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The royal physician moved through the palace halls at a brisk pace. He had been summoned after the Agni Kai. Another Agni Kai.
His mind drifted back to the first one, the day Prince Zuko had been carried to his room by guards, unconscious, half his face burned away. The guards had left without a word, and when Zuko awoke, he had been alone. No mother. No sister. No father. No uncle, not at first. Only the physician, an old man with salves and bandages, trying to offer comfort where the royal family had offered none.
He remembered the boy's trembling voice when he finally regained consciousness.
"Has father asked about me?"
And silence the boy was met with when the physician was unable to offer even a paltry lie.
Now, as he approached the prince’s quarters, he braced himself for a similar sight; the prince broken, abandoned, suffering in silence.
Instead, he heard a stern, exasperated, yet unmistakably warm voice.
“—You can barely stand, what made you think raiding the kitchen for Komodo chicken samosas was a good idea?”
“I was just trying to make sure you knew where to grab something to eat before I passed out in the hallway, you have to admit they’re pretty good.”
“They’re good, Zuko, but they’re not ‘risk collapsing in the hallway’ good.”
The prince huffed quietly, the corners of his mouth lifting into a soft, unguarded smile as he looked up at the girl perched on his bed. His shoulders eased as he settled back into his pillows, the tension in him dissipating in a way that would have been unthinkable the last time the boy suffered at his family’s hands.
The physician cleared his throat in the doorway.
The prince startled at the sound, a sharp wince crossing his face. The girl’s hands shot up to his shoulders out of reflex, steadying him before he could further strain himself.
“Easy,” she murmured, the word slipping out with the ease.
The boy went faintly pink, suddenly aware that they had an audience as he tried to gather himself.
The physician stepped inside with measured calm, his expression the same composed neutrality he had worn through decades of palace service. But at the sight before him—
He inclined his head.
“Prince Zuko,” he said, voice low but steady. “I was told you required tending.”
“Physician Jee, uh, yes,” he said, voice catching before he forced it into something steadier. “The Fire Sages advised that the royal physician perform a checkup as protocol after an Agni Kai, but my friend already healed most of the damage.”
He look over at the girl beside him as a warm and quietly proud expression spread over his face. “This is Katara, she’s the Avatar’s water bending master, and an excellent healer.”
The Water Tribe girl broke eye contact with the Prince before offering a kind smile in greeting.
“It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
The physician inclined his head in return, his voice measured but not cold. “And you as well, Master Katara. I have been treating Prince Zuko since he was a boy.”
He studied her for a moment with the quiet, discerning eye of someone who had spent decades reading pain. Her stance held the coiled readiness of a fighter, yet the hand resting on the prince’s shoulder lay there with the gentle touch of a healer.
“The Prince is fortunate you were close at hand.” He said.
“Lightning wounds are… almost always fatal.”
Katara’s expression softened, though a brief shadow crossed her features, “I was so worried when I couldn’t get to him sooner.”
A flicker of something—recognition, perhaps—passed through the physician’s eyes. He had heard whispered rumors that Princess Azula had in fact managed to kill the Avatar with lightning, though he figured it could not be so after the events of the eclipse. He was familiar with the princess’s relentlessness and ruthless precision. The fact that this Water Tribe girl had survived long enough to reach the prince at all was remarkable.
“May I?” he asked as he approached the pair.
Katara nodded and shifted enough to give him space, though her hand remained on Zuko’s shoulder.
The physician drew back the edge of the prince’s robe and stopped.
Lightning wounds were unmistakable. Violently ruptured skin and scorched in branching patterns. He had seen them only a handful of times in his long career, and never had he seen one quite like this.
The starburst scar was there, angry and red at the center, but the surrounding skin appeared to have been healed weeks ago, the swelling reduced, the edges knitted together with a precision that bordered on miraculous.
He pressed lightly along the ribs.
“You should be in far worse condition,” the physician murmured, more to himself than to either of them.
The physician continued his examination, fingers moving with practiced gentleness. He checked the prince’s breathing, the pulse at his wrist, the tension in his muscles. Each result was better than the last.
Finally, he stepped back.
“This is extraordinary work,” he said quietly, turning to Katara.
“You have spared him weeks of considerable pain.”
Katara’s gaze dropped for a moment. “There’s still deeper healing you’ll need once you’ve rested.”
Zuko nodded his head, the motion gentle but firm. “Alright, but for now I’m ok. Really.”
A quiet beat passed between them.
Then Katara murmured, “We still don’t know if the others are safe.”
“Aang and the others will make it. They will, just like you said.”
Katara nodded, reassured for a moment.
A pause.
“And Azula…” Katara whispered. “I’m still trying to make sense of everything.”
Zuko exhaled, weary but soft. “Me too. We will, but you need rest too.”
Even through their exhaustion, the physician recognized an underlying grounded ease between them. In the unguarded way the girl spoke to the prince, her voice steady and free of ceremony. In the softening of his expression as he listened to her, instinctively making room for her weariness alongside his own. The quiet honesty lingering between them, an unspoken understanding that neither had to carry the night alone.
The physician gathered his tools, his movements slow, deliberate.
“I am sure Prince Zuko will recover fully, in time.” he said, more certain now than he had been when he entered the room.
A faint and assuring smile graced his features. “Rest will do you good.”
Zuko thanked him respectfully, though his attention already settled back on Katara.
The physician stepped toward the door, pausing only once to glance back. Years ago, the prince had woken in this very room to nothing but isolation and silence. Today, the physician left the prince’s chambers with something like hope settling in his chest.
He remembered the first scar, the one that marred half the prince’s face. A burn delivered by a father’s hand, punishment for a boy who had dared to defend soldiers from needless sacrifice. Zuko had suffered for his compassion, and the physician had been the only one to sit at the bedside of a marked and banished prince.
And now, years later, another scar carved into the prince’s chest by lightning, coldly delivered by his sister. A wound taken not for soldiers, not for honor, but to simply protect a girl hailing from the Water Tribe.
As he continued down the hall, he found himself wondering, despite himself, what history lay between them. What bond compelled the prince to throw himself into lightning’s path for this girl. What past they shared that made her voice lilt when she spoke his name, or made his gaze soften when he looked to her.
Two scars, two acts of protection—one forced upon him for daring to defend his people, and one willingly taken for the girl whose safety he had placed above his own. In that stark contrast, the physician saw the truth of the Fire Lord Zuko was destined to become. A ruler whose loyalties were already written into his skin: one to the people he would very soon rule, and one to the girl who, whether either of them realized it yet, would stand beside him in all the years to come.
The boy was no longer alone.
And the physician, who had once been the only witness to a lost prince’s suffering, now found himself quietly grateful to be replaced by the young woman standing at the side of the king he was always meant to be.