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There was still a customer lingering in the dining room, and for a change it wasn’t the familiar, elegant sight of Li-Mei despite the dying evening sun filtering through the window being her preferred calling card.
Iroh couldn’t bring himself to be disheartened by that fact, but there was little use in denying that he would have liked to see her in her usual place.
Feng, bless her soul, was still wiping down tables even though to anyone else’s eye they would be clean enough to eat from, although her pace had started to slow. He couldn’t resist a private chuckle.
Always a perfectionist, that one.
The hostesses had long since gone home, and all the other waiters and waitresses had followed suit. A part of him missed Zuko being at his side through the lazy hours of the evening. Duties and prior engagements made absences of them all, in time.
Still, as owner of the Jasmine Dragon, it fell to him to ensure that the last customers found their way safely from the establishment, however much he would personally have liked to give the man all the time he so evidently needed. Feng had to go home sooner or later, and he knew from experience that she’d stubbornly refuse until there were no more customers left to tend to.
The man sat in serene silence at one of the corner tables so as to stare wistfully from the window there, and had done so for the last several hours of the day, yet such a choice brought its own discomforts.
Iroh had overheard many a customer that day speaking in hushed whispers, staring quite blatantly at the mysterious stranger in the white robe. Not for any reasons owed to the man’s demeanour – he was as perfect a guest as the Jasmine Dragon had ever been home to – nor was he any notable figure from the war or otherwise to have deserved the attention of so many people.
No, the fact of the matter was that nobody had ever seen anything like the condition that affected him, not even Iroh himself.
For all the man’s obvious grace and quiet manner, nothing could detract from the fact that the upper half of his face and then some was completely consumed by a strange purple pallor – comparable to the lavender that occasionally went into the tea. His eyes were a nearly identical shade, and not for no reason. Several times had the ex-Grand-Lotus spied the poor stranger being unaffected by bright rays of sunshine pouring over his face. It had merely made him smile and look towards where the heat had come from.
Blind. The signs were easily recognisable. Iroh didn’t dare hazard a guess as to just what else the illness may have done to him.
His robes and garbs seemed somewhat unfamiliar outside of that, but all who saw him were far too occupied with the obvious distraction to take any real note.
He didn’t bother anyone. He was perfectly polite to Feng whenever she took his order – at first there had been a variance, but the man had quickly settled upon White Lotus Tile as his brew of choice – and so he was left to his own thoughts.
“Excuse me, young man, might I have a moment of your time?” Iroh moved to stand at the opposite end of the table to the stranger, making sure that his voice’s source did not move about too much as he spoke.
The blinded soldiers under his care appreciated the gesture, he found.
The man’s lips – already having laid in a peaceful smile throughout his stay – upturned just that little bit further. “Time is one of the precious few things I have left to my name. Of course, I would be delighted to share it with you.”
Taking the invitation for what it was along with a dose of light-hearted presumptuousness, Iroh slid the seat before him out to sit across from the man. “If you do not mind my prying, what is your name? You need not tell me, if you’d prefer.”
“You are most kind, but I do not mind. Ubuyashiki, I’m called – ah,” the man shook his head, humming in amusement, “I apologise. This land asks for one’s given name first. The custom has taken some time to settle in my mind. My name is Kagaya Ubuyashiki.”
Iroh considered himself well travelled, but even he couldn’t quite place from where a name such as that would have originated.
His silence must have lingered for a fraction too long. “You needn’t worry about my homeland. There are none whom I have spoken to that know of it.”
“Kagaya it is, then.” Iroh smiled, knowing that the gesture would be felt rather than seen. “Though I can call you by Ubuyashiki if you wish. Forgive me – it is something of a mouthful! I am simply Iroh.”
“I would not wish to impose. Kagaya is more than acceptable.”
Iroh allowed silence to settle as he watched the man – Kagaya, he corrected mentally – drain the last of his cup and gently replace it on the table.
When he did so, he felt it acceptable to pry further. “Do tell, Kagaya. What brings you to my humble shop, in this humble land?”
“Happenstance.” The man admitted freely, “That which makes a fool of even the firmest of plans.”
Iroh nodded with a wry chuckle. “Oh yes, I know the feeling all too well.”
“Yes, I imagined you might.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed.” Kagaya continued smiling his inexorable smile. “There are very few who could see fit to refer to me as young, after all.”
That the man sitting in front of him was older than his years would suggest came as no surprise to Iroh. His own decades had made him quite familiar with the skill of appraising another’s character, and it let him see Kagaya’s point clearly; looking into his sightless eyes, Iroh was greeted by naught but fatigue and regrets. To have that at odds with a polite and charming surface was by no means unfamiliar to the Dragon of the West.
The man from lands unknown kept speaking. “In truth, I cannot begin to tell you of the circumstances of my presence here. It is a mystery even to me, for perhaps obvious reasons.” He said, gesturing mildly to the sprawling malady on his face. “The last I knew, my family was preparing to go to battle against a sworn enemy.”
Feng gave a start off to the side, cloth stopping in place upon the table that had been absolutely clean several minutes ago. Iroh shot her an amused look, and she had the good grace to appear abashed, but she made no move to stop eavesdropping.
If not for the fact that Kagaya also seemed aware of her presence, Iroh would have asked her politely to go home. But if the other man was satisfied in speaking with an audience, however small, then he saw no need to dismiss her.
“Your land was under troubled times, then?”
Kagaya’s smile thinned the smallest amount. “Yes. Indeed it was. Is, perhaps. It has been several months.”
“You have my sincerest condolences.” Iroh inclined his head, all too understanding. The scars of old battles ran deep, even to those who wore few on the surface.
“It wasn’t to the same scale as your Hundred Year War.” Kagaya admitted, raising his cup halfway to his lips before recalling that it was empty. “Our conflict was one much more… personal in scope. My only hope is that the worst has passed, and everybody is safe. I can ask no more.”
He frowned. “Even still. There can be no greater sorrow than to see one’s family in conflict, regardless of reason or danger.” Iroh spared a moment to let his words sit in the air before gesturing fruitlessly towards Kagaya’s cup. “More tea?”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly trouble you further. It is growing late, I believe. It is… difficult to tell, sometimes. The sun’s warmth is my clock, and it appears to have receded.” The man said, sliding his cup across the table. That he spoke no further of his home’s troubles did not go unnoticed.
Iroh nodded towards Feng, who fought against her curiosity for only a moment before walking over to take the cup to the kitchen – receiving a grateful wave from Kagaya as she did so.
“Your family.” He offered kindly, “Please. I would love to hear more about them.”
A gentle laugh filled the air, and Kagaya looked to the table. “Perhaps it is misleading to refer to them as my family, but I cannot help it. In every way that matters, I truly do think of them as my children. So many of them had nowhere else to go, or nobody else to look out for them. We accepted all equally, so long as they had the capability to help us in whatever capacity they could. They trained for my cause. Fought for it.” He took a quiet breath. “Died for it. It is the very least I can do to care for them as my own.”
A commander, perhaps, or a leader of some kind to be certain. The more that Kagaya spoke, the more that Iroh saw himself in the man. And if that connection was even a quarter as legitimate as he suspected it to be, then Iroh could only marvel. It was clear that Kagaya was not completely settled, but to have lost so many and so recently, that he seemed content being in a land that wasn’t his own was astounding.
“I remember them all.” Kagaya said, and Iroh allowed him to keep talking in peace. Being able to speak of sorrow was but one of many steps towards banishing it. “Each and every one of my children that fell in their duties. They all have a place in my heart. A heart that wishes dearly that it was strong enough to join them in battle, but alas… I am weak.”
“It is not a weakness to remain away from the fields of battle, Kagaya. Strength is not solely defined by one’s physical capabilities. The frailest of men can bear trials that may break the strongest.” Iroh cautioned. The path of self-deprecation was a dangerous one to walk.
To his surprise, the blind man laughed again. A sound surprisingly soothing given the note of sadness it carried
“Ah, I am sorry. I am very sorry,” Kagaya apologised with a wave of his hand in response to Iroh’s politely bemused silence. “You reminded me in that moment of yet another of my children. Ah, Kyojuro… a fiery soul, if ever there was one. I miss him dearly, as do the rest of my family. He, too, believed in that hidden strength. I fear in darker nights that he may not have been entirely correct, or maybe it is simply me failing to live up to his ideals. I have failed so often that what meagre victories I find are dulled and pyrrhic. Were I strong enough to battle alongside them, perhaps I could be comfortable believing that my children could forgive me in their last moments.”
How strange, that he could use a lesson once given to Zuko for this betrodden soul. “Failure is little more than an opportunity to begin anew, I find. Loss is not the end of all things.” Memories played through his mind: a man so much different from himself as he was now, struck down at the height of his achievements by the death of his precious son. “I know little of your circumstances, but there are few children who could ever hate their parents. My own nephew is a boy – no, a man – stronger than many I could name, and… even despite everything my brother did to hurt him, he found it so very difficult to truly hate his father deep down. Would that so many others could carry that strength inside them…”
Kagaya allowed his gaze to rise from the polished wood to meet Iroh’s eyes once more. There was still sadness that lingered there, but the man’s smile had begun to return to normal.
Iroh took that as a sign that his words were working, as he often liked to think they did. “You strike me as a good man, Kagaya, and I do not believe your family could ever hate you. Even if they did resent walking the path that led them to an untimely rest, there is nothing you, I, or any living man can do to alter the opinions of the departed. All that you can do is ensure that you live proudly with their memories at your heart.”
The man seemed to come to a realisation – his eyes widened for just a moment, but that was more than enough for the epiphany to be obvious all over his expression. Then, he laughed. A gentle, earnest sound. “It appears I was correct in visiting your shop, and not simply for the exquisite tea. ‘Only human feelings can be undying’.” Kagaya spoke as if quoting someone, shaking his head derisively. “Goodness, I’m a fool.”
“I find that most of the best men are.” Iroh beamed.
“That is very true.” He nodded, casting his mind back to a simple boy who wished only to protect his sister. “Fools hold no such notion of ‘reasonable’ or ‘foolhardy’. They fight for their own dreams, more often than not, regardless of how feasible those dreams are. And that is beautiful, is it not? I would call it wisdom.”
“That… is very true.” The Dragon of the West echoed, sharing a moment of wry amusement with his strange customer, only able to think of a young airbender and his motley band.
By then, the sun had well and truly set. Moonlight shone on the streets of Ba Sing Se, and even Feng had made her disappearance while the two men had been occupied.
That, more than anything, was a sign that the day had completely run its course.
It would be a shame to send a blind man home alone at a time like that, Iroh thought to himself.
“Are you certain I cannot interest you in more tea, Kagaya? Sharing some with a fascinating stranger is one of my greatest delights, you know!” He grinned.
Kagaya laughed again – and Iroh was struck with the notion that the man probably hadn’t had much reason to do so in quite some time.
“Oh, alright, you have me convinced. It would be rude to turn down such earnest generosity after all you’ve already done for me.”
Iroh was quick to disappear to the kitchen and return with another pot of White Lotus Tile, filling two cups with easy, practiced motions – not a single drop spilled or threatening to do so.
“To a pair of old fools?”
Kagaya held out his steaming cup. “To a pair of old fools, indeed.”
They clicked their cups together and drank, conversing well into the night and all through the morning.