Kureha ignored him and turned her attention to Bonney, who was now sitting on a chair with Robin hovering nearby, protective as a shadow.
Kureha mixed something in a small pot, then poured it into a chipped cup and stirred with a spoon like she was trying to punish the liquid into obedience.
"This'll help," she said, voice rough. "If it doesn't, you were weak anyway."
Jack tilted his head. "That's a comforting bedside manner."
Kureha shot him a look. "You're a pirate. Don't pretend you know comfort."
Bonney eyed the cup like it was an enemy.
Kureha crouched in front of her—surprisingly gentle in motion, even if her face remained sharp—and lifted the spoon.
Bonney's lips pressed into a stubborn line.
Kureha's eyebrow twitched. "Open."
Bonney's eyes watered.
Kureha sighed, the long suffering sigh of someone who had lived over a century and was still being forced to deal with the concept of children. "Fine. We do it the easy way."
Ginny brightened, "There's an easy way?"
Kureha held Bonney's nose.
Bonney opened her mouth in outrage.
The spoon went in.
Bonney's eyes widened. She made a noise that suggested betrayal. "Bad!"
Kureha nodded, satisfied. "Good. Means it works."
Robin instinctively stepped back half a pace, then caught herself. She wasn't afraid of medicine. She was afraid of Kureha.
Kureha turned her head toward Robin. "You. Want one too?"
Robin saw Bonney's face, saw the way her little hands clenched, saw the grimace that looked like it had been carved into her by bitterness.
Robin opened her mouth. "No, thank you—"
Kureha shoved the spoon into Robin's mouth anyway.
Robin's eyes went wide. Her pupils tightened. Her face remained controlled for exactly one second, and then she looked like she'd swallowed an entire library's worth of regret. (Get it? Library's worth? I am thinking of using more puns)
It was bitter enough to strip paint.
Robin's throat worked. She swallowed with visible effort, pride and survival forcing it down.
Kureha watched her. "Good girl."
Robin's expression suggested she was considering several historically significant words she shouldn't say out loud. (Again)
Jack, deeply entertained, murmured, "Welcome to the crew's culinary experience, Miss Robin."
Robin glared at him with a sweetness that promised future revenge.
After the chaos settled—Bonney sniffling but already looking a fraction better, Robin quietly drinking water like she was cleansing her soul—Kureha sat down, arms crossed, and stared at them.
The fire popped.
"You didn't come here," Kureha said, "after a climb like that, with a baby, just for a cold."
Ginny's shoulders tensed. She glanced at Gibbs, then at Jack.
Jack nodded once, small and steady. Go on.
Gibbs gave Ginny a look—comforting, steady, the kind of look a father gave when he didn't have solutions but refused to let you face the fear alone.
Ginny took a breath. She sounded like she was pulling the words out from somewhere buried.
"Do you know about Sapphire Scales?"
Kureha's eyes widened.
Kureha's mouth tightened. She didn't curse this time. That alone made the air heavier.
"I've heard of it," Kureha said.
Ginny swallowed. "I have it."
A stillness spread.
Kureha leaned forward, eyes sharp. "Show me."
Ginny didn't need to be told twice. She pulled back the cloth at her collar just enough to reveal the faint shimmer beneath skin—like light trapped under the surface, beautiful in the wrong way.
Kureha's gaze locked on it like a hawk.
She exhaled slowly. "Rare. Nasty. Not a story you want."
Ginny's mouth twisted into something that tried to be a smile. "I didn't ask for it."
"No one does," Kureha snapped. Then, as if she hated sounding soft, she added, "Sit."
Ginny sat.
Kureha moved with brisk efficiency, checking, prodding, asking questions like she was interrogating the disease itself. She listened to Ginny's breathing, watched her eyes, measured her fatigue with the kind of cruel accuracy only a great doctor had.
Ragetti leaned toward Pintel and whispered, "She's scary, like the old butler we once saw in that mansion."
Pintel whispered back, "I was thinking the same thing."
Jack watched Kureha work and found himself strangely quiet. He didn't like doctors. Doctors asked questions. Questions led to answers. Answers led to debts, and Jack had already collected enough debts to last him a lifetime.
Kureha finally straightened.
"I need time," she said. "I need to research what I can. And I need to keep her under observation."
Ragetti opened his mouth, then closed it. It sounded like something a doctor would say, which was alarming because it meant it was real.
Ginny's hands tightened in her lap. "Is there—"
Kureha cut her off. "I didn't say I could cure you."
The words hit like cold water.
Bonney, too young to understand, tugged Robin's sleeve and asked, "Mommy?"
Ginny's eyes softened, then went wet again.
Kureha's voice stayed hard. "But I can tell you what's happening. I can slow what I can. I can keep the child from catching every winter sickness and falling apart while you're trying to stay alive."
Jack's eyes narrowed slightly. "And the baby?"
Kureha looked at Bonney. "The baby, child hasn't shown any symptoms...yet. That's a good start."
Jack didn't look satisfied.
Gibbs stepped forward. "Doctor Kureha… we're not asking for charity."
Kureha snorted. "Good. I don't give it."
She named a number.
Gibbs flinched. Pintel choked. Ragetti whispered a prayer to any god willing to lower prices. Robin's eyes flicked to Jack's coat, as if calculating how much treasure he had stolen recently.
Jack didn't even blink. "Done."
Gibbs stared at him. "Captain—"
Jack waved him off. "We have gold. We give her a barrel"
Kureha's eyes sharpened. "You are giving me a gold barrel? Do you want a doctor in your crew?"
Jack smiled, harmless and bright. I don't want an old witch as my crew's doctor who will bankrupt me with every treatment."
Kureha looked like she'd met her kind. "Don't call me old, I am still in my youth you know."
Ragetti whispered to Pintel, "If she's young, we are not even born yet."
Pintel snickered. Kureha's eyes snapped to them. They immediately shut up and began whistling, not meeting her eyes.
The debate that followed was half practical and half absurd.
Pintel suggested leaving Ginny and Bonney in the capital because "capital sounds safe."
Kureha insulted him so efficiently that Pintel looked like he'd been educated.
Ragetti suggested they all stay because "moving is tiring."
Augur, leaning against the wall, said flatly, "Staying increases risk."
Robin quietly agreed, reminding them that too many eyes on one place was dangerous, and that she could not be seen.
Kureha looked at Robin for a long moment, then said, "You're the demon child."
Robin stiffened.
Kureha snorted. "I don't care. If the government wants you, they can climb my mountain and ask nicely."
Jack muttered, "They won't ask nicely."
Kureha grinned, sharp. "Then they'll freeze nicely."
Eventually, the shape of the plan formed.
Ginny would stay.
Bonney would stay.
Robin would stay.
Gibbs didn't like leaving them. Jack didn't like leaving anything he considered his responsibility, even if he pretended otherwise. Pintel didn't like leaving because he feared library in the ship would finally come alive and the books would bite him now and that Robin wouldn't be there to stop them. Ragetti didn't like leaving because he'd finally found a house where someone else yelled more than Gibbs did.
Kureha insisted. "One month. I observe. I research. I decide what can be done."
"And if you don't come back?" Ginny asked softly.
Jack's grin returned, but it wasn't careless. "Then you better find a new crew."
Ginny's eyes tightened, emotion threatening again.
Kureha snapped, "No crying in my house unless you're bleeding."
Bonney giggled at the harsh voice. It was small, but it cracked the gloom.
When the crew prepared to leave—coats back on, boots tightened, Pintel complaining about snow as if snow had personally wronged him—Jack pulled Kureha aside, into a corner where the others wouldn't listen.
Kureha eyed him. "What now? You want me to fix your face too?"
Jack touched his cheek thoughtfully. "My face is priceless, Doctor."
Kureha's expression suggested she had met priceless things before and thrown them out.
Jack's grin didn't fade. "Not for the crew. For me."
Kureha's eyes narrowed with interest.
Jack recounted the battle with Chinjao. He didn't dramatize it much—oddly enough. He mentioned the drill. The pressure. The moment his body moved before his mind caught up. The strange sense of the world slowing down, of attacks becoming visible before they existed.
Kureha's eyes widened—just for a moment.
Jack saw it and seized it like a man grabbing a rope in a storm. "You know about Haki."
Kureha huffed. "As a 124-year-old young woman, I know a few things."
Jack nodded, satisfied. "I awakened Armament Haki in that battle."
Kureha stared at him like he'd announced he'd learned to breathe underwater.
But she didn't look impressed.
Jack lifted his sleeve slightly and rolled his shoulder. "Ever since I woke up, I've been feeling pain. Here. Deep. Like someone hammered my bones from the inside."
Kureha didn't need a long explanation. Her eyes sharpened, her mind moving faster than any of them.
She stepped forward, grabbed his arm without permission, and pressed hard in a spot that made Jack's grin twitch.
Jack hissed. "Hag-"
"Shut up. And call me hag one more time I will amputate your hand." Kureha said, and pressed again.
Jack's face tightened. He tried to laugh it off and failed.
Kureha released him and crossed her arms. "Idiot."
Jack blinked. "I've been called worse."
"This is worse," Kureha snapped. "You forced it."
Jack's eyes narrowed. "Forced what?"
Kureha's gaze locked onto him like a scalpel.
"Haki reflux," she said. "When you awaken Haki… but your body isn't ready to carry it."