Hey all...
--edit-- So, I've decided to continue this OS as an SS. I am not sure how often I'll update, though :) You can read it here also:
https://harshubennet.wordpress.com/category/fanfiction/arakshi/arakshi-ss-finding-sakshi --edit--
I never thought I'd be back on this forum, but I had to write this and give my own closure to this story. This is my first story on this forum, and probably the last. I know it is short, but I'm writing after more than a year, so I am surprised that I even managed to write this much. I started writing this before 'the episode' aired, so you can see that a few creative liberties have been taken. This is in a way an early Christmas gift to all the Arakshi fans out here, and especially to Sakuu, who first read the preview of this story and encouraged me to continue.
Also, as much as I wish I did, I do not own any of the characters mentioned in the story, I merely borrow them to satisfy my own creative fantasies. And I do not have much knowledge on the medical condition referred to in this story, all I know is from what I've read or seen in stories, movies or TV shows. So please overlook any bloopers.
Okay, there ends my rant, now over to you lovely people. Seasons' greetings in advance.😛
ArAkshi SS: Finding Sakshi
Chapter 1: While the heart beats...
"While the heart beats, hope lingers."
- Alison Croggon
Arjun stared out of the window, at a lone bright star that shone in the murky Mumbai sky, listening to the last of the carols from a nearby church. In a few hours, the world around would awaken into another Christmas morning, a day of hope and joy for some, and just a lazy holiday for some others.
However, for Arjun, it was a day marked with loss, and the pain that one would usually associate with it. It was going to be a year since that fateful day, when he had witnessed the ETF headquarters blown off into smithereens. A year since he had turned his back on the law that bound him, the same law he had once sworn and striven to uphold.
It was going to be a year since he had lost the closest thing he had for a family, and the growing darkness in his life had engulfed him completely.
Well, almost.
**
After the light of his life had been snatched away, leaving him lurching in darkness, he had made his work and his quest for revenge, the only ways of his existence. He had wanted to shut out any emotion, or any bond that would tie him to anyone, purely for the fear of losing them. Yet, his team had managed to break through that wall to a large extent, although he had never admitted that to anyone. It had bothered him at times, the extent to which he had come to care for these people and many times his fears surfaced as outbursts of anger, as had happened that day. He had shouted at them for no particular reason before walking out of the building in anger. He remembered the stunned faces of Aisha, Chotu and Liza like it was yesterday. He had sensed Sakshi follow him out, but he simply walked out faster, eager to escape her piercing eyes and questioning gaze.
Then there was a deafening noise, and he had found himself knocked backwards with the sheer energy of it, while the building he had come to regard almost as home was blown off into smithereens in front of him.
He had stumbled through the debris that his life had now left him with, searching for a tiny ray of light that would guide him and make life a little less miserable. Anything that would help him emerge out of the gulf of guilt that fate had pushed him into.
And then, he had found her. Unconscious and gravely injured, yet, he had sensed a faint pulse course through her veins. She had followed him out after all, and that probably had saved her life, albeit barely.
**
After that day, he had partnered with Karan, fighting crime their way. This new partnership and the new job might have given him a way of existence, but he would still be wallowing in that abyss of despair had he not felt that faint pulse that day, Arjun thought as he turned around and walked towards the bed that lay at the further end of the room.
**
On the bed rested Sakshi Anand, eyes closed, her once flawless skin now tainted with scars and burn marks, reminiscent of the day they both had lost all they held dear. Robbed off her memories, she was only a shadow of the girl who had once annoyed him with her perpetual chirpiness.
The doctors weren't entirely sure if she would regain her memory or not. One day she might wake up to discover she remembered it all, or she might never remember again. The cheerful, naughty glint in her eyes was long gone, and now sometimes reflected confusion, of not knowing who she was or who to believe, or who the man who visited her every week with flowers and books, was. She had questioned him once, and he had merely replied he was her friend.
Friend...
He had never really considered Sakshi a friend, when she was her usual self. All those times she relentlessly tried to gain his attention in the strangest of ways, he had either shouted at her, or ignored her. He knew Sakshi was in love with him, although he never acknowledged it. She had never confessed, nor had anyone told him, yet he knew. He had never encouraged her feelings, yet he had never completely dismissed them either. As much as her chirpiness annoyed him, he had admired her ability to lighten up the gravest of moments with her smiles. He was jealous of her cheer and her smiles, and yet, he didn't want to be the reason to have them taken away from her.
**
But that was Sakshi Anand of the past. The smiles and cheer were gone, although he wasn't the reason. He didn't know whether or not to be relieved at that thought.
He didn't know a lot of things... why he visited her every week, for instance. Why had he convinced his doctor friend to let him stay past the visiting hours, every week? Why he talked to her of the most random things? Unlike their previous interactions, he was the one who spoke, while she listened intently. At times he read out the day's newspaper to her, passing his comments on certain news items casually, sometimes observing her for any change of mood, or any reaction. Sometimes he watched her engrossed in one of the books he brought for her, and when she fell asleep, he removed the book that would be lying on her body and quietly placed it on the table nearby. Sometimes he held her hand softly by the wrist, feeling the pulse that coursed through her veins.
Why, he didn't know. Perhaps he wanted to assure himself that she was alive. That he had something to look forward to, every week, that there was hope, that she would one day wake up to know herself, and him.
That her heart still beat, and therefore, hope lingered.
--
Harshu😊
--Index--
Chapter 1: above
Chapter 2: Her Questions (i)
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