"How much of life could he spend aching? Aching is not a stable condition; it must resolve into something."

― Arthur Phillips, The Song Is You

* * * *

He was standing there once again...

There, still, holding his breath, once again...

Waiting for his death sentence...

He had thought that it won't matter this time around...

That he didn't care...

Nothing mattered...

He could care less...

But he was wrong...

He still felt as if he couldn't breathe...

As if his heart could stop any given moment...

And that he was wearing black to mourn the death of the future he thought he could have with her...

With her, Suman Tiwari, his former best friend...

She would walk in any given moment, in red, the color of the celebration...

Red to represent the death of everything they were and weren't, never could be, never would be...

Red to represent the birth of her blissful future...

A future that doesn't include him, never would...

He had thought that the last time, his every desire, hope and the love he had for her had died, that now this time around, he would be numb and indifferent towards whatever was happening...

But he had been wrong...

And now he couldn't do anything...

He wouldn't...

No, he wouldn't...

And just then she walked in, wearing red, looking breathtakingly beautiful...

With a beaming smile, she took the hand of the man standing next to her in the mandap, and with the chant of prayers, after the vows and promises, she was already married to the man...

And he couldn't do anything other than look at everything happening right in front of his eyes...

And then she was gone... 

The man took her away, to somewhere he could no longer reach...

Yet he could hear her...

Her screams for help...

Just like she had the last time...

And suddenly, he was there once again, standing in front of the door of the closed room, banging it with both hands, uncaring of pain, his heart shaking with fear, calling out her name but he could only hear her cries for help.

"Sumo!" He yelled and yelled...

With all his strength he pushed the door, but no matter how much strength he put in, it didn't open...

He banged his shoulder on the door with force, trying to break in but nothing - it didn't break, no matter how much force he put in, the door wouldn't open... 

Frantically he tried to think of a way he could enter into the room, but he couldn't find anything... 

He looked around, and there they were, all of them standing together, but no one would help him, he pleaded each one of them to help him...

To Nana Ji and his father, asked for forgiveness for not listening to them...

But they didn't...

He begged Pushkar and Varun to help me, but everyone refused...

They were instead busy looking at him with a disapproving glare, a look of disgust on their faces...

As if it was his fault...

And, it was...

It was all his fault...

"Shravan..." Her tortured cry of his name shook his entire being...

He failed her, once again...

He failed to protect her, once again...

And he failed all of them...

All his fault...

And as her screams tore the air around him, he felt as if his soul is being ripped out of his body...

"Shravan..."

He woke with a start, sweat dripping down his spine, panic-stricken, he frantically looked around him. He still could hear her yells and cries for help, far away from him, screaming in the most painful way...

Inhaling sharply, he sat upright, his mind fervently stuck to the lucid nightmare, he frantically looked around for her and only then he realized he was in his room, on his bed. With a soul tiring sigh, weakly he fell on his back, his whole body trembling. With sweat trickling down his forehead and his breath coming in short pants, he fixed his gaze on the roof as he thought about the nightmare. And then suddenly, without a second thought, he picked his phone up and called her. The longer the calls went unattended, the more panic overpowered him. He was about to move away from his bed to go to her, not caring even if it was late at night.

"Shravan?" She finally answered, her voice drowsy with sleep, making him sigh in relief.

"Are you okay?" He asked her, still worried.

"Yes, what could have happened to me?" She asked confused.

"Nothing... Nothing bad can happen to you," he forcefully told her, more for his own sake than hers.

"Shravan, what happened?" She asked worriedly.

"Can we meet tomorrow?" He asked her.

"Shravan, you can meet me anytime you want, why are you being so formal?" She answered with a smile.

"Go to sleep now," he whispered and ended the call without letting her answer.

* * *

It had been three weeks ever since he had walked away from Tiwari Killa and had left her behind even though she had bluntly proposed him for marriage and had confessed her love for him and even though he himself had admitted that he had been in love with her, that had not been enough...

It was something he never thought could happen, not in the way it had happened. There was a time when he had thought he would confess with flowers and the letter he had written to her during their teens or in that coffee shop with shy smiles, a cup of coffee, and rain...

But that didn't happen...

Never he had thought it will happen with a sense of betrayal, doom, and bitterness as it had three weeks ago...

He had thought that she would never admit that she felt something for him the way she had. It wasn't Sumo - nor Suman Tiwari, not with risking her pride and self-respect like that in front of him, with her head bent down, tears and vulnerability, so fragile, so defeated...

He had never thought she could look like that...

Who was she? If not Sumo or Suman Tiwari, then who was she?

Maybe he didn't know her at all...

Maybe even after all these years, he didn't know her at all...

He had been thinking about her confession from the past three weeks even though he didn't want to, yet what he couldn't get out of his head was the way she had looked at that moment. No, he didn't believe her. No, he couldn't risk believing her again, and he didn't want to...

He wouldn't...

He couldn't...

But he wanted to know what had pushed her to show him the side of her - the side she had managed to hide away from him for so long...

From the past decade and more that he had known her, he never had seen that side of Suman Tiwari. Or maybe that wasn't true. Now that he thought about it, he had seen her once, in that old childhood house of hers and once when Nana Ji was ill and again when she had found him sleeping in his car that very same night and had hugged him tightly, had been worried for him... 

And maybe, also that night on the rooftop when she had been ready to jump to prove her trust in him?

Maybe...

Yes, the Suman of three weeks ago did look like the Suman he had seen on those occasions...

But that didn't mean he was going to believe her...

No, he did not...

When his father had gotten to know what he had told Nana ji, and about how he had refused, Ramnaath Malhotra had stormed inside his room and had forced him to agree on their plan to get him and Suman married. His father had ordered him, and when he hadn't given in as he had in the past, his father had pleaded him to marry Suman... 

The irony!

And even though his father - the man who had triggered the process of ruining everything between them - Ramnaath Malhotra himself, had sworn that she did love him, he hadn't believed him. And when his father had told him the detailed conversation between him and Suman, just make him believe, he still couldn't, because it had done nothing but raise more confusion and questions in his head. They had warmed his aching heart for a few seconds, just a few seconds, but had left him with a greater sense of disappointment and a far greater sense of betrayal...

"You don't need to hide it anymore, Shravan, you don't need to stay away from each other. We all know that you both are in love with each other," his father had told him.

"We aren't. We may never have been. I wasn't enough for her and I have been running behind a mirage that I was hell-bent on making my reality. But now I know better. You are right, there is no need to hide because there is nothing there to hide, never have been," he had responded.

"I don't know what else to tell you to make you snap you out of your numbness, to make you realize the truth. Just talk to her, Shravan, Hear her out, tell her what she should know..." and after saying that, his father had given up.

And then the next day, he had gotten to know that Nana Ji actually had started his search to find a groom for Suman. He had seen Pushkar taking off to go meet the selected few, playing his role of the son in law of Tiwari's to perfection yet each time he had come back to rant about how Shravan should just give in and marry Suman. He had ignored his younger cousin, pretended as if he hadn't been afraid that they would end up choosing someone like Aditya for her once again, yet he ignored everything...

He had kept repeating to himself that he wanted nothing to do with her. He couldn't believe her confession because clearly, he had never been important enough to hold on, to keep trying...

Too easy it had been for her to give him up...

Not enough...

And that he had always been; never enough...

Not for his father, nor for his mother and of course, never enough for Suman Tiwari...

And it was okay...

He has gotten used to it...

And that's when the nightmares started... 

Each night, his mind tortured him with new scenarios yet with the same ending, her screaming his name, him being suffocated with the helplessness. Each night his refusal to care was torn into shreds, his indifference destroyed, the wall of self-preservation that he had built around him came crumbling down until he started accepting his defeat, struck with the fear of something bad happening to her, he slowly started to give in. That day, Nana Ji had installed into his system a new kind of fear, a fear so strong that it surpassed his every other fear until he admitted to himself, acknowledged that nothing mattered to him more than her safety, nothing mattered more than her...

No longer it mattered to him what she felt about him or what he felt about her. What mattered now was that he had to make sure she would be safe and sound and would never have to go through whatever happened that night and what she had gone through even before it, what she would have gone through if the marriage would have happened...

He had overheard only one conversation between her and Aditya but he could predict that the taunts, the verbal and emotional abuse were only the start of what could have happened. He knew that. And if Nana Ji was right, it could happen again, there was a possibility of it happening again by the hands of whomever she would get married to...

Exhaling roughly, he leaned back on the bench of the same park they had always met and when he looked up, he saw her walking towards him with a blinding smile on her face. Taking a deep breath in, he admitted to himself, painfully, helplessly that he was reliving the same cycle, again and again, no matter how many attempts he makes to break off, he always finds himself stuck in the same sickening cycle where he could neither move along with her nor could he take a step back and leave her alone...

"Shravan," she breathed his name with a smile as she came to sit next to him.

"I thought you had broken moun-warth by talking to me," she said with an easy smile, an attempt to break the silence from his side.

"You scared me last night, and you are scaring me even now," she admitted with a nervous laugh when he kept looking at her with a frown.

"Suman, let's get married," he said bluntly, his voice clear and face expressionless.

"What?" She muttered, shocked.

"I have thought about it rationally, and I agree with Nana ji, there is only one way to keep you safe and that's for us to get married," he responded robotically.

"To keep me safe? What am I? A child?" She asked, offended.

"No, you aren't. But I can't trust anyone else with you. I just can't," he answered, ashamed.

"You are going to marry me out of some obligation, Shravan?" she asked in a whisper, hurt.

"No. I am going to marry you because I want to. I have thought about it and came to the conclusion that it's for the best. It's not out of obligation or out of love. I expect nothing from you or this marriage and that's why it will work out. Marriage with me will give you the freedom to do whatever is that you want to do," he told her with an even voice.

"What are you talking about? Are you telling me you want to marry me because you want nothing from me and I would be able to do whatever I want?" She asked, confused.

"That's not how it works, Shravan" she whispered, broken as she shook her head.

"We will make it work," he assured her, mechanically.

When she kept looking at him with a disproval frown and a heartbroken expression on her face, he couldn't understand what she found wrong when three weeks ago she herself had asked him the same.

"Three weeks ago, you were ready to marry me, but now you are giving reasons why we shouldn't. Have you changed your mind already? Only in three weeks? Did you finally come to your senses?" He asked her bitterly.

"That's not what I mean, and you know it. Forget about me, Shravan, tell me how this is good for you?" She asked her, tired.

Her question made him sigh and ask himself; yes, how marriage, a marriage with her at that, would do him any good?

"After whatever I have seen happening between my parents, I never thought I would be able to get married, but I knew that one day my father would ask me to. And I had promised him that I will get married to someone who wouldn't be money hungry like Urvashi, someone who wouldn't leave me as my mother had, and there had been a time when I wanted you to be that someone," he confessed.

His easy confession made her gasp, and she couldn't understand what changed? Has confessing his secrets to her gotten easier or did he no longer care about his secrets and therefore wasn't holding back?

"But that isn't the reason," he muttered with a sigh.

"Then why?" she whispered, heartbroken.

"My father, Nana Ji and you too think that we should get married, and I see no reason to deny you. They both and you are the most important people in my life. And now that I no longer have unreasonable expectations from marriage, it will work out,"

"A marriage with me would be easier for you because you can walk out whenever things get difficult once again or whenever things get too much for you and I won't stop you, I won't force you," he said with an indifferent tone in his voice.

"I will never do that you, Shravan," she muttered, hurt by the taunt.

"It no longer matters. You can walk out whenever you want," he told her with a shrug.

"This isn't how things work. This isn't what I wanted for us. This isn't how I wanted things to happen, Shravan," she whispered brokenly as tears slipped down her cheeks, unable to word her disbelief at his brutal honesty and cynic beliefs.

"I am sorry, Shravan," she muttered quietly, and suddenly his indifference melted away as once again he was reminded of the reason why he was giving in.

"I am sorry too, for everything that I have done wrong. Let me mend things, please," he whispered.

"You were right, everything is falling in place, happening as if it was meant to be, so let's just let things happen as they are," he told her as he gently wiped away her tears with his fingers.

He looked at her with eyes full of understanding and wisdom, a calmness she didn't know he could possess. He looked down at her as if he knew something she didn't. As if she was crying over something petty...

"Why are you so calm, Shravan?" She asked him, confused and conflicted.

"I am not calm, Suman. I am just tired of always fighting, so I am giving up and letting things happen. That's all," he responded to her with a tired shrug.

"I am just so tired," he repeated.

"At first, I had thought I was tired of hurting, aching and longing for something that would never be mine but now I am tired of feeling numb. I am so tired, Sumo," he whispered, looking down at his hands.

"I don't want to overthink anymore. I don't want to fight my father, Nana Ji or you and if all three of you want the same thing, that means what I feel about it shouldn't matter," he whispered with a defeated aura around him.

"It does, Shravan, it matters the most," she whispered, brokenly, without much conviction.

"And anyway, I don't even know what to feel anymore. Or what to do," he continued.

"So, I give in. I give up on holding up a wall to isolate me, I give up on my pride and my fear of getting hurt because that's going to happen anyway. No matter what I do, I get hurt anyway, so what is a point in fighting?" He asked her with a broken half-smile.

"All of you, for different reasons have told me that you and I can't live apart. And you are right, we can't live apart," he admitted, softly.

"Even if our reasons are different, even if I wouldn't believe in your reason, It has to be done," he whispered.

"And what is your reason, Shravan?" She asked him, conflicted.

"Nana ji is right. I can't trust anyone else with you. I will always worry, always would have issues with the way your husband - whoever he may be – will behave around you. Knowing you, you won't able to tell him off. You only argue and fight with me for what you want but can't do the same with others," he ended with a half-smile.

"I don't want you to be caged, Sumo. Not by obligations, or anything else, not by any kind of bonds. And I can't, absolutely can not trust anyone else with you. What Aditya has done is enough to haunt me for as long as I live. I don't want anything like that to happen to you, ever again," he said firmly, with determination.

"The only thing I can do to make sure that something like that never happens to you is to keep you with me. If you have to marry someone, anyone, then marry me, Sumo," he said, he looked in her eyes, before looking down and continuing;

"I know I am not someone you wanted as your husband, I am not enough, but I promise to keep you safe, I will never hurt you, not in that way. I can't guaranty you happiness or a blissful married life, we will never be happy together," he admitted quietly.

"That's not true," she contradicted, heartbroken by his firm beliefs, conflicted on how to tell him how wrong he was.

But her words went unheard by him...

"I know I will never be enough, but I will keep you safe," he continued, promising something that he knew he could do.

"And whenever you find your happiness somewhere else, I will let you go," he whispered quietly, resigned.

"Shravan..." She cried out his name in pain, wounded by his words.

"Let me keep you safe with me for time being, Sumo, and I will let you go whenever you find someone worthy," he pleaded, blinded by his reasons and fears.

"I don't know what to do with you, Shravan Malhotra," she whispered in disbelief, angered yet broken, tired.

And when he kept looking at her firmly, with a strange fear shining in his eyes, concerned and worried, for her, she sighed and gave in...

"You won't believe whatever I say now, so I am going to show you with my actions, and with time, you will know how much you mean to me," she told him, her hands moving to cup his jaw and caressed it with her thumbs as she kept looking in his eyes with tenderness.

His reasoning was wrong, he was being too pessimistic, too cynic, a part of her told her to back off - to not agree and to give him time until he would start believing her, to wait until he sees and recognizes how much she loved him but she knew she couldn't trust her luck. No, she shouldn't. Finally, everything was going smoothly, everyone was determined to marry them off and she couldn't miss this second, or maybe a third chance that fate has given them to be together.

Once married, she could take all the given time to show him how much she felt guilty for hurting him and show him how much she has loved him since forever, how he was everything she always wanted and that she could become everything he wanted her to. Yes, she had to agree now. For now, she just had to ignore her inhibitions and doubts, he will come around, she was sure...

"You know I had always thought whoever will get to be your wife would be someone very lucky. To me, you are everything any girl would ever want, well apart from your occasional misogynist bursts, you are quite a catch," she said with a teasing smile as she looked at him.

"Shravan, I too can't trust someone else when it comes to you. I will always have issues with the way your wife – whoever she may be – will handle you with all your anger and your wounds. I happen to think only I can heal them," she whispered with a soft smile, tears in her eyes.

"My wounds will never heal," he stated without blinking.

Ignoring his cynic statement, she continued;

"I want you to be healed with love and care, for you to be happy. And that can only happen if I take control of the situation. You are too much for a light-hearted girl to deal with," she said with her eyes crinkled as she laughed.

"So, yes, Shravan Malhotra, let's get married and stay together for life to heal each other in ways no one else apart from us can heal each other," she said, smiling brightly, hiding away her uncertainties and hesitation.

She was deluding herself, they both knew...

"I don't believe you, but yes, let's get over with it already," he muttered pulling away from her, his eyes narrowed as he looked at her suspiciously.

With conflicted thoughts, doubts and inhibitions, they agree to something they had always wanted but now when they were finally about to have it, they weren't sure...

'Was agreeing to marry the right thing?' They both asked themselves.

Only time would tell...

* * *

A/N:- First of all, apologies for the delay, the editing process took longer than I had anticipated...

Now how many of you are surprised by Shravan's u-turn? I don't know if I have succeeded in expressing his fear with its intensity but that's the driving force behind his decision while Suman is just turning a blind eye to the red signals and his honest confessions and warnings because she thinks luck for once is on her side and that she can handle the situation - that's such a Sumo move... 

Let me know your thoughts and feelings on this chapter in the comment section...

I hope you all liked the update, thank you for waiting, for keeping me motivated t,o write and for all the encouragement and support...

Thank you! :)

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