Where the Light Comes In- A PraShiv SS

Hello.....hii....so after a long long time.. finally Mera hua khatam...the way the show had demotivated me with the crap nonsense episode,I had thought ki I would not be able to finish it ever...but chalo thanks to the amazing amazing serve of past few days...I managed it....

Chapter 1— The Proof He Demanded

The room was dim when she entered, the pale amber of the setting sun slanting through the blinds, laying long bars of light and shadow across the marble floor. The air felt heavy, as though the walls themselves had overheard the storm that had brewed between them for days, waiting for its final breaking. Shivansh stood by the French windows, hands buried deep in his pockets, shoulders drawn in that tight, controlled way that meant his mind was not calm at all.

She closed the door softly. The click of the latch seemed louder than it should have been.

For a moment, neither spoke. The city outside hummed faintly, but here — silence, brittle and sharp, stretched between them like glass waiting to shatter.

His voice broke it.

“I want the truth, Prarthana.”

It was not the voice that once whispered to her in the half-light, not the voice that drew her close on winter nights. It was stripped, clinical, a demand.

She stood still, fingers curling into her palms. “The truth?” she repeated, steady.

“About you and Raunak.” His gaze, when it turned to her, was a blade — unsheathed, cold, reflecting his own doubts back at him. “I want proof. That nothing is… going on between you two.”

Something within her gave a small, incredulous laugh — not out loud, but in the bitter space between her ribs. Proof. As if love could be tallied, weighed, and stamped with authenticity.

“You want me to… prove my innocence?” she asked, each word slow, deliberate.

“Yes.” The word came like the fall of a gavel. “If you’re telling the truth, why would it be so hard?”

Her lips parted — not in surprise, but in the quiet ache of someone watching a piece of their world crumble. She took a step toward him, and in the light her face was both fragile and fierce, the kind of beauty that grief sharpens.

“Do you hear yourself, Shivansh?” she asked, voice low but carrying. “Do you hear what you’re saying to me?”

He didn’t flinch. “I’m asking for clarity.”

“No,” she said, her tone tightening, “you’re asking me to humiliate myself so you can feed your fears.” She drew a breath, deep enough to steady the tremor in her hands. “You think I’m with Raunak? Then tell me, Shivansh, when Sonalika drapes herself around you at every opportunity, when she lingers in corners with her smiles and her little whispers — did I ever ask you for proof?”

His jaw worked. “That’s different—”

“No.” Her voice rose, not shrill, but with the authority of a verdict. “It is not different. I trusted you. Even when the world had its doubts, even when she made it clear she wanted what was mine — I never once lowered myself to demand you prove that you hadn’t strayed. Because I believed you. Because I knew you.”

The faint colour in his face shifted, something raw flickering in his eyes, but he said nothing.

She took another step closer, until the air between them hummed with the tension of unshed words. “Do you know what you’re doing right now?” she asked, voice trembling not from fear, but from the sheer effort of holding herself together. “You’re proving to me that the man I thought was brave enough to face the world is a coward when it comes to facing his own heart.”

The word hung there — coward — and it hurt more than a scream.

Her lashes clung wet, tears brimming but not yet falling. She held them back like a soldier refusing to collapse before the battle was over. “You think demanding proof will give you peace? No. All it will do is shatter what little is left between us.”

When the first tear finally escaped, it slid down her cheek in silence, warm against the coolness of the room. He looked at her then — really looked — and the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes was almost enough to undo her resolve. Almost.

Her voice dropped to a whisper, ragged but firm. “I will not stand here and plead for the right to be believed. Not to you. Not to anyone.”

She stepped back. The distance between them became a wall.

The silence returned, heavier now. His breath was unsteady, as though he might say something — an apology, perhaps — but she didn’t wait to hear it.

Her hand reached for the doorknob. She turned it slowly, the faint metallic click echoing like a chapter closing. She didn’t look back, because if she did, her resolve might falter.

And then she was gone — leaving him in a room that felt colder than before, with the sinking realisation that in his hunger for proof, he had lost the one truth that had never been in question.

Chapter 2 — The Silence After She Left

The door closed with the soft finality of something far heavier than wood and hinges — it was the sound of a thread snapping. The echo of it seemed to settle in the corners of the room, and then the quiet pressed in, thick enough to choke.

Shivansh didn’t move at first. His hands, still in his pockets, curled into fists, nails biting into skin. The last trace of her scent still lingered — faint jasmine and something warmer, something that belonged only to her — and it made the air feel almost unbreathable.

A slant of dying sunlight lay across the floor where she had stood moments ago. It was absurd, the way he found himself staring at that patch of light as if her shadow might still be there. But it was gone. She was gone.

He turned away from the window and paced — once, twice — the sound of his footsteps unnaturally loud in the emptiness. His chest felt tight, as though the words he hadn’t said to her were lodged there, refusing to move.

Coward.
Her voice, sharp and unwavering, replayed in his mind. She hadn’t spat it at him in rage — she had said it with something far worse: truth.

He dragged a hand over his face. The skin beneath his eyes burned, not from tears — not yet — but from the weight of a shame he couldn’t deflect. He had thought demanding proof would give him certainty, some fragile illusion of control. Instead, it had stripped him bare in her eyes.

A memory surfaced without warning — her laughter on their wedding night when the power had gone out, the way she had lit candles around the room, teasing him until the weight in his chest had eased. She had been light in the shadows then. And tonight, he had extinguished that light himself.

He went to the sideboard, poured a glass of water, and set it down untouched. His reflection in the polished glass of the cabinet caught his eye — the hard line of his jaw, the tension in his mouth. He almost didn’t recognise the man staring back.

The truth was bitter, acidic: he hadn’t doubted her because of Raunak’s presence. He had doubted her because of himself. Because some part of him still believed he was never enough for someone to choose without hesitation.

He sat heavily on the edge of the bed. The sheets were still rumpled from the morning — from the small, ordinary intimacy they had shared before the day had unravelled. He reached out, almost without thinking, and his hand brushed the place where she had slept. It was still faintly warm.

Something cracked in him then — a small sound escaped, half sigh, half groan. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, as though he could physically stop the memories, the guilt, the echo of her retreating footsteps.

The city outside moved on — horns blaring, wind threading through distant streets — but here, time seemed to stall.

And for the first time in years, Shivansh Randhawa felt afraid. Not of losing a deal, not of the corporate battlefield — but of the silence that had settled in his home, a silence shaped exactly like the woman he had just driven away.

I think the worst thing is when a man feels the fear of losing a loved one. His fear is indescribable. Her footsteps in the distance will echo in his head for a long time.

Chap-3

The rain had not stopped.

The evening had fallen heavy over the quiet lane, the kind of dusky silence where even the wind seemed to walk on its toes. Shivansh stood at the far end of the street, staring at the faint golden light spilling from the windows of the small house she now called her own. His chest felt like a hollow ruin—echoing with every breath, every memory, every reckless word that had shattered her.

He had imagined a hundred versions of this moment—how he would speak, how she would soften—but the sight of her opening the gate, her face pale yet set like stone, stripped every rehearsed syllable from his tongue...

She heard it.

The soft creak of the main door. The low rustle of footsteps. Familiar.

Too familiar.

"Prarthana…” his voice was barely a scrape of sound, and still it trembled under the weight of her name.

She turned, slowly. And saw him.

Shivansh.

Drenched from head to toe, his shirt clinging to his frame, eyes red-rimmed — not from rain, but something far deeper. Guilt. Regret. Grief.

He didn’t say anything.

He just stood there, chest heaving as if every breath he took was borrowed.

“Why are you here?” her voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade.

He took a step forward. She raised a hand.

“No,” she whispered. “You don’t get to come back like this.”

He froze.

“You broke me, Shivansh.”

Her voice cracked.

“Not just with your words… but with the way you believed everyone else but me.”

He flinched.

“I stood by you when the world called you heartless. I stood beside you when your own blood tried to ruin you. I gave you my loyalty, my faith, my everything… and you gave me doubt in return.”

He opened his mouth, but she didn’t let him speak.

“No. You don’t get to ask for forgiveness wrapped in silence. You don’t get to look at me with tears now and pretend like it undoes the moment you looked at me like I was... disposable.”

A sob escaped her throat, her hands trembling now.

“Do you even know what you triggered that night?” she whispered. “You made me feel like every person who ever abandoned me. Like my adoptive mother, who said love was conditional. Like every empty night I spent convincing myself I mattered. And you—the one person I chose without fear—you broke me so casually, Shivansh..Do you know what it does to someone to be called a liar in the one place they felt safe? Do you know how it feels to stand in front of the man you love and watch him see you through the eyes of a stranger?"

He lowered his head.

She stepped back, as if his silence scorched her.

“I left… not because I stopped loving you. But because loving you was killing me.”

And then the dam broke.

Prarthana’s body shook as she covered her mouth, her sobs finally erupting after weeks of holding them in. She fell to her knees, crumbling beneath the weight of the betrayal, the abandonment, the silence.

And Shivansh—

He couldn’t stand anymore.

He dropped beside her, hands trembling as he reached out. Not to claim. Not to control.

Just to hold.

Gently, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close .She didn’t resist. Her fists were clenched against his shirt, as if holding herself back from collapsing entirely. His cheek rested against her hair, his own tears falling freely, soaking into the strands. He didn’t speak—words felt cheap, clumsy in the presence of such raw devastation.. she wept into his chest — violently, vulnerably. He didn’t say sorry. He didn’t try to fix it.

Because he knew some wounds weren’t his to heal. Only his to honor.

And as she cried, so did he.

Silently.

Shamefully.

Completely.

For what he had done.

For what she had endured.

For the boy inside him who never learned how to love without fear — and the woman he had nearly destroyed because of it.

Minutes passed. Or maybe lifetimes.

Finally, her sobs slowed. Her breathing steadied.

After a long while, he loosened his hold—not because he wanted to, but because he knew. If he loved her at all, he had to let go now. He had to walk away and become the kind of man who could stand before her again without the shadow of what he had done.

He gently pulled away, brushing a strand of hair from her damp cheek, his touch fleeting, reverent. His voice was hoarse

But he didn’t ask for forgiveness.

He didn’t beg her to come back.

Instead, he stood.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said hoarsely, voice raw. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I swear to you, Prarthana… I’m going to become a man worthy of the way you once looked at me.”

She looked up, eyes bloodshot, lips parted to speak — but he didn’t wait.

He turned.

And walked away.

Not out of pride.

But out of love.

Because real love doesn’t demand.

It transforms...

She stood at the gate, silent, tears still streaking down her face—watching him vanish into the darkness, carrying with him both the weight of his guilt and the quiet, aching promise to earn her again..

Chap 4: "Becoming Worthy"

There are heartbreaks that scream, ones that rattle through the body with the fury of a thunderstorm. And then, there are heartbreaks like Prarthana’s—quiet, wordless, and unbearably still. They don’t shatter you in one clean blow. They hollow you from the inside out.

She didn’t go far. Just far enough.

The small cottage she chose sat on the edge of a hill town—an old house with ivy climbing its walls and wooden floors that creaked beneath her feet. It was not lavish. It didn’t smell of imported perfumes or echo with the polished emptiness of marble. But it had a kitchen that felt like it had known warmth, and a window that let in the light unfiltered. That was enough.

She cooked for herself now—not out of necessity, but as an act of reclaiming. She swept floors. She lit candles at dusk. And in the silence between each breath, she stitched the scattered remnants of her self-worth back together.

But some nights—especially the quiet ones when the wind howled like an old sorrow—she would lie awake and remember the way Shivansh had once looked at her in his rare unguarded moments. As if she were not just real, but necessary.

And then she’d bury that thought like a dying ember.

Because love, when wielded by someone still bleeding, can be as sharp as the wound itself.

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And Shivansh Randhawa...

The rain had stopped.

But Shivansh Randhawa’s storm was only beginning.

He didn’t return to the mansion that night. He couldn’t bear its silence — the echo of her anklets in the hallways, the untouched thali in the dining room, the locked drawer where she had once kept his cufflinks with the tenderness of a wife, not an obligation.

Instead, he drove aimlessly.

Through alleys, past the city lights, until he found himself before the skeletal remains of his father’s dream project — the one he had once used as a justification for everything he ruined.

Now it stood like a metaphor for him.

Grand. Hollow. Unfinished.

He sat on the stairs of the construction site till sunrise, watching the sky bleed open.

He had destroyed the only person who had stayed.

And now… he would rebuild from the wreckage. Not to win her back.

But to prove to himself that he could be better.

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He started small.

He called Gayatri. Apologized. Not just for what he did to her sister, but for every time he had dismissed her pain too.

Ibegan with walking into his father’s old study—shut for years, cloaked in dust and memory. There, among files and faded letters, he found a photograph of himself as a child. Eyes bright. Arms clutched around his Bua Maa’s knees. A family shaped by duty, not affection.

He stared at that child for a long time.

What do you become when no one ever teaches you how to be loved?

He began attending trauma therapy — quietly, under an alias. For the first time, he spoke about her. His mother. The abandonment. The unspoken guilt of never calling his father back before he died...what he did to Prarthana...

Shivansh did not command the room. He unravelled. Slowly. Like a thread being tugged free from a tightly woven shroud.

"I believed love had to be earned. Or manipulated. That being wanted meant controlling how someone stayed.”

The therapist nodded. “And with Prarthana?”

“She gave without asking. And I punished her for it.”

There were no immediate epiphanies. No grand self-revelations. But slowly, painfully, the truth of it began to settle like dust in his lungs.

"I didn't push Prarthana away because I didn’t love her," he told the therapist one evening. "I pushed her away because she did. And I didn’t know how to hold something I didn’t believe I deserved."

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At work, his demeanor changed.

The cold, calculated CEO who once struck fear now listened. He stopped yelling in boardrooms. Stopped demanding loyalty. Instead, he began offering trust.

When his secretary once asked, “Sir, are you alright?”

He simply replied, “No. But I’m working on it.”

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He returned to his father’s project. Not as a businessman. As a son.

Every brick laid now was a prayer.

Every blueprint a letter to the man he never forgave while he lived.

He funded scholarships for orphans through the same NGO Prarthana worked at(yes ...he had never stopped caring for Prarthana..keeping a tab of her)— anonymously. Quietly. With the same care she once used to wrap his injured hand.

One afternoon, as he oversaw the construction site, a little boy ran past him holding a school bag with the NGO’s logo on it.

Shivansh smiled for the first time in weeks.

He was no longer building towers.

He was building legacy.

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But the nights remained hard.

He still reached for her in his sleep.

Still woke up gasping from dreams where she walked away again, this time without turning back.

Some mornings, he’d sit at the edge of the bed, palms over his eyes, whispering her name like a prayer.

Prarthana.

Patience.

Penance.

He had stopped asking for time to rewind.

Now, he only asked for the strength to keep moving forward.

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Weeks passed.

And slowly… he changed.

Not with noise. Not with fanfare.

But with every meal he remembered to eat.

Every apology he said without excuse.

Every decision he made with empathy.

And somewhere in the quiet, between pain and progress, Shivansh Randhawa began to resemble not the man who lost her—

But the man who might one day be worthy of being found again.

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Prarthana in her NGO...

A colleague asked her...

“Ma’am, do you think people can change?”

She paused. Then, eyes distant but voice steady, replied,

“Yes. But not for love. They change only when the absence of love finally begins to ache louder than its presence ever did.”

And somewhere, hundreds of miles away, Shivansh sat on the floor of his empty room, holding the red dupatta she had left behind.

His world had everything. Except the woman who had once offered him her whole heart—and asked for nothing but belief in return...

Chap 5

It was four months since that night.

The calendar in his room had stopped moving—but his heartbeat hadn’t.

The monsoon sky hung low over the hill town, clouds brooding like the unrest inside him. Shivansh Randhawa stood at the far end of the narrow lane that led to a modest ashram nestled between pine trees, the scent of rain-soaked earth thick in the air.

And then—

He saw her.

She stood near the old tulsi altar, the edge of her saree caught in the wind like a half-forgotten song. Her face was tired, paler than he remembered, but her presence was unmistakable. The woman who had once haunted his nights now stood just a few steps away… unaware that the man she had walked away from was holding his breath behind the corner of a crumbling wall.

He froze.

Not out of fear—but devastation.

He had imagined this moment a thousand times—her running to him, him falling to his knees, words pouring like rain after a drought. But now, with her just feet away, all he could do was hide—like a boy staring at the ghost of the only person who had ever made him feel alive.

She turned slightly, adjusting the dupatta over her shoulder. The bangles on her wrist clinked softly, and Shivansh’s breath hitched.

She hadn't changed a bit.

But he had.

His heart, once stone, now ached with a kind of tenderness that frightened him. His hands, once clenched with vengeance, trembled with the weight of vulnerability. He wasn’t the same man she had left.

She knelt to light a diya, her fingers cupping the flame to shield it from the wind.

That one act—so simple, so delicate—felt like a dagger to his chest.

He leaned against the wall, his pulse thrumming, afraid to step forward.

What if she had moved on?

What if she no longer looked back?

What if the silence he carried for her… had become irrelevant?

His eyes devoured every detail of her—the shadow beneath her lashes, the way her lips pressed together as if holding back thoughts she had no one to share with. Her solitude was deafening. And familiar.

She didn't stay with her adoptive family..as she didn't want to trouble Seema or cause problem for Gayatri..he had learned all this from Gayatri.

She had chosen to disappear where even grief couldn’t reach her.

And yet, here she was. Existing. Breathing. Hurting.

He dug his nails into his palm. Coward. That’s what he was. A man who had conquered boardrooms and rivals but was now terrified of the woman who loved him once enough to walk away for his dream.

The wind shifted.

She looked up.

Eyes searching.

Did she feel his presence?

He stepped back instinctively, his back hitting the stone wall. A soft rustle gave him away, and she tilted her head ever so slightly toward the sound.

"Shivansh..." she shouted suddenly....

A tear drop escaped from Shivansh 's eyes..."you think of me.. Prarthana..You can still feel me Prarthana..," he said amidst tears..

But she didn’t move. Didn’t walk toward him.

Maybe she didn’t want to see him.

"Kya soch Rahi hai Prarthana," she murmured.." why would Shivansh be here...and how"

Maybe she hoped it was just the wind.

He watched as she turned her face toward the sky, letting a single raindrop fall onto her skin like it was the only touch she could bear.

Shivansh closed his eyes.

Not today, his heart whispered.

But soon.

He wasn’t ready—not to ask for forgiveness, not to confess, not to bleed in front of her again.

But he would be. He had to be.

For now, he would watch.

Silently.

From the shadows.

Just to make sure she was real, not a figment his aching heart had conjured.

And when the time was right…

He would step into the light.

Chap 6: "For the Woman Who Taught Me How to Love"

The NGO gates creaked open softly under the pale morning sun.

It was early — too early for most staff or volunteers to be around. The air smelled of damp books, wildflowers growing in the cracks of the pavement, and the faint traces of incense left behind from someone’s quiet dawn prayer.

Shivansh stepped in quietly, dressed in plain linen — no luxury watch, no bodyguards, no aura of command. Just a man carrying a thin box under his arm and a decision in his heart.

He had rehearsed this a dozen times. And yet, now that he stood in her world again, everything in him trembled — not with fear, but reverence.

She wasn’t there.

He didn’t expect her to be.

He had come not to be seen.

But to leave something behind.

He walked through the now-familiar corridor, past faded posters on nutrition drives and women empowerment workshops — all things she cared about, lived for.

At the far end, near the reading corner she often cleaned herself, was a low wooden bookshelf — chipped and half-empty.

Shivansh knelt before it.

From the box, he pulled out carefully wrapped books — each one chosen with painstaking thought.

First: “You Can Heal Your Life”.

Then: “Milk and Honey”.

Then: a hardbound edition of “Letters to a Young Poet.”

And finally — a thin leather-bound journal.

Empty.

Except for one line he had written on the first page:

“For the woman who taught me that staying is not weakness. That silence is not love. That healing is earned, not owed.”

— Shivansh

He placed them gently onto the shelf. Adjusted the spine. Brushed a speck of dust off the top. It wasn’t a grand gesture. But it was his truest one yet.

And then he saw it — her dupatta, forgotten or maybe left intentionally, folded over the backrest of a chair. Faded maroon. A slight tear at the corner he had once offered to fix but never did.

He didn’t touch it.

He stood there for a moment longer, his fingers curled into fists at his sides, a storm of emotion in his eyes.

Then, as quietly as he had come, he turned away.

He paused at the door once — looked back at the little corner he had filled not with apologies, but with pieces of the man he was becoming.

And left.

No message.

No name tag.

No hope that she’d come running.

Only the quiet knowing that when she did see it…

She’d know.

Chap 7: "The Shelf That Spoke His Heart"

It had been a long day.

The monsoon heat clung to the walls, and Prarthana’s cotton kurta was damp with sweat and fatigue. She had spent the afternoon sorting out medicine requests and comforting an abandoned woman who reminded her too much of her younger self.

She was emotionally spent — and yet her footsteps slowed as she neared the reading corner of the NGO.

Something… was different.

She paused at the threshold, her fingers brushing against the peeling wall.

And then she saw it.

The bookshelf.

Once half-empty, now carefully filled — with books that hadn’t been there before.

Clean, thoughtfully arranged. A soft maroon bookmark peeking from one spine.

Titles she knew. Titles she loved. Titles she had once told him about in passing conversations she never thought he remembered.

Her breath hitched.

She stepped closer. Kneeling slowly, she reached for the first book.

“Milk and Honey.”

She had once recited a poem from it when he was working late, pretending not to listen. But she had seen his pen stop moving mid-sentence.

Her hands trembled as she picked the second —

“Letters to a Young Poet.”

She opened it randomly. A single dried jasmine petal fell out.

Her heart paused.

Only one person ever used jasmine for bookmarks.

Then she saw the thin leather journal — placed like a heartbeat between the pages.

She hesitated. Then opened it.

One line. Ink slightly smudged, like the writer had stopped — perhaps more than once — before finishing it.

“For the woman who taught me that staying is not weakness. That silence is not love. That healing is earned, not owed.”

— Shivansh

The world blurred.

She clutched the journal to her chest, her shoulders shaking with something she hadn’t felt in weeks — not grief. Not anger. But that ache of being seen again.

“Didi?”

She looked up. A little girl from the community center stood at the corner, pointing shyly.

“He came today. The tall man. He told uncle not to say anything but… I saw him. He left that,” she whispered, pointing at the shelf.

Prarthana swallowed, her throat thick.

She looked at the girl and whispered, “He didn’t say anything?”

The child shook her head. “No. Just stood there… like he was praying.”

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That night, Prarthana sat in the corner, the journal still in her lap, tears slipping silently down her cheeks.

She wasn’t ready to run to him.

Not yet.

But for the first time, in weeks of separation, she didn’t feel abandoned.

Because in the silence of a worn bookshelf…

In the ink of a single line…

He had finally said what she needed to hear:

Not “come back.”

But “I understand.”

Chap 8: "Her Words, His Redemption"

The night was still.

The NGO had gone quiet, save for the occasional rustle of leaves and the soft creak of a distant window left ajar. Prarthana sat alone in the reading corner, the soft light of a table lamp painting gold across the spines of the books he had left behind.

The journal lay open before her.

His handwriting on the first page.

Her heartbeat in every line that followed.

She stared at it for a long time. Her fingers hovered over the paper, trembling slightly — not out of fear, but vulnerability. This wasn’t about answers. It was about truth.

She picked up a pen.

And began to write.

---

"You came quietly, the way storms do before they destroy you — But this time… you left peace instead of ruin"

Her hand paused. A tear fell onto the corner of the page, but she didn’t stop.

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" I read your words. I saw the bookshelf. I noticed the dried jasmine you thought I wouldn’t recognize.You once told me you didn’t know how to love. But that wasn’t true.You knew — you just didn’t know how to let yourself be loved in return. I was angry. I still am. Not because you doubted me… But because you doubted yourself so much that you couldn't believe anyone would stay. I stayed, Shivansh. Even after I left, I stayed in every breath, in every second I spent trying to forget you."

Her writing slowed now, the words becoming more vulnerable.

"But I see the change in you. Not loud. Not performative. But real. Quiet. Steady. The way love should be.I don’t know what this means yet. I’m not ready to come back. But I wanted you to know… your silence doesn’t hurt anymore."

Because now it speaks. And for the first time, I’m listening without bleeding.

— P.

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She closed the journal gently.

No fanfare. No ribbon. No message saying “Give this to him.”

She simply tucked it back between the books, right where he had placed it — knowing he would return someday, not out of impatience, but because some hearts always find their way back.

And when he did…

He would see it.

Read it.

Feel it.

Her response wasn’t forgiveness.

It was acknowledgment.

A quiet answer to a silent prayer.

Chap 9: "The Page That Saved Him"

The sun had just begun to rise when Shivansh returned.

He hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t even slept. Something in his chest had pulled him there—like a thread from a place he once tore apart now slowly stitching itself back together.

The NGO was still closed, its iron gate only half latched. The early morning air clung to him like memory—soft, cold, and unrelenting.

He walked toward the reading corner, steps careful, reverent.

There it was.

The shelf.

Still standing.

He let his fingers brush against the book spines — the ones he had left behind weeks ago. They felt heavier now. Not with dust. But with presence.

Then he saw it — the journal.

Its leather cover slightly worn. A new page marked with the edge of a dried jasmine petal.

His hands trembled as he opened it.

And he saw her handwriting.

Her voice.

In ink.

On paper.

To him.

---

He didn’t read it fast.

He read it like scripture.

Like every line had to be earned.

Her words weren’t forgiveness.

But they weren’t rejection either.

They were truth — tender, unflinching, exquisitely painful.

Each line carved through his chest — not with blame, but something more devastating: understanding.

By the time he reached the last sentence — “I’m listening without bleeding” — he could no longer hold it in.

He pressed the journal to his chest and sank to the floor beside the shelf, his back against the wall.

And wept.

Not the kind of crying he’d allowed himself in years past — the hidden, stubborn kind.

But full, broken sobs. The sobs of a man stripped of armor. Of ego.

Of illusion.

Tears streamed down his face, soaking his shirt, his breath ragged as her voice lingered in his head — not screaming, not accusing.

Just there.

Still there.

Even after everything.

Time passed. He didn’t know how much.

But eventually, the sobs quieted. The pain didn’t disappear — but it settled. Like a storm that had run out of thunder.

And then — slowly, quietly — a small, disbelieving smile curled at the edge of his lips.

Because in that corner of a forgotten library, with swollen eyes and a broken heart…

Shivansh realized something he hadn’t dared to believe for weeks:

There was still hope.

Faint. Fragile. But alive.

And for a man who once only knew how to destroy…

That was everything.