I am Kuei, King of the Earth Kingdom. And I will slay a monster evil. I will set my kingdom free."
Zuko doesn't say anything. He merely pulls his other sword out and twirls it through the air while he waits for Kuei to get his emotions under control. For Kuei to lead him out of here.
He doesn't remember much about Kuei, even though he knows he learned about him as a child. It was part of his duty, to know the rulers of the enemy nation. So he was taught about Kuei and his early rise to the throne after his parents' unfortunate deaths. But it was so long ago, and Kuei hasn't been relevant in years. The knowledge sits heavy in his stomach now, the reason why. His hand clench around his sword and he frowns, a glare in his eyes.
There is a monster in the palace.
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