"All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."

- Mitch Albom

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Dedicated to my personal PR, Miss Reshma (reshmanair356 from IF) - whom I miss. I will be forever grateful for her support, kind words, encouragement, and patience!!!

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As the dusk colored the sky in the darker shades, drowning his room in shadows, his brain started to rewind the events of the day, her every word and every reaction, reminding of the reason why she was now sitting in front of him, so quietly, lost in her own thoughts. As he looked at her, he wondered if he has ever seen her so gloomy in his presence.

He sat there, resting his back against the headboard of the bed, staring at her before closing his eyes, feeling the burning sensation behind the eyelids, he let out a tiring sigh.

"Your coffee is getting cold," she suddenly said, forcing him to open his eyes and even though he nodded his head in response, the frown on her forehead didn't disappear, shaking his head, he looked away.

'What a day,' he thought with a numbed brain, staring out of the window of the room. His gaze unmoving, even as his watery eyes begin to sting, he didn't bat his eyelashes - evidence of the tiredness, pain, and everything else he has gotten used to...

"Shravan..." she called him out, snapping him out of his thoughts, he turned to stare at her as he kept blinking in an attempt to get rid of tiredness.

"Get some sleep," she said as she took in his tired self, "we can always talk tomorrow," she said with hesitation, a question in her eyes as she looked at him, only signing in relief when he nodded at her.

"Tomorrow then..." she whispered with a soft smile before standing up to walk away only to be stopped by him when he held her by her hand.

"Sumo, I am giving in, but don't make me regret it later," he whispered in a perfect blend of pleading and threat as he looked up at her with vulnerability shining in his eyes.

"Never, I promise," she firmly said with determination.

"We will see..." he whispered with a challenge in his voice as he nodded.

"With time, you will learn how to trust again," she said with a sad smile before turning around to walk away.

As he looked at her walking away, leaving him behind, he realized no matter what happened or in which situation they were in, he would never like the sight of her walking away from him. With a shattering sigh, he closed his eyes, refusing to open them, waiting for her to close the door behind her.

As she looked back at him, before closing the door, she saw him resting his head on the headboard, his eyes closed tightly as if he was trying to shut everything out. With one last look at him, she closed the door and moved away,

With a tiring sigh, she descended the stairs just to run into Ramnath Malhotra who must have been on his way to go to Shravan's room. The exchange of glares between them didn't go unnoticed by Nirmala who in return went ignored by him when she cleared her throat to defuse the ongoing glaring contest.

"Nirmala auntie?" Suman said with a confused frown and kept looking between the two.

"Ram brought me here to talk to Shravan before I could leave," she responded, unable to look at the girl who was so brutally hurt by her son the night before.

"Really? When I thought that the best way to end Shravan's suffering was for him to meet his mother, you didn't listen to me, and now..." Suman said, her glare fixed on the floor as she shook her head.

"Step aside," was his only answer.

"Don't disturb him, not today..." She whispered before he could walk away.

Hearing her Ramnaath stopped in midstep but didn't turn around, second-guessing his plan for a second, but the next second, he once again started to move towards his son's room, his instinct still telling him to go through his plan. Yes, so many things have happened in less than 24 hours, so many things that have hurt his son, wounded him and reopened his old wounds - the ones that maybe never healed and had been festering from the past decade - but he knew that it was time to reveal all the secrets so his son could break only once and then can finally start his life without any of impending dooms waiting for him just around the corner.

"Why are you doing this?" Suman shouted out as she came to stand before him.

"It's better if we break him once and not, again and again, Suman, so that you can collect and heal him at once. I am counting on you to heal him, to be at his side when he won't let me," he whispered as he looked down at the girl who he had mistaken as an enemy when she could have been his perfect ally.

"What?" She asked, shocked.

"I take my words back, Suman Tiwari, you had said that one day I myself will say that you both are made for each other, that day has come," he admitted with a nod as he patted her head in a fatherly manner when all she could was look up at him with her eyes wide open in shock.

Taking in her reaction with an amused smile, he turned around and nodded at Nirmala who followed him quietly. Opening the door of his son's room, he let her in first before with a sigh he closed his eyes to gather all the strength that was left in him and stepped into the room he knew he wasn't going to come out as the same man...

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He had walked to his wardrobe as soon as she had walked out of the room with the intention to take out some clothes so he could take a shower, hoping that it would wash away some of his thoughts that have been haunting him. But as he stood in front of his open wardrobe, his mind went blank, already forgetting what he was about to do. With a frown, he stood there, with his numb mind, struggling to remember what he was about to do, forcing himself to snap out of the thoughts that weren't leaving him...

Exhaustion slowly worked its way through his jaded mind and he sighed, holding his head in his palms. He felt totally dense and clueless as he kept staring forward without seeing anything. Suddenly he turned around when he heard the sound of the door opening, with a sigh he moved to see if it was her or was it Pushkar who finally had gathered the courage to walk in without fearing his anger. But when he came face to face with the person who had walked in, his froze, taken aback to find her standing in his room.

The sight of his mother standing in his room was so unnatural, so out of place that it took him a second to gather his thoughts.

"What are you doing here?" He said, his tone hard, cold but at the same time indifferent.

"She came with me," came the answer, and only then he realized his father was standing right behind her.

"Why have you brought her here? What are you doing?" He asked, moving his eyes away from her to look at his father who was standing there looking as if he had aged years in just one night.

"She is your mother, she is here for you," Ramnaath answered with a forced smile.

"Really?" He asked with an amused smirk as he shook his head at the man standing before him.

"What are you up to?" Shravan asked with a hard tone in his voice as he narrowed his at him, staring at him coldly.

"I am trying to give you back everything, every person I had taken away from you in my selfishness," Ramnaath confessed in shame, his eyes misty, unable to tolerate the mistrust that never before he had seen in his son's eyes for him.

'So this was how it felt to be loved and cherished by Shravan Malhotra before facing his hatred, anger, and cruelty?' He wondered, 'Was this the same way he looked at Nirmala, at Suman?', he blinked away his tears, unable to endure the pain his son's glaring were inflicting in him.

"Why are you doing this, Mr Malhotra? What are you trying to do now?" Shravan asked him coldly as he looked at him as if he didn't know him, his eyes guarded and pricing.

"I have told your mother about last night, and that you want to leave, she came here to talk to you, to tell you to stay back," Ramnaath answered, his eyes pleading his son.

Hearing him and taking in the sight of his mother standing there, staring at him with pity in her eyes, his indifference crumbled, taking away from him the shield he has been hiding behind. His jaw clenched in an attempt to hide away the trembling mouth, eyes blinked often to get rid off the mist forming in front of his eyes, his hands formed into tight fists before he took in a shuttering breath as he shook his head, once again feeling betrayed by his father.

"Why?" He asked as he looked at his father with misty eyes, his voice trembling, "why would you do this? How could you? Whatever happened, it was between you and me, why have brought in outsiders? You have always told me that matter of a family stays within the family, then why?"

His voice - not more than a whisper - seemed like a loud shout of accusation to them who stood there seeing their only son breaking right in front of them, the sight of him cutting their heart into pieces, holding back their tears they tried to find a way to comfort him.

"Why? Whenever I think that you both can't hurt me more than you already have, you prove me wrong. Why does that happen each time?" He asked in a whisper, his head bent down, an attempt to hide his tears that he couldn't hold back.

"Shravan..." Nirmala called him out, but before she could say something, he interrupted her.

"Don't you dare... This is between me and my father and you don't have any right to interfere," he said as he subjected her with a cold stare.

"Shravan, behave yourself, she is your mother," Ramnath snapped at him.

"Really? So you both still remember that?" He asked with a sardonic smirk, shaking his head as he looked in between the two.

"Shravan, I couldn't find any other way to deal with this situation. Last night you were asking me so many questions about your mother and now that she is there, you are reacting so badly, why? I don't understand..." Ramnath said with a bewildered look on his face.

"What? What can't you understand? When will you just let me be? Why do you have to control everything without even think about what I want? Why do you have to take it upon you to decide everything? Did I tell you that I want to meet her? Or I want her back? Then why did you brought her here?" He asked him, his voice getting louder with each word, so did his rage.

"Shravan, I have told her about everything that happened, whatever I have done, what you said last night, only for you to talk to her and know her side of truth," Ramnaath declared, his eyes expressing his confusion.

Finding his father staring back at him with confusion, challenging his stance, his rage evaporated, giving the helplessness and tiredness placed to take over his senses, crumbling every brick of the defensive wall he had tried very hard to hold up and he let go of his attempt to appear as strong, cold and indifferent, everything he wasn't.

"What has happened to you? What have I done to deserve such cruelty? Why are you doing this? I beg you, please, stop. Enough," he pleaded in a whisper, his head bending forward, the tiredness and desperation he was feeling present in his voice.

"Shravan..." Ramnaath gasp in helplessness at the sight in front of him.

"Why do you feel the need to go out of your way to make me feel how wrong I was about you? Why don't you feel pity for me? Why do you have to remind me, again and again, that where I am standing now in my life is your doing," he asked, voice quavering and when he finally looking up at him, his face wet with tears, grief-stricken he closed his eyes, shaking his head before letting out a shuddering sigh.

"Why can't you understand how difficult it is for me to keep standing here in front of you? Why do you have to remind me of everything that went wrong?" He whispered, "you were on my side, right? What went wrong? What I have done so wrong to lose you too?" He asked as he looked at his father in desperation as he stood in front of them, an epitome of devastation.

"Why are you making a fool of me in front of others?" He asked, his voice quivering and tears quietly slipped from his eyes.

"Shravan..." Ramnaath gasped, his breath lost at the sight of his son looking at him with his eyes full of pain and hurt, making his heartache as he realized that the hurt and pain in those eyes were caused by him.

"What you said last night to me, it made me realize that I was wrong in keeping you away from your mother, that's why I want to redeem that mistake of mine," he explained himself, hoping he wasn't wrong, that he had done something that would lead his son on the road to recovery, that his wounds would finally heal.

"No, that's not the truth, like always, you are doing what you think is right without realizing that you are snatching away from my dignity, my freedom to choose, to decide for myself," Shravan said in exasperation, a sardonic smirk playing on his lips.

"Shravan, you can't say such things to your father. Doesn't matter what he has done to others, he has always been a good father to you," Nirmala interrupted, no longer having the patience to let the accusations continue.

"Mrs, Ahuja, stay away from me and my father. Don't you dare to interfere," Shravan coldly told her without looking at her way.

"She is not Mrs Ahuja, she is still married to me, we didn't divorce," Ramnaath revealed, bending his head he looked at the floor, unable to look in the eyes of his son.

"What? Are you serious?" Shravan asked as he looked between his parents, before bursting out laughing till tears come out of his eyes as he kept muttering 'sorry' and tried to control his laughter but couldn't. After a few minutes, breathless, he stopped and wiped his eyes with an amused smile still present on his face.

"God, this is epic!" He exclaimed as he kept shaking his head, before continuing; "And here was I, so sure that I was a child of a broken home, that it was natural and given to suffer everything I had - to be as lonely I am - because that's what happens to children like me. But, of course, I was wrong to assume even that, wasn't I?"

As he looked between his parents, bemused before slowly coldness once again slipped into his eyes, his jaw set in a hard line as he shook his head.

"As both of you are here now, so tell me all about it, is there any truth you have kept hidden from me? So I actually realize how foolish I had been to let you both and your not-so-broken marriage rule my life and ruin it. So I know for how long I have unnecessarily felt ashamed that my mother cheated on my father and was some other man's mistress with whom she ran away in the end, so I know that how useless my gratitude and guilt was for being the reason why my father never remarried."

With wide-open eyes, speechless, they both looked back at him with shock coloring their faces, just where they have gone wrong, they wondered. She had always tried to keep him away from what happened between them and he had sent him away to London in order to keep him away from the mess their broken marriage would have created, only now to know that even though they had done whatever they could, he still his had suffered because of their separation, that he was still haunted by what had happened between them.

"Shravan, why are you still angry at me, why are you still behaving so rudely even though now you know that there was nothing between me and Mr Ahuja?" Nirmala asked with a frown, perplexed.

She had been so sure that he would understand and would cease to hate her if he would get to know the truth, but now when he knew the truth, he still was looking at her with coldness in his eyes, there still was no guilt in them, no warmth and no longer they held the same love in them for her that she used to see shining in his eyes before the day when she walked out her husband's house - more than a decade has passed to that day but wounds were still open, bleeding and raw...

"Do you really think I care?" He asked as he shook his head, letting out an ironic laugh, "Let me tell you both clearly; I don't give a damn who's wife you are, his, Mr Ahuja's or someone else's, because you weren't my mother nor you ever acted like one, that's the clearest thing about the entire situation," he said firmly as he looked at her in exasperation, suppressing the hurt that now was a part of him.

"The truth is, you have always been Ahuja, because you left me, replaced me with Aditya, became his mother while I had waited for my mother for all these years. More than a decade, I had waited for her one phone call, one letter, one explanation, but I got nothing, not even a word from her. Because she didn't deem me worthy of even that," he said, the hurt shining in his eyes overshadowing the rage present in his voice.

"So, Mrs Ahuja or Malhotra, whoever you are, sorry, but I don't give a damn to your marriage status. I do not care about it because that doesn't justify or explain why I was abandoned and rejected by my own mother," he said nonchalantly, an attempt to appear indifferent to her tears that were continuously slipping from her eyes.

"I never abandoned you, Shravan, I love you. You are my child, flesh of my flesh, how can you think I would do such thing if I wasn't forced? Your father was the one who never let me meet you," she said, stuttering at each word, her voice quavering in between as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.

"I gave so much importance the even the hatred I felt for you, so much so that I let it change me into a shell of a person I am now: a misogynist, a cynic, someone who is constantly fighting with abandonment issues, trust issues and you couldn't even fight your husband for your beloved child?" He asked with a sardonic smirk.

"What could have I done more? I was not in the position to fight with your lawyer father. He was stronger than me and even sent you away without informing me. What else should I have done?" She cried out, tired of being wrongly accused, of being treated like no one when she was his mother.

"What kind of mother you are? You know from the past decade, I had always asked that question to myself; what kind of mother you are? Because mothers are supposed to be selfless, loving, someone who would fight the world for their children. And you couldn't even fight your husband?" Shravan asked with a frown, his eyes shining with sadness and disappointment as he looked at her with resentment.

"No, I couldn't. He was a powerful and successful lawyer and I was just a woman with a job that wasn't enough to support your education. But I still had come back to take you away, I was ready to fight for your custody but you weren't there, you had already left the country," she said.

She remembered that day as it was yesterday: she had come back, a few days after when she had decided she had enough of Ramnaath Malhotra and his misogynist self and had walked out of the house without looking back, but she had to come back for her son, only to know her husband had sent him away and in response to such cruelty, she had refused to divorce him. From that day on, she had never looked back, nor she had ever regretted walking away, the only regret had been Shravan. She wished she had done things differently only when she thought about her son, but she had been sure he was living a stable life, away from India, from her.

"Really? Mrs Ahuja - sorry - Mrs Malhotra, how long have you been married to a lawyer? I mean, lived with him? I think, at least for eighteen years, isn't it? And even after that long, you didn't know that you don't need to fight much for the custody of a seventeen years old. I would have been an adult in a few months and then I would have been the one who would have decided with whom I wanted to stay with, not the court," he informed her with a sardonic smile, his eyes sparkling with dark amusement.

"But no, it was easier to leave me and rightly so, I would have been a reminder of your broken marriage. Leaving me meant you could easily forget that you were ever married to Ramnaath Malhotra, as you have - you forgot him, your marriage and the child born out of it. How convenient, it's easy for you to blame him for it, isn't it?" He asked, shaking his head as he let out an ironic laugh.

"It wasn't easy, Shravan..." She denied, her shoulder trembled with each sob and she looked at him with tears blinding her.

"Really? Okay, so let's move on to the other part, shall we? Ten years, you never ever tried to contact me, why?" He asked, his tone nonchalant but his eyes looking at her with a challenge, with his arms wrapped in front of his chest and a frown present on his forehead.

"Because you were in England. So far away...How could I?" She asked, bewildered, her eyes shining with confusion.

"Exactly, so far away from Mr Ramaanth Malhotra, why couldn't you? You knew that there Mr most powerful lawyer had no influence, he was only a father and you a mother. You could have easily contacted me, explained to me your side of the story, if not for me, at least to hurt him, to prove him wrong. Didn't you want your revenge?" Shravan said, his frown deepened into a scowl as he realized he would have preferred to be used as a weapon of revenge by his mother than a decade-long silence, indifference and a life-long abandonment.

'How pathetic...' He thought to himself, disgusted.

"And disturb your life? I am not that selfish, Shravan..." She said, crying out in frustration, once again falsely accused and misunderstood.

She had refused her heart to see him, to contact him, just so he could live his life without the hatred and bitterness of their broken marriage, but now as the three of them stood under one roof, he was making it look like as if her selflessness had been the cruelest of act from her part.

"Disturb my life, you say? Yes, because believing that my mother ran away with another man, completely abandoning me and my father is not disturbing at all," he said with a sarcastic smirk, letting out an ironic laugh.

"Shravan, behave yourself," Ramnaath interrupted, no longer having the patience to let the conversation continue.

"Why, Mr Ramnaath Malhotra? You wanted me to have this conversation with her, didn't you? And now that I am, why that makes you angry? Aren't you satisfied that I hate her and won't leave your side no matter how much you backstab me?" He asked with a frown, sarcasm coating every word being uttered.

"Shravan..." Ramnaath cried out in exasperation, pulling his hair out in desperation.

He asked himself; 'why nothing was working this time around?' Shravan has always understood what did he wanted without him telling him out loud, he had always been so forgiving, ignoring his every flaw, overlooking if he was neglected, then why, why was he being so stubborn this time around? Ramnaath wondered, helpless and defeated.

"So, coming back to us, Mrs Ahu- sorry, Malhotra, tell me whatever you have to tell me because this is going to be the only time we ever meet. After this you and me, we are done!" He said firmly.

"From today on, I don't want any kind of connection or relationship between us, not even one of hatred, not one of pain, nothing," he said with finality in his voice as he stared at her with a strong resolve.

"Shravan, don't say that. I have not done anything wrong. Can't you see how much your anger and hatred has hurt me?" Nirmala asked, her voice quavering as she trembled with each sob she tried to suppress.

"No, it hasn't. You have been content in this past decade and have moved on, so has my father, it was only I who hasn't. I was the one who never felt at peace, never had a home. But that is going to change now," he said, his face devoted to any expression, his eyes hard as he looked back at her.

"If that's what you want, so be it," she said, giving up too soon, only to ask him something she had been curious and confused about ever since the morning when he had confessed...

"But I want your honest answer; why didn't you tell Suman that you love her?" she asked, staring at him as he let out a shattering sigh.

Unaware to them, Suman, who had been standing behind the door with a hand on the knob - ready to walk into the room any given moment - lost her breath as she heard the question, her heart skipping beats in anticipation...

'what would be his answer,' she wondered...

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A/N: Yes, cliff-hang because I am a cruel writer...Muhaha...

But honestly, it was an intense chapter and I would love to hear/read your thoughts, feelings. This chapter has so many elements that I would love to discuss, so please, let me know your thoughts on Shravan-Nirmala confrontation. If it was something you wanted or not... Anything you would like to add... :)

As, always, thank you for your interest, support,t and encouragement, especially for your patience... :)

Thank you... :)