He drew his Odachi with trembling hands, each movement painfully deliberate, as though even the act of unsheathing the blade was a betrayal. The steel sang softly as it slid from its scabbard—a low, mournful whisper that cut through the thick silence between you like a sigh weighted with sorrow. It wasn’t the sound of readiness. It was resignation.

His grip faltered the moment the blade was free. Not from fear. Not of battle—he had fought countless before. But never like this. Never against someone whose presence once steadied his hands and gave him reason to sheathe his sword for good. The tremor in his fingers wasn’t the anticipation of blood, but the horror of whose it might be. Yours.

His eyes, once sharpened by duty and purpose, were now dull with anguish. Tears clung stubbornly to his lashes, refusing to fall, as though doing so would mark the moment as real—would confirm the nightmare playing out before him. His gaze kept flickering to you, not with the calculating measure of an enemy sizing up a threat, but like a drowning man looking for the shore. You were the shore.

He didn’t want this. Not this fight. Not with you. Never with you.

God... why did it have to be you?

He swallowed hard, and even that felt like too much. The knot in his throat burned, aching like a wound all its own, raw and throbbing. It spread through his chest, tight and suffocating. His next breath came in ragged, barely held together, and when it left him, it trembled—a cracked, shuddering thing that seemed to carry every unspoken word he’d buried for too long.

“This is the last time,” he said, and his voice broke like a branch under strain. He blinked hard, trying to hold himself together. “I won’t... I won’t hurt you anymore.”

But the promise stung like a lie. Because the blade was still in his hands. Because just being here—like this, against you—was already a kind of wound. The words caught in his throat, dammed behind clenched teeth and quivering breath. He bit back the flood: the pleas that wanted to pour out, the aching truth he couldn’t give voice to, the storm of I’m sorrys and I love yous that threatened to rip him apart from the inside.

He stood frozen, jaw clenched tight, like if he let it go for even a second, it would all come crashing down. And maybe it already was. Every muscle in his body was locked in place, not with readiness, but restraint. He didn’t want to fight. He wanted to fall to his knees. He wanted to scream. He wanted to reach out, to feel your hand in his again and pretend this was all just a nightmare he could wake from.

But he couldn’t. Not now. Not yet.

He was shattering, splintering beneath the weight of what he couldn’t say, couldn’t do, and still—still—he stood there, blade in hand, heart in pieces.

Because he loved you.

And somehow, impossibly, unbearably… you loved him too.