His wife was sitting in the garden, swinging by herself. Her eyes closed, her hair flowing while sipping a cup of tea. When he was about to approach her he saw Sahil, walking towards the other swing.

The swing where Abdullah and Maheen played, now there sat Sahil and Maheen.

His eyes stung. His nose flared. He was hurt.

Why was he so dramatic? He wondered.

His wife wasn't that kind of woman... then why was he so insecure. He couldn’t impose his insecurities onto her so he sat down on his study table.

Opening his diary. He was never the type of a man who would journal, but Saad would gift him a journal every year and he didn't wanted to waste that book.

Human are emotional beings. How many wounds had he gauzed up? He was a doctor he had stiched, disinfected many wounds and scars. But... what he couldn't heal was an emotional scar.

Seher... he saw the broken hand and the scar on her lips. But the pain in her eyes was emotional.

He had never liked or disliked her. She had helped Maheen escape... but as he saw her wounds he knew why. Saad was a monster. But he wasn't any better...

He hadn’t been a good husband himself.

He hurt her, left emotional scars on her. He let his weakness and insecurities win over his love.

His pen hovered over the page as he stared blankly, struggling to find the right words. The quiet ticking of the clock on his desk filled the silence. His chest tightened as the weight of his thoughts sank deeper.

It wasn't about his wife. It was about him- about the man he'd become.

How often had he been consumed by the shadows of his fears? How many times had he let his doubts taint the moments of happiness he could have had? He gripped the pen tighter, his knuckles turning white.

"I am my own enemy," he wrote. The ink bled slightly into the paper as his hand trembled.

Saad had destroyed lives, but what made him any different? He'd hurt the woman he loved, not with fists or words but with silence, with distance, with his inability to trust.

He thought back to the first time he saw Seher after her escape. Her frail frame, her trembling hands, the look in her eyes- a mix of relief and fear. She'd smiled faintly, but it hadn’t reached her eyes. He had seen many wounded patients in his career, but her pain was different. It wasn’t something stitches could fix.

And yet, wasn’t he inflicting the same wounds on his wife? Subtler perhaps, but no less damaging. The doubts he kept buried, the love he withheld when she needed it most- weren’t those scars he was leaving behind?

He closed his diary abruptly, the sound echoing in the quiet room. For a moment, he just sat there, staring at the leather-bound cover.

"I need to do better," he muttered to himself.

He stood up, his legs feeling heavy but resolute. He walked out of the room and back to the garden. His wife was still there, her cup of tea now empty. She was laughing at something Sahil said, her eyes bright.

He approached her slowly. She looked up and smiled, a soft, unassuming smile that made his heart ache.

"Tum se baat karni thi", she stood up. He shook his head, "Nahi baitho tum."

Motioning her to sit.

Maheen stopped smiling, she was being too pleasant to him.

She had to be rude.

So she stood up, "Nahi, mera jhoolna ka man nahi abhi."

Abdullah held the words in, "Jhoolne ka nahi ya mere saath baithne ka nahi."

He needs to control his tongue. Otherwise, they would make no progress. 

"Walking chalo phir," he said, holding her hand. She backed up, shaking her head.

He didn’t ask her if she wanted to go. He directly grabbed her hand.

"Nahi."

She said it out loud.

" 'Maheen tum mere saath walk par chalogi?' ye sawal hona chahiye tha".

Abdullah stood still, the warmth of her hand pulling away like a thread snapping under too much tension. He looked at her, confusion clouding his mind as her words lingered in the air.

"Why does it feel like you never really asked me what I wanted?" she muttered under her breath, more to herself than to him, but it struck Abdullah like a slap.

She turned to walk away, the swing creaking behind her as the wind picked up, and he couldn’t help but notice how it seemed to echo the hollow emptiness in his chest. He had been so sure of his actions, but her words stung him because they exposed a truth he had never confronted- he had assumed, he had acted without asking, and in doing so, he had taken a part of her that wasn’t his to take.

"Maheen, I- " He reached for her, his voice faltering as he tried to find the words.

She stopped, but didn’t turn around. The air felt thick between them, and for a moment, Abdullah couldn’t tell if it was the garden's stillness or the weight of his own guilt that made everything feel suffocating.

"You never asked me what I wanted," she repeated softly, her back still to him. "You never asked me how I felt about this life, this marriage, even the night we... became husband and wife. You decided, and I followed. That’s not love, Abdullah. Not really."

Her words, quiet but cutting, seemed to pierce through the layers of his defenses.

"Is this... is this about that night?" he asked, his voice trembling with uncertainty.

She didn’t answer immediately. The air felt colder now, the breeze rustling the leaves as if it was waiting for something. He waited for her to speak, hoping, praying that she would tell him everything- that she would release him from the confusion he was drowning in.

Maheen stood there for a long moment, her shoulders trembling, her fists clenched at her sides. The tears she had been holding back spilled freely now, staining her cheeks as she turned slightly, still facing away from him. The silence stretched on, as thick as the air between them, and Abdullah felt every inch of the distance between them like a heavy weight in his chest.

She took a shaky breath, her voice fragile but clear. "I know we were both coerced, Abdullah, but you… you could have lied. You could have said anything, but you didn’t. You wanted to make sure I was pure, right?" She let out a bitter laugh, a sound that broke something inside him. "Abdullah I wanted comfort... some kindess from you. Is kindness too much to expect from your own husband?"

She wiped at her eyes, her voice barely above a whisper as she spoke again. "Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to be your perfect wife, that maybe I had my own desires, my own needs that you never even bothered to ask about? Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to be ‘protected’? Maybe, just maybe, I needed you to see me as a person, not a thing to be preserved. To be kept safe." She shook her head, her voice breaking as the tears fell faster. "But you never saw me, Abdullah. You never really saw me."

I saw you... I saw you standing in front of the village helpless, crying, begging. That's why, I was terrified to see you in that state again.

I saw your face... when I was forced to slap you... and I didn't wanted to see you like that ever again.

He wanted to say that to her, but his lips were glue shut.

She turned to face him now, her eyes red and swollen, her lips trembling with emotion. "That night, you were so focused on making sure I was untouched, that you never stopped to think about how I felt, how I might have wanted things to be different. You made all these decisions without me, and I was just supposed to follow along like I didn’t have a say. Like I didn’t matter."

"I never got to choose, Abdullah," she whispered, her voice shaking with grief. "You made sure of that. And now, I’m left with this feeling like I’m nothing but a reflection of what you wanted, what you thought was best for me. I’m lost in this marriage because I never got to find myself."

"Before marriage I was what the village and my father wanted me to be. And after marriage, I am what you want me to be. You never asked me... they never asked me. What I wanted to be..."

Maheen walked a few steps living Abdullah standing alone by the swing, "All you have to do is 'ask' mushkil nahi hai Abdullah..."