Prompt: "Kojiro is elated to find that his rival, the breath and purpose of his patchwork existence, has arrived for their long awaited duel. Only to find that both of Musashi's hands have been crushed, and she will never again hold a sword." — TungstenCat
Her smile was painful, like cracked skin. So unpleasant to his eyes that he had to turn away. He clenched his own fists in a shadowed empathy pain, because he couldn't look at hers.
"Sad, isn't it?" Her voice was a butterfly with broken wings, straining to take flight once more. "Just a... freak accident."
"I..." Kojiro couldn't even find words to say.
"Yeah." She didn't have any either.
He sheathed his sword. There was no point having it out, not without someone to match blades with.
"...I didn't think it'd end like this..." The ex-swordswoman mumbled, slowly taking a seat on the rough path, wincing when she pressed her ground-up hands into the ground. "I... I thought of something so much cleaner."
"We all wish for an easy, clean, honorable death." He muttered, taking a seat beside her. "Rarely is it granted."
Her painful laugh made his own heart twinge. "Yeah. Guess so."
Birds chirped and flew above them.
"I didn't even get to write that book people kept saying the other me wrote. I didn't get to..." She hiccuped. "I..."
"You are still alive. There is still good you can do." Kojiro didn't even have that much, being barely more than a spirit.
Again, a painful laugh, but he could hear the tears in it now. "Not much. Not by myself. Always gonna need someone else now. Can't be by myself anymore. And the hell am I supposed to do about the dimension-hopping thing, huh."
She coughed into her elbow.
"I'm so pathetic," she whispered.
Then what does that make me?