Vrishaketu rushed out of Uttara's quarters, his eyes stinging.

This had been a bad idea.

He had agreed to talk to Prince Arjun after Uttara's constant badgering and begging and his desire to not let his new friend down, but he clearly should not have agreed.

He--he had talked so much! Too much! It was...not right! It was.... strange and improper and--and unacceptable!

And he had not been stopped! He so wished that he had been stopped before he had hurt himself upon coming to the realisation of what exactly he was saying.

He went to his mother's quarters to vent but she was not there.

"Where is the Queen?" He asked the guards.

"I'm not certain but most likely in the Widow's Wing, Your highness." came the answer.

Vrishaketu barely stopped himself from screaming out loud. That was the one place in the Palace he wasn't allowed to enter except in life threatening circumstances.

And he really needed to see his mother. To see that someone... someone he loved was still alive, still there with him, that everyone he could speak about were not ghosts.

His feelings bubbled and frothed inside him and he could not identify his emotions clearly.

He could not believe that Rajkumar Arjun had just let him keep talking! He had spilled his guts in front of a stranger, someone who was just barely better than an enemy, and the man had just let him go on! Even a person with the tiniest brain should have known that no one would want to speak the way he had with a person of such description and any decent person would have... made--made him stop before he made a fool of himself! Not Rajkumar Arjun apparently!

A part of him that sounded vaguely like his mother asked the rest of him what exactly the man had been supposed to do to stop him from talking of his own free will, but that was neither here nor there. He could have tried! 

The man had been content to sit and listen to him making a fool of himself!

He stomped away towards his grandparents' chambers, knowing that was at least somewhere  he could always find some solace(and perhaps some undesired wisdom).

His eyes burned with the effort of holding back tears. He raised his hands to quickly rub at his eyes.

And then due to his lack of attention, he collided into someone. A woman.

Really, he needed to stop knocking into women. And women also needed to stop knocking into him. (Though he would admit that this was more his fault that hers given that he was sort of.... meandering about).

He didn't pay much attention to her given how embarrassed he was and the first thing that registered was that she was middle aged, so she might be one of his Kuru Kakis.

"I'm sorry kaki--" he started before getting caught completely off guard by the pink sari.

He couldn't believe that wasn't the first thing he had noticed--a coloured sari whereas all the women he loved were in white. Just spoke of the appalling state he was in.

It was the Empress.

He blinked.

Not another one.

"I am sorry, Samrangi." He said stiffly, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"No it's alright." The woman said. "You look lost."

"I know my way perfectly well, thank you."

She only raised her eyebrows.

"That is not what I meant."

Vrishaketu managed not to fidget uncomfortably thanks to the extensive Princely training drilled into him(Ha! And he was a teenager! Still someone who was decades older clearly couldn't control his face properly all the time. Go figure). The Empress seemed to have the ability to make anyone feel discomfited.

"I am not lost Samrangi."

"Why the sudden switch from kaki to Samrangi?" She asked in a conversational tone.

Vrishaketu barely managed not to gape at her.

"Well.." He stuttered, "..I ... I was distracted and I thought you might be one of my Kuru Kakis and so I.... said so before I properly saw your face....I was clearly distracted enough to not notice the colour of your sari and I apologise for that."

Something unreadable passed over the Empress' face before she said, "Regardless. I am technically one of your 'Kuru kakis' anyway."

This time he couldn't prevent his jaw from dropping open. Was she actually serious?! 

Of all the audacious things!

Vrishaketu took a deep breath to restrain his temper. He had the odd feeling that he was being tested in some strange way. But he didn't know how to respond to such a ridiculous claim!

"I am sorry, Samrangi." He stressed on the last word, "But I would not want to be insulting to the Empress by saying any such thing."

He would have thought that Empress Draupadi of all people would not want to start on this whole 'Family' thing that her husband was going on about, especially given ...well... the terrible thing his father had called her.

Of course he did not want to call her kaki either, but well. He was trying to be polite to a lady, so.

She stared at him intensely for a while before finally relenting.

"Fine." She said. "Come with me. I haven't spoken to you even once in these last four months you've been visiting."

Did he get no say in this?!

Be polite to ladies! He reminded himself desperately.

(Ever since the Dyut Sabha incident... well. Over the years his father had not been proud of his actions at all so he had drilled it into all their heads that they must always be polite to women. Forget insulting, they must never even be impolite. And well. Given that Vrishaketu wanted nothing more than to just turn around and walk away or ask her to leave him alone, he was finding that a little hard.)

"I was going to visit my grandparents." He said honestly.

"Did you tell then you were going to visit right now?"

He blinked. "Uhhh no..?.. They live here now, so I can go anytime..?.."

The Empress lightly clapped her hands once. "Exactly! And if you didn't promise them you would go see them right now, you can come with me!" 

And off she walked, clearly expecting him to follow.

Vrishaketu stood dumbly. What just happened?

"Well come on!" She said impatiently when he didn't follow. When he still didn't follow, she walked back to him and tried to grab his hand, presumably to pull him along but Vrishaketu instinctively pulled away. Who let random women grab their hands anyway?

For a moment she looked at him sadly before schooling her expression. "Please?" She asked. He got the feeling that she was used to getting whatever she wanted most of the time.

Damn his father's need for drilling "Be Polite To Women All The Time Even If You Don't Want To" So firmly in their heads, that by now it was impossible not to try to be.

Sighing deeply, he finally followed her.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He was glad there was no one else in her chambers. That would have been even more awkward. As it was, he was sitting on the couch with a plate of refreshments beside him, feeling highly uncomfortable.

He wondered with great apprehension if she would ask him how he was settling in. He wasn't sure he could keep himself from losing his temper in that case.

"Do you know what Uttara's favourite colour is?"

Vrishaketu  jolted, startled.

"What?"

"Well? Do you?"

"Ah..." He floundered, completely taken aback. "Black?" It came out more as a question.

The Empress laughed slightly. "Well that's truly a friendship if she told you that. She doesn't much like the fact that black is her favourite colour. Thinks it's unladylike."

Vrishaketu couldn't help but wonder if he had fallen asleep and of all things, was dreaming about discussing Uttara's favourite colour with the Dread Empress of all people. 

"Uh... who cares what someone's favourite colours are?! What's ladylike or unladylike about it?!"

The Empress grinned. Vrishaketu felt like he had passed some sort of level in a test, though he hadn't the faintest idea what it might be. He still could not believe that this was an actual conversation taking place.

"Well royal people do tend to care about little things like that."

"Ugh born royal people are weird."

He realised what he had just said was rude but he wouldn't take it back. 

(Honestly, if their father had truly thought that his sons could always be properly polite in any given conversation, he must have had some grand delusions. Like. It was practically hereditary at this point to be accidentally impolite--and sometimes not so accidentally.)

The Empress just looked at him for a while. 

"You're a born royal too."

"Well yes, but I was raised in the ways of both royalty and commoners." He said, matter of factly. "My parents were commoners and my father was gifted a Kingdom so it's not like we come from  whole massive generations of royals like Kurus and Panchals."

"Your father was the eldest of his generation of the Great Kuru Empire."

Alright. Now she just seemed to be attempting to rile him up. What was this, honestly? What was she try to achieve? What on earth was she trying to test him on?!

Vrishaketu pursed his lips. 

"My father's parents are Suta Adhiratha and his wife Radha."

She started at him intensely(again) and then said, "Will you tell me some stories about your Grandfather and Pitamaha Bheeshma? They must have had some adventures together that you've been told about."

Vrishaketu thought that he would get a whiplash if the conversation continued like this, but he was only too glad to let go of the previous topic.

"Right..." He drawled. He still wanted to run out of here but it didn't seem like that would be a possibility, at least for a while. Might as well give up a story or two, much as he didn't want to.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was at least an hour before he could escape from her clutches. It had been an entirely surreal experience and he wasn't sure if he was keen to repeat it or not.

Right. Now to go to his grandparents and tell them of how the Empress herself had demanded to know of Pitamaha's 'adventures' with the Grand Excellency.

Really, his life was turning more and more ridiculous by the day.

Now if only he would be left undisturbed by these people for the extent of the rest of their current visit at least(They weren't even visits really, given that like it had been for all his and his brothers' lives, they had been spending like half of the time in Hastinapur).

He could deal with this stuff next time. Probably. But some respite now would be good.

As it would turn out, he would only get respite for a couple of days.

Lmao, given that the last few chapters have been all more than 2000 words, I now feel weird posting a chapter with 1700 words. Compare this to the early chapters, some of which were 800-900 words. I remember the shortest one even being between 700-800.

Anyways, how was Draupadi? This was truly a chapter where I didn't come up with a new line till I had written the previous one. Like. I don't even know lmao. I'm pretty confident about Vrishaketu's character by this point, but is Drau fine? I don't think I've done too badly, but still.

This was kind of like a filler chap. I'm not going to be continuing this relation thread in the story in depth, but I'm planting the seeds here now, so that avenue of a relationship to grow remains open here in the future, even beyond the end of the fic, when it comes.

Also lmao in that photo at the beginning of the chapter, I had to crop out Vrushali(or Padmavati as she was called in BRC) and Kunti from between Vrishaketu and Draupadi, therefore it looks kind of weird. Obviously Vrish is nowhere near as old as in the pic, but I love pics, so!