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' Scared & Scarred'
"Abhi-Abhi-Abhi...",breathes flared out of her burning nostrils when the bile rose to her throat. The deep pit of uncertainty whirling inside her was now full to the edge. Her toes tattered on the way to his arms.
Abhimanyu's eye widened in jolt on hearing the tremulous scale Adhya's voice held. The eyes that were stuck on messy bed were shifted to her, in a mili second. Her wobbling knees strolled in the warmth of his arm. He was pulled against her body in an affluent force.
"Abhi..." she said with her vocals sunken to the gush of winds. Abhimanyu's arms tighten across her frame in an instant.
Her stiffened muscles under his hold and the shoulders moulding to her front was an indication to another panic attack struck her flagrantly. The worst to conclude about the scenario, for him, was the reason for such a trigger.
Adhya's slender dactyls circled his nape, with her nails dug deep in his skin; to an extent that blood surfaced along the fiery sensation of pain. Abhimanyu's face contorted in paleness but his hold stayed affirm around her.
She wasn't crying, he concluded at the dryness his t-shirt had, nor her whimpers were audible. It was a complete silence. A fatal silence, though. He could make out, not everytime the silence meant for peace some are mind bursting prior to blunders. And this silence was one of them. If there was a whirlpool of emotion swirling in Adhya's head, Abhimanyu's head was an intense reflection of the same, currently. They stayed still. Engulfing the silence and embracing the masked souls, next to each other.
"Adhya..." said Abhimanyu, in his soothing voice; graced with love and eyes glinting in concern. He softly untangled her coiled arms off him. Adhya's feet drew an inch back and shoulders slumped in an unsaid defeat. Their entwined fingers loosely hung in air separating them. Adhya breathed in the moment, pinching her with the assumed rejection and rigidity coming from Abhimanyu. She least expected that, at least not from him ever. Her lips trembled in the frigidity of the air conditioner, her follicles stood erect with the cold as her metabolism neared the bottom line.
"Everything's fine!"Abhimanyu said, pulling Adhya in an embrace, again. The glitter of her tearless eyes was a doorway to emptiness she was heading to, and when he saw that, fears tugged in. Unlike her violent panic attacks, this calmed numbness from her was new to him and also a tough course to deal with.
"Everything is fine, Abhi?...Right?... Nothing is wrong?" she asked trembling in fear. Her muscles tensed up and her dead weight laid, on his shoulders. He could feel the aloofness she felt. This time, her panic attack felt more excruciating to him than it have ever been in the past. There was a distant essence of the events too, propelling them to act so strange and weird, as well.
"Yes! Everything is fine... everything is good and with you beside, it's beautiful too." Contrary to the situation of vulnerability and the sensed tension, his lips were gracing a smile, this time a real one. Adhya craned her neck to search for the assurance and sincerity in his eyes, the same way she could feel it through his words. When she found some, it did the magic to her in sprouting that much needed warmth her being felt lack of, all this while.
"It's all beautiful!",her gaze shimmering with adorance as the emptiness was replaced by the tears. He held that adorance in her eyes pretty longer than a few minutes, watching the time paced up, carelessly. Abhimanyu's lips scooted on it's own accord to kiss her temples and her eyes closed in sync, relishing the moment that transpired.
A lone tear slid down her paled cheeks, moulding around the edge of lower lip turning witheringly dry. Their entwined fingers loosened up as the breathes sinking in their lungs grew heavier. "Tell me."he asked, making his hold on her grow tighter to make her feel secured.
Adhya's lips parted to tell, but she didn't had the strength to. There was an unsettling calm in her mind now, after a destructive calamity that has arose. " I...I...",the squeeze of his palm motivated her silently with attentive ears. She pushed herself to the limits.
Closing her eyes, she breathed in the confidence to express her side of the story.
"I was lost in that dark store room, again.",her voice strangulated, pumped in the bravery to that rapping heart; momentarily.
"I ain't scared of the darkness, Abhi. It...it..makes me feel secured and hidden."she cried. Seeing her bursting to the tears was never this reliving to him as it was now. It was partially how she behaved previously too. Abhimanyu's ears on alert and eyes zoomed to her slender frame, in his arms.
"But the room had that smell. That same darkness. I couldn't find myself. I couldn't see myself.", Adhya's hands swam in air making that mirthless amused face, which was a mirror to her past fears. Her wet cheeks and melting eyes depicted the unfortune she was subjected to, a dreadful horror through her expressions.
"Why were you there? And how did you reached?"he asked, his fingers tugging her fringes to the sides he blew air to.
"I...I needed to collect some past records from the store room. I have been there a number of times before too. It's just that the windows weren't painted in black, earlier, as it was today. Everything was so dark. Like black. I felt lost...again. Defeated by my fate. Something I could never grow strong against." said Adhya. She looked into his darkened pool of almonds that stayed a mystery to her. His emotions were masked with his battling lashes and her sight was blur in tears.
"Nobody can grow strong against fate. It's what we all are puppet to. You, me and everyone. We should better stop fighting against it. And rather learn to accept what may come." The hoarseness of his voice sent shivers to the nerve cells. The daze in his demeanor affected her. He was lost into the oblivion. Adhya wrapped her fingers around his long index finger; as her hold grew strong it brought him in senses to reality.
"Come, let's sit and talk."he spoke earnestly with mellowed vocals, blinking his eyes to her. Her knees wobbling, gave up to slump on bed; followed by Abhimanyu who slid against the bed with his palms still clasped in hers.
"You know, you are strong. You were strong when you decided to move on from the past like that. Not just everyone is brave enough, and to say is the easiest. You did it, sweetheart. You moved on. And I am blessed to have my life shared with you.To make beautiful memories with you, and a lot more to come.",his eyes wrinkled mirthless eying the weariness her eyes sizzled with. He knew how tired her being is, fighting with her ownself every night before she falls to sleep.
'She needs to stop being a warrior now, all this while she is battling against herself.', he thought, looking at her mellowed tone features: the pinkish edgy nose and the stained cheekbones with the eyes sunken to a depth more than he saw last night.
"I have moved on. But what about these scars, I have? They still reminds me about it." She said in a dead voice, with no emotion masking her face. A look at her, would keep one hooked searching for the missing and still one couldn't find if it ever existed. He heaved a sigh, his heart ached witnessing her jerked to the same square of defeat, from where she started her journey of bravery too.
"Scars...scars are the rewards a warrior gets from every strive he fought. They are the memorabilia that you have made it. You have made through it,love." he mumbled in her ears with a disarming husk. Abhimanyu felt like communicating with a child, which have always been mandatory to get her rational side out of her eccentric shell she creates. His darting eyes stuck on her when the frozen emotions melted in accord to his words.
"Abhi," Adhya's words stuck in her throat with the prominent lump that swelled up her adam's apple. She further continued squeezing his palm in her hold," Why weren't they all human? Was money everything above justice and humanity?..."
"You know, I could still hear my granny's shrilled voice:Adhya,go away from this hell. He will destroy you.", she in took shallow breathes. Adhya's eyes were glistening with tears but none of them sufficed to fall. "But when the time came, she was one among to accuse me, through testimony in the court. Why, Abhi? Why they did so bad to me?",he had no answer to fill her quest. This was something she has been searching from the tender age of sixteen; that was garnished with bitterness of memories more, than the fun and frolic of teenage.
Her questioning gaze have always scarred his confidence as a man, and sometimes he felt helpless too knowing he have nothing to answer her. There have been moments of despair he had in closed room, for failing to provide security to his wife's valid insecurities. She still couldn't forget her past but when it becomes a huge part of their present, unnecessarily, he wishes to move out; calm himself first before he handle her. But unfortunately, at that moment of her panic attack he never had a choice to, other than to cajole her.
"Adhya, see...it was all in the past. And now, we have a beautiful present with us. You should value it. Those bitter memories is what you have left behind. They shall stay in there." He lifted his mass above the ground, taking a seat next to her on bed.
Unknowingly, her head fitted in the cavity of his nape; the scent of his warmth and sweat invaded her sense. She breathed in an erratic pattern ranging from shallow to the heavier ones. "I want to. But somehow, I just cannot. Those monsters overshadowed my present. I haven't moved on. I am still stuck in there. It's just that I pretended to have passed that phase." she said, her melancholy barefaced to her tone. With his eyes on her, Abhimanyu noticed a flicker of second when her face was a mirror to devastation and then it changed into nothingness. It was like her countenance were moulded like that. There was a lunatic weirdness about her. He has started to feel strangeness around her. He was guilt ridden for growing so much distanced to her over a few weeks of time.
"Time will heal everything, Adhya."
"Not every scar has a remedy. It's not on skin. But the soul is the bearer and it will bear till the last breath."
A pregnant pause engulfed them. Abhimanyu had nothing left in his mind to cajole her into. On the other hand, Adhya's mind was incurring a brain storm of emotions. Everything seemed new and dull, except for him, next to her.
"I feel disgusted of myself for falling so weak in front of them. I still hate myself for crying over that so called lost family. After Mom and Dad, I really never had one." spoke Adhya, staring into the oblivion. The shimmery pitter-patter of raindrops glistensed over the floor-to-ceiling glass panels and the sound of it kissing the ground was synchronized with their togetherness, musically soothing.
"Abhi, we will make our daughter self-dependent. So strong, that she wouldn't have to turn up to us, for support. She can fight her own battles.", his nostrils dipped in her freely falling hair when he staged his lips to her crown, for a kiss. Her hold on him loosened till it was barely a touch. She was framing herself into the warrior she potrayed herself to be. His fingers brushed her tears aways but the cheeks were stained with saline.
"It doesn't specifically applies to our daughter,okay? It's applicable to our son as well or the day isn't far when his wife would barge into our room complaining about his carelessly thrown socks and shoes. Like me."whispered Abhimanyu in a hush-hush tone trying to add an essence of humour to situation after a hellacious session of getting things on the right track. And fortunately, there was a sprouting smile on her lips.
"The day isn't far yet? You are insane! We haven't started planning for it yet and--the day isn't far."Adhya chuckled sarcastically, pretty irritated of the topic of his socks and shoes dispersed on the floor she keeps stumbling upon, on a diurnal note.
"Fine!",his shoulders hunched back in defense as he continued," But, we can still plan about the kids. Well, how about now?"
Adhya's breathe was hitched to her throat, her fists balled up and heartbeats paced up. She avoided looking into his eyes, battling her lashes apart she drew a little distance between them. Abhimanyu's unruly fingers brushed along her ear lobe compelling an erection to her follicles, at nape.
"Erm...I should get ch-changed, first.",she stood up abruptly, on noticing Abhimanyu's face advancing towards her beauty blades. "You get the sheets done."
-------|X|-------
"Stop these chase games, Krishna! It would get you nothing but sores, like this."Madhavi chided her son, Krishna who hissed in pain as the hot blood drained through bruise. Dipping the cotton in the tincture solution is her routine for years now. Her job of nursing the patients have made her learnt the diversity of remedies. But, to treat her son's injuries have always ached her heart to an extent that it ditched her professionalism. Her hands always shiver when they have to brush over his injuries. But if not her, then her carefree son won't pay a heed to his injuries, for a cure.
"With these sores, I get us food. Your job isn't enough to fill our stomach, had I not been working."Krishna retorted, his fingers skillfully trailing over the screen as he selected a few pictures and sent them to it's respective dealer, Nivaan Basu.
"You shouldn't talk like that to your mom." saying so Madhavi stood up, knotting the bandage around his sore ankle. There was a flimsy layer of tear glistening her corneas. The insulting scene at the hospital, in the evening,flashed across her mind. She pressed her lips to usurp that feeling of good-for-nothing for someone she has sacrificed her everything.
'Krishna always had to struggle with his needs. I never knew the necessity of food would eventually snatch my son.',her silent tears were pushed backwards, when she noticed him looking at her intently. His eyes softened but the rigidity in his shoulders was unmoved.
"Krishna-"she called out to him with motherly affection," Giving someone scars doesn't heal our wounds. Always remember that."
"Mom, I know what I am doing. You don't need to tell me."
"I can just tell you about things. It's up to you how to act. After all, you are a grown up now."she paused, trying to search for sincerity in her son's eyes but there was nothing.
"I am glad, you realised!",he shrugged his shoulders in reply, stretched his arms in the air; yawning.
"Krishna, I know what you're up to. And it would never get you anything other than remorse. Nivaan Basu would never bring you to lights." The color drained from his face when the words hit the right cord of his brain. He never knew if his mother had any knowledge on how he's planning his game play. But hearing Nivaan's name from her did alerted his senses to keep his acts guarded. Though it wasn't the whole truth but a loophole to his conspiracy.
-------|X|-------
Sliding the cotton fabric of her bodice over her head, she started at her reflection in mirror, cropped into a drop shape. Those visible tear stains made her feel disgusted of herself for falling weak, all over again. Adhya moved ahead, splashed water on her face to wash them away. It was rather an attempt to hide everything that reminds of her cowardice. The heat dissipated through her eyes when the cold water from the tap touched her skin.
"You are the strongest!" she spoke to the woman staring back at her in the reflection. But somewhere, deep down she knew it too, everything is just a false boost up. Everything is for pretense in front of others. But how could she lie to herself, even if it means for an enchanting delusion.
Adhya's upper clad less body revealed a pale, deep-seated cross in her skin, along the waistline. Her faltering knuckles trailed over it, she scrunched her eyes closed when the protruding mark of stitches came in contact.
<Flashback>
(italic)"Ahh..."she yelped in pain as the hot red fluid trailed along her sides. Nothing felt so relieving and shuddering to her at the same time, than this. The sharpend blade pierced profoundly with the pinch of her knuckles that were dipped in red. Shredding her soft skin into layers she grabbed the t-shirt from the floor to stuff her mouth with.
With another slash, the probability to her survival grew smaller compelling her brain cells to rejoice her last moments. Her muffled cries echoed through her ears, at the back of her head. And there was still an uneasy smile stretched through her grinding jaws. The illusion of letting her soul free of most possed materialistic belonging, her body seemed more beautiful than the sufferings of world she incur for just no hope.
Her injured finger tips caressed the blazing carving, her hands trembling with agony. Adhya's cheeks drenched in tears and the pair of quivering lips called for the creater in heaven to free her from all bodily pain, at it's earliest. Her eyes rimmed in red with the bursting capillaries, she wanted to capture her last moments beautifully but writhing in a minimal death.
' Even the death seems to ditch me, or rather play with me a little more.' Adhya thought, squinting her eyes in accordance with the pain that has slashed her nerves to a skull f**king sensation. The light above her head seemed blinking to her when her burdened lashes battled through the tears weren't ceasing.
She felt the urge to yell, giving a closure to manifestation when she found her body losing the control. Pulling out the t-shirt from her buccal cavity, she yelled to the loudest believing it to be for the last time.
Her body weakened with the blood drain, she slumped on the floor, lifelessly staring and blinking to the light on her head.
Few minutes more to her consciousness, she could feel her cells cracking and numbness propelling in.
"Adhya--Adhya! Open the door!" numerous of calls rang in her brain when her body laid half-dead. Her eyes closed to engulf darkness but fate was still in a strive to live for an infinitesimal hope sprouting. The knocks and the bangs, all went unanswered until she saw the doors flinging apart, with a diminshing wink of her eyes. The last sight of the day before she was pulled up to the life again; laid relentlessly on the hospital bed. (/italic)
<Flashback>
She gasped, when the soft knocks on the lavatory door broke her reverie. Her fingers lost the contact with that aching scar, at first, till she acknowledged the surroundings.
"Adhya, are you fine?... Do you need my help with anything?"asked an impatient Abhimanyu who was startled with her ignorance and act of hastening into other things.
"Yeah...I-I'n fine, Abhi. Just giv-ve me five minutes more!"she stuttered drawing herself away from the mirror; leaning on the door frame to support her trembling limbs.
"Okay!",she heard him say before his feet drew away with the diminishing sound. Her heart thudded at the obscured suicidal rememberance striking her boggled brain at the wrong time. She balled up her fist, knotting and closing it to release the tension; " Everything's alright... Everything's alright... Everything's alright!" she mumbled under her breath.Grabbing the pair of hot pants and a lose rayon shirt from the set of hangers attached at the back of door, she slipped into it. Not wasting a second locked in the lavatory to let things get messier for her with another panic attack, she moved out in a swift.
There he stood stretching the sheets on bed to fix it under the mattress. On a silent treaty she moved ahead to help him out; stretching the other end to follow up the same suit and cleared the undone creases. When her eyes rose, it fell on the stock of duvet and bedspread piled up at the corner, behind him. He noticed her staring at it, a sheepish smile in reply sufficed her bubbling anger nor she was in mood to pick up a fight after the weary events occurred to her. Simply nodding to him, she plopped on bed to lay down.
"Doesn't mean I am going to tolerate it everytime you do the bedspreads." she muttered in a playful warning, trying her level best to get the henious images out of her mind.
"Alas! I was crediting my charming smile for that change of mind.", Abhimanyu beamed at her, slipping into the duvet next to her after switching the lights off. Coiling his arm around her waist securely he pulled her to himself, nuzzling into her hair and peppering open mouth kisses along her beauty blades. She scrunched her eyes closed making out where they were heading to and she didn't wish it to happen after all the obscurity.
He could sense her resistance in the act, feeling her stiffened muscles under his cautious hold. As the realisation hit him, his hold fell vaguely loose and distance stretched into a barrier. Abhimanyu's action retarded laying himself on his stomach with eyes shut in a dismay. The sexual tension between them was palpable in density of air. Adhya feared for any undesirable reaction from him, her fingers crossed in prayer.
"A-Abhi, I...I ain't prepared for this!"she exclaimed in her breathy and croaky vocals. Her eyes shut, sprouting with tears thinking of the probability of hitting the wrong cord of his so called male ego, in any case. Beside being a gentleman Abhimanyu is a callous egoistic too. He can forgive any deed till it doesn't hit his gleaming ego and once the unfortunate was done. There isn't a way out of the backlash he conspires; so determined like an omniscient, in general.
There wasn't a reply from him for a duration she didn't had record of. She could feel him twisting away from her on the bed, drawing himself to the farther corner before a consistent settling.
"I have kept the cake and edibles in the refrigerator. Anyway, it was already past midnight so no use to call for a celebration when the special day was already over.",she heard him say from behind. Needless to say the mental trauma she was subjected to yet again. Her rationality sunk in layers. She felt like an object at the moment everyone wishes to play with but none actually concerned about her state of mind.
Her tears weren't enough to voice for that solitude she felt around Abhimanyu from quite a few weeks. He has grown distant to her, she knew and feared about it the most. She tried to revive the same jolly in their relationship as previously but it felt like dissipating more with her attempts. Anybody would have felt disappointed and rejected at the way she denied him but he should have though about her too. She too have a say in this. She too have say in things that are lawfully shared shared between a husband and wife. There shouldn't be a strive for an upmanship in a pious bond like this.
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A/N
I know everyone is done with my apologies for late updates and breaking promises, trust me, I remorse it too. Due to some surprising academic formalities lined up and a new voyage to begin with it took me time to adjust with the events. Thankfully I am acquainted to the things now and possibly the updates would be regular.
I had a lot more things to add in this chapter but owing to my schedule and the gap between the previous update I chose to update it now with minimal final touches here and there.
This chapter is really an important one I have been waiting to pen ever since I had the idea of writing a story with such a dark theme. It basically dwells upon the contradictions in human psychology to it's convenience and the limitations. It's a close up to Adhya and Abhimanyu's relationship as a whole: the ups-and-downs, the frustrations, the insecurities and a lot more shades to discover. An important part of #1 book of series would revolve around Adhya and Abhimanyu with other thrilling intervention of the current case on going. It was important to highlight the base steadily and I hope you don't hate me for this.
There was a subtle insight to Adhya's dark past, revealing yet undercovers, which would be brought to light at the right time. Krishna's is another strong character who would take a major role in the course of solving Vivaan's murder mystery and a lot more to come.
PS: I tried some experiments in the chapter when compared to my previous writing style and pattern. Don't forget to share your reviews about that too!
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Precap: Adhya suspicious of Abhimanyu.
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