Warning: I don't know, but this is feels to me like the weakest thing I've ever written. unfortunately, in the middle of exams, I really needed a way to bust some stress, and this is the only way I could think of, so I'm really sorry for pouring out my frustration on you guys :s That's partly why I didn't update my FF...I think I'd have made a proper mess of it if I tried to continue in my current state of mind.
NOTE: this is loosely based on the IPKKND track, fitting in somewhere between Holi and Arnav's kidnapping. Definitely before the kidnapping nonetheless:P
FF: Cul-de-sac
Chapter One- Nightmare
Arnav hurried forward unseeingly through the darkness, the shadows reaching out their scaled fingers to snatch him in their metal grip. The tips of their fingers were ice cold, and whenever they grazed against his skin he would feel the chill dart through his nerves, gnawing at him, before he would shake it off and drag his leaden legs forward. Not seeing where he was going, but with the strange, unshakeable knowledge that whatever he sought was somewhere blanketed within the blackness, something he had to find before the shadows would completely suck him in and swallow him whole.
Stumbling through blindly, Arnav struggled to stifle the uncertainty, the unease that he could neither place nor ignore, building within him. Silence sounded louder than anything else he could have heard, beating wildly against his eardrums. And suddenly...
A beacon lit in the heart of the darkness, a watery glimmer somewhere ahead, twinkling invitingly towards him. Arnav's heart bounced up, his eyes riveting onto the tiny little winking light. He knew instantaneously that that light was what he had been looking for. That was the light that would guide him out of this throttling darkness, this nothingness that he had suddenly found himself in...he inched closer...
His heart, perhaps, knew long before his eyes could adjust to the play of light and dark coalescing before his eyes, exactly who bore the lantern helping him find direction once more. It could have been no one else...no one else would send his nerve endings tingling, his hair standing on end, his pulse quickening while his heart began to thunder, tussling with silence for primacy. Only one person could cause the man of stone to feel so thoroughly...
...Khushi...
Arnav drank in the sight hungrily. There she stood, slender, still, her head bent, eyes lowered. Those lovely luscious long tresses of hair that he adored watching hanging loose about her shoulders, billowed gently in some unearthly breeze that he could not feel. His eyes rose greedily up her form. She was in green, clad in an emerald saree, that beautiful, sensuous shade that had set his nerves on fire, that had set him ablaze on that night when they had danced together...something powerful clenched within him and scorched him from within as he remembered, distinctly, the intoxicating fragrance of her hair, the velvet softness of her skin...remembered being drugged on their proximity, remembered the fire that had burned as they left the world behind as they danced to each others' tunes. Yearning rose like a tide within him as his eyes soaked in the breathtaking way the material clung to her in just the right way, showing him just a little, hinting so much more...the anticipation became almost painful as he trained his eyes onto what he had been craving for as he stumbled about...her face...
But there was something wrong. Her eyes were no longer lowered, her head no longer bent...but...that face...her face, her beautiful angelic face...was dead white. Her lips were parted and she was dragging strained, ragged, short breaths through her mouth. Arnav felt unease sweep through him once more, so thoroughly that a chill settled about his heart, this time one that he could not shrug off...her eyes, those luminous eyes that said so much...stared unseeingly ahead, empty. Dark circles nestled below her eyes...Arnav felt the chill begin to creep through his blood...
'Khushi?' he whispered uncertainly.
Finally, she raised her eyes to meet his...the wistful look written there stabbed a shard of glass straight through his heart. He panicked. Why did she look so...so...sad? Not merely miserable, upset, depressed...the look of sorrow on her face was enough to wrench his heart out of its hiding place...
Before he could formulate any more words, before he could take any steps forward to close the distance between them, before he could ask her what could possibly have gone wrong...he heard her soft voice murmur, 'Goodbye, Arnavji...'
'Wh-what?' he stammered, blinking hard as the dark began to press in from all sides, pushing against him with the intent of drowning him once and for all...she was walking backwards, walking, almost gliding away from him. His entire being wanted to cry out in protest, his legs wanted to race forwards to reduce that diminishing distance, his arms wanted to stretch out to catch and stop her...but he couldn't move. No matter how loud his heart clamoured, his limbs would not obey the plaintive instructions his mind shouted at the top of its lungs...he watched as she slid further and further away, into the farthest reaches of darkness, her luminescence faltering under the shadows...
'KHUSHI! KHUSHI!' he could hear himself shout, but his mouth would not form the words. Every foot she put between them seemed to suck the breath straight out of his body...his mouth would not open, he could not inhale...cocooned within a vacuum, Arnav felt the last of the air squeezed out his body as he begged, pleaded with his limbs to heed his desperate attempts to move, to dash forward and snatch up the source of his life, his sun...his heart throbbed painfully in its last attempts to beat before...
'Goodbye...' a disembodied voice floated through to him, muted, from a great distance away.
'NO!'
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness around him. To regain his bearings as he swallowed in huge mouthfuls of cold air, stinging against his lung walls, the sharpened edges of perspective returning slowly...Arnav looked around wildly. Before feeling his breath involuntarily release through his mouth in relief.
He was in his room. In bed. The sheets wrapped around his torso, covered in cold sweat, shivering uncontrollably. Breathing deeply, breathing gratefully, Arnav passed a shaking hand over his brow, feeling relief soak through him with each passing second, realisation becoming sharper.
It was all a dream. A horrible, horrible dream...
But then his eyes snapped open again; he started. His head darted quickly from side to side taking in the sight of his room...his empty room. Dread, the cold dread that had propelled him on in his nightmare, slowly began to creep up his legs, tangled in the sheets, as his mind struggled to find an explanation for her absence, panic rendering that nearly impossible.
He quickly turned round in his bed, relief momentarily nipping at his dread when he saw her stars clustered about the wall...she was still there...but where was there?
Feeling feverish, his limbs having difficulty bearing him up, Arnav clambered out of bed. His hurrying limbs stumbled across the room. There was no sign of her by the poolside. Neither was she in the bathroom. Arnav wrestled with the fear knocking soundly against his conscience, fighting to keep those doors tightly barred shut; he wouldn't think about what her absence meant, couldn't think about what her absence meant. He snatched the closet door open- her clothes, the loud vibrant colours that complemented the loud vibrant personality of his wife, stared back at him.
Damn it, where is she?
Arnav was beyond reason now. Panic rendered him incapable of rationality. He flung his bedroom door open and darted out. Her unexplained absence...his heart was a block of ice. His blood was slowly freezing in his veins. The tumult of feeling that besieged him, caught him unawares, pushed out any primacy thought or resolution might have played in his life. It did not matter that he was supposed to hate her. It did not matter that he was not supposed to care. It did not matter that that girl was the biggest threat to his sister's happiness.
All that mattered was that she was gone, and he couldn't breathe.
He was not sure, as he dashed across the length and breadth of the wide hall, the living room, darting in and out of the kitchen, whether he had awoken from one nightmare straight into another.
'Stay away from me! I said stay AWAY!'
The shriek shredded through the mesh of confusion and fear he was entangled in, freezing him in his tracks. His ears pricked up at the sound, his heart, so far beating weakly in an attempt to keep breath in his body, stopping completely.
That was Khushi's voice.
Everything else receded into a blur as Arnav dashed off full tilt in the direction of that voice.
'I told you stay AWAY! Don't come near me, don't you dare come near me!'
Arnav knew that tone. It was one she had used against him before. Furious, reckless aggression resounded from each syllable, each syllable that got louder and louder as he grasped onto the sound of the voice a part of him had feared he would never hear again. But relief battled with dread, the warmth and the chill freezing his blood in some places while thawing it in others.
What the hell is happening? Who is she with? Why is she so angry?
As if in answer to his question, as soon as he skidded to a halt outside a wide open door, a second voice rang out, unnervingly, sickeningly calm.
'How much longer are you going to run away from me Khushiji? Don't you know that I love you?'
If Arnav had been about to charge onto the terrace, ranting and raging at Khushi for giving him the fright of his life with her disappearing act, all semblance of such intentions evaporated in a wisp of smoke. The fear, the anxiety, the ice cold dread which had settled heavily in the pit of his stomach began to boil as another emotion, a far more familiar one, began to bubble within him.
Rage.
So that's where she was. That's why she was not in the bedroom. She was with him.
The anger that gripped him was deadly. An inferno raged within him as every strand of concern, every shred of vulnerability he might have felt while fearing for her, caring for, caught fire and curled into wisps of charred black nothing. He saw red. Disgust, vehement disgust, possessed his soul- pure hatred at the girl standing out there, that girl pretending to be so pure and noble of heart, when she was nothing but a husband-stealing, two-timing hag, no better than her lover, both masquerading under the guises of being perfect angels when they might have been the advocates of the devil himself. Ruining his life, making a mockery out of the first time he had felt in so many years, threatening to destroy Di's happiness at the root-
'How many times do I have to tell you that I HATE you for you to leave me alone?' the scream pierced through his wall of hate with difficulty, penetrating slowly, taking its time before sinking in.
What?
'You make me sick! You- sickening, disgusting excuse of a man! Can't you see that I'm a married woman! I have a husband, and I belong to him!'
Wait...what?
A jeering laugh grew into a cackle, before a cloying, oily voice simpered, 'Oh come on Khushiji...if the fact that I was married when I was living as a tenant with Buaji didn't stop me from getting engaged to you, then do you think that the fact you're married now will?'
A spluttering sound, followed by an enraged screech. 'You- you- monster! You ingrate, you- don't you feel even an ounce of shame? Even a bit of regret? Betraying a wonderful person like Anjaliji, who loves you so much? This family that loves you so much? Betraying us, when Buaji had welcomed you so lovingly into our home, pretending to be a bachelor, pretending to have no family, and you- stabbed us all in the back!'
'Oh come on Khushiji...haven't you heard the saying 'Everything is fair in love and war'? The end will justify the means...and I love you. Once you accept my love, once you love me back, you yourself will understand that all those lies were a small price to pay-'
'Shut up! Just SHUT UP! Can't you understand? When will you see that I hate you? Even when we didn't know that you were married, I told you, I specifically told you that I don't want to marry you and you still went ahead with it? Playing with the happiness of two families that would have trusted you with their lives...you make me sick!'
'Now, now, Khushiji,' the answering voice was deadly quiet, the menace barely concealed, 'I wouldn't say such things if I were you-'
'Stay back! I have had it with you! I made the mistake of not telling everyone about your sins the minute I found out, but I won't repeat the mistake again- I'm not staying quiet anymore!'
A cold laugh rang out at that. Its chilling sound drifted out through the entrance of the terrace.
'Who are you kidding, Khushiji? We both know that you don't have the heart to tell Rani Sahiba the truth. Especially now. When she is so happy- about to have a baby. You care for her happiness far more than you hate me...or else you would have told her a long time ago.'
'That was my mistake! I had thought that maybe you would learn, but no! Anjaliji loves you so much- the way she broke down when her mangalsutra tore-'
'Exactly. If you tell her the truth- she'll be shattered. And if anything happens to her- Saale Sahab will hate you even more than he hates you now.'
A thick, sluggish silence settled into the scene. A stifling, suffocating silence. The type of silence that had beat so relentlessly against Arnav's eardrums, louder than the pandemonium running berserk in his head as he, hidden in the shadows, stupefied and turned to stone, helplessly watched a thousand half-formulated strands of thought tumbling haphazardly over one another. The silence drowned out the din in his head.
'You will come running to me in the end, Khushiji. You won't have a choice.'
Silence.
'I would much rather kill myself than come to you.'
Silence. This time, it was ten times louder. Ten times more oppressive.
'You don't seem to realise, Khushiji, that you don't have much of a choice in this matter,' that hated voice, the loathsome, slippery honeyed voice, was suddenly cold, suddenly disquietingly calm, 'You don't realise that you're at a cul-de-sac. At a dead end. Because if you don't come to me- well death is the only other road you can take. Because, you see- there is nothing that can be made of your life now. For all practical purposes, your life is over.
'You still don't know why my dear Saale Sahab married you, do you? Well, let me enlighten you. He married you because he thinks you are in love with me. Because he thinks we are in love with each other. And that we were going to ruin his beloved Di's happiness by breaking her marriage so we could be together. That's why he married you. And yes- I know all about your little contract. So tell me Khushiji- after the six months are over, what are you going to do?'
The silence thickened by the minute, squeezing out the air. Darkness seeped insipiently in, a vacuum reopening. The nightmare was not over.
'What are you going to do? Where are you going to go? You can't go back to your family and bring shame and dishonour to them- once they find out about this little farce you are living in right now, they will never be able to meet society's eyes. You won't be able to stay here, because your dear husband will kick you straight out. You have nowhere else to go. Nowhere else you can go, without bringing pain and anguish to the people you love, the people you are trying to save by living this lie. So you see Khushiji...you won't have a choice. I will be your only hope. Your only way out.'
'No...' a soft, hushed whisper.
'Yes. You see, right now you are the root of all the unhappiness in this family, Khushiji. Payalji's married life depends on you. Rani Sahiba's happiness depends on you. If you make one wrong move, you will destroy your sister's happiness a second time round, as well as the happiness of the woman you are trying to protect by keeping me away. One wrong move, and you'll be homeless, rejected by your parents, rejected by your so-called husband. Do you think you can face all that dread Khushiji? Now, the only way you can escape is if you come to me. I care about you- I assure you I do. I will take you away and make sure no one- Khushiji, what are you doing?'
That sugar-coated, venomous voice abruptly became sharper. It rang out shrilly.
Arnav felt the darkness press more insistently against him.
'Khushiji, what do you think you are doing? Don't be stupid, you-'
And an oddly, frighteningly calm, terrifying quiet voice answered back, 'You said it yourself. That either I choose you or I choose death. And I said it too- that I would much rather choose death than come to you.'
'Khushiji-'
The crashing sound, echoing and re-echoing-
'KHUSHI!'
Arnav barely noticed his brother-in-law sprawled on the floor, crumpled in the midst of upturned flower pots. He barely noticed the look of pure fear that slid onto his face like a mask the minute Arnav appeared on the terrace. He did not notice the sudden deafening rush of air that assaulted him as he tore through space at blindly speed.
All he was aware of was the slim wrist he had managed to clasp, belonging to the same slender figure in his dream that had bid him goodbye, standing at the edge of the terrace, poised on a ledge prepared to toss herself into the empty space below. Aware of snatching her up in his arms and cradling her up tightly, his brain shouting a thousand refusals to accept her farewell. She was not going anywhere, she could not go anywhere. He wouldn't let her.
'What the hell do you think you are doing?! Pagal ho gayi ho tum? Kya karr rahi thi? T-t-tum...you...how...you...dammit, kya soch kar-? Don't you ever- don't you ever do anything like that again! Don't you ever even dare to leave me again or else I'll...what if I'd lost you?!'
He shook her, shook her shoulders, his wide open eyes boring into her startled, bewildered face, as ashen as the figure he had seen in his dream. Her teeth rattled as he grabbed her upper arms and snatched her up to within an inch of his face, delving deep into those beautiful eyes, rummaging in their depths to find the signs of life that he needed to convince himself that she was there, she was alive, she was his.
Feeling lightheaded, Arnav felt he might collapse. He hadn't been breathing for so very long that the sensation of air flooding into his lungs nearly caused him to keel over. With a cry, he threw his arms about the girl now standing limp and dazed before him, pulling her soft form straight into his, willing her warmth to suffuse through to his erratic heart to ease away its pain. Moulding her into himself, Arnav, luxuriating in the sensation of simply breathing, drank in, like a thirst ridden man, the inebriating scent of his Khushi.
***
Shyam could not understand what was happening. The man he was convinced hated Khushi enough to destroy her without a second thought was now embracing her for dear life. His blood boiled as he watched Saale Sahab's hands clutching Khushi even closer within the confines of his arms, his arms twining all the way about her, clawing at the fabric on her back. His face had buried itself deep into her hair.
He seemed to have forgotten that there was third person on that terrace besides the two of them.
Venom ripening within him, Shyam got to his feet, feeling the pain of the bruises he had been endowed with when Khushiji, with surprising strength, had sent him crashing into an array of flowerpots as she prepared to plunge off the terrace. He winced even while his mind raced ahead, trying to gauge what he ought to do next. The situation had spiralled wildly out of his hands. He did not know how much Arnav had heard. And Arnav had been his most important pawn in this game- damage control was vitally needed.
He scurried forwards to the couple, Khushi still engulfed in his arms in a smothering embrace.
'Saale Sahab-' he began, already with a story about how Khushi was prepared to commit suicide out of her love for him thoroughly rehearsed in his mind.
Except he never got to verbalise that story, on account of the fact that no sooner had he neared them, no sooner had he spoken, a square, granite-hard fist had rammed straight into his face. He only remembered a couple of stars bursting in front of his eyes before dropping unconscious.
I was gonna write more, but I really need to get back to my books now. I'm not sure I wanna continue- aside from having such little time, I also happen to be the laziest creature on earth :p regardless, please let me know what you thought about it :)
I reserve all rights over this work of fiction and request that readers do not reproduce/copy/modify it elsewhere and/or claim credit. Thank you :)
Chapter Two- Blind Alley (Page 13)
Chapter Three- Starless Night (Page 22)
Chapter Four- Tempest (Page 22)
Note! Note! Note! (Page 36)
Chapter Five- Red Skies in the Morning (Page 37)
Chapter Six- Red Skies at Night (Page 37)
Chapter Seven - Self without the Less (Page 49)
