!! Trigger Warning-Creator Chose Not To Specify !!
A/N-Okay, so I know you all were expecting some allusion to the shakti incident by this point, but trust me, this chapter is important to the overall plot development and character. Promise, I promise. Next chapter will be even more interesting for y'all!
Important Scene
"We're running out of wood, bhaiyya." Angad said, rubbing his hands together worriedly. "We can't do too much anymore. And we need wood for everything." He sighed, sitting down, and though Lakshman wanted to do the same, he did not, simply kneeling and picking Angad back up. "And though there's that one forest, the wood there is-" he flinched. "Weak."
Lakshman glanced around. "Well, we can make the cots lower, so even if it gives out, it'll be lower. I do not believe that there's so much else we need with wood anyways. Cots, tables, occasional sticks for cooking plates. Not much else, right? Just-" he glanced at the pillars holding the tent up, but Hanuman called out from the battlefield.
"Bhaiyya!" And both raced out.
-----O-----
The moment Vibhishan's words rang in the air, Lakshman let go of Ram. As expected, his bhaiyya did not make a wild move towards the Brahmastra. His dark circle-lined eyes stared at Vibhishan. Hanuman, behind the man, collapsed to his knees. Sugriv set down his mace, his arm looking sore, and Angad and Nal leaned into each other. Jal calmly set Neel on a bed and began bandaging whatever minor wounds he might have retained. "Not...dead?" Ram asked, clearing his throat.
Vibhishan allowed a small silence to be kept between them, before clearing his own throat, which suddenly felt constricted and filled with something thick and difficult. "Not dead." he affirmed. Ram let out a strangled sort of yell, standing up with a strat, making everyone jump back. Lakshman got up as well, brushing himself off. The man would never admit how hard it was to hold his bhaiyya back, how his arms ached.
For a moment, all Ram could feel, beating in his heart like a chant, was that she was alive. God, Sita was alive. If he closed her eyes, he thought he could still feel the silky feeling of her hair and see the shining brown of her eyes, glistening in the dim lamp light, even as the sun set. He would see her again. He had to. He couldn't live off these memories, and not hug her, to have her by his side. It was sickening to even think of doing so. To be forced along with only the essence of his mind with him would drive him mad.
Then, just as a breeze rushed through, Ram's eyes suddenly narrowed. His hair whipped in the wind, and though it would be impossible for a mortal to do so, nevermind his future command of the greatest empire of all time, everyone believed that it was Ram only who had invited Vayu's furious presence. Abruptly, like a flash of lightning, the crown prince was faced with the wall-like realization that he could have never seen Sita again, that she was indeed in the clutches of the demon king. At his mercy.
------O------
The war hadn't ended for the day though, even as realizations struck the leaders of both armies. Ram, armed with a bow, stepped out of the tent, deciding that enough was enough. He couldn't just stand here, being the leader of the vanar sena, and not do anything as his warriors were massacred. It didn't fill his conscience with a good feeling, to watch all the bloodshed without taking part. After all, there was no champion today. If any vanar was being killed, it was the rakshasas' fault.
Meanwhile, Lakshman had chosen to stay back, to help with the growing number of injuries. Vanars who had smaller things like cuts and splinters stepped out of their beds, going untreated in order to make up for the shortage of soldiers. Surely even half of an army with Prabhu Shri Ram himself fighting was worth more than ten times their full army.
But even this sacrifice did not fully make up for the shortage of beds. Healers still rushed around, but it was known that they would, with nothing but determination, treat another world's population of monkeys if they were so injured. So the only problem was the shortage of beds, and of herbs. Neel, in the middle of his furious grinding of the leaves which so provided with a fighting and fiery army, walked up to Lakshman.
"Lakshman bhaiyya," he began timidly, and Lakshman turned around, startled by the use of the honorific. "Please, could you build some more cots?" His voice sounded so weak and heavy that Lakshman's eyes softened. His whole face sagged as it relaxed, and he nodded. Neel rubbed his eyes, and stood right behind the man as he watched the war outside for a minute before beginning his journey. "Thank you," he whispered.
Lakshman turned around again, and this time, sat down so he could be at eye level with the vanar. It did not sit well with him to be looking down at the monkey. "What is there to thank?" he asked. "You do so much for my brother, my bhabhi, my family, myself. I would die for any one of you in a heartbeat. Ram bhaiyya is not dead or dying because of you." he sighed as Neel's eyes widened.
"Nothing can kill a great except the great himself. Without Sita bhabhi, bhaiyya is incomplete. You fill that void. You, and your entire kingdom." Lakshman's eyes drifted around, and his lips crinkled involuntarily into a smile. "I mean what I say. I wish I could do more. But for now, I shall settle with this promise. Every time we pass, I wish it could have been me. I would die for you all. Thank you."
-----O-----
Ram was busy with a demon in flight and all hundred thousand of his legion. Demons valued their chariots, and this one sat luxuriously in his, leaning back and unleashing his wrath wherever he saw fit. Ram's eyes narrowed as he watched the demon the first time he had spotted him. It was this barbarism that he loathed. Ram didn't hate anything. He condemned, he disliked, he did not prefer, but Ram never loathed.
And yet, as he watched more of his own being murdered, Ram learned the strong feeling of hate, and what it could do to the mind. How it spreads its evils across his conscience and his consciousness. It was only for his extraordinary self control that the auspicious man did not start a rain shower of death right then and there. No, he reasoned. Such brashness would not be wise. It would not be fair either.
So Ram kept within himself, wincing. Human emotions are so strong. Hate, being the strongest. The unwise romantics may think it was love, that love kept everyone going. That love was the reason everyone lived. And it was true, in some form. Love was the creator. It created so many things, sustained them. Love was the pure force of life. It was the white, it was the untouched maiden.
Stronger even, than this force, however, was hate. Hate kept people alive. So many lived purely out of spite. They had something to do, someone who had wronged them, and it would damn them if they did not get their vengeance. If love could create, hate could destroy so much more. Something white could always black, but something black could never turn white. True hate was irreversible. And for the first time, Ram thought he felt the consequences of this very human emotion.
The demon in the skies, whom Ram had not cared to learn the name of, laughed, clutching his stomach as his arrows met their targets. Ram narrowed his eyes. The chariot demon (as he had taken to calling him) had not noticed the radiant man on the ground. But he soon did, as his charioteer was decapitated by a single, shining silver arrow. Leaping into the cockpit (IDK if that's what its called, but in this story it's a freaking cockpit and no one can tell me different), the demon grabbed his reins.
Ram, while many demons (and the occasional bystander who passed by with popcorn) thought was dumb, overtly open and truthful, was sly. By killing off the rakshasa's charioteer, thus making him grab the reins to avoid falling out of the skies and immediately dying, rendered him weaponless. And since, technically, the rakshas could defend himself, Ram thought it was perfectly acceptable in his dharma to kill this demon.
In the storm of arrows which reached only that one fighter of Ravan, thousands more were killed. Ram was truly the cause of a massacre himself. He was the cause of an entire race being eliminated. He would not stop until his thirst for blood was quenched. And though Ram would not succumb to mortal emotions very easily, he was easily drawn into one thing; love. And he would do anything (within the hold of dharma) for love. He was like the heart of the battlefield, the pride of the Raghus finally showing himself.
Somewhere in the middle of Lanka, Sita, distraught but still strong, her eyes shining with something akin to an inferno, stood up. She looked like Maa Durga, living out of anger and with a sole purpose; to destroy the man who had wronged her. "Listen to the twang of his bowstring, Lankesh! This will be the last sound you hear!"
And somewhere in his bed, Ravan sat up, his face dripping with sweat.
------O------
But where Ram fought, the center of attention, Indrajit was able to gallop into the air again, arriving in all his might without receiving an immediate counter attack. He watched the battlefield, invisible, and could silently amend that the vanar sena, and the hermit(s) which led them were also decent. Those words fated to never leave the arrogant man's mouth, he continued his entrance into the battlefield, silently snapping the reins of his horses. This would be his day.
It was Nal and his sharp eye for observation that caught the illusionary demon first. He paused for a second, not quite believing it. This demon had the audacity to trick them into believing that Maa Sita was dead, to commit such a sin, even an illusionary one, without even flinching, seeing the monkeys at their most vulnerable, and now he dared to just storm into the battlefield like so? Preposterous. "Hanuman!" he roared. "Let's show this demon what we're made of!"
Pawanputra set the demon he was busy mutilating, down, and ran towards Neel, watching Indrajit in the middle of the skies. "Yes," he agreed. "Let's." WIth this word, the monkey raced towards Meghnad, followed by equally seething generals. They all sought their own revenge.
Lakshman spotted this procession, and walked out of the tent to stop them. God knew what they would do, and while he would equally love to kill Indrajit, watch him suffer as blood gushed out of every gash in his body, bhaiyya wouldn't. And all Lakshman cared about was what bhaiyya wanted. That was why he was there in the first place. For him, Ram bhaiyya was number one. His thoughts could come second.
So he stepped out of the tent after glancing at Jal, trusting her with the management of the injured for then. She nodded and smiled as well, finishing bandaging one of her charges. He would have preferred not leaving the injured, but the battlefield called, and there was only so much he could do.
So Lakshman too walked out. Hanuman began to hover in the air, double his normal size, so he could face Indrajit, smash his head into little bits. But in that moment, Indrajit's eyes locked onto something. Something beyond, beyond Hanuman, beyond the army, beyond Lakshman , even. And before any of them could comprehend what he was doing, a single arrow left Indrajit's bow.
Lakshman whirled around, his hair whipping against his neck, not even grimacing as his shoulders strained. A small whisper left his mouth as the arrow multiplied into ten, then twenty. He didn't need to turn his head to know what Indrajit had been targeting. The arrow rushed into the pillars of the tent. Those pillars which he had glanced at so many times. The weak wood fell over, crunching over itself.
The entire roof of the base tents fell, the roof which Lakshman had constructed. The complex structure crumbled, and as he watched, Lakshman needed only to close his eyes to know what was happening. The injured were still inside the tent. The injured, all of the healers, everybody was stuck inside the ruins. The ruins of all that heavy wood and the strangling tent cloth. Nobody needed to know.
With a whip of his long hair, like a swirl of magic, Indrajit was gone, invisible once more, leaving the procession of vanars to stare at the ruins left behind. The first to react was Neel. "NO!" he shouted, rushing towards the tent, his feet rapid. Of course. Jal was inside that tent. His future wife. Nal followed, letting go of his mace, his throat caught with a gasp. His sister, the one he had always teased. "Worthless". Would she be worthless anymore, simply a soul? Dying in the service of Prabhu Shri Ram, Dying while saving lives.
Those two friends rushed towards the tent, but the arrays of crumbled wood were enough. Enough to know. The splinters were enough to know. Everything was enough to know. Anyone inside would have been crushed.
Hanuman ran as well, picking up logs of wood desperately with his immense strength. Things were thrown every which way. They tried to find survivors. There were none. He knew it. Nobody could have survived all of that debris. Lakshman himself had constructed it. So much wood to make it stable. So much wood to kill.
And Lakshman just stood there, watching. So many if's. If only. If he had been inside, he could have stopped it. There was no question of that. A simple shield would have worked. He could have held the entire thing up if forced to. He could have died inside. Why, oh why did he have to step outside?
He walked, his feet refusing to stumble, towards the ripped green cloth and the logs and slabs of wood. Images of all the Healers flashed through his mind as he closed his eyes once more. Their strained smiles, tired eyes, trembling hands. No. They snapped open. He couldn't succumb to this. Some would still be okay. They'd be alright. He could expect Jal to pop out, still sewing, glancing around before her mouth broke into a smile. Right. Right? Right?
Behind him, Ram still fought, too immersed in the battle to look behind. If he had stopped, like everyone else, then so many more would be killed. But what about when the sun set? Who knew how much bhaiyya would grieve? The guilt which filled Lakshman must be ten times multiplied in Ram, the man who had led them all here.
There was no sign of the death they could all smell in the air. No blood drops. No severed heads. No crushed skulls. Not even a limb was visible sticking out of the crumbles which were left. But no one needed to see any of that to know. They were all dead.
A/N-I gave a few enters to allow you to process what happened. No more delaying shakti astra. The saga will start tomorrow. Be ready.
On a less grim note, this was a rather interesting chapter. I tried to introduce some emotions, but I wasn't particularly feeling it. I tried my best though!