Work Text:
So you get up to your feet, again.
Your body hurts, for a time too short. You don't even have the time to catch your breath between wounds soon to be no more.
You look, and you see him, again.
He staggers, then he stands straight, sword in hand, breath labored, his face a grimace. You see your own exhaustion reflected in him.
You have spilled so much blood out of each other there shouldn't be a drop left in either of you, yet blood pounds in your ears. Deafening in the battlefield where only the two of you, despite everything, still move.
You look at each other.
He touches his throat, where a gash is disappearing. You feel the burning in your chest wane, you don't need to look to know lacerations are mending, your skin sealing up like molten wax.
You look at him, the other, your enemy, and you know, and what you know makes you so very afraid. You want to charge at him again, to wipe away that fear that eats at everything you knew before. You see in his stance that he wants to do the same thing. But neither of you moves.
Because as you look at each other, you both know.
Because there is no one else. On this battlefield, in this land, under this sky. There is no one else that is more similar to you, than him.