Flashback – Two Years Ago
Aariz's POV
I have never known any pain like this, not when I was bleeding on battlefields or sobbing on praying mats while kneeling in front of god. Nothing I have experienced, the best or the worst, prepared me for this. I am lying on the cracked surface of Earth, not more cracked or broken than my trust, with blood pooling beneath me, my own blood which is hurting less than the darting pain in my chest.
I stare at her:
My Fatima
No, Ms. Fatima Quereshi
Or, maybe someone else
The whole world in front of my eyes starts spinning, the only thing keeping me tethered to reality is the pain in my shoulder and thigh, but that was not enough pain. The most agonizing pain, the pain which is not grounding me to reality, but making me feel like destroying everything real is the betrayal of the most real person from my life. The woman who had my entire being and existence is no more the woman I loved. She is not far from me, yet, I have lost her. She is in my reach, I can hold her if I wish, but the bullets she mercilessly passed through my body don't allow me to move. The woman who commanded me, taught me, healed me and loved... no, she did not love me. She never did. How could she, right? But, but some part of my heart wants anything to hold on to, anything at all that makes me believe she was real, and maybe just maybe, I would want to live once more, because currently death seems the easiest option to me.
Just then, my heart finds something to hold onto, the fact that there were two gunshots, two moments when I thought my life would end, when I was more than sure I would die, but they did not kill me. The woman standing in front of me is not the one I loved, but some part of the woman I loved is maybe left in her, some part is definitely left, otherwise why, just why would she aim at my shoulder and thigh and not some vital organ. Okay, fine shoulder has a lot of nerves that could have turned lethal, but it hit me just above the shoulder blade, and by the impact of the bullet and the gun model, the rough idea of the size and type it might have, tells me it was meant to be survivable. Also its trajectory was such that it could not cause any life threatening complications. She is not standing at a huge distance from me and the way she is holding the gun clearly shows me she is trained, so, in short, she did not cause me any serious damage intentionally.
But that is just one part, despite the pool of blood I have created and body giving into my weakening limbs, all my mind screams to my heart who is trying to justify her, is why? And my body feeling nothing except pain voices it out, "Was any of it real?", I observe my voice is just above a whisper, it is more hoarse than I expected, it hurts to speak, but I know the answer would be more painful. And above all this, my voice cracked, not by the strain of pain, but disbelief.
I am waiting for the answer desperately, but she is not responding. She just stands there with an unreadable face, emotions buried deep under that cold facade. Okay, so my heart is wrong, it needs to understand that she is not real. My heartbeats slow down, as if the end is near. So, now I can peacefully die... wait, something flickers in her eyes, something that will no more let me die peacefully, hesitation. My heart starts throbbing in my chest and a sharp pain hits my head. What the hell on Earth is happening here? Now, what the hell was this?
I struggle to stand despite the pain and agony, but my legs buckle beneath me, and I fall to one knee. How cinematic, wow. Desperation takes over me and I start blabbering, my body feels paralyzed at this point, desperation takes over the pain, "You, you said that we were in this together, you said, you said that we are one, we can't be parted away, you don't lie, right?" I cough and blood starts dribbling from my mouth. "You care about me, isn't it? I was not just another mission. I know. This is some pressure, haina, I will manage it, tell me, tell me all of it, I am not angry at you, I get you, I have your back. Say something, anything, please, I beg you." I join my hands in front of her in a pleading gesture.
("Haina" means "right?")
Her hand tightens on the trigger and the air between us grows heavy. She just said without saying that there are a thousand unspoken truths hanging between us, not by the gesture of her hand, but by her unwavering gaze of moist eyes. She wants to kill me, fine, but why the hell are her eyes moist? I swear to kill the very reason of the deep pain that is being reflected through her moist eyes.
And then she fires again, and I, I freeze, again.
The bullet tears through my leg, and a searing pain brings me to the ground, but this time....this time also, it wasn't aimed at my heart. And I? I understand it now. She wants to harm me, incapacitate me, punish me, but she doesn't want to kill me, not yet. She doesn't want me dead, at least till now. And my heart, this stupid heart finds hope in that. My Fatima, is not just ishq now, she is ibaadat and aayat for me.
(ishq means love, ibaadat means worship or service, aayat means, miracle or gift of god)
My breathing is ragged, my head is swimming and disbelief has flooded my senses.
She is not going to kill me.
The realization is a cold wave crashing on me. She is an assassin, she knows how to kill, she might have done it many times before, and yet, she didn't. I should be crying due to immense pain, but the tears in my eyes are due to the fact that the woman I loved is still alive in some corner of this cold woman.
No, I am not imagining it, not at all, her hesitation tells me that, look in her cold and calculated eyes, and you will feel it, a flicker of doubt, you can clearly see the conflict in them. There is humanity left in her, she is operating on a mission, and it is justified for her to hurt me, but what is not usual is that something very human buried in her, something that is stopping her from killing me. She is in guilt. She can still be mine, I can still be hers, I am still hers.
"Who are you?" I whisper, "Fatima, who are you?". I won't faint, I won't, I have to hold on to consciousness, I have to plant seeds of something that can bring her back to me again.
She is not answering, but something in her eyes flickers again. And there it is, in a slow and steady voice she says, "I never lied about what I felt with you." I died here, I died, I am no more. Her words are cutting through my pain and confusion. I am ready to stay like this if she continues speaking, it is healing, it is beautiful, this pain is beautiful. "Just about who I was" It is okay, it doesn't matter. I want to scream this to her and hug her, and most importantly tell her to stop crying. The bullets are not paining as much as her tears, those that don't fall from her eyes, but are so heavy there that their thickness can be seen.
She starts walking into the dark, and Like those old films, I want to say 'palat', willing her to turn around, just once, no, jokes apart, she would turn, she would, she loves me, she does. But, she doesn't turn back, she doesn't even wait for me to respond. The moment is gone. But, it is ok, she is hiding her tears, so I don't consider her weak, but how do I tell her that it is okay love, aayat and ibaadat can never be weak.
The woman I once loved is gone. The woman who taught me kindness, who made me look at something more than just a mission is gone, and replaced by a cold agent who doesn't think about anything except the missions. But, I will get her back, I have planted the seeds, even if she confuses guilt with love she would come back to me, because she is my aayat. She is mine and I am her, completely hers.
That may be a small flicker of hope for everyone else, but that was enough to keep me smiling while I lost my wits to the darkness around me.
Giriraj's POV
The night is too quiet for Karachi, isn't it?
I am crouched behind a camouflaged lookout post which is carved into the edge of a sand bluff. I have my eyes on them. Her and that boy, last time. Last time usually hurts.
The soldier who once manned this post is no more, I didn't do it, it's just that war always leaves vacancies for men like me, and though I am quite good at filling them, that man didn't have a beard. I am definitely not trimming my beard for that reason, so we take the easy way, a man who has no problem with me hiding behind this post is guarding him. Good for him that he doesn't want to die yet. Let me tell you something, he is afraid of a gun with rubber bullets filled inside it, though he doesn't know that those are rubber bullets.
I press the old binocular firm against my eyebrows, it is a relic from a martyr, too heavy for civilians, but perfect for nights like this. I don't need audio, I have her body language and his eyes. I also have two mouths that are speaking so clearly, that I can read their words like breath on glass.
"Why are you here Aariz?" So that is his name on her mouth, Aariz. His name must have come like a breath or gasp, I am telling by the way she says it slowly and tensed. Her file never told me what I just saw.
The twitch in her fingers show that she is calculating, grieving and deciding.
"You are not supposed to be here." Seriously? What is it? Bollywood Thursdays? His tone is half of a rebellion and half of a begging, like he is auditioning for the heartbreak Olympics. God, you know the worst part? He is not a fool, yes he is not. He knows exactly what he's doing, but my question is, who trained him to speak like that on the field? Emotional appeal as tactical entry? I almost laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was him. A man who should know better, saying things that belong in a battlefield of hearts, not operations. And here I am, cringing on behalf of national security. I used to think he was reckless. Now, I think he's reckless on purpose. Weaponizing vulnerability like it's part of his kit. But that doesn't make it any less painful to watch or harder to hear. And yes, I cringed, but not because it was absurd, but because I knew exactly what he meant.
I don't see a boy and a woman, I see two forces that should have never met. I told her, I told her to cut him off, but she chose this damn chaos, because she wanted more out of him. More lead and intel. I know what is coming, and it would have not if she would have listened to me, just because I was playing subway surfers when she first met me, doesn't imply that I am a barking dog she can ignore whenever she wants. But, it is okay, she is just 22, a kid, I get her, I would back her.
He was never supposed to mean anything, but till now, I know one thing for sure, this dumb, okay fine, this great captain of an undercover operative matters, he does matter, for sure.
The gun raises, but I don't move because I have seen this in her nightmares. She fires and he drops. And, the world stops for a moment, and the next moment she crumbles, just a shift of weight and a crack in spine. A breath that never comes out is stuck at her lips as a sob, and I see her speaking something to no one, those words remain in her mouth, but from my experience I know it was,"I'm sorry". And something tears inside me, not rage or sorrow, just a cold darting pain in my chest that says this pain should not have been seen, but I saw it, and I can't unsee it.
I want to desperately replace my binoculars with a rifle with a sniper scope seeing the pain in her eyes. Not to stop her, but the world. To shoot this very moment so it never repeats and she never has to live this again. I lower the binoculars. Aariz bleeds and Chhayika breaths, and somewhere between them, a shadow that watches, the one she will never see.
She walks away and doesn't look back, good, because she should never see what comes next. Because I move swift, silent, and calculated, and reach him before his men do. Two of them are closing from the other side, delayed by traffic or fate or both. He is unconscious and barely breathing, his blood is seeping through cracked pavement. I can't let him die if she doesn't kill him, I stop the bleeding as much as I can. I should drag his body, but I carefully lift it up and place it behind a thicket of trees. I am doing a cleaner's job, not a leader's, but I am both right now. I cover the blood trail with loose soil and leaves, wiping the traces with water from a leaky pipe behind the wall. It's not perfect, but it buys her time. Moreover, it should not be perfect or he will die due to time delay. According to my calculation of the behaviour and IQ of those two men and Aariz's team, my work gives her enough time to escape and him enough to survive.
He slightly stirs, not awake though, but not completely gone too. Just aware enough to remember the feel of movement, maybe. He won't know it was me. That is exactly how it should be.
That is how it has always been for me. I move before the world notices and make the cracks invisible. I patch her silence with shadows, and when it bleeds, I take the stain before her. It is not a compulsion for me, and so it is not a sacrifice by my side, it is a choice I make voluntarily. I am just meant to cover her flaws, and I do it, everytime, even when it bleeds or it breaks me. I am good at my job, or maybe... forget it.
Blood seeps through my gloves and my boots press down the trail he left behind. I rinse what I can under a broken pipe, scrub the rest with dirt. The stains cling and each new smear of blood, it feels heavier, so I let it be. I am privileged to be the one to fix what she can't see, to keep the quiet air between us clear of chaos, even if it means staining myself. And that covers the weight of this act, of what I'm becoming, because it settles deeper inside me. She doesn't know how many times I have done this, nor did she ever ask. Maybe she thinks I just appear, just vanish.
I check his pulse once more and it is still steady. He would live if he wants to, and he desperately wants to. I leave him half covered in shadow and half in moon light, similar to the situations she has been dragged into because of him, even if unintentionally. I should hate him for it, right? But, the truth is that I can't, rather I hate the part of me that understands him more than anything. I hate that part of me that almost... sympathizes. The part of me that knows he is the one suffering the most, he has been dragged into her world, just like me and her, against our judgement, better or not, I don't know. The fact that I and she let us be dragged away willingly, but he never had a choice, makes me feel that he, that he is the victim and not the culprit. But then who do I blame for it, if not him, me or her, or system? That would be childish, so let's say, fate, maybe yes, maybe no. I hate that I get it. How amusing is that the silence that defends and guards her, that very silence traps me in its suffocating grip, until I forget how to breath without it.
I vanish before the headlights cut the road, back into the silence she still believes protects her, never guessing how far it has to stretch to hold her.
Present Day
Chhayika's POV
I remember that night, the night I became Fatima Quereshi.
It wasn't my name, it was too pure to be mine, instead a mask. A mask formed by painting ashes of someone's tragedy into a carefully constructed lie. You know the worst part? I don't even know whose tragedy it was, who lived it, how she survived it, I can't answer any of them. I don't know how she lived after losing everything, but I know what emotions were left in her after that and how she used to recall it. Her backstory was that she watched her family burn to ashes in a mosque fire set by extremists, her world ripped apart in an instant, her life was suddenly drained of colour, and a life full of everything, suddenly had nothing left. That was who I became, I can never see that happening to me, the process of imagining and letting a part of me absorb that something like that happened to me, when it really didn't was itself painful, ugly, and traumatic, yes, traumatic in its own way.
But, keeping the emotional segment aside, it wasn't really tough, because I am by nature a good actor. No, I am not boasting, I really am, I have been doing it since childhood. I have mastered it to an extent that I can show people exactly what they want to through my face in a way that they would blindly believe they found it out themselves. I have been doing it even before I joined RAW or any kind of government entity, before I started earning, before I found what career really is, before I found out myself, before I understood that I deserve to live. Let me say it the way it is, I am a brilliant, astonishingly marvelous liar. You can never, in no case catch me, even mentalists read what I want them to, it is that natural. I have been doing this since I was 3 years old, and 21 years of practice can make anyone perfect. I have a secret trick, let me share it with you. It is simple to listen to and extremely hard to practice, that is why knowing it won't give you any leverage, living it would. But anyway, since I am telling you, just listen, I don't lie to people, I lie to myself, my entire system absorbs the change. Let me give you a simple example, my brother once lied repeatedly that he score 76, whereas in reality it was 71, and after 3 months the forgot his real score and only remember the fake one, so much so that he fought with school authority that they degraded him and stopped only after seeing his marksheet. And, if by any chance you are thinking he was doing it because my parents were standing and he couldn't back off, then you are wrong, they didn't even see the result. He scored 71 out of 80, which is 88% approx, and his overall result was 96.95%, so my parents really didn't give a damn about it, more because he topped the school. He forgot the truth, and his system embedded the lie too deep. The only difference between me and him is that he took three months and I only need three seconds, anytime and anywhere. He had a skill issue, I don't. The point is, we all wear masks, especially when the world demands, don't we? I am just brilliant at it. Now, you know what it means to melt your chains and make weapons out of them, to master your weakness to a level that it becomes strength. My suffering became my strategy. My wounds learned to walk like strengths. Are you a good liar? You may have a chance in my field, and let me tell you, I love competition.
I digress too much, my bad, coming back, I had studied her story like it was sacred, not missing a single detail, from name to suffering to survival, I didn't learn it, I embedded it into my system. I became her with the precision of someone who knew the stakes, it was a kind of performance in which I had no choice, but to keep perfect. Everyone can speak the lines, I mastered the pain in her eyes, the trembling in her voice, the grace in her movements. I learned something I didn't have, softness; I became someone I wasn't, weak; and I lost something I couldn't, though for a short period of time, my pride and ego. Because for it to be convincing, it had to be real.
Real, it was all very real, so real that I did something that I was sure I only had to pretend to do, trust him. Him, Aariz Khan, the man who saw me for what I wasn't, yet offered me a piece of him, without complaints. He gave me intel, true, but he also gave me something far more precious, not for an agent, but for a woman, ownership over him, he never owned me, but willingly or unwillingly, I had started to own him. He had his own demons. He was a man so torn between duty and conscience that it bled with his every word and action, and yet he smiled. It pained to see his condition, and that pain is guilt now. He was different from others. He was not blind behind loyalty, but someone who knew the price of royalty, and willingly paid it. You know something dangerous about him, he loved me, but that was safe because I didn't like the love, but he, he respected me, and I liked it.
I was clear, clear that he is just a part of the mission, significant yet powerless. I had the power, I had the leverage, but the truth is I had that all because I had him. He wasn't supposed to matter, because I was there only for information. I had to make him trust me, and get to know everything, either directly by him, or by his blind trust. But, somewhere in the verses of Quran, the poetry we exchanged, the glances we shared, the songs we sang, the music our flute and guitar played, the way he held my hand, the way he smiles, the sheer korma I fed him, the shahi tukda he made for me, the mehndi he mastered, and the way he saw me, I wondered if I had already crossed a line, a line that should have been far from my reach.
Had I gone too far? Because one thing was clear, he was no more a tool, not just means to an end. He cared, cared in a way made me uncomfortable yet secure, that made my question my resolve. He saw me like I was the god or the breath, or maybe, just maybe, both. And that was lethal. I knew that it was just a matter of time till this care turned to rivalry and that love transformed into hate, till he asks questions that shatter it all. And that, that was inevitable.
"Do you believe in love?" He asked once. I remember the weight of his words and the sincerity in them. The genuine desire to know. And I swear on this, only for a split second, I wanted to answer him truthfully. I wanted to tell him that love can't be afforded in the real world, at least not in my world, not in a world built from wreckage of a thousand betrayals, that it was never that way. I wanted to, really.
That could be Fatima's words too, but I didn't. I couldn't. Because the mission demanded something else.
Instead I smiled and told him, I learned to trust the mission above everything else. I had learned to believe in the cause that would one day bring peace. I didn't lie, that is what I think too. If I had lied, he would have caught me, so I made it smooth. The things I said were pure truth, but what kept me awake the whole night that day was the part that made him look at me with those eyes, so full of want and hope; was the lie, the ultimate one.
And I hated myself for it. I hate myself for it.
But, in the end, what I hated more was that I couldn't stop myself from getting attached to him. I couldn't really stop feeling his warmth, the way he held me with those gentle hands, how he laughed at the smallest things. How he didn't judge me, even when I couldn't explain everything that was completely broken inside me.
I should have walked away and left when it was easy, but as the mission demanded more, I did what I had to. I waited, I waited until the night was right, the moment when I knew he would speak of the operation, of the plans that could change everything. That was exactly when I had to leave, with the truth that I had extracted, as if, as if I had never been there.
The way he looked at me that night, I knew, I knew I would lose that, that became precious to me, so I stared right into his soul for the first time. I was trying to see him see me, in a way that no one would ever see me again. He would never understand the choice I made, he shouldn't, I wouldn't. He still doesn't know, actually no one apart from me knows that the night I shot him, I cried for the first time, in the dark, all alone, this time, by choice.
He would never know that I didn't want to harm him, that I didn't want to kill him, that I just couldn't.
But, I could let him live either. So, I left him there, bleeding and broken, with all questions I had no answers to. "Who was I?" "What was real?" I could have stayed and told him everything. But, it was not all about the mission, but the fear too. The fear that if he enter my world, that if I let him in, I would lose everything I have worked for. And, I couldn't let that happen, I couldn't let him make me human.
The past always has a way of pulling you back, of bleeding into present, no matter how hard you try to bury it. I stand in the corner of my Delhi study, lights off, the silence pressing against the walls like an old memory refusing to fade. The monitor glows in front of me, cold and blue, casting my reflection on the screen, a version of myself I am used to avoiding. My face looks exactly like how the past must remember it, lined with fatigue that no sleep cures, stitched with stories that I never really told. On the screen, the footage plays, grainy and grey. Karachi Port. Last week.
She walks like she knows who she is. She walks like she knows who I was. Her ID flashes briefly across the corner. Fatima Qureshi. The name is a scratch on old glass, something I used to know well, something I left behind on purpose, buried beneath years of calculated silence. But this woman walks with my weight. She limps slightly, the way I did after that failed operation in Gilgit. Her scarf falls the same way, loose over one shoulder. And below her left jaw, there it is, the same mole I once used to cover with makeup when the mission needed me to be someone else. I don't even flinch. I already knew.
I knew before the Istanbul confession. Before the agent started shaking and begged me not to hurt him. Before he said the words I had dreaded since the first whisper reached my desk, someone had brought Fatima back. Someone had used that name, that ID, that signature, crossed the LOC without resistance, entered areas I swore I would never touch again. I had killed that alias. I had erased every trace. Because Fatima wasn't just a name, she was a life I wasn't willing to return to. I had decided that. But someone else decided differently.
And now, she walks the earth with my limp and my features and the goddamn smirk I thought I had unlearned. I press pause. The frame freezes just as she turns to the camera, not directly but enough. Her expression isn't scared. It isn't hesitant either. She almost looks amused. And that almost is what burns.
She isn't trying to hide. She's trying to be found.
I lean back in the chair, the room suddenly heavier. This isn't surveillance anymore. This is a message. A revival. A threat.
She's moving. And I am going to have to move too. Not because I want to find her. But because I know exactly what happens when a ghost starts breathing again.
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Author's Note:
This chapter takes us through the tangled perspectives of Aariz, Chhayika, and Giriraj, revealing the hidden layers of their lives and choices. The weight of their decisions and emotions can't be ignored.
What do you think - can Chhayika ever truly escape her past, or is she destined to carry the shadows of those she's tried to protect?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments! Your feedback means the world to me.
Thank you for being a part of this journey.
~Kshyatri