#mchm

[avani008]

Draupadi - Savitri, Puru & Dronacharya

Savitri

Even when she sleeps, she hears the crackle of flame urging her onwards: her mother–her true mother–does not forget slights easily, and forgives them even less, and she hears the whisper chiding her for indolence. Fire witnesses oaths and sees them carried out, even when those who make them shy from what they demand; she repeats her mother’s orders, even as they turn to ash in her mouth.

But vengeance, however, has no end; and even after her hair is washed in blood–even after her eyes are red with tears for her fallen sons–the murmur in her heart does not cease. There are enemies around, always, those who might look at precious Parikshit or her other adopted heirs with ill intent, and it takes every ounce of strength Draupadi has to ignore it.

She wishes for silence, for freedom from fire’s never-ending fury, and in ice at last she finds it. 

Puru

She never thought to imagine a world without her dearest friend in it, but today–if what Arjuna says is true–so it is. She wonders that the sun has not stopped in its motions, that the moon not dashed itself to pieces, but day fades into night, and Krishna is dead.

She retreats into her own apartments; the years have taught her the value of her tears, and these are not to be shared with others. Krishna would have understood, Krishna who knows–knew–her better than any other; Krishna she would have allowed to mourn with her. But he is gone, now, left her like so many others; Draupadi’s heart twists with grief. 

In the morning, Yudhisthira speaks faintly of ascending to the Himalayas, and Draupadi murmurs her assent. 

Dronacharya

She touches his feet, as she should: this man who her father loathes above all others, and who her husbands love above all others. What ought she to make of him?

“You will be no less than a daughter to me,” Drona promises her, and she manages a smile.

“No,” she corrects him. “Pray let me be more than that, O teacher: let me learn from you as my husbands do.”

They laugh, her husbands and their teacher alike, to think of her trained in the manly arts, and she lowers her eyes demurely. Amused though he is, Drona has already granted her request and taught her the most important thing she must know–if she is to achieve success and gain her heart’s desire, as he did, she must use the same weapons to which he resorted to defeat her father. 

She must send her husbands before her into battle, and emerge, in the end, victorious. 

[godsumoto]

🐶 Arashi 🐶

[avani008]

‘Shakuntala’ For Krishna. xx

He will know loss.

Abhimanyu, Anantha, even abandoned Mathura itself; but foremost in his heart is that what comes first. 

They gather outside his home that morning, every friend and familiar face he has ever known. He knows better than to hope to see them again; but even more than their company, he longs for the comfort of being no more than another cowherd in their ranks, to concern himself only with festivals and foot rot instead of wars and woe.  He wants, very much, to be allowed to be human again, as he is among them, instead of expected to be something greater, something more. 

“We have not much time,” Akrur says, gently, and for the kindness in his voice, Krishna will forgive him Satyajit’s murder, a thousand quarrels with Ahuka.

The chariot rattles forward. Vrindavan disappears in the distance. Krishna, savior of Mathura, champion of dharma, forces himself to put his memories from his mind. 

[avani008]

Rukmini - Ila, Puru, Savitri, Shakuntala & Ved Vyas

Ila

Okay, nothing I write is going to be as good as @parlegee‘s WIP, so I defer to hers whenever she finishes it. 

Puru

There is a beauty, Rukmini thinks wistfully, to the silver that streaks through the hair of her fellow wives, the laugh lines that form at the corners of their eyes, the scars and streaks that stand testament to a life well-lived. Oh, Rukmini is senior to them all, but still her skin shines smooth, and still her hair hangs to her knees: unusually, unearthly young, unlike everyone else except her husband.

“A blessing,” she says indistinctly when asked, “from Durvasa himself” and prays they will not ask further. They never do, somehow having learned better, and leave her to her own thoughts. 

There is a beauty to transience, and it will never be her own. 

Savitri

She wants for nothing–how could the Queen of Dwaraka do so?–but the echoes of suffering linger in her soul. She has proven herself in the wilds, and on her own, and now she must test herself against new challenges.

But if her heart calls out, occasionally, for the peace of the forest, how is she to be faulted for it?

Shakuntala

The night before she sends her letter, Rukmini goes to her brother, hoping to convince him to see sense at last. Always he had blustered and raged in public, and blushed and recanted when it was only the two of them. He is her brother, no matter how much a hold Jarasandha might have on him, no matter how Kamsa’s death haunts him, and he must listen to her. 

But: “I will see you wed to Shishupal,” he snarls, “or dead” and she knows him lost to her. 

Later, when he chases after her and her lord, she spares his life only to see the brother she had loved dead in body as well as soul–but her mourning is long past by then, and it is that memory she flinches from. 

Ved Vyas

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, and Das Kapital by Karl Marx. (I don’t know that she would necessarily agree with everything in all three–quite the contrary–but my headcanon version would appreciate the chance to argue with them even more!)

Yayati

Rukmini never has much patience for bedtime stories, and so her nurses soon learn to offer her riddles instead, puzzles and enigmas to challenge her mind. She is never defeated for long; before falling into sleep, she always mumbles the answer to a succession of increasing frustrated servants, who find themselves outthought. 

At least one thinks to present her with a bit of whimsy, too unlikely to be truth, but hopefully enough of a diversion to satisfy the Princess: how could a baby, even a prophecized one, escape a prison cell as those insurgents in Mathura claimed? How could it make its way to safety, alone and unassisted, while its royal parents remained behind and all the guards swore no one had entered?

At last, it seems, the Princess meets her match; she says nothing before retiring, and the lucky maidservant smiles in triumph, too self-satisfied to notice that Rukmini smiles in her sleep. 

[avani008]

Dronacharya, Puru, Savitri and Shakuntala headcanon for Amarendra .

Dronacharya

Baahubali thinks at times that there is nothing in the world he knows that Mother or Uncle did not teach him, and while Mother’s instruction is for him and Bhalla together, Uncle’s is meant for Baahubali alone. Not how to string his bow or hold his sword; but subtler things, more important things. 

Uncle teaches him how to soothe, how to joke, how to win an enemy over with words; Uncle teaches him when to be wary and when to indulge in whimsy.

“Your father would be so proud of you,” Mother tells him, and for one dreadful, disloyal moment, it is Uncle’s face–not that of a portrait that resembles his own–that fills his vision. 

Puru

“Father,” says Mahendra, with his brightest smile, and twenty years of parenting have prepared Baahubali to be on his guard. 

But, he supposes, a father has some responsibilities, and so, reluctantly, he asks: “What is it, Mahendra?”

“Well–you know Mother has this notion of a challenge–couldn’t you talk her out of it? For my sake?”

Baahubali laughs. “And deny her the pleasure of defeating you? Never.”

Savitri 

He wishes only that Mother would forgive, not because it would mean an end to his sorrow; but because it would put an end to hers. 

Shakuntala

It is not, as some might expect, the moments where Mother is angry at him, her face turned away: no, those he must remember, to remind himself that a question of right and wrong demanded it, that the separation from her was worth it. 

Instead, if he could, he would forget all traces of the day when he thought to ask what had become of the woman who had born him. Uncle was away on the borders, Bhalla too young to know, and of course he could never upset Mother by slighting her so–and so he turns to his father’s brother, hoping in his childhood innocence, that he might have only mistaken Bijjaladeva’s neglect. 

Baahubali discovers the truth, unvarnished and honest as no one else would tell him; and for months after he dreams of a woman he never knew, dying even as she reaches out her arms to him. 

[avani008]

For Sivagami: Dronacharya, Puru <3

(<3 back at you!)

Dronacharya

Her father-in-law, Mahishmati supposes, must be given all the credit for her success at statecraft, for where else might she have learned such a thing? From her father, nothing more than a merchant? Nonsense; he could teach a daughter no more than have to count money and charge interest, how to cultivate nothing more than greed.

And yet it is his words that Sivagami remembers as her father-in-law mentions in passing that one can either be a good man or a great king: her father’s cracked voice whispering that ambition and acquisition were not so different–that one could do anything, if only they wanted it enough. 

And it is that Sivagami thinks when she resolves that she will achieve what her father-in-law considers impossible, by craving it as much as her own father would wish: she will raise a man capable of goodness and greatness both, and not settle for anything less. 

Puru

She does not trust herself with the child, not she, Sivagami, who raised demon and deity all the same; instead, she gives him into the care of the river woman–Sanga–who pulls her from the river. “I was given the responsibility of taking him to safety by his noble mother,” she explains when asked of her relationship to the child; “and that duty complete, I take your leave.”

For twenty years, she stays away, hoping to give Mahendra the benefit of a childhood unspoiled by her presence and the truth of what became of his parents. Certainly she has other responsibilities that require her attention–a kingdom cannot be taken back simply with a long-lost heir, scattered and untrained forces, and all the determination in the world. No, instead it needs all the alliances Sivagami has forged over long years, and all Bhallaladeva’s distraction due to the stray glimpses she allows his spies to have of her. 

Two decades, she judges, is long enough for Mahendra to have come to manhood–and only the knowledge that he will surely have forgotten anything of her gives her the confidence to approach him. A stranger is enough to remind him of his duty, she thinks; and from afar, she can ensure he makes his way to Mahishmati. 

But he smiles down at her, her Baahu’s eyes in her Baahu’s face, and calls her “Grandmother”, and Sivagami finds all her plans gone asunder. 

[avani008]

Urvashi headcanon for Sivagami

Her features are not made for beauty.

Oh, as a girl she spends more than enough time before the family mirror, studying herself from this angle or that, always to be disappointed. Try as she might, her face stays disappointingly square, her forehead too pronounced, and her nose–oh, far too determined.

As do the mothers of most young ladies, her own mother makes up the lack with jewelry: and Sivagami learns young that she is never to step outside the house with the gold that offers a substitute for affluence for attractiveness. It must do something, she reflects; why else would she manage to marry the elder prince of Mahishmati, of all people?

But a princess, if anything, is all the more strictly required to be beautiful, and Sivagami hangs a nethichutti on the parting of her hair, pierces her nose with ever more elaborate stones and chains, weighs her earlobes down with heavy earrings. Her head throbs at the end of the day, but she never believed that being lovely would come without a cost.

And then she becomes Queen Mother, and regent to an empty throne.

Her head aches more than enough now, merely from the arguments she must conduct with her ministers; and one by one, Sivagami discards the fripperies she once considered essential. Her hair is bare, other than the vermillion that marks her place in the royal family; her nose bears only a simple golden stud; and the only earrings she deigns to wear, day in and day out, are the golden discs commissioned for her by her sons on her fortieth birthday. 

It is a heady thing, to suddenly need to be powerful rather than pretty, and with surprised delight, Sivagami finds her features more than capable of serving. 

[avani008]

The Dronacharya MHCM prompt for Vichitravirya

“Faster!” barks Elder Brother, and Vichitravirya slumps, exhausted. His brow is heavy with sweat; it drips down his face to mingle with his tears. 

“He is only strict with you since he wants you to improve,” Mother soothes later, but his eyes, Vichitravirya can see, Vichitravirya knows, are uncertain. He is not so naive as she; he can sense what his elder brother means. You will never be able to equal me, he says, in so many words, you, born of a fisherwoman rather than the goddess herself. You will never taste victory. 

Chitrangad might have, before his death, but Vichitravirya is nothing so special. He is only himself.

He will disgrace himself no longer, he decides, and he refuses to go to the training grounds again, not for any amount of pleading on Mother’s part or exasperation on Elder Brother’s part. He refuses to go to Kashi, for what sort of fool sought out more humiliation for himself? He refuses to marry Amba, because in her anger at his brother, he sees a reflection of his own despair; and instead he sets her free. 

“Fight, my lord,” his wives urge when he falls ill; “please, fight!”

For love of them, he tries; but he will not be successful. His brother has taught him so.