Arjuna Mourns Abhimanyu

They brought the news at sunset. Abhimanyu was dead. Surrounded. Slaughtered. Alone.

Arjuna had been on the other side of the battlefield, held back by a formation specifically designed to keep him away. He had felt something—a cold spot in his chest—hours before the messenger came. A father knows.

Now he stood outside the tent where Uttara wept. He couldn't go in. The girl was pregnant with Abhimanyu's child—a child who would never know its father. And he, Arjuna, was the reason.

Arjuna: "He spoke of you constantly."

Arjuna turned. Uttara had emerged, her face swollen, her voice raw but steady.

UTTARA: "My father, Abhimanyu called you that every day. 'My father the greatest archer. My father who taught me everything. My father who will come and save us all.'"

Arjuna: "I didn't save him."

UTTARA: "No. You didn't. He knew the formation. The Chakravyuha. He told me you taught him to enter but not to exit. He went in anyway."

Arjuna: "He shouldn't have. He should have waited—"

UTTARA: "Waited for what? For the war to end? For someone else to be brave? He was your son. He couldn't stand by while his family needed him. That's what you taught him. That's why he's dead."

Arjuna: "I know."

UTTARA: "Do you? Do you know that his last words—Subhadra told me—his last words were 'Tell my father I did my best'? He died wanting you to be proud. Not wanting to live. Just wanting your approval."

Arjuna felt something break in him that he'd been holding together all day.

Arjuna: "I am proud. I was always proud. I should have said it more. I should have—"

UTTARA: "Yes. You should have. But you were busy being the best. Being Arjuna. Being too important for the small moments that would have mattered more than all your victories."

Arjuna: "You're right to hate me."

UTTARA: "I don't hate you. I married into this family knowing what it was. Warriors. Heroes. People who die young and call it glory. But this child will not be a warrior. I swear it. This child will live to be old. Will have small moments with their own children. Will not die alone in a circle of enemies."

Arjuna: "You can't promise that."

UTTARA: "I can try. I can raise them differently. I can make sure they know that glory isn't worth the price."

Arjuna: "And if they have their father's spirit?"

UTTARA: "Then I'll fight that spirit every day. I'll teach them that courage isn't just fighting. It's also building. Healing. Living."

Arjuna knelt before his daughter-in-law.

Arjuna: "Whatever you need. Whatever it takes. This child will have everything I can give."

UTTARA: "Can you give them a father? Can you give me back my husband?"

Arjuna: "No."

UTTARA: "Then give them peace. Win this war, whatever it takes. Make sure Abhimanyu didn't die for nothing. And then—then help me build a world where war isn't the answer to everything."

Arjuna: "I don't know if I can do that. War is what I know."

UTTARA: "Then learn something new. You're the great Arjuna. You learned every weapon ever made. Learn peace."

She went back into the tent. The weeping resumed, muffled by cloth and darkness.

Arjuna stayed on his knees until dawn. Not praying exactly. Listening. To the silence where his son's voice used to be. To the future crying in Uttara's womb. To the cost of everything he'd ever done.

When the sun rose, he rose with it. There was a war to finish. And after that—if he survived—a promise to keep.

Learn peace. Somehow. After all the blood.