Ram rushed back, his heart beating with a sense of dread that he could not seem to silence, not with the most rational thoughts. His sixth sense had never fooled him before, and truly he never wished it would, but in that moment, he hoped, he prayed that he was wrong. All he wanted was to see his brother, standing out of the hut, with Sita inside, perhaps cooking something. Then he could tell her that it was all a plot. All of it. Try to make up for it with something else. He closed his eyes shut.

Finally, they fluttered open as he skidded to a halt. Right in front of him, eyes clouded with tears, was a fair, tall man, with short, reddish hair, holding a bow in his hands so tightly that his knuckles were white. Right in front of him was the brother who somehow had disobeyed his orders, who was supposed to be protecting his wife. Which meant that Sita was currently alone, unprotected, in the middle of the wilderness.

Ram cried out, almost falling to his knees, but Lakshman quickly ran forward and caught him before he could fall. "What are you doing?" Ram cried, steadying himself up again. "You were supposed to be with Sita while I gave chase! Those were solemn orders, Lakshman! I told you not to go anywhere or do anything I told you to protect her! I told you to not leave her even when I screamed out for help! What happened?"

Lakshman shook his head, running a hand through his hair. He did not speak of what Sita had said to him. In his eyes, saying something against his bhabhi to his brother was treason, and completely wrong. "I-I, we both were scared! I drew a protective line around the cottage, and Sita bhabhi told me, she pleaded with me to come here! I was so conflicted! Your orders versus hers! What could I do, bhaiyya?"

Ram screamed, stumbling back. No, no, no, this could not be happening. His mind felt bruised, as if it had just been hit with lightning, and was fizzing out. A steady sense of doom that had been trailing him while he gave chase to that deer had finally caught up to him and smacked him right atop the head. "I can tell you what you were supposed to do, Lakshman! You were supposed to listen to me! Sita can't defend herself! You can! I can! Y-you-"

Orders. Orders, disobeyed. It did not make any sense, and yet it did. But he threw the latter part of his mind, the part that claimed that something said by Sita surely provoked Lakshman to act so rashly against his orders, away. "Come on." he breathed, though he felt breathless. "Come on, let us not waste any time! We need to go back! Best case scenario, Sita is there, waiting for us-right?" His words caught in the middle of the air, and he shook his head, grabbing Lakshman's arm and pulling him towards the hut again.

But as he brushed apart the last branch, every breath of his seemed to slow down. The flutter open of his eyelashes only gave way to something much worse than not knowing. The only thing worse than not knowing. Knowing. He saw the line his brother had claimed to draw, fizzling like lightning with unrestrained magic. He saw the fallen plate of fruits and rice. He saw the torn cloth. The torn cloth of white. The color of purity, defiled with dirt. "Sita," he mumbled, rushing past the line and into the hut.

So empty. So silent. The rather small cottage had never felt so spacious. It had no Sita inside it, and though Ram knew, he knew, he didn't stop searching. He turned over pots and pans as if Sita could fit into them. He opened the containers of food and scattered them on the ground as if Sita could hide in them. He opened all the doors and checked all the cabinets as if he thought Sita was playing with them. "Sita..." he trailed off, hands shaking, and stumbled backwards out of the doorway, where he fell on the ground.

"Lakshman." He began, turning around towards his brother, who looked around at the mess with a pale face. "Why did you leave her? Why? Why did you listen to that crazy woman's pleads? Why did you give her up to be eaten up by monsters and vengeful rakshasas? WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO RASH?! Why would you leave her here like bait for a monster? She's dead! She's dead! " He stood up, pointing a finger at Lakshman, before pointing all around him, driven by anger and sorrow.

"You did this? Why did you? Do you not trust me enough to know that I would not fail at retrieving a simple deer? I have killed fourteen thousand demons, and you didn't trust me enough to do this?" he tilted his head. "Do you underestimate me so much? That must be why you have come here! Because you thought that I couldn't do anything!" He looked around, moving sluggishly like Ravan's drunk generals often did.

"She was a helpless, harmless, pious woman! You left her here, unprotected, left to the laws of a jungle, confined by a mere line! You, who was supposed to be so rational, who came her to help! Well, you did more harm than help, that's for sure! She was killed, Lakshman! SHE WAS KILLED!" He held his head. "Innocent blood was spilled, Lakshman. You should not have left her." Lakshman looked away, jaw clenching and wiping away the last of his tears. It would be a long journey. "Why did you leave her? She can't be. D-Dead, No."

He forgot all the words he spoke to his brother, and collapsed again in despair. But Lakshman would never forget. And he would never defend himself. Why did he leave? Couldn't he have just plugged his ears? Couldn't he have just hidden in a tree? Couldn't he have just lit a pyre, waited for Ram bhaiyya to come back for a few more seconds, and then have jumped into it, so that everyone was left happy? He could have finally used that craftiness that Maa Sumitra claimed he inherited from her. What was it always him that ruined all the best things for others?

And was everyone right? Had he done more harm than good? Should he have stayed back? Perhaps he should have. He couldn't have done anything to protect them. He was useless. Ram bhaiyya was good enough. He should have just stayed back. And died from separation, ending everyone's misery by ending his existence. Was it not true? Shouldn't he? And what was this? Tears? He was crying? HE? He had everything! He was so foolish, so greedy, so lavish! Lakshman wiped away the last of his tears.

"Come, bhaiyya." he cleared his throat and lifted Ram up, shaking his shoulders to bring him back to life, back to Earth from his planet of misery. "Perhaps Sita bhabhi is playing a trick on us. Perhaps she is hiding somewhere, and Jatayu is guarding her, and she is waiting to be found, and then she will surprise us by jumping out! Let's look! Maybe this was her plot to finally make us laugh!"

Ram shook his head, his face covered with tear tracks. "She hates-hated pranks." he mumbled. "Hates them. You know. She said "Urmila and Shatru always play pranks on me!" She said that "I shall never play a prank on anyone! I shall never do something that I myself don't like to others!" He looked up at Lakshman, eyebrows curved up. "She was such a good person, Lakshman!"
Lakshman nodded. "Then let us look for her! It is no use lamenting! Let us look! There is no blood here, see? There is no blood!" He turned Ram around to look at the place. "She could not have been killed! Perhaps we can still save her, but not if you descend into misery and sadness and agitation! Let's go!" And so, he pulled his devastated brother out of the clearing and towards the forest, where promise lay in the form of thick branches and lost hope.

-----O-----

But as time passed, and the sun began to sink into the horizon, Ram lost his last piece of hope. He began to talk to everything. "Do you know where Sita is?" he asked softly to the trees, patting the bark. "How about you?" he inquired towards the grass underneath his feet. "Perhaps you have seen Sita? My wife, you know. Most beautiful woman you'll ever see." he told the pine marten wisely. "Sita? About this tall? Seen her?" He wondered towards the sparrow, holding a hand right below himself.

Lakshman could only watch, slack jawed, as Ram began to descend into madness, clutching his hair, and asking inanimate things, inhuman things, all about Sita. He peered at the ground as if he could see the tracks that she made. He looked towards the sky as if she should be flying right above them. He looked towards the river, and wondered out loud if she was swimming, and then at the trees, and asked if she was climbing. His brother could only swallow, and do the same.

But finally, Ram got tired. He got agitated, impatient, angry. He fell towards the ground, and grabbed his bow even tighter than he had before, eyes flashing with a hatred towards something that none of them could not see; fate. WIth one single, sleek movement, he drew a long arrow from his quiver, which Lakshman realized, with a start, was the Bramhastra. "If no one tells me, i shall end this world! Everyone shall die! My Sita is gone! She's gone, you understand? She is dead! If she is dead, then this world should die! All of you hiding her from me, should die!" He strung it, and seemed ready to release it, when Lakshman snatched it from him and held it at arm's length.

"Are you kidding me, bhaiyya?" he asked shrilly as Ram reached forward in vain to try to grab it. "If Sita bhabhi is still alive, say, if she was captured, then you would be killing her too, with this arrow! You would be killing your own wife, bhaiyya!" Ram looked at him with such a look of plea that Lakshman almost softened and handed him back the arrow, before something caught his eye. "Look, bhaiyya! The deer are moving towards the south! They're telling us where Sita bhabhi went!"

And then Ram saw it too. The light shone on the top of the deer's fur, and for a moment, Ram forgot that it was a deer itself that had got them into this mess. He nodded, and got up, taking in a deep breath, letting it fill his lungs. "That was foolish of me," he conceded. "And I am sorry for blaming this world and its people for my own mistake. I should not have done that. It was wrong of me to do so." He patted a tree, grasped his bow, replaced the Bramhastra in his quiver, and the two brothers walked towards the way of the deer.

Instead of finding Sita, however, or her captor, they found Jatayu. Jatayu, king of the birds, lay there, dying, wings cut off, and Ram cried out, walking closer, as Lakshman carried a pot of water to cool down his wounds. "My friend," Ram mumbled. "What has happened to you? Who did this? Who would do this to a good being? It is true, then, what people say. There are barely any good people left on this Earth."

Jatayu rolled over in Ram's arms, turning to face the king, greyish, bleak eyes meeting tear-filled blue lotus ones. "There are. There always will be, as long as you are on this planet, Yuvraj Ram. I have seen Maa Sita. She was tricked into being abducted by the Demon King Ravan, of Lanka. He took her in a chariot. I tried to stop him-he chopped off-" Jatayu suddenly slowed down, and Ram shook his head in denial. "Bless you, son."

And Jatayu was dead. He was dead, and Ram could just stare at the body in his arms disbelievingly. "No-" he was cut off by his own whimper, and he shook the body desperately. "Jatayu, my Sita's protector. You did better than I or my brother did! Why did the universe have to kill you, of all people?" Ram shook his head, placing Jatayu there, and they cremated the bird, pouring his ashes into the river.

"Why? Why, fate? Why are all the good people destined to suffer?" Ram looked up at the skies, and for a moment, Lakshman was ready to snatch his Bramhastra away again before Ram turned towards him, his sharp, piercing icy eyes searching the dark ones of his brother. "Let us leave, Lakshman, for help. That is what we need. Help. We need to search for Sita, with the few months we have before my exile is done."

A/N- Fun fun. All in good fun. This is so much fun. I am a bit trembling after writing this chapter. My hands are shaking. Ah well. The things I do to write well.