Living in a Mirage

Chapter Fourteen

"Perspective can never change the reality. What is, just is. The 'truth' cannot be questioned and deep down we all know, when we are true and when we are not..."

- Shahid Kapoor

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Dedicated to the amazing and supportive jayhz90 who even though has never watched KY2, has never before read a fanfiction, is currently reading this one only for me!

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As Dhruv practiced with his new band on the melody they had cracked last week, he felt as if he was living the most amazing time of his life. He had been accepted by everyone around him as their leader, and not because he was an ex-member of Fab 5 or because Manik would mess them up if they didn't. Being the most experienced one, he was respected by them, and they encouraged him by giving him the liberty to do as he wished.

But that wasn't the only reason why he felt that he was living the most amazing day of his life, it was more because, after many years of suffering and torture, he was no longer living in the shadow of Manik Malhotra...

And that was the truth, by signing the papers, he has been able to get rid of Manik Malhotra's ghost that he felt lingering around him, but now, he felt as he has gotten free from many other things that had made him feel so helpless, so pathetic. Now as his band did whatever he told them to as they looked up at him with the same expression Manik used to get by everyone, he felt as if he could achieve everything he ever wanted to. Because no more was he underrated, looked down upon or ignored because Cabir was funnier than him or because Mukti played bass guitar better than him, or because Manik was simply better than him at anything and everything effortlessly. Things he had badly wanted to be good at but no matter how much he had tried, he never could...

No longer he was made fun of or treated as the inexperienced child, the way Cabir and Mukti had thought of him from years. No longer was he treated as if he was a breakable, fragile or invalid child - the way Manik had made him feel since always. No longer he felt as if Alya compared him with Manik and thought of him as if wasn't worthy of her. No longer...

He was free. Free from the suffocating and overprotective Manik, free from being his lowly sidekick. Signing those damn papers has truly liberated him from more demons than he could count - the never-ending dramas of the ex-members of Fab 5 and their melodramatic lives. He no longer had to live in the shadow of the great Manik Malhotra, knowing he was the better one, knowing he could never excel in anything, no matter how hard he tried to...

As he looked up at Alya, sitting before him, gazing at him so lovingly, he decided that the most amazing thing about today was that he no more felt insecure or guilty for loving her as he wanted to. No more she was Manik's ex for him. No more was she fighting with him for Manik. She was his and his alone. With a sigh of relief, he felt as he was finally and completely free from Manik Malhotra.

He didn't know his one signature on a paper could give him all of that. If he had known this before, he would have done that ages ago, he thought with a smile.

"Dhruv Vedant!" A loud angry voice rang in the practice room.

"How dare you, just how dare you!" Nandini's voice quivered with rage as she came to stand before him.

"You signed those papers after knowing very well that it says that you too are requesting the court to declare him dead. How dare you?" She growled as she subjected him with an evil glare of hers.