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They had Bheem.
They took him in the darkness of the night, when Bheem had taken a small detour to reach their ambush point. They had not anticipated the British patrol in that area. A gross oversight from their intelligence.
They took him, and Ram had not been able to do anything about it.
They had Bheem.
The Gonds were not making much progress with the English soldier they had captured and tied to a tree. A mahua tree. Mahua flowers were immortal, Bheem had told him. "Just like our love," he said, offering one to Ram with a smile so bright that Ram was left with little choice but to kiss his husband and taste the happiness straight from his sweet mouth.
They had Bheem.
Peddaya held a blade before the white officer, his eyes hard and his mouth tightened into a severe line, as Jangu questioned him about the whereabouts of their kidnapped leader in the English he had quickly learned during his time in Delhi. The man sneered at their questions, eyeing them with the disdain one reserved for diseased rodents, or pesky cockroaches perhaps, at their feet, and chose insults and curses as his only answers.
They had Bheem.
Ram stepped forward, swiping the soldier's confiscated service revolver from Lacchu's loose grip, raising it at their prisoner, and unleashing its bullet on him. The bullet pierced his knee in a shower of bony splinters and crimson droplets. Ram reached the side of the soldier, his mouth spitting obscenities and his limbs writhing in their restraints, just as the smoke dissipated from the barrel.
"Where is he?" He had not spoken English in well over a year. The words felt as heavy and alien on his tongue as they always had and always would. They did not sound natural like his native tongue, or flow easily like Hindi, or taste sweet like Gondi. Bheem had marveled over how quickly he had picked up Gondi.
They had Bheem.
"Fuck off," the man wheezed, barely able to breathe, as tears, snot and blood stained his face in equal measures.
Ram was aware, all too aware, of the three pairs of eyes on him. He was aware, especially, of the pair belonging to the man he had asked the same question, regarding the same person, in a similar language of violence, more than a year ago, the only difference being that Ram used to wear the uniform this soldier wore now.
They had Bheem.
His foot ended up on the man's shattered kneecap, pressing on the mangled mess of flesh and blood in a grotesque squelch. Someone near him sucked in a sharp breath, and Ram could not tell who it was, and neither did he care to find out.
They had Bheem.
"I will not ask again," Ram said, leaning more of his weight on the leg that crushed the knee. His foot almost slipped on the blood spurting from the puncture and pooling beneath the limb, soaking the red soil of the Deccan in a deeper shade, scarlet almost, or vermilion perhaps, like the pinch of vermilion Bheem had smeared on his forehead all those months ago, healing him and making him his own without even thinking, as if it came to him as naturally as breathing.
They had Bheem.
The man would never walk again. Ram took some of the pressure off his knee, only to trample it again with vengeance. The anguished howl that escaped the prisoner did not sound human, not to his ears.
"Where is he? Where did they take the Gond Protector?"
The man blabbered something, a string of words spoken too quickly and incomprehensibly, but Ram could tell it was not a colourful insult this time. He lifted his foot, slick and red, red, red, and knelt beside the officer to catch his words better.
Their captive gave him a location, numbers and names.
Ram nodded, releasing a harsh breath he only now realized he was holding, and stood up. He unlocked the chamber of the revolver. A lone bullet remained.
"Anna?" someone beside him ventured.
Locking the chamber back in place, Ram raised the pistol again and shot the soldier in the head, putting him out of his misery.
The silence from his companions clung to him like a shroud surrounding a dead man on his final journey, heavy and all-encompassing.
Lacchu would not look him in the eyes for the rest of the journey, and that was fine. It was fine with Ram. Truly. He did not want to look at Lacchu either and discover what he held in his eyes. Disgust? Fear? Resentment? All three?
It was not important.
They had Bheem.
That was important.
They bid their time, waiting for the sun to settle behind the horizon and leave them in darkness. Ram considered himself a patient man. Hell, patience and grit had sustained him for the four brutal years in the British Imperial Police. But this wait, though. This wait of a few hours dragged on longer and tested his nerves harder than the wait of four years ever did.
They launched the assault fast and hard. For a station holding such a valuable prisoner, the English were ill-prepared to handle… well… just about anything. Ram would have almost felt sorry for them if his mind was not consumed by the images of a crown full of curls crusted with blood, brown eyes, as rich as the soil washed by Amma Godavari, hazed and devoid of life, a heart, as soft as the feathers shed by wandering peacocks in their courtyard, beating weaker and weaker with every passing moment.
Bheem was…. Bheem was fine. Sure, he was battered and bruised, had a split lip and a stiff gait, but he was otherwise whole and unharmed. Certainly better than how Ram had left him on the whipping post, bleeding and broken, clothes and flesh tattered by the nailed whip, too weak and unconscious to take any more abuse from Ram, crimson leaking freely from everywhere, his mouth, his chest, his back, his arms, his thighs, would he ever walk or even open his eyes again—
The first thing Bheem did upon being freed was capture Ram in a bone-crushing hug. The second thing Bheem did was hide his face in the crook of his neck. The third thing Bheem did was shed a flood of tears as Ram soothed his hand through his curls and whispered sweet nothings in his ear.
"Shhh," he murmured, peppering his beloved face with feather-light kisses, mindful of the bruises. "I am here now, bujji kanna. I promised I would never let anyone harm you ever, didn't I?"
Ram intended to keep that promise with his life.
"I am sorry," Bheem sniffled, holding him even tighter, and Ram could barely breathe, but it hardly mattered, as long as he could feel the wild beat of Bheem's heart against his own ribs.
"None of that," Ram scolded, the words empty of heat but rich with tenderness.
"I… I thought… I…"
"I know, my love, I know."
Not "I thought I would die here." Bheem did not fear death. Not "I thought no one would come for me." The Gonds, his brothers, Ram, they would always come for him and Bheem knew that. Not even "I thought I would never see you again." As much as they loved each other, their lives were sworn to the country and it could demand a sacrifice from any one of them at any time. Bheem knew it.
No, Ram knew what it was. It was, "I thought it would be like last time." It was, "I thought they would violate me, body and soul, all over again." It was, "I thought I might not be strong this time, I thought they might break me this time, I thought I would hardly recognise myself this time."
"It will never happen again," Ram promised, sealing it with a gentle kiss to his lips. "Not while there is still breath in my lungs and blood in my veins."
It was a long time before either of them felt like releasing the other from the cage of their arms.
Once the initial exhilaration and relief of the rescue had worn off, things shifted. Ram felt a vicious ache in his chest, a stiff catch in his breath, a torturous knot in his stomach whenever Bheem was in his vicinity.
They did not make love. Ram did not accompany him to baths or ask Bheem to come to his own.
He could not bear to see Bheem's naked skin, behold the scars on his body. Permanent brands of Ram's betrayal seared forever on his flesh. A constant reminder that he still bled into Bheem's nightmares on certain unpleasant nights.
Bheem noticed the distance. Of course he did.
"Rama," Bheem asked him one night. "What is it? What bothers you?"
"Nothing," Ram said, the word ringing hollow even to his own ears.
"Something plagues you." It was not a question.
"Why won't you tell me?" Bheem asked in the following silence. And then, in a small, anguished voice, "Is it something I did?"
It was Bheem's fragile voice, his sorrowful eyes, the quiver of his lips, more than the actual words, that finally cut through the fog in his mind.
"No!" Ram shouted, jolted out of his murky ruminations. "Bheem, my love, you haven't done anything wrong." He took Bheem's hands in his own and pressed fleeting kisses to his knuckles. "I am sorry I made you feel this way."
"Then what is it?" Bheem squeezed his hands. "Talk to me. Please?"
Ram looked him in the eyes, his rich, beautiful, eloquent eyes, and marvelled, not for the first time, over his undeserved fortune.
"I tortured a man."
And Bheem knew. Bheem knew Ram was not speaking of the countless men he had tortured behind the locked bars of a police station, both innocent of their accused crimes and otherwise. Bheem knew he was not talking about Lacchu, his friend, his companion, his brother, the young, seemingly naive man who would not break, who would not divulge a single word to Ram regarding the identity of the mysterious Gond Protector, even under immense torture. Bheem knew Ram was not even talking about him , the man who breathed life into his barren soul, the man most precious to his heart, the man he loved and yet could not spare from the sharp edges of his own rigid beliefs and misguided ambitions, the man he could not get to kneel on the whipping post, no matter how brutally he tried, how viciously he cracked the whip on his back, how many wounds he etched on his flesh, how much blood he drew from him, until there was a river of red at his feet.
"An English soldier?" Bheem prodded, as gentle as a mother calming a weeping child.
Ram let out a shaky breath. "Yes."
"Is… is that how you found out where they kept me?"
"Yes."
Bheem's gaze flitted towards the lone oil lamp in their room. Shadows danced on his face from the flickering flame. The space between his brows crumpled, whether from deep thought or distress, Ram could not tell. He did not want to tell. He was too afraid to tell. "What…. what did you do?"
A noose tightened around his throat, like the one Governor Scott Buxton had ordered him to tie around Bheem's neck when Ram had failed to bring him to his knees. Ram swallowed past it and managed to bite out the words regardless. " Peddayya and your brothers, they tried to intimidate him at first. It didn't work. The man was stubborn."
"Most of them are," Bheem agreed, his voice quiet, and Ram could tell that his mind was half here and half elsewhere. He knew where this 'elsewhere' was. On an afternoon where the sun shone brighter than it had any right to, when the wind fell silent in grim anticipation of what was to come, in a city thousands of miles away, on a wooden platform erected for the sole purpose of setting an example of the man who had dared to challenge the British and take back something that had never belonged to them.
Ram knew because he was there too. Holding the whip, holding his breath, holding his bile, holding his screams.
Not holding back on the lashes he inflicted on Bheem.
"We… I felt like we were running out of time," Ram went on. If he kept pushing ahead, maybe, just maybe, his mind would stop dwelling on a day that was long gone, on a scaffold whose wood was soaked with the blood of the best son of this soil. "So I took matters into my own hands."
"How?" Bheem still would not look at him.
"I shot him," he said, voice blunter than a bludgeon. "Put a bullet in his knee."
The hitch in Bheem's breath, the faint twitch of his leg, the left one, the one Ram could still feel under his foot on some restless nights, unbent and unyielding, no matter how much force Ram put— they did not escape Ram's attention.
"And?"
"I crushed the leg crippled by the bullet." He looked at Bheem, intent on catching every twitch and tremble on his face, even though Bheem refused to look at him still. "Until he gave me what I wanted."
"Did he then?" Bheem asked, his jaw stiff.
Ram nodded. "He did." Not everyone is as strong as you or your brother. "And then I killed him." Put him down like one put down a wounded animal.
"And then you came for me," Bheem finished, eyes returning to him at last, and Ram flinched at the softness they held, the kindness, the concern.
Misplaced, all of them.
Ram inhaled sharply, the air leaving fiery trails in his lungs. "Does it not bother you?" he asked, and why, oh why, was his voice so strained? "What I am still capable of?"
"It bothers you," Bheem said, the words barely more than a whisper. "Clearly."
"And you?" Ram pushed.
Bheem sighed, deep and heavy. "You are not that man anymore, Ram."
Ram knew evasion when he saw it.
"I tortured men then." I tortured you then. "I tortured a man now. Don't tell me this is different just because it helped us."
"That is not what I am saying."
"I am still that same man," Ram said, and a laugh barked out of him all of a sudden, as dry and brittle as sand fleeting between his fingers. "That same selfish, cruel man doing whatever it takes to get what he wants."
Bheem's eyes sharpened then, and Ram almost flinched again from the steel in them. "You were never selfish," he insisted. " Never ."
"But I was cruel," Ram shot back. "Still am."
"You are… aware of the price now. More so than ever." Bheem untangled his hand from Ram's and his stomach twisted at the loss until his open palm came to rest upon Ram's chest, right above the spot where his heart raced frantically. "It is why it weighs so heavily on your soul, doesn't it?"
And Ram did not know what to say to that, but he knew there was much left unsaid between them, lost in the silence of the night and the pain of reopened wounds.
Bheem gathered him in his arms and laid him down, head cradled against his chest, letting Ram listen to the steady beat of his heart.
Sleep eluded them both that night.
The water of the lake was calm at this time of noon, little sparkling ripples swayed gently by the wind. Ram closed his eyes, letting the birdsong and the scent of crushed fruits wash over him. Dark wisps of clouds gathered in the sky, like the incense ash before Kali Kankali's shrine, and lent a crispness to the air. They were blessed with rain in the morning and it seemed they would be blessed again soon.
The lake was one of the first places Bheem had shown him when Ram had first arrived in his village. It was an early summer afternoon, dry and cloudless, and their playful splashing and shoving each other into the water had somehow morphed into sweet, languid lovemaking in the shallow edges of the lake. Ram tucked that day away in the stash of his cherished memories with Bheem.
Speaking of…
He heard Bheem before he saw him, picking up the heavy squelch of his footsteps on the mud.
"Malli," Bheem began, flopping down on the wet grass beside him, "is displeased with you. She says you promised her you would be there with her friends this morning. And now they are missing a princess."
A laughter bubbled out of his chest, bright and airy. "Is it Malli who sent you here in search of me?"
"I cannot ignore a direct order from the High General of Devabaavi," Bheem replied with all the seriousness he could muster.
"Indeed," Ram chuckled. "That would be a great folly."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while. Bheem hummed a song, something wordless but melodious all the same, matching the sweet lilts of the birds around them. He truly was the pampered child of the forest, Ram mused with great fondness. If Mother Nature had a favourite child, he hoped it was Bheem. It would certainly be Bheem. Who did not have a soft spot for him?
It was like this for a long moment, peaceful and easy, before Bheem broke it.
"I talked to them about that day," he said. "Peddayya and Jangu. Lacchu."
Ram tensed. "Did you now?"
Bheem nodded. "I did. They were scared, you know-"
"As they should have been," Ram huffed.
"For you."
Two words. Two simple words. And they were enough to bring Ram's blistering thoughts to a halt, like a galloping horse hushed by a skilled rider.
"Me?"
"They were worried for you," Bheem repeated. "Lacchu… he told me…"
"What?"
Bheem worked his jaw, as if he were weighing his words, choosing them with the utmost care. But then he sighed, seemingly arriving at a decision. "He told me you were terrifying, that you did not look human."
Ram did not think so either.
"He said you were like a caged, skittish animal," Bheem recalled. "Ready to snarl and spit and lash out at anyone before you. Ready to torture that white man, torture Lacchu again, torture yourself even, if it meant you could reach me. So hurt and so lost. Like a puppet whose strings were snapped."
Bheem could have punched him in the gut and it still would not have made him as breathless as his words did. Mere words they were, but oh, did they hurt.
Because of the truth they held. The raw, naked, disturbing truth.
Yes, he would have done anything to get to Bheem. Anything.
"So yes, they were scared," Bheem finished. "For you. For what my disappearance was doing to you. For what torturing that man was doing to you."
His jaw stiffened. "It is not natural, right? This… this darkness within me." A short, stiff inhale, just to get the air back in his lungs. "It should not exist."
Ram's gaze remained stubbornly ahead, staring at the lake, but he could feel Bheem's eyes on himself, could imagine them even, soft and mournful.
"Sometimes," Bheem said, voice so soft, Ram could mistake his words for the whispers of the wind. "I think you forget that you were held captive too. That they abused you just as much, put a mark on you just as deep and unforgiving."
Sleepless nights and bloody days. Hunger and nausea and bile like he had never known before. Broken bones barely allowed to heal before they were broken all over again.
Scott Buxton, face flushed and furious, eyes simmering with vengeance and a thirst for blood. Ram's blood.
"You do know what we do with rabid dogs, the ones that turn on their masters, hmm?" the governor had drawled, lips curled into a sneer so twisted, it almost looked painful. "We put them down." Two of Buxton's men stepped forward, lathis in hand. "Put a bullet between their eyes." A nod from the governor and the men unleashed their lathis on his bound, defenseless body. "But we won't put you down. Not just yet." A strike to his back and his entire frame jolted. A strike to his stomach and it stole his breath. A strike to his ribs and his vision darkened. "We will keep you alive, but barely." A strike to his head, near the barely healed wound where Bheem had struck him with the stake. Bheem. He could have plunged the stake into his neck, but he didn't. Why didn't he? Ram would have welcomed it. "Make you bleed." Blood in his mouth, blood in his nose, blood trickling down his head, stinging his eyes. Red, thick and coppery. Such a laughably insignificant amount compared to what he had drawn from Bheem. "And when that beast comes here, lured by the scent of your blood," Buxton said, all but hissing the words into his face. "We will put him down first. You will wish you had tied that noose around his neck yourself."
Ram had laughed in his face then. He was certain, so certain, that Bheem would not come for him. Why would he, after everything Ram had done? After his heinous betrayal and the even more heinous pain he had inflicted on him?
The bigger surprise was not the punch that had followed his laughter but the familiar beat reverberating through the walls of his underground cell, many, many nights later. Bheem had come. For him. Against all expectations, against all good sense, Bheem had come for him.
"But then," Bheem's voice cut into his ruminations, dragging him back from that cramped cell clogged with his own blood and excrement. "You think it was all deserved, don't you? Penance for your sins?"
The silence hung in the air like an empty noose, but it was answer enough for Bheem.
"Did the man you tortured deserve it?"
Ram thought about it. Allowed himself to imagine that man, all arrogant eyes and huffy words, stomping through the countryside in his heavy, leather boots, viciously stifling out the barest whiff of a rebellion, likely assured in his belief that a brown life was not worth wasting a bullet over.
"No, he did not." He simply had the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
"When will you give yourself the same grace, my love?" Bheem asked, hand settling on Ram's own on the soft, damp grass between them.
The sky darkened as the ashen clouds shrouded the sun, and the wind picked up momentum, turning the gentle ripples of the lake into even tides. Distantly, a peacock wailed, longing for his mate.
"There were other ways," Ram spoke into the silence. "You would have found one."
Bheem finding Jenny. Bheem deciding to befriend Jenny. Bheem winning over Jenny without even trying, without even understanding her language, by simply being himself, kind and sweet and helpful, where Ram had only relied on lies and manipulation and brute force.
Bheem getting the blueprints of the jail from Jenny.
Bheem, kind, gentle and patient. Two of those things that Ram wasn't when he still wore the colour of their colonizers. Perhaps, he still wasn't.
"Sometimes, I wonder," Bheem began again, and Ram stole a glance at his husband to find him staring at the lake, the dark waves reflected in his eyes. "What if I hadn't found Jenny? What if I didn't get the blueprints?"
"You would have found another way," Ram insisted, squeezing Bheem's hand in gentle reassurance.
Bheem's gaze turned sharply to him. "And if I hadn't?" he challenged. "Seetha told me they were going to hang you in two days. The fear I felt then." Bheem rubbed his chest, as if he could still feel the vestiges of that ache. "It was… so… so… raw. Intense. Almost like a physical thing. Like someone had punched me in the chest— no, worse! Like someone had driven a blade into my gut. I couldn't breathe, I could barely think. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before, Ram. Not even when the Buxtons stole away Malli." His breath quivered and Ram could only squeeze his hand tighter in response.
"What if I hadn't found Jenny?" Bheem went on, anguish bleeding from his words. "What if she didn't give me the blueprints of the jail? What if I had run out of time? Would I have grabbed just about any soldier from the jail, stolen him away?"
Ram's breath hitched in his throat.
Bheem… what was he…
His next words did not leave anything to Ram's imagination.
"Would I have learned how to torture a man? Right there?" Bheem wondered, his voice rolling like thunder through Ram. "I don't know. Perhaps I would. Would that have made it right? Justified? No. Never ." His entire frame shuddered, and Ram could not help it. He let go of Bheem's hand and threw his arms around him.
"Bheem!" Ram gasped, rubbing the broad space between his trembling shoulder blades, soothing a hand through his curls.
"I should know what it is like," Bheem whispered against his neck, the words warm and wet and rumbling through Ram's entire being. Ram simply held him tighter, willing their racing heartbeats to calm down. "To have your body violated, to be helpless against the excruciating pain, to be able to do nothing but take what is meted out to you until your very soul feels hollow. The utter wrongness of it all."
"Bheem," Ram uttered again, as if saying his name tenderly would be enough to fix everything, to swim through the murky waters of their past, to undo all the mistakes.
Bheem's arms, his strong, steady arms, wrapped around Ram's waist and held on fast. "But all I know is that I was desperate enough to do anything, anything for you, Ram. Even if it meant carrying a man's blood on my soul for the rest of my life."
The sky rumbled in the distance, a sign, a warning. Ram's eyes felt as damp as the air around them. In his arms, Bheem was safe; there was not a force in the world that could harm him. If Ram could have anchored themselves to this moment, he would. He never wanted to let Bheem go. He had tried it once and it had ended up being the deepest regret of his life, wounding them both.
"Does it scare you?" His words were almost swallowed by the thick, painful lump in his throat. "This darkness?"
"It does," Bheem answered, voice as rough as the winds disturbing the forest around them. "More than I can possibly express." He inhaled sharply, rough, whiskered cheek nuzzling against Ram's neck and Ram welcomed the sensation like a fevered man welcomed the soothing medication trickling down his throat.
"But if I had to damn my soul to save you, I would do it. I would cross that line. I would embrace this darkness. A thousand times over and then another thousand times again." There was no hesitation, no misgivings in his voice, only steel and thunder. "I would anger my Gods and yours as well, condemn myself to them, ask Baradeo to throw my spirit into the pool of biting worms for all of eternity. I would do it all for you, Ram. And I would do it with a smile on my face."
Cold, biting droplets splashed on his back. Once upon a time, Ram had been indifferent to the rain and all the other wonders of nature. But that was a time before Bheem had rushed into his life. A dark, bleak time, devoid of warm eyes and an even warming laugh, with only pain and suffering and an impossible duty.
"What if?" Ram swallowed, struggling to get the words out, past the shards of glass lodged in his throat. "What if I lose sight of myself in my quest?" His voice dropped. "Like last time?"
"You won't," Bheem said, voice as certain as the sun rising in the sky.
"How are you so certain?"
Bheem lifted his head then and kissed him on the lips, slow, sweet and promising. "Because you are no longer alone, my love," he answered and Ram could weep at the gentleness in his voice. "I am here. I will be your anchor. I won't let you stray. Not now. Not ever. I am the Shepherd, remember? I am very good at keeping my lambs in line." The arms on his waist tightened, pulling Ram impossibly closer, as if Bheem wished to mould their bodies together. "I will protect you as I have protected my flock."
And what could Ram say to that? Other than how were the gods generous enough to bless me with you in my life, and you are the greatest treasure of my heart, and I was mad to ever leave you, and you are my god, and I love you. Bheem had heard every single one of those declarations a million times before.
Ram repeated them again, regardless, between soft kisses to his lips. The rain and thunder bore witness to it.