(Continued from here with @writedisaster )
Lip doesn’t have anything to say in response to the physician’s continued denial. He just stares, as if he’s not quite sure whether Ithadel had been speaking to him or to someone else, someone in a different place, someone who can afford to hear no. It’s Phyllis who first seems to understand. She hides her face while Lip keeps staring.
The question makes Lip flinch. The physician’s voice sounds low and taut; he sounds like someone they want to please. But they can’t answer. They can’t. They’ve already fucked this up so badly. They lift their chin, trying to look like Phoebe, act like Phoebe. They’ll say something harsh about how it’s not his place to ask, and they’ll-
His hands look like their father’s hands. Their head stops working again.
“Our… hosts," they hear themself say instead. Their voice is clear enough, but it sounds like it’s taking a great effort to speak that clearly. "It would be… rude… to refuse our hosts.”
Phyllis is crying. She’s trying to hide it, but she isn’t as good at that as Lip is. She’s young. She hasn’t had his years of practice. As quiet as it is, the sound makes Lip move again. He wraps her in his arms, cradling her golden head against his shoulder as she shakes. He forces himself to breathe in, and then to speak.
“It’ll be alright, Liss. It’ll be alright. We’ll be- you’ll- I’ll just ask the prince for help.”
The thing about being secondborn is you don’t really need to be smart. Secondborn children don’t need the steadiness of the firstborn child, or the cleverness of the youngest. It is to everyone’s good fortune that Prince Lip was born second. And it’s a joke that he’s the one sitting here now, talking about this.
Phyllis stops crying, as much from surprise as anything else. “The prince?" she repeats, in a whisper. "But he’s-”
“-so wise and so kind," Lip interrupts fervently, before Phyllis can say anything she shouldn’t. "I’m sure he’ll be able to help us.”
He takes Phyllis’s hands in his own, gives her a light squeeze and a warm smile. Despite the sleepless eyes and uncombed hair, he looks for a moment like the prince who waves to the tournament crowds. Bright and lovely and unhurt. “I’ll ask Harriet to bring ice for your ankle, and then tonight I’ll speak to the prince. It’ll all be alright.”
He knows Phyllis is young, but she’s smart. Smarter than him, probably. Smart enough to know a bad idea when she hears one. But she’s young and she’s hurt and he’s her big brother, and she wants to believe that he has the right answers for this. He can’t blame her for that. He kisses her forehead and draws back. Things to do.
He pulls the bell-rope that will alert Harriet, and slowly, unsteadily gets to his feet. “I’ll talk to her," he mumbles, looking at no one. "If you have anything else that could help with the pain…”
The sentence trails off as he focuses on walking, leaving Ithadel and Phyllis to sort out the remainder. He doesn’t know Harriet as well as he knows Anna; better to meet her in the hall than to have her come in and see Ithadel here. When she shows up, he’s leaning against the doorframe outside; he relays Ithadel’s instructions on ice and care, then sends her on her way. Once she’s gone, he leans back into the room.
“Are you ready?" He asks listlessly, pulling at the clasp of his cloak. "I’ll walk with you to the door.”
Ithadel’s ringing panic eases as Lip neither censures him nor accuses the monarchs, but it still takes him longer than it should to process the reply, watching the royals comfort each other with wide, wary eyes.
At least part of his difficulty is because what Lip is saying doesn’t make sense.
Hosts? If anyone should be the host it would be the royal family; this is their castle and he doesn’t know of recent travel. And… it’s hard to picture Lip asking his brother for help with this. Is another royal family visiting? Ithadel doesn’t pay much mind to public going-ons in that vein, but usually there’s some sort of public spectacle or chatter from his patients that he can’t avoid.
As the prince steps away, Ithadel speaks to the princess in a low, conspiratorial murmur. “Are you worried that you will still have to dance, or worried about disappointing your… your ‘hosts’?”
But the princess just shakes her head. Ithadel clenches his jaw and stares down at the bed – slowly notices his hands, and carefully unclenches those, smoothing apologetically at the bedding until it lies smooth once more. (Except it doesn’t. Pressed wrinkles remain, faint but accusatory.)
This. This is why. It wasn’t just his family, it’s any structure with people that have complete authority like this, isn’t it? All it takes is one unreasonable person in power and suddenly everyone else is forced to act out a nightmare.
…that thought is probably treasonous, in this context.
…but Earth and Sky, this isn’t his nation, he doesn’t have a home anymore, and he really, really didn’t want to ever have to do this dance again —
(You think these children are any happier with it?)
Ithadel closes his eyes. He breathes out a slow breath; draws it in steady, by sheer force of will if not true calm.
Do the work. No trick. No choice. He can’t fix the world, but he can do his job, and that’s all it has ever really come down to. So Ithadel numbly considers his options and begins to plan what little mitigation he can offer. Nothing about what he’s witnessed here so far has inclined him towards optimism; better to plan for the worst case.
When Lip leans back in, it’s to find that Ithadel has partially unwrapped Phyllis’s ankle and is rearranging and reinforcing the splinting to provide more support. He doesn’t look up from his work as the prince speaks. His lips are pressed thin and pale.
“I’m starting to think,” Ithadel says, a bit distantly, “that the advice I’ve given you so far may not be well-tailored to your current situation.” And then he adds the dangerous part: “If I knew more about that situation, I might have different suggestions.”
Ithadel finishes with the princess’s leg, sets it back on the cushion, and dares a brief glance up at the prince to try to judge his reaction before turning back to his bag, measuring out a dose of pain tonic for the princess.
“Either way, my… your…” How on Earth am I supposed to address royalty– “Prince Lip, I would appreciate the opportunity to tend to your feet as well. Burst blisters present the risk of infection.”
It’s an assumption, but an assumption in which Ithadel is confident. The prince’s movements are ginger in the extreme. Ithadel swallows and offers the medication to Phyllis, avoiding eye contact and doing his best to minimize his overall presence.
(These aren’t audacious suggestions from a lowly subject. Of course not. They are entirely neutral possibilities, presented for the prince to take or leave as he will.)
