The mist is thick with blood. It clings to the trees, to the torn grass, to the bodies cooling at our feet. The battle rages somewhere behind us — shouts, fire, screaming — but I can’t hear it anymore.

Not when you’re this close.

You raise your weapon again. So precise. So practiced. Like you're thinking two steps ahead of me.

But you’re not.

You’ve never been.

Because I was never going to let you leave this battlefield untouched.

You move, and I’m already in front of you. Blade to blade. Sparks leap into the fog as steel grinds against steel — and there it is again.

That flicker in your eyes.

That spark of recognition.

You try to kill me like I’m just another enemy.

But I know better.

I lean in close — not for strategy. Not for the upper hand. Just to breathe the same air you do.

“You don’t need to understand,” I say, quiet. Steady. “You just need to stay alive.”

You shove back, chakra spiking, but I follow you like a shadow. Like a curse. My Sharingan spins behind the smoke and blood, and I feel it — that tight pull behind my ribs. The lock. The tether. The bond.

You don’t feel it yet.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because I do.

“You’re mine,” I whisper, more to myself than you. “From the moment my eyes opened to you, you were mine.”

You move to strike again. I dodge it without thinking.

“You can run, Tobirama. You can hide behind your brother, behind your clan, behind that logic you wear like armour.”

I grin — teeth bared, eyes wide.

“But one day, there won’t be a battlefield between us.”

There’s a pulse in the air — raw chakra flaring, wild and sharp. Yours.

But I step forward anyway, undeterred.

“One day, you’ll stop looking at me like I’m a threat,” I say, voice low, dark, certain.

And in the silence between breaths, I finish:

“You’ll look at me like I’m the only thing left.”