Characters: Mifune, Hanzo
Summary: They still have their faith, despite everything.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: The dialogue is taken from chapter 532, with some alterations.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
He was little more than a child that day in battle, so very long ago—only nineteen, and though to a nineteen-year-old himself Mifune had thought the age more than enough, looking back a little over fifty years on he realized that he was too young. Far too young to fight such a foe as the one he faced that day in the northern reaches of Ame no Kuni.
"—although your blade was too dull," Hanzo finished, looking over his much-younger vanquished opponent with veiled eyes.
Biting back the urge to give in to the pain and howl, Mifune grimaced hideously. If his blade had been dull… If his blade had been dull, then he had been even duller.
"People are their blades." His voice was hoarse, choked, garbled. Mifune squeezed his eyes shut against the unforgiving light of the sun just overhead. "That means… I, too, was dull… I fear… my life ends here."
By all rights, Mifune knew he should have died. He had been on the ground, blade away from him, poison coursing through his veins, wreaking havoc on his body. It should have been how Hanzo had said: he should have felt the pain, become paralyzed, lapsed into a coma and died within two days time.
Or Hanzo should have finished the ordeal then and there, and brought a glimmering arc of metal down into his chest.
That's how it should have been, but wasn't.
Though Mifune could not lift his eyes to stare at his opponent, he knew intuitively that Hanzo was… disgruntled by that remark.
"One last thing. People's lives don't end when they die."
At that, even though it killed him to do it Mifune lifted his head a fraction and stared.
"Your life doesn't end when you die. It ends when you lose your faith."
Faith. Mifune had had little used for it. He lived by a simple rule; fight only when necessary, and once in battle, kill or be killed. The only faith he had was that he would win, and that if he didn't he would at least die in a manner befitting a samurai. With dignity, and if not, then with his hands guiding the sword to his belly.
"Those comrades of yours… Their lives are over from this moment, because they have no faith. They, far more than you, are the "dull blades" you speak of. You stood before me to protect them even though they had no faith in you or even in their own ability to stay alive."
The faith Hanzo spoke of, Mifune knew instinctively, was a very different sort of faith than the one he had known casually during the entirety of his short life. This wasn't the faith of the sword; rather, what Hanzo spoke of was the faith of the bones and of the blood. The faith that never left, even when all hope seemingly was lost.
"When I tell stories of you, I will remember you as a hero." The firm conviction in Hanzo's voice startled Mifune beyond all else. "Tell me your name, in exchange for your life."
Mifune did not. There was no need for him to live, not really; death was just as well if it came this day or the next. All he wished was that his comrades would live, would survive to see their snowy home again.
That was when Hanzo fed the antidote into his lips and down his throat.
"I'll test my faith on you. Will it be death while still holding strong to faith, or a long life gained by renouncing it?"
Mifune had stared after him, long and hard, and felt wonder seeping through his veins to replace poison as the antidote did its work.
He admired this man more than any he had ever met. Hanzo of Amegakure was an enemy, it was to be sure, but Mifune saw his ideals and his strength and knew that, for all that there was an enemy there, there was a strong man, a man who could maybe set out to do what he hoped he could.
Where had that gone?
"Have you failed your own test?" Mifune's rough voice rose with anger. With disappointment. "Have you truly lost your faith?"
Mifune was no longer young. His once dark hair had gone all iron gray, his skin was deeply etched with lines and, in the coldest of months he could feel his bones start to ache deeply. He had lived his three score and ten years, and a little over it.
He had lived long, but he still had the faith that Hanzo had given him.
Where had Hanzo's faith gone?
"Step back, wait for the opening and seal me. I think you can do it."
Mifune could almost smile when he heard that. He had no idea why, except that he could hear it—the faith, the faith he had waited so long to hear again in Hanzo's voice—once more, just a little bit.
Hanzo-dono.
"Mifune… So that's your name." The lipless mouth of Hanzo curved into a smile as he plucked up the broken blade from the ground. "I knew you'd survived."
And in went the blade to the poison sac of the salamander.
Mifune could smile now, as he watched clouds upon clouds of gas spill from the man who was neither dead nor alive. "You have regained your faith. You were no dull blade, my friend." Yes, you were my friend; I count any man who can teach me a lifelong lesson a friend, be he comrade or foe on the battlefield.
"When I speak of you, I will regard you as a hero! One who never lost his faith!"
(Hanzo always remembered the young samurai whom he had once fought and defeated, so long ago.
In life and beyond, I spoke of you as a hero. You, a nameless boy on the cusp of manhood, who showed more courage than men twice your age.
You were my test of faith.
And only you, it seemed, was capable of reminding me of what I had lost to the darkness of paranoia and despair.
He was not a dull blade anymore.)