songerein | Tea For Who?

Entry tags:

Tea For Who? - OPEN

Who: Iroh and whomsoever wants to find him
Which: Open Log
Where: Not far from the fountain
What: Iroh enjoying sharing tea with strangers.
Warnings: Possible angst, themes of loss, possible war/death/betrayal mentions.

Iroh had found that he had been able to help people during the crisis in a number of ways. But one of them had been tea and talking. Just being there for people with a calming drink and an open ear. So he was trying that again now, once again by the base of the fountain.

Between conversations he was sipping his own tea and considering what it might take to open a tea shop here. For however long he was going to be here, that was...

For anyone who wanted to find him, he is near the fountain with a small comforting camp fire over which the tea pot is heating and a pair of large picnic style baskets, one of snacks and one of teas and tea fixings. So that he can have enough for every taste and stay a while for whoever showed up without over steeping the tea.

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Her, "Oh?" in response to his initial words was soft, sympathetic, accompanied by the faintest crumple of her brow as she considered the notion. Perhaps it would be harder for someone who had lived longer to acclimate to a new setting - although of course it begged a few questions that rose to the tip of her tongue. Only to get waylaid, that was, at the mention of another party involved--

"Your nephew?" Well, that implied obviously enough another curiosity about this friendly fellow. "Is... some of your family here with you, then? I know it's not unusual for people to come here from the same world, but not very many of us seem to be related to each other that way."

The idea was rather pleasant to her, it seemed, if the note of hope to her question was any indication.

He nodded. "Some of my family is indeed here," he agreed. "Both my family by blood and those with whom I share the bonds of the past." Specifically the war.

There was a certain glad wonder in the lass's eyes as she lowered her cup of tea unconsciously, holding it safely in both hands. It seemed her interest was held entirely in that moment by the notion of this pleasant old man having family along with him.

"How lucky...! It's always so nice when people don't have to come here alone. Are you-- close, with them?" Outside that which was implied by the relationships themselves, of course; given how readily he'd mentioned his nephew, that one specific connection seemed strong enough. Still, the question was a little stilted as she asked it, despite her clear interest in the subject - family was a somewhat complex topic, for Naminé.

"I would like to think that I am very close with my nephew. What he thinks, however, seems to change with the day," he said with a hearty laugh to show that he wasn't upset. "He's gone again now, off wandering probably. He does that every so often when he has hard choices to make."

A warm smile.

"As for those who I consider family in other ways, I have seen the young Avatar, Aang since my arrival here. As well as his teacher, Toph. Quite a remarkable young woman. I hope I live to see what they both become, for they and those like them are the ones who will reshape the very core of our world."

Not mentioning Azula was... a choice.

Iroh's laugh and words prompted a faint breath of amusement from Naminé as well. Kindly, she surmised aloud, "He must be young. I'm sure in time he'll make up his mind." She could think of one such fellow in her own acquaintance, wanderlust included; Riku was mellower, these days. Mulling it over a little more, though, the blonde sobered slightly to add, "Whatever decisions he makes, I hope they turn out for the better."

Listening along to the other descriptions, Naminé took another quiet sip of tea. "An... Avatar? I'm afraid I don't know what that is. But the way you talk about them - is your world in some kind of trouble?"

"I am sure they will, eventually," he said with a hint of a smile.

He sipped his tea as he considered the rest of what she said and asked. "Yes, but it is a trouble of our own making. The Avatar's job is usually to maintain the balance. That is supposed to be the balance between humans and spirits, but for the last hundred years a great war has altered the balance between humans and other humans. The Avatar has been working hard to end the war and restore the balance."

The lass paused to listen, her brow crumpling faintly, sympathetically. "That's... a very long time for people to fight." Quieter, "And a lot of responsibility for one person."

Especially one so young, who probably hadn't even been around for much of it. (Curious, too, to hear of someone with a duty involving spirits, but not too far off the beaten track for Naminé, supernatural entity that she technically was herself.) Hearing all this seemed to trouble her enough for her to linger on the explanation, and presently she asked, "What was the cause of the war? I know people disagree about all sorts of things, but to spend so much time at odds with each other..."

Part of her couldn't help but think back to what small traces there were of her own worlds' history, how so much was torn asunder by squabbling over the Light.

"A very long time, and thankfully the Avatar has some wonderful friends helping him. As for the whys of the war..." he sighed, pulling lightly on his beard.

"The blame can be laid nowhere other than the feet of my family where it belongs. What my grandfather told us his reasons were and what they actually were were not the same, of course. But what was taught to our people was that we wished to bring the advancements of the Fire Nation to the rest of the world so that they could all share in our prosperity. But what we gave them was not technology or prosperity. We brought them scars and death. Pain. Loss." He shook his head. "Some of us learned better in time, not not nearly enough of us."

He would not lessen his part in the pain spread to the rest of the world. "Whole cultures and species reduced to few if any surviving members. War is not the glory we were sold on. It isn't helping anyone. It is simply fighting and killing, each side so certain they are correct. That they're doing what they have no choice but to do. What they have to do."

Hand curling to her chest, Naminé looked thoroughly bothered by the whole matter - sad, though not angry. So many of her own experiences felt like a smaller scale by comparison, though of course the threat of the Heartless was massive, and not limited to a single world. But somehow it was worse imagining so many individuals caught up in such a conflict between humans, rather than the few who could fighting against a horde of unknowable evil.

"I... can understand wanting to help people learn, but that..." Faltering, she shook her head. "Well, it seems to me that it's just as you said. No matter what the real cause was, it sounds like it's done far more harm than good."

So much loss... She sat with the weight of it for a moment, clutching her teacup in both hands, then - finally looked up as something occurred to her. "Then you... if you disagree with the war, does that mean you've had to go against your own family?"

Not all of it, hypothetically, based on what he'd said before, but-- the implication seemed to be there just the same.

He nodded. "I did," he said, gravely. Then to lighten the mood, he laughed. "Of course my brother made it easy for me to do so."

Not that it was actually funny, but he felt badly for making the poor girl so upset. So it was time to smooth things out.

"More tea?"

Naturally, Naminé opened her mouth to offer sympathy, only to pause at Iroh's laugh. Looking perplexed a moment, she started to echo instead, "Your..." which was followed by a slightly quavering, regretful, "Oh."

But the blonde knew an attempt to shift the mood when she saw it. Despite the somberness lingering around her eyes, Naminé elected to play along, only taking a brief moment to down the very last of her tea before dutifully holding out her cup.

"Yes, please."

He smiled warmly and filled the cup for her. "A good tea brew is like a love. Unique and warms your heart."

The lass was certain to return his smile and careful to not to spill the cup once it was full, even as she hummed with a note of surprise. "I've never heard love described quite that way before."

Heart-warming, yes - but unique... As if there were different kinds, which she supposed there were, when she thought about it. "Still, I'm sure you're right. I... wouldn't know, I suppose."

"Would you not, my dear? Have you only one person you love?" he asked, kindly.

Naminé balked at the question, shrinking toward her shoulders as one might expect a teenager to. "Well, that's not-- exactly the case, no."

But what was the case she seemed to struggle to articulate, opening her mouth once and then shutting it, teacup held in both hands as she stared at it with faroff eyes. Her return to the present didn't take too long, however, and her brow pinched slightly as she refocused on Iroh.

"It's more that I... don't think I can say that I've ever loved someone, exactly, or even that I know what it should feel like. There are many people that I care about, but-- I've never used that word for it before." And given her already complicated relationship with emotions in general... the semantics of it become even more of a mess.

"Well, why don't you tell me about how you feel about these people you care about and we'll see if we can't sort it all out. A kind girl like you, I suspect you've found many people you could love by now."

The girl perked, shifting in place uncertainly. Although the details of why she had so many doubts about her capacity for love were probably too much to mention, there was no reason not to indulge the rest of the question, right? Truthfully, she needed the chance to explore the idea.

Struggling a moment with where to start, she temporarily neglected to drink her tea.

"I guess... I'm grateful to them, more than anything. In my own worlds, I was almost always alone. There were people who were important to me, ones I tried my best to protect in any way I could, but they... it was always from a distance. I couldn't get close, no matter how much I wanted to. And that meant that to them, I wasn't..."

Important? Real? Remembered? That was one of the more unpleasant parts of her history, and Naminé made an effort to shake it off; that wasn't what Iroh had asked about, not technically. The blonde took a sip of her tea to clear the thought, brow scrunched slightly, and started again.

"Here, things are different. I can walk freely - I can go and visit them any time I want to. And I suppose - a part of me was always afraid that even if I could get close, they wouldn't want me there anyway. But it's not like that, not at all. Everyone's been so kind and welcoming, and they treat me well. They protect me, just like I've always wanted to protect them. How could I-- not cherish that? Being here has made me the happiest I've ever been, and most of it's because of the people around me."

"It sounds like things were rough at home for you. Do you want to talk about it?" He offered, gently.

"Huh?" Pausing, the girl seemed momentarily surprised, but... in hindsight, perhaps it wasn't so strange that he would focus on that part. "... Oh. That."

By now that part of her past was farther behind her, and thus felt more like a matter of fact than a tragedy she could recognize as such - not that Naminé had ever been particularly inclined to call it one. Talking about it felt like a questionable idea more because it might bother Iroh than because it bothered her, and the blonde shifted hesitantly a moment. Yet--

"I suppose maybe it would help you understand if you knew. From the time I was born, I was... a captive of sorts, until someone managed to freed me. After that, there were important things I had to do to help make everything right - and that meant hiding myself away from almost everyone else so that I couldn't be found and captured again until it was over. Back in my worlds, I'd only just finished what I had to do before I got taken away to another place, and then to this one."

And all that left little room for a social life, to be sure.

"If you had been a captive, how did someone convince you that it was on you to fix anything?" he asked, keeping his anger hidden to himself for the moment. It sounded like whoever had 'saved' her had actually just captured her themselves. Words could be as effective as steel when it came to creating a prison.

Even without his anger showing on the surface, the question itself was enough to prompt Naminé to shake her head quickly, as if to try to dispel any notion of wrongdoing.

"No one had to convince me of that. Because-- it was true." Goodness, this really had ventured into territory she was cautious of treading. But they were there now; the only way forward seemed to be to explain in the hopes that Iroh might understand. "Even if the things I did while I was captured weren't what I wanted, I still chose to do them. I still... hurt a lot of people, just because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't. It was only right for me to do what I could to make it better afterwards, once I was free."

Sitting back slightly, she folded her hands on her lap, teacup remaining carefully held between them. With her expression so pinched, she looked contrite even now when she was only talking about the past, rather than living it. "And the truth is, the problems I caused couldn't have been resolved by anyone other than me. If I hadn't made the effort, even more innocent people would have suffered because I was selfish."

"While wanting to help others is admirable, doing what you had to when you were under attack to save yourself..." he shook his head. "If someone captured an Owl Wolf for a traveling show and hurt it to make it perform every day... if that performance made it hurt a volunteer from the audience, is the fault the Owl Wolf's? Or is the fault in the horrible person who hurt the creature so?"

Naminé was already prepared with her initial rebuttal - that saving herself should hardly have been her priority when she was, by her very nature, not worth saving. Not in comparison to those she'd hurt, at least. But the words never reached her lips, in light both of what else Iroh had to say and the fact that she'd learned by now, no matter her instincts, that that self-deprecating sort of explanation tended not to go over well with people. (Kind ones, anyway.)

His hypothetical situation did give her pause. What an Owl Wolf was she had no real idea, other than what was implied by the name; going with that assumption, she considered it a moment, and then shook her head.

"If you're talking about a creature that didn't know any better... then it wouldn't be right to blame it. And... I'm sure if something like that did happen, it would have plenty of reasons to be afraid and angry at anyone, not just the people who hurt it. But-- I'm not the same. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I can't take all of the blame, but I... can't forgive myself completely, either."

"I can tell you do not want to argue any more, so I am willing to step back from it for now, but I suspect you give yourself far more blame than you have actually earned."

He had the right of it, really - Naminé was never argumentative by nature. Letting out a breath, she tucked her chin at his words, looking apologetic.

"Thank you. For caring." Both about settling the matter without conflict and about her treatment of herself to begin with. Her features were gentle, anyhow, with her regretful, "I know not everyone agrees with the way I see the past. I hope I didn't upset you, Iroh."

Tea For Who? - OPEN

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Cw: theoretical animal cruelty

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Thank you for the thread!