Chapter 9

                                    

                                          
A/N:- Honestly, this is getting out of hand, I really hadn't planned on writing so much on this. I thought, I'll end this book with five chapters max and here we are. Ughh... my spiralling thoughts! Do you all think the flashbacks are unnecessary? I thought, it'll help in building the intrigue maybe. Anyway, here are some more, hehe!
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Flashback, Swargaloka, an year ago
Bheeshma had still not gotten adjusted to being dead. 
It was a very strange experience. On asking his seven brothers, the Vasus, they had laughed indulgently and tried their best to explain the complex nature of the human soul. 
One which had divinity mixed into it. 
He could travel at the speed of light and sail across the cosmos within a blink. He could be formless or retain his mortal features if he saw fit. He could even revert back to any age that he desired. 
He had been so confused with the litany of things that he was allowed to do and having witnessed things which he was sure bended the rules of any Earthly phenomenon that he decided, he would just remain frozen in the state that he had been in, during his death. 
Well, not exactly. 
Sometimes he still touched himself all over, searching for the thousand arrows which had speared him to the ground of the Kurukshetra. 
Bheeshma's face softened remembering the first night he had laid alone on his bed of arrows, the deadly shafts plunged into his battle hardened body.
Stinging with the lingering cinders of his many sins.
Reminding the wizened Grandsire of the Kurus, constantly of the grave mistakes he had committed while trying to uphold his stringent morality. 
Arjun had come to him then. 
When he had been beseeched by his grandchildren moments after his fall, when his friends and foes had all gathered around him, faces pale in horror and expressions downtrodden in grief and guilt, he had seen his favourite grandchild, standing far away from the others. 
His face, a mask of ice, Gandhiva held in a white knuckled grip. 
Bheeshma had asked him for the makeshift pillow of arrows and for him to bring his mother to him and Arjun had responded silently. Only his arms moving in perfect synchrony, as his eyes remained trained at the far distance - on the setting sun. 
The wise warrior knew that it was all a façade. 
For his dear Phalgun had the softest hearts amongst them all. Something which he kept carefully hidden from his compatriots. 
So, he hadn't been surprised when the shining beacon of the Kurus, his poor Pritha's youngest, had then plopped down on the ground on his knees, beside his head. 
Arjun's calloused hands had taken one of his own, hanging limp from the perch of the arrows and then he had pressed his mouth against the back of the palm. 
Bheeshma didn't think he could experience any greater pain that what he was already going through. It had been beyond what any human could possibly suffer. The threshold of tolerant agony had already surpassed him by leaps and bounds.