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You know this is a dream, for you stand here on ground that you once came to know well, over many days, each a battle. It was a war that took place long ago, long before you became Servant, Archer, long before you grew used to clinical white walls, the Command Spells of a Master, a snowstorm that would last forever.
You know each hollow of this land. You know the grooves of the hills, you know where every animal burrow lies. With the same certainty, you know the slick of mud with a heavy depression in it, where the wheel of a chariot was once stuck, and you know the bloodstain not far from there, the unsightly pool of dark where a pale-haired head, deprived of its body, rested.
Almost without you realizing, your feet take you there. With the habit of deep memory you walk gracefully; you avoid the just-buried arrowheads and the heads of lances with alacrity because you were there to watch them fall. This battle was barely a speck in the magnitude of all of history, but it alone remains in your head, the occurrence you think on again and again, and it is because of this that you dream of it every time you close your eyes.
(Usually you try not to fall asleep, as you do not need to at all. But this time, it seems, it was different.)
You blink and suddenly you hear noise all too familiar to you and suddenly you feel the dirty, bloody sweat and suddenly you are all alive again.
You stand in your chariot facing the backs of your two horses and your standard flies above you, fabric aloft in the strong wind with nearly the sound of a cracking whip. You raise your eyes just a bit higher to see what you have always, always known you would, the radiant Radheya bracing his hands on his own chariot, trying to raise its wheels onto solid ground. It is a familiar sight, not only because you see it again and again, but because each time you memorize it once more. You know exactly how the tendons in his hands strain, you know exactly what his expression looks like, you know what will come next.
You know that he will turn toward you in a mere moment and you will see the resignation in his eyes, the knowledge that this would always happen, and you know that your hands will tighten around your Gandiva bow and you will fire a heavy arrow and you will cut his head from his body, you will see the glint of viscera at his neck in the evening light as the sun approaches the horizon, you will watch as his head falls to the ground, you will hear the Kauravas scream and the Pandavas cheer. You know that it was what was meant to happen.
But in this dream, it has not happened yet.
You were known by many names, throughout the years. There were many things to recognize you for, so of course you were.
You were the third son born to Pandu, so you were called Madhyapandava.
You alone could wield the Gandiva bow, so you were called Gandivadhara.
You were ambidextrous, so you were called Savyasachi.
You always won, so you were called Dhananjaya.
You were Arjuna, so you were called Arjuna.
Were you?
Another person stands next to you.
They called him lotus-eyed.
He looked different than you. He was lighter of skin, his hair was straighter. Your faces were different. You were thin-lipped, sharp, he was graceful. Of course he was, and they called him Vasudeva, and he was the incarnation of Krishna, and he was the one who smiled with those lotus-eyes narrowed as he said that the Radheya knew no honor. He was your charioteer. That alone means that he could not have been the same as you, for you could not have been a charioteer in that battle - you were the wielder of Pasupata, the glory of the Pandavas.
You could not have been the one who chose to kill the son of Surya. (The son of Kunti, though you had not known it. Had it not been your belief that he was a charioteer's son?)
Even now it does not feel right to say his name, so you force yourself to. It settles like dead weight against the blood-rich soil.
"Karna."
Two syllables but so short it feels as though it should be one. It ends the same as your name does, and for that reason the last sound rolls off your tongue spat as though it is an offense.
The person that name describes died by your hand, but surely not by your desire.
(But still you say his name like a curse, like it has a taste that you can only rid yourself of through enmity.)
It was Krishna, your charioteer (not yourself, never you), who asked it of you, beckoned forth your evil and coaxed your archer's hands into position, who said, "Waste no more time, Arjuna," the five short words that shot down the sun.
In this dream, you know too what he will say. He leans in to speak over the clamor of the battle that now rings in your ears and as he does he smiles again, a benevolent smile that holds so little malice, and he says, "Slay your enemy."
But this time, everything stops when the words leave his lips, because that is not Sri Krishna's voice.
It is your own.
You have heard yourself speak far too often not to recognize it, even in words you have never said aloud.
In this dream with hands you no longer control you draw back your bowstring and the entire world is silent to the rushing of blood in your ears and the broad flat arrow gleams, deadly in the fading sunlight but your eyes are drawn along the sight of the Gandiva and soon all you see is a pale neck.
Your arrow flies.
Strikes true.
Suddenly all you see is red.
It was your voice this time.
Nothing moves, after your arrow slices through his neck, and even though he is long dead now he has turned his head just so and you can see the expression in his eyes and you don't know what to make of it now, just as you have never known what to make of it.
You both knew that this was meant to happen, of course.
You made a promise to challenge him. He made a promise to kill only you.
And so it was predestined.
Was that the reason for the look on his face?
No, that it happened no longer disturbs you. You have been at this scene too many times, you have dreamed this dream too many times even as you try not to sleep.
What frightens you is that it was your voice and when you heard it you were happy.
There was something like ecstatic joy welling in your heart as you loosed your arrow, as you watched it pierce soft unprotected flesh (it was your father who demanded his armor), as you killed him. A violent, hot swell behind your ribs like you never knew true happiness until that moment even if you did, and it is that feeling that frightens you, because if that is you, if you are no longer able to abandon the sentiment, if the pressure of the bowstring on your fingers at that moment felt natural, then -
who is to blame but yourself?
Your own voice answers again and says, "No one."
And you laugh.
The carnage of battle resumes around you and you can do nothing but laugh in your chariot, standing a head above everyone else, and Krishna is gone, and there is only you left.
You and that traitorous heart of yours.
When you wake up your throat is raw and there is crescent-moon pain in your palms where your nails have drawn blood.