Delicate - A Rikara Tale (Completed!)

Ten - Resolutions

A/N- With two exams down and two more to go and a little time to spare between studies and packing (I am going home for a glorious, entire month, a true heaven for a hostelite like me.) With only five-ish days left for me to go home, I felt extra-happy and extra-inspired and the result is an extra-long chapter. I hope you like it and show me some extra love. You know the drill- vote and comment because it gives me a chance to know my readers! I love all of you and getting to know what you think makes my day!

Omkara led his wife back to the hall so that he could retrieve his phone. In all honesty, he could have left her alone for a minute or two. He knew that no harm would have come to her, but the thought of leaving her alone did not sit right with him, given her vulnerable state. His mom had been left alone in a weak state of the mind and the consequences had changed everything. It was not that he thought that Gauri was weak and needed to be protected. It was something else, something he had not allowed himself to think of because the thoughts of her being yet another Svetlana had dominated all rest.

Om talked to Shivaay before he passed the phone to his much anxious and eager wife. Gauri would no doubt be happy to know that Mrs. Sharma's treatment had begun immediately. The Oberoi influence and Shivaay's reputation had ensured a private room and a private nurse for Omkara's ailing mother in law, though no one would know of that fact until he formally introduced Gauri to the rest of his big family. Now, as he watched Gauri's smile and heard her happy tone as she talked to her mother on his phone, Omkara's mind went back to the thoughts that the truth about Gauri's past had set free. The thoughts about Gauri that he had denied, even to his own self.

The instinct to feel and be consumed by what he felt finally rose out of the buried place he had shoved it in. Those thoughts which he had crammed into a hard to reach place after his world had shattered to pieces when his mother had attempted suicide felt so foreign to him now. He'd once let poetry and the indelible ink of love tattoo his mind before he'd locked that up, resolving to think not feel.

And then, there was Gauri. A woman who he had, despite his resolve and intentions, felt attracted to upon their first meeting. His attraction had given way to anger and rage when he thought she was Kali's mistress. A woman willing to wish destruction and death upon a married woman's home. His attraction to her lingered despite his best efforts, she awakened the old thoughts and feelings inside him - the instincts that screamed at him to protect not to procure. That was why Om had married her. Because in her presence he felt something like the old O used to – alive.

Om wistfully accepted that his resolve to harden his heart was slowly proving to be futile. It was not in his nature to destroy what he touched. He was a creator and could not negate the very emotions that made him feel alive. The ones that connected him to the people around him. Yes, he had resolved to think more than he felt and contemplate deeply before he acted upon his impulses but Gauri resurrected those dead desires in his soul almost effortlessly. He felt the desire to protect, to soothe, to reassure again as opposed to the unrelenting principles of negotiating, manipulating and conquering that he had followed like a mantra for the past few months. Those had been the worst months of his life, a silent yet violently loud aftermath, the calm after the storm that had ruined everything.

"Om, thank you!" Gauri held out the phone to him with a smile on her lips. The smile faded to a frown when he did not take the phone.

Awkward silence enveloped them. A silence broken by a loud growling sound.

Gauri's pale cheeks were now a soft pink. "Sorry wo..." she looked down, not daring to meet Om's eyes. "I didn't eat before we left and there's a whole flock of crows in my belly"

Her embarrassment and endearing, almost childlike statement had Om doing something he had not done in a long time.

Om laughed.