uncle_iroh | Inbox for Sn: Pai Sho

He watched it very carefully for a long moment, thinking about possibilities and potentials.

"Hmm."

He smiled, leaning down to look at the board from a different angle. It helped, sometimes. Then he made a move on the opposite side.

"A very interesting play!" he said, pleased. "It is as I often tell Zuko, you can see the most interesting things... when looking at a situation from another point of view." He managed not to make a pun on Aang's name there, though it was hard. Still he felt the implied pun would do the job. He made his next move, watching the old/young man carefully.

He laughed, a little bit.

"A good lesson, yeah -" he countered quickly, backing up his first piece. "even when it's hard to remember the entire board."

And he got it, though he didn't say anything about it.

"Even when you cannot see the entire board," he countered. "Retreating so soon? Then let me see if that is the trap I expect it to be." He advanced.

He grinned, shaking his head. Here he thought he'd been subtle enough. Apparently not. And now the trap would spring far too early.

He makes his counter, closing the trap early.

"You really are as good as Zuko said."

"My nephew flatters me," he said with a warm smile and a nod as he worked to turn the early trap to his advantage if he could. "But the game is not yet over."

"Not by a long shot," he agreed, pausing to sip at his tea before moving in a seemingly unconnected way.

"It's nice being all on the same side now," he adds. It's a known thing, an understood thing - but worth saying, nevertheless.

He sipped his tea as well. "I agree. This is how we should be. It is good not just for my nephew, but for us all. And our world, when we return to it."

He nodded.

"He's...happier. I mean, once the changes are settling in. He does well when given responsibility. Well, this kind."

He remembers the other kind all too well - but in fairness, Zuko had done well at that, too. Just...not so much fun from the other side of it.

"I sometimes wonder if my nephew feels that he is allowed to be happy. Perhaps that too can be learned here."

That causes him to nod.

"He puts so much emphasis on responsibility. But he'll find the rest. I believe in him."

"And if he cannot find it, he has us to show him the way."

He nodded, again, seeming to shore up his defences against Iroh's moves.

"He seems to be doing well here," he added, conversationally.

"I am pleased to hear that you see that as well," he said, working on his own defenses.

He shakes his head.

"Here I was thinking I'd only have to catch up to a different world once. If we count literally and metaphorically...well, it's three times now."

"That is the thing about worlds. And about travel. We are always seeing a new and different world. Even if it seems as though we have never left the one to which we are born. Time, nature, other people, spirits. Everything acts to constantly make the world new and different." He sipped his tea.

"In that, this place is much like all Zuko and I have seen since leaving the Fire Nation. It is much like Ba Sing Se. It is much like leaving your home must have been for you."

He's quiet for the better part of a minute, just thinking on those words. He hadn't thought about it that way, really.

"You're right, of course. And, at least this time didn't involve getting frozen."

"There is more than one way to be frozen," he said, seriously as he sipped his tea before taking the pot to refill both their cups.

He smiled a bit, nodding.

"Also true," he responded, thinking about the board and far more besides. "I keep changing with the times, and just hoping that some part of me stays recognizable. Seems to be working so far."

"That is one of the cores of bending after all. When we bend an element it both changes and yet stays the same. You can use bending to pull a breeze from a hurricane, it is yet the same wind. When you pull water from the ocean then return it, it fits right back into the water that birthed it. Take fire from a torch and it burns the same in your hand. You can make a orb of earth, it remains stone. We all change, we all can change. And yet who we are is always the same. The important parts of us remain, always."

"That much I knew...but harder to apply it to self instead of elements," he replied, with a nod.

He tilted his head.

"So Zuko has always been Zuko, then? Serious, well-meaning?"

"Many things that are worthwhile are difficult," he agreed kindly.

"And yes. Zuko may have lost sight many times over what he should be doing, what the best course of action is, but he always meant things for the best in his own way."

He leaned back and stroked his beard.

"Since the war began, in the Fire Nation, children have been raised and taught to believe that the war is a good thing. That the Fire Nation isn't trying to conquer the world to rule or ruin it, but to unify and improve it. That the other nations had less technology and less civilization than we did. That one war now would stop all future wars because if we shared a culture, we would all understand each other better and have no further need to fight."

He sipped his tea.

"Those of us being groomed to rule weren't taught the truth behind it. We were indoctrinated even more, perhaps. I came to my realization of the truth late in life. Too late," he said softly. Too late indeed to save his son. He sighed softly. "I saw too late the cost of the war, saw the cultures that we weren't absorbing but destroying, the lives we were ending."

He took another sip of tea.

"For Zuko, honor was always a pinnacle of good. to be a good person, you had to have honor. And on the surface, that is not a bad way to see things. But when the wrong people are held up as paragons of virtue, the definition of honor, and our understanding of it, can be muddled."

He leaned back. "We were each raised to believe that our fathers were good men, doing their best for the people not just of the Fire Nation but of all nations. That they were men of honor, doing the difficult thing for the sake of everyone. It is hard, then, to understand a moment when those same men act utterly without honor. Because then you have to either believe that they never had honor, or that your own understanding of honor is flawed. My brother acted without honor many times in Zuko's life." the words were said a bit grimly, but without clear anger or judgment. They were fact. His emotions would not help, here. "That left Zuko constantly trying to figure out what honor actually was. That is why he believed that honor was a thing someone could bestow upon you, or withhold from you, rather than something intrinsic to who you are and laced into your actions and inactions."

"He believed the war was just and that his father had honor, and only took honorable actions. Therefore anyone who opposed the war had to be wither wrong or evil. It took you and your friends to show him the truth."

He leaned forward again to refill his tea cup. "I must admit, while I am glad it happened, I do feel a little like I have failed, that for all the time I was with him, I was not able to convince him or guide him nearly so well as you were. Either way, Zuko learned far sooner than I did. And he was always fully himself, even as he seemed to the world to change drastically. A well meaning, serious person for whom honor was important. Someone always trying to do what is right. And of course, someone who is stubborn." Very very stubborn.

The silence from all of that, things he'd never known, draws out. It isn't the Fire Nation he'd known, not the one that lived in his memories, lived in Roku's memories. It was astonishing how quickly, how thoroughly it had become something else - its teeth lengthened, its sinews bound by false ideas for the pride of a few - then let loose at the jugular of an entire world.

He sighed.

"I hope the Fire Nation can...well, not go back. It can never go back. Nothing can. Time does not allow us such a luxury. But under him - with your guidance...it will become something wiser than it was."

He smiled.

"It was always brash, always eager. Hopefully those come back again. The Fire Nation built, more than anyone else. Saw problems and thought of solutions. You need some stubborn for that."

"I am not maligning stubborn as a whole. Some of the best people are stubborn. But like with many aspects of personality, it needs to be wed to kindness, fairness, and love."

He lifted his tea cup as if in salute.

"This is why more people should drink more tea. It is impossible to have tea and not have love, after all."

He nods in agreement.

"Especially your tea. Gosh, it's some of the best I've had."

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