The halls of the Emergency Task Force (ETF) headquarters were usually filled with the sound of rapid typing, urgent briefings, and the heavy boots of officers. But for Riya, the silence between those sounds was what haunted her. It had been six months since the warehouse explosion that nearly claimed Arjun’s life, and four months since he woke up from his coma.
It had been four months since the man who once promised to love her for seven lifetimes looked at her with polite, cold eyes and asked, "Who are you?"
The doctors called it Retrograde Amnesia, a result of the trauma to his brain. He remembered his training, his skills as an investigator, and his duty to the country.
But the memory of the woman he had secretly married in a small temple just two months before the blast was gone.
Riya stood at the coffee machine, her fingers trembling as she held the mug. She still wore her mangalsutra tucked beneath her shirt, the cold gold pressing against her skin, a secret weight she wasn't ready to let go of.
"Riya? The file on the Khurana case?"
She jumped, turning to find Arjun standing behind her. He looked exactly the same stoic face, sharp eyes, brooding intensity, sharp jawline. But his eyes were different. They lacked the warmth that used to be reserved only for her.
"Woh file aapki desk par hai Arjun sir," she said in a low voice.
"Sir," Arjun repeated, a slight frown marring his forehead.
"You used to call me Arjun when we were off duty, Rathore ne kaha tha muje".
Riya swallowed hard. "I think it’s better this way. For the professional environment." SIR.
Arjun didn't move. He took a step closer, the scent of his sandalwood cologne hitting her like a physical blow. It was the scent of their first dance, the scent of the nights they spent planning a future that had been erased.
"I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something important when I look at you," he muttered, almost to himself. "A flash of a thought."
Riya forced a smile. "It's just the stress, Arjun sir. Don't push yourself."
Weeks turned into months. They worked together on cases, their rhythm as partners still flawlessly intact.
It was as if their bodies remembered what their minds had forgotten. During a chase in a narrow alleyway, Arjun reached out and pulled Riya behind him before she even saw the gunman. It was instinct, a deep-rooted need to protect her that even amnesia couldn't touch.
One rainy evening, they were stuck in the office late, finishing paperwork. The sound of the rain against the glass windows was rhythmic and heavy.
Arjun looked up from his laptop, his gaze fixed on Riya. She was focused, a stray strand of hair falling over her eyes. Without thinking, Arjun reached across the table. His fingers brushed her temple as he tucked the hair back behind her ear.
The touch was electric. Riya froze, her breath hitching. Arjun’s hand lingered, his thumb grazing her cheekbone.
"I have these fla.. flashes," he whispered, his voice hoarse. The smell of wild flowers and petrichor. The sound of a silver anklets, A woman in red saree. And a laugh that sounds exactly like yours."
Riya’s eyes filled with tears. She wanted to scream that it was her. That the red saree was what she wore on their wedding night.
"Everyone tells me I was a loner," Arjun continued, his brow furrowed in frustration. "Rathore says I was obsessed with work. But when I’m near you, I don't feel like a loner. I feel... home."
"Arjun sir , please," Riya sobbed, turning her face away. "The doctors said pushing you could cause a relapse."
"I don't care about the relapse Riya....." he growled, standing up and pulling her to her feet. "I'm tired of living in a world where I’m a stranger to my own heart.
He bore his eyes into her like searching a part of himself in her ocean depth hazel orbs. Tell me, Riya. What was I to you?"
Before she could answer, A high-profile case on a human trafficking ring had just come in. The moment was shattered. Arjun’s professional mask slammed back into place, but his eyes stayed on her for a second too long before he grabbed his gun and went away.
The mission was a chaotic mess. It led them to an old shipyard. Gunfire echoed through the rusted containers. In the heat of the moment, Riya found herself pinned down.
"Arjun! Left side!" she screamed.
Arjun swung around, neutralizing the threat, but another attacker emerged from behind a crate, swinging a heavy iron rod. It struck Arjun across the head, the exact spot of his previous injury.
"ARJUN!" Riya screamed, throwing caution to the wind. She took down the attacker and scrambled to Arjun’s side.
He was on the ground, clutching his head, his eyes squeezed shut. "It hurts so much Riya.... it’s all coming back... too fast... He took her name like prayer.
"Stay with me, Arjun!!! Look at me please!" Riya begged him and cried inconsolably, cradling his head in her lap and hugging him with her life.
Images flooded Arjun’s mind like a dam breaking with no restraint. Riya laughing, dancing under rain and dragging him in the middle of the road at midnight. Riya sliding a ring onto his finger. The taste of her lips, warmth of her hug, fingers caressing his hair while reciting about her day to him, riya back hugging him while he was cooking. The way she whispered 'I love you' against his neck before giving him a love bite. Her favorite spot of him. Him kissing her dimpled cheeks like it's a ritual and habit.
The pain was blinding, but through the haze, he saw her, not just the officer his junior, his colleague, but his Riya, the only family he left with and he ever had. His wife "Riya Arjun Rawte".
"The temple," Arjun gasped, his breath coming in ragged bursts. "The... the old priest. He complained about my shoes being dirty." He spoke in broken words breathing heavily.
Riya froze, her heart stopping. "What?"
Arjun opened his eyes. They were no longer cold and empty. They were swimming with a familiar, agonizingly beautiful love which is for her, only her.
He reached up, his trembling hand finding the gold chain hidden under her collar, pulling the mangalsutra into the light.
"You kept it," he whispered. "You kept the promise."
Riya let out a broken sob, burying her face in his chest. "I thought I would lost you forever. Even when you were standing right in front of me, I thought you were gone."
Arjun held her tight, ignore the throbbing in his skull. He pressed a long, fervent kiss to the top of her head. "I could lose my mind, Riya. I could lose my name. But I could never truly forget the soul that belongs to mine." You are the half in me remember marriage vows.
The ETF backup arrived minutes later, finding their two best officers huddled together on the cold shipyard floor. Rathore started to bark an order but stopped when he saw them. He saw the way Arjun was holding Riya, not as a partner, but as a man holding onto his entire world.
A week later, Arjun was cleared from the hospital. He sat on the balcony of their small, cozy apartment, watching the sunset. Riya walked out with two cups of tea.
He pulled her into his lap, refuse to let there be any distance between them ever again, not even the air pass by and they breath in each other like two bodies and soul.
"Do you remember everything?" she asked softly.
"Not everything," Arjun admitted, leaning his forehead against hers. "I still can't remember where I hid your birthday present last year."
Riya laughed, a sound of pure joy that lit up the dark corners of the room.
"But I remember the important part," Arjun said, his voice dropping to a octaves seductive, smooth silken.
"I remember that I am Arjun Rawte, and I am absolutely, madly, unreasonably, intensely, passionately, desperately, irrevocably in love with my wife Riya Rawte, my better half, the love of my life and my whole world.
He kissed her then, a slow, deep reconnection that erased the months of cold silence. The amnesia had taken his past for a moment, but it had proven one thing that even if the brain forgets, the heart always keeps the essence of memories.
They were no longer just colleagues or survivors. They were whole. And as the stars began to peek through the Mumbai skyline, Arjun knew he would spend the rest of his life making sure he never forgot the way Riya looked in the moonlight ever again.
Seher Hone Ko Hai
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