A Different Path

Mirror

When the rest of the Kings were busy applying medicine on their sunburns, Ashwathamma had dragged Karna all the way across the palace, ignoring the servants who gaped openly at the agitated duo. Karna barely registered anything, he just followed behind his friend silently, befuddled and unnerved.

"I don't believe the galls of that Sudakshina!" Aswhathamma bellowed, still in the clutches of his brutish anger.

"Forget it," Karna mumbled.

Karna sighed when Aswathamma turned to him in obvious fury. "You are acting as if this is the first time I have been insulted" he replied with cold nonchalance.

"So? Am I supposed to just let it go?"

"I don't care what they think, my friend. Their opinions do not have the same influence over me as before. I have come to realise that I am my own biggest enemy."

"But Karna-"

"No. Don't you see how foolish I have been all this time?"

Aswhatthama frowned at him and flopped down into the armchair. Karna offered him a glass of water and sat down opposite him. When his friend was done drinking water, Karna took his hands and inspected the red, irritant skin. He was sure that it would go away in a day or two, but he still called out for servants to send some medicine.

"Does it hurt?" Karna questioned moments after the servant left them, having applied the paste on Ashwathamma's hands.

"It's alright."

Karna swallowed the lump in his throat and gazed evenly at his friend. He didn't know what else to say. How was he supposed to react to what had happened? He felt so lost and so confused. If Ashwatthama burns weren't so evident, he would have thought that he had imagined everything.

"What did you mean?" Ashwatthama asked him in a tense voice.

"What?"

"You said you finally realise how foolish you have been."

Karna leaned into his chair and closed his eyes, remembering all the insults, the jibes, the taunts that he had swallowed for so long. But it was more than that. While the words played out every night in his mind, mercilessly distressing him they were still less impactful than the disgust he saw with his eyes. The raised eyebrows, noses drawn up and wrinkled, eyes lit with revulsion and lips holding back the obscenities that would have been disposed of freely had it not been for the presence of a certain crown prince of Hastinapura. And while both Aswathamma and Duryodhana were always ready to defend him if some fool dared to affront him, he knew that they didn't notice these small, minuscule things. They were too high up in their castles made of privilege and good breeding, they who had never had to justify their existence nor get berated for pursuing what they perceived was theirs for the taking.

But Karna saw. He saw everything.