I'm In Love With A Monster

They're Gonna Eat You Alive Here

Zuko was hungry, which was quite the annoyance as it forced him to break his quiet solitude.

At first, he had just tried to ignore it, hoping that it would just go away on its own (despite knowing otherwise from experience. While he hadn't been a vampire for long, it had been long enough for him to know this much and to learn the consequences of neglecting his needs the hard way). But alas, the pangs of hunger were relentless, and he found that vampire hunger was so much more intense than any hunger he'd felt as a human.

So, he forced himself up out of bed and made his way down to one of the kitchen areas. In it was a refrigerator that stored blood for the vampires, and it was one of the only reasons that Zuko was grateful to be in that place.

That gratitude ended promptly when he saw someone already there, and he just hoped that she wouldn't speak to him. The last thing he wanted to deal with was human interaction (even if it wasn't technically human interaction).

She noticed him before even closing the refrigerator door. When she did, she had two blood bags in hand and handed him one.

"You're the new kid," she pointed out matter-of-factly, her voice nearly monotone as Zuko accepted the bag from her.

The girl had long jet black hair which was half up in small space buns while the rest of it hung down and fair skin that contrasted it. Her bangs casted a shadow over her eyes. Her sweatshirt said "anti you" and so did her stern rbf.

"Yeah," he replied.

He wasn't entirely sure what to make of her. In a way, her presence was oddly comforting as she wasn't overly friendly out of obligation like Joo Dee or Katara, but she also wasn't rude to him like Sokka or Jet had been.

"I'm Mai," she stated.

"Zuko," he replied.

Zuko opened up the top of the blood bag.

"Just a head's up, it's cows blood. Not as good as human," Mai explained.

Zuko took a sip of it and shrugged. He didn't want to taste human blood ever again anyway, despite how much he may have craved it. Too many bad memories.

"I've had worse," he replied.

It was true. He'd had to take whatever he could get and the cow's blood really wasn't terrible. Besides, he was starving, and he managed to down the whole thing relatively quickly, eyes turning red and black veins emerging under them as he did so (a feature of his vampirism he had yet to learn to control).

Mai still hadn't even touched hers and handed it to him before getting herself another.

"You're brand new, aren't you?" she asked curiously as he finished the second bag.

"I️ just got here today," Zuko replied.

Mai shook her head.

"No, I️ mean new new. As newly turned," she said.

Zuko shrugged.

"Relatively, I️ guess," he said.

Mai sighed with what seemed to be annoyance.

"They're gonna eat you alive, here," she said.

Zuko gave her a puzzled look.

"What do you mean?" he asked, confused.

"Look, the wolves pretty much run this place and they don't like us. So keep your head down and don't draw any attention to yourself, got it?" she asked.