She Lived Twice

3 || Peter Pan and Wendy Darling

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Night had fallen on the Maheshwari Villa, their children—all three of them—sound asleep in their beds.

Nisha stared at the open sky of her bedroom balcony, lost deep in thoughts. "Nisha, sleep," Rajesh urged. Nisha frowned at her husband's words. "Aise kaise sleep, Raj?" Nisha asked, turning to face him.

"What are you so worried about, now?" Rajesh asked, approaching his wife.

"Two years have gone by, and we still don't know anything about the girl that we call our daughter. Forget calling her our daughter, she is our daughter."

"Why are you bringing all of this up now, Nisha?" Rajesh asked, not seeing where his wife was taking this conversation.

"She has questions about her past. Questions about where she came from, who she was, what she did. Questions that we don't have the answers to. Remember when she came home from Gauri's house and she looked at the walls with all of Yuvi and Tanu's pictures? She wanted to know why she wasn't there. Rajesh, we don't know anything about Anika. We know she had this boy in her past, Sahil. We don't know if he was her son, her brother, or her nephew. At her event today, she brought him up. She burst into tears, she had that horrid nightmare. Rajesh, she doesn't know, and neither do we."

Rajesh thought over the situation. "We may not know much about Anika, but we have clues." He turned to his wife, determination glistening in his eyes.

"Do you still have the mangalsutra?"

Nisha nodded. "Of course I do, what kind of a question is that?"

"When we found Anika, she had a mangalsutra hidden underneath her shirt, according to Nurse Diya.  In the rubble of her home, Gautam found a wedding lehenga, covered in ash. All of this means that Anika is married. And since there was no one in the house apart from her and Sahil, it means that her husband is most likely still alive and well."

"So her husband has the answers?" Nisha asked, catching on. Rajesh nodded. "Anika's husband is the key to unlocking the mystery of Anika's past. All we have to do," he turned to the night sky, "is find him."

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For the past two years, Shivaay Singh Oberoi has been the object of utmost hate from his very own family. Every moment of his life has been filled with solitude and an emptiness. A dull ache has settled in his heart, pining for the love of one in particular.

A gem he had lost to flames, because of his stupidity and temper.

Even his beloved brothers, Omkara and Rudra, have turned their backs on him.

"I used to be so proud to call you my brother," Om had said with tears in his eyes, "but, I'm now ashamed to even say that we're cousins."

Rudy, his duffer, was broken beyond repair. "You were my superman, Bhaiya," he had sobbed. Om had offered his shoulder for the younger one to cry on, and both of them walked away from Shivaay. Forever.

Shivaay cried in the embrace of the darkness, a home he had learned to come back to with great difficulty.

"I wish I could see you again and apologize. Come back to me, Anika."