In Kosala, the dawn became noon, and the noon lasted for only a minute.

Shrutakirti spent the sixty seconds with a silver plate of rose petals, scattering them upon the pathway which her sister and brothers would take back into their rightful palace. The moment they emerged from Chitrakut, she would make sure that their bare feet were no longer pierced by gravel and sharp stones.

Ayodhya was no place to find peace, not now. Citizens from the edge of Kosala had been flocking to the city for some time, flooding in through the walls, the doors which the guardsmen had thrown open with huge smiles.

But so far from Ayodhya, in the place where it all began (the place where Shrutakirti's happiness ended), it was silent. Just the wind, and the pebbles skipping across the pathway, and one princess of Kosala with her rose petals.

Rose petals were always Ram and Sita's favorite. They represented the couple well, Shrutakirti thought. Despite constantly being pricked by thorns, they would always produce the most beautiful petals, the richest colors.

Shrutakirti hadn't taken the regency as badly as Shatrughan had. She appreciated the new perspective it had given her, much before the time for introspection had arrived. People would hate her, and they didn't need a reason to hate her, and she would just have to accept that. There was no way she could make everyone like her. She could give flowers and be kind and never speak out and remain the docile doll everyone wanted her to be, and still be loathed.

"You don't hate me, right?" she asked to the handful of petals which lay crumpled in her palm. The flowers were the refuge she found in these fourteen years. And it was a very difficult refuge to find, since all the flowers in Kosala seemed determined to wilt.

Fourteen years had passed. It hit her all at once, the gravity of the time which had been ripped away from her. She had been nineteen. Now she was...

Thirty three.

The flowers couldn't possibly understand.

She opened her fist and let the petals flitter away in the breeze, dancing like the rejoicing citizens of Ayodhya. "I don't care if anyone likes me at all. I have the people who belong to me. And they are all I need."

Her last pace, Ram's first pace, was finally covered in a mosaic of red, and tucking her pallu back over her hair, Shrutakirti stepped onto the carriage which waited for her beside the path.

Instead of looking out the window, she sat in the middle of the seat and shut her eyes. Rocking back and forth, the youngest princess wondered how quickly the flowers would bloom when Dasharathnandan stepped foot unto his motherland again.

-----O------

Sixty seconds was a lot of time to do nothing.

Then again, Mandavi had spent this whole exile doing nothing. Shrutakirti had been the regent to a throne, Urmila had been the strength of their family, and Sita didi was doing whatever princesses did in jungles, but Mandavi had been doing just about nothing.

If she hadn't been mourning for the past fourteen years, she might have laughed at how much her earlier self would have hated this new her. Mopey. Lazy. Hours before her sister and brothers were due to return, sitting in her apartments and watching her reflection.

The moment when she'd found out they were returning was cathartic. There was no way to describe it.

Mandavi had always looked up to Sita. She knew how the pairings went, of course. Sita-Urmila, Mandavi-Shrutakirti. But how was it fair to draw lines based on blood? Could she and Sita not share a dear bond too?

She had been firm, but kind. Natural, but graceful. Elegant in every sense of the word, but just as likable.

Exiled, though a princess. A princess, though exiled.

Life is unfair. It had always been something Mandavi liked shrieking into her sisters' ears, as if they didn't know it themselves. Life is unfair. Can you hear me, you rakshasis? It's not going to turn out well unless we stick together.

Well, they'd tried their darned best. And this whole life thing was just not working out.

Sita had been given the worst of it, of course, and was dealing with it just like Sita always did. Presumably. But she shouldn't have had to. She shouldn't have had to just deal with it. Karma didn't work like that. If her elder sister hadn't thrown any terrible things into the spitting pot of oil which was the world, then how come it spluttered hot drops upon her anyway?

Fourteen years wasn't something Mandavi had ever taken lightly. She didn't take things lightly as a rule.

She wasn't taking this return lightly either. In fact, maybe that was the problem. Maybe she was taking it too seriously. So seriously that she couldn't even do anything but sit. And stare. At the diamond-shaped mirrors embedded into the wall, all the little Mandavis, equally pathetic in their bright lehengas and drooping eyes.

"Papa," she said, thinking of the bearded man she left back in Mithila, the warm shadow and the soft hands. "You taught me so much about being useful and making my own life. I've just wanted away for these fourteen years, aching for something to do. So why can't I finally be of use now? Why can I not pull myself out of these chambers?"

"I'm no Raja Kushadwaj."

Mandavi startled, sitting up and twisting towards the doorway, where Kaushalya was standing. The eldest queen smiled. The strands of her graying hair were brighter than any mirrors, adorning her head like jewelry. "But you have felt the impact of these fourteen years just as much as the rest of us. We have been suffering, and suffering, and there has been no end. And now, bliss approaches us, and we hardly know what to do with ourselves."

"I..." Mandavi felt a little ashamed, but a little understood.

"Don't worry. I'll tell you what to do, beti. Deck yourself out. Gather your servants and do this. Jewelry, clothes, vermillion."

"But-"

Kaushalya held up a hand. "You came to tell us this news first, when even the servants hadn't reached. But here is the thing. You are no servant. It is no task of yours to string garlands or make sweets. You are a princess of Kosala, and Kosala is no kingdom in mourning. What will your mother say to me if he finds his own daughter so wrecked?" She drew in a dramatic breath, clutching her hands to her heart. "Do you want to see me die, Mandavi?"

Mandavi quickly shook her head, standing at once.

"Do you want to see Rani Chandrabhaga kill me?"

"No Maa!"

Kaushalya drew herself up. "Well then order yourself a makeover before Maa Kaushalya gets butchered! Then find Shrutakirti, would you? She's been working too much."

As a servant was painting her lips red, the second princess thought that maybe she had finally been granted permission to be happy.

-----O-----

The king's crown glinted proudly upon the divan.

It had been their father's.

Shatrughan never demanded a new one, of course. His reign was one best forgotten, a sickening uncertainty in between.

Now, it was over. All over. The new king, or maybe the old king, or maybe the only king all along, was on his way home. His only procession would be his wife and brother. His only garments would be the same orange ones he took with him.

Shatrughan hadn't asked for new chambers either, hadn't moved into his father's old ones. Maybe these rooms, his childhood ones, were the things keeping him tethered to his old identity. A prince. He was just a prince, one of the many princes of Ayodhya.

Even now, the man who was returning was just a prince. There were no kings left in Kosala. It was good. For a kingdom which had suffered so greatly over its kings, it fared surprisingly well without one. He could hear the rejoicing from his rooms, in a different world from him.

Where was Lakshman right now? Would he be resting with the rest of them? No, that wasn't Lakshman. He'd probably be shooting down invisible rakshasas, or punching some jobless punk.

Then, Shatrughan longed for something he had always run from. Just a punch, that explosion of pain in his bicep. Pain meant that Lakshman had returned, to smart at his teasing, to chase him around the palace instead of condemning him to stay still on a throne.

"Thinking of bhaiyya?"

Bharat stood at the doorway, and then entered without asking. Of the dwindling things he remembered about Ram, Shatrughan did remember that he always waited for a nod before coming in. Maybe Bharat had long understood that the answer would always be yes, to him.

He laughed. Or choked, more like, because somewhere in between he'd begun crying. "Actually, for once I'm not. Ask anyone else though, and all they'll be able to say is his name."

Rustling, Bharat settled next to him. "Laksh?"

"Laksh." Shatrughan let his tongue swipe over the dryness of his lip, and then corrected himself. "Lakshman bhaiyya."

They couldn't be of the same age anymore, could they? The jungles, the vines, the astra leaching the life out of him, must have all stolen a few years from his twin. Now he was truly older, and there was nothing even Shatrughan could do to say otherwise.

"Laksh," Bharat replied, smiling. "Just call him Laksh."

What? Confused, Shatrughan looked up at him from his hunched over position. "But you were the one who always insisted?"

"That was a habit." Bharat's smile grew dimmer, and then it was a thin ghost haunting his mouth. "You called him Lakshman. I tacked on bhaiyya at the end, gave you an admonishing look, and you whined about how you were the same age. At some point it became our own sort of routine, right? I don't think I could ever pretend everything was back to normal if you started calling him bhaiyya."

"Even if I did, you couldn't." Shatrughan rubbed his eyes with the base of his palm. "Pretend, that is. Nothing will ever be normal. Papa is dead. Fourteen years are gone. There are things even Vishwanath cannot take back."

Bharat remained silent for a second, and then said, very softly, "When did my Shatru become so wise?"

Both of their eyes drifted to the crown, that tantalizing thing they had learned to hate. The gold was tarnished. Strangely, Shatrughan never remembered Papa polishing it. Maybe even dead things like metal repulsed at his reign. But at least it had made him wise, whatever that meant.

"You were a good king."

Always a mind reader. Shatrughan squirmed. "Not like Papa."

Bharat looked at him, shadowed and earnest. "Because you are not Papa. And you are not bhaiyya. You are just Shatru, and you can be just Shatru again. We are once more the princes of Ayodhya, and these are titles we must pretend to sink into just as easily as Ram bhaiyya will sink into the throne. Princes, not mourners. Because Ram bhaiyya is coming back, Shatru. Ram bhaiyya is coming back."

Jolted, Shatrughan gripped Bharat's shoulders. "And Lakshman."

Bharat grinned back, and the room was thrown into sunlight. "And Lakshman, in all his almost-dead glory. We will again be four brothers."

Four brothers. Four brothers, separated by fourteen years, but of the same blood still. "Do you think they'll have changed?" he demanded, chewing his lip.

"Oh yeah. Ram bhaiyya will have gotten plastic surgery during his time in the forest." Shatrughan smacked him, but Bharat took it with a laugh. "Don't worry about silly things. They'll only have changed as much as we have."

Invigorated, Shatrughan sat straight. "I haven't changed."

"Then they haven't either." Bharat grasped his hands, and then they both stood up. "Come on. Don't let one hour define fourteen years of waiting. We must be the first ones to greet them."

Shatrughan watched him walk for the hallway. There had been something he'd forgotten to say. "You were a good brother," he called, feeling open and utterly vulnerable.

Bharat's silhouette was gray, and very still. "Well," he began. "Now you'll have two more. So maybe I won't have to be as good."

Two more.

Ram. Lakshman. The two names which had flitted through his mind incessantly, yet which he had almost forgotten to pronounce. Pretending they were around corners, hands on his shoulders, hazy memories to wipe away his tears. Fourteen years of hallucinations to get him by.

Though Ram was painted across banners and rangolis, Shatrughan found himself thinking of the other one, whose face was the same as his, and yet so hard to recollect. Lakshman.

What would his hands feel like? The weight of his eyes like a thousand brambles? Would he have suffered a lot? Would he be sickly? No. This, Shatrughan knew, that Lakshman wouldn't be sickly. As long as he could serve Ram, Lakshman would glow brighter than the golden sands which lined the ocean.

Lakshman.

Bharat.

Shatrughan.

They were all good, just good enough in these adopted roles of theirs: guardsman, counselor, king. Ram would be great. And this was the end of all pretending, of all these acts. Finally, they would be back in their proper places, and Shatrughan, for one, was utterly fine with that.

-----O------

All three queens had a portrait of their husband.

Kaushalya's was a miniature, embedded into gold and pressed into the hollow of her neck. His name was etched into the back. If she ever felt close to insanity, she'd grasp onto it and murmur a prayer. He was, after all, her connection to the heavens. Maybe her husband would hear her voice, the voice which so often sang for him, and would stand up from his throne of clouds to carry her wish to Narayan, at whose feet he rested.

Kaikeyi's was massive. It spanned from high ceiling to marble floors, and even it couldn't capture his majesty. This one was awash in blue silks and shawls of gold, beard not yet graying, eyes not yet somber. You could look at this one and hear the voice of the king, filling your ears like a throne hall, hand raised, sword gleaming.

Sumitra almost got no portrait at all.

She'd never asked for one, and he'd thought that maybe gifting her a painting of himself was a little arrogant.

In the end, it had been Lakshman who had asked, "Where is Papa?" while his head was on her shoulder, and the day was young. "Maa Kaikeyi and Maa Kaushalya both have paintings of him. Why don't you?"

It was an innocent question, but Sumitra had no clear answer for it. Her husband was present in the room, within their son. Lakshman, who had the shape of his eyes, the stubbornness of his jaw.

But that was Lakshman.

And Lakshman was his own person.

"Your mother forgot to ask," she laughed, and tried leaving it at that.

In the afternoon, her servant maid declared the name of Ram. Sumitra looked up from her records, tilting her head and waiting for the other name which inevitably accompanied the first.

"No, my queen. It is only Rajkumar Ram."

"Let him in," Sumitra had replied, smiling once Ram brushed through the curtain of silks. "Good afternoon, putra."

He was seventeen, with all the beholdings of that which was infinite. When he smiled at you, you felt as if the hand of the universe had come to rest, gently, upon your head. With that gentleness, Ram held up a scroll. "Papa sent this."

When she unrolled it, her mouth fell open.

It was a portrait of her husband, Maharaj Dasharath, sitting in his study, drafting a letter.

"But putra, this is—" By the time she looked up, Ram was gone. Alone in her chambers, with the sunlight reflecting off the curtains and gleaming off the bedpost, Sumitra found herself wordless. "This is..." She trailed off, finding that even the emptiness didn't encourage her sentence to come stumbling out.

Again, she glanced down. Hastily sketched, catching the sweep of his hand as he reached for a quill, it seemed to have trapped the quiet majesty of his spirit, and yet the passion of his every motion. With unconscious tenderness, Sumitra smoothed her hand over the smudged curve of his shoulder.

Who must have told him? Did Lakshman? Or was it Ram, reading Lakshman's eyes as he so often did? Or did Dasharath realize it on his own?

Now, as she sat in the same bed, waiting for her daughter and sons at last, Sumitra finally found the words for it.

Their return would be like the feeling of setting that scroll between all her others, the thing eternally longed for but not voiced. Completion.

As if pulled by an invisible force, her fingers again found the portrait of her husband. This time, when she unrolled it, eyes drinking in his form, Sumitra could smile.

"Your son is coming home, Dasharath, oh beloved of mine," she breathed, and the sun seemed to gleam brighter upon hearing his name. "Again, we will be complete."

-----O-----

Urmila was used to waiting.

And yet, this hour seemed longer than those fourteen years.

Was Kosala ready? Would it tremble, once the rightful king's feet stepped upon it again? Was the sun prepared for the brilliance of the lord incarnate?

And her sister, her best friend. There were no words for her. Sita, just Sita. This was a constant which could never change, which no evil could taint.

Then, the inevitable third.

As she leaned against the pillar, she thought of all the women in Kosala's history, who awaited their countrymen by this very post. Had any of them fought for fourteen years? Had any of them stepped through the thorns of Dandakaranya in their voyages, or crossed the sea?

No. In this, her husband was superior, and her wait was all the more painful.

The pattern seemed to favor threes. Arms crossed, Urmila raised her chin. If her husband was superior, and her wait was more painful, then who was to say that their reunion wouldn't be the sweetest?

A/N: What is it that the young kids say? Feeling cute, might delete later?

I've had this chapter almost done for nearly a year now, but I checked the draft today and decided to just finish it in one go. I'm beginning to realize that I should just do that more, instead of just ignoring my document altogether, haha. Oh well.

I'm sure we're all very annoyed that the reunion is taking this long (me included), but I promise there should only be one more chapter in between. Some final strings I want to tie up, some final thoughts I want to address. Maybe confront my fears that I won't be able to live up to 180+ chapters of buildup, but that's besides the point.