#shikandi

Realistic: He always feels as though he ought to be friends with the King of Anga--another unconventional soul! Another person who knows what it is to suffer Ganga-putra’s sidelong glances!--but never quite manages it before the dice game occurs and all hell breaks loose. 

In a better world, he thinks, they would have been. 

Hilarious: Shikandi unquestionably has the best hair in the family: shining and thick and gloriously resistant to tangles and matting.

“Ha,” retorts Krishnaa, trying her hardest to look as though she doesn’t care.

Heartbreaking: When Shikandi realizes that his youngest brother is teetering on the verge of a breakdown, thanks to their father’s explicit descriptions of what he expects of his children’s destiny--the fact that it’s soon after Draupadi’s wedding and the twins’ first seperation ever doesn’t help--he takes Dhristadhyumna aside for a quiet chat.

The words “Bhishma” and “Drona” are never spoken, but they hang between them as a shared burden, and the next day, Dhristadhyumna doesn’t look nearly so haunted. 

After, Shikandi remembers little of what passed following Ashwattama’s last blow, the hours he spent half-smothered beneath heavy tent-cloth, the stench of blood and vomit rising around him. Memory returns to him only with the arrival of new voices, new footsteps, new shouts of grief and anger, and at last, as he knew there must be, the searching arms of his sister.

He is placed into them by one of his brothers-in-law--Bhima, perhaps?--and his throat is dry but still he rasps: forgive me I tried to save them I wasn’t enough forgive me forgive me forgive me

*

He is not there when the Pandavas exact revenge for their sons, but he is there when Uttara brings forth Parikshit. He hesitates, at first; he has no part in this legacy, no satisfaction to be found in the face of a step-nephew’s son, but Krishnaa moans a little and he steps forward to catch her should she swoon. This much, at least, he can do for her. 

When he looks to his sister, however, she is instead fiercely, fearsomely glad, and so is he to see it.

He has lost so much in one terrible night--father, brother, soldiers, self-respect--but at least Krishnaa remains. 

*

In the past, Shikandi had always regarded his twin siblings with a certain guarded respect--with love, of course, but with the understanding that those two, born from the flames together, would ever be closer to each other than the rest, that to intrude would be nothing less than outright sin. But now, everything is different. Now he and Krishnaa are all that are left of Panchal.

He asks, once, if she would rather he had died and Dhristadyumna be spared. (This is what it means to be Panchal: to expose every vulnerability, every fear, but only to those you held most dear.)

Krishnaa, far from immediately denying his words, bites her lip instead for a long moment. “Perhaps,” she says eventually. “You in place of my sons, a thousand times over.”

(This too: to be ever honest, ruthlessly, painfully so--but only with those you held most dear.)

“As would I,” Shikandi admits, and reaches for her hand. The blood of Panchal, so long nurtured through the generations, will die with them, they know, but for now they have each other.

1. Droni is not Bharadwaja’s only daughter, but the only one he must raise himself; apsaras make for such poor mothers, after all. She spends her first years from from civilization, learning to love everything that a woman ought not; and her father is too preoccupied with his studies and his students to pay heed to where she goes and what she does. A son he might have taught prayers and penance; Droni instead learns what his students do of the warrior’s way, and befriends them all.

But Drupada–Drupada is something unlike any of them.

2. “If you came to Panchal,” Drupada teases once more, “I might marry you; but you, you are so stubborn. Think about it while I’m gone; as my Queen, you would have rights to half my kingdom, the authority to demand anything your heart pleased.

She does think about it; how can she not? But then she meets Kripi by chance, Kripi born outside a human womb, just as Droni was once; Kripi who understands so much more about her than anyone ever could, and then Droni can wonder no more. 

3. They have no children, of course, to demand milk; instead Droni travels to Panchal out of curiosity than anything else and a desire to see her friend well established. She expects only the same joy on his part, not to see Drupada’s face darken with displeasure when he hears of Kripi, nor to be humiliated in the midst of his court as an aberration. 

When Droni storms from the palace, angrier than she has ever been in her life, she does not leave alone. A girl, angular and tall, falls at her feet; “I’ve heard you know how to use weapons,” she says all in a rush, “I will serve you all my days, I will do whatever you want, but please teach me how.”

Droni calculates: A brahmin woman’s anger will be nothing to the King of Panchal, but the loss of  his eldest daughter will be unforgiveable.

“Very well,” she says, and gestures for the girl to get up. 

4. With time, Droni learns. 

To come to know Shikandi, her student, and his nature; to shape and mold him into the perfect warrior. 

There is no Ashwattama in this world for Droni and Kripi to love and mother, and so Shikandi has rights to all their hearts. 

There is no Arjuna in this world for Droni to promise the position of superior archer, and so Shikandi has rights to all his knowledge. 

With time, Shikandi learns, too. 

5. When at last his training is complete, and there is none to rival Shikandi in all the world, he comes before Droni to ask what he might offer as guru-dakshina. 

Droni does not need to think on that; she has done so already, for thirty long years.

Storms in Panchal are sudden and violent, and so Shikandi cannot entirely blame his betrothed, reared in the milder climates of Dasharna, for startling at the start of the rain and leaving behind the rest of their entourage. He supposes, though, that he ought to follow her: the King of Dasharna was reluctant enough to allow his daughter to tour her future home prior to her marriage without her coming to any misfortune because of her mad behavior.

When he catches up to her at last, however, she seems entirely in possession of her senses. Instead, her lips are quirked upwards in a half-smile and her hands clasped behind her back.

“I thought,” she says, “we might talk more freely in private.”

Shikandi—there is no other way to put it—stammers disgracefully. He has gone to no little trouble to avoid such an encounter before the marriage might be safely solemnized, but now that it is here, he finds his blood warming with eagerness rather than panic. He had not expected that, not in the slightest.

His future bride misinterprets his confusion. “You will find me an easier negotiator than my father,” she promises wryly, and that is a relief. The King of Dasharna might generously be called a demon in human form when it comes to his treaties.

“All I want,” she says, “is to be treated as your equal. Different in what I might offer, perhaps—“ Shikandi swallows a hysterical giggle “—but no less for it. If you can trust I have thoughts and opinions and desires of my own, and let me have my own way as much as you can, I think we might suit each other very well indeed.”

It is not really so different than what Shikandi wants himself, and before he realizes it, he nods. His bride’s face shines, and all too soon she grasps his hand—Shikandi has but an instant to marvel at how warm and soft her fingers are before his heart beats out a panicked: She will know, she will know, she must know….

bhaginī (1/2): (Sanskrit) a sister; "the happy or fortunate one"

Some of my favorite siblings from the Mahabharata:

(from top to bottom)

Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika, the princesses of Kashi.

Rukmi, Rukmaratha, Rukmabahu, Rukmakesha, and Rukmanetra, the princes of Vidharba, and Rukmini, their only sister.

Subhadra, Balarama, and Krishna, the carefree children of the Yadavas.

Draupadi, Dhristadhyumna, and Shikandi, born in the kingdom of Panchala and bound to their father’s vengeance.

The House of Panchal (+ Krishna) Daemon AU

for @walburgablack

Oh, Drona, you might have laughed along with Drupada when his daemon finally settled in the most inconvenient form possible: but how can you remain so ignorant to what it means? Elephants never forget a grudge, after all--and neither does he. 

A hundred qualms might have prevented Shikandi from going into battle--the question of how to transport his daemon, how to shield it from a blow, how to overcome its essential need for water. And if he has outthought and overcome so many hurdles, how are the jeers and judgment of a thousand traditionalists to stop him?

Dhristadyumna’s daemon is precisely what the world expects: sleek and silent, padding beside him. A princely beast, indeed, that settled as soon as they strode out of the flames together: Dhristadyumna’s lone companion in his grim and grisly path. 

Proper ladies are meant to shriek at lizards (”Salamanders,” Draupadi corrects pedantically), not shout with glee when their daemons settle as such. But  years afterwards, when Jayadrath dares try to touch her daemon without invitation, a violation beyond compare, he only reels back, screeching.

“Pity,” says Panchali sweetly. “Did no one ever teach you, dear brother-in-law, that salamander bear poison in their skin?”

Krishna must have a daemon. Everyone has a daemon, every mortal soul; and of course an eagle perches, yellow-eyed and clever, on his shoulder. But it flies apart from him, further and higher than any other daemon has ever been known to go: and survives blows no other daemon has been known to, and--

For @walburgablack!

1. He meets Shikandi first, a slim youth hovering by his--her--his father’s throne when Drona comes to remind his childhood friend of his bonds. He does not laugh alongside Drupada, but neither does he chide him, and Drona has no compunction in dismissing him entirely from his thoughts. 

2. He hears of the twins’ birth and the prophecy made with it; all the world does. But the thought that Drupada could ever harm him by such petty means--that a son sent by the gods would stoop to murder--is nonsense, and Drona recognizes it as a rumor spread by his old friend to save face. 

The gods know who is right and who is wrong in Drona and Drupada’s disagreement, and they will never intervene to punish the righteous. Why, the princess of Kashi had vowed similar retribution against Ganga-putra himself, and wasn’t her garland still hanging, forlorn, atop Panchal’s walls?

3. This is why he has no compunction about taking Dhristadhyuma as his pupil and teaching him what all he must know--not everything, of course, as the boy stays no more than two years in his ashram, but enough that he need to feel ashamed of it.

No one will ever have cause to say that Drona was afraid; not of a rumor, not of his past, not of a boy with fire in his eyes. 

4. Draupadi--well, Drona is not quite certain what to make of Draupadi. At times she seems entirely herself, but at others, there is a tilt of the chin, a rise of the nose, that reminds him unpleasantly of her father. 

If Arjuna had been where he ought to be, safely under Drona’s care, he might have said a word or two to him before he took in his head to participate in her swayamvara: young men were always so impetuous when it comes to a pretty face, and could always do with more warnings.

But that is what comes of Duryodhana’s meddling: Draupadi is Arjuna’s, and Arjuna’s (in part) Panchal’s. 

Too late to regret it now. Drona relies instead on his master pupil’s fealty to his teacher--and how could the love of a woman, any woman, compare to that?

5. When the end comes, he is grateful it is not at Satyajit’s hands.

Dhristadhyumna he can excuse, as an old man’s hubris: Dhristradhyumna looks nothing like his earthly father, and more like the living embodiment of everyone Drona has ever wronged. 

But Satyajit? Drona knows the steel of his gaze, the shadow of his hair: they are, after all, very much like his father’s when he was young. 

His siblings are new to life, new to the earth, new to everything, and frankly Shikandi finds it exhausting. Not a day goes by, when his  weapons practice is not interrupted by Dhristadhyumna wanting to know how to tie the drape of his clothing, and complaining over how slippery silk can be; or Krishnaa angrily demanding if this affliction is indeed to come upon her once a month.

But also: they lie down beside him, like children half their age and size, and ask sleepily: “Is this what it’s like, having more than each other?”