Pro Patria Mori
A Naruto character piece
By
EvilFuzzy9
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/General
Characters/Pairings: Danzo S.; [N/A]
Summary: Danzo feared old age, but not for the looming specter of death. No, for he was a soldier, and the reaper a constant companion. But nothing scared him more than losing the chance to die for his country.
Danzo Shimura winced, leaning heavily on his cane and panting. Sweat soaked into his bandages, and his lungs twinged and stabbed with every breath. He panted, all but gasping and wheezing in his miserable state.
How pitiful, he thought, looking ruefully down at his good arm. It hung feebly at his side, aching and throbbing and refusing to move though he willed it. The muscles were practically devoid of strength, and his joints felt stiff, rigid, and nigh unbending.
His sword lay where it had fallen from arthritic fingers, forgotten for a time upon the worn and fraying tatami mats. Something burned in his chest, a sharp pang in his heart. Physical, not emotional.
Danzo wondered. Was this what all those decades of loyalty and sacrifice had earned him? A broken, weary old body barely even fit to stand under its power?
T'was a bitter reward, if so. To think that one who held the code of shinobi so close to his breast—the chivalry of a life given in service to lord and country without glory, without praise, unseen and unheard from the shadows—should live to this miserable age, to see himself wither into something barely even worthy of being called a man, was just too cruel.
Where had gone the strength in his limbs, those muscles which had once been as corded steel with a limber dexterity he had so greatly prized? What had become of that humble soldier, that determined young man who had refused to let any wound or adversity stay him from fulfilling his mission? Had he fallen so far with age that he could no longer do even this much?
Frustratedly, Danzo steadied himself as best he could on trembling legs, sore and afflicted with a bone-deep ache. He raised his cane and put it forward, leaning on it as he then tentatively nudged one foot forth.
An even poorer result than yesterday, Danzo bitterly noted, his lame right arm shifting in its sling.
It was harder to hit the bullseye than it ought to have been, and more laborious also to grasp the hilt of his sword. His martial discipline suffered, but not for lack of practice. No, indeed! Every day for the past fifty years he had trained himself without fail, morning and evening. Not even when the doctors told him that he ought to have been resting had Danzo ever neglected his daily exercises, not so long as he had been able to rise from his bed and drag himself out of the room.
Perhaps it was that youthful zeal which now cost him, that brash refusal to heed words of caution which had to his ardent mind then sounded like the folly of feeble hearts. It seemed that after all these years the consequences of his reckless fervor had finally begun to catch up with him. It was a toll paid only decades after the fact, the price of pushing himself so far and so often beyond his body's limits.
How disheartening, if that were truly the case. Though he had not served on the front lines for many a year, still Danzo had always believed and always hoped that it would be in duty to the village where the reaper would catch him. He had never dared to imagine that he should survive to utter the lamentations of a soldier unmanned and enfeebled by the inexorable march of time, that he should live into old age and see himself waste away into a miserable shadow of his former self.
Not for the first time, Danzo grimly mused that he very well might live to be robbed of his only pride, of the strength to fight and die for his village. His mind was stil sharp as ever, but his body grew weak and frail. Already muscle and sinew had begun to fail him, all those years of training and discipline starting to unravel and come to naught in the face of time.
It was a frightening prospect.
Ever since he was a boy, Danzo had cherished the tales of his forebears, the proud men and women of the Shimura clan who had given their lives to see the dream of Konohagakure brought to fruition. He was just old enough to remember how wonderful the idea of the hidden village had seemed to his kin, to his mother and father and aunts and uncles who had known firsthand the harsh realities of life as ninja during the Sengoku Jidai.
He was raised in a time when the existence of Konoha was still a tenuous thing, an experiment never before seen in the world of shinobi. Many fought and died in valiant service to see the dream of the founders realized, to actualize the ideals of Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha ere the latter's descent into treachery. Danzo could still recite from heart the names of those heroes and martyrs who had given their lives for the village in its earliest days, before there had been any monument to the fallen, any memorial to shinobi killed in action.
"There is no fate sweeter or more honorable than to die for one's country." It was on such rhetoric as this that he had been weaned, raised as a young ninja of the humble Shimura clan to believe most fervently in the nobility of shinobi, the proud anonymity of a sacrifice made in the shadows. Ninja were nameless servants of a greater cause, he had been taught, faceless protectors of a fragile peace.
In these days few now appreciated what they had in Konoha. The younger generations took it for granted that things were this way, that this order they knew, the security they enjoyed behind defenses subtler and more impregnable than any broad or towering walls, were the natural and logical way for things to be. They grew up knowing peace and safety, believing without a care in the invincibility of Konoha and the inevitability of truce and treaty at the end of any war.
Few there were who could still ken the true frailty of this modern order. So precious few in the younger generations had glimpsed the darkness of the outside world, perceiving the threats which lay all around them and hemmed them in like a noose ready to draw about their necks, the innumerable enemies who would see Konoha thrown down and cast into darkness if not for the unfailing vigilance of her silent guardians, those mighty roots who supported the great tree deep below the earth, nourishing and anchoring her that she may yet endure any hardship.
Even among Hiruzen's former students, those three ninja so widely acclaimed as brilliant prodigies, only one could see as Danzo saw, the fragility of their peace and the desperate measures which had to be enacted simply to secure the continued order. Orochimaru had seen the darkness of this world, had stood over his parents' graves and pondered the nature of life and death.
Hiruzen's romanticism had been a hollow comfort to the boy, filling his head with fanciful notions unfit for a soldier of the Leaf. Danzo had done his best to help him understand the truth, to teach him how noble and valiant his parents' deaths had been. Orochimaru knew that sacrifices had to be made to preserve Konoha, to secure the future of their village against chance or enemy plot.
They had to be strong for Konoha's sake. They had to do whatever it took to fight for the village and protect it from decay and destruction. All of them had to serve the village in their own way. Orochimaru was clever, a man of scientific bent, and these days he spent most of his time squirreled away in secret labs conducting research to improve the survival of Konoha's soldiers, to empower their shinobi with serums, elixirs, and secret jutsu.
Danzo was not so gifted as that. If he was clever, then it was not in matters of research and experimentation. He was ANBU through and through, a man whose greatest virtues had always lay in sinew and subtlety, a soldier who lived by strength of arm and cunning strategy.
Yet, limping down this dimly lit hall in the subterranean, labyrinthine Foundation complex, sore and bone-weary from an exercise he should have been able to do without breaking a sweat, Danzo perceived that one of these things was gradually drifting out of his reach. He was a soldier by birthright and choice, a ninja from cradle to grave, yet if called to service in his present state he would serve as nothing but an inconvenience, a high-ranking liability to Konoha's military might.
This troubled him deeply. Never before had Danzo hesitated to give life and limb in the line of duty: an arm and an eye were small prices to pay for a sterling record of missions accomplished. But senseless sacrifice was something both Hiruzen and the Nidaime had rebuked him against, telling him not to throw his life away on a futile effort.
And should Danzo fight or undertake a mission as he now was, then futile assuredly would all his efforts be. He could no longer fight to serve his village. Not half so well as once he could have.
Ruminating, Danzo mused that Hiruzen would likely tell him to step back and entrust matters to the next generation, if he bothered to tell the man of his troubles.
Harrumph.
Too trusting, that man. Too optimistic by far.
Out of all the youths in the village, there were simply none whom Danzo felt to be truly fitting and worthy to carry on his responsibilities. Not Orochimaru, not Sakumo, not even young genius Minato. There was no one in the younger generation with the convictions and the resolve to do what he did for Konoha's sake.
No one alive in the village had done so much to see its prosperity continued, no one save the Sandaime Hokage. And even Hiruzen hesitated to make the truly difficult choices as a leader, to harden his heart and put sentiment aside.
An ill fit for his station, Danzo sourly thought. Too meek and gentle to govern as the Hokage should.
Once, he would never have dared to think such a thing. Once, he had held the utmost respect for his former rival, the boy who had been chosen over himself to become Third Hokage. But Lord Tobirama's pronouncement now seemed a distant memory, and Hiruzen grew ever softer with the passage of years: mild, complacent, and scarcely adhering to the ironclad ninja code.
The Sandaime's mettle had rusted, a once keen edge gone dull and blunt. Respect alone for what Hiruzen once had been kept Danzo from seeking to usurp the man, but every day his patience grew thinner. Hiruzen's politics of appeasement, his willingness to barter land and lives for treaties so easily broken, would cost Konoha dearly in the long run—or so Danzo believed.
Hiruzen no longer had the resolve to fight for the village's future, too peace-loving and moderate to carry the Leaf through times of adversity. No, more and more clearly it seemed to him that Hiruzen would not be the one to lead Konoha into a better age. He cared too much for other lands and other peoples, too little for his own home and kin.
Konoha needed to be strong, unassailable. It needed to grow and prosper and dominate. Before all else should her needs be weighed, the needs of the village before the whims of foreign lords. Hiruzen was not patriotic enough, not devoted enough to see this. The Second Hokage had been a shrewd man, his policies informed by practical necessity before pretty ideals.
It was the Nidaime out of the two founding hokage whom Danzo most greatly respected and emulated. Above all else must the village be preserved. No matter what it took, the well being and prosperity of Konohagakure had to be ensured.
And to see that will carried out, he had to be strong. He had to survive and endure no matter what. If it was Hiruzen who inherited the will and ideals of the First Hokage, then it was Danzo who followed in the path of the Second.
No matter what the threat, he would see it neutralized. Any power that could potentially imperil Konoha, he would stifle and strangle by whatever means possible. He would do whatever it took. He had to, for Hiruzen, it increasingly seemed, was walking a path that would lead Konoha only to stagnation and failure.
In the end, it may very well fall to him. Not because he considered his life precious, but for the sake of Konoha and the world of shinobi, he could not yet afford to die. He could not afford to be weak. So no matter what the means, he had to endure. He had to stay strong.
For he, it increasingly seemed, would have to be the one to take up the mantle of the First and Second Lord Hokage. He would have to become someone capable of reforming this world as they had, if that was what it would take to ensure that Konoha would survive and flourish even after his passing. For this cause, and for the sake of the Hidden Leaf, he would sacrifice anything.
Narrowing his one good eye and drawing a slow, ragged breath, Danzo made a course for Orochimaru's laboratory. Perhaps he could yet make use of that boy's talents...
He could not afford any weakness. Not yet, not so long as the village still had need of him.
Not even if that weakness was his very humanity.
A/N: Danzo is, to me, one of the most fascinatingly complex characters in Naruto, and in a way honestly one of the most realistic of the antagonists. He is also one of the hardest characters for writers to really pin down, and among the most easily and frequently flanderized.
Which is a shame, because many of the writers who butcher him the worst are paradoxically the ones who otherwise most seem to WANT morally ambiguous characters and dark, gritty settings. I dunno, make of that what you will.
Also, my vacation officially ends either today or tomorrow. After that, I'll be heading back to my usual work schedule.
Yaaay...?
Updated: 1-28-16
TTFN and R&R!
– — ❤