Shivaay knew it was coming, but that in no way meant he was prepared.
He had tried, many times, to imagine what he would say to Anika if he were to ever see her again. He had run through many different situations in his mind, sometimes, in his weaker, lonelier moments, even speaking the words out loud.
She was still single and in love with him.
She was still single and hated him.
She was with someone else but still loved him.
She was with someone else and hated him.
He had gone through iterations where he was still married to Tia.
Where he had married someone else.
Where he was divorced and single.
He supposed that in his many internal conversations, he had probably run through a situation very similar to the one he and Anika were currently in. Barring, of course, the one crucial factor which changed absolutely everything.
In his wildest dreams, he could not have pre-empted the person Anika being happily married to as being his brother. His Om. One of the largest pieces of his heart.
So when she knocked on his bedroom door- and of course he knew it was her, he always did- he finished buttoning the kurta he had changed into to buy himself a few last seconds where she was Schrodinger's Anika: both his and not his, for one last moment.
"Come in.
She took his breath away. He had always found her unsettlingly beautiful. Of course, it wasn't just her appearance though by any standards she undoubtedly attractive. It was something about the way she occupied the space she was in.
Her eyes, her features, her entire being in constant motion. Anika was the kind of person who commanded a room and demanded attention simply by being. How else would a woman who had by no accounts made any effort to win Shivaay's love-actively attempted to push him away, in fact- and who defied his every requirement in a partner, have managed to so effortlessly steal his heart?
Shivaay had hoped that the years, the distance, the fact that she was married to his brother... he had hoped that these were all things that would quash the tsunami of emotion he felt towards Anika.
He had hoped in vain.
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"Hello Shivaay.
"Anika.
She looked at him, straight into his eyes, and Shivaay felt his heart kick in his chest. He wondered how she felt, looking at him. Sighing, he sat down and indicated the seat opposite for her to settle into.
Anika, of course, continued to never do anything he wanted her to. She looked around at his room in a ponderous silence, walking around like a cautious child. He wondered what she was looking for.
"Nothing's changed. Her voice sounded off somehow, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
"Of course it hasn't. This is my room and I'm an adult, not a teenager whose likes and whims change on the regular. What were you expecting? Posters I've ripped out of magazines? somehow arguing with her kept him from breaking down. It had been how he'd attempted to hide his love for her in the past, he prayed it would keep working now.
Anika looked at him, he expected to see a glare but she just looked... sad. Almost as though she felt sorry for him. "Don't pity me. Most people don't change as easily as the seasons, Anika. Saying her name another spear through his chest.
Anika shook her head as she sat down, not in the seat he had pointed to initially, but in the one just beside it. He rolled his eyes. Of course.
"I'm not pitying you, Shivaay, but the wife who occupied this room for years and left behind not even an essence of herself. No marks on the dressing table where she might have placed her beauty products, or hooks on the wall where she might have hung photos. No empty cupboard to suggest she had one to herself and no change in furniture to give any indication she tried to make this place feel like her home as opposed to simply a house she lived in. Tell me, Shivaay, did Tia simply not try, or did you stop her when she did?
"Well when she couldn't make a single change to my heart, why the hell would she bother making any changes to my room? The words were fast, bitter and regretted as soon as they left his mouth.
Anika sighed and waited until Shivaay looked up, looked into her eyes. "Shivaay, we need to talk.
Everyone had tried to prepare her for this. Everyone had told her that Shivaay was a broken man now, that though he seemed to still be normal in front of the press and the media, behind closed doors he was none of that. He was empty. He was lost.
She knew as soon as she saw him, she knew despite his attempts to conceal his hurt and his pain behind spiked insults and meaningless rebukes. She knew it from the way he held himself and she knew it from his expression and most of all, she knew it from his eyes.
Those mesmerisingly beautiful eyes that openly depicted his pain and the depth of emotion whirling within him- for her- that he had not been able to destroy.
In all honesty, it broke her.
Anika had imagined what a future with Shivaay might have been like and in the early days her heart had yearned for it and she had wept desperately for what could have been.
That was until time and the beauty of her present with Omkara had overwhelmed and overshadowed any desire to so much as think about an alternative.
Seeing Shivaay broken because of her, seeing the reality of how he had felt and clearly still felt about her... it broke her.
But it did not change how she felt.
Anika felt no conflict within herself and no doubt as to what she wanted to do. Most of all, and perhaps most surprising even to herself, she felt no regret.
She had moved on, and for whatever reason Shivaay- who had been the one with every advantage when their fleeting moments together had come to a brutal and bitter end- the one with a wife, money, power, influence, family, a clear and promising future- had not.
"What is there to say, Anika? he finally said, breaking her out of her reverie.
"What would you like me to say, Shivaay? Is there anything that you want to hear?
He was silent for a long, long time.
"Everything. I need to know everything.
So Anika told him everything.
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She began with why she was here now, she told him about how his family had turned up in London to persuade her and Omkara to come back for him.
Shivaay said nothing.
Then she told him about the intervening years. How she had ended up married to Omkara, how their life had been after marriage. She didn't want to hurt him unnecessarily and so she spared him the details, but Anika knew she had to make it clear to Shivaay that she had initially married him out of necessity, not out of any desire to spite Shivaay, and that it had not been for money or power, but to enable them both to escape.
She also knew it was important- critical- that Shivaay understand that a bond of convenience was no longer what tied them together. Anika could feel that each word was twisting an agonizing knife further and further into Shivaay's already shattered heart, and her own heart clenched painfully with every shift in his expression- but he needed to know.
Anika was in love with Omkara. Unconditionally, infallibly, irrevocably.
Shivaay said nothing.
Finally, she had reached the past.
Her and Shivaay. Shivaay and her. What was and what could have been.
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"Marrying me would have destroyed you, Shivaay. You would have turned your back on everything you believed in, everything you valued and everything you held to be true. You would have fought against society, your family and, most and worst of all, yourself. For me. You have a very idealised notion of me, Shivaay, and you must know that you never truly knew me well enough to actually love me. What we had was attraction, understanding and... a feeling. A knowing, even. But we never let it come to fruition. We never let it grow. It was a special, fragile, growing thing which could have been beautiful but we didn't let it. And I'm glad. I'm so glad that you didn't compromise yourself for me, didn't change yourself for me and didn't ruin yourself for me. And me? Shivaay even if you don't believe that I would have been terrible for you, even if you naively believe that love would have been enough to get us through, even if you genuinely don't think you would regret the endless battles and wounds you'd have to fight and bear had you married me... think of what it would have done to me. Anika's strong, confident voice cracked.
It was Shivaay who continued.
"Marrying me would have destroyed you too, Anika. You would have had to change to adapt to my world, to adapt to me. I find you charming, I think your quirks are wonderful... but my world and the people in it would have crushed your spirit and I'm not sure if I could, or even would, have stopped them. If you fought back, refused to change, I would have seen it as you refusing to improve yourself out of some misplaced sense of pride... and I wouldn't have understood it. I would have loved you, fiercely and all-consumingly. But loving me back would have stifled you. With Omkara you are free to live the life you want, to feel every part of you is free to exist exactly as it is and that each and every aspect of every wonderful bit of you... is loved. I would like to think that I would have loved you as openly as Omkara does, would have been your support and smashed mountains in order to defend you against the infinite barbs and insults that being my wife would have exposed you to. But I don't know that I would have. I couldn't even win the battle against myself, how could I possibly hope to win against anybody else?
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It was strange, Shivaay thought, the way he felt in thst moment. The words she had said, the words he had said. He understood them, he even, to some extent, believed them. Of course he did.
But his heart still refused to come to heel. His heart still believed she was his, still knew that despite the phenomenally high probability that they would have destroyed each other... they wouldn't have.
His heart still loved Anika. Desperately, painfully, unendingly.
And that was why he knew he had to let her go. He had to move on.
Shivaay Singh Oberoi was the master of facades. The master of keeping his true thoughts and feelings close to his chest. When Shivaay Singh Oberoi did not want someone to know how he felt... even Om and Rudra couldn't see what he hid.
Maybe if he pretended long enough, one day it would become the truth.
So he took one last look at Anika, and he let himself love her. He closed his eyes and imagined one last time what his life could have been.
But he had made his choices, and she had made hers.
What was there left to do now but live with the consequences?
Channel V Dil Dosti Dance
Arjun
