Chapter 7

| Part Seven |

"You trust me, right? Then let go of this topic forever. Not just to me, but you will not ask about her to anyone. Neither you will try to find about her. Promise me. Promise me, Mr. Shergill."

It was difficult but he had to. He wasn't sure but he needed to. He did not want to but he did. He made that promise to her.

"You should get some sleep. I don't want your migraine to worsen," she mumbled, pressing her palms on his shoulders, pushing him to lie down.

His lips curved up at her concern. He did lie down but grabbing her hand in his. "As long as you are around me, I am going to stay alright. Rather fantastic."

She shifted her gaze from him, a quick drop rolling down her cheek that alarmed him. He gave an instant pull to her hand. "What is it about?"

She shook her head. "It is just overwhelming, Mr. Shergill. I haven't really got a chance to dream about love and my Prince Charming but I am confessing today, if I ever had picturized one, then it would be just like you. Just like you."

He gave out a small laugh. "Alright, that's enough for today, Mrs. Shergill. Itni tareef. From your side. Kya irda kya hai tumhara? Wo bakre ko katne se pehle halal karte hai na... itni achi achi bate sunkar mujhe waisi hi feeling as rahi hai."

"This man won't change," she muttered, to see his tongue back in action.

He leaned a bit towards her. "You want me to?"

"Never." She smiled. He smiled. She laughed. He laughed and everything felt perfect. Just perfect. What else they needed? Cradling her closer, he was ecstatic to have her in his arms. It was the dream he never thought could come real.

•

"Di, what are we going to do?" Divya's anxious voice raised a momentary fear in even Drishti but she was quick enough to pull herself together.

"Today has to be her last day, Divi. We will kill her," she looked at Divya with the flickering determination in her eyes, "Just the way she killed Mumma Papa."

Divya gestured her head in a nod. "But how Di? How are we going to do it?"

Drishti pulled out a folded paper from her clutch along with a small stone that emitted bright light the soon Divya's fingers brushed over it when she tried to get it from Drishti's hand.

The duo stared at the blue light that disappeared as Drishti let go of it completely in Divya's hand. Divya questioned what it was, to which Drishti had no particular answer.

"I don't know much, Divi. Someone kept this on my window last night. It was like one moment I was standing there and when I turned around, I sensed a movement and when I turned back, I got this. It kind of miraculously appeared." Drishti unfolded the paper and held it in front of Divya whose eyes widened to read the words on the paper.

This will help you finish Pishachini and make sure you do it tomorrow. She will kill you two otherwise.

"Divi, as per this, she is going to attack us today. We have to be alert."

•

"Oh no. Mrs. Shergill." He ran towards an unconscious Drishti. He dropped himself on his knees, taking her head from the terrace floor in his lap. Pressing his palm against her cheek, he repeatedly attempted to wake her up but she did not respond. Panic rose in him to see her bruised arm, bleeding forehead and her disheveled self.

She had suddenly disappeared after lunch and he had been looking for her since then. He had taken an off from office to spend some time with her when she asked him if she could stay home for the day.

"Divya?" His gaze caught her a little later. She was on the other end of the terrace, visibly physically unhurt, but struggling to get on her feet.

"Rakshit - doctor... call the doctor," she said, in a heavy voice, tapping his shoulder.

Divya was Mrs. Shergill's sister. It struck him after he heard her. He immediately got up, picking Drishti in his arms, rushing downstairs. He informed Shikhar to go to Divya on meeting him near his room.

•

"Don't." He was on the call with the doctor who had left just an hour before, confirming for the third time that his wife had no severe injury that needed her to get hospitalised. The doctor was busy assuring and reassuring the distraught husband over the call whose concern for his unconscious wife seemed to touch another level altogether when the husband caught the sight of his wife regaining the consciousness and attempting to get up and he warned her not to move.

The call was disconnected within seconds and he was near her the next moment. Slipping his hand around her back, he carefully helped her straighten on the bed. He silently grabbed the glass of water from the table and held it in front of her.

She stared at him, helplessly. Though he stood in front of her, his eyes looked at everything but her. "Mi... Mister Sher..." Her words broke with her weak voice. Her heart went heavier, watching him gritting teeth and shutting eyes before he thrusted the glass in her hand and returned back to his stiff stance.

She gulped the water first and when he got the glass from her hand to put it back on its place, she pulled him on the bed by his wrist. As she let her hand slip slowly, she made a quick run on his knuckles with her thumb, urging him wordlessly to lift his eyes to her. "I... am fine, Mr. Shergill." She fought with her weakness to get all the words without scattering them just to lessen the worries of his unsettled heart.

"Mr. Shergill," she squeezed his hand, "I really am." Oh how much she hated to see him that way! Sick worried for her. She had a fair idea that it must have scared him to see her in that condition.

Few more caresses and she earned his gaze. The next she knew was, she was pulled closer to him in a desperate hug. A hug to assure himself that she was alright and with him.

"Tell me why she did this to you." He pulled apart, seeking the answers to the questions that had clouded his mind ever since he had found her on the terrace.

She kept silent. He repeated his question. She did not break her silence. He did not let go of his question.

"Mrs. Shergill, I know, I did make a promise to you not to ask you anything about her but I can't keep the promise anymore. I know, she is the reason behind your condition. Just tell me everything." He sat adamant and determined to find out everything that she was hiding from him. "Dad left us for her and now your this condition... I want to hear each and every word of the truth. Now. I will never see your face again if you still keep your mouth shut." He made a statement that he did regret verbalising but then, he had enough. He wasn't going to sit pretending as if nothing happened after seeing her hurt. No, he wasn't. Having her in front of him, unconscious, and bandaged, had evoked a sense of protectiveness within him.

He had lost his father. He wouldn't lose her no matter what. He would not. No matter what and for that he needed to know it all.

"Mr. Shergill."

"You don't have to get to it right this moment. You need rest but as soon as you are in a state to talk, I want to hear truth."

She winced as she felt a sharp burning pain shooting up from her back to her neck when she tried leaning forward. His hands instantly pressed on her shoulders, gently backing her against the headboard again. "Do not."

His pained expression restrained her from moving. She continued staring him.

"There is a long scar on your back and neck. The doctor did confirm that it is nothing to worry about but it will take time to heal and it will hurt until it heals."

As he was done informing her about her injuries, she clasped her hand with his. "It doesn't hurt."

"You have always been good at lying, no?" Taunting her at that moment when she was down with pain was the last thing he wanted but he couldn't hold himself when she tried false assuring him that she was alright when he clearly knew that she was not even close to being fine.

She shook her head, with a small smile playing on her lips. "Not lying but certainly at hiding."

"Yeah right," he muttered, and stretched his hand to pull a packet of tablets from the side table and handed it to her. "A painkiller. Doctor said, you'll need it to bear the pain."

Her smile grew a little widened and he could only wonder how could that woman smile with the amount of pain she was in. Keeping her hand on his, she pushed it away. "I don't need this when I have my very own painkiller with me, in front of me."

It took him a few moments to let it sink in his system that she called him as her painkiller. When did this woman grow this good with words? She wouldn't even let him stay mad at her, would she? He shifted closer to her, getting his palm against her cheek. "I was scared." The fear that had gripped her all the while she was unconscious finally came over his lips.

"I was scared. The thought of losing you is terrifying. Don't put me through it again. Don't." He wounded his hands around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.

Something twisted in her heart at his words. Don't put me through it again. It was one of those moments in her life when she wanted to change the past. The events in the past. It was the moment when she wished she had never met him. Pishachini was not out of their life. She would attack her and Divya again. There was no way that she could promise him that it would not happen again, that he would never have to see her in such state. Though she would try hard for it to not happen but she couldn't promise it not happen.

What would he do if Pishachini killed her just the way she had killed her parents years back? How would he cope up with her loss? Who better than her knew what it is to live with the pain of losing your loved ones?

"Mr. Shergill. There is something that I want you to know." The urgency in her tone forced him to pull apart.

"I know, I am breaking a promise I made but I have to. Mr. Shergill, your father did not leave you for any other woman." Damn! She knew she wasn't supposed to blurt it out to him but the the mere thought that if something happened to her tomorrow then the truth will buried deep with her forced her open her mouth to reveal the secret his life had revolved around since his childhood. The biggest truth of his life that he thought was the truth was far away from being true.

She always knew that he deserved to know but she had a promise to keep that never let her enlighten him about the same. Not anymore. She must tell him. He had a right to know.

"Your father... is not alive. He did not leave you willingly. He is not around because..." she held his arm, "...he is dead."

Her words hit his ears like a wave hitting the coastline, destroying the sand castles over there, taking them away with it. Her words, perhaps, was going to wash every fragment of hatred and disgust his heart held for his father for cheating on his mother, for leaving and never returning back to check if they were alive or not!

Your father did not leave you for any other woman.

Your father is not alive.

He did not leave you willingly.

He is not around because...

He is dead.

He is dead.

Your father is not alive.

He did not leave you willingly.

He is dead.

Your father did not leave you for any other woman.

He is dead.

He is dead.

It froze him for several seconds. He could process nothing but the statements that just fell in his ears. He kept hearing them in his mind, again and again, over and over.

Her eyes misted over to see him struggling to absorb the information she had just put in front of him. She had a clear idea that he would break down whenever he would come to know that he had held his father responsible for the things he never did, accused and hated him for the crime he never did but still, witnessing it right in front of her eyes was hard. Real hard.

"Mr. Shergill..." She whispered his name as an attempt to break his trance. Raising her hand from his arm, she curled her fingers around his neck, pressing her thumbs against his cheeks.

He got his eyes on her. "What are you... How do you -" He stopped in the middle. She knew her. She knew that one eyed woman. He did not have to ask her how she knew if she did. Was that why she was insisting him to keep away from her? Because she had killed his father and she could kill him too? 

"Mahima Ma'am knows it too."

Never before that day, he had experienced the feeling of ground slipping beneath his feet. Mom knew?

She briefly narrated him, how one sudden day weeks before her phone had received a video message when she was in the kitchen. Chiranjivi's message.

Mahima who overheard everything when Drishti was viewing the message oblivious to her presence and immediately stepped in and recognised Chiranjivi. She had met him a couple of times with her father. If there was one thing that she knew about him, then it was that, he was trustworthy.

Chiranjivi hadn't taken curtains off everything but the only fact about Mahima's husband's disappearance and Mahima did not think twice before believing it for her father had always told her, if anything ever happened to him, then trust Chiranjivi in everything he would say.

"Mahima Ma'am did not want you to know. She made me promise her that I will never let this come in front of you," she said in a low tone, knowing every bit she was saying was hurting him to the extent that she could probably not even imagine.

He asked. One word question. Straight and simple. "Why?"

She took a few moments to gain her composure. "Mr. Shergill. It is easy to live with hatred for someone than the pain of having misunderstood them all your life and especially, the pain of losing your parents. Ma'am knew, you would blame yourself for the rest of your life for being disgusted with your father and hating him if you came to know that he was innocent. She did not want you to go through it."

His muscles began stiffening.

"Mr. Shergill, relax, please." She  rubbed on his arm, alarmed to see his shaking hands and the tremors. She had read about it. The worst migraine attacks often started off with tremors. Everything was too much for him to accept and digest. The stress must have been overbearing for him.

He felt himself being pulled in a hug, a soft voice whispering the words in his ears that he could not comprehend but they were soothing to his ears. He heard an earnest promise before losing himself in darkness. "Until the time I am here and even when I am gone, I'll shield you, always."

•

His head hurt while trying to open his eyes. Slowly blinking, he traveled his gaze around. He was lying on the bed. She was right beside him, visibly too worried but relaxing with him regaining consciousness. The last thing he remembered was her promise.

He smiled weakly at his woman. He did not know how she must have pulled, shifted and made him lie on the bed when she herself was injured and without a single doubt, in tremendous pain because she had not even put a painkiller inside her.

"How're you feeling?"

The corners of his mouth curved more upwards. He gave her an assuring nod, gesturing he was good. He straightened himself on the bed. His mind was still occupied with a bunch of things. He was going to need time to accept it all and he was sure, with her beside him, he would do it, sooner or later.

"Mom should never know that I know. We will pretend as if this conversation never happened in front of her," he told her in a monotonous tone and she, nodded as if had already seen it coming.

"Aap thik hai na?"

"Remember I said, As long as you are around me, I am going to stay alright. Rather fantastic?" He repeated his words that he had uttered the last night to her and it made her smile bright.

"As long I am around and even when I am not. You will stay alright. Always. Always," leaning a little towards him, she pressed her lips on his cheek before engulfing him in a warm hug, "And that's a promise, Mr. Shergill."

• 

The End! 

This might seem rushed and this is indeed rushed, I admit. I hadn't planned this, this way. Anyways, had I not finished this now, then probably this would have stayed incomplete forever. So yes, that's about it!  

This tale has got a beautiful response. 58, 660 views so far. It's a huge number for mere 6 parts. A bunch of likes and overwhelming feedbacks. Thank you, everyone who has become a part of this short journey, in some way or other. You all made this so worth it. 

With love. 

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