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hoodlock:

I can’t stop thinking about what must have happened in the fight between Hanzo and Genji. More specifically, I can’t stop thinking about how obscenely, totally one-sided it must have been.

Like, we know that Genji was at the brink of death afterwards and Hanzo walked away, but it’s more than that. 

Genji’s body was absolutely destroyed. His limbs are all prosthetic. His face is covered in scars. He mentions how he can no longer eat regular food in one of his voice lines. We only see his eyes when he removes his mask in the Dragons short, but even with the mask removed, there’s still metal visible on much of the lower half of his face, which might imply that he needed portions of his skull/jaw replaced as well. 

And then there’s Hanzo–who doesn’t have so much as a single visible scar. And if he does have scars, they’re certainly not anywhere on his body where you’d expect to see them if someone had tried to kill you, like his head, neck, and chest. I’m also working under the assumption that he doesn’t have prosthetic legs and just wears futuristic boots, based on the fact that his pants are tucked into them, they go over his knee but possess a normal, organic joint at the back, and his ‘ick’ reaction to finding out that so much of Genji’s body is now robotic. 

Like, Hanzo walked away from their fight completely unscathed, but Genji was mutilated. Mutilated, but not killed–which probably means Hanzo wasn’t just carrying it out like a normal assassination, quick and to the point. He was angry. It wasn’t enough just to kill him–he wanted to make Genji suffer for what (in Hanzo’s mind) he was making him do. He might have even deliberately made it so Genji’s death would be long and drawn out–something which ultimately allowed time to save him.

And Genji, in turn, barely fought back. In fact, he probably only made attempts to defend himself. The chipped sword is likely a direct result of that, since swords are not generally designed to block one another and are meant to simply cut through flesh. The aim is to kill your opponent fast, or at least hurt them enough to incapacitate them. As a trained assassin, Genji would have known that as well as anyone. But if you can’t (or won’t) do that, and you’re not fast enough to outright avoid a hit (Hanzo was a better swordsman, after all), then you block–and that’s what Genji did. He didn’t want to die–but more than that, he didn’t want to kill Hanzo. Didn’t want to hurt him at all. Was more content to let himself get chopped practically to pieces than to raise his sword against his brother.

That’s probably what motivated Hanzo’s guilt, as much as anything. If he’d given his brother an easy death–made it an honorable kill–he probably would have returned to his life as the heir feeling saddened but justified. But he fought Genji with the intent to crush him, to stomp him out like a cigarette butt, and Genji hardly did anything to stop it. He simply could not bring himself to fight back with everything he was capable of–not when he loved Hanzo so much. It’s no wonder Hanzo could barely live with himself afterwards. He had done such a monstrous, unforgivable thing to the only family he had left after the death of their father. And why? For what? 

So, realizing what the Shimada Clan was doing to him–what he would turn into if he stayed with them–he left. But, I’m sure he knows as well as any that that doesn’t quite erase what he did. Which may be part of why he reacts so angrily towards Genji when they reunite. 

Genji’s been alive all this time, and yet he never came for Hanzo. He could have settled the score, but instead he went after the Shimada clan itself, the ones who put him and his brother at odds to begin with, who made it so they had to fight. And there’s Hanzo, realizing all this and being so upset about it. Because after everything Hanzo has done to atone on his own, it’s Genji once again who forgives him. It’s Genji once again who loves him more–would probably have loved him just the same even if he hadn’t spent the last 10 years trying to make things right. And that must have been so frustrating for Hanzo to know that he’d abandoned everything, done so much to make things up to someone who never, ever even blamed him. All this time, he’s been carrying a burden which he inflicted upon himself. And once again, he has to ask himself, why? For what?

But by the end of Dragons, when he lays down his bow and returns to pray at the little shrine he’s made, he finally figures it out: for Genji.