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blackknight-100 · 7 months

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if i could request a prompt, a ramayana au! where rama goes to valmiki’s ashram to request sita to come back (as he does in some retellings) and gets a glimpse into how she’s lived all of these years, if the unit she and luv-lush have become and feels decidedly like an outsider. thank you!

Hello there! Thank you for the prompt. I haven't read any such retelling where Rama goes to request her to come back (unless you mean the one when Sita goes back into the earth, and I don't think you mean that?) so I hope this piece works for you:

It is Lakshmana who drives his chariot all the way to Valmiki’s aashram and offers him a hug of encouragement. A short, stocky woman in a saffron angavastra and a bun at the nape of her neck notices them first. Rama introduces himself and his brother, and watches with a wretched feeling in his gut as she gives them both a strained smile, introduces herself as Isha, and invites Rama in. To Lakshmana she says sternly, though not ungraciously, “Perhaps, it would be better if you wait outside.”

Rama opens his mouth to protest, daunted by the thought of facing this alone, and perhaps even a little peeved by the insinuation that his brother had done wrong by his wife; but Lakshmana touches his arm, bows, and answers, “As you wish, devi.”

Isha ushers him past residents going about their daily tasks and introduces him only to those curious enough to ask. She settles him under an old banyan tree, fetches him a glass of water with jaggery, tells him to wait, and then disappears.

Not long after, she returns and takes him past a different section, around the back and to a thatched hut in a corner. Rama immediately discerns this is where Sita must live. There is a little garden around the track leading to the door, and the flourishing greenery bears the marks of her care. In the verandah is a straw chair, amateurly made but well loved. Isha, who had gone in, now comes out with two little boys, one in each hand, and nods at him. “You can go in,” she tells him, “but do not wander around alone. This is the women’s section.”

It is only when she and her charges are out of sight that he realizes those two must have been his sons. He has heard, of course, of the twins – Lav and Kush, but for the first time he knows their faces. The thought of it nearly brings him to his knees and it is with some difficulty that he drags himself in.

Janaki, as he sees her now, is much changed. No longer is she the delightful princess he met so long ago. She is thin, her face gaunt from the labour of raising her children so far from the family that was supposed to aid her. And yet she still shines brighter than the Sun that fathered the Raghu clan, and if Rama ever harboured notions of getting over his love and loss, he now knows he was sorely mistaken.

“Sita,” he murmurs, and how broken a sound it is! What use is his kingship if he cannot have what he wants with all his heart? This is the woman he has waged a war for, the one who has borne his children, and the one who he has forsaken.

“Rama,” she murmurs back, and he can hear the suppressed tears trying to burst out. But this Sita is not the blushing girl he wedded in Mithila. This Sita has lived through the humiliation of an Agni-Pariksha, has endured the ignominy of being forsaken. Sorrow has brightened the fire in her eyes, misery has pressed her lips close together. She now stands straight and tall, assured in her ability to walk through horrors untold. This Sita will not be won over by lifting a bow.

“Please,” Rama says – and what a day, that Ayodhya’s king has come to beg – “please, come back. Come home with me.”

“And then?” she asks.

“I will fix everything,” Rama promises. There is a desperation in him that he can no longer suppress. He cannot hold her eye, and he cannot look away. All around him are traces of a hard life he has not lived – three straw mats propped on the wall, an earthen pitcher draped with a moist white cloth, utensils stacked neatly on a rack. “Come home, Sita,” he pleads, and weeps.

Sita’s hands are rough on his face, marred with callouses. She draws him close to her, and he leans onwards, shuddering like a man dying as her lips touch his forehead in benediction.

“I love you,” she tells him, and it is like pressing down on a much-loved bruise, painful and intoxicating all at once. “I have loved you all my life, and I will continue doing so forever. But I cannot go back.”

Rama’s voice is a whisper when he speaks, a prayer at the temple of her soul. “Why?”

Sita laughs. It is not the same resonant sound as before, bright as a bell. This laugh is a softer tinkle, tinged with the memory of what is, and what has been. “Do I not get an apology?” she teases.

Rama opens his mouth, a hundred protestations and regrets bubbling up even as shame colours his cheeks.

Sita shakes her head. “Where is your dharma, scion of Raghu? What will the people say?”

“The people miss you,” Rama says, and Sita scoffs.

“Bharat can be King,” Rama bursts out, unable to bear the harshness of that sound. “He has done this before. I will… we will go away together. Sitey, we will make something for ourselves, I…”

There is a scuffling sound, and Sita lets go of his face. Clutching his arm, she hauls him to his feet and steps outside. The loss of her touch stings, like someone has poured ice-cold water over him and he follows her blindly, seeking that relief again.

“Maa!” It is all the warning they have before the twins dash around the corner, all muddy clothes and twigs tangled in their hair. A calf prances in right after them, mooing out to the whole world.

Sita frowns like a switch has been flipped. She gives them both a severe look. “Where is Isha? And which of you freed him?”

“I don’t know. I saw him and he was getting bored,” Lav (or was it Kush?) pouts. “And we were bored too.”

Beside him, his twin draws a line in the mud with his toes, giggling. Sita stares at it for a long while.

“Maa! Bhaiyya poked me,” the first boy complains, and Rama feels a rush of relief knowing he had not guessed wrong.

“I didn’t,” Kush protests.

Sita places a hand on each of their shoulders, herds them to the calf. “Go, return him. It is bad manners to let loose animals in the aashram.”

Lav clutches the edge of her pallu, his little lips wobbling. “I wasn’t trying to be bad.”

“I know,” Sita sighs and presses a kiss to each of their foreheads. Rama’s heart aches. They cannot be older than six years, Taksh is, after all, just five. They are just babies, really.

Kush tugs his brother’s arm. “Come,” he says, side-eying Rama. Lav quietens down and follows him.

Sita watches him watch them go. “Do you think they would be better off in the Palace?” she asks eventually.

“Not if you aren’t there,” he replies. And it is true, he thinks bitterly.

Sita twists her fingers, pulls her pallu closer. “I will think on it,” she promises, and Rama holds those words close to his heart.

“I must go now,” he says, although he wants to do anything but. Sita does not seem particularly offended though. “I will see you off,” she offers, and he thinks it’s better she has the time to reflect on everything.

Outside, Lakshmana is sitting on a rock, talking softly with Lav and Kush. The calf is sprawled across the ground with its head on his knee, making soft, contented noises from all the petting. He stands when he notices them, and the boys let out identical shrieks of alarm.

“We’re going!” Kush yells, dragging the poor creature away.

Beside him, Sita rolls her eyes. “Go faster.”

They wait till the children are gone before approaching, and Lakshmana bows down to touch her feet.

Rama watches with a foreign pang in his chest as his brother apologizes profusely to his wife, and Sita, ever-loving, pats his shoulders and forgives him with a hug. Lakshmana volunteers information about her parents and sisters and she listens with the rapture of a chataka witnessing the year’s first rains, and Rama barely manages not to be jealous.

They leave much later with well-meaning goodbyes, and Lakshmana extracts a second invitation to the aashram. When Rama gets on to the chariot, all he knows is failure and loss.

But Lakshmana does not drive them home. He leads the horses half a mile into the jungle and swings around to look at him. “You are upset,” he says. It is not a question.

“I messed up,” Rama tells him bitterly. It is hard to conceal his resentment now that the whole world is against him. He had sent away his wife to please his people, against the wishes of all his family. And now the same citizens of Ayodhya denounce and scorn him, and his brothers look to him warily, as if to guard his sisters-in-law from a similar fate. Dasaratha had chosen his wife over his people and paid for it, and now Rama pays for the contrary. What is, then, the right answer?

“Did you apologize or explain?” Lakshmana asks.

Rama bites his lip, barely refrains from losing his temper. How is this my fault? he wants to ask. Have I not suffered as well?

Lakshmana touches his arm, gives him a compassionate look. “When we had the boys,” he begins, and Rama has to smile at the thought of them, “we – Urmila and I – fought a lot. One of those times, it was my fault. I will not tell you want happened, and I hope you will not ask, because you will be very angry, but suffice to say it was bad.”

Rama sits down, blinks at him, interested now. “And then?”

Lakshmana gives him a sheepish smile. “I was too bull-headed to accept that it was my fault. But Urmila came up and said that she was sorry for acting the way she did, and that she could see my point. I was, as you can understand, mortified.”

“Huh,” Rama says, surprised. This is not how fights between Sita’s sister and Sumitra’s oldest usually end.

“Anyway, I told her that no, it was my fault, and she should not have to step back when she had been correct. And then, bhaiyya, Urmila told me something really important. She said when we fight someone we love, we should step back for a moment, and apologize even if we weren’t wrong, so we could initiate a conversation about what happened and how to prevent it.”

“…oh,” Rama says, for lack of a better response. “That is… very mature.”

His brother nods sagely. “There is never a dull moment with Janak’s daughter. But you see what I’m trying to say?” “Yes,” Rama breathes, pieces falling into place. “Let’s go back, I will tell her! Lakshmana!”

But Lakshmana merely settles back in, shakes his head. “Not today,” he advises. “Let her have some time to see what she wants. Too long we have tried to mold her into what she should have been, instead of appreciating what she was. We will come back another day.”

Rama doesn’t want to go, not to that empty Palace in Ayodhya that is no longer home. But he takes his brother’s words to heart and listens. After all, if he cannot trust Lakshmana, he can trust no one.

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