Work Text:
He sits in the shadows and watches Bhima, fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the tabla. Sits and watches and drowns out the noise of flesh meeting flesh in violent glee, every slap of skin on skin echoed by a slap of his skin on thin leather. He sits there and cannot move, for this man who is nothing to Bhima could easily—so easily—overpower him. For Arjuna is disarmed, disfigured, unmanned, impotent, and can only sit and watch his brother avenge their wife—his wife, his beloved, his P ānchāli—and beat his hands raw and bloody in frustration.