AdiYa OS: What If?

He is thoroughly exhausted when he asks her. They are sitting on a cold park bench in the middle of the night, a bottle of Jack Daniel's in his hand and his head in her lap. Before finding him Zoya had thought she'd never find him and perhaps she'd never see his face again.

When she found him he had been speaking to a tree in the middle of a park twenty minutes away from his home. Aditya's brother had called her on his phone, begging, pleading of his whereabouts. He hadn't come home in two days and Aditya was not to be trusted on his own.

Zoya had run out of bed, finding the first thing she could to cover herself with and had set out into the dark cover of night to find him. She had been frantic and when she'd found him, she was furious.

Aditya! She had called out and when her voice broke through the fog in his mind, he turned towards her. Seeing her in the dark before him he smiled and stalked right up to her, dragging her to sit on the bench where they now found themselves.

"Zoyaaa, Zoya Zoya Zoyaaa," he sings her name.

She shifts so that he is lying on his side, his face tucked into her stomach, singing her name in an effort to rouse her.

She closes her eyes and immediately falls back into the memory of the day they met, the day that changed them forever. She thinks about the moment they stumbled into each other, the song that had drawn them both, the stubborn nature of their interaction.

If Yash had not been her motivation for that fateful day in the shop and if Pooja had not been Aditya's, what would have it been like if they'd met first?

"Harr ek cheez ka sahi waqt hota hai Aditya," she whispers, her voice getting caught in her throat.

"Aur humara waqt humse un dono ne cheen liya haina?" he mumbles into her shawl.

She thinks back to when she had first seen Yash. Zoya had been walking along the bazaar gully, Noor running behind her when she'd seen Yash. Something about him had seemed so familiar to her, as if she had known him from before. She was 19.

She thinks about Aditya, his overzealous nature, his stubborn air, his hard moral ground. What if it had been Aditya that day instead of Yash? Would she have seen past his boyish charm? Would she have been just as intrigued? Would she have known him like she did Yash in that moment?

"Main tumse kabhi na baat karthi. Tum bilkul uss type ke ladke ho jinke baare main Aboo ne mujhe door rehne se kaha tha," she says softly.

He looks up at her then, his hair falling into his eyes. She forces herself to look at him and she finds his eyes red but soft. He is looking at her with a softness she isn't accustomed to.

"Aur tum bilkul uss type ki ladki ho, jinke peeche main bhaagta tha," he says with a smile.

Something in his smile disarms her and suddenly she feels vulnerable in his hold. He isn't touching her, his hand is caught in the fold of her shawl, but the weight of his head on her lap and his eyes seeing hers, undo her. A fear settles inside Zoya and she begins to pull away.

"Aditya, chalo. Tumhe ghar jaana hai," and with that reasoning she forces him up and away from her.

"Zoya ko darr lag raha hai," he sings beside her and she doesn't have to look at at him to know he's staring right at her.

She forces herself to look at him again. "Aditya, please, utho."

Her voice is soft enough, exhausted enough, to wipe the smile off his face and Aditya complies. He walks two steps ahead of her, continuing to look back at her, almost to ensure she's not left him. They round the bend to his home and Zoya is caught at the sight of his house.

"Yeh ghar nahin hai. Qaid hai, qaid. Uski yaadon ki qaid," Aditya fumbles out.

It still surprises her how his words feel as though they are coming from her own heart. She feels just as caged and just as trapped.

Zoya adjusts her stance and feels a tug before noticing that Aditya still has his hand folded in her shawl. He has been holding her to him the entire walk. She looks at his hand and when he follows her gaze, he pales in colour.

Abhi na jao chodh kar, ke dil abhi bhara nahin.

Zoya pulls her shawl tightly around her and Aditya looks at her as if he's seeing her for the first time. His heart drops when Zoya begins to walk away. It seems the hardest moment in Zoya's presence, is when she turns away from him.