The name was spoken gently, but Krishna’s voice cracked like a leaf in the wind. He knelt beside his brother, his other half- his steady hand reaching for Arjuna’s shoulder, the other resting over the blood-soaked cloth covering the boy’s face: Covering much of the brutality left by the unjust of the battle today.
Not even a flicker of acknowledgement.
He sat there in the dust, knees drawn, back bowed, cradling his son in his arms as if he were still small- still a child with ink-dark eyes and tiny fingers that used to tug at his bowstring in play. His armor, dented and smeared with soot and gore, pressed cold against the boy’s lifeless cheek.
This was his Abhimanyu. His child.
His heart’s first dream, his soul’s fiercest prayer, his son that lay unmoving in his lap.
And now they wanted to take him away. To prepare the pyre. To burn what remained.
They might as well set him on fire.
Because Arjuna knew, he knew, that whatever he was before this moment- it had died with his son.
How could he explain it to Krishna- to his god, his breath, his dearest soul- that it wasn’t just a body in his arms, but every hope he'd held across battlefields, across exile, across aching, endless years of longing for peace?
That this boy was the proof that something good had come from his hands- not just war and ruin and killing. That this boy had been his reason to believe in a future.
And now… Now, there was no future left.
“No,” Arjuna rasped, the word so raw it sounded more like a wound than speech. “Just a little longer.” His voice shook, nearly breaking under the strain. “Please.”
For thirteen long years, he had dreamt of holding his sons. Of running his hands through their hair. Of showing them the stars he used to name with Krishna. Of teaching them to shoot and pray and love.
He had nothing left- nothing but this.
This boy. This lifeless body, so small again in his arms.
Even if he deserved nothing else from fate—no crown, no kingdom, no forgiveness—he deserved to hold his son for just a while longer.
Nakula stood some feet behind, unmoving. His jaw clenched, his knuckles white, and his eyes swollen. He was murmuring to the grieving Upapandavas, trying to comfort children when he, himself, was breaking. He didn’t know how to mourn this.
He didn’t know who to mourn first- his moon-faced nephew, who once giggled in his arms as he spun him through the gardens… or his sister-in-law, now a husk of herself, drained and crumbling beneath the weight of her cries, or his brother, his brilliant, unshakable brother: now hunched and hollow, clutching loss like it was the only thing keeping him from vanishing too.
Sahadeva knelt in silence, palms joined in prayer, tears slipping down his face without resistance. Of all the brothers, Sahadeva had always sensed what others didn’t speak aloud- and what he saw now in Arjuna terrified him.
Because he wasn’t just watching a father grieve, he was watching his brother unravel.
Not even Bhima, whose arms had once uprooted trees and torn chariots in half, could loosen Arjuna’s grip.
The mighty warrior, the Vrikodara, had tried. He had knelt beside his brother, voice thick with grief, hands gentle despite their strength.
“Arjuna, Brother, please, let him go.”
Yet Arjuna clung tighter. His arms- bloody, bruised- wrapped around Abhimanyu’s still form like a man shielding fire from the rain.
Bhima tried again, but he could not move. Because it wasn’t just muscle holding Abhimanyu’s broken body: It was grief. Grief so dense, so ancient, so fierce that even Bhima’s strength turned useless against it.
Arjuna looked up at him then- his eyes rimmed red, lashes stiff with unshed and shed tears, dust clinging to the curve of his cheek. And in them, Bhima saw something that hollowed him out completely.
A boy. Not a warrior. Not a prince.
He just saw his younger brother crushed under the weight of a loss the world had no name for.
“Just for a moment, Dada,” Arjuna whispered, his voice cracked. “If I let go now…” Arjuna’s voice faltered, and the tremor in his fingers spoke what he couldn’t say. Bhima read the unsaid words in his brother’s eyes. I’ll forget. I’ll forget how he felt.
It wasn’t just about holding Abhimanyu’s lifeless body.
It was the desperate, aching need to remember: to etch the feel of his son’s broken body into his very bones.
And in that moment, Bhima realized: Arjuna wasn’t just fighting to hold onto his son. He was fighting to hold onto himself.
He had no reply. Only a tear that rolled, hot and unwanted, down his cheek and into the dust. He stood up and stepped back, shoulders shaking, fists clenched uselessly at his side.
Then, it was Yudhishthira who approached, his heart breaking into countless pieces at the sight of his younger brother, his warrior, his Phalguna, reduced to a shadow of himself.
With the gentleness of a father, Yudhishthira placed a hand on Arjuna’s shoulder, feeling the tremors that wracked his brother’s frame. His voice, usually calm and commanding, was a mere whisper now, heavy with sorrow.
“Phalgun,” Yudhishthira whispered, the name coming from him as a caress, as a gentle call to the boy Arjuna once was- so full of life, so full of promise. “My Anuj...” He paused, his chest tightening, fighting the tears that threatened to escape. “Please, let him go. We need to prepare him for the rites. You must let go, brother.”
Arjuna’s eyes remained distant, fixed on his son, his hands clutching Abhimanyu’s body as if he were afraid it would vanish, as though the very air would steal him away. His lips quivered, but no sound came.
Yudhishthira’s words were a soft echo in the storm of Arjuna’s grief. He knelt in front of him, his eyes filled with pain. "He is at peace now, Phalgun. But his soul cannot move on without this- without us giving him this final gift." The king’s voice faltered, and the man who had so often held his brothers together was now nothing more than a fragile thing, broken at the sight of his younger brother's agony.
Yudhishthira’s hand remained gently on Arjuna’s, the touch conveying all the unspoken love between them. But it was not enough. Arjuna didn’t move. His grip on Abhimanyu tightened.
Finally, it was Krishna who knelt beside him- quietly, like dusk folding itself over the ruins of a battlefield.
And in moments like this, one remembers why he is called divine- not solely for his miracles, not only for his might- but because he speaks truth even when it tears through the soul like a blade.
He placed a hand on Arjuna’s back, feeling the tremble that coursed through him, the quaking breath, the silent storm of a grief so heavy that not even gods could shoulder it.
“Arjuna,” Krishna whispered, his voice gentle- aching, threaded with centuries of love and lifetimes of brotherhood. “Our Abhimanyu… he fought like fire. He bore your name with pride. He made you proud. He made us all proud.”
Arjuna didn’t respond. His arms only curled tighter around his son’s lifeless body as if to protect him from the cold that had already taken him.
Krishna’s voice softened, but each word pressed like a blade to the soul. “Now you must do what he did. Fulfill your duty. He upheld your name, Parth. Now you must uphold his.”
He paused, then added, almost pleading, “Do not let grief cloud his honor. Let his farewell be worthy. Let your love walk with him across the fire, not cling to the ashes left behind.” Still, Arjuna didn’t look up. His cheek was pressed to Abhimanyu’s blood-matted curls. The tremble in his hands had stilled into something far worse: numbness.
“You taught him how to live, how to aim straight, how to stand tall even when the odds crushed around him.” Krishna’s voice broke slightly, despite himself. “Now teach him how to cross over. That too- is a father’s role.”
Slowly, painfully, Arjuna turned his face toward Krishna. His eyes- once bright with clarity and resolve- were red, hollow, and unfocused. The storm had passed, but it had taken everything with it.
His voice, when it came, was no more than a cracked breath, so fragile it barely reached Krishna’s ears.
“My gods, Hai Prabhu,” Arjuna rasped, “I will-I will do my duty. But hai Krishna- just a moment more. Please… Please, let me stay with him… just a moment more, Madhav.”
The plea struck Krishna like no weapon ever had. The great Vishnu, the keeper of dharma, the anchor of the universe: could do nothing but close his eyes, crushed under the weight of a sorrow he could not lift.
“I know,” Krishna whispered. “I know, Parth.”
His hands, steady as they rested on Arjuna’s shoulders, now trembled as well. The bloodied cloth between them was growing colder by the minute.
“But you must let him go,” Krishna said again, voice raw. “You must walk him to the pyre. Not because you are ready but because he deserves that walk with his father.”
“I will be with you, Arjuna. Always. Your brothers are here. Your family is here. You are not alone. We still need you.” He paused, his fingers tightening slightly on Arjuna’s shoulder.
“You must let go, Parth. For the sake of his soul… and for your own.”
Arjuna’s eyes lifted to Krishna’s, and for a heartbeat, the world seemed to still. Just them. Just grief. Just love. And the impossible moment between a father’s heart and his duty.
Then, like a bursting dam,
From deep within Arjuna’s chest, there came a cry- raw, wounded, primal. A sound not meant for the world of men, a sound that shattered through the silence and scraped at the sky. His fingers, once iron-bound in grief, began to tremble. His arms, bruised and bloodstained, slowly- painfully- unwound from the broken body of his son. And into Yudhishthira’s waiting arms, the boy was passed.
The eldest Pandava held Abhimanyu as though the weight might crush him- not his body, but his soul. His knees nearly buckled, but he did not flinch. The calmest brother, the pillar of their house, stood trembling.
Yudhishthira looked down at the boy: his nephew, his brave-hearted kin, and then up at his broken brother.
His voice cracked as he whispered, “He will never be forgotten, Phalgun. Not while I breathe. Not while any of us remain. Your son will live on- in every tale sung of courage, in every heart that knows his name.”
At Arjuna’s cry- a sound so devastating it reignited the weeping of Subhadra’s wails in Draupadi’s arms- Sahadeva and Krishna moved like lightning, instinct propelling them forward. Sahadeva caught his brother’s shoulder, steadying him with arms that had never seemed more desperate, while Krishna pulled him close.
No one there, no soul present, would ever forget how Arjuna wept that day. And Arjuna himself would never remember whose arms caught him, whose embrace cradled his collapse. Because in that moment, the world became nothing but grief.
He could barely see Abhimanyu anymore- blurred behind never-ending cascading tears. Just a flicker of a face he once kissed goodnight: a boy who had once run to him, laughing in a sun-drenched courtyard.
Arjuna’s body buckled, and he fell into Krishna’s chest, breath hitching, the sobs powerful and shaking.
And Krishna- His Madhav held him like a friend, like a brother, like the god who had carried oceans and now bore the storm that was Arjuna’s grief.
The fire had not yet been lit. The pyre stood ready.
But for Arjuna, the true burning had already begun: deep inside his chest, where no flames could be seen, and none could ever be extinguished.
His heart was already ashes, and in that quiet, trembling moment, Arjuna let go: of his son, of a piece of his soul.
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