Awakening of India - 1947

The news of the releases spread through Delhi's political circles like ripples on still water.

While the some in public saw it as an act of redemption and some saw it as a indication that the war is over and that India has emerged victorious, it wasn't the same in the political circle.

In drawing rooms and coffee houses of seasoned politicians, in the corridors of Parliament and the offices of newspapers, the whispers began. What did it mean? Why now? What was Mehra planning?

Nehru himself received the news in his study, surrounded by books he'd read a dozen times during his confinement, philosophical treatises on non-violence while his nation burned, poetry about peace while Pakistani shells fell on Indian soil.

His daughter Indira sat across from him, her young face twisted with the familiar mixture of worry and barely concealed contempt.

"Papa, I don't trust this," she said, setting down the official notification with obvious disgust. "After months of keeping you prisoner, he just...releases everyone? It doesn't make sense."

Nehru rubbed his tired eyes, still clinging to his naive worldview even as reality crumbled around him. The isolation had aged him visibly, but more than that, it had revealed the hollow core of his idealism.

"Perhaps he believes he's won so completely that we no longer matter."

"Because we don't," Indira snapped, her voice cutting through his self-pity.

"While you sat here reading Tolstoy and wringing your hands about the morality of war, he actually saved the country. The people see that, Papa. They see who acted and who simply... talked."

Maulana Azad arrived that evening, his own release having come with the same unexpected swiftness.

The old scholar looked not just frail but pathetic, his usually immaculate beard unkempt, his eyes holding the hollow look of a man who'd watched his life's work crumble and finally understood his own irrelevance.

"Jawaharlal," he said simply, embracing his old friend. "What have we become?"

They sat in Nehru's garden as the sun set over a Delhi they barely recognized.

The city thrummed with martial energy, troops on every corner, victory rallies every evening, newspapers full of maps showing Pakistan's shrinking borders. And everywhere, the sound of celebration, of a people who had finally found leaders willing to fight for them.

"The people support him," Nehru said quietly, his voice bitter with the taste of his own failure. "I've seen the reports. Whatever moral authority we once had... it's gone."

"Gone because we never understood what leadership meant," Azad replied, his voice carrying the weight of belated recognition.

"We thought speeches about brotherhood would stop bullets. We thought moral superiority would save lives. We were fools, Jawaharlal. Dangerous fools who nearly let our country die for the sake of our principles."

"Will history judge us for that?"

"History will record that when India needed warriors, we offered philosophers. When the nation needed steel, we provided silk. Mehra may be ruthless, but he's what India needed. We... we were what India could afford when it was safe to be weak."

They sat in silence, two relics of a gentler time, finally understanding that their moment had passed. The moral high ground they'd occupied for so long was revealed as nothing more than a comfortable delusion, a luxury that real leaders, leaders like Arjun Mehra, couldn't afford.

They didn't notice the shadows moving beyond the garden wall, the careful watchers who noted every visitor, every conversation.

But perhaps it no longer mattered. The trap was already closing around them, though they couldn't yet see the shape of it, or perhaps they simply lacked the ruthless clarity to recognize it.

In the depths of the Red Fort, beneath the same stones where Mughal emperors had once dispensed justice, a different kind of court was in session. The dungeons that had held freedom fighters under British rule now housed a different class of prisoner.

'Major General Akbar Khan' hung in his chains like a scarecrow, his once-proud uniform now little more than rags. Months of Colonel Sharma's "enhanced interrogation" had broken him in ways that would never heal. His hands shook constantly now, his left eye was sealed shut by scar tissue, and his voice had been reduced to a rasp from too much screaming.

But his remaining eye... that eye still burned with a hatred so pure it was almost luminous.

Colonel Sharma studied his prize with clinical detachment, the way a scientist might observe a particularly interesting specimen.

"He's given us everything, Prime Minister," he reported during one of their regular sessions. "Troop movements, safe houses, contact networks, code words, dead drops. Pakistan's entire intelligence apparatus west of the Indus is in tatters."

Arjun stood in the doorway, refusing to enter the cell proper. The stench was overwhelming.

"No need to hurry, now he becomes useful in a different way", he said, with his voice steady.

The plan was elegant in its cruelty, a masterpiece of psychological manipulation. Khan would "overhear" whispered conversations between guards, carefully scripted theater about his impending execution by slow poison, a method chosen specifically to maximize terror. Fear and desperation would do the rest.

Then would come the angel of mercy: a young officer, apparently disgusted by Mehra's "tyranny," offering escape. Captain Ravi Shankar was one of Sharma's best operatives, able to project sincerity with the skill of a trained actor.

He would provide Khan with a weapon for "protection," civilian clothes, and most crucially, information about Nehru's location and daily routine.

The narrative fed to Khan would paint Nehru as a secret opponent of the war, a potential savior for a desperate man who might offer asylum and protection. If that failed to motivate him, his hatred for Indian leadership would serve just as well, a final act of vengeance against the symbols of his torment.

"The poison we'll actually use is fast-acting but delayed," Arjun said, his voice as casual as if discussing the weather.

"A derivative of ricin, modified by our decorated chemist from IISc. Twelve to twenty-four hours of lucidity after administration, then rapid organ failure. Enough time to act, not enough to cause complications or be traced back to us."

Of course, he succeeded—thanks to Arjun's 'accidental' suggestion, which unexpectedly set the chemist's mind in motion.

Arjun stared at the broken man in chains, remembering the proud officer who'd been captured all those months ago. Now he was a weapon, pointed at the heart of Indian democracy by the very man who claimed to defend it.

"What do you think of collateral damage, Colonel?" Arjun asked quietly, the words tasting like ash.

"Almost certain. Azad visits Nehru regularly, they're old friends, after all. Nehru's daughter might be present. Servants, security personnel. It's impossible to predict exactly who will be in the house when Khan arrives.", Sharma said.

The weight of it settled on Arjun's shoulders, but not with guilt, with the cold satisfaction of necessity.

In his original timeline, these men had been celebrated as giants, yes, but giants with feet of clay. Nehru had led India into mediocrity and weakness, transforming a potential superpower into a perpetual victim of its own moral posturing.

Azad had been the conscience of the Congress, true, but conscience without strength was just another word for surrender.

Now they were what they'd always been, obstacles to India's greatness. Impediments to the future he was building from blood, iron, and the will to use both.

"The narrative must be perfect," he said finally, his voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction.

"A Pakistani agent, driven mad by captivity and hatred, escapes and strikes at India's most prominent peace advocates. The final proof that our enemies understand no language but violence, that the very idealism these men represented was a luxury we could never afford."

Sharma nodded, making notes in his leather-bound journal. "The irony will not be lost on the public. The men who insisted Pakistan could be reasoned with, killed by a Pakistani agent who knew no reason."

"Exactly. Their deaths will serve India better than their lives ever did, as martyrs to their own naive worldview, as proof that the path of strength was the only path that could have saved us."

"Ensure that after the incident, security is visibly increased around all war supporters. Extra guards for me, for you, for Patel, for the Defense Minister. We must appear to be reacting to an unforeseen tragedy, not orchestrating it."

"What about the investigation afterward?"

Arjun's smile was devoid of warmth.

"'Khan' will be found dead at the scene, the poison having done its work. A desperate terrorist's final mission, ended by his own hand when cornered. The weapon will be untraceable, one of thousands floating around Delhi's black market. Case closed."

The trap was set, and all that remains is to see it playing out over the following days.

Captain Shankar played his role to perfection, appearing at Khan's cell in the small hours of the night, when hope was at its lowest ebb.

The "sympathetic" officer spoke in whispers of his disgust with Mehra's methods, his growing doubts about the war, his desire to do something, anything, to retain his humanity.

"They're going to kill you tomorrow," he hissed through the bars, glancing nervously over his shoulder. "A new poison, something that takes days. You'll die in agony, alone in this hole, forgotten by history."

Khan's response was a rattling cough that might have been laughter. "Better...than living...as their slave."

"Maybe. But what if there was another way? What if you could do something that mattered before you died?"

The seed was planted carefully, watered with fragments of truth and cultivated with the skill of a master gardener.

Nehru was being released from house arrest. He was vulnerable, accessible. He represented everything Khan had been fighting against, or alternatively, he might be the one man in India with the moral authority to offer genuine asylum to a Pakistani officer seeking to expose war crimes.

The beauty of the plan was its ambiguity, Khan's fevered mind could interpret it either way, as salvation or as revenge. The result would be the same.

On a cold January morning, as Indian artillery pounded the walls of Lahore and Karachi's harbor burned with the light of a dozen sunken ships, a broken Pakistani spy began his final, unwitting mission.

Khan moved through the shadows of Delhi like a ghost, his mind clouded by desperation and the slow burn of poison already beginning its work in his veins.

In his fevered thoughts, it no longer mattered which side Nehru represented, be it the salvation or vengeance. The weapon felt heavy in his trembling hands, a Luger pistol with its serial numbers filed away, untraceable and perfect for its purpose.

Behind him, unseen but always present, Sharma's watchers tracked his every step. They moved like shadows through Delhi's narrow lanes, across the wide boulevards of Delhi, past the monuments of empire both British and Mughal.

The serpent, bred in the dungeons of the Red Fort, slithered toward its predetermined target while its master waited in his office, preparing speeches of mourning and rage.

By evening, Khan had reached the neighborhood where Nehru lived.

Khan crouched in the shadows across the street, watching the house from afar and the gleaming lights in the windows, waiting for his moment.

In his pocket, the vial of "antidote" that Shankar had given him, which was just another dose of delayed poison which was administered to him before his 'escape'. But just the hope of it being an antidote, seemed to pulse with the rhythm of his failing heart.

He wasn't able to see the irony that he was already dead, had been from the moment he'd accepted that first sip of water in his cell. But death, he'd learned, could be a weapon too.

The Nehru residence was modest for a former Deputy Prime Minister, surrounded by a small garden where the old man liked to walk in the evenings. But tonight was different. Security was heavier than usual, not because anyone suspected an attack, but because of the unusual gathering taking place inside.

Nehru, in his first act as a "free" man, had done exactly what Arjun had anticipated. Faced with reports of Muslim League leaders fleeing the country in terror, he had called for an emergency meeting.

The old idealist couldn't resist one final attempt to salvage his vision of Hindu-Muslim unity, even as that dream lay in ashes around him.

The gathering was a who's who of India's fading moderate voices. Azad had arrived first, of course, followed by the remaining Muslim League leaders who hadn't already fled to the Middle East, men like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the "Frontier Gandhi," and several others who'd foolishly believed Mehra's rhetoric about protecting all Indians.

Most significantly, Gandhi himself had come, his frail form supported by his walking stick, his eyes still burning with the fervor of a man who believed truth and non-violence could triumph over tanks and artillery.

The Mahatma's presence had been kept secret, even Arjun's extensive intelligence network had missed this development.

Khan crouched in the shadows across the street, watching the unusual activity around the house and quietly bidding his time.

Inside the house, the meeting had devolved into what could only be described as a wake for their shared ideals. Gandhi sat in the center, his usual serenity cracked by the weight of events he could no longer deny or deflect.

"We failed them," he said simply, his voice barely above a whisper. "All of them. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, we failed to show them another way."

"Did we?" Nehru asked, his voice hollow. "Or were we simply naive enough to believe that moral authority meant anything when faced with existential threat?"

The Muslim League leaders sat in stunned silence. These were men who had chosen to stay in India, believing in the promise of secular democracy.

Now they watched their co-religionists in Pakistan being slaughtered while their own community in India cowered in fear of being branded traitors.

"Mehra has won," one of them said finally. "Completely and absolutely. The people see strength, and they worship it. What do we offer them? Guilt? Regret? Philosophy?"

Azad shifted uncomfortably. "We offer them their souls. Their conscience. Their, "

"Their graves," another voice interrupted bitterly. "That's all conscience buys in this world, Maulana sahib. A noble epitaph."

Outside, Khan moved through the garden with the careful precision of his military training, even as his body betrayed him with tremors and cold sweats. The poison was working faster than Sharma had predicted, or perhaps desperation was accelerating its effects.

In minutes, he would be face to face with the symbols of everything this war represented, the naive idealists who had nearly let India die, or the secret peace-makers who might yet save what remained of his own country.

The serpent slithered through the darkness toward its moment of truth, carrying with it the power to eliminate not just India's most prominent peace advocates, but the last living symbol of the independence movement itself.

In his office miles away, Arjun Mehra sat at his desk, unaware of Gandhi's presence but certain of the outcome. By morning, the voices of moderation would be silenced forever, and the path to Akhand Bharat would be clear of all obstacles.

History, he reflected, was written by the victorious. And victory, he had learned, required sacrifices that lesser men could never stomach.

[A/N: Congrats! Melkor_Namshiel was the first one who guessed of the assassination of Nehru].