“…I never wanted to do this.”

The bane of existence he’d spent too long sparing. The bane of existence he’d somehow ended up caring for, even through her lust for blood and vengeance.

Even through her willingness to destroy everything they hold dear.

The cyan energy runs through his body, and he can feel his strength returning, his dark blood spilling across his stomach slowly beginning to heal. His body grows less shaky with exhaustion. His eyes glow in the night’s air.

He charges forward.

She’s walking towards him, towards the kitsune she’d lived to kill, and now he knows he has to stop her, it’s been too long playing games and he finally has to end it.

She whips around - she could hear him coming - and blocks his strike with her scissors, her face still contorted into one of rage but now it seems to be edged with surprise as well.

He ducks under her own swing of her weapon and they trade back and forth, blocked strike after strike blocked, and then she lands a lucky kick on his side and he skids away.

She leaps at him, scissors aimed at the ready.

His eyes open.

He slices her through the midsection and through her heart.

Now her face is entirely shock. His is scrunched into one of desperation and pain, not physical but mental, eyes swimming with power and regret, perhaps regret for not finishing the job all those years ago, when they’d met and met and met in battle and he’d always slinked away whenever she’d been defeated because he couldn’t bring himself to kill her for an unfathomable reason that his own cracked heart refused to elaborate.

But now she stares at him as she falls through the air and he refuses to look away even after seeing the hurt and betrayal written across her fading face.

And then her wooden body collapses onto the earth and his own body shakes again ever so slightly. He refuses to look away. He refuses to deny the truth he’s always met and now always caused.