Shape of the Sun

The mother-son relationship

Content Warning: This passage contains explicit and disturbing content, including depictions of mental instability, abusive behavior, violence, and intense emotional distress. It may be triggering and unsettling for some readers. Please exercise caution while reading and prioritize your well-being.

"No...no...baby, baby..."

The woman kept whispering in the silence to the wall, dribble falling down her chin to the stone floor. She wore a white patient gown, pristine a sharp contrast to the bruises on her body. And it wasn't that her attendants didn't try to prevent her from harming herself. They did - but their attempts were too feeble in the face of a woman who had lost all sanity.

And so they stayed away out of self-preservation and later on, out of a growing contempt for the senile woman who could have had a much better life than they ever will, had she not been so useless. They were jealous of the middle-aged crazy and stayed away.

Why she stayed away, they did not know.

But she'd rather spend all her time awake sitting by the wall and muttering nonsense. She'd say the same words over and over.

Baby. Don't go. Love me.

It made them laugh. The man this old crazy was pining after was living the best life any could have with another woman.

What a waste.

If Harita knew what they thought, she'd have scoffed. They were the idiots that didn't know better. How could that greying weakling, Bhairav, ever compare to her lover?

She snickered. He'd never leave her. He trusted her, even till the end. She remembered his pretty eyes, a shade near slate grey. Such beautiful eyes. Such...

"Why are you so useless?"

It was that voice again, the scary one. Harita shrank into her chair, knees brought up to chin. This will go away. If she stayed silent, this monster she'd birthed will go on its own like in the past. She wished she had killed him that day.

"You wished you killed me?" The voice was laden with surprise, laid thick on it. Usually, Prithvi saw such a mediocre sight and wished he could go blind. Or better, drain all the blood in his body that had her makeup.

She was such a weakling. She sucked the life out of him just by being.

She was afraid of him. He could feel it, could see it when she shook her head in a bid to convince him that she had in fact not said those words. The problem was that she had. Probably thinking out loud, he guessed. And even more fascinating was that rather than piss him off, it kind of pleased him.

In the weirdest turn of events, Prithvi felt a kindred spirit in that determined, cruel thought she'd voiced out. He was the victim, the casualty of that statement - yet why did he feel so excited? That was the word. Excited. Prithvi felt budding excitement looking at Harita trembling in her chair.

Perhaps, it resonated so deeply with him, the malice. Prithvi had been with Bhairav long enough to be sure that they were nothing alike character-wise. He was strategic, flawed, and decent like his half-brother which he hated to admit but couldn't deny. Prithvi was nothing like them and he knew it, and it was too hypocritical to stack on the tag of childhood trauma or labeling as an explanation for his oddity.

Strange as it sounded, Prithvi had lived relatively better than most despite everything. He had been well taken care of, Bhairav had made sure, and the surety of being his son was sufficient to balance any name-calling he'd have faced.

Well, almost sufficient.

Not to mention, he actually had decent half-siblings and Prithvi meant that truly, irritably. Rajkumar's friend, Veer, also had half-siblings. They lived like ghosts every day, he was well aware. He had every reason to be pleasant, grateful, that type of thing.