"Khwaab aur haqeeqat mein ab farq na raha, sab jhoote hai, sab dhoke hai"

~ Author ~

Mumbai, India

It was white, it was pretty. Meher woke up at a pristine, beautiful place, which looked somewhat serene, somewhat peaceful. She noticed herself laying on the ground and immediately woke up.

She looked down on her clothes, which weren't bloodied anymore. Where was she?

She noticed that she wasn't on the highway anymore— she couldn't make out where she was. Was this a dream?

"Yes, it is," A familiar bass voice made her turn around, Meher's happiness knew no bounds. Without giving much thought, she ran straight into Abhimanyu's arms. Abhimanyu laughed as he picked her up and twirled her in the air, their giggles echoing in that place.

When Abhimanyu finally put her down, she cupped his cheek lovingly, her thumb tracing the roughness of his face. How long had it been? Five complete years. Five years later she was seeing him again, in one piece with no scars, no blood.

Where was she?

"Somewhere between heaven and earth," he answered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Huh?" Meher was startled. Abhimanyu chuckled, dropping a small kiss on her hair. "You asked where you were and I just gave you the answer."

"You can read minds now," she stepped away from him for a moment and crossed her arms.

"Well, you can say that," he shrugged.

Meher went to him again, her hands tracing his bicep, resting on his shoulders. "This is real, right?"

"No," he answered. "I am just a fragment of your imagination," Meher's eyes filled with tears. She wanted it to be real, she wanted to be with him.

"This feels so real," she chokes, her hand never stops caressing his face.

"We never really had time together, did we?" He asked her and Meher shook her head, her lips pressed so as not to burst into tears.

"Mhmm, you went so far away that returning was impossible," she complained.

"I am sorry," he told her, hugging her tight. "I didn't know it would end so soon."

Meher's tears weren't stopping. She wanted it to be real, so bad that she wanted to stay back here with him. Love was a mysterious emotion. It brought happiness, passion, and delight but along with that, it brought pain and sadness.

Being introverted never taught her the want to fall in love, to have a partner for a lifetime. And when she did understand what love was like, what it felt like, it was already gone with the wind.

Parting made the love stronger. Their love was strong but could they return back to each other? No. That was the pain of love, it was death that made them apart— no situation could drive them apart but only death.

Then why did God make people in pairs just to drive them apart? Were they that bad of a person?

"You can never be a bad person, Meher," Abhimanyu broke the hug but still held her in his arms, wiping the tear off her face. "You're God's grace, my grace, the biggest blessing of my life, how can you be a bad person?"

Meher kept crying, she knew where this was heading to.

Another separation, another heartbreak, another loss.

"What am I supposed to do now?" She asked him when she finally gained some courage.

"You go back," and her heart broke into millions of pieces, "you go back to fulfilling your dreams, you go back to your parents, to your old life."

"And what about you? What about— us?" She whispered.

"I have lived a life," he gently held her face in his palms, "enough to know and to experience one of the best things in my life. My life is over now. But yours is still there. You live my share of life. They say," tears sprang out of his eyes as he tried to laugh, the separation was killing him too. "The greatest love stories are of two types— the ones who create history in love while they live or the ones who make history by dying for love. I guess, I fall in the second category. Let me be the lovesick Ranjha to this enigmatic Heer."

His words made sense to her. Her rapidly beating heart suddenly calmed as she felt the depth of his words.

People come and go, but the memories remain. One needs to cherish those memories than to resent someone's death.

"I love you, my Ranjha," she tiptoed to place a kiss on his cheek, just like she did, five years ago.

"I love you meri Heeriye," he pecked her forehead for one last time as he left her, going back to the place where he came from.

Meher watched his retreating back, her vision getting blurred as she fell into the dark abyss, once again.

* * *

Kabir was sitting outside Meher's ward, his feet continuously tapping the ground in nervousness. Meher was shifted to a normal ward yesterday. Thankfully, she was alive. It was his turn to stay today as the twins who were here previously went home to catch some sleep. The older ones were not allowed because they fretted over a lot, especially the moms, it was difficult to handle them.

Shikha already fainted twice due to high blood pressure and Divya had caught a fever due to excessive stress. The Dads did nothing but scream at the doctors.

A week had gone by since the accident. When the news came by, the media had already started covering the accident area and the visuals of the location were not that great. Something was obviously not right. It wasn't an accident, it was a planned murder.

Something that Aryan Raizada had told him the moment he saw his battered best friend. Aryan had left no stone unturned to find the car and the drivers and put them in jail and make sure that they never returned back.

If they die accidentally after getting hit by a bunch of people in jail, it is not on us, was what Kabir had said to his brother before the latter carried out the job.

Two men in that unnamed car.

One by suicide.

One by heavy injury on the head after getting hit by a jailmate.

But both died before they could get their hands on them.

But no answer to why she was attacked. Meher was never the target but Sahil was. And it was only he who knew that answer. But he had no idea about the perpetrator, the mastermind who gave the orders for this accident.

Someone made a mistake, a grave one— by attacking Meher Mathur, someone from a big business family, who just started on her career, someone who was not actively involved in the family business a month ago. She was never supposed to be the target.

She was a side effect of the plan, maybe the attackers didn't know that she was in the cars as well.

It was a well planned murder. Attacking where there was no CCTV, a stolen car with no number plate and now the people involved in the car were gone.

Meher had to wake up now. Completely, fully so that she could answer the questions that were revolving in his mind.

Meher had gained consciousness quite a few times by now but passed out as soon as possible. Her blood pressure wasn't that stable and has incurred multiple injuries but no deep head injury, with second degree burns on the calf of her right leg. A corrective surgery was made earlier this week and her legs were back to normal.

Meher could have died. It was indeed very astonishing how someone could survive something extreme.

"Sir," the nurse who came from the ward, "she has gained her consciousness," she informed him. Kabir sprang up from his seat and looked at her in disbelief, but when the nurse repeated her words again, he went straight into her ward.

And when he saw her, he noticed how her expression changed from being confused to being stony.

Kabir carefully went to her and took a seat on the chair that was beside her bed. He pressed the button on the side of her bed so that the upper portion could rise up, so they could talk properly.

But when she winced, he immediately took it a notch down since she had three broken ribs and two swollen ones. Sitting up straight would only hurt her.

"How are you?" He asked her finally, Meher looked at him with the same expression.

"Where is Sahil?" And Kabir did not reply.

"The moms are worried about you, the twins—" he didn't get a chance as Meher cut him off again.

"Where is Sahil?" This time she emphasised more clearly, the sternness in her voice did not go unnoticed by him. It was clear that despite the heavy injuries, Meher could speak very well, she still had a lot of strength.

But Kabir couldn't bring himself to deliver that news to her.

"Tell me Raizada, what happened to Sahil, where is he?" Her voice shook in the end when she noticed Kabir desperately trying to avoid that question. She had an intuition and it was not for the good.

He shook his head.

Meher's heart dropped but she didn't lose her stance. "Words," she gritted, "I need words, Kabir."

"He's dead," Meher closed her eyes as she tried to let his words sink in.

She did not want to believe him. So she did what came to her mind.

"Switch on the news," Kabir had no choice but to comply. He was sure that their news channel would be running Meher's news on the channel.

And he grabbed the remote which was on the table beside him and switched on AV News.

Well, that was surprising for, for the first time this week, AV News was not covering Meher Mathur, but Ruhi Parekh.

But his eyes went down to the running news and there it was. The news of Sahil's death and Meher's accident.

When he turned his head to look at Meher, she was hard to recognise. Her eyes were trained on the TV, he didn't see her blink once.

Meher was indeed hard to comprehend now. From one eye she saw the news which told the man who happened to be Meher's friend passed away, there was another breaking news playing on the screen.

"Share and Grow's CEO's daughter Ruhi Parekh is the first victim of New Year Serial murders," said the reporter and then the news suddenly switched back to the area of her accident.

Pictures were screened and she noticed the shredded car, the blood on the road and only one sentence. "Meher Mathur gets saved from a disastrous crash by a margin. Sadly, her friend who was driving couldn't survive and was declared dead on arrival."

And the news played over and over again stating why such a thing happened.

The constant to and fro of the same news over and over again, made something snap inside of Meher.

Looking at her stunned posture, Kabir switched off the TV but Meher still kept on looking at it.

And then she screamed. She screamed through everything she had in herself, she screamed, screamed and screamed.

It was maddening, it was scary. There was a scream of the mouth and lungs and a scream of the eyes and soul. It was the kind of scream that bypasses the ears to speak right to the heart.

Kabir was shocked at the sight. The high and mighty Meher Mathur was crumbling but that sight did not bring him joy.

Seeing the person he so much hated in pain did not make him happy.

In that scream, he felt years of pain, years of misery and the realisation that he wasn't the only one. It was that scream that urged him to go and comfort her, to forgo the hate that he had been harbouring upon her for so many years.

But he couldn't. Something inside of him still stopped him, he wanted her to let loose and do what her heart desired at that moment.

You cannot un-hate somebody in a second whom you had been hating for so long. It takes time, a lot of time and patience and a lot of understanding at a humane level.

Meher stopped screaming as her ribs hurt her. Tears were running down her face. Her heart held so much pain that she wished to die at that very second.

Grief was difficult to handle. This was the very reason why she resented death so much, it took away opportunities, it took away moments, it took away time. Four deaths in the last seven years were too much to endure. Death broke her, shattered her to pieces and there was no going because that was the end.

How can she not resent it? Why did it have to happen again?

And then her eyes stopped at Kabir Raizada. The cause of her misery this time.

"Kabir Raizada," she spoke with so much venom, Kabir was startled by her yet again.

"It was because of you, right?" There is no speculation, just straight up accusation. Her eyes were blazing with anger, the pain was overpowered by fury.

"W-What?" Kabir looked puzzled at her. But a faint recognition made him understand.

She knew something was up.

"I am done with your acting, Kabir. You were in this project with Sahil and it was dangerous because it is not every day some car follows you all of a sudden and rams the car into yours. It was a planned murder," Kabir fell silent at her accusation. It was true and he couldn't go back and deny it.

Meher didn't stop there. "But the question is, why him and not you? You are a shrewd man, Kabir. You kept yourself protected and pushed Sahil in the frontline to bear the consequences, isn't it?"

It was a lie. Sahil chose himself to be on the front line, without taking any protection. It was his choice. But telling Meher anything now was problematic. She was hurt and agitated.

"You hate me, right?" her breaths became shallow, her heartbeat increased and her face started paling. Kabir stared at her in panic, noticing her deteriorating health.

This was it, she thought. This was the breaking point of the feud between them. This was the last string.

"You succeeded Kabir Raizada," there was red in her eyes, the anger clearly evident through her battered soul. "You killed some I dearly cared for, you succeeded in hating me."

Another end to the chapter, again a bit heavy on the side. People die and damn I killed a lot of people in just 16 chapters lmao. Anywhoo, Meher knows obviously something was up. How do you think she'll take it? Let me know in the comments below.

I never really do this, but do you guys have any questions for me? You can ask personal and even my story related questions (no spoilers please).

Also, tell me pasta or pizza? My vote is for pasta ;)

Do VOTE and COMMENT. Comment a heart <3 to let me know that you loved the chapter.

With Love,

Akii.