| Hawaaon Ke Paighaam | Messages Of The Wind | A Tere Bin AU

| The City of Lights...|

Find light in the beautiful sea, I choose to be happy
You and I, you and I, we're like diamonds in the sky
You're a shooting star I see, a vision of ecstasy
When you hold me, I'm alive, we're like diamonds in the sky

Meerab loved post-op. Recovering, resting, recuperating; she loved it all and they seemed to love her back. The relaxed days where you could stay in bed, take it slow, and have the third helping of dessert, all without feeling guilty at the lack of productivity or the abundance of sugar all suited her rather well; a little too well. Officially about to be out of the two-week mark in just a day, she lay back on the sun lounger on Omar's huge balcony and sipped on the fresh pomegranate and beetroot juice that had just magically arrived for her a few minutes ago at four pm; as it had done every single day for the purpose of boosting her low iron and energy since she'd come home.

It would be back to work soon, and even as the idea of taking flight again made her a little giddy, the lady of leisure within her was stronger in her leisurely ways and wanted more of doing nothing but relax all day.

She sounded like a rich, spoilt bum.

A rich, spoilt, soon to be twenty four years old bum.

The last week had been distinctly different from the one before it, with the absence of her ever-present male nurse cum full time companion cum borderline neurotic husband. He hadn't wanted to, but he'd left for London a week ago at her insistence that she'd be absolutely fine.

She was an idiot.

He'd left the penthouse at seven pm on a Tuesday about a week ago, and she'd started experiencing rather strange withdrawal symptoms at around seven-o-six pm. It had begun with the overwhelming feeling of being alone in a fifteen room home with two floors, a terrace, a pool, and absolutely no connection to the outside world other than a lift that was only allowed up if she approved it. It had then progressed to feeling antsy and all sorts of restless as she'd gone from watching TV in the bedroom to watching it in the living room before moving back to the bedroom because it was cosier. After three hours, at ten pm, the symptoms had digressed from feeling lonely or bored to a full on, potent need to be held in her ex-male nurse's arms as he spooned her to sleep, which he had done at around ten pm every day for a week since she'd been discharged.

It had been awful; like an actual disease, which was ironic since the polypectomy she had been recovering from hadn't disturbed her as much as yearning had.

She couldn't even complain too much because she knew Murtasim was in London because of matters relating to the hijack and crash. Kenny Carter, labelled in her mind as 'the flight engineer', had died. Or been killed, as was what news channels were trying to figure out for the past two weeks. Meerab had only found out last week, a week after his death, when she'd finally caught up on the news. Truth be told, she tried not to think too much about the hijack, the men, the crash; that entire flight.

It took her back to an uncomfortable place that she seemed to have blocked out since. Sometimes, the one specific point on her throat, just above her collarbone, seemed to ache whenever she thought back to the single most traumatic six or so hours of her life. And aside from the fear, trauma, and discomfort of the 'what if's, memories of those hours made her confront things she didn't really want to think about now; or ever to be very honest.

Death.

The very real feeling that the moments you were living would be your last. The palpable fear and wretched assurance that there was almost no way you were surviving and you knew that. The havoc that feeling and knowledge wrecked on your senses and body, the way your brain felt like it was bursting with fear but also numb with shock, and you lost capability of making even the smallest, most insignificant of decisions.