AN:- Aaand I'm back with another one shot. I find Neil's insistent "I'm only helping Avni because I'm a cop." so adorable, I couldn't resist another piece of writing from his point of view. Who are you trying to convince, Neil? You are hopelessly in denial.😆
I'm loving the new episodes where he keeps calling Avni his wifey, but I've stuck to writing about Neil's thought process pre-marriage. Do share your thoughts on it. <3333
OoO
She was always falling, wasn't she? And he was always saving her. Like clockwork.
She fell. He caught her.
Saved her.
It didn't even require him a split second of decision, it was more than a habit to him, more than something he was just used to doing- he felt responsible for her. Saving her wasn't something he had to make himself do, helping her didn't require a second thought; it wasn't an impulse, wasn't a momentary plan of action he made right when she got in trouble, it was something he just did. If Ananya was in the middle of a storm, he was going to do his best to get her out, help her, save her, protect her, no matter what it took.
He felt responsible for making sure she was safe and secure and that didn't bode well for him, considering she was, in all likelihood, a lying scoundrel of a criminal whom he had to put behind bars. It was his job, for god's sake. He'd been going out of his way to protect a criminal, yet he couldn't help it.
As much as he understood this...emotion, he didn't understand its root cause. Something about her brought out the protective instinct in him, made him want to defend her to the ends of the earth, even if that meant turning against his mother at times.
He wasn't going to lie, he'd surprised himself, too, when he'd turned against his mother for Ananya, never mind that his mother had been behaving unreasonably at the time, but he'd defended her, raised his voice for her, almost hit Amol for her (he didn't regret that. He regretted not being able to hit the bas***d. That one was a criminal, for sure, and though he didn't understand the why, he'd let him free. For her.), stormed out of his own chunri ceremony for her; he'd done all that for a criminal he didn't fully trust (she didn't trust him either and that pricked him more than it should) and he didn't even know why.
Then he'd found her unconscious and unresponsive, lying on the floor in her house, pale so pale, and his heart had leapt to his throat (it was almost like he'd lost something he didn't know was precious to him, it was like choking on air, it was like being on the edge of a cliff looking down the precipice, it was like falling with no floor beneath his feet, it was awful and he hadn't been able to wash out the panic for days after the incident) and he'd called her Juhi, and he'd experienced the worst form of dj vu, and he didn't understand any of it (but he wasn't sure if he wanted to. Not just yet.) so he reminded himself that she was a criminal he did not care for and chanted it in his head whenever thoughts of her clouded his mind.
She was always lying to him, always trying to blindside him, always hiding secrets (stowed away carelessly in her eyes, so many secrets, he wanted to pull her aside, sit her down and make her speak and it was very difficult to curb this urge at times); he didn't trust her and yet he felt things (mad things, crazy things, flippity floppity heart related things, wanting to make her smile when she looked miserable related things, staring at her related things) and it was becoming hard to justify his feelings for her in his head. He was coming down with...something, probably a disease that affected him in the head.
Maybe it was the side effect of being so deeply involved in his investigation regarding her, maybe it was that he thought too much about her (all the time) and encounters with her only served to increase his curiosity about her and it was all culminating into him developing a sort of...attachment to her. Misplaced sympathy, probably. Nothing more, nothing less.
As for how far he went to protect her at times- well she was his arch nemesis and it was his mission in life to be the only force who made her furious, the only one who would make her narrow her eyes in exasperation, the only person who could disturb her peace. So, of course, he had to work to make sure nobody interfered with what was rightfully his. The job as Ananya's arch nemesis, of course. That's what was rightfully his.
The cure to all his Ananya related problems lay in the success of his ongoing investigation on her, of that he was sure (even if there existed a voice in the back of his head calling him out for the amount of denial his justifications exuded.)
He was going to prove himself right in calling her a criminal and then, when she served her due behind bars, he'd be rid of whatever emotions the sight of her stirred up in him.
And if he repeated this reasoning enough, maybe he'd be able to convince himself of it.
OoO
Ye Hai Mohabbatein
Cricket
