#pradyumna

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At first, he doesn't believe it. How can he?

He hears the words: the stunned, stammering account from the trembling soldier who collapsed at his feet, and he knows what they mean. The syllables are clear. The sequence of events, detailed and devastating.

And yet... his heart does not accept it. Again, how can he?

"Lord Krishna is dead."

No. No, that's not possible. Not his Madhav.

His Madhav was not meant to die. Not now, not ever. Certainly not before himself.

Arjuna was at the outskirts of Hastinapura, the sky was clear- mockingly so. He had come to inspect the outer grain storage sites, nothing glorious, nothing urgent. A quiet ride. A soldier at his side. An ordinary afternoon.

Until the second rider arrived.

The hooves thundered over dry earth like war drums. The messenger dismounted before the horse had stopped, fell to his knees in dust. His lips trembled, and his voice cracked before he spoke.

Arjuna didn't recognize the young man. Just a boy in a soldier's garb. A messenger from Dwarka, soaked in salt, his eyes rimmed with red.

He opened his mouth, and his voice broke Arjuna's world.

"Lord Krishna is dead."

He couldn't breathe it. He couldn't think.

The soldier fell forward, hands trembling as he drew in ragged breaths.

Somehow, he managed to speak.

"He was in the forest... under the peepal tree. He had gone alone. And a hunter-my lord, the hunter mistook him for a-" "A deer. He... he took the shot."

The words struck like arrows to the chest. Each one embedded itself in Arjuna's ribs.

A deer. A deer?

The man who moved universes. Mistaken for a deer.

Arjuna chokes on his very breath. Like the air itself is water and its rushing down his throat.

It's a horrible sound. A hoarse, broken thing. He presses a hand to his mouth to stop it, but it keeps coming-like the last exhale of something old and sacred.

This just can't happen.

"No," Arjuna whispered. His voice sounded far away. "No, that's not... That isn't... He's not-he can't be-"

The soldier squeezed his eyes shut. Tears spilled freely down his face.

"I'm sorry, my lord."

The silence that followed was vast: deafening, the only thing Arjuna heard was the roaring absence of Krishna's laughter.

The sobs behind him are muffled. Choked. The soldier's shoulders quake, head bowed, palms pressed to the earth like he's begging some unseen god to give him the right words.

But Arjuna isn't listening.

He's still kneeling, trembling, forehead against the ground that now feels cold and unfamiliar. The world feels... wrong. As though Krishna's absence has shifted the balance of everything that was. Even the air feels thin. Distant.

The one voice that had always steadied him-through war, through exile, through the worst and best of himself-is gone.

Gone.

And Arjuna... does not know how to move without it.

"My lord-please," the soldier whispers again, crawling closer on bruised knees. "I wouldn't... I wouldn't have come if there was anyone else. But you must go to Dwarka. Please-please, they're-"

His voice breaks.

And then he throws himself flat, pressing his brow to Arjuna's shadow.

"They are killing each other."

Arjuna stirs.

The soldier lifts his tear-streaked face, eyes wild. "It's madness. The Yadavas-they're turning on their own. Brothers against brothers. Sons against fathers. Blood everywhere, and no one-no one can stop it-because he's not there. My lord you are our only hope."

Arjuna doesn't answer.

The soldier presses on, voice shaking. "They keep calling out his name. Some curse is upon them-I don't understand it. But it's like grief poisoned their minds. Like it shattered something inside them, and they don't know how to bear it-so they've turned it outward. On each other."

His head bows-and with it, time folds in on itself.

And then Arjuna remembers.Gandhari's curse.

The battlefield was still bleeding when she'd spoken it.

Her grief had turned the air heavy, her voice sharpened by fire and love shattered beyond recognition. The Yadavas shall perish. Your clan, O Krishna, shall fall by its own hand, as mine has.

And Krishna-his Madhav-had listened quietly and smiled. That smile-how could Arjuna ever forget it?

Not mocking but sad. So sad. So achingly soft, as if he had known it all along. As if he had chosen to carry the weight of that curse long before it was spoken.

As if he had always known how the Age of Heroes must end.

Arjuna had wanted to scream that day. To protest. To beg Gandhari for mercy. To demand Krishna defend himself.

But Krishna had only placed a gentle hand on Arjuna's shoulder.

"It must be so, Parth," he'd said. "Let her grief have a place in the world. Even this pain is part of the song." And then-"Will you still walk with me, even knowing where it leads?"

And Arjuna had answered without pause: "Always."

The young soldier's hands reach out, clutching Arjuna's wrists.

"Please, O Parth. You are the only one they might still listen to."

Parth.

Oh, how it burned. The name should have felt like home. Instead, it lands like ash in Arjuna's chest.

Because it had always belonged to one voice. That one soul. His.

The only lips that had ever breathed it like a lullaby and a challenge both.And now those lips were dust. That voice was gone and Arjuna can't seem to remember what the last thing he said to him.

He lowers his head. "Do not call me that," he whispers.

The soldier flinches. "I'm sorry, I-"

"I'm sorry I-," Arjuna says, and there's no anger in his voice. Only grief. Only a weight so deep it warps the air around him. "That name... it belonged to him. It only meant something when he spoke it."

He pulls his hands gently from the soldier's grip and stares at them.

They are the hands of a warrior. A kingmaker. A man once guided by a god.

Now, they shake.

"I don't know how this madness will be stopped." Arjuna says. "But I will go."

The soldier exhales in a sob.

"I will go," Arjuna says again, more to himself than anyone else. He rises slowly, like an old mountain rising from the sea. The soldier scrambles to his feet, awe and fear wrestling in his eyes.

Arjuna does not look back, his vision blurs again-not from tears this time, but from the hollow ache behind his eyes. The world feels unreal. A fever dream wrapped in smoke.

And yet, through it all-he hears Krishna's voice, the echo of it, from some memory pressed deep into his ribs.

"There will come a time, Parth, when the world will be too heavy even for you. On that day, you will have to choose: to weep... or to walk."

He breathes, ragged. The name leaves his lips like a prayer:

"Madhava."

It was a prayer, a call for his god to give him the strength to breathe. It is the breath of a man holding up the sky by sheer will.

Then Arjuna rises. Slowly.

Like an old man who had finally let age catch him. Like a mountain shifting-not in grandeur, but in weariness, as if even the earth groaned under the weight of its own bones.

The soldier watches, breath held tight in his throat.

He has never seen Arjuna this close before.

He has seen him, of course. Who hadn't? The kingmaker. The kingsalyer. The hero of Kurukshetra. The man who had strung the Gandiva like it was made of silk, while kings and demons alike trembled. The man who had stood beside the divine Vasudeva as his charioteer, his brother, his shadow, his flame.

The soldier has seen that man. But not this one.

Not this man who moves like the world has ended. Not this man whose hands tremble. Whose eyes look like they've been hollowed out by something too ancient to name.

And then-to his utter disbelief-Arjuna kneels. Again. But not from collapse, not in despair. No-he kneels with intent. Carefully. As though the motion costs him something he is still willing to give.

The soldier stiffens, uncertain, but Arjuna only reaches forward-places both hands over his.

And then he smiles. Not the one that warriors describe in hushed awe, or bards weave into golden verses. This smile is wrong. Too quiet. Too soft. And too heavy with something that shouldn't be in a hero's mouth.

The soldier's throat tightens. He doesn't understand why it hurts-until he does. Because this is not a smile of triumph. It's not even a smile meant to comfort.

It is grief. Grief, wearing courage like a second skin.

And somehow, that is worse.

Because it means the hero feels it. Not distantly. Not like a god mourning mortals. But deep-deep in his marrow. Enough to break him.

And if he could break- Then what hope was there for the rest of them?

The soldier's hands tremble in Arjuna's. He wants to look away. He wants to not see the tears at the corners of the archer's amber eyes. He wants to pretend this is just another story, one of a thousand sung on long winter nights.

But Arjuna is looking at him. Really looking.

"You've done more than most ever could," the warrior says, and the words feel like balm and blade both. "You brought me this news... even when your heart was breaking. Even as your world crumbles."

The soldier's voice cracks. "I... my family-" He doesn't finish. He can't.

"I am proud of you," Arjuna says, and the soldier can feel the truth of it-quiet, unshakable-in every syllable.

And that is the moment something breaks in him.

Because he's just a boy.

A messenger.

A flicker in the shadow of history. But the hero of the age is holding his hands, speaking to him like he matters.

And not even that is enough to fix the world.

"I am proud of you," Arjuna says again, and means it. "And now... I have another task for you. If you're willing."

The soldier nods at once, though his shoulders sag with fatigue. "Anything."

Arjuna gently releases his hands, rising once more. "Ride to Hastinapura immediately," he says.

The soldier lifts his head. "To my elder brother. Yudhishthira."

The name alone carries a hush. Another figure from the war songs, a pillar of dharma. The soldier swallows, nodding before his mind even finishes catching up.

"Tell him..." Arjuna's voice falters, just for a breath. "...that I go to Dwarka."

He doesn't say more than that. Doesn't try to explain. Doesn't recount the chaos. Doesn't describe the bleeding city or the shattered kin. He simply says it like a stone dropped into still water.

Arjuna's gaze turns skyward for a heartbeat-toward the blazing blue where Krishna once walked, where gods once laughed. Then he looks back down.

"Tell him what you've seen," he says. "He will know what to do next."

The soldier nods again, harder this time. "I will. I swear it."

He wants to say more. To promise his loyalty. To ask-What will you find there, my lord? Will there be anything left of Dwarka when you arrive? Of him?

But the questions lodge in his throat. Because somehow, he understands: Arjuna doesn't need questions. And he doesn't need promises. He just needs him to ride.

So the soldier rises, fists clenched, spine straightening.

And then, hesitantly: "Should I... tell the queen? Subhadra?"

At that, Arjuna's breath catches. Sharp and silent. As if someone had struck him through the ribs and then vanished.

Subhadra.

The soldier sees it, just for a flash, the way her name folds him inward. The hero of heroes, undone again by something as simple and sacred as family.

Arjuna's lips part, but no words come. For the first time since the news was spoken, the soldier realizes something terrifying:

Arjuna didn't realize he had a heart left to break.

But he does, and it has broken again.

Arjuna sees her in his mind-her laughter, her fire, her stubborn grace. The way she used to punch his shoulder when he teased her. The way she glowed when Krishna was near, teasing them both, always saying they were too alike for the world to survive them together.

She had always been fearless. Her lionhearted flower.

She had withstood the death of a son with no one but herself to weep into. She had held a thousand crises at bay with little more than will and steel-edged silence. Her strength had never been loud, but it had been unshakable.

And yet...This.

This will break her.

Because Dwarka was Subhadra's, as much as Subhadra was Dwarka's. She had been raised by the sound of waves and war chants, by Krishna's laughter echoing through salt-washed halls. She had danced on the palace terraces, barefoot and wild, her hair full of wind and her eyes full of stars.

And Krishna- he had not just been her brother. He had been her light. Her anchor. Her horizon. Subhadra had been his mirror, his spark. The one person who could match him stride for stride, silence for silence.

They had not always needed words. Just a glance, a shared smile-an inside joke the world was never meant to understand.

And now that light is gone. And there is nothing Arjuna can do to soften it.

No message gentle enough. No words safe enough. Because telling her this would be like telling the sea that the moon has died.

Arjuna looks away, voice tight.

"No. Not yet," Arjuna says quietly, his voice frayed at the edges. "Let my brothers... let the empress speak to her when the time is right. You don't have to carry that weight, son. Not this one."

He closes his eyes briefly. Then opens them with that same brave steadiness.

"You will do that for me?" The soldier nods, tears falling silently. Arjuna rests his hand on his shoulder.

His voice is soft. But in it lies the weight of kings, wars, gods, and endings.

The soldier nods. Tears slip down his cheeks, quiet as rain. He can't speak. He doesn't trust his voice not to crack under the sheer honor- and the tragedy- of being entrusted with this.

"Ride now. And ride safe, son." A pause. Then- "I'm sorry about your family."

The words are simple. But they land like scripture.

The soldier doesn't know how Arjuna still has room in his heart for other people's grief when his own is swallowing the sky.

But maybe that's what makes him who he is. A person whom even the Creator had loved.

The soldier bows his head, then turns. He mounts his weary horse without another word, casting one final glance at the prince still standing beneath a sky that suddenly feels too big, too empty.

Arjuna watches him go, until the dust swallows him whole. Then, when he is alone again, he turns his face to the wind, toward the beautiful land that was as much a part of him as his own home.

And walks toward that place where everything ends.

.......................................

He rides to Dwarka at once. He needs to see with his own eyes.

But what greets him is not the golden city of laughter and sea-salt winds. Not the realm where Krishna's children raced along shining corridors and Rukmini's veena sang sweet in the dusk.

No.

He finds ruins. Smoke. Silence.

And bodies.

Yadavas with familiar eyes and familiar smiles now twisted in death. Blood smeared over the salt-bitten shore. The air was still heavy with the echo of rage and madness.

They destroyed themselves. The great Yadava clan, torn apart from within, a divine prophecy fulfilled with horrifying precision.

His Madhav's body had been cremated by the time Arjuna reached the forest. 

The ashes scattered. The sacred lotus feet that once led him through war, through love, through dharma- gone. Dust. Smoke on the wind.

But someone had left offerings beneath the Peepal tree: fruit, flowers, a folded silk shawl. The bark bore the imprint of knees pressed in prayer. There, scorched into the soil, was the faint shape of a footstep, and the fading sandalwood scent of his beloved Madhav. 

Arjuna knelt beside it. He pressed his fingers onto the ground where Krishna’s body had lain, and suddenly...he could see it. The serene curve of his smile, eyes closed, limbs folded like the world no longer needed guarding.

He didn’t look dead. He looked... complete. As though Krishna had walked his full circle, and stepped gently beyond it.

Arjuna bowed his head, in a grief that carried reverence. A love too large for words, too heavy to hold.

That he was still breathing at all was a feat.

As if the very act of drawing air into lungs hollowed by absence required divine mercy. As if the world itself should have stopped, just for a moment, to honor the silence Krishna left behind.

He almost collapses into a dead faint there and then, the grief and empty heart crippled his trembling legs. Instead, he walks through the broken city in a daze.

He looks out at the bloodstained shore- once vibrant and alive- now piled high with the bodies of his brothers, his kin. The air is thick with the coppery scent of death, heavy and unrelenting.

Horror feels like a word to pale, too small to hold what his eyes witness.

He remembers the laughter that once echoed here- the sound of children playing, of warriors boasting, of promises made beneath the sun. Now, that same courtyard-where he once drank and joked with his in-laws-is filled with weeping widows and silent children clutching tattered remnants of their fathers.

Grief wraps around him like a suffocating shroud. Each face a fracture in the city's soul. Each tear a testament to a world crumbling beyond repair. Arjuna's breath catches. The weight of loss presses on his chest, and for a moment, the archer feels utterly small: just a man standing amidst ruins too vast to comprehend.

Then...

He finds Pradyumna's blade, its once-shining steel dulled and rusted with dried blood-silent witness to battles that cannot be undone.

He stares at it for a long time.

Pradyumna... The boy had grown in Krishna’s likeness - not just in face, but in spirit. Quick-witted, bold, too clever for his own good. Arjuna had loved him like a son. There had been moments, in fleeting light and shared laughter, where he’d seen Krishna’s younger self flicker in the boy’s smile.

Near a shattered step, Samba's delicate anklet lies abandoned, its jingling long silenced, a fragile echo of laughter now lost.

Arjuna closes his eyes. Samba, wild and bright. Always up to something - the pranks, the games, the unrelenting grin that once painted palace walls with joy. How many times had Krishna sighed in exasperation while hiding a fond smile, saying, “That boy will be the death of my patience”?

By the shore, where waves wash cold against broken stone, he recognizes Satyaki's favorite angavastra- silk torn and stained, a ragged remnant of a warrior's honor.

Arjuna kneels, brushing dirt from the fabric. Satyaki.

The man had once laughed that he'd follow Arjuna into hell if only to keep the devatas on their toes. And Arjuna had believed him. Because Satyaki had never once faltered - not in the war, not in peace, not in the long shadows that came after.

He had been more than a warrior. More than a Yadava prince. He had been a friend.

One of the few who knew how to needle Arjuna out of his silences, who could match his sarcasm blow for blow, whose loyalty had not been loud - but unshakable.

"Let them call you proud, Parth. That's only because they fear you."

"Let them fear me then," Arjuna had once muttered, battle-weary.

Satyaki had only grinned. "Fine. But if you brood any harder, the Gandiva might file for custody."

Arjuna had laughed then - one of those rare, startled, real laughs. The kind that only a few people could draw from him in the worst of times.

And he had defended him - always. Even when others questioned Arjuna’s choices, Satyaki had stood by him, sword in hand, voice sharp and clear.

He had once shouted in court: “You speak of dharma? Then speak first of what Parth has given, what he has lost, to uphold it.”

And now...

Now, he was just a cloth on the sand. Torn silk. Stained red. A silence where a brother’s laughter used to be.

Arjuna closes his eyes, and the waves echo louder than before. There is no one, no one, left untouched. No branch of the family spared. The warriors. The poets. The servants. The children.

He finds a row of bodies near the palace gates: some bludgeoned with clubs, others with bloodied fists, some with no weapons at all, just grief weaponized into madness.

Arjuna sinks to the ground. 

This was not a war. This was unraveling. People turned inward and torn apart. Like a string pulled until the whole garment frays.

He finds no one left to greet him. No Rukmini. No Satyabhama. No little Yadavas with bright eyes. Only the ocean, licking hungrily at the ruins like it, too, wants to claim what remains.

But through the wreckage, one absence cuts deeper than the rest.

Balarama is not among the dead.

Not on the blood-soaked fields. Not by the crumbled palace where his laughter once shook the marble. Not even near the great halls where his voice rang like a conch in counsel and in fury.

Arjuna searches. He searches even though, in his bones, he already knows. They had already told him.

He walked away, they said. Not fallen. Not struck down. Not devoured by the madness. He simply stood, turned his back on the burning city, and walked into the forest.

Alone.

Some say he sat beneath a tree and closed his eyes. Others whisper that the great white serpent-his divine essence, his truest self-uncoiled from his mortal frame and slid quietly back into the sea.

Only rumors and the hush of a vanished god. And somehow, that is worse than finding a body.

Because to find a body is to mourn. To give the dead their due. To mark an ending.

But this? This is a question left open. A wound with no scab. A door left ajar forever.

Arjuna stands at the edge of the sea. Foam curls around his boots. The wind, salted and sharp, bites at his cheeks.

He closes his eyes.

He remembers their clashes: fire and thunder. Their silences. Their fierce, wordless bond, buried under years of rivalry and respect. Krishna had been the bridge between them, the pulse they both shared without ever admitting it.

And now both ends of the bridge are gone.

He sees Balarama in his mind’s eye: tall, unyielding, shoulders squared like a mountain that had carried too much for too long. Perhaps he had finally grown tired. Perhaps he had watched the city burn and decided that some griefs deserve no witness.

Perhaps he knew: There was nothing left to save.

Arjuna lowers his head. Presses a fist to his chest like a man making a vow to the sea.

“Goodbye, Dau,” he whispers, the name barely a breath on his tongue. “Wherever you've gone... may it be far from sorrow.”

And yet- A bitter thought coils inside him, tight and coiled: If I had seen your body beside his- If you had lain beneath that peepal tree too- If I had found you both...

I would not have walked away from that forest.

The sun rises and sets without witness, without meaning. Smoke rises in plumes from the pyres by the shore, and Arjuna tends each flame with hands that once drew the Gandiva - now shaking, blistered, caked in the ash of his own people.

He lights the funeral fires with the same fingers that once reached for Krishna’s hand in the middle of battle. And now they reach only for silence.

There are too many bodies.

Too many names.

The great warriors. The reckless sons. The fierce cousins. The children with Krishna’s eyes and his laughter. Servants who had once sung his name in the courtyards, who had fed him sweetmeats in festival seasons, who had guarded his halls with pride.

All ash, now.

And still, Arjuna stays.

He recites the rites. He bows to the ocean. He prays even when his throat breaks.

He lifts bodies. Builds Pyres. Offers ghee and flowers with steady hands. He weeps but does not falter.

Because if he does not do this, who will?

If he does not light the flames, if he does not carry their names - who will remember they lived at all?

But the hardest grief does not lie among the dead.

It walks, weeping, within the palace. The queens.

Draped in white. Their eyes hollow, their voices raw from too much screaming, too many songs turned into mourning.

Rukmini is already gone. She had walked into the fire with her husband’s name on her lips. Silent. Straight-backed. A goddess until the very end.

Satyabhama followed. They had tried to stop her - but she had only smiled that sharp, clever smile and said, “He promised to never leave me behind.”

And then she was gone too. Flames curling high around the bangles she refused to remove.

Few others followed - noble, broken hearts too full of love or madness to remain. Those who stayed behind... did so in ruins. Women with eyes full of waves, whose voices would never rise in song again.

Subhadra had not come. Arjuna thanked the gods for that mercy.

Vasudeva, the great elder, stood at the center of it all - dry-eyed, spine straight, the last banyan tree standing in a burned forest.

Arjuna found him in the shattered audience chamber. The old man sat alone on Krishna’s throne - not in power, but in remembrance. His white hair was unbound. His hands folded in his lap like a prayer never spoken aloud.

When Arjuna knelt before him, Vasudeva did not speak at first.

Then-quietly, like the hush of twilight:

“I am leaving too, my son.”

Arjuna’s breath caught.

“My time is done,” Vasudeva said. “I have no wish to see this place become a ruin. And I am too old to walk the forest like Balarama. But I can still go to the river. I can still sit beneath the stars that once heard my son’s first cry.”

He lifted his eyes to Arjuna. Ancient. Endless. “But I entrust to you the women and people of Dwarka.”

Arjuna stilled.

“You are the last whom he trusted the most. You are his, as much as he is yours. What is yours is his to protect, and what is his is yours to protect. You will not let them fall... You will do your best.”

Arjuna bowed, forehead to the floor. “You have my word, father.”

“Take them to Hastinapur,” Vasudeva said. “Away from this cursed shore. To safety.. to wherever peace still breathes.”

Then he stood.

And without farewell, without fear, he walked from the palace and disappeared into the dawn mist.

He would not be seen again.

Just before he leaves with the remaining people in Dwarka, he steps into Krishna’s room for the last time.

He presses his forehead to the ground of Krishna's prayer chamber and there he finds Rukmini’s prayer beads, abandoned in the corner, their silk thread frayed with time and use.

He picks them up carefully. Reverently. The beads are warm from memory alone.

Rukmini.

He sees her: the queen who had never needed to raise her voice to command a room. He remembers the soft rustle of her sari as she moved through Dwarka’s stone halls - never hurried, never loud.

Krishna's first light.

She was warmth, not fire. The kind of gentle presence that steadied rooms without a word. She mothered with ease but never patronized. She listened more than she spoke - and when she did speak, the whole palace fell quiet.

She had a way of looking at Krishna - seeing him in a way no one else quite could. As though she saw the child, the god, and the man all at once - and loved each version equally.

Once, during a quiet moment after the war, Arjuna had confided something dark to her - something unworthy of a hero. She hadn’t offered false comfort. Just poured him a glass of tamarind water, pressed it into his hand, and said:

“You carry so much, Parth. Even the Lord leans on you. Let yourself rest, sometimes.”

She had smiled, soft yet unshakeable.

And for a fleeting moment, he had understood why Krishna needed her- not as a queen, not even as a consort- but as his home.

Satyabhama had never left prayer beads. She had left scorch marks on the training yard.

Arjuna still feels the phantom sting of a bruise she gave him once - with the flat of her blade and a wicked grin.

Satyabhama had never been easy to like- but once you did, gods help you, there was no escaping her.

Arjuna remembers her not just as Krishna’s fiery consort, but as his friend. His rival. His greatest irritant in Dwarka.

They had bickered constantly: over tactics, over archery forms, over Krishna’s absurd taste in garlands. She had the temper of a monsoon and the precision of a sharpened arrow. And she never, ever backed down.

“You think you're clever just because he lets you sit beside him?” she had once snapped at him across a training yard. Arjuna had only grinned. “I am clever. And he doesn't let me sit beside him - he needs me there.” To which she’d promptly shot an arrow so close to his ear it took off a lock of his hair.

Krishna had laughed for days.

But that was Satyabhama - bold, ruthless, hilarious. She’d duel Arjuna just to keep him humble. Mock his brooding silences. Flick mango seeds at his forehead during court sessions. And gods help him; he had done the same.

He once caught her sneaking mangoes out of the royal kitchen before a feast. She hadn’t even tried to hide it - just shrugged and said:

“They never give me enough. And I’d stab someone before I ask your Madhav.”

To which Arjuna had said, “You should ask him. He’ll say yes, won’t he?”

She gasped like he’d committed treason, then tackled him into a fountain.

They’d come up laughing. Battered, soaked, shining with mischief like children in grown-up skins.

She was the only person besides Krishna who could provoke Arjuna and live to brag about it.

But beneath all the fire and defiance, there was devotion - not just to Krishna, but to Dwarka, to the family they had built. She had loved fiercely. Protected stubbornly. Cared without asking permission.

She had been the sword at Krishna’s side. Not ornamental - equal.

And now…

Now, she was gone.

Not a ghost. Not a shadow.

Just ash in the wind, and the memory of laughter in marble halls.

Arjuna presses his fingers to his temple. He almost smiles - almost - thinking of her sparring with the gods themselves in the afterlife, demanding mangoes and opinions.

As Arjuna prepares to leave Krishna’s prayer chamber, the faint scent of sandalwood still clings to the stones beneath his fingertips.

The silence presses heavy around him, but then-like a sudden gust stirring dry leaves-an unexpected memory breaks through the stillness.

The streets of Dwarka, alive with color and laughter.

He sees himself, running - chased and laughing - a vivid splash of white garments now painted with the riotous hues of Holi. The mischievous gleam in Krishna’s eyes as he darts behind him, powder flying from his hands like sparks. The joyous roar of the Yadavas cheering them on.

Subhadra’s teasing smile, arms crossed, blocking his escape like the sister and sister-in-law she was - fierce, loving, impossible to outrun.

He hears Krishna’s laughter again, warm and wild, pulling at the corners of his memory.

“You cannot outrun me forever, Parth.”

Arjuna almost smiles through the ache, remembering how the warrior in him had lost that day: beaten, drenched, and gloriously alive.

That moment-so distant now-is a shard of light in the endless shadow of loss.

He closes his eyes, holding onto that laughter like a fragile flame.

Then, with a breath heavy as the world itself, he rises from the prayer chamber floor and turns away.

"How do you expect me to breathe? How can I live after this?" he whispers.

There is no answer.

She is considered to be the reincarnation of Rati, Kama's wife. In her human form, she is married to Shambara.

When Shambara kidnaps Krishna's son Pradyumna, she raises him herself, separate from the other children of Shambara, teaching him all the martial secrets of the danavas. This is something that serves Pradyumna in nearly every war that he has to fight.

The number of times I read Mahabharat or watch it on different platforms or read different books on it I really feel that the modern platform is not doing justice to some Mahabharata characters.

Yeah they are not that Saas Bahu type serials to keep going on for years but still yaar I badly want more space time and dialogues for some characters.

I am a very inconsistent girl in her study phase but I really wanna write something badly about the Mahabharat giving more space to the untouched characters.

Thinking to start a new series.

"MAHABHARATA RUKMINI AND REVATI'S VERSION"

I want to include everything in this series. That every untouched characters of the epic and my two mothers Rukmini and Revati Maiyya.

Features :-

More( I mean lots of) RukminixKrishna scenes

No hate to the other wives and the gopis of Vrindavan I have high respect for them but still I want Krishna to have only Rukmini as his lover and queen.(Although she is already the only one)

Space time for Revati xBalrama, all the kids of Rukmini and Revati, the Uppandavas, Abhimanyu, etc.

Krishna and Rukmini meeting each other thousand times before that letter and harana incident.

And much more.........

OR: Two times their children helped in repairing their relationship, and the one time they didn't.

1.

Rukmi wakes from deep sleep at a start. His wife is asleep next to him; she had cried herself to sleep after receiving the news. 

Rukmi himself had thought he would be sick all of yesterday evening; he had stormed away and locked his chambers, nursing a glass of madira all evening, his eyes staring into the distance.

There is a letter on his bedside table.

He opens it.

The note is unsigned, written in a hasty, sharp hand, but Rukmi knows instantly who it is. He will never not be able to recognize the hand of the man he detested above all, even if it is not the flowing, elegant script Krishna is wont to write in.

I will not waste your time with pleasantries and presumptions. You must already know.

She has already lost too much, Rukmi. I do not know how much more she can bear. I will not beg, but a letter from the brother she has always loved, even to date, can only offer her comfort—comfort I cannot give.

She still loves you. She always will.

Rukmi stares at the letter.

She still loves you.

His sister—

Rukmini, his mind breathes and is assaulted by a cacophony of memories: the sweet chiming of her anklets as she ran to him, her childish laughter as he spun her around, the faint glow of gold on her skin whenever she was upset; the solemn and despairing look she sent his way every time Rukmi ranted about Krishna, the hidden anguish on her face when he declared she was to marry Shishupala, the gold that glimmered on her skin like a second layer in the setting sun as she begged the husband she had chosen to spare his life.

She lost her child, Svami—you know how it feels.

He walks to his desk, mind spinning.

The next morning, his wife awakens to find him slumped on his desk, a bottle of particularly strong madira off to the side. The desk and the floor is littered with multiple parchments, either crumpled or in various states of disarray; all of them are written on.

Rukmini, one reads. O Dvarakaeshvari, another starts.

They never go more than a few sentences.

The one he has slept on begins with: My little radiance.

2.

Rukmavati loves Pradyumna, Bhrata. Let them be happy, please; I am loathe to deny my child anything, not after I lost him and got him back against all laws.

I know you love your daughter too. Let them be happy, brother. Don't let our sour relationship ruin our children's happiness.

Rukmi reads the letter from Rukmini with a steady gaze; she had continued to write him all the years after her marriage even though he never responded.

He reads her letters with fondness, but every time he sits down to write her back, he is reminded of the sharp tug on his hair and the smooth glide of the sword against his scalp as his hair was shorn away. And his fondness turns to mortification and revulsion. His pride has never recovered from the insult Krishna offered him.

Rukmini's son has stolen away his child.

But Rukmi is getting older. His children are of marriageable age now; his eldest son's wife already bears child.

He finds himself thinking of his sister more fondly now, more than the bitterness of his youth. Some part of him is tired of the bitterness. He only wants to hold his little sister closer, in a way he hasn't since she was a young teenager.

He looks up.

"Call off the army," he orders his commander shortly. "If Rukmavati loves my sister's son, I will not interfere in their happiness."

If his commander is surprised, he makes no show of it, and instead bows his head and responds, "As you will, Rajan."

He ignores the way his wife gazes at him with a hidden hope, and turns away. He cannot bring himself to write Rukmini back just yet, so he must hope that no response is response enough for his sister.

(It is; though Rukmini always wonders what would be better: no Vidarbhan army pursuing her child, or a letter that has been a long time coming.)

+ 1.

Rukmi has somehow managed to get through his granddaughter's wedding to Aniruddha without offending any of the Yadavas.

His enemy has sobered in a way he never thought would be possible.

It was the War, the bloodshed being greater than few other battles; Rukmi still smarts from the refusal of both sides to accept his aid.

He has managed to be marginally polite to Krishna out of affection for Rukmini, who he has seen after long years. She had slowly stopped seeking him out or visiting Bhojakatha as often; the last time she had come was over fifteen years ago, and he had missed her like a limb even though he had never fully forgiven her.

It is supposed to be a night of revelry, of reconciliation.

He knows that Rukmini hopes that tonight is the night he lets go of his grudge that is decades-old at this point. His wife has all but begged it of him: "It has been over half our lives, Svami. Our grandchildren are to be wed, let go of this grudge."

But tonight is one of those nights where the only thing Rukmi can remember is the sharp tug on his hair all those days ago. All he could forgive but that one insult; the effect is compounded by how much Rukmi has already drunk, having already passed the fine line where wine was something he could live without. Now it is his lifeblood, he cannot go minutes without draining the crystal goblets that are ever-flowing with wine as red as blood.

He goads Balarama into a dice game. The latter is almost as drunk as him.

They play, and this time not even Rochana's distressed glance as he gloats can distract him from the doom he is spiraling into.

Aniruddha stands up and demands, "Grandfathers, stop."

Neither of them pay him any heed.

Rukmi is enjoying the temper that is rearing its head in Balarama's eyes as he bests his enemy again and again.

But he forgets that for all that Shesha bears the weight of the world and his beloved lord, he is still a snake. And a snake attacks when provoked.

The last thing he sees is the tears in his Rukmini's eyes, the gold flaring on her skin like a tempestuous light storm; amidst the pain and as Balarama raises his club, the last thing he thinks is: I am sorry, little radiance.

A few weeks later, a letter is set on Rukmini's windowsill. No one knows how it got there.

Rukmini opens it with trembling hands, and almost drops it when she recognises her older brother's handwriting.

It is the first letter he himself has sent her in over twenty years.

My little radiance, my gilded namesake,

You were the best thing in my life, ever since I first set my eyes on you. I will never forgive your husband for taking you away, but it is high time that enmity be set aside considering that our grandchildren are to be wed. Your sister-in-law calls me childish for holding on so long even when our grandchildren are ready to make us great-grandparents.

Let this marriage join our families thrice over and restart our relationship.

I wish I had been there for you all those years you needed me, but I wasn't.

I love you, little radiance.