Endgame | ✓

21. Things Falling Back.

21. Things Falling Back.

HE WAS THE first person I knew I would see when I woke up.

And honestly, I wasn't disappointed. Peeling my eyelids seemed to take a tremendous effort, but all my other senses seemed to activate and adjust to my surroundings automatically. I registered the faint smell of antiseptic, the slow but steady beep of the monitor and the heat of his skin against mine.

He had his chin propped in the palm of his other hand, but fatigue had clearly gotten the better of him and he looked like he was nodding off. I almost smiled at the sight of that, it had been years since I had seen him like that. Both my lips and throat were dry so I swallowed painfully.

"Papa," I tried to call him, but all that came out was a breathy rasp that was so quiet I barely heard myself. Every muscle in my body seemed taut and heavy, but I managed a little pressure on his fingers , a fleeting squeeze just to let him know that I was awake.

It was a good enough signal. A split second later, he was jolting up in his seat, spinning around to look at me. "Nushki?"

The look on his face was a sweet mix of disbelief and relief, but I didn't miss the dark, fragile bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes, like he hadn't properly slept in all the time I'd been unconscious. Maybe he hadn't.

"I was so scared," all his equanimous composure had disintegrated into something frantic and primal. He didn't waste a moment reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table, settling down beside me on the bed.

I drank from it almost greedily when he lifted the straw to my lips, like I had been wandering in a dry desert for years only to find some form of reprieve. When I was done, he set the glass down, he threaded his fingers through my hair.

"I'll get your mom and dad --"

"No," I tightened my grip on his fingers and he paused. "Papa, stay." He swallowed and glanced away, looking this close to falling apart, and I could see it coming from a mile away.

"It's all my fault," he began, a gentle sniffle following it. "I shouldn't have come back in first place."

"It's not your fault."

He shook his head. "It is. I fucked up and messed up with our lives. I wasn't there when you were growing up -- your teenage years, everything. Everything would've been different today."

"Well, you surely aren't missing the teenage angst," I tried to laugh, sitting up on my back but dad pulled me in gently.

"Are you talking about him?" he asked with a laugh but it was almost hollow and empty. I furrowed my eyebrows together, questioningly so he dropped the laugh the next moment and continued. "Virat?"

I nodded, managing to do so despite the throbbing pain throughout my entire body. "Our story is full of teenage angst. So you are certainly not missing much of that." I frowned.

"He loves you," he told me, and I nodded because I knew he did. Probably more than I had estimated but that wasn't something I would ever complain of. "He wanted us to reconcile which was why he texted you to come in the docks. And he was talking to me about you during your engagement night, before he left to find you and found you, if I'm not wrong?"