Anuj's claim to affection (A Karna-Arjun what-if story)

The intangible world

Arjun's pov

An arrow grazed a shoulder. Bright, bright red blood squirted out of it.

Then the world was unusually dim. Blurred. The shapes around were distorted. The shouts were indistinct.

The only clear-cut form was his older brother's, drawing his bowstring opposite him. Clearer than his body was the loathing on his face.

His older brother was shooting at him.

He needed to shoot back, to intercept the arrows. But the arrows disintegrated to dust when he tried to target them. Their trajectories were blurred. He could not aim at dust. He could not dodge dust.

What kind of a world was this, where hatred was tangible and arrows were not?

Now there were gashes on his body, gashes made by dust. The dust, he thought, originated from the hatred, and the hatred, from his older brother.

But his older brother did not know he was his older brother. Nobody but him knew. It was a duel between rivals to them. It was a duel between brothers to him.

It was not the same.

Even to his other brothers. They would be wondering why he could not aim.

To them the arrows would be arrows. They would not be dust.

A blast of dust drifted over towards his arm.

His bow.

He could not let hatred touch his bow.

He pulled his bow away.

"No, Parth!" a friend's voice warned.

"Madhav--"

He ducked.

"MADHAV!"

His own scream jerked Arjun awake.

***************

"Arjun--Arjun..."

"Madhav?"

"Madhav isn't here yet," a soft, soothing voice said. "He'll be here soon...he's on the way..."

Hands caught his shoulder and attempted to make him lie down again. Arjun squirmed away.

"Don't jerk your head so much, my dear."

Only one person called him that. Arjun's vision focused bit by bit to reveal a face beside his, whose eyes were a bit teary.

"What happened, jyesht?"

Yudhishthir shook his head. "How do you feel?"

"Is he awake?" Sahadev came bustling over and set a bowl down on the table bedside the bed and handed him a glass. "All right, drink this first, Bhrata Arjun."

Arjun frowned and took a sip.

It tasted awful.

Yudhishthir caught his hand before he could push it away.

"Stop make faces and drink. It's ten year olds who fuss about medicine."

Arjun could not fight his persistence, so he ended up swallowing the contents of the glass whole. By then Sahadev had brought the bowl to his mouth. This wasn't as bad.

Nakul turned up after a bit and ran his hands over Arjun's head.

"Most of the bleeding has stopped," he pronounced. "Now you just need to wake on time to eat. You've been sleeping two days straight, Bhrata Arjun."

"Go and call Bheem, Nakul," Yudhishthir said.

"Where is he?" asked Arjun.

"He went to sleep for a while outside..."

The look Bheem gave him when he barreled in told Arjun he had been sick with worry. That made him feel sick, too.

Not only had he lost the duel and shamed everyone who cared about him--foremost, his brothers, because his mother and Panchali would not be back from Varanavat yet--he had also worried them out of their wits.

He must not fall asleep again. 

He might drift into that world.

The very idea was paralyzing.

But two hours later, sleep cast an impregnable grip on him. No matter how hard he fought it, his mind passed from the world where his brothers sat with him in the infirmary to the one where hatred was tangible and arrows were dust in the arena.

******************

How was anyone expected to fight dust?

It was everywhere, piercing him everywhere, and then there was his older brother opposite him, from whom the dust emanated.

"Madhav," was the only one he could call. "Madhav, please--where are you?"

"Parth."

"Where are you?" he asked again.

"Right here..." Someone shook his shoulder. "I'm right here--if you wake up, Parth."

That was the only thing which, it turned out, could break him out of that world.

*******************

"What have you done to yourself?" Madhav asked, helping him sit up.

"I don't know," said Arjun.

"You did not tell him, did you?"

Arjun shook his head and looked around. All four of his brothers seemed to have left to let him talk in peace to Madhav.

"Why not?" demanded Madhav.

"I don't know," again.

His friend gave him a stare.

"He--he didn't want to know," Arjun said finally.

Madhav did not look satisfied, but he changed the topic to funnier ones like his recent fight with a demon army. Though Arjun find it impossible to laugh, he might have smiled once or twice.

With Madhav at his side, it was much easier to wake up when he fell asleep. Every time he came around, Madhav would be present by fail. Madhav with his cheery smile and steady eyes.

"You have to get up quickly now, Parth," he said at some point.

"No, I cannot."

Krishan pulled Arjun's cheek a trifle harder than necessary. "Why the hell not?"

"I can't--can't face the world."

"You will face the world fine," said Krishna drily. "Barring one human in it."

Arjun chose to pass commenting on that.

"Look, you are never going to break out of these nightmares if you do not have the will to get up again."

"I don't have it."

"Parth--" 

Madhav might have started giving him the sermon about how warriors could not harbour such weaknesses inside them, but Arjun did not know. The intangible world was back.