I should have told her I love her.
Why was that not the last thing he told her?
At first, Abhimanyu did not understand that he was dead. He saw his body before he felt the absence of it.
It lay broken upon the blood-soaked earth of Kurukshetra, still and mangled beneath the dust of war. His body did not hold his soul, so, he felt no pain.
No weight in his chest. No burning in his limbs. No blood choking his breath. No arrows tearing through skin. No warriors closing in from all sides. No sound of chariot wheels, no conches, no cruel laughter, no shouted commands.
There was only him and silence. Only the strange, weightless feeling of being lifted from everything that had once made him human.
For a moment, Abhimanyu felt almost free.
He had done his best. His very best.
He had entered the Chakravyuha knowing only half its secret, and still he had gone. He had fought as a Maharathi. He had fought as the son of Arjuna, as the nephew of Krishna, as the grandson of Panduâs line. He had fought for Badi Maaâs humiliation, for the insult that had burned through his family before he had even been old enough to understand the full shape of it. He had fought for dharma. For justice. For the world his elders had promised must be restored.
He had not shamed his fatherâs name.
There was a strange peace in it, a sense of liberation, of a promise kept. He had given everything he had. Every lesson. Every breath. Every ounce of courage in his young bones. He had spent himself fully, like an arrow loosed from the string, and now there was nothing left to hold back.
Nothing left to fear. And then his gaze fell upon the amulet.
It lay against his ruined chest, half-buried beneath blood and torn cloth. The thread had darkened. The small charm was cracked at the edge, but still there.
Uttara.
My dearest love, I should have told her I love her.
The peace inside him broke. He had not known marriage could be so brief and still leave such a wound.
Theirs had been a short marriage.
They had not had years to learn every corner of each otherâs hearts. He had not yet memorized all her moods, all her fears, all the little things that made her laugh when she tried not to.
Yet there had been things he had just begun to learn: like how she liked her hair braided in the mornings, or which songs she hummed when she thought no one was listening, or what dreams she carried quietly inside herself when she looked at the moon.
Gods above, I love her.
He had loved her as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
My poor Uttara. My brave Uttara.
She had been so proud of him. That was what made it worse. She had stood beside him with her chin lifted, eyes shining whenever the songs of his valor reached her ears. Others praised him, and she would try to hide her smile, as if pride were something she could tuck away beneath her veil.
He had seen the fear too. The first time they had truly argued was after Uttar fell on the first day of war.
Her brotherâs death had torn something open in her. Abhimanyu remembered the way she had stood before him, pale and trembling, refusing to cry until the doors were shut. Then she had struck his chest with both fists, not hard enough to hurt, only hard enough to show him that grief needed somewhere to go.
âYou will all go,â she had whispered, voice breaking. âOne by one, you will all go, and we are expected to stand here and be proud.â
He had caught her hands. âUttara....Priye...â
âNo,â she had said, tears spilling then. âLeave the warrior outside, where the war can have him. In this room, speak to me like my husband.â
The words had pierced him more deeply than any arrow. So he had held her. He had promised her he would be careful. He had promised her he would return.
And because songs of his valor had already reached her, because she had seen him train, seen him ride, seen warriors twice his age praise his skill, she had believed him.
Or perhaps she had wanted to.
That morning, the morning he died, she had held his wrist before he left.
He remembered it now with cruel clarity. Her fingers around his arm. The tremor she tried to hide. The amulet in her palm, warm from her touch.
âWear this,â she had said.
He had smiled. âDo you think a thread can protect me?â
âI hope it will,â she replied, tying it carefully around him. âOr has my lord decided my prayers mean nothing?â
He had softened then, because how could he not? She had looked so young in that moment. It was just his Uttara, frightened by a morning that felt wrong.
âTimes are not good,â she had whispered. He should have listened more carefully.
Instead, he had laughed gently, trying to ease the fear from her face.
This war too shall pass.
He had told her.
Those had been his last words to her.
He had been running late. His father was waiting. The army was moving. The world was rushing toward blood and duty and fate, and Abhimanyu, foolish Abhimanyu, had thought there would be another evening. Another dawn. Another chance to say all the things that sat quietly in his heart.
So he had pressed a quick kiss to her temple. A hurried touch: a promise without enough words.
Then he had run after his father.
Now he looked at the amulet on his broken body and wished with everything left of him that he had stayed for one breath longer.
I should have said more.
The regret rose in him, vast and unbearable.
I should have told her.
I should have told her that her eyes shine brighter than the stars the gods themselves shaped into the night. I should have told her that her kindness dwarfs all my valor, all my skill, all the glory men throw at my feet. I should have told her that when she smiles, I forget I was born for war.
He had not yet learned all the small, ordinary things that made her herself.
He knew she liked tending to the palace gardens in the early morning, before the servants came, when the dew still clung to the jasmine leaves and the world had not yet begun asking anything of her. She would kneel in the soil with the seriousness of a priestess making offerings, scolding the flowering vines for growing too wildly, praising the stubborn little herbs that survived heat and neglect.
Once, he had found her there with mud on her fingers and a smudge across her cheek.
She had looked horrified to be caught so plainly. Abhimanyu had thought she looked more beautiful than any queen in a jeweled court.
He should have told her that too.
He should have told her he loved the way she cared for growing things. The way she believed wilted flowers could be coaxed back with patience. The way she treated even the smallest living thing as if it deserved tenderness.
Perhaps that was why her fear had wounded him so deeply.
Uttara knew how fragile life was. He had been foolish enough to think courage could make him an exception.
I should have told her that the thought of our future made me giddy like a child.
A future.
The word hurt now.
He had imagined one, though he had never said it aloud. He had imagined returning from war with dust in his hair and victory at his back. He had imagined Uttara scolding him for some new scar, then touching it with hands too gentle for anger. He had imagined walking with her through palace gardens when no one needed him to be brave. He had imagined learning her properly, slowly, over years. Her laughter, her stubbornness, her favorite flowers. The way she would look holding their child.
Their child.
Something in him trembled. He had not known. Or perhaps some part of him had. Some quiet, sacred part that had looked at Uttara that morning and wanted to stay.
My love.
My wife.
Forgive me.
I thought I had time.
And if there was another birth after this one, another turning of the wheel, another chance granted by gods kinder than war, then let him find her again.
Not as a prince, perhaps. Not as a warrior.
Let him be born as something simple.
A gardenerâs son with soil beneath his nails.
A bird nesting in the branches above her courtyard.
A deer drinking from the pond where she came to water her flowers.
Even a stray dog sleeping in the shade of her garden wall, if that was all fate would allow.
He did not care.
Only let him be near her.
Let him know her again in some quiet life untouched by war. Let him watch her tend to jasmine in the morning. Let him hear her laugh without fear behind it.
Let me grow old beside her, or fly above her, or curl at her feet in the sun.
Any life. Any form. If Uttara was there, if Uttara was his, he would live it gladly.
Again and again and again.
But as the battlefield slipped farther away, as his broken body became smaller beneath him, as the amulet glimmered once in the dying light, he held on to the only prayer left to him.
Let her know.
Please.
Let her know I love her.
Let her know I wanted to grow old with her.
Beneath my duty, beneath my vows, beneath every sacrifice I made for this war, I wanted a full life with her: until her hair turned white beside mine, until my teeth grew loose, until my hands forgot the bow but still remembered hers.
A life where I came home to her.
Let her know. Let her know I loved her.
