Author's note: Wrote this because the makers would never give us what we are hoping for.
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Armaan stared at Abhira from a distance. Anybody who knew her would notice the difference in her demeanor, as if there was a wall around her, a sturdy invisible wall, excruciatingly built piece by piece from the scattered remnants of her heart. She stood there on the open terrace, yet caged in a box, a constant sense of suffocation that seemed to have become her only constant these days.
Armaan knew it probably wasn't right for him to be here at Abhira's place at this time but he was driven by his restlessness after today's incident at the bachelorette party and it didn't feel right to let her stay all alone knowing she was probably suffering a lot. He had only seen her fall in the pool, but all the things that preceded were still unknown to him. He also knew she wouldn't open up, especially not to him but he just had to be there for her, make sure she was okay.
So he walked towards her, while she was lost in her own array of thoughts, gazing at the few stars that adorned the rather empty sky, like door knobs to hidden poetries. And in that moment it hit Armaan again, how intrigued he was by her mind...the mind that felt like it were a galaxy of exploding cosmos and shooting stars. She had the kind of mind that would look at firecrackers and believe they were falling stars for her to wish upon. Her mind was what the first rays of the sun on a winter morning would feel like... wasn't there a word for it?
Abhira found solace in the stars, their distant light offering a sense of calm. Each point of light seemed to pulse with the heartbeat of the universe, a rhythm she found oddly comforting. For a moment, she could forget everything and just be.
Armaan walked closer, "You love watching the stars don't you?"
Abhira flinched with a force that hit them both, like a jolt of unexpected lightning. Her hands instinctively wrapped the shawl tighter around her and her body tensing as if struck. Her breathing became rapid and shallow.
Armaan stepped back, his expression softening as he noticed her reaction. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "I didn't mean to startle you."
Abhira took a step back, her back pressing against the cold metal railing of the terrace. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her temples, the familiar grip of panic closing around her chest. She tried to speak, but her throat was tight, the words trapped. She focused on her breathing, willing herself to calm down. Inhale, exhale. Just breathe. Slowly, the world began to come back into focus. She could see him more clearly now, his features softened by the moonlight. There was no threat in his posture, only genuine concern.
"I...I am sorry, I just... wasn't expecting anyone", Abhira spoke, her throat hurting with the strain it took to form a coherent sentence. And she hated it, being so vulnerable and so weak, she hated being in her skin right now, as if she didn't belong, not even in her own body.
Armaan just shook his head, "you don't have to apologise, I understand."
For a moment her eyes seemed to hold a question, if he actually did, if he truly did understand how it felt right now to be her, to struggle to just...be. But before he could actually read her eyes, she turned away. And they stood there in silence. Every few seconds Armaan's eyes feel on how Abhira's hands on their own accord would scratch her arm, as if trying to remove her skin. And it broke Armaan, because Abhira was always someone who was comfortable with who she was, someone who wouldn't shed herself to build a version that others wanted, someone who smiled looking at herself in the mirror... someone who probably knew how to love herself. So there was something so discomforting and painful to watch her feel like her very own skin wasn't where she belonged, like she had to remove it to feel something pure and untainted.
Armaan gently wrapped his hand around hers and she looked distraught but she wouldn't look at him. All he wanted in that moment was to erase the events of today from her memory, and let her free from the pain that she was feeling.
It was a few prolonged moments later that Abhira sighed, her eyes still fixated at the stars, "When I was five years old I asked Mumma about Papa, I asked her why everybody has their father standing at the school gate waiting for them while I didn't. She refused to tell me anything and I don't remember much but I guess she even panicked a little."
Armaan stared at Abhira, and the sheen of tears that settled in her eyes. He gently squeezed her hand, encouraging her to continue.
"I was seven, when I came back home crying, with a scratched bleeding knee and a few bruises here and there. Mumma wasn't at home, she had to work extra to make our ends meet. So I waited for her on the porch, waited for her to come back, wrap me in her embrace and heal all my wounds. I waited for hours before I stood up, fetched the cotton and antiseptic from the drawer and tended to my own wounds. That day the seven year old Abira learnt something...some times people don't show up and you can't wait for them to do, before you allow yourself to heal."
Armaan could imagine, a cherub little Abhira, with her red running nose and shaking little hands, too scared to allow the cotton doused in antiseptic to touch her skin and his heart broke a little for the child who learnt to tend to her wounds a bit too early. In a tiny corner of his heart, he has always been jealous of the relationship Abhira had with Akshara, but people tend to forget that growing with a single parent means, that on some days you don't have any and it's not necessarily their fault because they are only trying, but can you stop a child's heart from yearning?
"I was nine when we got a class project to make a family tree and talk about three things we love the most about each of our family member", Abhira hurriedly rubbed the tears that fell down her eyes, while Armaan drew comforting circles with his thumb on her other palm. "Everybody turned up to class with these big trees, Mumma, siblings, grandparents and....Papa. And I just had Mumma and me. I felt...incomplete, as if everybody had something that I didn't and I couldn't ever have. I ran away and I cried, something my teacher never expected to see. She called Mumma and she told her what happened."
"Abhira you...", Armaan tried to say something comforting but Abhira interrupted, "let me speak...please", she pleaded, her eyes shutting painfully.
"That night, Mumma and I slept under the stars, and she told me everything about my Papa, his innocence, his kindness despite his difficult life. Abhinav Sharma... that's my Papa's name. Mumma told me, he would have loved me with all his heart and soul. He was a simple man but there was nothing he wouldn't have done for me. She told me...about my elder brother...the brother I never got a chance to meet."
That was something Armaan didn't know about. And he realised how little he knew about her, how little he had tried to know her. The pain that her voice carried today, was something he hadn't felt before, the kind of pain that seemed to make it difficult for her to breath.
"Mumma pointed at the sky, and she showed me how bright the stars shines. She told me these stars...were my family. Every star in the sky was a heartbeat of my Papa and my bhaiya."
Armaan stared at her face and he could see a young, innocent and anxious Abhira staring at the stars, with an unmatched sparkle in her eyes.
"So instead of making a family tree, I made the solar system and I told my class that the sky was my home and all its stars and planets were my family", Abhira smiled between her tears.
"I was a weird kid, I talked to myself, I talked to myself because I didn't have a lot of friends, I played with the trees and I talked to everything around me, except people. And then we shifted to Mussoorie and I became the resort staff's favourite. They would get me chocolates and help me hide it from Mumma. I would talk to balloon sellers and get them to teach me how to make animals with balloons. I would sit with the florist and make tiaras for his mother. Although incomplete, I never felt empty..." Armaan smiled at her, because that is who she was. She would find happiness in tiniest corners and build her home with those little moments of joy. She was hopeful, she was bright and she was....apricity! Yes that was the word...the rays on sunlight on a winter morning... apricity.
"I never felt empty...the way I do now", and it took whatever little strength was left in every cell of her body for her to not break down into sobs and let him see the wreckage he had made of her, the aftermath of his and his family's disasters.
"On some days...I fear I have started to see myself the way you do", Abhira spoke, removing her hand from his grasp and clutching her own shawl.
And Armaan looked at her confused. How did she think he saw her?
"I fear that someday I will look at myself in the mirror and find a broken toy that needs repairing to be of use. That I will look at myself and I will find something who has to be tolerated, someone who has to be beaten and broken into pieces and remoulded to fit in this world, to find a place where I could belong. That I would find an object that can be thrown away like it was never important. I fear...I will find a broken branch fallen from a rotten dead tree...like your Dadisa does. I fear I will find a girl who is nobody's daughter, nobody's blood and love, the way your mother does. I fear...I will find a girl that deserves to bleed and remove her skin, a girl who wouldn't know what a father is like...the way your phupha sa finds. I fear I will lose my voice...my only companion on most days because this voice doesn't reach me among the other voices now plaguing my mind", and Abhira sucked in a breath digging her nails into her arms.
"I fear...I will find someone incapable of having a home, someone who is undeserving of love and family...I fear I will see myself, the way you see me, I fear, I will hate myself, the way you do"
An unmatched desperation clawed at Armaan's heart, a desperation to hold her and tell her this isn't how he saw her. He gently cupped her face and made her look at him.
"You really think I hate you? You really think that's how I see you?", he whispered.
And Abhira just shrugged, closing her eyes, too exhausted to find her voice, too scared to allow him to find the pain in her eyes, the pain he had caused.
He sighed and rested his forehead on hers, "That is not...that is not how I see you Abhira. I don't hate you...I can't. I see you, and I see a strength unknown to me, I see you and I see a voice that could change the whole world. I see you and I see a light brighter and warmer than a familiar summer morning. You are so full of love and kindness, you can never be incapable of having a home."
The knots in her chest only tightened, "please don't lie to me...I can't take anymore of these lies, I can't... please."
"I am not lying...trust me, please, I couldn't even if I wanted to Abhira..."
Abhira pulled away from his hold, the touch too familiar and her heart too fragile to harbour any hopes. "After all that has happened and is still happening, do you really expect me to believe that?" Her voice barely above a whisper.
And Armaan went silent, his mind going back to all the events that brought them here, Charu's truth and the blames that were thrown at her, his own cruelty and attempts at showing her she did not belong, this wasn't her family and the mansion wasn't her home. He thought about all those moments in the last month where had time and again told her he didn't want her, he was tired of her, all those moments where his family had taken a jibe at her and her upbringing, her dead mother who died saving him...an information he didn't mention to his family, and let them insult her. Whatever happened today has left an emotional and a physical scar on her, and has worked as the final blow to break her but what he has been doing to her, what his family has been subject her to had long caused the damage.
Armaan looked at her walked away. And he feared...that the day Abhira was scared of was long past them and he had probably convinced her of all the abuses being thrown at her, were truths.
Apricity...the comforting sunrays of a winter morning, gone, lost and suddenly the weather felt chilly, harsh against his skin or perhaps the realisation dawning upon him...Abhira would never be the same.
Thanks for writing this when in the show this scene will never come.
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