𝓡𝓔𝓒𝓞𝓡𝓓 𝓞𝓕 𝓡𝓐𝓖𝓝𝓐𝓡𝓞𝓚 × 𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓𝓔𝓡 𝓞𝓝𝓔𝓢𝓗𝓞𝓣𝓢

WHEN HE CHOSE THE SILENCE

Buddha × Reader

Before he was the Buddha, he was Siddhartha. A prince, yes, but restless. He moved through the palace like a man wearing borrowed skin, searching not for gold or fame, but for stillness. For truth.

And during his years of seeking, when he lived on alms and silence, he came upon a village by a slow, wide river. The air was thick with smoke and birdsong, and it was there that he met {Name}.

She was not royalty or sage. Just the daughter of a potter, her hands stained with red earth, her voice low and steady. But in her eyes was something that made Siddhartha pause—a stillness that did not need to be sought.

He had grown thin, too thin, after weeks of fasting. It was she who found him beneath a neem tree, barely breathing. She placed a bowl of rice and milk beside him, not speaking. When he opened his eyes and their gazes met, the world hushed.

“You are kind,” he murmured.

“It is not kindness,” she said. “Only what is right.”

She returned each day after that. She never asked him who he had been before, nor why he seemed to carry so much sorrow inside such calm. She only sat beside him when he allowed it, offering food, or silence, or simple conversation about the river, the rains, the firewood.

She loved him without knowing when it began. Her love was not desperate, not even hopeful—it was a quiet ache, like a song half-remembered. It wasn’t love that demanded anything. It was love that waited, unnoticed, blooming softly in the background.

One evening, as the light turned amber and the trees cast long shadows, she asked, “Do you think you will stay here long?”

He turned to her, his expression unreadable. “No. The path I follow still stretches far.”

“Will there ever be a place for someone beside you on that path?”

There was a silence between them then, so complete it felt sacred.

“I walk toward the end of craving,” he said. “Even for love as kind as yours.”

She did not cry. She did not beg. She only nodded.

“I understand,” she said. And she did.

He left at dawn. She watched him go, a figure growing smaller against the rising sun, until he disappeared into the forest that led to Bodh Gaya—toward enlightenment, toward legend.

Years passed. She married a man from the next village—a gentle carpenter named Anik, who brought her sandalwood and silence, who asked nothing of her heart that she couldn’t offer. He knew, without needing to be told, that there had been someone before him. Not in body, but in spirit.

He never competed with a ghost. Instead, he built her a house with wide windows and room for quiet. They had two children. She laughed often. She held her husband’s hand and leaned into his shoulder when storms came. And still, there were nights—quiet ones—when her thoughts drifted to the man beneath the neem tree.

Many years later, when the Buddha returned to her village with disciples and a peaceful gaze, she stood at the edge of the crowd with her son by her side. He did not look as she remembered—there was something even more distant in him now, a radiance that made him seem less a man, more a mountain.

Still, when he passed by, their eyes met.

She offered him a bowl of rice and milk.

He took it, bowed his head.

“Do you remember me?” she asked, soft enough that no one else heard.

“I remember the kindness that saved me,” he said.

That was all. That was enough.

She walked back home to her husband, to her children, to the life she had built. She no longer carried longing, only memory. Love had not left her—it had simply changed its shape.

And in that, there was peace.

Don't and DON'T ever ask me for updates, I'll update this oneshot if I want to. Keep in mind that I have a life too, just like you. Writing stories are simply a hobby of mine and I appreciate if you'll wait until I update again.

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