Retrouvaille: An IPKKND FanFiction

Chapter Five: Doubts

The rays of the morning sun slowly paced their way towards the rolls of hay stacked at the center of the room. Khushi turned on her side and felt a prick against her skin. From an object she wasn't quite familiar with - none of her beds, back at Lucknow, or in Delhi felt like it. She moved her hand to rid herself of the prickly stub. As she did, a stack of hay rolled down to the floor.

She sat up straight in a quick motion. Her vision hazed as her eyes struggled to adjust against the sunlight that came from the sole window a few feet away from her. She could make out the outlines of at least a dozen trees, if not more. Where was she? A pain shot up to the back of her head. She flinched and let out a deep groan. The throbbing seemed to intensify with every attempt of hers to move. She scrunched her eyebrows and looked around. Her eyes paused on her clothes that were neatly folded on a make-shift rack on the other end of the room. Why was she there? And why were her clothes lay on that rickety shelf? She scanned a room and quickly recognized a lantern in the corner. It looked strangely familiar when it shouldn't have.

She turned her attention back at her and noticed the bottom half of her body covered in hay. She wasn't sure how she got there.

"No, I am not going anywhere without you!" she heard a voice in her head. It was hers. It reverberated in her head; the echoes amplified with each iteration. "We can still escape from the back", another sentence followed the suit.

Someone else answered. This time it was a male voice. A familiar male voice. A voice that never failed to send shivers down her spine. "Khushi, listen to me. Those guys are after me. If I go to them, they'll let you go unharmed."

"No. I can't let you - "

The rest of the words were drowned in her memories. Or had they? Was there anything else she had said?

She couldn't recall.

All she remembered was an agonizing ache that had suddenly radiated from somewhere in her head. The rest was a complete blur. Fear gripped her heart; she could feel it weighing her down and pulling at it from all sides. Her heart hammered in her chest as the fear escalated... The warmth that had lovingly enveloped her heart since she found him was fading...

Although she couldn't tell where she was, she knew as he walked away from her. She knew as he had taken steps away from the haystack at the center of the room. And out of that door.

"Arnav ji!" Khushi woke up with a start. She could hear her erratic heartbeats - loud enough to be heard in the room. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. She pulled her hand out of the blanket and wiped them off with the sleeve of her kameez. She blinked her eyes a couple of times as her hand flew to her temple.

She looked around the room to find it empty. Was it all just a dream? Had she never seen Arnav? Had it always been her imagination that he was back with her? Or was it a reality?

She threw the blanket away from her body and dropped her legs to the ground. The plush faux fur rug cushioned her hasty descent from the bed, but she flinched as her weight shifted on her injured leg. A faint moan escaped her. She quickly reached her ankle and wrapped her hand around it.

"Khushi!" she heard the voice of her husband from somewhere around. She didn't register the general direction of it. For she had wrapped her palm around her ankle.

"Khushi, what are you doing?" The voice panicked.

She heard a hasty click from their coffee table - something that resembled a coffee mug being kept on it in a rush. But before she could notice anything further, she was lifted from the ground. Her eyes were squeezed shut from the pain that ran through her body, but something about the chest she was suddenly pulled against felt like she was being cared for. Comforted. Loved. She liked whatever it was that she felt in that short moment.