Dollhouses
Pairing: Ayaan/Humairah
Genre: Angst/Romance
Summary: Ayaan and Humairah are going through a rough patch :(
***
This was what love looked like - saturated, sour, stagnant.
It painted a magnificent portrait, with a backdrop of a double-story home, amidst a garden of azaleas and roses... in the middle of rolling clouds and darkened, rumbling skies.
Love was dishonesty, lies... wretched, useless love. Just the way she remembered it, like she remembered his words.
"If you want to leave, you're welcome to. I won't stop you." Why didn't he care? Why?
She couldn't stay there anymore. The door slammed shut behind her, and she ran just to get away.
The sky roared fiercely and she - breathless and bewildered, weeping and fuming, collapsed on the ground, clutching her chest in pain.
How did this happen, how did this happen... so fast?
She caught her tears on her sleeve restlessly. She was shaking, but she wasn't sorry.
***
Their home had been like a coffin without him, large and empty and to escape from the unbearable silence, Humairah fled to her country home where her childhood had unravelled.
For the first time in many years, Humairah felt human again.
In the small room, layered with dust and cluttered with the memories of a once carefree youth, she was oddly content.
She was the most comfortable she had been in a long time, in her own bedroom with her shelves laden with old porcelain dolls and her small canopy bed.
She was happy without life's little luxuries that she had become so accustomed to.
She had given up her charge of her household and taken charge of her own life.
But was it enough?
Her once unblemished optimism was long gone and she had no will, no desire and no one to celebrate her new identity with.
Idly, she fingered the soiled lace dress of a doll; it had been one of her most treasured.
Now, tattered and torn - she laid on a shelf. Someone's beloved, forgotten - thrown away.
Much like herself, she thought, blinking back tears.
She missed him. It was as simple as that, these forced distances between them were necessary and at the same time unbearable.
Being away from him, was exactly what she wanted the first few weeks, but as time passed, Humairah realised that loneliness was even more painful.
God, was she so fake? She was pretending to be happy with him. She was feigning happiness without him.
What did she want? Who was she?
Regret poisoned her blood, resentment coursed through her veins. Loathing not at him, but at herself for letting things get so out of hand.
She strolled through the countryside watching colourful birds chirping, roses beginning to blossom, such beautiful sights that made her worry cease temporarily, but then she would remember him and the ache in her heart would start up again.
Dawn's slow promise of warmth would go unfulfilled everyday as she sat by her window, waiting for him to emerge from the mist and take her home, where she belonged.
Humairah wished that she could be the flawed girl that he had fallen in love with, but these impossible longings were just that - impossible.
Weeks turned into months and just as she settled into the country life, busying herself in the garden, Humairah's prayers were answered. Standing in the doorway, stood Ayaan, thin, pale and weary, but there
Bloodshot eyes began watering again, and his tired eyes beckoned regretfully.
And before Humairah knew it, she was spinning in his strong arms as he murmured soft, sincere apologies into her hair as she cried.
All the anger, frustration dissolved and melted away as they held onto each other.
