Zayan slowly took off his wrist watch and carefully placed it on the bed side table. He was still standing awkwardly when he heard the door creak open and Maya stepped inside.

She was holding two mugs. She handed one mug to him.  

"Thanks." He said as their fingers brushed when she handed him the cup. He looked at the swirling green tea. He took a sip, but regretted it the next second as the hot liquid scalded his throat.

Maya's parents had convinced them to stay over for the night as it was late at night. He had been very reluctant about it, but Areesha's not-so-subtle glare had effectively shut his mouth.

Maya had been told to prepare the guest room for her mother-in-law. There was no question as to where Zayan was supposed to sleep as he was her husband. Of course he was going to sleep with her in her old bedroom.

Maya had felt a little hesitant about that. She wasn't sure why, but her bedroom was like personal territory and she felt like it reflected her personality. She had decorated it according to her own taste and it was a tad bit more colorful and flamboyant than the rest of the rooms in the house.

She still had the "I solemny swear that I'm up to no good" cushions from the time she had been obsessed with Harry Potter. She wasn't sure if he'd find that childish and stupid but she still loved them too much to throw them away. She uncomfortably cleared her throat, glaring at the cushions to disappear.

A lush maroon carpet with crisscross patterns on it adorned the wooden floor of her bedroom. It started at the foot of her queen-sized bed and was approximately twelve feet long.

Her study table with a revolving chair was at the far end of the room facing away from the bed. It was still lined up with textbooks; just as she had left it. Around her desk she had pasted motivational quotes on colorful sticky notes in her own curly handwriting.

Above her desk was a silver colored grandfather clock. It was a gift from her father on her birthday a long time ago. That clock had witnessed a lot of her breakdowns during her student life. She had spent a lot of time sitting at her study table and cursing the clock for running too fast.

The time on the clock had stopped at 4: 35. The time had stopped in her bedroom as well just like it had stopped for her in her life. Her bedroom was literally a relection of her personality. The more she stared at the clock, it looked like a sad, unhappy face. She blew out an inaudible sigh and shook her head herself. What was she thinking?

"Your room is... girlish." Zayan commented as he stared at the pink wallpapers making her smile involuntarily albeit embarrassed, and forget her previous train of thoughts.

"Yeah, I literally begged baba to have my room painted pink because he was so against it. When it was done, I didn't like it because it was a slightly darker shade of pink than I imagined. So we got these off-white curtains to balance it out." Maya reminisced with a glance at the curtains with a golden design imprinted in them. "He still teases me about it."

"So blue cake for Uzair and pink room for you. That makes you sexist." He commented making her chuckle and she realized that she had colored the icing of the cake blue.

"Oh God!" She let out a small chuckle. "That's so true, isn't it? I didn't even realize it."

"And you're quite observant." She commented.

"Well, it's a habit developed over time. Plus it comes in handy when you're a lawyer." He shrugged, carefully taking a small sip of the green tea testing the temperature.

He looked around and flipped around the medical textbooks on her bookshelf.

"This stuff looks scary." He commented as he opened a copy of 'Grays Anatomy' and flipped through it.

"Well, you lawyers have to study a lot too, don't you? Like whenever a law gets revised you need to study it thoroughly or when you're preparing a case."

"Yeah, but this is scary." He snapped the thick book shut with a shudder and looked around the bookshelf.

"What were you and Fawad talking about earlier?" He glanced at her and she immediately understood what he meant. She blew out a long sigh.

"He asked me if I was happy with our marriage." She said as if that was the stupidest question ever.

"I had a feeling you guys were talking about me. So what did you say?" He asked, genuinely curious.

"What do you think?" She said and Zayan sighed.

"He cares about you, that's why he asked." He said instead.

"Yeah sure." She said in a taunting manner. "If he had really cared, he would have listened to me when I told him that I didn't want to get married."

"Maya, you know that he had more than enough reason to believe that we were involved in each other." He stated. The scene when Fawad had caught them replayed in his mind and left a bad taste in his mouth. That was the moment she had come into his life, never to leave again.

Maya looked at him for a second before replying. "I don't care now. He has no right to ask me that. I don't give a damn about his concern."

Zayan looked like he was ready to argue but he knew better than that.

"I never knew you to be so stubborn. And you hold grudges too." He commented dryly.

"I never knew you to be so judgemental." She all but snapped at him.

"Maya, you know you're hurting yourself the most by doing this, don't you?" Zayan said ignoring her previous statement.

"Yeah. I know." She whispered and if the room wasn't so quiet he wouldn't have even heard her. He knew she needed space so he dropped the topic.

She quietly sipped the green tea from her cup, deep in thoughts and Zayan looked away, continuing to explore her bookshelf to avoid talking to her.

"Fault in Our Stars? Seriously?" Zayan picked up the book from the shelf after a few minutes of silence.

"I had a phase, okay?" She said suppressing a smile.

"And how do you know about it anyway?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "You've read it too, haven't you?"

"Huh?" His head snapped towards her. "Yeah." He replied distracted.

He hadn't read it, but Leya had narrated the entire plot to him. During her last days, she had started reading a lot to distract herself from negative thoughts. He used to bring her a book every few days. Then she would narrate the whole story to him too distract his thoughts too. He should have been the one to be there for her, but it was the other way around really. She had caught him from falling in more than one way.

He remembered how they both had cried at the end of the book. At first, he had hidden his tears from her not wanting to show that he was crying over a stupid book. But they both knew that he wasn't crying over a simple book. They had hugged each other not wanting to let go. But apparently fate had other ideas and despite them holding each other so tightly, it snatched her away from him in the cuelest manner possible.

He shook his head to let go of the thought. He swallowed against the lump in his throat. Leya was everywhere, everywhere he looked. She was a part of his life, a part of him. He couldn't just let go. It would mean let going of himself.

Is it possible to let go of your past? Isn't your past a part of you? He ran a hand through his hair, making them messier than they already were and swallowed his emotions letting his tears fall on his heart instead.

He flipped opened a random page from the novel but he couldn't read a word. They appeared blurry for some reason and he couldn't see them. His fingers caressed the rough surface of the pages wanting to touch her soft skin and kiss it with his fingers. Swalowing, he closed the book shut and placed it back on the shelf. It was easy to close the book but it was so hard to close that chapter of his life. 

To distract himself, he looked around the room. The photograph on the side table caught his eye. Intrigued, he picked it up.

His eyes cleared up and now he could see clearly. He stared at the girl in the photograph. She was beautiful. She was laughing, with her eyes crinkled and a full blown smile-the contagious kind on her lips. He smiled back at her. It was impossible not to smile at her.

"Who is she?" He glanced at Maya seeing her halt as she sipped her from her cup.

Maya rolled her eyes as she stared at her picture. It wasn't from more than an year ago. She remembered the day they had gone for an outing and her brother had snapped this photo without her knowing. She had been laughing at something her father was saying, most probably one of his old anecdotes for he loved to share those. She really didn't remember what he had been saying but she still remembered the happiness of that day. She usually got annoyed when someone took her picture without her knowing but that photograph had turned out good and her mother had gotten it framed. 

"Whoever this girl is, is beautiful." Zayan said softly, taking both of them by surprise. He wasn't one to appreciate a woman's beauty; not anymore.

"That's me." Maya stated blankly, trying to decipher the look in his eyes.

"I know it's you. But it's not you at the same time." He remarked still staring at the picture. Upon seeing her blank face he turned her towards the mirror on the wall.

Above the mirror, she had written on a chart paper 'Mirror, mirror who is the fairest of them all'. It caught Maya's eye before she dropped her gaze to what the mirror was really showing. The mirror showed a very un-beautiful girl. She stared into the girl's eyes but they were so blank.

Maya averted her gaze from her own eyes and stared at their reflection instead. It was easier to look at her reflection with him standing behind her. She ignored how this thought had so many meanings. If he wasn't there, she would have dwelled on the fact that she couldn't even look at herself. 

"Look at yourself. Really, look. You don't smile anymore. It's like you've lost that light in yourself. Even her eyes are smiling." He said. For a moment he thought as if he was describing himself. They had so much in common yet they were poles apart. He glanced back at the picture which once again captivated him. He didn't matter. She did. This beautiful girl mattered. There was no hope for him, but there was hope for her. He had told her he'd be there for her, and that's what he was doing.

He knew Maya was pretty, but he hadn't really appreciated that fact. He did know it, but at the same time he didn't, if that made sense. It didn't make sense to him. He had just never thought of her as a beautiful woman. He had realized this just now, and the realization had left him surprised. Was he really this unaware of everything around him? Was he really living in the past?

Maya sighed as she stared at the picture too with a different outlook this time. The picture represented more than a simple memory from the past. It was a real reminder of the person she used to be.

"I used to be a very happy person before - you know, everything. This incident just changed me, flipped my entire life around. The worst part is that I don't know how to fix it. I- I miss myself too. I miss being happy." Maya admitted not only to him, but to herself as well. She missed smiling for no reason, just for the sake of it.

It was hard to bare her soul in front of him. Allah knew how hard it was for her but when she had uttered the first word she could not stop.

She hadn't realized this before but now she did and this had taken her by utter surprise; how she could be so honest with him, even more than she was to her ownself? She wasn't the kind of person to bare herself to a stranger. A stranger who happened to be her husband: the most real relationship ever. Maybe it was just that moment and she had just uttered what she had thought, without thinking. If she come to think of it, it was her thoughts that were the real issue. The irony.

"We're together in this. I'm with you, whenever you need me. You know that." He said softly. He couldn't help himself, but he could help this girl. He would. The glimpses he had seen from her real self were beautiful. 

She had just dropped her real self somewhere and he would help her find it. He had died from inside. There was no coming back for him. With one final glance at the girl in the picture, he turned to the girl in front of him.

"Thank you." She nodded as she stared into his eyes. He knew why she said it, she knew she didn't need to elaborate. No more was said between them; there was no need.

Their eyes were speaking volumes until Maya finally averted them and looked down, afraid of spilling her entire self to him, just through one look. She was glad that some kind of understanding was developing between them but she was slightly afraid at the same time. She didn't know why, maybe it was just her thoughts creating more issues, she thought.

She took the picture from him and glanced at it again unable to look away with his words ringing in her head. She looked at the girl in the picture, really looked at it. The more she stared, the girl's smile looked frozen and even foreign. She had forgotten that feeling of smiling so carefreely in this short time. She shook her head and placed it back on the side table with one last thoughtful glance as a small smile slowly but surely adorned her features.

Zayan lay back on the bed unable to meet Maya's eye. It wasn't because of her; it was because of himself.

He felt like a hypocrite, saying that to her when he knew for a fact that he had stopped smiling after that incident too. That one incicident had flipped his life around too and he couldn't relate with Maya more. He could feel what she felt. The only difference was that he knew that she would be okay. He knew that for a fact.

He knew that she would start smiling again. He had promised himself to be with her, to hold her till she could hold herself on her own. But he hadn't been able to promise the same thing to himself in all these years. He knew it was time to move on but he also knew that he could not move on. He just could not. He knew all the words he would say to someone in his shoes going through the same things. He had said all that to himself but it just didn't work. He was stuck somewhere and he could not get out of that no matter how hard he tried. No matter how rational, how logical those words sound to him, he just couldn't convince himself. He never let it show to anyone but he knew for sure that his own words didn't work on him.

His past would always find a way in his present. The lines between the two were very blurred. In reality there was a distinct line between the two but when it came to his thoughts there wasn't because he lived in the past itself. He had erased the lines himself. He could not block it's way and maybe it was because he didn't even want to. He didn't have anything in the present to block it with. He didn't know on what basis he could tell his beautiful past to let him live, when he didn't have a beautiful present.

Somewhere in the middle of his train of thoughts, Maya had turned off the lights and the room was dark. He had her heard her soft 'Allah Hafiz' and he was sure that he had heard himself reply it to her as well.

He was present in the room, in the bed lying beside her, but at the same time he wasn't. He was lost somewhere in his thoughts, in the past.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips disolving into the cold air. He hadn't realized when his thoughts had all jumbled up into a quiet chaos. The kind of chaos that didn't make all that physical noise but still managed to be chaotic. It was so quiet yet so loud.

His breaths had started to even out with his mind shutting down, his eyelids getting heavy and body feeling light and he had fallen in a deep slumber with the woman beside him still wide awake, staring at the picture on her side table, smiling at what he had said. 

***

I felt like this chapter was really well-written and this is a surprise because I feel like this about myself very rarely. I poured my heart out into every single sentence. What do you guys think? I tried to express their deep feelings and I hope you read thoroughly without just skimming through the dialogues

By the way, I have a question. Do you guys usually hang onto the small details and emotions while reading and visualize them or do you just skim through the dialogues getting a general sense of what happens? I want an honest answer please. I won't mind, I promise.

I had a sudden burst of inspiration when I started writing this and I just couldn't stop. Every time I sat down to edit it, I had more to write. 

Do let me know if you have a favorite line or paragraph! Looking forward to reading loads of comments today!

I proofread the chapter so do point out any mistakes. I won't reread it because then I'll sit down and start adding more details. I seriously spent HOURS writing this...

Till next time, 

Allah Hafiz. Stay happy!

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