Song's temper had finally cooled after a couple days' travel with Yì Suì.  It helped that she had to hide it from him.  It did not help that his retreating so far into his shell tended to make it flare.

Finally, on the fourth day, he said, "W-we should l-look f-for B-Bian."

She glanced at him, startled.  "I… I think she might have gone home, Yì Suì.  To her real home, I mean, not that village of ingrates."

"W-we should s-still try," he said, shrinking back a little from her gaze.

"You're right, we should," she said after a moment.  "But it's across the ocean.  And… I'm not too sure we would be welcomed there."

"Wh-why?"

"Because we're Earth Kingdom peasants," Song explained.  "Bian is from the Fire Nation, who we're at war with."

"...Oh..."

Song looked westward.   "…but if you want to…"

"W-we sh-should," he repeated.

The girl smiled at him.  "Then we will."

He nodded, and relaxed a little.

Song promptly altered their course west, and after a number of weeks they came to a port.  Things got difficult when she tried to buy passage to the Fire Nation, however.  The only ship that was willing to take them across the ocean was obviously crewed entirely by male pirates.  Song weighed her options — and then made the deal, desperately hoping that this wouldn't come back to haunt her.

On the trip across the ocean, the pirates mostly ignored their two passengers — something Yì Suì, in particular, was glad of. When they finally made landfall, he practically bolted off the ship.  Song remained only long enough to pay the second part of their fare, and then followed the boy quickly.  If she never had to spend that much time around pirates again, it would still be far too much.

Their trip across the Fire Nation itself proved very uneventful — they told those they passed they were siblings, and those who asked why Yì Suì was so shy were easily satisfied when told he'd been kidnapped.

They found no traces of Bian.

Song's worry only grew as they came closer to the capital.

It was Yì Suì who first noted the signs of battle. "S-song..." he whispered, staring at the burnt and cut-up trees just outside the capital city.

"Oh, my," whispered the doctor as she took it in.

A few cautious minutes later, Yì Suì screamed, finding a man in a green uniform and dark, flattened cone-shaped hat pinned to a tree by a broadsword through his throat.

"Get behind me!" Song ordered him, standing between the boy and the body.

Yì Suì was only too willing to obey.

And then a bloody hand reached up from the grass and clamped around Song's ankle.

The doctor almost screamed, but pulled free and stumbled away, turning to see who had grabbed her.  It proved to be a fifteen-year-old girl, covered in blood, with a broadsword matching the one in the tree-man's throat buried in her gut. There was something clinging to the other end of the sword, but, between the grass and the blood and the girl's loosened dark hair spilling over it, it was impossible to tell what it was. The wounded girl's golden eyes glinted for a few seconds, then fell shut as she passed out.

Shakily, Song knelt beside her and pulled bandages from her bag, immediately setting into treat her and keep her from dying.  As she moved around, the thing holding onto the other end of the sword became clear.

It was an arm.

Just as she uncovered it, Yì Suì screamed again, from the other side of the small clearing.

The girl was stable enough.  Song ran to the younger boy.

He had found the body the raggedly severed arm belonged to. It was a hard face to forget.

"Lee!" gasped the girl as she dropped to her knees beside him.  That was the only outburst she allowed herself as she threw her all into making sure he didn't bleed out.

He was frighteningly pale, and cool, but his heart was still beating, and he was still breathing.

"Yì Suì," said Song as she worked.  "I need you to find me some help.  Please.  They'll die if we can't get them to a better healer…"

The frightened boy nodded, and fled the clearing to look for someone — anyone — who might be able to help.  Soon enough, he came across a young man around Song's age lying flat on the ground, coughing.  A body lay next to him, of a rather surprised-looking man wearing the same clothing as the first body Yì Suì had found — only this one's nose had been smashed in.

"U-um..." Yì Suì finally managed to get out, his voice a terrified squeak.

The young man made it to his knees and turned to look at Yì Suì.  Surprise entered his eyes, and he coughed some more, keeping one hand pressed against his throat.  "Y-you okay, kid?" he asked.  He was bruised, battered, and bloody — in fact, his physical condition was worse than the dead man's.

Still stammering and high-pitched, and speaking almost too quickly to be understand, the child stammered out what was in the clearing he'd come from.

"Zuko," breathed the man.  He tried to get to his feet and failed, hitting the ground rather hard.  He swore and slammed one heavy fist into the earth, cracking it, and then tried a second time, and made it.  "Take me."

Yì Suì nodded, taking care to keep a distance between himself and the stranger, then led him to where he'd left Song.

When the man saw the scene, he swore and rushed to Song and the man she had called Lee, taking notice of the unconscious girl only long enough to sink her into the earth.  "Hey!" protested Song, but he ignored her.

"Haven't… got long," he gasped out, then slammed his fist into the ground twice before he, too, passed out, collapsing over Song's lap.

After about ten minutes, a short, blind twelve-year-old girl found them there. She swore rather excessively, sank the unconscious girl a little deeper, and hauled the unscarred young man off of Song.

The doctor let out a relieved sigh at this — the earthbender was heavy.  "Thank you," she said through tears.  Lee — Zuko — whatever his name really was — was dying, and she didn't have the skill to save him.

"...Is Sparky okay to move?" the girl asked, after a few seconds.

"L— Zuko?  If he can be kept immobilised…"

She nodded, then raised the earth under him, as a makeshift stretcher. After a moment's thought, she did the same for the other unconscious young man. Slowly, carefully, she started pushing them towards the palace.

Song hesitated.  "Wait — what about her?"  She indicated the other girl as she got to her feet, brushing in vain at the blood soaking her dress.

The twelve-year-old paused, clearly considering just leaving her there, then shrugged, and, none-too-gently, lifted the entire block the teenager was imprisoned in to drag along as well.

The doctor flinched, then looked for Yì Suì.  He was trembling, terrified, on the edge of the clearing.  "Come on," she said softly to him.  "We'll find somewhere safe for you."

He nodded. "Wh-what about th-them...?"

"I'm going to clean up and help them some more, okay?"

He nodded again. "K-kay."  Together, the two of them followed the blind girl, who very quickly ran into another teenage boy, this one dark, with blue eyes. "Well?" she said, abruptly.

"It's over," he said, sounding tired. "He did it, he's fi — " His eyes widened, taking in the three bodies. "What happened?"

"No idea. But I think you need to find Sweetness yesterday."

"Right." He turned and ran back for the palace.

While they waited, Song flitted from Lee— Zuko to the teenage girl to the earthbender.  She noticed quickly that the earthbender had several lesions on his throat as well as a bruising pattern that indicated someone had tried to garrotte him with a chain.  Grimly, she cleaned him up and spread an herbal paste over the wounds on his throat to stop the bleeding.  He was going to scar, however — his neck was pinched, and the skin rubbed off in places.

A few minutes later, the dark boy returned with a girl who looked enough like him that she was probably his sister. She let out a little cry of dismay and knelt next to the stretcher holding Zuko.

Song joined her, pointing out where the injured boy needed help that she simply could not provide.

"Sweetness" first tried to reattach the severed arm. After nearly five minutes, however, it became apparent that this was not going to happen — by the looks of things, the injury had been caused by another Dai Li chain. Everything she tried, no matter what, left the arm falling off again. Starting to cry a little, she sealed off the bleeding, tended to the most serious of his other injuries, then turned to the earthbender.

He seemed more exhausted than anything else; Song had done much of the grunt work already.

Satisfied of this, with some reluctance, the waterbender turned to the girl imprisoned in earth. "...I have to, don't I."

"I can hold her," the tiny girl said. "And Sokka can keep his sword on her, too, just in case."

"I'll help," Song added, wondering just what it was about the dying girl that made them all so cautious.  Who was she?

"...Fine," 'Sweetness' agreed, still seeming reluctant, and the twelve-year-old opened the top of the earth prison. 'Sokka' drew an eerie black sword and put it at the unconscious girl's throat.

Together, the two girls worked on the unconscious one, Song cleaning the wounds again and moving bandages aside so the younger girl could heal what lay underneath.  "All right, that's all I can do," she said, wearily. The tiny earthbender resealed the girl in stone, and the waterbender swayed. Her brother caught her.

"…now what?" asked Song, uncertain.

"We go back to the palace," 'Sokka' said, supporting his sister. "Put Zuko somewhere safe, lock the bitch up somewhere safer, and then..." He shrugged. "We wait for him to wake up and he talks it over with Aang, and they figure out how they're going to handle the next step, I guess."

"I guess Yì Suì and I will find some place to stay," the doctor said after a moment's thought.

"Why don't you come to the palace with us?" 'Sweetness' asked. "You can help with cleanup, 'specially since I'm not good for much more."

Song hesitated, torn.  On the one hand, she wasn't nearly as exhausted as many of these people had to be, depending on how long the fighting had gone on.  On the other hand… she looked over at Yì Suì again.

He hung on the fringes of the group, clearly intending to follow her wherever she went.

"Is… there somewhere he can stay? Without men?"

"...It's a big palace, I'm sure we can find a room," she replied, sounding a little puzzled.

Song lowered her voice and leaned in close so only Sweetness could hear.  "He's been abused by men for most of his life.  He's very timid because of it."

Song suspected this didn't spark righteous fury only because the other girl was too tired. "We'll find a room for him."

"Thank you," the doctor said softly, bowing.

Sweetness nodded, then leaned against her brother as they made their slow, careful way back to the palace.  A room was quickly found for Yì Suì to stay in, and Song explained to him that she was going to find the infirmary so she could help out some more.  "I'll keep the door locked, and only you and I will have the keys, all right?"

He nodded, and made a beeline for the windowsill, where he pushed the window open a little — something of a habit he'd made after that policeman had burst into his room, to ensure that he'd have an escape route should something similar happen again — and curled up.

Song quickly found a change of clothing — her dress was a blood-drenched loss — and then slipped through the palace, trying to find the infirmary.  She was sidetracked, however, by every wounded man or woman she came across.  She might have lacked a waterbender's healing ability, but she could still clean their injuries, set broken bones, stop bleeding, and ease pain.

After some indeterminate amount of time, an old man pulled her aside and ordered her off for food and sleep.  Realising that she was woozy and unsteady on her feet, the girl agreed and then stumbled off to try to find a place to eat.  Someone in a uniform — probably a guard — showed her to the kitchen, then to a place where she could crash for a few hours.

She was just coherent enough to thank him before she collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

part two is here.