Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The new boy had been here for three days.

He was the only other kid in the whole fortress besides Jing, and she was curious because she hadn’t been around other kids in a very long time. She was also curious because her papa had said he was a raccoon, and she’d never met or even seen a raccoon, either. He was smaller than anyone here except for her, and he had a big poofy tail that was always twitching and looked very soft, and she wanted to ask him if she could touch it.

She also wanted to ask if they could play together, and maybe if they could be friends, but she hadn’t gotten the chance to do any of those things yet for three reasons.

The first reason was that her papa kept the new boy very busy doing chores. He and her aunt and the staff were always giving him new things to do, and so he always looked too busy to play. Jing didn’t have to do chores except to keep her room clean, but she did have to do homework, and thinking about if she had to do homework all the time made her nose scrunch up. It didn’t sound fun to never get a chance to play.

The second reason was that he never talked to anyone. He was always watching and listening to the adults, but he never said a word or even made a sound, and even though it was really cool, it also made it hard to talk to him. She would ask him a question like what his favorite food was or how long he was going to work for her family, and he would just stare at her, and then her aunt would tell her to stay away from him and she’d have to listen.

And that was the third reason – she wasn't supposed to be alone around him, ever. Both her papa and her aunt had told her that many times, and had lectured her the one time they had caught her trying to sneak away from them and follow the boy. He was dangerous, they'd said, and very angry, and he might hurt her because he didn't like their family. They didn’t even let her get too close to him when there were lots of people in the room.

Jing understood all of these things, because she was very smart like her papa always said. But she was also smart because she knew secret ways around the house that no one else knew – because she was the only one small enough to find them.

She was smart, and she was curious. So, she found a way to see him alone, and she knew that would make it a lot easier to ask her questions and get to know this strange new boy.

It was very early in the morning when the little panda girl snuck out of her room. She knew the staff's schedules very well; they always got up before everyone else to start doing the daily chores. She didn’t have to be awake for two more hours, so she knew no one would come looking for her for a while.

The new boy was with them, carrying a large basket of laundry. One of the adults had their hand around his wrist as they all walked, and neither of them looked happy about it. Jing wondered why the adult didn't just let him go and let him walk by himself. Surely that would solve the problem they both had?

She watched them from a long way away for a while, seeing which direction the boy was going, then went a different way herself to find one of her special secret ways around. After a few minutes of being quiet and sneaky – things she was also very good at being! – Jing found the place that the boy had been sent to work for the morning.

He was in one of the laundry rooms, sitting on the floor as he looked through the things in his basket for stains and other things. He was alone in the room (except for her!) but he still looked very annoyed while he worked, throwing sheets and clothes onto the ground without even folding them first. When she stepped into the room, the boy jumped and turned around even though she thought she was being very quiet about it.

They stared at each other for a while as Jing realized she was disobeying her papa so badly just for being here at all. The raccoon watched her carefully like he was afraid she was going to be mean to him – which was very strange because he was supposed to be the mean one, according to everyone else.

“Um. Hello. My name is King Jing,” she finally said, folding her hands politely in front of her like her aunt had taught her to do when greeting strangers. “What’s your name?”

The new boy frowned really deep and made a weird face as he turned back around to finish looking through the laundry. Jing was shocked by how rude he was being. Maybe he was just shy?

“How come you won’t tell me what your name is?” The girl walked around the basket until she was facing him again. He stared up at her with the same strange frown. “How come you won’t talk at all?”

He shook his head and growled, and it took a minute for Jing to realize that he was trying to get words out between the growling. She waited very patiently, because her papa had taught her that sometimes people took a little longer to speak what was on their mind, and one had to be patient for such things so as not to be rude.

“G-g-g……go a-way,” he finally whispered in English, sounding like it was very hard for him to say the words.

Jing’s eyes lit up. She had been learning English since she was very little, but only her papa and sometimes the head chef spoke it with her. This was a chance to show how smart she was and impress the new boy!

“Hello! My name is King Jing!” She repeated in the other language, watching with delight how his eyes got big and wide. “What is your name?”

He looked very surprised, but didn’t answer. Jing pouted a little bit and tried another question.

“I am six and a half years old. How old are you?”

Still no answer. She was starting to get frustrated.

“Do you want to play with me?”

His frown grew deeper and he looked down at the laundry pile, then started going through clothes again. This time, he started throwing things across the room every time he finished with them instead of just dropping them on the floor.

Jing didn’t understand. Why was he angry? If he only spoke English, then he should be happy that she did, too! Everyone else spoke Mandarin around here, so it made sense why he didn’t talk before, but why wasn’t he talking to her now? Why wasn’t he answering any questions? Why was he being so rude?

The panda stomped her foot, upset and confused, and put her hands on her hips. It probably wasn’t very nice, but her aunt did it all the time, so it couldn’t be too bad.

“Will you be friends with me?” She asked through gritted teeth, determined to ask all her questions even though he wasn’t answering them. “Your tail is very fluffy. Can I touch it?”

The look he gave her was very mean and very angry, and his hands stopped grabbing things out of the basket. She thought about all the warnings her papa and her aunt had given her about this boy, but she was too angry herself to think about stopping. In fact, she was so mad and so confused that she had a whole new question, now.

“How come you are working for my family if you’re so mean? Why don’t you just leave?”

It happened so fast. He had been crouching on the floor in front of her, and then suddenly he was standing up and his face was all screwed up in anger and then he pushed her.

Hard.

Jing tripped backwards and fell on her butt, staring up at him in shock. It didn’t hurt very much, but he’d pushed her. He’d pushed her! The raccoon looked just as shocked as she was at what he’d just done, and then he looked really, really scared. He backed away into the other side of the room away from her and held his hands up like he thought she was going to push him back.

She stood back up, shaking because it was very scary to get pushed down like that, and felt tears starting to grow in her eyes. The boy looked even more scared that she was about to cry, but she turned around and ran out the door before he could see it.

She ran all the way back to her room, crawled into her bed, and cried until she was too tired to cry anymore.

When her aunt came to collect her for breakfast, she had already wiped her tears away, but the confusion and hurt still swirled around in her head. When she saw the boy again in the dining room, he wouldn’t look at her as he put plates on the table. Jing sat down at her regular place and stared down at the dark wooden pattern until her papa arrived.

He stopped to look all around the room like he had started doing since the new boy had come, and she saw the way the raccoon trembled under his gaze. Then her papa’s eyes turned to her, and he began to frown.

“Jing, dear daughter, what is the matter?” He asked in English, surprising everyone in the room.

“Huh?”

The larger panda kneeled down beside her and gently touched her face. “You have been crying. Did something happen?”

Jing heard a scary sound in his voice; the one he once used when he’d learned that a guard had said awful things about her aunt. Behind him, she could see the new boy shaking even harder than before, holding dishes to his chest like he could hide behind them. He was waiting for her to tell on him, she realized, and her papa was expecting it too. Her papa suspected something had happened and that it was the raccoon’s fault.

Well, it was his fault, but…she thought about the guard that her papa had gotten scary about. That guard didn’t work here anymore. She didn’t want the boy to not work here anymore either. He was weird and mean but she didn’t want to be the only kid in the fortress again.

And he looked really, really scared, and that made her feel bad for some reason.

“I’m okay, Daddy,” she said softly, lifting her hands so he could hold them in his bigger ones. “I had a bad dream last night about a monster, and it made me cry, but I know that it wasn’t real.”

His frown changed into worry. “Why did you not let me know? I could have chased the monster away for you.”

“Yes, but I am very brave, Daddy. I can chase them away all on my own, now.”

“Yes you can. You are very brave, indeed.” He touched her nose with his finger, making her giggle, then moved to take his place at the table next to her. “Let us eat, then. There is a long day ahead of us.”

Jing nodded and glanced at the new boy. He was staring at her with his mouth open, very surprised that she did not tell on him for his rudeness and meanness. She folded her arms and did her best to look stern like her aunt, giving him a big nod. She would not be a tattle-tale if he did not do that again.

She didn’t know if he understood that, because he turned away and walked off with the rest of the dishes, but he did keep looking at her over his shoulder. If he didn’t understand, then that was okay.

Because next time, Jing decided, she would just have to be more careful.

Chapter Text

Sly hated everything about this place.

He hated living with the monster who had attacked his family and home. He hated that he had to work for him like a servant. He hated that he couldn’t understand anything the people here were saying, and the only time he heard English was when the monster or the monster’s sister wanted to scold him for something.

And above all, he hated how helpless he felt. How small and weak and pathetic he was, that he couldn’t fight back or even escape. He had tried everything he could think of over the last week – picking the lock to his room or breaking through a wall at night, slipping away from the staff during the day, but nothing he did ever seemed to work.

Sly was trapped, and useless, and he hated it.

The one thing he didn’t hate – or, well, he wasn’t sure what to feel, exactly – was the little girl who lived here. She was always staring at him, and trying to talk to him, and he didn’t know what to think about that. She was the monster’s daughter, which meant he should hate her, too, but she was also really young, and it felt weird to hate someone younger than him.

When she’d cornered him alone a few days ago and started talking to him in English, he’d been surprised, but he didn’t want to be near the monster’s daughter and hoped she’d get the message to leave him alone. Surely, she knew that he hated her family and this place. But she kept going, and going, and then she was asking why he didn’t just leave, like it was the easiest thing in the world and he just – he got so angry.

He hadn’t meant to push her. He really hadn’t. And when he realized what he’d done, his anger had turned to terror. The monster had told him that he would kill him if he hurt her. She would tell the monster and then he’d kill him.

But she hadn’t. He had watched her lie to the monster, and then look at him in a way that he understood meant she had forgiven him for pushing her. It didn’t make any sense to him at first. Why wouldn’t she snitch?

It made sense the next very day after that, when she found him in the kitchen and tried to talk to him again. He had ignored her again and worked very hard not to let his anger make him do something stupid, like his dad always taught. She hadn’t stayed very long that time because there were other people in the kitchen, and she seemed to know that they weren’t supposed to hang out.

But then she came back the next day. And the next day. And the day after that. Always when he was left alone, and always asking him questions.

“What’s your name? How old are you? Can you play with me? Can we be friends?”

It annoyed him, and he always ignored her because he didn’t want to accidentally hurt her again and he also wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t a trick. Maybe the monster had asked his daughter to test him into letting his guard down, and then do something horrible to him once he had. It didn’t quite make sense since she hadn’t told the monster about when he’d pushed her, but he didn’t care. He had to stay alive in this scary, awful place, and he couldn’t get caught doing anything he wasn’t supposed to until he figured out how to escape for good.

Tonight, though, was different. Tonight, she had found out where his room was.

The staff had locked him inside again, at the exact same time as every night, and just like every night he looked over the whole room for a way to escape without finding anything. Then, like every night since the day he’d been brought here, he had taken the pillow and blanket off the bed and crawled under the bed with them, curling up into a ball and watching the door, terrified that the monster or the other monsters who had been with him would come inside while he was supposed to be asleep, and do to him what they had done to his parents.

Usually, he would stay awake as long as he could until he couldn’t anymore, and then he’d wake up crying from nightmares, and then he’d watch the door again until the cycle repeated itself, but tonight was different, because she had found his room.

She knocked on the door.

The sound scared him so bad that he forgot how to breathe, pulling himself further under his little hiding place and waiting for his family’s killers to finally kill him too. But then there was a quiet, young voice joined in by the knocking.

“Hello? Mr. Huàn Xióng? Is this your room?”

Sly was so stunned that he didn’t do anything at first. He stayed perfectly still, blinking as he tried to process what was actually going on against the terror gripping his body and mind. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to uncurl from under the blanket and slide out from under the bed.

“Mr. Huàn Xióng?” The girl called again by the time he was standing in the middle of the room, trying to figure out what to do. “I am sorry if I woke you up. I wanted to come inside but the door is locked.”

Still clutching the pillow to his chest, Sly carefully crept over to the door and pressed his ear against the wood. He could hear her shuffling on the other side, but couldn’t make out any other sounds no matter how hard he tried. If someone else was with her, they were doing a very good job of being quiet.

Was this the test he’d been so afraid of? Were they waiting to see if he’d use this girl to break out of his room and try to escape? That he would tell her to go find the key to open the lock and let him out?

The boy swallowed and remained pressed against the door. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. His voice had gone away the night that his life had been ruined, and the only time he’d managed to bring it back had been to whisper at this girl to go away. That had been so hard to do that it had left him dizzy and out of breath. Speaking across a wall like this sounded as impossible as walking through it.

She had stopped knocking and calling for him, but he could still hear her there. She sounded nervous, and he didn’t understand why she didn’t just leave if she was so worried that this was the wrong room, or that she would get in trouble for being here. Of course, he also didn’t understand why she seemed so determined to talk to him when he was trying to make it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her.

Against his better judgement, Sly raised his hand, hesitated, then knocked gently against the wood. Just three simple knocks to let her know he was here. She gasped, sounding surprised, and knocked back.

“Is that you, Mr. Huàn Xióng?” She asked.

He knocked once, hoping she’d understand it as a yes. The girl went quiet for a minute.

“Does that mean yes?”

Another single knock.

“Okay!” Now she sounded excited. “Will you come out and play with me?”

Sly’s mouth twisted in irritation. Two knocks.

“…Does that mean no?”

One knock.

The girl went quiet again, but he could still hear her on the other side. She was very loud compared to him even though she was smaller. He figured that made sense – no one was as good a teacher about being stealthy as his dad was.

Had been.

Her next question was almost missed as he struggled to blink back sudden tears. “Are you stuck in there?”

A single knock.

“Oh.” More silence. “I am sorry, but I don’t have a key. I don’t know where to find one.”

The raccoon closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he was disappointed about that, but he was.

“Do you like your room?”

Two knocks.

“Oh. I am sorry.”

She really sounded sorry, too, which caught him off guard. Why should she care about how he felt? No one else here did. Why was she being nice right now when she was the daughter of a monster? He didn’t understand it and he didn’t like how conflicted it was making him feel. He wished she’d be mean so he could just hate her like he hated everything else.

“I don’t think I am allowed to let you leave,” the girl said, still sounding upset. “If my father or my aunt knew I was here, I would be in a lot of trouble.”

Sly rolled his eyes. She had people making food and cleaning up after her every single day, and the monster clearly loved her even though that didn’t make sense for a monster. What would “a lot of trouble” even look like to a spoiled princess like her? Washing her own clothes for once?

“I should probably go back to my room soon, so they don’t find me here.”

There was a long pause, like she was waiting for him to ask her not to leave. The boy wouldn’t have asked that even if his voice had come back to him.

“…Okay. I’m leaving now.” He heard her start walking away, stop, then hurry back to the door. “Um. Um. Are you going to be here tomorrow night?”

That was the dumbest question she’d ever asked, and she asked a lot of dumb questions. Sly rolled his eyes again as he gave a single, very angry knock against the wood.

“Okay. Can…can I come back tomorrow night? Can we talk more?”

He blinked. Hesitated. Thought about it.

Knocked once.

“Okay!” The girl said, very loud and very happy, which made him wince. “Goodbye, Mr. Huàn Xióng! I will see you tomorrow!”

She ran down the hall, making him wince again, and he stayed listening at the door until he couldn’t hear her anymore. He wondered why she wanted to come back when it was obvious he didn’t like her.

He wondered why he had just told her she could.