dead girls don't love [dgdl]

chapter 32(II) \g

Ivanya stood up straight as she forced a smile on her face, grabbing the phone tightly. 

"Are you taking a day off today?" She says, trying to smile at him. Smiles, she has read somewhere, were the panacea to all battles. 

But, this was a war. 

He stood there for seconds, eyeing her from top to toe and then as if a realization hit him, he blurted, "I am sorry." 

Ivanya looked at him confused for a moment. Then, she remembered he did not say sorry for what he had done that night, the one before yesterday when he caught her talking to a man, in suspicion of his wife and his insecurities maybe, or in contemplation and fear of what he had done. 

She knows he wouldn't be saying sorry for yesterday. It was just a bash, after all. 

"You always are." Ivanya smiled at her husband as she said, not whispering as all other times. "It's fine." She spoke ahead, through the soft smile before turning away from him. 

As she walked to the parapet feeling the wind calm the sore spots of her body, she heard him request, "You are not planning on leaving me, right?" She stops in her tracks. 

A lie again. 

He speaks what she knows he will, while she takes two more steps to the parapet and leans on it, her hands on either side of her. She hears him absentmindedly, focusing on the sky, the wind, the trees, the falling leaves, and a gilhari.

"You won't leave me right, are you planning to divorce me, it is not the first time this happened then why? I know I made a mistake, I am sorry, my love, you know I was drunk, I would never do that to you, I love you." He almost pleads, but does not save his pride. "You love me." He tells her. 

"I don't." She turns and smiles at him. 

A lie she tells today. 

A good lie.

A life-saving lie. 

But then all those happy moments of their marriage and togetherness replay in her mind as her eyes meet his, light and soft and his face, innocent and lovely. 

And it plays in her mind as life repeats itself in a flash in front of someone who is going to die. 

She turns her back to him. "It doesn't even matter, " 'even if I do' she thinks to herself but resents telling him, "You don't deserve it." 

"You — I, I am saying sorry then," he turns her by the elbow, "what is the problem?" 

Her eyes search for him, the man she fell for. But she would not find him. Her heart aches at the realization as her brows frown, and yet she continues to search. 

Maybe he was always the same man who she looks at now, and probably, she kept lying to herself. She kept denying, overlooking his faults and behaviours and forgiving him all this time. She was wrong in knowing him, and so very wrong in wishing and hoping that love can change or better someone. 

She answers simply, "You."

His hand goes behind her back and grabs her hair, in possessiveness. 

She flinches and then as the realization settles in, and a reasonable part in him tells him he needs to plead this time,  at the way his wife did not seem to be forced and afraid anymore, the devil draws back.

"I am sorry." He says again. Ivanya crosses the distance of him so that he is now by the parapet and she is a step or two behind him. 

"I thought it was the alcohol." She tells herself more than she speaks to him and then chuckles remembering what a lame excuse she had given herself for the despicable art he performed on his body. 

"You are getting too much now, Ivanya —" he spurts, "Look, I am sorry, I won't do it again, pleaseee."

She blinks back the tears as she remembers every please she had begged with. 'Please don't do this to me, Shekhar. Please, this is wrong. Please stop, you are hurting me. Please, no. Please, please, please.'

All unheard. 

"I want a divorce, Shekhar, and no matter what, I am not changing my decision, not even if you beg." Ivanya declares, fisting her hands on her side to hide the tremble of her hands. 

"You can't do this to me!" He mocks, then calms his expression, stepping forward to reach her when she pushes him back, away from her, with a slight force of her hands on his chest. 

He staggers behind. And the next second she opens her eyes, he is hanging from the parapet yelling out her name, asking her to save him. 

Her eyes widen and her mouth parts in shock as fear and nervousness take hold of her.  Ivanya rushes to hold his hand. She does. 

Her face, brushed with previous faded bruises and cuts from various nights, shines under the sun and all he sees in her eyes is all he did to her. All the bad he did to her. He loved her.

But he took her for granted and punished her for crimes she did not perform. 

His hands slip, the hold on the boundary and Ivanya's hand saving him from the fall getting loose. Ivanya tries to hold tight. Tears fall from her eyes, as they do from Shekhar's too. 

She tries and tries.

"I am sorry," she feels his words when he says this time, for the first time genuinely. Her heart twists inside her, and everything seems to go round and round. 

She tries pulling him up but her weakened and hurt limbs fail to support him. She tries to save him, trying to pull him up, holding on to his slipping hand tightly, like always.

But she fails and he falls. 

A second passes and a sound of crashing on the ground reaches her ears. Shock drives her silent. Everything is so soundless, sickening silence. 

Shekhar lay on the street, bruised, broken, bleeding. Breathing his last. Red gushes out of his head engulfing him.  

In a second, a crowd is around him while Ivanya falls back on the terrace, the truth sinking in. He was her husband. He was going to die. She could not hold on to him. All of it. Every bit of it. 

As the realization hits her after a minute of the shocking and whammy bolt, tears leave her eyes, sobs break out of her and she weeps. Cries and cries, not stopping, holding on to her chest. 

Shekhar's eyes close to nothingness and his beating heart surrenders to death. 

Dead. 

Ashna would have never thought that the man whose death she would have wished for in anger and frustration in her dreams sometimes would die in this way. 

Not only did the devil of the night die, but also, the man who was her sister's dear husband, succumbed to his own hostilities. 

Maybe if he did not beat her so much, she could have held on to him. 

Or so much that she did not want to hold on to him anymore. 

As he slips out of her grip, she slips out of his.

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