𝓡𝓔𝓒𝓞𝓡𝓓 𝓞𝓕 𝓡𝓐𝓖𝓝𝓐𝓡𝓞𝓚 × 𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓𝓔𝓡 𝓞𝓝𝓔𝓢𝓗𝓞𝓣𝓢

WHEN HE CHOSE THE SILENCE - His perspective

Buddha × Reader

They think I left it all without looking back.

That I walked into the forest with certainty in my heart and nothing behind me worth holding onto.

They do not know the truth.
Because there was someone.
There was {Name}.

I stayed in her village longer than I stayed anywhere else in all my years of wandering.

At first, I told myself it was for recovery. My body had been pushed to the edge—fasting, meditating, testing the limits of my flesh in pursuit of something formless. She found me at my most fragile, and yet, she looked at me as though I were whole.

She brought me food the first time, yes. But then she brought me warmth.

A scarf, once. Frayed at the ends, smelling of smoke and river mud. “The mornings are still cold,” she said, leaving it beside me without meeting my eyes.

Another day, she brought mango slices in a palm leaf. I hadn’t tasted sweetness in so long that my hands shook as I ate them. She sat a few steps away, watching the trees, saying nothing.

It became routine.

She came each day. Sometimes we spoke. Sometimes not. But our silences grew thick with everything we never said.

There were evenings we watched the sun dip low and cast her face in gold, and I thought: This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
There were mornings when she smiled at me like I had always been there—like I belonged.

And I wanted to belong.

Not to the world, not to kings or kingdoms or even the teachings I was still trying to find—but to her. Just her.

One afternoon, she was shaping clay by the river. I sat nearby, cross-legged in the shade, pretending to meditate. But I wasn’t meditating. I was watching her hands. The way they smoothed the wet earth. The way her brows furrowed in focus.

And I thought: I could stay. I could build her a kiln. Fetch her water. Fix her roof before the monsoons.

I thought: I could ask her to marry me. I could live here—not as a prince, not as a sage, but just a man who wakes each day to her voice.

But then I’d see the hunger in others’ eyes when they came to me for comfort. The old man with shaking hands. The child whose mother had died of fever. And I’d remember: I wasn’t meant for this. I had left my home not just to escape, but to heal the world’s wound.

Still, every time I tried to leave, I couldn’t.

It wasn’t just her presence. It was the life she never asked for, but I imagined anyway.

There was a night I almost broke.

The rain was falling in sheets, loud against the thatched huts. I took shelter beneath the potter’s awning. She stepped outside, saw me soaked through, and—without a word—took my hand and pulled me inside.

We sat by the fire. Her father was asleep. The coals crackled. Our knees brushed once, then again. And then, for the first time, she asked softly:

“Do you ever wish you had stayed home? That you hadn’t walked away?”

I didn’t answer at first. My throat burned with a truth I wasn’t supposed to speak.

“I didn’t know home could feel like this,” I whispered.

She turned to me. Her eyes shimmered with something between hope and sorrow. She didn’t move closer. She didn’t need to.

We both knew what we wanted. And we both knew I would leave.

A few days later, she brought me a necklace. Simple—just a thread with three small beads shaped like lotus seeds.

“I made it when I was a girl,” she said. “You don’t have to keep it. I just thought... maybe it could remind you of something gentle.”

I still have it.

I left the village the next morning.

I did not say goodbye. I couldn’t. The words would have broken me.
But I looked back.

I walked into the forest and turned, just once, and I saw her standing in the doorway of her father’s house, watching me. She didn’t wave. She didn’t cry.

But I felt her grief like a hand pressed to my chest.

____________________

Years later, I returned—not as Siddhartha, but as Buddha. The Awakened One. People lined the path to see me. To touch the feet of the man who had found the end of suffering.

But I was searching the crowd for one face.

I found her.

Older. Graceful. A young boy stood beside her. Her husband—a kind-eyed man—stood behind them, arm resting gently on her shoulder.

She stepped forward and offered me a bowl of rice and milk.

My breath caught.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

I met her eyes. My voice caught in my throat. I remembered everything.

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

But inside, the words I couldn’t say roared through me:
I stayed because of you. I nearly gave it all up for you. I still wonder if I should have.

She smiled. A soft, distant smile. The kind people give to things that once hurt but no longer bleed.

She had healed. She had chosen. She had built the life I only dared to dream of.

And I—
I had chosen the world.
I had given it peace, truth, the Middle Way.
But I had also lost something only one person ever offered me:
A quiet, ordinary forever.

I walked on. The path continued.

But part of me—perhaps the most human part—still lives in that village, beneath that neem tree, waiting for her to appear, holding a bowl of rice and milk.

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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