Chapter 5
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Last Chapter.
"Their gazes gel for a second longer than necessary before the hazel is ruthlessly wrenched away.
"See you around", she says and walks past him.
She is a few footsteps away before she exhales out the air that was burning her chest.
"You're still a coward", his voice hits her back like a physical force.
She turns around slowly. Her eyes are green and smoky with pain and suppressed anger. Wind whips her long chestnut hair wildly as she glares at him.
"You don't want to come with me", he says slowly leaning against his motorbike, "because you're afraid...you're terrified...of falling in love with me again".
"Falling in love?, Khushi thinks, her mind going back in time.
She hadn't really wanted to say yes to him that night, just as she hadn't wanted to do a million other things in the days that had followed. What had made her say yes to him that night? What had made her say yes to that little repressed part that she knew had always resided deep inside of her.
"Her human part", her mother used to call it with a voice that suggested it was something she needed to be ashamed of, something she needed to keep unexpressed and hidden. And what reason did she have to not believe when she'd witnessed first hand, as a child, the havoc those tiny spiral DNAs she carried in her cells, in her mud colored blood, mixture of green and red, were capable of wreaking?
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Yet, her mind dwells on the few months she'd known true happiness, the time she was allowed, she had allowed herself to be comfortable with both her sides..
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A particularly strong gust of wind snaps her out of her reverie. It brings her back to her reality. She straightens her back and walks up to him. Stopping at an arm's length, her brow arching predictably. He remembers it clear as rain even across the fog of elapsed time.
"The concept of love is a myth. It is not backed by logic so I don't believe in it".
Her confident words throw her off for a moment. It fills his heart with a strange ache, then bitterness, then fire. He feels fiercely protective of those bubbles of memories that had kept him company in the years following their breakup.
Memories of a love that lasted less than a smile's journey from eyes to lips.
Then, memories of some of her unguarded moments come to him. What he saw in her eyes. What he felt in her touches. What he felt with his heart. His confidence surges. It soars up way above hers.
"Really?, his eyes challenge her, "Then by what name do you remember those six months we were together?
"Physical attraction. Companionship. Fun. Friendship. Empathy, common interests", she crosses her arms.
"Quite a list there", He exhales in impatience. "Just like...just like lemonade is not different from the sum of lemons, water, salt and sugar, love, which is just a word at the end of the day, is the sum total of every freaking thing on your list and more. So Capt. Gupta, you might as well use the single word- love- to save time. It's perfectly logical". He ends his speech with one of his slow grins. It causes an old remembered flutter in her heart. It is unsettling.
"Disagree", she stands her ground. Her gaze is unwavering. "I refuse to use the word love because the way it's commonly used by humans in this context it carries an implication of sum greater than parts. It implies a human's unhealthy attachment to this word and concept - a thirst for self delusion where pent- up fantasies are projected onto a person deemed closest to one's imaginings while all forced emotions are cooked inside one's own head".
"Oh for God's sake", He throws his hands up in frustration, "Lighten up, woman. Where is that damned human side to your mind when I need it?
Her eyes flicker ever so slightly. Her lips quiver. She bites her lip but can't stop it from curving into a smile. Just like before he succeeds in piercing through her guards.
"Aha", Arnav takes a long stride and presses a finger on her smiling-but-trying-not-to lips, "Caught it".
Startled by his action, she looks up at him, her heart on overdrive. Her eyes are wide and their vulnerability not fleeting quick enough to be missed by Arnav's eyes.
He holds her gaze and says intently, "And...since you are so averse to the word love. Fine. Let's call it something else. What's in a name anyway?.", he pauses, pretending to think hard, "How about calling it lemonade?
Khushi purses her lips at looks up at him before bursting out laughing. Then she pauses and thinks, her eyes fairway and wistful. She plays along with him. "All the sugar was from your side and sour from me", she says with a small smile.
He smiles back at her, his eyes crinkling amusedly, "Don't know if I agree with that but all that water and salt was definitely from my drunken tears that day".
A spasm of pain runs across her features. For him to be so self depreciating about the pain she caused him, the pain she never allows her mind to dwell upon, is the last thing she expects of him. It wrenches her heart. It also makes her realize how little time and distance has changed the way her heart responds to him.
"I'm sorry, Arnav", she hears herself speak, "I'm sorry for the hurt I caused you. But, it was necessary".
"Necessary?, he says skeptically, crossing his arms.
"Yes", she says, her neck muscles convulsing as she speaks in between pauses, "It was not meant to be...It was bound to happen one day and by making it sooner I tried to lessen the hurt. I knew myself and that's why I didn't make any promises right at the very outset".
"I'm trying to understand", he says slowly, "But quite frankly, you're not making much sense to me".
She is quiet for a long line before an unknown force makes words erupt like a volcano.
"The person you loved...the person you bonded with all those years is not who who I really am. That person is only a very small part of who I am. It's a part I try to keep repressed all the time. It's a part I don't feel very proud of and I can't help it".
Her tone is anguished. It reflects her conflicted heart. It gives away the absolute honesty behind her words.
He is able to delve inside her mind, know her reasons, go to the root of her reasons, without being told.
"Your father", he says softly. It's not a question. It's an affirmation of what he saw inside her mind.
She neither confirms nor denies it. Her still eyes, her melancholic silence, say it all.
"Not only that", she says, "I think, It's just how I naturally am. My human side is not expressed often or voluntarily. For some reason, only you seem to bring it out but it's not who I really am or wholly am or who I want to be".
He gazes into her eyes, observing as they glimmer with a thin sheen of moisture in early morning sunlight.
"I know that already", he says with a throb in his voice, "I've known that all along. And you're wrong, I did not love, I did not bond with just a part of you; I loved all of you...all parts of you...just the way you were and are".
Their eyes fuse together across a universe of lost chances, regrets and melody of aching hearts.
"You would have never been happy", she says to him and more to herself, trying to convince herself she'd made the right choice in breaking away when she did, "Like my parents, who went against everyone's advise to bond for life. After a few initial years, their incompatibility, the ever widening gulf that lay between them...broke them apart...broke them individually and it was my father, with all his human weaknesses, who suffered the most...who...
"All humans are different", he interrupts her with a shrug, "We can't predict the future. We can't live our lives based on 'what ifs'. We can't find happiness without taking risks".
She is quiet for a while, her eyes flickering turbulently. "After we broke up, I went home to accept my childhood betrothal with NK. It was for the best...
"And are you happy?, he asks gently.
"I guess". Her smile wavers as it cuts through a haze in her eyes. "I'm not unhappy and my life has the peace and stability I always aimed for. Isn't that better than the state of happiness, which is ephemeral anyway?", she asks him and herself..
They both know if they hadn't met each other and shared what they did, the answer would be yes.
"How about you?, she asks, her green eyes suffused with concern.
"I'm not unhappy either", he smiles with a shrug, "My work is my passion and my life. It leaves me with little time for anything else. And I hope you realize what I said earlier on was a joke. A bad joke".
She knows he's lying. They both know he's lying.
They break their eye lock and stare at the construction robots working silently, at the rapidly changing outlines of an emerging city. The first city on a reawakened Earth.
After a while, Arnav clears his throat and meets her eyes again. There is acceptance in his eyes. He looks like a man whose desire to acquire is now superseded by an urge to give...to not cause his beloved any distress.
"But my offer to show you my city still stands", he says with half a smile.
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It is like reliving those days again. The powerful hum of the HM as it zips through dewy air. The wind in their hair as it whips past their ears. The awareness roiling around them like honeyed syrup. Perhaps it was a mistake to agree, Khushi thinks through wafts of his scent, jolts of his proximity and warmth of her own heart.
Arnav shows her around the town in progress. His face is impassioned as he talks about not only building a city but also a state, a government, a society, a world, and a future. He talks about how the UFP Reconstruction Task Force, under his leadership, incorporates lessons learnt from the Apocalypse and their sojourn in Vulcan into their blueprints, plans, designs and efforts every step of the way. He talks about evolution psychology, collective human consciousness and it's current embodiment of lessons learnt from their destruction.
"Oh I know it won't be Utopia", he says, raking his fingers through windblown hair, "Far from it. We are hopeful not delusional. But how can you desist from hoping when you're building from ashes, when hoping is the only choice you have?
A shiver runs down her spine as they pause in front of a brand new Parliament building, a towering, virtually indestructible structure in white and gray. She stares bemusedly as he talks about the absolute need to respect their home this time around, about building a sustainable relationship with it and what's left of it's resources, about factoring in common human flaws, weaknesses, patterns of behavior while building this new world.
"We can't afford not to", he says, his eyes flaring with emotions, his voice seeped with intensity, "I'm not even sure if we deserve this second chance our Creator has given us".
The deep timbre of his voice gives her goosebumps. She feels like a moon, glowing quietly in his passionate light. She has never felt this alive before. She is seized by a desire to keep orbiting him till the end of time. Her eyes well up. She pretends something got into her left eye and rubs it with the back of her wrist.
He steps forward to check before she can stop him.
"It feels better now", she says quickly.
Standing close to her, he surveys her face. His eyes are intent with yearning and reined emotions. Her eyes are unguarded and even as he studies their depths, his irises flicker with understanding and pain.
"Shall we go back now?", she takes a deep breath and regains her composure. She smiles at him to convey she is alright now.
His eyes carry a tinge of sadness while his lips curve in an answering smile."There is one last place I want to show you", he says quietly and Khushi doesn't have the heart to refuse him.
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They stand on a hill facing a large excavation site. Robots are already busy doing preliminary work, scanning through layers of debris and mapping the remains. A river flows serenely behind it.
They sit down on bare rocks with the wind and the sun on their faces. To her, Arnav's voice seems one with the elements.
"This was considered a work of art in Medieval Earth. A poem you could see with your eyes, touch with your fingers, feel with your hearts. An elegy in marble, an ode to a lost love, a lover's tear on the cheek of eternity, it has been variously described...", his voice drones on as lyrical as the river.
"Close your eyes", he whispers in her ears. She feels him slipping virtual reality glasses on her. "Now, open them. This is how it's going to look on a moon-lit night when I'm done with it".
She gasps, her fingers entwining unconsciously through Arnav's. Her throat closes with emotion that is neither explained by the moon enchanted whiteness, nor by the startling foil it makes against the surrounding inkiness, not even by the perfect geometrical symmetry of it's edifice or the sheer genius of it's architecture. The experience is so much more than it's components. An undefined more. An inexplicable more.
She doesn't even realize her eyes are spilling tears until she feels his warm touch on her marble cheek. "It will remind me of you when you're gone", she hears him say.
She doesn't even realize when the glasses come off and they start kissing, hungrily, thirstily, as if expending all their life forces on this one moment. As if this was the only moment worth expending their life forces on.
"Khushi", he breathes when their lips disengage for air. His voice is a prayer. "Stay with me. Don't go".
Her eyes are distraught and full of remorse. Her words rip off of her soul, "I can't, Arnav. Enterprise...NK...My home...".
His eyes freeze with sudden fury. Without another word, he gets up and offers her his hand. As they face each other, he doesn't meet her eyes. In complete silence, they walk toward his HM, their feet taking them away from the ruins of a poem.
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Two weeks later, Arnav stands on that rock again. A lonely figure under the starry skies, his eyes watching an orb of light streak across the horizon, embarking on it's voyage across the universe.
*Scroll down for epilogue*
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