Prompt : Plz write something on Arjun and Ashwatthama during the Brahmashira vs Brahmashira encounter. Very few people realise how amazing Arjun's ability to call off that mass destruction weapon at will, is.

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Grief has the ability to drive people to utter madness.

Some of them have the internal strength to pull themselves back from the brink and yet some, forget all comprehension and reason in their senseless rampage to give back to the world, the same pain that it has inflicted on them.

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"What a great irony,

These friends doth share

A disharmonious symphony

An unlikely pair"

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Thus was the dichotomy of Arjuna and Ashwatthama.

The son of Drona had invoked the Brahmashira the moment, he had seen Bheema advance at him like a maddened rhinoceros. The fear in his mind overriding common sense and the blackened poison of vindication rotting his good judgement simultaneously.

"The Brahmashira Partha! Now!"

Lord Krishna's words hadn't even left his shapely lips completely when the thunder clouds circumbambulated the prince of lightning, overhead. The infallible essence of the celestial weapon of Brahma poured relentless, mapping the tall sinewy body of Arjuna rapidly.

His prussian gaze melted into a sea of burning gold and the ends of his grey streaked hair crackled like the static emerging out of the very dark clouds roaring with thunder above head.

He was a solitary figure painted in a magnificent play of amber light and ivory robes, illuminated against the backdrop of the onyx grey which had lapped up the sky and the dry grass of the ground.

It was a sight to behold.

The sheer power which pulsated underneath the dark skin of the invictus Savyasachi.

A more than worthy match to the destructive power of the violently maroon essence of Ashwatthama's weapon.

Both the energies, swirling in these veteran human machines of war, hungered to be released, stretching their vaguely shaped threads in a near magnetic force propelled towards each other.

To meld into one and cause annihilation.

"Take it back, O' warriors. Have you both lost all sense? The universe will collapse under the weight of this collision. Take it back, now!"

Vyasa's voice of reason seemed to chasten the archer supreme somewhat and in a move which was beyond mortal comprehension, the celestial weapon of Lord Brahma sunk back into the body of the swarthy Phalguna.

It was an astounding feat in itself.

Such a master of divine warcraft was he, a skill undaunted and a power so unbelievably controlled that even Ashwatthama was forced to feel the ensuing awe at his legendary prowess.

But he could not do the same.

His mind wasn't steady enough. His thoughts not within his motor control anymore or maybe the desire for vengeance had taken him by such a vice grip, that he was hardly capable of taking back a normal weapon, let only a one piece artillery of mass destruction.

"I cannot take it back, great sage. I am incapable. I can only divert it!"

"Then do so."

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"At the wake of grief unbound

A horrifying battle in blood

A litter of tender corpses found

A sea of vengeful agony a flood..."

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Evil rises clear in the heads of men lost to reason.

"Then let this weapon destroy the heir to the Pandava lineage which is growing in the womb of Uttaraa. Thus is my will and my ultimate payback."

Arjuna's face, chiselled yet lined with scars a hundred, the tapestry of his grief and glory in a fierce amalgamation over his once smooth skinned beauty, paled like a slaughtered animal drained of blood.

Sadistic glee surfaced in Ashwatthama's heart and he saw the Brahmashira shoot out of his hand, effortlessly passed right through the third Kaunteya's statuesque figure to go and hit its intended target.

Yet the King of Ahicchatra's momentary happiness was to be short lived. The slight fear and agony on his once friend's expression propelled a terrifying wrath over the dark skinned Lord of the Yadavas.

Krishna's jade brown eyes glowed anew in a fury unforeseen and the unfortunate wretch, the son of Kripi found himself screaming hoarse, kneeling on the ground as blood flowed unchecked down the cavern carved inside his forehead.

A curse as his penance.

A lifelong suffering till he is granted retribution.

And yet when his bleary vision cleared, only Arjuna remained standing in front of him, not pity but a strange look of sorrow dragging down his striking features.

"You killed my father", Ashwatthama whispered.

"And I killed a million more", was the Kaunteya's quiet admission.

'Yet so did I. So did all of us.'

The older man's exhausted mind finally reasoned even as he was loathed to admit it out load. But his subdued demeanour must have given it away it to his companion clearly enough.

Arjuna sighed and stared towards the setting sun; the warm yellow light throwing in harshly how cadaverous his face had actually become.

"Your father slaughtered my son, Ashwatthama. Trapped him in a battle formation not even the greatest warriors of any age could have been able to come out of alive, alone. And then he had him murdered."

The graphic image of a mutilated Abhimanyu battling them all with a desperate yet ferocious fervour, his arrows as sharp as his father's assailed him. And with it came the sharp and bitter aftertaste of regret and guilt.

"Did it lessen my anguish at his death? No", Arjuna admitted truthfully.

"Will it ever make me not resent him a little? No."

There was that facsimile bitterness which seemed to had shrunken the son of Shakra, a little into himself. A sight, Ashwatthama had never hoped to see even in his wildest nightmares.

But here they were.

Two men. Survivors. Killers.

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"An agonised son with fury anointed

A fatigued father broken

Two deadly weapons were pointed

A terrifying curse awoken"

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"I killed all your children."

It was like stating the obvious and yet he guiltily enjoyed the flinch that his cruel words had wrought.

"You must be thrilled. An endless cycle of diseased suffering. An ignominious life, begging for deliverance at every second. How has your heart not burst with joy, yet!"

His voice was drenched with sarcastic cheer yet Arjuna only looked at him, brows twisted in consternation.

"You think, your pain will cancel mine?"

Ashwatthama could only stare, confusion overtaking the scathing anger for once.

"Agony doesn't have a measurable metric, Drauni. It only burns through one's soul like cinders in a volcanic explosion. It has no path, no direction, no fealty to give."

Arjuna's hand slipped into his puss filled diseased one, scarred with blisters, just as calloused as that of the Gandhivadhari's. The warrior sage felt his eyes sting and the wrath abated at the wake of such a visceral grief that it threatened to make him buckle under its weight.

"Your suffering has only compounded my own."

Arjuna's thumb stroked Ashwatthama's distorted one, reminding the latter of all the times, he had done the same for the former, when they were mere kids practising in Gurukula.

'Only you Phalgun. Only you...'

He wished he could let his words be heard. Let some of that grief he has caused be scabbed over. A pain he knows has no deliverance except death. A parent who has to light his children's pyre.

"Come with us. Hastinapur will--", Arjuna began then.

The vindication returned with a vengeance and Ashwatthama snatched his hand back from the younger warrior as the image of his father's severed head mocked him anew.

"No! I will not live at the mercy of my father's murderers. I have nothing left there. Go and enjoy your victory, my friend. Let the past rest in peace."

'Never! Never again...'

"Ashwatthama...", the Pandava prince beseeched.

"Now I know what my father meant when he continuously praised you. And it doesn't lessen my envy, if only dissolves my bitterness", the son of Drona said finally.

"My friend, you don't have to---"

"Let me say this. The generations after may curse me otherwise. More than your beloved Dwarikadheesh has already done."

Arjuna's once endearingly cyan eyes brimmed like twinkling diamonds in a sea of milk, the lingering power of the Brahmashira, flowing through his veins, finally extinguishing at the wake of Ashwatthama's hateful yet soft admittance.

"You were always the best amongst us. And now, I know why."

"Compassion is the greatest metric of a warrior, my little gemstone. You can be extraordinary in battle, but it means nothing if you cannot harbour forgiveness in your heart."

Drona's gentle wisdom had failed to impact his much impressionable son at that time.

Yet the heavy truth in the Kuru preceptor's words stared unblinking at Kripiputra's face this fateful day, as the latter walked away from the marshy ground of Vyasa's ashrama and disappeared into the depths of the woods.

A miserable existence is best led in complete isolation.

Where the noxious fumes of his rank anger and the charcoal blood of utter derision flowing through his weakened veins couldn't touch the remaining life that was struggling to bloom again in the bosom of the Kuru empire.

He who forgives, saves his own soul.

And he who cannot, will burn in the flames of a never ending hell of his own making.

And Drauni Ashwatthama had willingly embraced the fiery tongs of a bitter and vindictive existence, as Savyasachi Arjuna had set his heart free of the mortal cage of despondence and fury, his tempered grief; only illuminating his path towards an eternal light.

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"One's mind is in fury swell

And the other's heart is set in ice

One drowns in the pit of Hell

And the other soars in paradise.."

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