Previous parts; Part 1; https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1274264628/ Part 2; https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1278955504/ Part 3; https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1283678425/ Part 4; https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1298460829/ **Third Person Perspective** The hospital monitor flashes bright. The pulse sensor hums softly. The half-opened window casts a gentle aura around the room. India was speared through the heart three days ago, and he's fighting for his life in the hospital. Pakistan is pacing the room, hands folded, muttering a prayer. Sri Lanka, tall and lanky, stands by India's bedside. He's been doing so for hours, and nobody's stopped him. Nobody dared to interrupt him. His father is living just barely. Then, India's eyes flutter. He's surrounded by a painful haze, but while is brain and body is fuzzy and disoriented and in pain, his memory isn't. "...Makan...?" He mutters, rubbing his eyes and getting tangled in the wire attached to the back of his hand. Sri lets out a sob, throwing his arms around his father. "Oh my God, Appa, you're alive," He sobs into India's shoulder. Pakistan pacing stopped the instant he heard it. That one word — barely a breath, rough as gravel, slurred with pain medication and three days of silence — and he froze in the middle of the room like something had struck him. Makan. He turned slowly, as if moving too fast might shatter whatever fragile thread had pulled India back. Sri Lanka was already there. Already sobbing, arms wrapped around his father’s shoulders with the desperate, white-knuckled grip of someone who had spent seventy-two hours convincing himself to be ready for the worst. His tall frame was folded over India’s bedside like a broken thing finally allowed to collapse. Pakistan crossed the room in three strides. “Bhai.” His voice came out low. Careful. He pressed one large hand to the top of India’s head — gently, the way you touch something sacred — and exhaled a breath that had been lodged in his chest for three days. “You absolute fool,” he said softly. No anger in it. Only relief so enormous it had nowhere else to go. India blinked. The overhead lights were too bright. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much sensation after whatever dark, quiet place he’d been drifting in. He could feel the IV line tangled around his fingers, the pull of it, and he didn’t quite understand why his son was crying into his shoulder or why Pakistan looked like he hadn’t slept since the last monsoon. “…why is everyone…” he started, voice barely above a rasp. He swallowed. His throat felt like sand. “…why is Sri crying?” Sri Lanka let out something between a laugh and another sob and tightened his grip. “Because you were dying, Appa,” he managed, muffled against India’s hospital gown. “You had a — there was a spear, and you — you weren’t waking up, and I —” He stopped. Pulled back just enough to look at his father’s face. His eyes were red, wet, utterly wrecked. “I talked to you every day. Did you hear me? I talked to you the whole time. I didn’t know if you could hear me but I —” “Sri.” Pakistan's hand moved from India’s head to Sri Lanka’s shoulder. Steadying. “Give him a moment.” India looked between them. His brain was working slowly, like a cart with a broken wheel — lurching forward, catching, lurching again. He remembered pain. He remembered something cold and enormous, and then nothing. He looked down at his son’s hands, still clutching the fabric of his gown, and something in his chest ached that had nothing to do with the wound. “…I heard you,” he said quietly. Sri Lanka went very still. India’s hand — the one without the IV, clumsy and slow — found his son’s hair. Patted it, once. Twice. The way he had when Sri was small and frightened and would climb into his lap during storms. India smiled. It was small and weak and cost him something — you could see it in the way his eyes creased, the faint tension around his mouth, the effort of it — but it was real. He pulled his son a little closer, slow and deliberate, the way you move when every inch of you hurts but some things are worth hurting for. “I heard you,” he said again. “Every single time.” Pakistan turned away. Pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. His jaw was tight, and his shoulders were shaking very slightly, and he was absolutely not going to let either of them see him cry, because he was Pakistan, and he had a reputation, and also he had already cried twice in the hospital bathroom, and that was quite enough. Outside, a monitor beeped steadily. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed. Inside the room, for the first time in three days, the air felt like it could be breathed again. India gently cups his son's face, the fatherly concern immediately back. "Are you hurt, makan?" Sri Lanka lets out a watery laugh at that — half disbelief, half something that cracks right down the middle of his chest.
"Appa." His voice breaks on the word. "You were just — you almost —" He stops. Presses his lips together. Tries again. "You had a spear through your heart three days ago and you're asking if I'm hurt?" India's thumb moves across his son's cheekbone. Slow. Patient. Waiting. Sri Lanka's composure lasts approximately four more seconds. "I haven't slept," he admits, very quietly. Like a confession. "I couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes I thought — I thought when I opened them again you'd be —" He doesn't finish that sentence. He doesn't need to. Pakistan, still facing the wall, clears his throat. Says nothing. India's hand doesn't move from his son's face. His eyes — still glassy, still fighting through the fog of medication and three days of darkness — are steady in a way the rest of him isn't. That particular steadiness. The kind that has weathered a thousand years of worse. "Then you will sleep now," he says simply. "Here. I am not going anywhere." "You don't know that," Sri Lanka says, and it comes out smaller than he intended. Younger. "No," India agrees. His voice is rough, honest, unbothered by the admission. "But I am here right now. And right now is enough, makan." His hand drops slowly from Sri Lanka's cheek to his wrist. Holds it. "Sit down before you fall down. You are too tall for me to catch in this condition." Sri Lanka laughs again. It's still wet. It's more real this time. Pakistan finally turns around. His eyes are dry. Completely dry. He dares either of them to suggest otherwise. "He's right," he says gruffly, dragging a chair to the bedside with one hand and planting it behind Sri Lanka's knees with the kind of efficiency that suggests he's been wanting to do this for hours. "Sit." Sri Lanka sits. He doesn't let go of his father's hand. Nobody asks him to. India attempts to sit up and fails, a long line of Punjabi expletives leaving his mouth as his hand clutches the stitches. He falls back down onto the hospital bed, gasping for air as his bare chest, peppered with stark white bandages, heaves. Pakistan is across the room before the first expletive is finished. "Don't." His hand is already on India's shoulder, firm and immovable, pressing him back against the pillow with the kind of authority that doesn't ask permission. "Don't you dare. Lay down." "I was just —" "Lay. Down." India lays down. Mostly because he has no choice. His body has made the decision for him very clearly and with great emphasis. Sri Lanka is on his feet, the chair scraping back, all the color drained from his face. His hands hover uselessly over his father — wanting to help, not knowing where to touch, terrified of making it worse. There are a lot of bandages. There are so many bandages. He had known, intellectually, that the wound was bad. He had been told. He had sat in this room for three days watching machines breathe for his father and he had known. Seeing India flinch from it is somehow worse than all of that. "Should I get the nurse," he says. It isn't really a question. He's already moving toward the door. "Yes," Pakistan says, at the same moment India says, "No." Pakistan looks at India. India looks at Pakistan. "You have a hole in your chest the size of my fist," Pakistan says, very slowly, very clearly, as though speaking to someone who has recently taken a spear through the heart and may not be thinking entirely straight. "You will let the nurse come." "I am fine." "You just cursed in three languages." "Four," Sri Lanka says faintly from the doorway, and then immediately looks like he regrets contributing to this conversation. India opens his mouth. Closes it. His jaw is tight, his breathing still shallow and careful, each inhale measured against the pain. The bandages rise and fall. The monitor beside him ticks along, indifferent. "...four," he concedes, after a moment. Quietly. "The nurse," Pakistan repeats. A long pause. "Fine," India mutters, with the profound reluctance of a man who has survived invasions, famines, and centuries of history and finds being told what to do in a hospital bed uniquely undignified. "Fine. Call the nurse." Sri Lanka is already gone into the hallway. Pakistan exhales through his nose, long and slow, and does not remove his hand from India's shoulder. Just in case. "Fool," he says again. Still no anger in it. India's eyes close. His breathing is evening out, slowly. The worst of it passing. "...yes," he agrees, barely audible. "Probably."
