Chapter Text
The sun was low when the doctor emerged from under the deck of the bucket of bolts named the Toucan-Puffin. Only hours earlier, Doctor Shizuka was forced under an oath and given medical supplies and a freshly burnt and banished thirteen year old before being shipped out to sea.
After doing what she could, all the doctor wanted was fresh air. The details were kept from her and she was sworn to never utter a word of what she had seen. With good reason, for if Shizuka had seen the grievous wounds and had less fear of what consequences would be brought down on her and her family she would have told the tale of the cruelty inflicted on the young prince.
“Doctor,” a young pikesman waved to her, arms weighed down by two buckets of water, “I was getting water and I wondered if you wanted me to boil it for you.”
The doctor looked over pikesman Yoshio and felt herself tense at that reminder of the task ahead of her. “Let’s do it in my infirmary. Though before I must ask, are all occupants under an oath?”
“Of silence ma’am? Yep. No one will be saying anything, not that we know anything outside of a doctor and a mysterious patient.”
Shizuka straightened as she walked below deck, “And we will be keeping it that way, pikesman.”
She hesitated before the door and looked at the young man- goodness the age of enlistment was getting smaller with each passing day- and saw her darling boy Keiichi, so happy to serve. She would not let him be harmed for her failure to keep this under wraps.
She opened it and saw Yoshio’s face pale. “Dear Agni,” he cursed softly, setting the buckets down, only to step back with hands over his mouth. Fresh meat. Probably hasn't even seen a proper battle with that reaction.
“Language,” she snapped, approaching the bedside of the child. The prince’s face, or whatever could be seen from under Shizuka’s bandaging, was pale, lips chapped and bloody. “Get that water boiling,” she ordered as she opened her cabinets in a search for a clean washcloth, the only response being Yoshio’s steady breathing as he began bending a flame.
“How did this happen?” Yoshio croaked. “I mean, he’s the prince. What monster would have the authority to get away with this?”
“Don’t speak such treasonous words,” the doctor warned, setting cloth aside and checking her small clock. She saw him tremble at the implications of her words. His armor creaked when she pulled back a portion of bandages to reapply her poultice and to disinfect.
As she redid the bandages Yoshio sat at the chair at the bedside. The two sat together and Shizuka, for the second time that night, was reminded of Keiichi, in the form of the prince. It was years ago, when she returned home only to find Keiichi curled in bed with a fever. She had held his little hands as he sobbed, wishing she could do anything to rid him of his pain, even to inflict it on herself. That was the duty of a parent. Only a monster, one utterly shunned from Agni’s light would dare inflict this suffering on a child, much less their own.
Maybe this is why after a week of toiling and fighting for the boy’s life she hesitates at Earth Kingdom shores. She gives Yoshio a letter for the royal palace. The letter is given to a hawk with a black ribbon. The letter proclaims the worsening state of the prince.
The response is to dump the body into the sea, and the doctors blood is filled with ice.
The other letter that comes to the doctor thanks her for Keiichi’s sacrifice for the nation. She weeps over his possessions and thinks of the recruits who he was leading and training in the 41st. She thinks of what little gossip and news she has heard of the Agni Kai and she looks to the child who has hardly stirred. Recovery is complex. It is not unheard of infection setting in when the medicine is in poor condition or if equipment has not been properly sterilized. No one can fault the doctor for the severity of the wounds.
She thinks of Keiichi as she writes a letter regarding the death of the prince. A day later she takes her things and retires to a neutral port. Yoshio helps carry a crate or two to her new small home, paid for by her earnings of working decades as a doctor.
Shizuka sends a final letter to a sister accompanied by spirits. The caravan carrying the letter takes custody of the old woman’s grandchild who is ill to bring him to her sister.
The Fire Nation grieves appropriately for the Crown Prince. A doctor settles into a retirement from the military, but never stops healing. A pikes man deserts, seeking a legend, not unlike how a prince could have done in another life, if his father had more restraint or thought that banishing a child with no chance of return was a bad political move. He is the one to inform an admiral about the events of the Agni Kai. He is invited to a game of Pai Sho.
Days after the death of the prince, a young boy named Li awakens to a house filled with herbs, plants, an old woman and a cat.