A/N: Written for HashiMada Mini-Bang! on Tumblr, prompt: Mokuton&Katon.
I wrote this a month ago, and I'm posting it now with little to no revision after then (the wonders of having little to no internet for a month and yet wanting to do something for the Mini-Bang), so I have no idea if something in the latest Naruto chapters patently contradict it.
First time trying myself in this fandom and with this ship. I hope I managed to leave the characters at least a little IC. Please R&R, I greatly need the criticism. Not beta-ed.
Lyrics from Come Healing by Leonard Cohen.
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
Oh solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
"I find it strangely fitting, you know. Me being blessed with katon, and you with mokuton."
I start talking before even coming out of the shadows of the trees to the sunlight-kissed opening. I don't really need my eyes to leave the crystalline dance of the waters streaming down the river. I know perfectly well that he is on the other side. I move my gaze on him nonetheless, and he catches me by surprise -as he did the first time he spoke to me, as he did the first time he kissed me, as he did the time he killed me, and, if I'm really honest with myself, as he did every time the two of us interacted.
His appearance is that of the child I met on this river too many years ago, too many lifetimes ago. The sight sends a bolt of pain through my chest and for a moment I falter in my step and avert my gaze again, because this is something I haven't allowed myself to remember for a long time. Because this, this boy, this young shinobi, the best friend of my childhood, has been dead in my eyes since that fateful day on the riverbank. I paid the price of my Sharingan with his memory if not exactly his life.
He probably notices my hesitation, because the moment I go back to looking at him, I see his adult self again.
I swallow and force myself to go on. I need to say this. Whether to him or to myself, I still am not sure.
"Mokuton is the art of building. You were the one to build and heal. A village, a nation. A safe haven."
The words come out of my mouth eerily, and at the same time too easily, as if I have rehearsed them countless times before. And perhaps I have, between the silent walls of the cavern that became your stage and tomb, with the growing legions of white Zetsus as the only spectators to this strange monologue I refused to recite even to myself.
"But katon... Katon is the art of wastelands. All fire can do is burn. It is wild, untamable. It cannot heal. It cannot save. It can't protect, it only destroys. It couldn't protect my brothers, it couldn't save Izuna."
We both know what's left hanging in the air.
Your Healing Technique could have.
I have reached the riverbank. The water dances at my feet, to the rhythm of its own song.
"I tried. Finding my own way, my personal mokuton."
I see droplets of water fall on my feet. Whether it's the river or your tears I don't know. It doesn't really matter anymore.
"...I failed."
It's barely a whisper, carried away by the wind, but I know he has heard it, as loud and clear as if I shouted it for the whole world to hear.
"I had known it from the beginning. I just... decided to ignore it. I thought this time, with the Rikodou's power, it would be strong enough. But I was wrong."
Tears flow freely now, down my cheeks, down my chin, to fall on my fisted hand.
"Infinite Tsukuyomi... It was just genjutsu. And genjutsu... genjutsu can only go so far. Like this one. I can feel it, on my own skin. It's weightless. Impalpable. Like fire. The flesh, the rocks, the wind... everything. It's not... thick. It's not like wood. It's fake. An hypnotism. As refined as it could be, yes, but an hypnotism nonetheless. A perfect illusion written in flames."
He hasn't moved since I brought him here, in this genjutsu version of that place, the only place where I can really open my heart to him. He moves now, when the walls of this last illusion start crumbling around me, going in and out of phase as my energy slowly wears away.
Not yet, I think, not yet. I need some more time. To show him my guts, to see if I can reach the other side, one last time before death forces me to finally pay my toll.
Hashirama walks across the river to stand in front of me, and his tanned hands come to cover mine. As he gently pries my fingers open, he finally talks.
"Did you know that in some regions of the world, people periodically burn down their fields, after a crop?"
He rests his forehead on mine, and my nostrils are suddenly filled with the debris of his Edo Tensei body.
"A burned forest is reborn again from its ashes, stronger than before."
I didn't expect him to catch up so quickly with my symbolism. Nor did I expect him to find any kind of justification to my actions. Guess he can't help but surprise me more and more, even now that we are so close to the end.
"Is that what I was? A fire that destroyed, to make the soil more fertile?"
The air now smells of blood and metal, but I can still hear the river behind me, and all my eyes can see are Hashirama's chocolate ones, and his full lips curved in a warm, loving smile.
His hand closes on mine, and mine closes on a small, round pebble.
"Time to go.", he says as his Edo Tensei body starts crumbling apart.
There is still time for me to use my last remaining strengths to lift myself up from the place where I have fallen after the battle, and caress his lips with mine.
It tastes of blood and tears and sweat and dirt, of fire and wood and just Hashirama, and it doesn't matter if the whole Shinobi Alliance is watching us, murmuring, commenting, disbelieving their own eyes, for all I can see is a riverbank, and a gigantic grin on the face of a young kid, not yet in his teens.
"Let's skip stones."
Oh see the darkness yelding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
On a second thought, lest something BIG happening in this last episodes, and if everything goes as I think (and hope) it may go (Madara has his own hey I had got it all wrong all the time moment before he dies, and Hashirama stays by his side as he dies), this will not go so out of canon (practically everything happens in a genjutsu Madara casts on him and Hashirama, so they can have their private talk). I think. Hope. Whatever.