Hello my ladies. This is a mid week treat, for the Shivaay fans here. I know we are about to see the fake accident scene tonight, and its pretty clear he isn't involved in AniRu's plan. But as I have absolutely no faith that the CVs will give us a drawn-out, angsty scene of Shivaay thinking he's killed her, I decided to write one! Its on the way he would process the shock of such a huge, guilt inducing act. This One Shot is set just an hour after he has tossed her over the landing (before her "memory loss"), and he doesn't know if she will make it. Enjoy, COMMENT and like, please!
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BEFORE AND AFTER
Blood. Sticky, thick, the dark red oxide of freshly spilled blood everywhere. His hands were covered in it, his shirt soaked where he had held her head to his chest. He stood at the landing, where he had done it. Where he had killed her. So she was not dead yet. So what? She would be, soon. The blood swam and churned before his eyes, as he looked down at the puddle of red on the ground below. Her blood. It was up here, too. It was everywhere. It clung to him in damp patches, sticking against his skin. Covering him, soaking into his pores, entering his body with the iron tang of freshly spilled guilt. So much blood! So much! Did anyone have this much blood inside them? It seemed like an ocean of red to him.
Right now, Shivaay felt oddly lightheaded. If he fell from here, like she did, would he float? He might float. He might defy all known physical laws. Like he had defied the truth of her, the innocence, the purity of her. Like he had defied his Fate, denied his Destiny. If he could defy all those truths, why couldn't he also defy the laws of physics, and float? His arrogance that she would point out was leaking through this thought. "Shivaay Singh Oberoi, ab bhagwan bhi hai?" she would snort. He tried to smile. Found, to his surprise, that he could not. His face felt stiff, like a paper mache mask that had hardened over raw skin. Because who he had been just an hour ago was not the same person as who he was, right now.
Maybe he was not going to float, but he knew he was suspended, at the edge of something, about to crash, splinter apart, like her. Shivaay's could sense that his entire life stretched before him, divided into two halves. If she was dead, inside his bedroom, if he was actually waiting out here for the doctors to gather courage to come and tell him that she was dead -- then his life was already neatly cut, into two parts. Before killing Anika. After killing Anika. Before-- when he had a beating heart, a fierce, loving, luminous heart that beat only for him. After-- when that heart didn't beat at all, lying terrifyingly silent, on his bed. He was waiting to become two men. Before. After. Shivaay now thought-- maybe he wouldn't float after all. Maybe he would plunge through the floor, through the earth, and right down into hell. He was already in hell. What was one more fall?
From up here, he could see his family down there, all of them coming to terms with his almost murder. Dadi was sitting with Prinku, praying. Om was holding Pinky back from climbing the stairs, from reaching him up here. This was good. This was right. Good old Om. Always knowing what to do. The choices he had made, to stay silent while his mother savaged his woman--- those choices seemed so laughable right now, he would roar with laughter, if he could move at all. If he could stop being so frozen. That had been Before. Before, when everything other than her, had mattered. Appeasing his mother, to keep the peace at the cost of his wife's dignity. But it was After, now. He would kill anyone who said anything about Anika right now. Kill. Maim. Take apart with his words or his hands. It really didn't matter who. So that his mother was downstairs, howling, and not up here, being vicious -- maybe that was for the best. She would not like After.
Rudra was on his hands and knees, scrubbing at blood on the marble floor. The bucket next to him, already as red as the floor in front of him. Shivaay would have frowned at that odd sight, if he could move, if he could feel anything. Why was Rudra not up here? Oh, right. His brother had almost killed his Bhabi. Maybe Rudra could no more stand being with Shivaay than Shivaay could stand it, being with himself. But Rudra had sent his Soumya to Anika's side, and that was more than Shivaay deserved.
Names and realities were coming slowly, and comprehension finally dawned. Who was Soumya, again? Oh. Of course. Another wife, right?Unacknowledged, like Anika. But no longer, yes? Shivaay was in the After. Should Anika die tonight, she would die as his wife. Full rites, all rituals. And with those last rites would go his own pledge. The word of Shivaay Singh Oberoi, not easily given, never broken. The pledge that if his wife died tonight, she would take along her husband with her, tomorrow. You respected your wife. In the After, Shivaay knew this. Because you either lived through them, or you lived not at all, without them. But Soumya was still not Rudra's wife, because Rudra was still in the Before. He would learn, when he became After. But for Shivaay, Soumya, was his--- his sister in law? Yes. Yes. That felt right. Sister in law. She was inside the bedroom, with her Bhabi. Something about assisting the nurses, who she knew from her mother's hospital.
Shivaay shivered now, the first reaction he had been able to make, since stumbling to this landing. Where he had accidentally murdered his hope, his heartbeat.Time telescoped, now becoming infinitely fast, now feeling like hours passed between one blink of his dry eyes and the next. He couldn't cry. He couldn't feel. He had been numbed. After he had reached her, something in her stillness had made him sluggish, weak. He had sat by her inert body, blood pooling and soaking his knees, his arms. He had sat, babbling something, he didn't even remember what. Om and Rudra had screamed, shouted for the doctors. Soumya had run towards them, her mouth an open "O" of shock and horror. He remembered all that clearly.
Shivaay knew that he had been the one to carry her up to his room. But he knew that just from the state of his bloodied clothes. He didn't remember actually doing it. Those entire minutes were all gone. Inside his room, the doctors screamed, called for bags of blood, called for plasma and bandages and tests. His bed turned blotchy red, the sheets colored by her wet, bloody hair. He'd backed away from her still body, as people swarmed around her, trying to fix what he had broken. That much came to him, now.
Shivaay didn't remember much else. Someone had held his arm, led him out of his room. They had left him outside, and then, after staring at his closed bedroom door, he had come here. To the last spot where she had throbbed with life, fighting him, fighting his stupidity, his blind anger. Once he was here, at the landing where he had pushed her, he apparently could not move away. From here, he could see the blood down below. And the sight of the blood on the floor two stories down had held him here, for hours, in fascinated, horror stricken shock.
Everyone looked smaller from up here. He could see as his father stood by Rudra, staring up at him, as his brother literally cleaned up Shivaay's sins. No one was up here, but him. No one was with the murderer, the husband. Shivaay couldn't turn around. He couldn't watch what was happening inside the bedroom, where the doctors and nurses who were here for Janvi now surrounded their brand new patient. He couldn't watch. He could only wait. Wait to be told whether it was still Before, a time when he still had her. Or if it was After, when he did not. Suspended between two time lines, two realities-- one that allowed him to go on breathing, the other reality that didn't-- odd thoughts flooded Shivaay now.
Twilight thoughts. Madness licking at his feet, terror beating a drumbeat against his bloody chest.
Because even if this had not been the final act, he was going to lose her. He knew it. His dangerous life, his dangerous enemies, or just him. The biggest danger, for her. Him. He was suddenly sure that he was going to lose her. He had cheated his own Death, and Death had an odd sense of humor. It would not take him, anymore. He would have to go to Death himself. Chase that bas***d down. But the damn thing would not come for him, it would come for her, instead. If not tonight, then soon. And why not now? No one could survive that kind of blood loss, right? And his Billi? He had eaten as many of her miraculous nine lives as a depraved Death dealer like him could. He had taken her lifeline, wrenched through it like it was tissue paper. Torn her, hurt her. Bloodied her. And for nine months, he had done it with whatever weapon-- words, actions, cruelties -- with whatever he had at hand.
Tonight, the only difference was-- he had done it, literally.
He wondered now. What would he say, to Sahil? If it was in the After? What words to use, what tone to use? Were there any words to explain to a seven year old-- "I have killed your sister?" Not any, in his vocabulary. Maybe there were words to say these things, in hers. He would ask her, if she woke up. If she came back to him, if it was Before. And if she did not, there were no words needed, anyway. He would follow her, soon enough.
The shudders came more frequently now. But Shivaay didn't mind them. Didn't worry about why he was shaking as if his very bones were clamoring for release through his flesh. Anything that was more than that first, frozen wasteland was welcome. The tremors that went through his body in waves suddenly crested. A wave of sensation now broke across the stone walls of Shivaay Singh Oberoi, drenching him. And, just as suddenly as his world had ended, had become a timeline of Before and After, the pain of what he had done hit him. Gasping, he fell to his knees.
Welcoming it. Welcoming the pain, the loss, the grief. The guilt that ate and ate and corroded him like battery acid across naked skin. The burn of it. His mind clamored, speaking to the fierce pain. Loving it. Begging it. "Hurt. Hurt me more. Even more. Throb through me, break my heart, rip open my soul. Let me never forget this moment. I have done this, to her, to me. I have earned this pain. But spare her-- not for her, but for me. Spare her life, so I can live. So I can guard what I stole. What I don't deserve."
He rested his arm against the banister before him, his eyes fixed on the pool of blood below. His chest heaved, trying to draw air into his lungs. He could feel all the pain now. Feel the enormity of what he had done. And he welcomed it. Compared to his crime, this roaring, biting pain was nothing. But at least he could feel this guilt and pain sitting out here. In some small way, he could share her pain, as she struggled, clawing back from what he had done to her, inside. They were, after all, even in this, same to same.
Shivaay waited, for his sentence, for where he would be. Before. Or After.
Jhanak
Shiv Shakti
