Hey! Hi! Hello! How are you doing? I just found your blog and I absolutely love it. Your laxman Kumar ficlet was so haunting, I just had to come back and read it. Would you mind writing an Abhimanyu lives au? It's alright If you don't want to or if you're busy or if you're not taking requests rn, but I'd love to see the way you imagine it. The post about feeling inadequate as a writer has resonated immensely with me and motivated me to start writing again, so thanks!!
Hey there!
Firstly, thank you for looking through my blog, and taking the time to leave a message. I am so glad you liked the fic and that you read it again!
Secondly, congratulations on finding the motivation to write again! You have no idea how happy I am that I could help even a little bit. And as a writer who (for some reason) can presently write nothing longer than one-shots, I hope you find the exact words you need, that you have no typos, and that all your ideas arrive whenever there is writing materials/devices nearby. I hope you will remain immune to writer's block, and write the story that satisfies you. Good luck!
Thirdly, for your story, I wasn't particularly certain whether you wanted a general tragedy or a comparatively happy ending, so i wrote two for you (even if the second became gratuitous K&D). The first one is in this post, and the second one here.
1.
Drona watches the Kaurava army descend on Abhimanyu with a horrified misery he has not known since his fight with Drupada. The young warrior is every inch his father’s son, and every time Drona glances at him he sees Arjuna instead. Arjuna – as a young boy, chariotless and bowless, pressed from all sides by enemies thrice his age, bloody, broken but unbowed.
When Abhimanyu had charged into the chakravyuha, he had cut down soldiers so swiftly and so devastatingly that the spinning arms were all but destroyed. Now the same warrior lies on the ground, delirious and dying.
The feeling that stirs in his chest is not quite mercy, neither is it compassion, but a strange amalgam of pity and longing. He furtively looks around. Of all gathered, the kings of Gandhar and Anga are most likely to challenge him. The other Kauravas he can quell, and Ashwatthama and Kripa are his family. But the two kings are kneeling beside Duryodhana, who sits still and lifeless beside his fallen son.
‘Already a child has left us today,’ Drona thinks, although neither Lakshmana nor Abhimanyu are young enough to be a child, ‘and sundown is close. This valiant one must live another day.’
It is with this resolve he picks up Abhimanyu from the ground, and walks towards the Pandava camp. His feet grow lighter every step of the way.
2.
The Pandava brothers fall at his feet when he brings to them their glorious child. Arjuna, having deposited his son in the makeshift ayuralay, tearfully clings to his hands.
“Do not leave, Aachaarya, I beg you. Duryodhana will not forgive you this,” he weeps. “I pray you, do not leave us alone.”
Arjuna is not wrong, but Drona will not leave Ashwatthama alone to shoulder his follies.
Krishna, standing alone in silent vigil at the tent flap, gives him a sorrowful look. “Why did you do that?” he asks.
“Should I not have brought back Abhimanyu?” Drona can hear the incredulity in his own voice.
Krishna shakes his head. “Arjuna will take no vow.”
“I’m sure he will vow whatever you want him to do,” Drona tells him. Arjuna and Krishna’s friendship is well known.
“You do not understand,” he says, cryptic as ever, before walking away.
Bewildered and a little frightened, Drona walks back to the Kaurava camp with leaden feet.
3.
At the entrance, there is a motley group waiting for him.
“Look who comes,” Shakuni sniffs.
Duryodhana, eyes red and leaning heavily on Dushshasana's shoulder, gives him a scowl so fearsome that he shudders. Karna rubs his back, murmurs something soothingly. The Crown Prince shakes his head. “Guards,” he calls, “arrest him. Take him to Hastinapur. Let His Majesty, my royal father, judge his treason.”
Ashwatthama sobs a little. “Duryodhana, please,” he says.
Duryodhana whirls around at him. “I could have him killed right now,” he says. “My son died today, and yet Abhimanyu still lives. This is all the mercy I can offer you, my friend.”
Ashwatthama bows his head. Drona sinks to his knees and weeps.
4.
The fourteenth day dawns bright and clear, and Arjuna, angry with the assault on his son, prevails upon Krishna to charge into the Kaurava ranks.
The first person he meets is Vrishasena, chasing after his brother, and cuts him apart like a reed by the Yamuna – right in front of his father. Next he finds Karna, and the memory of Draupadi’s sorrow burns in his mind.
“To him Madhav, to him!” he insists, but Krishna has already turned the chariot away.
Karna taunts him as he chases them, but his charioteer is no match for Krishna, so in the end, he challenges him to a duel.
They fight long and hard, and nearly exhaust every weapon that laws of battle permit them to use. The other soldiers gather around to watch them fight. Finally, from the depths of his shattered chariot, Karna retrieves a long shaft with a glittering tip. Krishna immediately swings his vehicle away.
“What are you doing?” he asks Madhav, harsher than he had intended. Madhav doesn’t answer.
But he doesn’t need to. Karna has lifted the shaft to his bow. “Vajra of the Devaraj, smite the youngest of Pritha's sons,” he commands, “and do not let him rise again.”
The shaft catches him on his neck, for Krishna still hasn’t turned the chariot. Arjuna falls, and Madhav lets out a haunting wail he will remember for the rest of his life.
Through excruciating pain and mind-numbing panic, he hears Karna walk up and say, “Tell your aunt, Dwarkadheesh, he will live to see another day.”
(Nakula is expressionless when he speaks. “The wound will not heal, but he will live. Though I do not think, he will rise again.”
His brothers, wives, mother and friend all look relieved.
“Small mercies,” Madhav murmurs, but Arjuna thinks he would rather have death than be crippled evermore. )
5.
“You did not kill Arjuna,” Duryodhana observes, even as they desperately try to kill Bheema's monstrous son.
Karna shakes his head. “No, he acknowledges, “I didn’t.”
“He killed Vrishasena.”
“I know. I was right there.”
Duryodhana bangs his mace on one of Ghatotkacha's fingers. The giant withdraws them with a roar. “So, why?” he demands.
Karna's knuckles are white where he clutches his bow. “What greater shame than to have such talent and yet be crippled?”
Duryodhana stops swinging and turns to him, unimpressed. “Do not lie to me Karna. Not you too.”
“I’m not lying,” he insists, and turns to Ashwatthama. “Thama! What are you doing?”
Ashwatthama is tying the soldier’s spears into one long shaft. “The ballista,” he tells them. “Get the bolt throwers.”
In the end, it takes eighty three makeshift shafts, and twenty one bolts, but finally, Bheema's gargantuan son falls in a cloud of dust and smoke, and the Kaurava army cheers.
Ashwatthama comes up to Duryodhana, kneels. “Please, Your Highness,” he mumbles, “my father…”
Duryodhana lifts him up and hugs him close. “He will be alright, my friend.”
+1
Bheema screams well into the night, and it is music to Duryodhana’s ears. When morn comes, the grief-stricken father descends into the battlefield like Rudra reborn, and ravages more than a sixth of the Kauravas army.
But rage is man’s one true enemy, and on the fifteenth day, Bheema falls to Duryodhana’s mace. His promises to his lady wife remain unfulfilled.
The remaining Pandavas appeal for truce. Duryodhana offers them a palace deep in the forest – guarded by man and nature alike. Shalya whisks away Nakula and Sahadeva to Madra. Duryodhana lets them go. It is in his woodland prison that Yudhisthir settles with the women and children of his household and thus, the last of Pandu's line lies buried under broken oaths and promises.
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I'm finally reading the Mahabharata and I'm really not impressed with Drona right now, specifically because of how he handles Arjuna's jealously of Ekalavya.
Drona rejects Ekalavya as a student because he's of low caste, but this does not stop Ekalavya from pursuing archery anyway while still considering Drona as a sort of spiritual teacher even though he's not physically there or even talking to him. Through incredible dedication and discipline, Ekalavya is able to become an excellent archer by himself, and is so good that Arjuna feels threatened because he's the one who is supposed to become the greatest archer. But instead of telling Arjuna that he should emulate Ekalavya's qualities that have led him to become so good and really step up his game when it comes to practicing and striving to be better, Drona cuts Ekalavya down to make Arjuna "better" in relative terms. He asks Ekalavya to cut off his thumb as the sort of price he pays for considering Drona to be his guru, and he knows full well that Ekalavya will do this gladly and without hesitation. So of course Ekalavya does it, then he sits in the forest completely silent for the rest of the day with his bandaged hand. And the next day he goes right back to practicing.
Considering that Drona's motivating reason for teaching anyone at all is so he can eventually get help with his revenge plot against his """friend""" who turned out to be an asshole, I'm also have some doubts about, uh, whether he could stand to improve himself and be a better spiritual teacher?
Oh, and Arjuna, you want to be better? Go practice with Karna, because he absolutely wants to be better than you and that kind of competition is going to motivate you 100%.
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