When he lives there, later, he'll walk the boundary between the old and the new streets.
Oh, God, and he's the only one who knows, anymore. There are precious few Fire Nation ex-pats living in Ba Sing Se, and the few he's encountered are even older than he is, retiring in comfort, something to write home about with hoary old jokes about conquering Ba Sing Se. They never served under him, never fought here. It makes him feel old and forgotten in an unchosen way, and all the things he did here feel old and forgotten, too.
When the Earth King returns, he finds a months-old letter from the new Fire Lord, painstakingly written in the way only a teenager who's trying to sound like an adult can, and in the middle of the stilted formalities about normalizing relations and repairing damage there's an offhand comment about the Dragon of the West and a tea shop in the Upper Ring. Four weeks later, his chief clerk puts this together with the invitation that had been extended, once, to a tea shop owner who-- rumor had it-- had been a Fire Nation general of some kind.
The Earth King decides not to summon Iroh, since that would put them off on the wrong foot, and invites him to tea instead. Iroh spends several hours drinking some excellent tea and explaining, as delicately as he can, the Siege of Ba Sing Se, and the damage he did to the city. The Earth King, who's still trying to catch up on a century's worth of history, has heard of this but finds the outsider's viewpoint fascinating. Iroh comes away with the scent of the excellent tea still caught in his beard, mildly depressed because the only thing worse than being forgotten is to never have been heard of at all. Still, it is good diplomacy.
He does not mention Lu Ten to the Earth King until his third visit, and regrets it. It is his last visit to the Earth King.
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Date: 2010-09-21 08:55 pm (UTC)Oh, God, and he's the only one who knows, anymore. There are precious few Fire Nation ex-pats living in Ba Sing Se, and the few he's encountered are even older than he is, retiring in comfort, something to write home about with hoary old jokes about conquering Ba Sing Se. They never served under him, never fought here. It makes him feel old and forgotten in an unchosen way, and all the things he did here feel old and forgotten, too.
When the Earth King returns, he finds a months-old letter from the new Fire Lord, painstakingly written in the way only a teenager who's trying to sound like an adult can, and in the middle of the stilted formalities about normalizing relations and repairing damage there's an offhand comment about the Dragon of the West and a tea shop in the Upper Ring. Four weeks later, his chief clerk puts this together with the invitation that had been extended, once, to a tea shop owner who-- rumor had it-- had been a Fire Nation general of some kind.
The Earth King decides not to summon Iroh, since that would put them off on the wrong foot, and invites him to tea instead. Iroh spends several hours drinking some excellent tea and explaining, as delicately as he can, the Siege of Ba Sing Se, and the damage he did to the city. The Earth King, who's still trying to catch up on a century's worth of history, has heard of this but finds the outsider's viewpoint fascinating. Iroh comes away with the scent of the excellent tea still caught in his beard, mildly depressed because the only thing worse than being forgotten is to never have been heard of at all. Still, it is good diplomacy.
He does not mention Lu Ten to the Earth King until his third visit, and regrets it. It is his last visit to the Earth King.