about the title: malaal is a Farsi/Urdu word meaning remorse, guilt, anguish and/or grief. taken from Abbas Ali Khan's song of the same name, which you should listen to along with Bloodstream by Stateless if you like listening to music while you read. those two would be my fic songs for this one.
summary: a lot can change over five years. but when it comes to them, nothing does.
notes: this fic is set five years in the future and takes place after that scene shown in the VDay special where Vidushi is with her husband and sees Parth working as a mechanic.
It has been almost five years but she still remembers how difficult it is to get the stains out.
She will probably have to stop at the outhouse before she goes back in. And the sari would have to be disposed off. He wasn't back until tomorrow and she has sent the cook and the maid home. The watchman, he wasn't a problem, she'd gotten his daughter a job in her husband's firm after all.
She knows her mind is running the same way it does every night. Every night in bed with him. A force of habit. But this isn't every night. And she isn't in bed. And where she is, is an amalgamation of her worst nightmare and her faintest hope mingling together in a nondescript garage in the dead of the night.
She needs to be here now, but here now is also the anti-thesis of everything she has worked for. This here now is that single split moment that breaks life into two halves - divides it into a before and after so stark, so defining it can never be reversed, a lifetime building up to this moment and a lifetime awaits after it. A lifetime regretting it, rectifying it, questioning it, reasoning it, reconciling it, erasing it, reliving it. This here now is going to be her undoing, and god help her, but she craves it.
'Thinking about him?' She looks up at him then, pulled back so suddenly from her thoughts, she has whiplash. He's returned with two steaming chais. The glasses are dirty and she wonders how old they are, when were they last washed properly. Watches him take a sip from it and does the same.
He's changed. He's sharper, harder, more angles, jagged edges and blunt lines.
Over the years, her mind had softened his edges, blurred his features, replaced his sharpness with a comfort and tenderness she had come to associate with him, no not his softness, hers. He'd never been soft with her, had been anything but soft with her. No, he had extended his softness to everyone else but her. For her, he reserved his harshness, only her, always her.
And it was in his brutality, his anger, his hate, his disgust that she had found him to be the most honest, stripped of all the calm and control that she knew to be fake, that used to prick her so bad and yet it had been his tenderness, unexpected and unwarranted, that had shattered her.
She thinks it ironic, always has. The way she did the same, only not. The way she always reserved her softness, her tenderness, her vulnerability just for him. The way he used his as a weapon against her. His kind words, his tender gestures, his silken promises merely a farce to get her guards down, a ploy to destroy her. And she been a fool, such a fool in love that she had welcomed even that with open arms. And it had been that, her love for him that he had used as ammunition to bring her down. Break her down, piece by piece and crumble her slowly, bit by bit. And she had let him, secure in the knowledge that at least then she was the only thing on his mind, at least then he needed her like she needed him. Irrationally, irrevocably, all the time.
He's watching her silently. The way she sits on a discarded tyre, her sari collected around her like a cocoon. He's never seen her in a sari before. She looks older in it, more graceful and composed, more mature. Nothing like how he remembers her. He hates it.
She's looking off into the distance, her mind far away from here. And he can see the years have been kind to her, but life hasn't. Just as he remembers her, she's still delicate and lithe but the fight seems to have drained out of her, the fire gone. She looks like a shadow of herself, but only because he knows her better - perhaps better than she knows herself.
When he turns back to the car, it takes him all of fifteen minutes to realise what the problem is. He feels his heart skip a beat and the blood drain from his face.
He doesn't think it's a coincidence. He stopped believing on those at a very young age, couldn't afford the luxury of hope. Hope like love was a privilege reserved for the rich. Hope for the common man was nothing but a lethal poison, slowly eating away on the inside, even as it fueled an illusion of better tomorrow - a little more, a little extra, but alas, a little was never quite enough. And by the time one figured it out, hope left only a skeleton of dreams in its stride. No, there was no room for hope in his life.
Which could only mean one thing, that she had purposely diffused the spark plug. Just enough for the car to have a genuine problem and yet be possible to drive it so far away from her posh locale, to his garage on the wrong side of town in the dead of the night.
He didn't for one moment doubt that she couldn't have fixed it herself. She had been a part of the dream team after all, this she could do it with a blindfold on. The question then, was why was she here, in front of him and now? Now after these years, here after all this time.
There were a thousand thoughts, a hundred thousand thoughts, swirling in his mind building up to a crescendo so loud it almost drowned out the rush of blood in his veins. He had initially thought this to be a genuine coincidence, even when he knew better, even when he had taught himself to know better. He had put their past where it belong, along with all his memories of his years at FITE and his friends and everything he was before - he had left it all behind. Sure he would never have to face it all over again. Sure she had done the same. But watching her sitting here so calm and composed, so oblivious to the turmoil and the storm she had brought in her wake angered him. She was mocking him with her mere presence and he was tired of being mocked, of being scorned at, of being ridiculed.
In a swift movement, he had closed the distance between them and lifted her up to her feet, her arm tight in his grip. She looked up at him shocked, caught off guard by his sudden actions. He smirked, she always did act well, pretending to be innocent when she was anything but.
It had taken him years to get where he was and where he was, wasn't much. Just enough to get by on his terms. An honest living, a small business and the freedom to come and go, work and stay as he pleased. A freedom he had paid heavily for. He had had to break off all ties with his past - pleasant or otherwise, wipe his slate clean, start afresh from scratch. He had worked everyday from dawn to dusk and then some more, slowly building a world of his own, on his own. Something to call his, entirely his and now she was here, contaminating it, ridiculing it. The jewels on her hand alone would total up to be more than he could make in a year. And it felt like a stinging slap across his face, belittled everything he had worked for day and night.
Why are you here?' He asked her, his voice low and dangerous.
I told you, my car has been giving me trouble and I...' She answers, confused at the sudden change in his demeanor. He was fine until just a moment ago. He couldn't have figured it out, could he?
No, not your well crafted excuse.' He knows. Why are you really here?' He asks her slow and strained, barely concealing his anger.
And that was the big question wasn't it? One she herself didn't have an answer for. She had spent nights laying awake in bed after she had caught that chance glimpse of him at the garage outside the pharmacy. His sweat covered face, his grease stained hands, his shocked, wrecked eyes. That one moment, that one image had haunted her days and nights and she was slowly going mad. Recounting all the memories she had thought she'd left behind, feelings and thoughts and emotions that she'd so carefully buried deep under the layers of handwoven silk, designer jewels and impulsive overseas trips. The sense of restlessness and yearning that had gripped her since, felt foreign to her after all these years and her skin felt too tight, too stretched trying to keep everything inside, contained and locked while she walked around pretending to be normal. But she couldn't tell him that. She couldn't even say it out loud to herself. Afraid she would erupt and drown out her whole existence.
He can see the storm clouding her eyes, her breath heaving as if overwhelmed but no words escape her lips. No answers, no lies, no reassurance, nothing that would help him stop his world from crumbling apart. His grip on her tightens and she looks up at him defiant. This she knows, this she can deal with, his actions and her reactions long ingrained in her. She can close her eyes and let go, she can quietly face whatever he chooses to do, to say, as long as she doesn't have to speak, she doesn't have to act and play an active role in the unfolding events. It will be easier to justify and rationalise later. Easier to just blame it all on him and the moment. Play the victim card.
Only she isn't the victim here just as he isn't the culprit. They are who they are. Him shackled by his values and morals and her trapped in her cage of greed and gold.
His eyes are penetrating through the careful layers she has built around her. She needs to stop him, to move away before he strips her of everything she's carefully build, everything she's worked for and holds dear.
I don't know' she answers honestly. Hopes it's enough.
It's not.
Five years' He tells her. She looks up at him. She knows, of course she knows. It's taken me five years to get here, to become this. You cannot just breeze in here in your designer sari and priceless stones and make a sham of everything I own, everything I am.'
But that's not...' She shakes her head. He's getting her wrong. Just like before, just like old times.
Then what is it? Why are you here? What do you want?', a pause and he's looking at her, really looking at her. She flinches.
'What do you really want?'
She bites her lip. She needs to hold on, she can't give in now. She shouldn't have come. She should have just moved along. Ignored him, ignored everything she had been feeling. But she needed answers, she needed to understand. She needed to make him feel like she had felt ever since she'd seen him. Like everything was suddenly bland, dimmer somehow, like she had been thrust underwater and everything seemed distant and she couldn't breathe. She needed to see for herself if she was the only one.
She wasn't.
Answer me, Vidushi!' He shakes her and she ends up biting her lip harder, tastes blood.
She could leave here right now. Apologise to him, say it was a mistake, that she would never cross paths with him again. Never show him her face again, never see his. The thought is followed with a sharp pang. Or she could stand her ground. Let him decide. Make decisions he wouldn't consider otherwise. She had stood calm in the face of his breakdown before, she could do it again. It's the only thing she was good at when it came to him. She could be more, but that's all he ever wanted from her.
In that split second she's made her choice. It seems anti-climatic to her. After all that they had been through, all these years, all they'd built - doing it so silently, she wasn't good with silences.
She was words, and threats and insults. She was snarks, and barbs and honesty. And while she had been called many things over the years - selfish, manipulative, opportunist - she'd never been a hypocrite, never in her eyes, never to herself. In that moment however, she realises she'd have to be what she wasn't, for him to do what he wouldn't. She chooses to stay. To see what he would do now, wanting him to battle with the choices he'd made, ones he'll make now and live with it, the way she does, the way she will.
She stands her ground quietly and silently watched. He could leave or he could stay. She's ready for both. His rejection or his acceptance. His downfall or his salvation both within his grasp. And she wants to see him decide. Wants to see what he would eventually pick. A part of her, vindictive and wild, wants to remember this moment for years to come. When she pulled him to the brisk of everything he was, everything he believed he was, and then pushed him over. Falling down with him.
He hates her. He hates her, so much. He can see that smug glint in her eyes. Victorious and dark - reveling in his turmoil, his breaking control. She always did enjoy pushing him over the edge and watching him crumble as she stood and mocked him for his weakness. For giving in, for losing to himself - over and over again. For reducing him to her level, stripping him of his morals and proving to him that they were alike. That he was no better than her, had never been, could never be, no matter how hard he tried.
He should just step back and walk away. She would eventually leave. And he can forget he even saw her, draped in a white sari, ethereal and haunting in his small garage. He can go on pretending she doesn't exist, doesn't live in the same city as him, same world as him. Like he has been doing for so long. Everything could back to being normal, like before. That would be the right thing to do, the moral thing.
But where had morals gotten him anyway? He knows if he did, tried to do the right thing, she would always mock him at the back of his mind, he would see her victorious smirk whenever he'd close his eyes and feel like the failure she had clearly come here to make him feel like. He could let her go and let her win, let her turn everything he has worked for over the last five years into a joke she would recount at one of her social parties - the ex who's merely a mechanic now, be her little foray into the rough side of life. Or he could show her what life on the rough side actually felt like. He could ruin the sanctity of her life just as she had his. Show her the consequences of playing with fire. Of belittling someone's dreams, hard work, life. Burn her like she was burning him, flaring the sparks he had been trying to douse for years, rekindling the blaze, bringing it alive. It would turn him to ash he knows, but he wouldn't be the only one going up in flames.
When he curls his fist in her hair and pulls back her head, she'd been expecting it. A smirk covers her face and he wants to scratch it off. Instead he attacks it with his lips, drowning it and tasting her blood. It tastes bitter, metallic and heady. Like sin. Like her and he's fallen so far deep, so low, he doesn't think he'll ever rise. And for the first time in a long time, he doesn't care.
She always knew he had a wild edge, but she never thought it would be so sharp. She feels like she had been cut and sliced, diced into tiny precise pieces. He'd taken her apart till she'd begged and moaned and lost her voice. Then he'd put her back together, slowly, carefully and not quite right. Her skin feels raw - stretched and loose, foreign and familiar, both at once. And as she stumbles to collect her clothes, she sees him watching her with a satisfied smirk on his face from where he lounges on the floor, making no attempts to help her. Her sari is ripped and covered in grease where he tried to pull it off in his haste, wanted to tarnish her, ruin her, destroy her as easily as he had her clothes. But she was no article of clothing he could just use and dispose, not any more, not like before. In fact, if anything, it had been the other way round this time. This time, she would be the one to leave him here and go back to her life, with only a lingering memory that would light up the rest of her life, this late night in his small garage a secret she would bury deep within along with her long forgotten delusions of love.
--
Or so she thought, until a week later, she sees him standing next to her husband as their new driver.
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