The boy jolted at the sharp curse bitten off by the woman. Her beautiful face was marred with an expression so vitriolic that it made her look demonic. She grabbed the boy’s hand and started pulling him harshly.
“Ammi! I am sorry please”, the boy whimpered, fear making tears spring to his eyes as he tried digging his heels to restrict the violent dragging motion.
But his mother was much stronger than him and he hadn’t eaten properly in days and his shoulder was aching with the strain of getting pulled. The evidence of his crime lay spread on the floor in pieces. He hadn’t noticed when the vase had toppled off the table, his sleep deprived body staggering against a sharp corner.
He hadn’t had time to close his eyes for the past few days. Business had been slow and whatever little his father had managed to scourge had been over by the second week. He had been doing odd jobs in and around after school.
He was tired.
He hadn’t seen the table blocking his path.
He hadn’t seen the vase.
He didn’t do it on purpose.
“Ammi— not the right hand, please”, he tried again, beseechingly, squirming desperately to pull off from her vice grip but in vain. He knew what awaited him in the kitchen. He had a test tomorrow. He needed to be able to write.
But his mother, once enraged, couldn't be reasoned with.
“You worthless piece of shit! You are not worth the bread you eat, monster child”, the woman barked and tugged at the ten year old and put his hand on the lit stovetop forcefully.
The boy screamed in pain, feeling his skin burn and tried with all his might to struggle out of his mother’s monstrous hold. But it was a futile endeavour as always. The woman held it over the fire for a few more minutes and then pushed it off like he was a discarded piece of cloth.
The boy held his hand to his chest, sobbing and then yelped as the woman slapped him so hard, he lost his balance and fell onto the dirty kitchen floor.
“Stop howling like a wimp”, his mother snarled, those striking pale eyes sharpening like twin blades of steel. She turned off the stove and walked away muttering under her breath— more curses and irritated admonishments.
“Pata nhi mar kyun nhi jaataa”, he heard her last words before the house was quiet again.
The boy curled as tightly as he could, cradling his burnt hand against himself trying to stop the cries from erupting out of his boney chest, gasping and choking on his tears. He knew they had no bandages in the house and he had no money to go buy some and he had a test tomorrow, how is going to write like this and his stomach hurt.
He wished he could die too.
Rehman startled awake.
The phantom pain of second degree burns spread like an infection over his right hand and he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from whimpering like an idiot. He kept staring at the ceiling, counting the dark shapes swirling on it, visible from the faint light of the bedside lamp he had forgotten to switch off, till the ache subsided and he could breathe again.
Ulfat was sleeping peacefully at his side, her lips parted in unconscious bliss, a strand of her mahogany hair fluttering over her beautiful face.
Rehman lifted the lock away with a light touch, careful to not wake her up. She always looked so ethereal when asleep. Like a dream he had conjured up in his delirium.
Sometimes, he would stare at her for hours, trying to figure whether his life till now was something real or was he still stuck in that house of horrors, locked away and driven mad and had built up a reality to exist outside his own mind.
Ulfat, as if sensing her husband’s thoughts, sniffed and then snorted gently in her sleep and turned on the other side, still blissfully dead to the world. Rehman smiled and tucked the blanket securely over her body and leant down to press his lips gently to her silken swathe of hair spilled over the pillow.
Rehman knew he wasn’t getting any sleep tonight.
Work it is, then.
He got up and gingerly walked outside the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft nearly inaudible thud. The haveli was deceptively quiet and he peeked inside Uzair’s bedroom, more out of habit than actual concern. His cousin was dead to the world as well, his messy curls visible from beneath the blanket and his snores making a gentle music in his darkened bedroom.
Satisfied, he closed the door and started towards his study.
Then he saw the lights coming from under his office door and immediately his senses sharpened as if on default. He picked up a knife from the fruit basket kept on the center table of the hall, thanked his manager for putting actual blades instead of those decorative and blunt knives, and slinked towards the door, one with the shadows.
Well, his knife won’t be of much use if the intruder had a gun, but he would still have the element of surprise.
Then before he could open the door and spring inside, body locked in a predator’s attack pose, he heard a very familiar voice filter through the door.
“Fuck this stupid shit!”
Rehman huffed and straightened, relief and exasperation washing away the tenseness from a few moments ago. He threw the knife back into the fruit basket with a criminally precise aim and swung open the door to his study.
“Ahh!”
Naieem leaped up from where he had been sitting on Rehman’s chair, what appeared to be his mathematics book in one hand, poised to hit the possible intruder, eyes looking slightly wild under the mass of hair that looked like had been tugged at quite some bit through the past few hours.
“That wouldn’t work if the person comes in with a gun or even a knife”, Rehman said, deadpanned.
Naieem deflated and dropped the book on the table.
“It would have been distracting enough to give me a fighting chance”, he argued, albeit weakly. Rehman could see the boy’s eyes had almost sunken into his face, eyebags looking like bruises.
“Fair point”, he muttered and stepped towards him, taking a glance down and observing the sheer number of papers covered in Naieem’s chicken scrawl handwriting, mostly filled with numbers.
“Why are you awake, doing algebra at two thirty in the night?”, he asked finally, having reached the sixteen year old close enough for the marks of stress to look painfully vibrant on his oldest’s face.
“I have a class test day after tomorrow and it is one third of the grade and I cannot for the life of me complete this assignment and I am so freaking stupid, I want to tear my head off and—”
Naieem was babbling incoherently at this point, eyes looking even more crazed by the second, hands moving through his own curls rapidly when Rehman caught his arm gentle but firm and pulled it down.
“Stop”, he said, making him snap his mouth shut.
“Breathe”
“But this assignment—”
“Naieem.”
“What?”
“Did you even have dinner? I didn’t see you at the table tonight.”
The boy looked down a little sheepishly and Rehman sighed, feeling his heart sink a little inside his chest. The boy worked himself to death. He was already a little too smart for his own good and for some godforsaken reason had taken it upon himself to always academically excel like it was some race he had to win.
Rehman was uncomfortably, incredibly proud of him but his love would always triumph over his pride.
Idiot boy.
“Beta, how many times do I have to tell you stop skipping on meals?”, he scolded him and the boy blushed a little chagrined.
“But baba—”
“No buts. No skipping meals for any reason. I don’t care whether you flunk your test or cannot complete your assignments, you are not ruining your health for anything. Now come along—”, he tugged him firmly outside.
Naieem grumbled under his breath but followed him out, obediently.
Rehman switched on the kitchen lights and then went rummaging inside the refrigerator. Naieem climbed up the alcove to sit on the ledge and dangled his legs like an uncouth monkey. Rehman gave him his best disapproving dad stare but the boy just grinned at him, unapologetic. He rolled his eyes and took out a container.
Naieem was following his movements with curious eyes as he pulled a pan from the drawer and switched on the stove. For a treacherous second his heart jumped inside his chest, that stupid nightmare still clinging to his jagged edges like a ghost refusing to leave and he had the strange desire to fling himself away from the stovetop.
But he restrained himself and gestured to his son to move away.
“What are you doing?”, Naieem asked suspiciously, peering into the pan as Rehman dropped the vegetables into it.
“I am heating the food”, he answered, dropping oil and a few full spices to add a little tadka to the cold vegetable curry. It was a strangely therapeutic process. He had almost forgotten just how many times he had done this for himself and Uzair, years back.
“You know how to do this?”, his oldest asked incredulously and more than a little cheeky.
Brat.
Rehman glared at him playfully, “did you think I grew up with an army of chefs to cook for me whenever I’m hungry?”
“I don’t know. You never tell us anything about how you grew up”
The statement was perhaps spoken too casually for it to be of any consequence. Almost like an afterthought and yet it hit Rehman with the force of a battering ram. His previously unburdened motions were hindered for a split second. The trauma returned to bite into his vulnerable throat like a hungry hyena, howling for blood.
It was true. He had never said anything about his childhood to his sons.
How could he?
What could he even say?
Mercifully, as if on cue, a small noise broke the disconcerting quiet, pulling Rehman’s gaze just outside the kitchen. There was no one visible but his razor sharp senses had picked on the other presence easily enough. Or it could have just been a father’s intuition.
“Looks like we are being watched”, he whispered to Naieem but loud enough for their little spy to hear comfortably well as was evident by the answering giggles coming from the shadows collected at the door.
Naieem grinned conspiratorily at his father and jumped down from his perch.
“You are right. Maybe we should investigate”, he was already outside and Rehman gave the simmering pan his attention, smiling as he heard the loud squeak of surprise and the following chuckles and protests coming from outside the kitchen.
His youngest was still laughing as he was dragged inside by Naieem who was tugging the six year old, by an arm around his little neck.
“Look what I found!”
“And pray tell, Faizal miyan, why are you awake at this hour? Should I tell your Ammi about your little escapade?”, Rehman asked as the boy tried escaping from his older brother’s playful hold desperately.
“Abba No! I was shleeping but then I got thirshty and I heard voicesh—”, he lisped in that adorable way he sometimes got when he was half awake.
Rehman rolled his eyes yet fondness flooded his chest making him go a little breathless as his youngest, finally free of his brother’s hold, stumbled gracelessly but fearlessly towards him, confident that he would hold him if he slipped or tumbled against something.
Rehman swept him off his feet as he reached close enough to touch and settled the boy at his hip, facing his precious charge away from the stove. What if he gets burnt accidentally? No— he would rather jump in the fire himself.
Naieem had poured a glass of water by then and was making his little brother drink from it, coming to stand beside Rehman and him, uncomfortably close to the stove for the older man’s liking. He switched it off finally and plated the food, holding Faizal with one arm who was dozing sleepily in the crook of his neck while Naieem regaled him with the woes of tenth standard maths and his teachers’ general cruelty.
“Eat”, he instructed the boy, ignoring his cheeky hmph as he handed him the plate.
Naieem would sass him incessantly and sometimes make him want to pull out his own hair but he was also sweetly obedient. His golden child. So unlike his mischief monger of a cousin and his youngest both of whom could make Ulfat and him run around in circles for the entire day.
“....so I thought I will complete the assignment today—”, Naieem spoke in between shovelling the food inside his mouth and Rehman felt Faizal’s soft snores hit his neck in small waves.
“Don’t talk while eating sweetheart, you will choke”, he ran his fingers through Naieem’s wavy hair and dropped a kiss on top of his head ignoring his embarrassed yet mild protest. Teenagers and their perpetual disgust of display of any kind of affection.
At least Faizal still liked getting kisses from his parents.
Rehman kissed the sleeping child’s cheek, adjusted his arms around his youngest and settled beside his oldest as the latter finished his food.
The nightmare was far away now, vanishing under the weight of the night, lulling him into a steady sort of peace. Maybe he could go back to sleep again, once he put both the boys into their respective beds and made sure they stayed there, this time around.
Faizal was dead to the world as he was tucked inside his bed, Rehman stroking the silky strands off that little forehead.
Naieem, though, took some convincing to go to sleep.
“The assignment will still be there tomorrow morning. Do not stress yourself because of schoolwork, kiddo. Sleep is important.”
“Ughh dad—”
“Do you want to look like a zombie in front of..what was that girl’s name— Zarina? Uzair was telling me you have a crush on her…”
“DAD! I AM GOING TO SLEEP OH MY GOD—”
Rehman chuckled as the door was slammed quite unceremoniously on his face.
“Sweet dreams, meri jaan”, Rehman called out despite the closed door, knowing fully well that he could be heard from inside.
“Good night, baba. I love you but please stop listening to Uzair chachu my god—”
My hand was the one you reached for, all throughout the Great War {s.q}
Pairing : mc!reader x sylus
Word count: 1.4k
Warnings: um mentions of death, grief, angst (no character death)
A/n: damn its been a long time since i wrote. Also...first LADS fic! Lets see if i ever write more
The sound of the slap echoed through the quiet room, and you were stunned with yourself for having done it. From your periphery you could see the twins wince before looking anywhere but at the two of you, clearly not expecting the move from you. Sylus himself was completely surprised, eyes widened in surprise and head turned to the side more due to his shock at the attack rather than the impact itself. His pale skin was beginning to turn red, a mark beginning to bloom where your slap had landed.
For a moment you were taken aback by your own boldness, even feeling a bit of guilt, but then his expression changed, tongue poking at his cheek indolently and your guilt evaporated, your previous anger resurfacing two-fold. You vaguely heard the twins shuffle out, clearly not wanting to stick around for the repercussions of your blatant disrespect.
“How violent... .kitten” his velvety voice murmured and the nickname had never sounded more like a taunt than it did at that moment. You cleared your throat, crossing your arms, forcing yourself to meet his smug eyes, because, of course your displeasure amused him. That's what he always did. Make light of situations. But today’s incident was the point where you'd had enough.
“You can't keep taking hits meant for me. It's incredibly-” you groan in frustration, unable to figure out how to express yourself. “-selfish” you finished finally. “Its incredibly selfish”
Your frown deepened as you straightened your spine, furious. “I didn't mean to hit you” you said, forcing yourself to take a deep breath and try to clearly articulate yourself, despite his taunting. “But you need to listen to me. You can’t do this everytime” you said earning a dismissive scoff.
“Do what? Save your life?”
“Then tell me, Miss Hunter. Explain to me, how protecting the girl i love, is selfish” he said finally.
His cocky facade finally wavered the barest amount. “Selfish?” he murmured lowering his head towards you. “Its selfish, to protect you? to take hits meant for you?” you backed away, jaw tensing. The mark on his cheek was a lovely red now.
“Its certainly not as selfless or chivalrous as you think it is” you could see a muscle feather in his jaw, almost unnoticable. you knew he would never raise his voice at you, never be a danger to you but this was a conversation long due, and you didn't care if he got angry.
He began to speak and you could tell he was beginning to get ticked off. You held up a hand. “Do not say it is not selfish. not when you couldn't even dream of understanding what it does to me”.
You felt breathless and the exhaustion from the fight was beginning to catch up to you. Yet you refused to leave this argument unfinished. “Because you're not catching those hits for me. You're doing it for yourself, so that you won't have to see me injured and what is that, if not inconsiderate and selfish?”
You could still see it, the way he'd materialised in front of you in a swirl of red-and-black mist, forming a human shield for you against the Luminivore’s attack. you could still feel the way your heart had raced so hard it might as well have burst out of your chest. You still hear the ringing in your ears as for the briefest of moments he'd sunk to his knees in front of you, how your stomach had threatened to heave up its contents, barely noticing the way his evol had already begun stitching him up, but it had been too slow for your liking, too sluggish. And the fact that he'd dared to be so crassly dismissive of the incident had made your fear turn into anger and your hand had swung of its own volition.
Sylus took in the expression on your face and something in his eyes softened. He began to reach out, as if to comfort you but you pulled away. Oh, how desperately you wanted to be wrapped in his embrace, in his safety, but all that would do is make you forget about this until another fight, another too close of a call. You shook your head.
“I know you care about me. I know your intentions are pure and that you want to see me safe and unharmed, but didn't you think for a moment, that perhaps I wish the same for you? That all I want is for you to be whole and safe and out of harm’s way? That putting yourself in danger to keep me safe may protect me physically, but did you even wonder how my heart might be breaking?”
He murmured your name, eyes roving over your face, his calm demeanour wavering as worry took over his face, brows dipping. You exhaled, breathless and tired to your very bones. “You know a wanderer isnt going to be the end of me” he said quietly, injecting a slight amusement in his voice. “Give me a little more credit, won’t you?”
“That's not the point.” You shook your head not taking the bait. “So what if you heal yourself? Everyone has their limit. How many times, before even you fall? Do you understand how selfish it is? because if you die, death won't happen to you. It'll happen to me. to luke. to kieran. to mephisto. All of us, left standing around, trying to figure out how to live the rest of our lives with a Sylus-shaped chasm in it, only to realise it's not possible.” you exhaled again, shoulders shaking as your emotions threatened to overwhelm me, tears beginning to prick your eyes.
“And the fact that you don't realise that, or that you feel that my feelings don't mean as much as yours, that you think your pain doesn't affect me the way mine does you, is honestly the worst part” you finally duck your head, refusing to cry in front of him.
This time you don't stop him when he reaches out, strong arms wrapping around in a familiar embrace, one that should have comforted you, but only made you cry harder. His clothes still reeked of smoke and gunpowder and the barest hint of the blood that had stained his clothes with the gash that the Luminivore had given him.
“Oh sweetie” was all he said, quiet as if he was looking for words to say. Shocking. It took confessing all your fears and worries, exposing your vulnerabilities to render the great Sylus Qin speechless.
You stood there for a long while, until your breathing calmed and your hiccups stopped and your tears dried up. Only then did he gently cup your face in both his hands as if you were something precious, making you look up at him, thumbs wiping away your tears. His gaze for gentle, apology written across his face. “I didnt realise you were bottling all that up. My poor, sensitive kitten” he said, a gentle tease to attempt to lift your mood.
“Don’t mock me” you mumbled, sniffing as he kissed the top of your head. “I wouldnt dream of it” he looked at you for a moment before sighing. “I really didnt mean to hurt you. I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping you safe. I thought doing this one thing might absolve me of my other sins. but I cannot change that I am protective of you.” he said.
“That doesn't mean you must sacrifice yourself like some lamb to the slaughter” you replied earning a soft chuckle. “Lamb? if you'll make allegories, at least be accurate, kitten” he said to which you huffed, getting another gentle kiss to the top of your head in apology.
“I understand what you mean. ill… try not to repeat the same mistake. And I do not discount your feelings, sweetie. I am well aware of how much you care for me, and i cherish the knowledge that you've trusted me with your heart”
You place your palm over his heart, feeling the steady pump beneath your skin. “Then you should do better to preserve it,” you whispered.
He laced his fingers with yours, lifting your hand to kiss the back of it. “I promise, I'll do my best”. you sniff. “I shall hold you to that promise”
You winced, lifting your gaze to the mark still on his cheek. “I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to hit you” you repeat cheeks warming, earning a soft laugh. “With how angry you were and how much you had to say I'm surprised all you did was a slap” he teased, voice low and amused.
“Don't provoke me” you say quietly and he laughs at you again as you duck your head.
"I wouldn't dream of it, o feisty one”
A/n: probably haven't gotten his characteristisation down perfectly yet, but oh well we persevere. All i am is teen wolf references and taylor swift lyrics
Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Gryffindor!Reader
Summary: Draco hates you for being a muggle Gryffindor but slowly falls in love with you
Warnings: swearing
Word Count: 1,461
Draco grinned running beside you, his coat over your heads. The rain poured down heavily, the pitter patter drowning the sounds of your giggles. His cheeks hurt with how much he had laughed tonight and yet something about your red cheeks and hair licking the sides of your face made him smile wider. He had been wrong about you. So wrong.
“Whatever, mudblood.” Draco spat at you as you rolled your eyes.
Professor Sprout had made you both partners for the next assignment and he couldn’t be more annoyed. What pestered him even more was that none of his jabs seemed to work on you.
“Do you want to plant those roots or shall I?” you asked, not doing much as looking at him. He huffed.
“I’ll do it. Not letting you lions spoil my grade,” he said, internally groaning at the sticky mess of a plant the teacher had handed them for the day.
He picked it up by the ends, hastily dropping it into the pot. Did it have to be so slimy? You cracked out laughing making him snap towards you.
“What’s so funny?” he said, his cheeks turning pink as he saw you bending over in laughter.
“You. You can’t even touch a plant can you?” you said in between laughs as he frowned.
“It’s slimy,” he whined, narrowing his eyes at you as you took over to adding the humus to pot.
“Whatever you say pretty boy.”
Draco removed the coat as the two of you reached the corridors, catching your breath. The heat of the torches felt good against his skin as he looked over to you. You had placed your hand over your stomach, panting. As your eyes caught his, they shone with a wicked gleam. He was certain his own mirrored them. You shook your head wildly, making your hair spray water droplets around.
“Eeeeeesh! Don’t get me dirty now, will you?” Draco said groaning making you smirk at him. Draco raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah?” you said coming closer to him, making his heat beat faster. You took some water in your palm and splashed it on him. Draco made a face at you, which did nothing to hide his grin. You made a face back at him crinkling your nose, making you look adorable.
Draco hissed as you uttered some healing spells on his leg.
“Promfey wouldn’t have made it hurt so much,” he said making you scoff.
“Yeah, it would’ve hurt more seeing the sting only increases the more the time passes by,” you said as Draco looked at you. You were extremely cautious and looked more scared than him, treating him so tenderly. You looked up at him and something in your expression changed. You gave him a small smile.
Draco heard some footsteps as you turned towards him with widened eyes.
“Run,” You said in an undertone taking his hand and running along the corridor.
You continued to write as Draco groaned beside you. Couldn’t you stop, for like a second?
“Y/n,” he said dragging out your name. “Can we do this later, please?”
“Draco, just two more pages and then we can rest,” you said shaking your head.
“No. We’re taking a break now,” he said, snatching away your book, making your eyes widen. You heaved looking at him.
“Okay, what do you wanna do?” you asked as Draco’s face went blank.
“Uh- why don’t you tell me about your boring muggle life?” he said making you roll your eyes. He looked at you, feigning an interested expression so very obviously.
“Fine,” you said, launching into your favourite memories as a child. Draco listened on to you, laughing and smiling. He found himself imagining a younger version of you and liking every second of it. Maybe you weren’t so bad after all.
Draco didn’t know what were louder their footsteps or the giggles. All he knew was that he never quite felt this alive yet. You did that to him, you made him lighter than anyone or anything ever had. He would see your smile and his day would immediately become better. You had his back, he knew you did. He never would have thought he would start liking a muggleborn Gryffindor. He didn’t care about what his parents would think. Not when it came to you. He could not not have you in his life now. You fit in seamlessly and Draco was only too happy to let you.
You turned towards him, pointing towards the room of requirement. He nodded furiously, his face showing a wide grin as you closed your eyes, thinking about what you wanted. Better the room of requirement than Snape catching him out of bed. You took his hands, eyes gleaming, taking him inside.
“Draco?” your voice came making him shudder. Draco quickly wiped away his tears as you sat down beside him cautiously.
“How did you find me?” he said, voice a little rough from all the crying.
“Draco. The lake calms you, you always come here to this tree when you are sad”
Draco just gave you a tight-lipped smile, as you looked straight ahead. You could hear the cicadas from the grass and flies that buzzed around you both. It was a windy day.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” you whispered, not sure what to say. Draco sighed.
“My father wants me to take over his job at the ministry as soon as I leave Hogwarts. I just- I wanted to pursue charms further, maybe in Japan, but father won’t bend. I hate that ministry job.”
“Maybe once you get out of Hogwarts, you could decide for yourself”
“No, you don’t get it Y/n. My life, it’s all planned out without my say in anything. Get top grades, work at the ministry, sit like that, talk like that. It’s suffocating. I’ve become into this monster, the monster my father always wanted me to be. I have two fools for friends and I can’t even run away. I can’t even run away because I’m the only thing that keeps mum going,” Draco didn’t know when tears fell down his cheeks. Your heart thumped in your chest as you brought your hand up to slowly wipe them away. Draco leaned in to your touch.
“You are not a monster Draco. You’re not. If we start judging ourselves so harshly, there would be no saint. It’s okay. You realize that you did wrong things. That’s more than many people do. And,” you took in a deep breath, “I don’t know about you, but I’d consider us friends and close ones at that. So unless I’m one of those fools you better take that statement back.”
Draco let out a laugh, feeling better after your words.
“Okay. I change my statement. I have 3 fools for friends,” he said as you smacked his arm giggling.
Draco entered a huge room with a spacious sofa and a huge bed. The fire was lit and it warmed his skin pleasantly. You removed your over-cloak, as Draco raked at your form. You were perfect.
“See something you like?” you asked, a smug look on your face which made his heart do a little jump.
“Pretty sure she’s the girl I love,” he said, coming towards you making goosebumps erupt on your skin. Draco cupped your face leaning down to kiss you. You sighed, feeling his arms around your waist, pulling you closer as your fingers let themselves loose in his hair. He sucked on your lower lip, biting it a little making you gasp. Draco pressed his lips against your forehead as you both caught your breath.
“Remember the first time we kissed?” Draco said as a smile emerged on your lips.
“Yes I do. You were an idiot.”
Draco was fuming as you sat down beside him.
“How did your date go?” he asked, putting on a sickly sweet smile.
“What date?”
“Your date with Dean”
“I’m not dating Dean?” you said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, you two looked awfully close for ones who don’t”
You opened your mouth to retort, but closed it thinking.
“What if we were?” you asked instead as Draco’s head snapped towards you.
“He’s not good enough for you.”
“And you are?” you said making him stop.
“I wish I were,” he whispered making you drop the playful mood. You had pulled him closer and kissed him, and then again and again and again.
“Well I was an idiot in love,” Draco said fondly, pressing his lips on yours. He trailed kisses along your jaw, his mouth finding your neck sucking a little there. You sighed, your hands pulling him closer as he un-zipped your dress, making it pool at the floor. Maybe he wasn’t the only idiot.
A/N: This was written for the lovely anon! I hope you enjoy ;)
A/N: It is an AU where Hamza is not an Indian spy and Rehman wasn't involved with the ISI and any terror attack. Also this chapter turned out to be monstrously big too. Get a snack and a blanket and maybe a box of tissues... coz, heavy angst alert.
Word Count : 9.4k
Masterlist
| Part Two |
Disclaimer : This is based on Akshaye Khanna's portrayal of Rehman Dakait specifically in the movie, Dhurandhar and has nothing to do with the real Rehman Dakait who was a terrorist shitstain responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. If there is an afterlife I sincerely hope he is being roasted on a grill.
“Ulfat! Have you seen my black kur—”
Rehman stopped short, his words mingling into silence as he entered the kitchen. His wife, contrary to popular opinion, wasn’t the typical homemaker whom you’ll find slaving away in the kitchen.
Yes, she was mainly responsible for the household but that was just for designating and managing the budget. The day to day activities including the kitchen came under their manager, Parveen Khala’s purview.
Ulfat only entered the kitchen when she wanted to. When she cooked something on their children’s demands or on the rare occurrence Rehman wished for something, or sometimes when Meher or Uzair were being particularly demanding.
Ulfat owned a franchise of bookstores, spread across the city.
She was mainly immersed in her business most of the time. She had always had a burning passion for literature and poetry. When she married and came to the Baloch household, she had had just one request to make to her new husband.
To let her build one bookstore in the town and look after it.
But Rehman, usually supernaturally in control of himself, had never quite developed the ability to restrain himself when his family asked for something. And Ulfat defying all expectations, had turned out to be quite the shrewd businesswoman herself.
“At least let me invest in the franchise? Your bookstores are garnering quite good profits annually. I am not being biased”, Rehman had tried cajoling.
“No can do, sir. I am not letting your blood money into my business. Stay away—”, Ulfat had responded, playfully swatting and then kissing his frustrated protests away for good measure.
The bookstores were probably the only business venture of the Dakaits that wasn’t built on blood money or any illegal funds.
So, the point was, as far as Rehman knew, Ulfat didn’t have time to spare in the kitchen, cooking what appeared to be quite a feast. There was his wife, instead of commanding an army of sous chefs as expected, standing by the stove herself, stirring a suspiciously delicious smelling pot, while looking at what appeared to be a small recipe book.
There was no one else in the kitchen. The counters and the table were filled with colourful paraphernalia of half cut vegetables, freshly grinded masalas, fragrantly chopped herbs, an odd container or two and various other kitchen utensils.
“Did I miss an anniversary or something?”
Rehman asked almost cautiously, trying to remember any special occasion he had missed, being too absorbed in his work as usual. Ulfat almost dropped the ladle into the pot, startled by her husband’s voice appearing suddenly just beside her ear.
“Goodness! Rehman! Seriously. How many times have I told you not to startle me when I am working in the kitchen? Phir mujhe chot lg jaegi aur aap pura ghar sar pe utha loge…”
“Sorry..”, Rehman said sheepishly even as his eyes showed blatant curiosity, “But why are you slaving in the kitchen? Do I have to hire more cooks?”
“Its nothing like that. I was just feeling like cooking today…”
Rehman came around Ulfat and peered into the pot and his eyes caught the neat lines of his wife’s handwriting on the recipe book kept on the counter.
“You just suddenly felt like cooking rogan josh?”, Rehman raised an eyebrow. Ulfat looked sheepish.
“Why? Can’t I feel like cooking a—”
“A dish that I know you don’t care for much because you find it too rich for your taste?”
“Damnit!”, Ulfat whispered under her breath, “how do you even know that? You know what, I don’t want to know— twenty years of marriage, at this point you probably know the pattern of my breathing—”
“Three small ones, half a second pause and another—”, Rehman answered deadpanned without missing a beat, “but that is not the point. I know Faizal doesn’t even know the name of the dish, Uzair and Meher have gone to the movies and I certainly didn’t ask for it.. So—”
“Can you not give a rest to your detective brain for one second? Everything is not a puzzle you need to solve—”
“To me it is. You know how my mind works, my dear. So you better tell me who has had my queen slaving in the kitchen the entire afternoon?”
“He doesn’t even know I am cooking…”
“Oh it is a he, then? Do I know him? I have to know him…”
“Rehman…”
Rehman smirked as Ulfat groaned, dropping her beautiful head on his shoulder, her messily tied mahogany hair tickling his neck softly.
“It's for Hamza, isn’t it?”, Rehman asked softly, his fingers already threading through her hair gently.
“He was just telling me stories of his childhood and mentioned how his Ammi used to cook rogan josh on special occasions and he misses her sometimes and—”,Ulfat's voice was muffled against his kurta.
“And so you decided to make it tonight for dinner and invite him”, it wasn’t a question so Ulfat didn’t answer.
The ache spreading through Rehman’s chest was sweet. Sometimes he marvelled at how quickly Ulfat had taken to the young Baloch. At the beginning Rehman had believed his wife had been trying to fill the wound left from their eldest’s absence but then he had felt ashamed of his own reasoning.
Nothing would fill the gaping chasm Naeeim’s death had left behind in their hearts.
Rehman will always falter while drawing in air. The easy almost subconscious pattern to his breathing, forever destroyed. Ulfat will always have that slight haunting in her eyes, the everflowing warmth in them chopped off in half.
But Hamza had made his own place in between them.
Fitting inside the gaping hole left in Rehman and Ulfat’s souls like a messy, imperfect piece of a jigsaw puzzle which will never fill it completely but stop their hearts from falling out of their chests all the same.
“Don’t look at me like that”, Ulfat whispered, finally moving her head away from him.
“Like what?”, Rehman whispered equally low.
“With pity.”
Something fractured in his chest and Rehman pulled Ulfat back in his arms, enveloping her in an embrace just tight enough to hurt pleasantly yet not suffocate her at the same time.
“Meri jaan… you are my spine, my heart, my strength, the very air in my lungs. The only person I pity is myself. The most powerful man in this part of the country and I can’t even—”
“Hush..”, Ulfat’s hands tightened their grip on his back, her breathing uneven as she pressed a kiss on his chest through the fabric of his kurta, “you have given me everything I will ever need. You… are everything I will ever need.”
His head dropped on top of hers automatically as the simmering noises of the pot and the heady smell of the cooking masalas lingered in the balmy kitchen air.
“Nevertheless, looks like Faizal and I will get to taste the leftovers, thanks to your darling Hamza—”
Ulfat laughed and the moment lightened immediately.
“Don’t get high and mighty with me, Sardar. I know perfectly well, the only reason you requested me to cook kheer, was because Hamza and Uzair were cribbing about not getting to the sweets before Donga in Meher’s cousin’s wedding last week.”
Ulfat chuckled and went back to her stirring ignoring her husband’s indignant protests with flourish.
“Also, your black kurta is in the laundry. I swear you ruin all the cuffs because of the blood—”
And if later that evening, during dinner, Rehman had smiled at Hamza’s delighted compliments to his wife with the softness he had reserved only for his children, no one had been the wiser.
Through the decades of incessant battles and suffering, if there was one cardinal fact that Rehman Dakait had thoroughly realised, it had to be that waking up to a resurrected consciousness was a far more agonizing process than almost dying.
Waking up was overrated anyway.
Every nerve ending in his body was screaming. His entire nervous system was aflame. It hadn’t been a jarring immediate way that he had come to consciousness.
It had been a slow, long drawn out, incredibly painful saga.
His mind, cloudy with the nauseating after effects of anaesthesia, had been lucid before his body had fully woken up. He had laid there, eyes closed, trying to make sense of his surroundings, almost paralysed from neck down. And then his fingers had regained sensation and he had been able to move them slightly.
His extremities had answered after a few moments and it had travelled up his limbs with alacrity.
But it had been his torso finally gaining the precious touch of life that had almost made him cry.
How embarrassing.
Rehman had been made aware of every single moment of abuse he had subjected his body to, for almost thirty years in that few minutes.
His chest a canvas of white hot agony, his abdomen pulsating with a vengeance unforeseen.
His old scars protested howling.
The bullet wounds, the lacerations and abrasions, the stabs, the messily done stitches, the bone which had never quite set properly after an incident, the swollen joints, the ligaments going through it over and over again, the regenerated tendons and tissues and the over burdened nerves abused by a steady stream of cigarettes and alcohol.
In his youth, Rehman Baloch had been reckless to the point of being suicidal. His ferocious ambition had driven his unprepared soul into disastrous ruin.
At one point, if he had had to fall on a fucking sword to reach the power just at his finger tips, he had done it. His overconfidence in his body’s recuperative abilities had primarily stemmed from the fact that he was perfectly confident no one would care if he did die.
He was pretty sure he had single handedly given Uzair most of the latter’s blood pressure issues.
In his defense he had tried controlling his impulses after getting more than an earful from his hysteric young cousin till that latter had been almost in tears, after one time too many of waiting outside the OT not knowing whether his brother would survive or not.
Marriage had mellowed him more than he cared to admit.
Ulfat’s pain was one thing Rehman had adamantly refused to accept, no matter the fact that whether he deserved even her concern let alone her devotion, had always been a point of baffled wonder to him.
Yet now as he lay helplessly drowning in excruciating agony, unable to even breathe let alone scream or cry, Rehman Baloch wondered whether all this power and wealth had been worth it in the end.
All the money in the world hadn’t been able to shield him from the bullets tearing through his gut and then caving his sternum in.
And all that deferential power and envious influence hadn’t saved him from the way his entire ribcage had fractured as the realisation of betrayal had struck him much before the fists and the bullets.
Hamza…
How could he have been so blind? So fucking stupid. Such a goddamned rookie idiotic blunder—
‘You know exactly why—’, his own mind answered back, merciless in its clarity.
“You care too damned much, brat! Feel too damned hard… react too fucking strongly. Your heart will be the fucking end of you.. And when that happens.. You will hear my fucking laugh, even if it comes from the fucking underworld—”
‘Well, Haji, you fucking monster, I can hear your laugh coming from the damned fucking underworld’
Life always did come full circle.
Rehman must have conveniently forgotten it.
He had snatched his throne through a series of horrifyingly manipulative tactics drenched in betrayals, treacheries and a completely capricious and cruel disregard of everyone else’s life or feelings.
His legacy was drenched in traitorous bloodshed and littered with shattered pride.
It was only fitting that his end was soaked in it too.
But it wasn’t the end, was it? He had to live with this now. Survive the collapse of everything he knew to be true - wade through his own blood and reach an end which seemed too far for reach.
‘But he is my son! My son! I didn’t—’, his broken mangled heart howled still.
Rehman had felt it scream even then, half blinded in red hot rage and the blood clotting near one eye, hand quaking with a grip so fierce it hurt, barrel pointed at Hamza while he stood in that wretched forest floor.
Hamza had a gun pointed at him too. His hands had been shaking violently.
‘Goddamnit kid, steady hands—’, Rehman had almost corrected him, habitually.
Even if the bullet had been poised to hit him this time.
If Hamza had thrown the gun away then, and run towards him, Rehman would have still caught him. He would have still protected him. His stupid old heart would have still forgiven him. Even through the blows and the confused anguish and the charred remains of loyalty and love - he would have accepted any fucking reason if it had been just a moment of madness.
But it was a cold premeditated trap, meticulously planned and staged for years. Every smile, every moment of camaraderie or affection, every word, every act of loyalty and devotion had been a carefully crafted lie. A fucking pretense carried out with brutal efficiency.
Hamza Ali Mazari had done what no one else had been able to do.
Unravel Rehman Dakait so masterfully, destroy the previously impregnable walls of defence around him with such aplomb that when the time had come, even if there had been a chance of rebuttal, Rehman had faltered, frozen, crumbled.
Hamza had shot him.
Hamza had shot him knowing that Rehman never would. He couldn’t shoot the boy. The twenty five year old grown man whose eyes were still painfully young, whose laugh made his entire face glow, who had appeared to love so innocently, yet so deeply.
He couldn’t press the goddamned trigger. He couldn’t steady his infamously rock solid aim.
Rehman Dakait’s notorious control had failed him completely.
It had reminded the gangster lord of that one story in a Hindu epic that Ulfat had narrated to him, one evening. About an ill fated warrior, cursed to forget all his skills and his training right at the moment when he had needed it the most.
The toll of all his sins.
Exacted in one brutal stroke of fate.
The second bullet had not hurt as much.
Maybe his body had already gone into shock and that had numbed most of the pain from the second one shredding through his chest.
Who was he fooling— he knew perfectly well why it hadn’t hurt as much.
SP Aslam’s attack was expected. The man had always been maddened in a jealous rage against him. His attack was almost offensive.
But Hamza… that was his own blood poisoning him. A man he had sheltered like a child for seven long years. Mentored him, guided him, opened up his home to him, let him play with his child, saw him laugh with his wife, roughhouse with his brother… opened up his heart.
And it had all been a game of smoke and mirrors.
In that single moment, lying in a pool of his own blood, choking, wheezing, struggling to breathe through his shredded insides, his mind had shattered, body had fractured and soul had completely hollowed out.
‘But he is my son!’
If only his stupid bruised heart would stop screaming for one goddamned second.
—
Ulfat had fallen asleep with her cheek pressed to his hand, her body curled up in a decidedly uncomfortable position on the chair beside the bed.
Ulfat…
Rehman’s eyes had searched for her the moment his vision had somewhat cleared off. The stark hospital lights had brought out the ashen pallor of her pulchritudinous face. She looked like she had aged a decade in one night.
“Ulfat..”, his fingers fluttered weakly against her soft wet cheek.
The poor woman had undoubtedly cried herself to an exhausted stupor. Her eyes were moving restlessly beneath her papery eyelids, the lower half swollen and reddened. As if she was battling with her nightmares tirelessly.
Rehman felt his heart, or whatever was left of it, shatter into dust.
Ulfat had always been his pillar. She was deceptively angelic to look at. But very few people had met the steel and fire behind those playful marble eyes. If he was a mountain, she was a river. She had effectively burrowed through him with a staggering force and he had bent around her obligingly.
And here she was, a paragon of power, beauty and wit reduced to a husk.
Again.
Because of him.
The guilt would eat him alive if the lingering betrayal wouldn’t.
Ulfat, Rehman was convinced, was a saint - a messiah sent by some benevolent God who had taken pity on him.
Her eyes fluttered as the movement of his fingers steadied somewhat. She woke up gently, the exhaustion and grief clear in her sleep drunk gaze. They met him for a second, then widened and she was up with a twang. Like an overstretched bow.
“Rehman! Oh God! Oh thank god! Oh my god! Nurse… doctor.. someone!”, Ulfat blabbered incoherently, almost falling off her seat as she stood up violently.
“Easy my love..”, Rehman rasped, his mouth feeling full of cotton wool, his throat parched like the desert and his tongue leaden like sandpaper.
“Oh god, Rehman.. You need.. Water. I am gonna get ice chips.. Wait…”
Ulfat turned and was about to leave when Rehman used the last burst of his strength and caught her hand. She stilled and turned back to him. His eyes must have said everything his dried throat couldn’t utter yet.
She sat back down carefully and leaned her forehead to his temple ever so gently. Like the slightest pressure would crush him.
It took Rehman a minute to realize she was praying under her breath. Weaving gentle gratitude and asking mercy from a ruthless God, feather light against his skin. Her cracked lips moved almost rhythmically. The mild scent of mogra and vanilla seemed to dissipate the strong odour of antiseptic, morphine and blood.
‘Meri jaan…’
Rehman closed his eyes and breathed. He felt her lips press to the corner of his eyes next.
Ulfat’s kisses drank away his tears before anyone else could witness that one moment of weakness.
She always had protected him in her own small yet increasingly impactful ways.
The doctor swung open the door and Ulfat raised herself immediately. The small quiet in the room broke and Rehman slowly wore the mask of the Bastard King, back again.
Mutilated and mangled, attached to wires and machines, weak as a kitten physically at least and yet his presence was a live thing blanketing the entire room as it always had.
The disposition of a warrior and a monarch never did fade, even if Rehman did look like death warmed over. Several times over.
“Three ribs fractured, two on the left, one on the right, bits of the sternum had pierced one lung, we have platted most of it… breathing troubles might persist. The aortic lining was nicked. One centimeter to the left and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Brute force trauma to the kidneys, one minor hairline fracture on the back of the cranium.. Probably from the fall. There were minor scratches and abrasions and a very nasty case of road rash. I’m worried about the abdomen though. The intestines were a mess.”
Rehman didn’t even blink. Ulfat’s face had paled, a little green at the gills, but her eyes were dry and her lips didn’t quiver.
It apparently took more than this to break the Leader of the Balochs and his consort.
“Recovery time?”,Rehman’s voice was still parched.
“More than you’ll like for sure. But.. Sher-E-Baloch or not, I will advise you to take it easy for a year, at the very least. I don’t want to be up to my elbows inside your body again rearranging your insides as it lies in pieces—”
“Come on Doc… everyone wants.. a piece.. of me…”, Rehman drawled with a smirk, words interspersed with deliberate pauses because of the pain.
The surgeon sighed and rolled his eyes. He had been tending to the Dakaits for the past two decades and was well versed in Rehman Baloch’s twisted sense of humour which being as rare as it was, only bloomed in the most inopportune and inappropriate of times.
“God help us all! If he is joking he’ll be fine. Don’t worry Ulfat Bibi.. your husband will be out of my hospital and back on the streets and giving us both grey hair in no time at all—”
Ulfat snorted, “He wishes. I will tie him to the bed if necessary, don’t you worry doctor sahab.”
The smiles lightened the mood somewhat.
That was before there was a shout from the corridor. A loud smash and then more screaming. Rehman’s instincts roared and if he had had even a fraction of his strength remaining he would have launched himself from the bed.
But he could only turn his head towards the noise, that also with much difficulty.
The world was still somewhat syrupy.
Ulfat had already reached the door by then. The doctor, hot on her heels.
“Ulfat.. Don’t—”
Rehman tried to warn but his wife had already run out.
—
“...ucking dare you! You spineless treacherous snake! And here you were yesterday, pretending, after everything that you did!”
Ulfat gasped as Uzair rammed his fist into Hamza’s abdomen in such a powerful uppercut that the younger man slammed into the opposite wall, winded like he had run a marathon.
“Hamza! No—”, Yalina cried out, struggling in the almost merciless grip Donga had on her arm.
Meher was leaning against the wall, near the door of the ICU, holding it in a grip so fierce that it was almost as if her knees could no longer support her own weight. Her face was a pasty shade of grey. She had still not changed her clothes from the previous night.
A few of their men had collected at the end of the corridor and seemed to be guarding the exit. Two nurses and a resident doctor were cowering at a distance.
Uzair pulled Hamza by his hair next, ruthless yet precise and bashed his face against the same spot where he had fallen just a second prior. The blood bursting out of his temple made Yalina scream and Meher gasp.
Ulfat was frozen at the door, unable to grasp the scene which was playing like a nightmare in front of her eyes. For a moment, she thought she was still asleep by Rehman’s bed, and was dreaming up this nonsense.
But Uzair’s next words brought her back to Earth as the lieutenant to the Baloch gang practically spat them out— vitriol, disbelief and a strangely aggrieved anguish clear in his tone, “Mere bhai ke saath dagaabaazi ki tune tune! Rehman Bhai ke saath dagaabaazi! Namakharam salee!”
Dagaabaazi?
Betrayal?
What the hell was Uzair babbling?
“Uzair! What the hell are you doing? Hato usse! Aur Donga Yalina ka haath chodo! Kya badtameezi hain ye? Dimag kharab ho gaya hain tum logo ka! Arre chot lg jaegi use, kya kar rhe ho?”
Ulfat pulled Uzair off Hamza with a beastly strength she didn’t even know she possessed. Maybe it was a mother’s instinct overpowering her intuition which had been screaming at her since yesterday night, when she had first seen Hamza after the incident.
The poor boy had been bleeding like a slaughtered pig and for the life of him couldn’t meet her eyes. Ulfat had known that very moment that something was very wrong but worry for her husband’s condition and seeing the young man she had grown to love like a little brother or rather like her own child, had shadowed her instincts somewhat.
Now, in the daylight, in the middle of what looked like an impromptu battlefield, they were blaring at her like sirens.
“Bhabi aap saamne se hatt jaen, aaj main iska qatl kardunga!”, Uzair shouted, his face contorted in agonized rage even if for some reason his hands were shaking, his eyes suspiciously bright.
“Pagal ho gye ho! Kya bak rahe ho? Hamza, are you okay?”, Ulfat looked at Hamza, then finally noticed how, even as the latter was heaving, was looking everywhere else except at her.
“Haan ho gya hoon pagal! If you come to know what your darling Hamza has done, it would drive you insane as well—”
Uzair turned around and went and picked up his mobile from where he had thrown it on the floor in rage and held it out to Ulfat.
The recording was dodgy and the sound was of poor quality but there was no doubt about the identity of the people on the screen. But what shook Ulfat to her core was what they had been discussing.
It was a five minute long video which clearly showed how the trap was laid.
Cold, meticulous, brilliant.
Calculated, precise, cruel.
“And remember, Baloch. If you betray me, I will kill that pretty wife of yours before I kill you too and Jameel sahab, I will castrate you.”
SP Aslam Chaudhary warned his two co-conspirators, his words turning in Ulfat’s mind relentlessly in a neverending loop as the video ended.
The mobile slipped from her numb fingers. Shock gripped her throat with one breathless hand and denial surged like a tsunami inside her. It wasn’t possible. It had to be a trick. There had to be some explanation to this. Anything else.
She turned to Hamza.
He was looking at her now. And Ulfat knew it even before she asked, her voice tremulous even if her resolve hardened like a diamond. A long instilled defence mechanism.
“Is this true? Did you—”, she walked towards him, voice getting lower as her nerves steadied, “Look at me Hamza!”, she barked at him when he had shifted his gaze. It made the other man jump slightly and his eyes met hers finally.
The truth was a dragon breathing fire into her lungs.
“Is it true? Did you betray us? Did you plan this? Is the video real?”
Ulfat Baloch could be terrifying in her own right. Something which most people found out much too late and often to their detriment. Her face had turned paper white. Whether in shock or wrath, no one could determine.
Hamza breathed.
“Yes.”
One word. One simple monosyllable. And Ulfat felt her world crumble.
Yalina let out a single sob from somewhere behind, Meher who had slowly inched to come and stand by her, caught her, pulling her away from Donga’s grasp in one fluid move. Uzair let out an inhuman sound - something caught between anger and pain.
Ulfat felt the ground beneath her feet shift. Years of cautiously built relationships snapped within a split second. Her heart folded into itself like it was catering to the momentum of being kicked carelessly and with cruel disregard.
She closed her eyes for a second and a scene from one evening came unbidden to memory.
Ulfat raised her eyebrows. It looked like a bomb had gone off in Rehman’s study. The entire office was covered in sheets, old files, bulky ledgers and what not. The musty smell of papers and alkaline scent of ink mixed with the smoky flavor of cigarettes had filled the air.
And in the middle of the battlefield, her husband stood, cigarette dangling from his lips, a stack of papers in one hand and what appeared to be a pocketbook in the condition of completely coming apart in another, an adorable frown between his eyes as he peered into both.
“Has anyone ever told you, your thinking face makes you look annoyingly hot. Especially if you are wearing your glasses?”, Ulfat chuckled while coming inside, carefully avoiding stepping on the papers littered on the floor.
“Has anyone ever told you, flattery absolutely works on me”, Rehman smirked through the cigarette, a plume of smoke blowing on Ulfat’s face as put the tea cup on the desk and leaned against it.
“What are you even doing?”, she asked.
“I have been trying to map all our businesses since the beginning. Do you know, we used to sell soap boxes alongside the drugs at one point?”, Rehman frowned as he picked up a ledger, discarding his trusted pocketbook on the desk.
“Why am I not surprised..”, Ulfat sighed and picked up a paper and mentally appreciated the patience of their accountants who had to decipher her husband’s infamous chicken scrawl, “why the sudden trip down the memory lane?”
“I need to make a blueprint for the upcoming review. I was thinking of recording it all down. It might prove to be helpful for foraying into new ventures.”
“Sounds like a wise plan. Only that I know, you, meri jaan, have a near eidetic memory. So this is definitely not for your benefit or our businesses. You are doing it for someone else—”, Ulfat saw Rehman look down into a book, almost covering his face with it and knew she had hit the nail right on the head.
“Thinking of retiring already?”
“You wish. I will go insane doing nothing all day and eat your head. Then you’ll kick me out. No no…. I am merely preparing the boys. We lead a dangerous life, my love. We have to be prepared for every situation.”
The situation being his sudden death because of their innumerable rivals’ uncountable plans succeeding, went unsaid. Ulfat hated it when he did that. Trying to spare her from the truth by weaving flowery words. But she understood it all the same.
But if her husband thought she wouldn’t catch it, he was dead wrong.
“Wait… did you say boys? As in plural? As in, Uzair and— someone?”
Rehman gave his wife a long suffering look but it was softened with pride and clear affection.
“As much as I love my little cousin, Uzair will not be able to handle the entire thing alone. He is a terrific enforcer, knows the inner workings of our business and is well connected within our networks but— his diplomatic skills leave a lot to be desired.”
Ulfat's smile was commiserate. She adored her brother in law and his ferocious devotion towards her husband and their family as a whole, but it was true. Uzair Baloch was a fantastic general but put him on the throne alone and it would be a catastrophe.
Especially for an empire which basically ran on cloak and daggers as much as it did on Rehman’s legendary reign of terror.
A sudden shout and a giggle brought the couple’s attention to the window. They looked at each other and then went towards the single window in Rehman’s office, which incidentally faced the garden.
Ulfat peered down and saw them.
Hamza was running around letting out theatrically high pitched yelps as Faizal chased him with what looked like the wooden sword Rehman had carved for him some days ago. Their eight year old was yelling.
Yalina and Meher sat on garden chairs, gossiping and peeling what looked like a mountain of oranges. The late afternoon sunlight was hitting their beautiful hair and lighting the gravel path where Uzair stood barking at someone on the phone.
“Mercy, Shehenshah! I surrender!”, Hamza yelped again, as the wooden sword hit him at the ankles.
“There is no surrender in battle, evil king! Only death!”, Faizal shouted and hit Hamza with a ferocity which had Rehman winching in sympathy beside her.
Uzair, unbeknownst to how close they had come to him, turned at the last moment, just as Hamza barreled into him at full speed, Faizal hot on his heels. The two men tumbled down in a tangle of overgrown limbs, suspiciously feminine shrieks and a giggling child atop.
“Abbe behenchod! Kya kiya!”
“Abbe haramkhor bacche ke saamne gaali nhi!”
“I will tell Abbu you both are saying bad words. Ammi will make you give money to the swear jar.”
Faizal warned his uncles sagely as the two men groaned, letting go of dignity and contended to lie like a pair of lions basking in the sun together. Meher and Yalina’s laughter filtered in the crisp winter air and reached Ulfat from below.
“Are you sure, these are the men you want to leave your legacy to?”
Ulfat teased her husband.
“Hush, I am rethinking all my life choices”, Rehman sighed in her hair as he pulled her by the waist to his chest.
Ulfat’s answering laughter rumbled through both their bodies as she tucked herself contented by her husband’s side and looked down on her strange messy family, heart feeling full.
“He was about to give you everything anyway…”
Ulfat’s voice was thin. Mortifyingly weak. She didn’t have to look at Hamza to feel the jolt of bewilderment passing through him.
“He trusted you. You and Uzair were going to get everything divided equally. He wished you both would continue together but he made sure you both would get your rightful share even if you decided to go your separate ways.”
The hallway was quiet. Not even the crickets outside could gather the courage to sing.
The sheer weight of the truth had sucked the very air in the space around them.
Ulfat swayed lightly and Hamza raised a hand towards her, almost unconsciously, almost instinctive.
“Don’t!”, he jerked back like he had been hit. Ulfat breathed and breathed and coughed till she could finally speak through the suppressed scream building in her throat.
“It would have been all yours anyway, Hamza. You didn’t have to… break his heart too.”
A sob.
Ulfat didn’t know who let it out. Whether she had broken her control, whether it was Yalina or Meher or Uzair… or maybe it had been Hamza himself. His usually effervescent face was a mask of cracked anguish.
Like Ulfat’s pain had cut meandering trails of vengeance on his own bloodstained one.
Old wounds layered underneath the new ones Uzair had given him just now.
“Bhabi—”, he almost whimpered.
“Don’t you fucking dare call me that”, she didn’t shout, she didn’t yell. She hissed the words through painfully gritted teeth. Wrath coloring her vision blood red.
“I trusted you. I let you around my kid. My family. I thought—”, Ulfat turned, words breaking into a pathetic hysteric laughter, her knees wobbled and Meher caught her arm. Ulfat removed her gentle grip and went and sat on the waiting chair kept aside.
This time her words were soft. Almost whispered in wonder. As if she was marvelling at her own lack of foresight. At the blind faith she had had in Hamza. At the innocent image of a family she had built that one winter afternoon, looking down from her palace.
“I thought even if Rehman didn’t survive this… yesterday—”, the thought itself was so excruciating she almost gagged on it but powered through, despite the small sound Hamza made like that of a wounded animal.
“...that, even if he died. He wouldn’t have been alone. You would have been there…holding him. He would have gone with someone who loved him… whom he loved, making the process less painful.. I—”
“Bhabi, please breathe—”, Meher’s voice was achingly empathetic. But Ulfat couldn’t stop. Her words were spiraling out of control. Just like her mind.
“But I was a fool. A naive, hopeful idiot. The only people surrounding him as my husband lay dying had been his enemies… and you…”
“You were the third fucking bullet that no one could see!”
The last words were spat almost viciously as she stood up again, storming towards Hamza.
A rage contorted Ulfat’s pretty features into an expression no one had ever seen on her face before. Not even when she had lit Rehman’s cigarette before he had gone to murder her son’s murderer.
Hamza looked terrified for a moment. His body curved inside. Bracing for a staggering impact. And Ulfat didn’t hesitate. She was spitting fire. She was Rehman Dakait’s rage at the moment. Burning everything within sight, uncontrollable, unquenchable, devastating.
A slap echoed through the corridor like a verdict.
“Jiss insaan ne tumhe apne seene se lgage rakkha, tumne ussi ke seene mein khanjar khop diya! Maine tumhe apna beta manaa! Faizal ke jaise pyaar kiya tumse! Aur tumne meri zindagi hi cheen li mujhse!”
Tears rolled down Hamza’s face but Ulfat didn’t care.
“You killed Rehman and me and every fucking dream we had seen with you in it! You lying deceiving snake! I will kill you myself—”
Yalina suddenly jumped in between Ulfat and Hamza and caught Ulfat’s raised hand with both of hers. She was crying. Her pretty face was a mess of smeared kajal, splotchy red marks and those curly tresses sticking to her cheeks.
“Please Bhabi… please… no.. no…please…I beg you…please”
Ulfat heaved, the anger slowly dissipating under such a tidal wave of grief that it nearly stole all her breath away. She stroked Yalina’s wet cheek, the girl still crying incoherently.
“I had considered you my son and no matter what you have done, I still can’t bring myself to curse you. But show your face around my family again, and I will personally put a bullet in your skull.”
Hamza was looking down, his towering frame cut almost in half, as if asking for his neck to be severed from his body.
“Bhabi, aap bhai ke saath rahe, isse toh main niptata hun—”, Uzair began, detaching himself from Meher’s tight grasp and walking towards the accused.
Yalina was still trying to cover her husband’s figure with her painfully smaller body.
Ulfat was about to say something when another voice stopped Uzair in his tracks.
“Koi.. kisiko.. nhi niptaega…”
“Bhai!”
“Oh my god—”
“Rehman!”
Ulfat gasped and ran towards her husband who was standing by the door of the ICU.
Standing would be an understatement.
Rehman was leaning against the saline pole he had brought with himself, the IV still inside his vein. There was a heavy coat on his shoulders, over the dressing gown and the doctor was two seconds away from having an aneurysm by the expression of disapproved alarm on his face.
Rehman's face was so white, everyone was afraid he would faint. The dark circles under his eyes were black craters and his knees shook just a little from the strain of holding himself upright.
Anyone else would have cut a tragically pathetic figure.
But not Rehman Baloch.
His eyes were piercing. Glazed yet awash in that same terrifyingly cunning intelligence that has petrified everyone in Karachi into near subservience. He was wounded, no doubt.
But he was a Titan, still.
And his body played no part in the sheer authority which his rasping voice delivered.
It was brutal and filled in the charged space of the corridor like a live wire.
This was the Rehman Baloch, Hamza had read about, studied for years before the infiltration and whom the streets whispered about in barely suppressed terror. There was not a single hint of pain in his expression even if everyone knew he had to be in tremendous agony.
“Sit down, for god’s sake! What are you doing? You’ll rip all your stitches—”, Ulfat stopped talking seeing the look on her husband’s face. She knew it was futile to argue with him at the moment.
“Hamza.. Ali.. Mazari.”
Hamza flinched violently yet raised his eyes to meet his maker.
“Is that even… your real name?”
“Yes.”
The answer was whispered. But it rang with truth. Not that anyone in the Baloch household could know how to differentiate between truth and deception, if the current circumstances are considered.
“If I… ever see….you anywhere near my territories… again.. I will personally…rip out your throat.”
It was a verdict.
Exile. Permanent banishment. Not death.
But betrayal to the Balochs have always been certain death. Death in painfully creative ways. Ways that have made greater men quake in their boots and demons shudder underground.
No one who had betrayed Rehman Dakait had been spared.
Not even his own mother.
A strange, unbelievable verdict and Yalina almost collapsed on the ground with sheer relief. She was half certain she would be widowed today.
The men were gaping at their leader, faces blank with numbed shock. Ulfat shivered once but stood by her husband, taking most of his weight on herself without letting it show too obviously. Her face was broken and she had no strength left to hide it.
“But Bhai! He betrayed us! He betrayed you! He.. he knows everything! All our plans, our routes, our contacts…the moles…. The freaking safety measures in the haveli! We can’t—”, Uzair protested horrified.
“Last I… remember…. I was still… your boss… or did someone else take the position while I was out!”, Rehman thundered, the strength in his breathless shout palpable in the air.
The men immediately lowered their heads, deference to their leader, automatic and undisputed.
Uzair was clearly conflicted but he would not openly go against his brother. And especially not when he could see the toll it was taking on Rehman to even remain standing on his feet, in this condition let alone shout.
“Bhai….”, Yalina whimpered and Rehman’s mask wavered. If only for a second.
“And anyone… who….wants to go with him….leave now. Later….if I find anyone… in contact with him…you will face the same punishment….betrayers face.”
Yalina’s face fell and she clutched Hamza’s hand desperately.
“Kuch bolte kyun nhi tum? Bolo na ye sab jhuth hain! Tell them it's all a lie! Tell them it was staged. Why are you not defending yourself!”
Yalina cried to Hamza, the agony in her voice like poison in the room.
Meher wanted to reach her desperately, pull her back into their sphere but it was impossible now. She could see the chasm between them. A physical gorge drawn by a single treacherous act that no amount of blood could ever fill.
“I didn’t want to kill you. At least not… not after—”
Hamza’s first coherent words and they seeped into the air like a prisoner’s last wish. He didn’t complete his sentence and Rehman didn’t ask him to. He coughed once, blood blooming at the corner of his mouth.
Uzair’s punches had opened the scabs again.
He turned with much difficulty and found Yalina’s small shoulder below his arm as she supported him. Even after all of this, she was standing with him.
Hamza couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t even breathe.
He was numb.
Like an ice sculpture.
The men made a path through them for Hamza and Yalina to pass, their faces twisted in betrayed anger and Hamza knew they were holding themselves back with great restraint. Rehman’s words were law in the gang. And that was the only reason he still had his limbs attached to his body.
Uzair had been easier on him than he had expected. Maybe the shock of his betrayal had broken some of the younger Baloch brother’s infamous strength.
Hamza heard a small sound and a few gasps behind him and wanted to turn. Every single cell in his body wanted to turn and run and grovel and just beg till his throat hurt, till he could wipe that look from his… from Rehman’s face, from Ulfat’s eyes, from Meher’s countenance, from Uzair’s visage…
But he couldn’t.
Not yet. Not ever.
The game hasn’t ended yet.
And one wrong move could bring the whole thing tumbling down.
Even if Hamza felt his heart tearing itself into half, as his slow steps took him away from the man who had made him feel like he deserved to be protected, to have a family, to not feel so goddamned alone in the world.
From the man he was sure now regretted giving Hamza any shred of affection he ever had, intentional or otherwise.
__________
Rehman felt the world tilt and the edges of his vision go grey as Hamza and Yalina stumbled out of the corridor.
He had felt the men simmering under the outrage. Uzair's conflicted flare of protective tendencies had surged. The audience’s bafflement was a whole presence in the hallway.
Yet he couldn’t… he couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t order the death sentence of a man his heart refused to stop considering as a son, still.
Couldn’t see the light drain from those brilliant vibrant eyes.
Couldn’t stop thinking about the strange dream where he had felt Hamza press his face inside his throat and wail like a child who had lost his father. It had enveloped his mind like a heavy milky mist.
Yet seeing Hamza and Yalina walk away from him, even if it had been on his own orders, had felt like seeing a part of his soul tear itself apart savagely and fly along with them. And try as he might, he couldn’t catch it back.
Rehman was left with a patchwork of his body and his heart, tattered and stitched and lacking.
The next time he opened his eyes, it was dark outside and Uzair was curled like an overgrown house cat near his feet, fast asleep in the most uncomfortable position a human body can ever contort itself into.
Ulfat was nowhere to be seen, much to his disappointment.
He was sure he would be punished severely for the stunt he had pulled.
Another addition was Faizal. Also asleep. Curled into a ball inside Uzair, clutching his uncle’s kurta like a lifeline. His young face was pale and the tear tracks sliced Rehman’s mangled heart into further bloodied strips.
He had forgotten about his youngest.
The poor boy. All the hospital had probably reminded the kid had been the time when his elder brother Naeeim had passed away.
Naeeim…
Rehman would be lying if he hadn’t wished to pass on for one moment when he had been battling for his life, prone on the bed, under the surgeon’s scalpel. He would get to meet his firstborn, see his beloved moonchild’s lovely smile one more time and the pain would finally stop.
But Rehman had never not fought for survival like a feral wild animal. It was bound in his bones. He couldn’t undo years of habitual action in one stroke. No matter the severity of the hurt. Or how badly his heart had broken.
He couldn’t think of Hamza anymore.
He shouldn’t.
He should end that chapter. He didn’t want to know about the whys. He simply didn’t care anymore.
“Baba!”
Faizal’s eyes were open the next second when Rehman’s gaze found him.
“Hello darling…”, Rehman whispered.
Faizal was out of Uzair’s death grasp the next moment, startling his cousin so violently the poor man almost took a tumble on the floor and was in Rehman’s arms the very next moment.
“Faizal! Baccha, chot lgi hain apke abbu ko, dheere.. Dheere..”, Uzair countered gently as Faizal climbed atop his father, almost desperate.
“Hush! It's okay Uzair, the day I can’t hold a rambunctious Dakait in my arms is the day I die..”, Rehman consoled while suppressing a cry of pain as Faizal almost elbowed him in the gut.
“Bhai, you have already aggravated your injuries enough for a day.. No, a month. Please have mercy on my nerves and Bhabi and Doctor sahab and take it easy.”
Rehman grimaced even as he cradled his youngest as tightly as he could to himself, without ripping out his stitches or hurting the trembling boy in his arms. He pressed consoling kisses to Faizal’s mop of hair and hummed slowly.
It was an old lullabye, Ulfat used to sing to both Naeeim and Faizal when they would fall sick and couldn’t sleep.
“I thought you would never wake up! I was so scared!”, Faizal cried.
“Forgive me, my love. I am not leaving you or your mother any time soon…hush hush…”
Rehman sang gently and kept at it till his throat was protesting and Uzair had almost fallen asleep, seated in the chair beside the bed now. Faizal’s soft snuffling sound of sleep broke Uzair from his doze and he woke up straight.
“You look like shit”, Rehman said, voice low enough to not disturb his finally calm son.
“Speak for yourself. You look like a truck had gone over you and backed up for good measure”, Uzair responded equally low, a small smile teasing his face after what felt like centuries.
“Brat”, Rehman said affectionately.
Uzair was quiet. Rehman could see the self flagellation clear on his cousin’s face.
Well, that won’t do at all.
“Uzair, whatever you are thinking right now—”, his cousin cut him midsentence. His face blank and eyes staring into the distance. As if tracing every single incident that led to this point.
“I left you alone with him. I thought.. I will collect the shipment order and by the time you are done with the ribbon cutting—”
“Uzair…”
“Do you know why I left?”, Uzair looked at him suddenly, eyes filling up with self recrimination more than guilt, “I left because I was bored!”
Rehman carefully moved one arm which had been wrapped around Faizal and caught Uzair’s trembling hand. He squeezed it with as much strength as his recovering body would allow. The younger Baloch curled his other hand to rest his forehead on, almost leaning over Rehman’s legs.
“I was so stupid. If I had been there—”
“Both of us would have been shot. It wasn’t your fault Uzair—”, Rehman said calmly.
“No! I wouldn’t have let you get shot! I would have fucking killed that motherfucker myself! I know you hesitated—”
Rehman felt his heart jump. Uzair was looking at him, almost ashamed of his own outburst but he didn’t shy away from his words, as was his habit. He would say what is in his mind, whether his older brother liked it or not.
It was one of the reasons Rehman had kept Uzair as his second in command.
He didn’t need to surround himself with yes men.
They were only good foot soldiers. But made terrible partners.
“You had a gun Bhai, I know. Even if he drove you all off the road, even if you were caught by that jackass Aslam, you still had a gun. I went to the spot. I saw the spot where you were shot… the blood stains..”, he stopped and swallowed once feeling nauseated.
The amount of blood soaking the earth had made Uzair want to hurl. The hardened general of the Dakait gang and feeling puckish at the scent and sight of blood - should have been a joke. But he was only human too.
One more squeeze from Rehman’s hand on his and Uzair shook the images away.
“I saw the shell casings. You didn’t shoot. The gun was just a few centimeters away from your grasp. That means you dropped it when you fell. Hamza… shot you. But you didn’t shoot. Not first or even to retaliate. I have seen you fight Bhai… you never miss and you never hesitate.”
Rehman looked at the ceiling.
What could he say to Uzair that wasn’t the truth?
So he told the truth.
“I couldn’t.”
And wasn’t that just sad.
There was silence and only Faizal’s rhythmic breathing and the machines attached to Rehman’s body beeping were the only sounds in the chamber.
“You are letting your heart decide. It is dangerous. He knows Faizal’s security pattern Bhai..”
Uzair was talking sense. Rehman knew it. And he was letting his heart make the decisions he should have left to his cold hard judgement that had always led him on the right path. His heart on the other hand has only ever created nuisance.
“Change the pattern then. Change the routes. Change everything. We were due for a change anyways. Can’t depend on one pattern for too long.”
“You are letting him go without punishment. The men will notice. They will think you have become weak.”
A beat of silence.
“Maybe I have…”
Rehman didn’t know who was more scared with that admission. Uzair or he himself.
“Bhai you are scaring me…”
Rehman patted his hand.
“There is no greater punishment for a man who was ready to die for his mission and then see it fail. Tell me Uzair, why did he come back today even after knowing that I was awake. He could have run. Easily. Disappeared. The men were distracted. Busy. No one was keeping watch. Why come back to the lion’s den?”
The same question had been eating at Uzair, that was pretty evident.
And no logical answer seemed to come to any of them at the moment.
“I still can’t believe…he betrayed us. Hamza… I would never have imagined it in a thousand years. I still can’t completely…”, Uzair stopped.
Rehman looked outside the single window in the room. The night was gentle. The moon was a full circle. Almost mocking him and the darkness inside him.
“Hamza, if Meher or Uzair have put you up to this, know that I can break a man’s wrist in seventeen different ways.”
Rehman didn’t even look up at his supposed attacker, his entire focus on the inventory list in front, lounging on his throne as usual. Hamza, who had been advancing towards his boss, steps as cautiously silent as a cat, bit his lips resigned.
He sighed and came in front, even if his hands were still suspiciously behind his back. Almost like he was concealing something.
“I don’t care what Uzair says, you definitely have supernatural powers. No one can hear me come, and by no one, I mean, no fucking one!”
“I couldn’t hear your steps idiot, but Yalina’s perfume is way too strong”, Rehman replied cooly.
“Goddamnit.”
“By the way, who gave you the brilliant idea of sneaking up on me? Did you want to lose a limb by any chance?”
Hamza grumbled but came and stood in front of the monikered Bastard King. There was an almost hopeful smile on his face. Rehman looked up finally and raised an eyebrow.
“Was I supposed to give you any instructions? I thought Uzair had already divided the work.”
“Ah yes, it is evening Bhai. We are done with work”
“What? Evening already… goddamnit, I lost time, this fucking inventory is a mess. Tell Siyahi to meet me tomorrow when he finds the precious time.”
Rehman stood up wincing and found Hamza still standing in the same position in front.
“Okay, now I am concerned. What is it?”
Rehman frowned. Did the kid have a fever? Did he forget anything?
“I… had to give you something. Just, please promise me you wont rip my head off”, Hamza said quickly and thrust what he had hidden behind his back in Rehman’s hands even before the latter could reply.
“What the—”
Rehman stared at the pack of glass marbles nestled inside his scarred palm. They were a little translucent, a rust color swirling a mesmerizing pattern on each one and they sparkled in the dim yellow lighting of the room.
But most importantly, they were exactly the same ones Rehman remembered owning as the only thing he had ever bought for himself as a boy.
They were his first and only toy, he could say. He wasn’t sentimental or nostalgic but he remembered feeling an acute sense of loss when he had been dragged to prison and on returning had found all his possessions gone, along with his precious marbles.
“How..”, Rehman asked - wonder coloring his voice.
“Don’t be mad.. But I overheard you talking to Faizal last week and I found out this one artisan in Saddar who made custom toys and I just sort of explained to him about the marbles and he said he could make them exactly like this so—”
Hamza was babbling nervously and Rehman knew he should take pity on him and say something but the words were caught in a tight mortifying stone inside his throat. It was with a herculean effort that he swallowed it down.
“So.. you brought me marbles after accidentally finding an artisan in Saddar?”
“That sounds incredibly suspicious when you frame it like that—”, Hamza muttered cautiously.
Rehman couldn’t stop his face from doing that complicated thing he knows makes him look fucking stupid. But by the way Hamza suddenly started glowing like the sun itself on seeing his expression, made the small indignity worth it, he supposed.
Stupid boy.
And his stupid fucking heart.
“Well, let's see if I still have it in me or not…”, Rehman said suddenly, giving in to the childish desire inside him and walked out of the room.
Hamza whooped and sprinted after him like an overgrown puppy.
“Let me warn you Sardar, I was the undefeated champion in my locality.”
Hamza warned playfully, holding the door of the warehouse open and Rehman just passed by him, a smirk twisting his lips almost mischievously.
“I am going to wipe the fucking floor with you, son.”
Memories were painful whip lashes against his back. Carving out his flesh one strip at a time.
Has any of it been real?
His mind was a trap on its own. A gluttonous cage for punishment.
‘I did this to myself, Uzair. Me and my stupid fucking heart which still can’t stop screaming.’
Rehman thought almost viciously but didn’t have the strength to utter.
By the look slowly forming on Uzair’s face, he didn’t need to.
A/N: This is all your fault @avatar-of-procrastination ! Also, @harrystyleskiwi9 I know this is not exactly what you wanted but I hope you'll still like it? Fingers crossed. It is an AU where Hamza is not an Indian spy and Rehman wasn't involved with the ISI and any terror attack. Also this turned out to be monstrously big. So I have divided it. It is still lengthy though, fair warning, get a snack or something.
Word Count : 9.5k
Masterlist
| Part One |
Disclaimer : This is based on Akshaye Khanna's portrayal of Rehman Dakait specifically in the movie, Dhurandhar and has nothing to do with the real Rehman Dakait who was a terrorist shitstain responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. If there is an afterlife I sincerely hope he is being roasted on a grill.
Hamza was sitting on the floor. The cold was seeping through the wall of the sterile hospital corridor into his torn back in waves. His entire body was a mess of bruises and abrasions. His bones were cracking under the weight of his raspy breaths. His usually silky soft hair, now a mass of wild tangled locks matted with gore and filth, fell to cover half his face.
Pain was a muted companion.
He was numb.
There was a small hitch in the air, the sharp intake of breath drawn against a pair of still painfully young lungs. It broke the almost cloying syrupy silence which the hallway had descended into.
Hamza looked up from where he had been staring at his blood stained fingers.
Faizal was standing a few feet away.
His oh so familiar eyes wide like saucers on his little hollowed out face.
“Hamza bhaiyya—”, his whispery voice cracked open at the last syllable.
The look on his youthful visage hit Hamza’s broken chest like a fully loaded freight train. Because he had seen this exact expression mirrored to a frighteningly precise degree on a much older face just a few hours ago.
Rehman Dakait’s younger son had inherited his father’s exact body language and non verbal cues including his expressions to an eerily familiar severity.
The shock slowly transforming into horrified grief was so achingly similar in Faizal’s molasses brown eyes as had been on his father’s wane blood stained face when the realisation of the exact degree of the treachery enforced against him had been finally revealed, that Hamza couldn’t help but gag on the truth.
“You are hurt…”, the ten year old whimpered and stumbled towards him, searching for the safety only the circle of a father’s - a brother’s arms could provide.
Hamza didn’t even have the time to flinch as Faizal threw himself into his chest with the kind of trust only innocent children can have and display.
He didn’t care about the blood drenching Hamza’s clothes which was now imprinted on his small cheek, and his nimble frame.
His father’s blood.
Bile rose acerbic, crawling up Hamza’s throat with an unforgiving vengeance.
He has no right— his hands tightened around the small shaking body clinging to him— he has no fucking right! Hugging the child of the man he— consoling this little boy who was quivering with the heavy weight of terror and still worried about Hamza’s wounds.
Hamza buried his pulsing face into Faizal’s mop of hair.
He smelled like Rehman. His shampoo. The scent of cedar and nutmeg. The distant fragrance of citrus and coal tar and petrichor. It had mixed seamlessly with Ulfat’s perfume of pomegranate and jasmine and yet dominated the fainter scents somehow.
Or maybe that was just Hamza’s sadistic brain torturing him per se.
Chaudhary Aslam’s screams, the loud sounds of gunfire, crashing wheels against the hot tar of the road, the tang of metal and blood and dust raining heavily on Hamza’s tongue. His leg muscles screaming, men shouting and Rehman Dakait choking on his own blood.
The hand which had trembled so violently while it had aimed at the Gangster King of Lyari.
The sneer on the white clad SP’s ugly leering face.
The feel of Rehman’s blood spilling hot and slippery beneath Hamza’s desperate press of quivering hands.
Rehman’s face had fractured for a split second. The infuriated fuelling rage on his white blood stained sooty face had suddenly given way to a horrifying stilted betrayed grief. His usually rock solid aim had wavered, his impeccable reflexes drowning under the press of an inexplicable resignation.
And that was all it had taken.
Hamza’s hands had shaken. The heated barrel had almost slid off aim at the last second and had hit a tree beside. But he had steadied it in the next moment, his old training resurfacing in tandem with the primal urge for survival every creature has.
The way Rehman’s body had jerked back, a thick viscous red bursting out from his abdomen, making him drop his own gun and stagger back a few steps to cater to momentum, hands coming to clutch his stomach, had almost made Hamza throw up on his own shoes.
But it had been the second shot which had shaken him up the most.
The entire forest had trembled with the force of it.
Rehman’s face had lost whatever color had been left, his arms swinging back in a tragic arc as he had dropped back with a grunt, the projectile of the bullet slamming into his chest with virulent rage.
“NO!”
Hamza didn’t even remember when he had dropped his own revolver, covered the distance separating him from the supine man and had dropped on his knees beside him. His hands had automatically pressed on Rehman’s chest, on the weeping wound gushing out all of the blood remaining inside his heart.
There had been so much blood. The ground had been soaked with it. Hamza covered completely. The air was so thick with it that it had felt like the taste had settled permanently on the younger man’s tongue.
Rehman’s mouth had been half open, blood trickling from the corner, almost like the shock had paralyzed him to the ache of the bullets inside his heaving body. His eyes - cloudy, bereft of that brilliant cunning intelligence, that sharp clear gaze completely - wide on that white as a sheet face.
A strand of his usually neatly gelled back hair, now completely free of product, had fallen almost gently over his forehead.
The gut wound had been sluggish as it had supposed to have been.
But the second bullet had ripped through Rehman’s sternum savagely.
“No! No.. no no NO! What have you done!”, he had turned and screamed at Aslam who had been limping towards them, dragging his rifle with him slowly.
“What needed to be done. Or did you forget your mission, Baloch?”, the SP had spat at him unrepentant, his face a repulsive display of absolute glee.
Raw unrestrained panic had overridden every sense of judgement. Every single thought he had nursed jealously, bitter and poisonous in his mind for years had flown right off, at the clear, inanimate yet imminent face of certain death.
Rehman’s breaths had weakened almost to a negligible degree.
“No.. no please…please.. Not like this…I can’t.. Oh God, I can’t—”
Hamza had pleaded to whoever would care to listen, to fate, to destiny, to the Gods who had stopped listening to him a long time ago, his hand sliding off Rehman, with every excruciating struggle of keeping the rapidly growing pool inside the broken gaping chasm which the latter’s chest had become.
“The doctors were saying Abbu might not wake up ever again”, Faizal’s shaking words brought Hamza back to the present, back to that stark white hospital corridor and the endless waiting.
“I am scared Bhaiyya. Will Abbu go to Naeem bhaiyya now? But then I will never be able to see him again! He can’t go! I..”
“Hush hush..little one. Your Abbu is a very strong man. If anyone can defeat death, it will be him. Have faith…”
The words felt rehearsed in his mouth. Foreign. Empty.
Rotten.
“Faizal! What are you doi— Oh my god! Hamza bhai! You are bleeding! We need a nurse here! Right now!”
Meher.
She was kneeling in front of Hamza, hands hovering uselessly in front. Her beautiful face, ever glowing with hidden mirth looked like an ashen canvas. Those vibrant grey eyes always twinkling with mischief were swollen and rimmed with an unforgiving red.
She looked wrong.
It was all wrong.
Meher Baloch was supposed to be bubbly and cheery and make everyone around her laugh helplessly. She was supposed to snip at her husband and joke with Hamza and Faizal and jump around like an energetic firefly.
“Ye bacchi ekdin phurr karke udd hi jaegi, dekhna—”
Rehman’s voice had been brimming with both his characteristic exasperation and then again with enough fondness to fill the vacuum of space itself while Meher had bustled around him one late afternoon, laughter ringing clear in the Baloch mansion.
It felt like a different lifetime.
When everything had been golden and good. Warm and loving.
When Hamza could forget his cold reality and exist in the space created for him by the people who had taken him in with such tenderness that it had been overwhelming to say the least.
Instead Meher looked like someone had hollowed her out with the blunt edge of a butter knife. Carelessly and cruelly. Her silky black hair fell limp in a hastily tied braid, a few strands free, not a hint of that perennial delight visible on her face.
She took Faizal from Hamza with heart breaking care.
“Bhai, aapko bohot chot lgi hain, marampatti ho jaane ke baad, ghar chale jaana. Yalina has called me at least ten times by now. Uzair will be here in a moment”, she said.
“I can’t Meher Bi.. I have to— I need to know. I can’t..”, Hamza’s throat dried up as Meher’s tired eyes welled up with unshed tears, yet again.
“The doctors said it will take at least a few more hours. They had to….”, her voice broke, she tightened her hold on her nephew, almost as if to shield him from the rest of her words, “they had to transfuse another batch and the blood count is still too low…”.
She closed her eyes for a moment, straightened up and steadied with a strength that was awe inspiring to say the least.
Hamza had always admired Meher.
Uzair’s wife of three years and a lawyer of great repute in the city.
It had been a whirlwind romance straight out of a teenager’s favourite fantasy book for Uzair Baloch and Meher Zarvari. Hamza had never seen Uzair behave so erratically before than he had in Meher’s presence.
They had clashed like sword blades. And along the way the edges had dulled till the war had turned into a playful duel.
Then one evening, Uzair had come to the Baloch house, rosy cheeked and bright eyed, smelling of sweet sharbat and frangipanis, collars suspiciously unmade and pulled up and Hamza and the boys had burst into laughter.
Rehman had come running out to witness the commotion.
He had taken one look at his red faced younger cousin and had sighed like a great old lion, then looked upwards as if begging for strength and had gone back inside to call up old man Zarvari.
Meher had fit into their group like she had been specifically made for it.
Her words sharp enough to cut steel intrigued Rehman enough that they could be often found bantering with such visceral fervour that it would have left anyone else bleeding. Ulfat had taken one look at a five foot one Meher struggling to put Uzair in a headlock and had promptly imprinted on her like a mama duck.
“That one is mine”, she had informed everyone pointing at a visibly confused Meher and walked away.
Rehman had just sighed again.
Hamza had befriended Meher with an ease that had been almost astounding to behold. She was almost his age, only a year younger and went along with him like a house on fire. Almost literally. If there was a fire somewhere in the house, it most probably was the result of something Meher and Hamza had cooked up.
Always ready to defend Hamza to Rehman and Uzair, trying to unsuccessfully steal Ulfat’s world famous kheer from the kitchens, teaching Faizal to spy on his parents so they could get out of the house for impromptu parties - there was nothing they hadn’t been able to achieve together.
And here she was, brilliant and beautiful Meher, reduced to a husk of a woman waiting for a news which seemed capable of either making or breaking her.
All because of him.
Because despite her playful verbal spats with Rehman, Meher loved her brother in law with a fiery devotion that only a rambunctious daughter can for a father.
Meher’s relationship with her own father had been a cool estranged familial bond made due to blood. Her father didn’t care for his daughter’s outrageous boldness and Meher had never received the unconditional love that a girl wants from her parents.
So when Rehman had extended his quiet protective tendencies and silent affection to his little brother’s wife, Meher had soaked it all up like a starving sponge.
Hamza wanted to curl up into a ball and become invisible.
But it was impossible with the nurses bustling around him and Meher seated opposite on the waiting chair, Fazial wrapped tightly in her arms, her sky blue dupatta enveloping the kid like a shield of armour.
Hamza hadn’t even noticed when Uzair had come stumbling through the corridor like a man functioning on nothing but empty air and collapsed beside his wife. His face was a travesty written in barely held grief, fury and a messy agony.
Uzair Baloch was a simple man. Whatever was in his heart would be clearly visible on his face. And it was evident enough from the dark circles under his reddened eyes that he had not slept the entire night.
Maybe he was still swamped from managing everything from the nervous gang members to the hassled politicians to the frenzied media.
Hamza hadn’t even thought about the world collapsing outside the hospital.
The truth was, he could care less.
“What a charming sight!”
Hamza stood up immediately, inescapable rage and a small spark of fear darkening his now cleaned face as the new presence in the empty hallway made the hair at the back of his neck stand up.
How dare he! This greedy manipulative swine!
SP Chaudhary Aslam came almost swaggering inside, two policemen trailing behind their boss, faces twisted in ugly mirth. Hamza’s fists had been itching since the moment Aslam had fired the second bullet.
He was right on Aslam’s face before he could come close to Meher and Faizal.
“You shouldn’t have come here”.
Donga and Basheer, who had been kept on guard, were nowhere in sight. The bastard had most probably arrested them or had them restrained somehow.
Aslam laughed raucously, his eyes glinting dangerously as he saw Hamza from his toes till up his roots, like he was searching for some invisible blot on him.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I am part of the LTF which is working with the Karachi Police. I need to get statements regarding today’s events.”
“You godforsaken asshole! How fucking dare you! You shot my brother, you blathering, simpering weasel! I will rip your limbs apart with my bare fucking hands—”,
Uzair had launched himself right at Aslam and would have actually gone through with his claims had it not been for Meher who had left a shocked awakened Fazail to grab her husband’s massive six foot four body. Still she hadn’t been able to get his hands off the SP’s throat.
“Uzair let him go! It will only make his job easier. Leave! Hamza!”
Hamza immediately understood what Meher was trying to say. In his current mental state, Uzair had gone berserk, completely forgetting how easily Aslam can arrest him on the pretext of assaulting an on duty officer and throw him in jail, or God forbid, try to kill him too.
“Uzair! Chod! Goddamnit!”
But it was easier said than done. The two policemen accompanying Aslam were also trying to pull the two men apart along with Hamza but to no avail.
Uzair’s monstrous hold on Aslam’s throat was a dead weight which was nearly impossible to break. Hamza could see the SP’s eyes bulging out, his face turning an alarming shade of bruised purple.
He would strangle the man to death.
Hamza wouldn’t lie, it was immensely satisfying to watch, as that had been all he wanted to do since that ill fated day he had met the older man.
But right now, the consequences would be too great to let Aslam die. At least he had to wait till he could reveal his own part in all of this and Uzair could strangle him to death too.
It would honestly be a relief.
Anything else other than this choking suffocating agony lighting a fire inside Hamza’s soul will be a relief.
Yalina’s pretty face swam in front of his eyes and grief struck him mercilessly across the face like a stinging slap.
“Uzair! Let him go this instant! And that is an order!”
The voice cut through the commotion like a whip splitting the air open with a resounding crack. The sheer power behind the voice made Uzair drop Aslam immediately. Or maybe it was the long ingrained instinct inside him to obey that voice no matter what.
Exactly like he followed his brother’s orders.
Aslam choked and gasped, heaving precious air back in his burning lungs, no doubt.
Ulfat Baloch was a vision in pearl pink, her long hair tied into a messy bun, some strands falling in almost artful curls framing her chiselled face.
The color complimented her milk white skin like a sheer satin silk on cream. She was a lotus blooming in the filth. Her presence was so starkly different to the world around her that it had always felt oddly otherworldly to Hamza.
She walked up to them, her gait lionine, exactly matching her husband’s notoriously arresting walk, eyes dried and crystal sharp. She didn’t demand the deference which automatically suffused in the otherwise pulsating surrounding.
She commanded it.
Her face was totally dry and perfectly blank. No hint of an expected anguish or even the aftermath of it was visible on her expression, unlike the rest of them. She moved and the very air in the corridor seemed to make space for her simultaneously.
It shouldn’t have come across as a surprise to Hamza.
Ulfat had always baffled him with the sheer strength she hid under delicate hands and luminous eyes. She was the soft light of the oncoming dawn in contrast to Rehman who was the darkest shade of the night. She reared and nurtured while her husband slaughtered and killed.
And yet they were forged from the same fires. Made of the same steel. Housed the same power and pain and loved with the same violent ferocity which could put the very Gods to shame.
Ulfat Baloch was an unbending wall, her will equal to starlight and she guided Rehman Dakait and his world like a sun does to the sunflowers.
SP Aslam and his lackeys were nothing in front of her.
The policemen immediately stepped aside to let her through, almost as if in a trance themselves. She passed Aslam’s bent form, caustically uncaring about his condition and came and stood turning with her back to Uzair. And to the rest of them. Facing the LTF officers unperturbed.
Her arms were crossed in front of her chest, her spine ramrod straight and her feet placed with a span of distance perfect for shooting a long range target. She didn’t say a word, didn’t shout or scream or accuse or allege.
She just stood.
Eyes hard and empty.
A sentinel. A guardian. A queen.
A lioness protecting her pride.
A mother standing like an impregnable wall in front of her children.
Hamza could see Rehman in her at that moment. That same fierce protective fire burning in her veins like a hurricane. At that moment, nothing would pass through her and reach any of them. Not words nor bullets.
And certainly not SP Chaudhary Aslam and his gang.
Aslam may have realised that as well as he stared at the woman in front.
“You want a statement? Here it is. Write it down. My husband was returning from a political event with his convoy when he was ambushed by the LTF. He was hunted and shot twice and is now battling for his life behind those doors while the officer who did all of this is standing in front of his wife and family and laughing at their faces.”
Her voice was sharp and tore into Hamza like a barrage of venomous arrows.
The statement was near perfect except for one tiny detail. A detail that would break Ulfat’s sturdy heart harder than seeing her husband bloodied and fighting for his life ever could.
Aslam as if on cue laughed raspily. Uzair’s fingers had dug into his throat in violent bruises.
“Nice story Ulfat Bibi. Lets see what the media spins out of this. Don’t you worry, I will make sure the perpetrators of his heinous crime are caught post haste—”, his sneering words were almost spat on Ulfat’s face.
Uzair had almost leaped across and caught Aslam by the throat again but Meher had caught him successfully this time, her eyes razor sharp, revulsion pulsating beneath them as she glared at the Head of the LTF.
“Get out SP sahab and don’t test a lioness protecting her cubs. She will tear your throat out with her teeth before you can manage to even blink.”
The truth in Ulfat’s voice, more than the ice, made Aslam take a step back even as he smirked at her.
“Maybe look in your backyard once in a while, Marium-Uz-Zamani. Spiders have been known to eat their mothers after being fed.”
Hamza swallowed the blood filling his mouth with how hard he had bit his tongue. Aslam’s beady eyes had flashed upon him once before he had turned and stormed out, his boys practically fleeing behind their master.
“Uzair, get Donga and Basheer and secure the house. Meher, take Faizal back. He is exhausted as it is. And Hamza—”
Ulfat had turned to look at him finally, orders slipping past her lips as naturally as it came from Rehman, the exhaustion of holding onto an unbreakable mask finally wearing down her defenses low enough for the agony to peek through.
But her words stopped in their tracks when her eyes fell on Hamza properly.
He must really be looking like a sight.
“Ya Allah, ye kya haal banake rakhha hain, baccha? Gaadi kitni buri tareeke se crash hui thi? Doctor dikhaya kya? Chot toh bandaged hain… dard ho raha hain kahi zyadaa tumhe?”
Ulfat’s gentle hands caressed the wounds on his face and his neck with her usual maternal tenderness. Hamza could feel his heart literally thumping outside his ribcage in a mad scramble to explode, if only that would stop this sickening feeling from erupting out.
He wanted to scrub a layer of his skin off.
Ulfat was still examining him with concerned eyes.
Longing hit Hamza so hard it almost made him dizzy. The longing of feeling his mother’s touch, skittering over his forehead in affectionate approval, cupping his face. Memories sparked clear in his muddled mind.
Memories which then transformed into the ones he had formed in the Baloch household.
And with it, it brought such an acute flood of shame that it made his eyes sting.
Hamza had just entered the living room.
Uzair had taken one look at him and burst out in unashamed laughter. He was laughing so hard he had almost taken a tumble off the chair.
Rehman, startled out of his inspection of an old file in his hand, had looked up in shock. His piercing eyes peered from above the reading glasses Hamza had never seen the so monikered Sher-E-Baloch wear before and his lips pressed in a line Hamza knew was from an effort of holding back his own amusement for the sake of looking dignified.
Yet his eyes always gave him away. Or rather the crows feet crinkling just that way, trying to hide behind the glasses yet starkly visible under the golden lighting of the room, spread like mirth on his chiselled face.
“Yes okay, I know I look funny but—-”, he had begun only for Uzair to start wheezing, tears rolling down his handsome face in tandem.
“Oh God.. you.. Hehe.. you look like… a baboon who has gotten an electric shock!”, as if picturing his own statement, Uzair fell into another burst of laughter on his own.
“I know! I tried everything! That stupid Donga made the jeep go through a fucking mountain of sand bags and then the wind picked up and now my hair is a mess.”
Hamza knew he was pouting but he couldn’t help it. His hair had tangled so hard and had been filled with such grit from the sand that try as he might, he could do nothing but tear it all out.
“Maybe try getting a hair cut?”, Rehman suggested finally when he was sure he could speak without bursting into laughter like his cousin who was still red faced and wheezing.
“And get murdered by Yalina. No thanks.”
“Your girlfriend is five foot and twenty.”
“You are married Bhai.”
“Touche. Fair point.”
Ulfat as if being magically summoned had just entered the room, “Is someone dying here, who is wheezing like an out of breath seal—”, stopped short and stared at Hamza.
“Hamza. You look like a cartoon character. On drugs.”
“Thank you, Bhabi.”
Uzair was definitely dying at this point. Rehman had taken pity on him finally and was patting his back as if that would help bring the air back inside his lungs. Ulfat smiled and beckoned him with a gentle hand.
“Come with me. I’ll straighten it out—”
“Don’t cut it! I—”
“I know baba. Yalina will murder me along with you if I do that. And why should I cut such beautiful hair? Don’t worry. You’ll be back to your handsome self in just a few minutes.”
Hamza had blushed furiously, muttering nonsense under his breath and followed behind Ulfat like an obedient duckling leaving his traitorous friend still croaking on the couch, wishing Uzair would die already.
“Sit here”, Ulfat had made him sit on the ground while she sat on the chair in the dining room.
She had already brought some things from the kitchen. It was a small bottle of oil, what appeared to be water, another expensive looking cosmetic bottle, a large toothed and a fine toothed comb.
Thus began the operation.
Hamza had thought it would be torture, getting his hair pulled this way and that but nothing of that sort happened. Instead he almost fell asleep with Ulfat’s gentle fingers softly untangling his messy stubborn locks, using oil and water almost simultaneously.
He was blinking awake when the comb untangled the bigger knots and Ulfat used the fine toothed comb to brush his now blissfully free hair more gently than was strictly necessary. Then she poured something incredibly expensive smelling on her hand and then massaged it on the lower half of his hair expertly.
“There.. All done.”
Hamza looked at the hand mirror Ulfat held in front of him and almost jumped up in shock. His hair had never looked this good before. It was bouncy and shiny and almost felt like silk along his fingers.
He also saw Rehman leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, spectacles still perched unassuming on his aquiline nose, in the reflection of the mirror.
The fond affection in his usually blazing eyes was unmistakable and at first Hamza thought it had been directed towards Ulfat. But Rehman removed his gaze the moment Hamza straightened, coming inside almost casually, as if he had just entered and knew immediately.
He had been looking at Hamza.
Warmth spread uninvited inside him.
Ulfat’s hand on his shoulder was a steady blooming anchor.
“You always did want daughters. It's all coming out now”, Rehman joked teasingly.
Hamza pouted and Ulfat laughed mellifluous.
“Bhai…”, Hamza groaned but Rehman didn’t respond. He only patted his head with one scarred heavy hand, taking the opportunity to run his long fingers through his hair once.
It made Hamza’s eyes sting for no good reason.
“What makes you think I don’t have daughters? I have two very beautiful ones, okay”, Ulfat said nonchalantly. Rehman raised a perplexed eyebrow.
“Meher and Yalina. You should see them squabbling over my dresses, jewellery, books, food and absolutely anything they can think of.”
“Hey!”
Meher’s offended voice filtered through from somewhere inside but was almost lost in Rehman's bark of laughter.
“Yes. Those two remind me well enough, that sometimes, it is good that all your wishes don’t come true.”
“Double Hey!”, Meher yelled again.
Hamza joined in their laughter now, the sounds of home, familiarity and love weaving around him in a tight warm embrace.
“I am fine Bhabi.. It looks worse than it is. I just..”, Hamza began, his voice thick and hesitant only for Ulfat to sway for a moment.
“Bhabi!”, terror lashed anew in his heart and he steadied her with gentle hands.
“Sorry. My head spun for a moment. I am fine.. Its just that, I realised most of that blood on your shirt is probably Rehman’s…”
Ulfat’s voice broke and for a second her mask cracked and a wife peeked through a queen’s body. Hamza’s guilt was a living breathing fire dragon inside his chest.
“Yes!”, he wanted to scream, “Yes it is your husband’s blood. The blood I spilled. The blood I was allowed to spill because he trusted me enough not to— I am a cad and a destitute ingrate and you should despise me!”
But he stayed mum, watching Ulfat pull herself together through sheer will and stand up again, spine slightly bent under the weight of her husband’s absence but holding the weight of her own body.
The night was long and hadn’t ended yet.
Hamza only wished someone would take mercy on him and knock him out already.
_____________________
It was almost dawn when the surgeons found the time to breathe and meet them.
Hamza stood just a little apart.
“He is going to live. Allah be praised but I have never seen another man fight like that.”
Ulfat broke quietly. Almost collapsing on the ground, steadied only by Uzair’s arms around her. The younger Baloch cousin had refused to leave them here alone. He, in a completely shocking move, caught the surgeon’s hand and pressed his eyes to it in overwhelming gratitude.
“You don’t know what you have done, Doctor Sahab. You have saved us all. My brother is the beating heart of our family. Without him, we would have all keeled over like dried leaves scattered by the wind.”
His words rang wobbly but impossibly, painfully true and who knew it better than Hamza.
The surgeon shook his head, a tired smile breaking on his lined face.
“It was my duty sir. I am only glad I could service the family that has serviced the town for so long. Mind you, it will be a long and painful road to recovery but your brother is the most willful stubborn man I have ever gotten on my table. He will recover. Slowly but surely.”
Ulfat straightened up from her slouch in Uzair’s arms, wiped the corner of her eyes tremulously and clutched her dupatta tight in shaking hands,
“Can we see him Doctor. Please… just one glance. We won’t disturb him..”
The surgeon nodded.
“It would be cruel to refuse you Ulfat Bibi, but be careful. Just five minutes and try not to touch him. Too much jostling might rip the stitches.”
Ulfat nodded and walked shakily towards the ICU.
“Bhai, main chalta hoon phir”, Hamza whispered as Uzair shook slightly where he stood.
“Yes yes.. I.. you don’t want to see him? I guess we can see through the glass. I don’t want to disturb Bhabi but I am sure she wont mind us taking one look”
Uzair practically dragged Hamza through the corridor. The ICU felt like the gaping jaw of the gates of Hell and the staircase of Heaven at the same time. The storm inside Hamza had stopped but the wreckage it had left behind was immense.
Does he even deserve to lay his eyes on him?
The door creaked open gently and Hamza and Uzair stepped in. Till the threshold at least.
Hamza heard Uzair’s faint hitch of breath and could commiserate well enough with the sentiment.
Rehman looked dead.
The hospital bed and the various wires attached to his lean frame had drowned him. His face was lax in medically induced sleep, the ever present frown lines on his severe expression had been smoothened away by unconsciousness.
His usually effervescent face was as pale as the white sheets he was laying over.
He looked unnervingly small.
Fragile and swallowed by the world.
Ulfat was kneeling by his bed, her face pressed into an IV infused hand, the small hitches of her breaths signified her suppressed sobs.
Hamza turned almost violently and stumbled out. His eyes were so blurred he could barely see anything, his heart was hammering so hard he could barely hear Uzair through the incessant ringing in his ears, his chest so tight that he could barely breathe.
He had almost killed Rehman.
Murdered the man who had given him a family, sheltered him from the loneliness and dangers of an empty life on the streets, almost kept him clutched to his chest. And he had turned around and stabbed him right there.
When the blood had been spreading too fast and Hamza had not known what else to do Rehman had raised his fingers to his cheek.
His hand shaking so violently, it had been a sacrilege. Hamza had expected fury, disbelief, betrayed grief, a last attempt to choke him but Rehman had only caressed the bridge of his cheekbone, eyes horrifyingly soft and resigned.
“Hamza…”
He had whispered, the voice fractured under the massive boulder of betrayal yet the fondness had been too great, the affection too big, the love too deep for it to have been sucked dry, even through the gut wrenching treachery.
“No.. Bhai.. no.. I am sorry.. I am.. I didn’t.. This was not supposed to happen. Not like this.. This was.. Please.. Bhai..”, Hamza had cried, his tears dropping on Rehman’s face like a rueful shower.
Rehman’s hand had dropped then, his eyes shutting close.
The following stillness had been strangling and had ripped a scream out of his throat finally. Aslam might have said something but it had been lost in the sheer rage of his grief.
Hamza had buried his face in Rehman Dakait’s cold throat and howled like a child. It had been an ugly, unrestrained, almost a violent display of raw panicked grief and denial.
A beat of him struggling through his tears and another wail trying to tear out of his chest and Hamza had felt the weak press of a pulse against his wet cheek.
Death had not claimed his prize yet.
Maybe the Gods weren’t as deaf as Hamza had thought.
“Hamza! For God’s sake! Where are you? Uzair Bhaiyya told me not to go out so I stayed put. He said something about work.. You weren’t even picking up my phone. I called Meher so many times, I am sure she would eat my head the next time I see her and— Hamza, say something.”
Yalina’s voice was like a cool shower after a walk through the desert. Hamza’s hand trembled where the mobile was held to one ear. He wanted nothing more than to hold her right now. Her smaller body tucked close to his chest where he could feel her heart beat against him.
He needed to feel alive. He needed to feel a person breathe against him.
He needed his wife so damned much it made him want to scream.
“Hello? Hamza meri awaz aa rhi hain kya? Kahaan ho..”
“Yalina.. Main aa raha hun. Wait for me a little more? I am coming—”, he cut the call before she could reply.
The sun wasn’t out yet. Even the birds seemed afraid to start singing. He could still hear the heart monitor’s grating sound in his mind, Rehman’s raspy breathing as his heart stopped, his voice calling out to a son who had driven a knife through his back uncaringly and twisted it for good measure and left him bleeding on the ground.
Hamza, having just come out of the hospital, ran. The streets of Lyari empty in the darkness of the first hour of dawn was a backdrop of despair mirroring his own heart perfectly.
______________________
Hamza was lying awake, staring at the ceiling fan rotating hypnotizingly abovehead. Yalina was sleeping contentedly curled on top of his chest, her smaller body rising up and down with each breath.
It would have been adorable if the violent nauseating guilt building within him hadn’t tossed his insides around like a raft caught in a thunderstorm.
Memories were encroaching on his mind in a mesh of bittersweet pain.
He had tried to tell himself that it was deserved. The deceit, necessary. The betrayal, justified. But his heart rebelled so hard against his mind that it made him feel sick to his core.
When he had agreed to the mission, he had expected Rehman Dakait to be exactly how everyone knew him to be - a ruthless merciless bloodthirsty warlord who would sell his firstborn for a better deal.
He was supposed to have infiltrated the gang, gotten close to their all powerful leader and manipulated him to his own ruin. A violent death had been just an added bonus.
He should’ve known better than to have trusted SP Chaudhary Aslam and his poisonously sweet manipulative words.
But he also shouldn’t have gotten attached.
That was a cardinal mistake for a mole.
But who would’ve thought how his life, after coming in close proximity to the Balochi mafia, would have altered so dramatically from what he had expected.
Rehman Dakait had been an enigma. A complete disaster for a pattern analyst. A violently unpredictable man. He had thrown all of Hamza’s carefully crafted notions about him into the wind with that Devilish charm and that cigarette dangling smirk with reckless abandon.
Yes, the man was dangerous. Yes he was also a bloodthirsty psychopath.
But what the cautiously maintained files of the ISI hadn’t mentioned was that he was also a protector. The people of Lyari feared him because of his absolute control over the city but they also respected him because he did what no politician or policeman had ever done for them.
He cleared the streets. Opened hospitals and schools and wellness centers. He stopped property dealers from cheating the poor people out of their houses. He had hammered down on petty crime like never seen before.
He helped anyone who would throw their hands in front of him regardless of blood, ethnicity and origins.
And the thing which had taken Hamza totally aback was that he cared.
The Bastard King of Lyari and the chosen King of the Balochs - he actually cared.
Cared almost too much.
He cared about the children studying in the schools he built. He cared about the people getting free treatment in his built hospitals. He cared about his family. He even cared about the boys in his gang.
He cared so much that it had ultimately turned out to be the architect of his own ruin.
No one had told Hamza about the dangers of being cared for by a man who could very well crush you beneath his boot like you were nothing but an insignificant insect.
No one had warned him about how it would feel to have Rehman Dakait’s large hand on top of his head. Grounding, steady, almost a touch playful but guided, directing, protective and most importantly, loved.
He had taken one look at Hamza and decided that he would be part of his family.
It had not happened all at once. It had been a slow measured process. But it had been inevitable. He had believed Rehman to be exactly like Aslam had told him.
Cold and aloof. And that is how he had been at first.
After Naieem’s death, he had worked himself to his bones.
At first Hamza had thought the man simply hadn’t cared enough. It had been a sobering chilling thought. A man who could murder his own mother. Why would he care about his son?
But then once Hamza had to come late at night to the Baloch mansion to get a file, Uzair had predictably forgotten about it and he had passed by a room searching for it and had almost given himself whiplash.
Rehman had been sitting on the bed, the usually proud line of his back bowed like a mountain had been kept on top of him, his hands were clutching what could have been a scrap of fabric, or an infant’s clothes.
He was trembling. His breathing was uneven and heavy. Silent convulsions wracking his powerful frame almost mercilessly.
Hamza had walked out discreetly and almost in a trance.
That had been the first crack in his armour and after that it had just slowly and steadily unravelled till he had no shield left to cover his exposed vulnerable parts.
He remembered that one night he had been raging sick.
Hamza had felt the first stirrings of fever in the morning. But it had been light enough to ignore. By midday, he had cursed himself thoroughly. The fever had been slowly climbing till he could hear nothing but his own heart beat and the sun overhead was giving him a migraine.
Nausea and pain had covered him head to toe and he was sure he was seeing three copies of Uzair as the latter kept striding in front with his too-long legs.
“Are you feeling quite alright?”, the ever vigilant Donga had asked and Hamza had nodded.
A mere fever won’t stop him from doing his work.
By evening, he was almost delirious with it and pretty sure by the way Rehman was looking at him, looking pretty shitty as well. It had been one year he had worked in the gang and Rehman had spoken directly to him exactly six times.
And one time had resulted in Babu Dakait’s unfortunate end and such a violent vengeance that it would go down in the history of Pakistan as one of the most gruesome public executions possible.
“Hamza, you look like one can boil an egg on your head”, Rehman had drawled almost bored, finally bringing Uzair’s attention to him.
“I am fine, Bhai. Just a flush—”, and he staggered only to be caught by the hand in Rehman’s vice-like grip. God but the man was deceptively strong.
“Yeah, no. I will be the judge of that. Sit down before you fall down, idiot.”
Hamza doesn’t remember much after that, except faint voices and oddly gentle touches. One moment of clarity had been a mortifying second, his fever had spiked so high he had almost called for his father. His absent philandering father who was most probably dead in a ditch somewhere.
The touch on his forehead had suddenly softened impossibly.
Then fingers had gone through his sweat soaked curls almost affectionately and he doesn’t recall much of anything else except a very faint whisper of something like ‘idiot’.
The next morning had brought with it Uzair and Donga’s gentle teasing, the most delicious khichdi he had ever tasted and an off day in what had felt like forever.
Rehman hadn’t come by but the next morning he said smirked at him when he had been present in the meeting, bright eyed and bushy tailed.
He remembered long nights of work, watching Rehman command a room by his mere presence, his sharp business acumen untangling the messy ropes of a vast empire almost hilariously easily.
He remembered his dumb questions being answered with an astounding amount of patience even if it usually was interspersed with an ‘idiot’ more often than not.
But coming from Rehman, the word had always sounded more like an endearment than anything.
Hamza had almost forgotten how good it felt being protected by someone else for a change. He had been alive for so long without any defenses, without anyone to even think about his safety in any situation. The Balochs, he had learnt, had protection woven in their souls.
They always protected their own with an unforeseen ferocity.
And to Hamza it was almost a surreal experience.
Yet, even with their reputation, he had never heard of a gang leader protecting a lowly gang member who was not even his own blood at the cost of his own safety.
Rehman had moved like a shadow demon. So impossibly fast that he had been almost invisible to the naked eye.
Hamza had been so sure that the room was empty that he had not checked the upper level before entering.
A rookie mistake.
“Bhai, looks like they ran—”
His words had barely finished materializing when a gunshot had rung clear in the room. Hamza had by default braced for impact knowing he would be too slow to move in time but no bullet had hit him.
Rehman looked at the slash made by the bullet across his left arm, almost with a bored intensity, as it hit the doorframe behind
“And to think I wore one of my better kurta’s today.”
The attacker hadn’t been able to make a single noise before he had been taken down viciously fast. Rehman had barely flinched. Yet Hamza had felt the slight jerk like a kick to his own chest. He had still been standing gaping like a prized fool when Rehman had cuffed him upside his head like Hamza had seen him do to Uzair on many occasions.
“How many times do I have to teach you fools to check the upper level before barging in like a rhinoceros. Idiot. You could have died.”
“Bhai..”
“What? Why are you standing like a statue? Woh behaya Javed khud toh chalke nhi aayega. Uthake laa, jaa!”
Later Hamza had approached Rehman cautiously. The latter had a bandage wrapped neatly around his left bicep.
“Why did you step in front? Aapko lag gyi.. Agar thoda aur right me hota toh? Seene me lag jaati goli”, he tried keeping his voice steady but it wavered nonetheless. He couldn’t even attribute the shake to his acting.
Rehman had looked him dead in the eye while answering as casually as if he were discussing the weather.
“Main samne nhi aataa toh tujhe goli lag jaati. Aur seene pe hi lgti.”
“Toh lgne dete. Mera kya hain.. Ek aur mil jaega. Aapko kuch ho jataa toh?”
Rehman looked at him strangely for some seconds then abruptly turned away, picking up a tumbler for pouring the whiskey from the bottle kept at the table.
“Ghar jaa Hamza. Bohot raat ho gyi hain. Uzair ko bhej dena jate waqt. Javed ka business sab ulat pulat hoke rakkha hain. I’ll have to straighten it.”
The non sequitur totally threw Hamza in a loop but what could he do. He turned and started to walk away. Rehman’s voice stopped him by the door.
“Next time if you do something so colossally stupid I will let you get shot. Get that through your thick head. Itna baal ugaake rakhha hain, kuch buddhi ghussti bhi hain sir mein ke nhi kya pataa…”
Hamza had no idea when he had been integrated into the Dakait family. One day he was hauling arms into the back of trucks and the next day he was seated at the dinner table fielding a million questions from Faizal as Ulfat looked on indulgently.
“You are so tall Hamza Bhaiyya!”, Faizal had said - his childish curiosity softening Hamza’s heart.
“Yes. You will also get tall if you eat your vegetables”, he had said trying to sound sagely.
“Chachu is tall too.”
Uzair had beamed as if he had been personally rewarded by the President, “Haan, tere Hamza bhaiyya se bhi zyadaa lamba hun. I used to eat all my veggies”. Hamza had given him the stink eye.
“Baba, you are not as tall as them. Did you not eat all your vegetables?”, Faizal asked innocently enough.
Rehman, who had been eating while checking something on his mobile, looked up to stare at his youngest, unimpressed.
Ulfat had giggled helplessly before she could stop herself. Rehman had given her such a heated look that it had made Hamza blush and stare at his plate, forgetting his own delight at Faizal’s question.
“Beta, God balances out His gifts equally between people. When He asked me what I wanted, I took intelligence from his offerings compensating for my height. Your chachas on the other hand seem to have precious little in that department.”
“Bhai! Come on—”, Uzair’s grumbling was lost in Hamza’s helpless snorting, Ulfat’s pearlescent laughter and Faizal’s childish giggles.
It was only later that Hamza had realised that Rehman had addressed him as Faizal’s uncle as well. His name had come in the same line as Uzair’s and no one had seemed surprised at that.
He had felt warm for days after.
The memories were like a bioscope of choice reels, running in front of Hamza’s sleep deprived eyes like an incessant merciless barrage. It was a torture as much as a relief if only temporary.
Hamza remembered that evening as clear as if it had happened just yesterday.
He had messed up big time. He knew he was biting off more than he could chew. SP Aslam had been hankering down on him for some time and he had to give the other man something. So he had sacrificed a big shipment for some brownie points with the LTF head.
But the ensuing mess it had created in Rehman’s plans had made the latter mercurial with volcanic fury. The Baloch leader had ripped them all to literal shreds. It had been a one sided verbal massacre.
The ability Rehman Dakait had, to make anyone feel miniscule in comparison to him despite their actual size, should be studied in criminology classes.
Hamza was sure at one point of time, Donga had been this close to actual tears.
Hamza and Uzair hadn’t been spared from their leader’s wrath any more than the rest. They were his left and right arms, literally, his top lieutenants and thus most of the accountability always fell on their shoulders.
And thus, so did the ensuing blame.
“I swear to God, if you hadn’t been my brother, I would have slit you nose to navel and left you to bleed somewhere!”, Rehman had thundered and Hamza had restrained himself from actually cowering in the face of such unadulterated rage.
“Now get out of my sight you fatherless bastard! Don’t show me your face before I can breathe without wanting to tear your worthless head off your shoulders.”
Hamza had actually felt Rehman’s unthinkingly cruel words being carved into his chest like a brand. Everyone in the gang knew about how his father had abandoned him and his mother and older brother to destitute poverty and fled with a woman half his age.
It will always be a sore point in his life, no matter how young he was then and how older he would grow with time.
He had practically fled from the throne room then, afraid that he might do something like try to punch Rehman or worse, burst into tears.
He remembered hearing scratches of Uzair’s subdued unhappy tone. Something along the lines of, “shouldn’t have said that Bhai.. you know what happen…”.
Hamza had tuned it out and walked home, heart strangely twisted in tight coils.
What did it matter what an illegitimate bastard child of a gangster said about him? People he actually cared about had said worse things to him. He didn’t care about what Rehman fucking Baloch thought of him.
At this point Hamza wasn’t sure when he had started lying to himself.
It had been the middle of the night when Hamza had woken up abruptly from a relatively undisturbed sleep when he had felt a presence near his head. His survival instincts should have blared red at this point. An apex predator lounging almost soundlessly, so close to his bare vulnerable throat.
But the body was a strangely intuitive learner.
Hamza knew he wasn’t in any danger.
In fact it was more a blanket of safety he had felt falling over him.
And his olfactory senses had already alerted him to the identity of the shadow. That smell of expensive tobacco, old papers, petrichor and cedar spice.
Rehman could be deceptively quiet when he wanted. Another reason that had made him such a deadly opponent. He was like a cobra hiding in the grass. Can lie still for hours before pouncing on his unsuspecting prey.
But right now, he was more like a lion watching his cub sleep.
Odd but protective.
The words from some hours ago came back to Hamza and he almost snapped at Rehman to get out and let him be miserable in peace. He held back his tongue though.
“Uth gayaa?’, the words were gravelly soft.
“Hmm”, Hamza replied equally low.
The shadow shifted in the dark. An uncharacteristic nervous energy in his movement. Hamza kept lying still on the bed. Waiting. Trying to figure out what would happen next. It was in vain cause he couldn’t have predicted, Rehman actually sitting down at the edge of the bed, his hand hovering over Hamza’s head.
It was almost like he was waiting for permission to touch him.
Which was a ridiculous thought because why would Rehman Dakait need anyone’s permission to do anything. But his hand was still suspended in the air, close enough to touch but far enough to not as well.
Hamza leaned against it slightly and Rehman finally placed it fully on top of his supine head.
His fingers automatically started running through Hamza’s hair. It was like he knew the exact paths on his scalp that would make Hamza want to purr in satisfaction. It was humiliating. To be this exposed to someone else.
Especially to a person who can wield your greatest weaknesses like his sharpest blades.
But Hamza couldn’t deny that the ache which had taken root inside his chest had slowly lifted with each gentle caress on his head by that oh so familiar scarred hand.
“Gussa hain abh bhi?”, Rehman’s words were soft and broke Hamza from his mini nap with a jolt.
“Nhi.. I wasn’t angry”, he said truthfully.
“You were upset”, Rehman said. A statement. Not a question. Hamza didn’t refute it. Knowing a lie will be caught anyway.
A heavy sigh.
“Zyaadaa bol gyaa main. Nhi bolna chaahiye thaa. Maaf kardein?”
Hamza caught the hand still caressing his head gently.
“Aapko mujhse maafi maangne ki zaroorat nhi Bhai. Aap Bhai hain.. Daant sakte hain, haq hain aapka. Aur sahi hi toh kahan aapne. Bass uss baat ka saayaan mere zehn se utaar hi nhi rha. Woh.. mere Abbu dikhte kaise the, wahi yaad nhi aataa aajkal..”, Hamza tried chuckling but his voice broke.
Rehman’s hand had stilled but only for a second, then it started moving again, not breaking a single rhythm which was comforting in its own right.
“One who cannot appreciate what he has been given in life is not a man who is worth anyone’s pain.”
Rehman’s voice was a steady presence. A balm against the puss oozing laceration on Hamza’s chest. An injury so deep it had overshadowed his entire childhood. Or whatever had been left of it.
But it was Rehman’s next words which Hamza now thinking retrospectively realised had ruined everything the young man had known in his entire life, to be. All his practised defenses had been torn down by a simple few words.
“Aur maine galat kahaan tha. You can never be fatherless. Not as long as I am alive.”
The words curled like painful vines in Hamza’s chest wrenching a sudden mortifying sob from his lips and he turned immediately to hide his face, burying half his torso into Rehman’s lap. He clutched the worn out Pathani in tight desperate fists and convulsed silently.
The motion of the hand inside his hair didn’t stop.
Hamza didn't know when sleep had claimed him. And more importantly, he couldn’t be sure whether or not he had dreamt the dry press of cracked lips on his forehead.
Hamza felt fatigued tears roll down the sides of his face as the clock ticked to show midday. He was so tired he felt like he could sleep for a decade. Suddenly his phone rang, breaking his depressed musings cuttingly.
He picked it up immediately, so that Yalina wasn’t disturbed. The poor woman had been awake for him waiting and tensed almost the entire night.
No one had even told her about Rehman yet.
She was almost like the baby of the family. Just before Faizal, if anything. It was evident Ulfat had tried to protect the girl she had started to love like her own, from the painful wait they had all suffered through the night.
But Yalina was nothing if not a warrior and a firebrand in her own right. Hamza knew there would be hell to pay, once she did come to know about what had happened yesterday.
Will she ever be able to forgive him for this betrayal?
What was even the point, when he himself could never be able to do so?
Uzair’s voice was refreshingly jubilant, “Hamze! Bhai uth gye! Jaldi aajaa. By the grace of Allah, he is awake. Come fast”, the call cut.
Disclaimer : Here's a too long drabble on Uzair's relationship with his brother as asked by one of my pyaari moots @hum-suffer . This turned out to be longer and angstier than I had anticipated, but once I started writing, I just couldn't stop my thoughts from spiralling. I know you wanted something when they were both young, but this turned out a little different. Hope you still like it! Also, did I use a Sanskrit word as a title? Yes, I did, because I love it.
A/N : I'm adding the tags much later, Ik. I just want my readers not to miss this. Guys, if you have already read this, sorry for the inconvenience, hehe
The sun was beating down on the residents of Lyari, mercilessly. The day was sweltering and the dust of the foul smelling streets had covered everyone in a thin layer of scratchy refuse.
But Uzair Baloch seemed unperturbed.
His face, a mask of perfect eery calm, red splattered in a macabre tattoo on his left cheek and smeared across his forehead like a symbol of pride. His clothes were drenched in blood, his fingers stained so deep that it would probably never come out. There were bits of bone stuck in the unruly curls of his soiled hair.
He was a nightmare materialized in a demonic form.
The snivelling man being dragged by his collar at his heels, was still begging pathetically. His face was so brutally beat down that he was almost unrecognizable to most people. But anyone who has lived in Lyari for more than two months could identify him blindfolded.
Arshad Pappu whimpered in pain as Uzair dropped him carelessly when he reached the centre of the square.
"Please....please... leave me.. spa..re me. I didn't do anything!!!!", the disfigured gangster almost wailed in despair and terror.
Uzair's eyes flashed manically. Murder clear in his ice cold gaze. And for the first time his calm inanimate expression twisted in a horrifying parody of the usually jocular smiling handsome man that he was.
"Spare you?", he whispered once, brandished the butcher's blade. Almost caressing it's edge like a lover stroking his beloved's naked waist.
"Spare you!!!", Uzair shouted next, almost startling the assembling crowd jarringly. Basheer, Ismail and the boys were standing guard like sentinels, their blood soaked faces drawn tight and ghostly against the nervously teetering crowd.
He bend down and picked up his victim's collar again, forcing him to look at the ruthless fate waiting for him in Uzair's bloodshot eyes.
"Do you have any idea of what you have done???", he shook Arshad's collar violently.
A sudden hospital corridor. Hamza's tears and two bloods, dried and drying, clinging to every inch of both their skins. The struggle to keep his heart from literally exploding into pieces. The empty air in the senseless grief of the throng of strangers outside. The sirens of the police and the media channels prickling incessantly.
His brother's face messed up almost beyond recognition - they hadn't yet managed to clean the blood. The virulent tapestry of violent starbursts of bruises staring accusingly at Uzair from his limp frame. Whatever was visible of the skin unmarred by blood or any scarring and bruising had turned ashen.
The mortuary. The harsh hospital lights. The superimposed haunting ghost of his older nephew staring at him from the darkened corners of the room. Eyes so much like his father's, staring remorseful and blaming.
Rehman's hand falling limply from the steel slab they had kept him over. His oh so familiar fingers, long and loose, bereft. The ever present magnetic aura of his soul was gone. The heavy pressing weight of his person that had always felt like a protective blanket around Uzair had been rudely snatched away.
And the blizzard that had frozen him after had been merciless.
Suffocating, gagging and then wheezing in anguish, unable to let lose the scream trapped inside his throat. The pain choking him like barbed wires around his throat, his entire chest, squeezing the life out of him. Then staggering and almost falling over his older brother's dead body.
Hamza's arms stabling him somewhat, Basheer trying to lift him up from the ground where he had crumbled, finally managing to hold his weight and make his knees stop trembling under the dead weight of his broken spine.
Uzair had lifted himself up and clutched his brother's ice cold hand, hanging from the edge. He had tried pressing his own warmth into it with his face, his burning eyes, his quivering lips, but to no avail. Try as he might he couldn't will Rehman back to life.
His grief had been useless.
"Arshad Pappu...", Hamza had uttered desolate, his words a churning mantra in Uzair's ears, "they were waiting for us, Uzair. The SP and his dogs. Pappu couldn't even be bothered to show his face, that coward-"
Arshad Pappu - Finally, a direction for the tsunami of Uzair's rage and in turn his pain to follow.
First Arshad, then the SP and every last bit of that fiendish taskforce. Uzair would kill them all. He would tear their limbs off one by one and bleed them dry and then burn their husks on display for their families to see.
It had at least helped him brave through seeing his beloved sister in law, the very strength reflecting in Rehman's visage break down in front of his eyes, as she saw the hollowed out brutalized shell of the man who had once been her husband.
Ulfat hadn't exploded like they had expected, as she once had, on Naieem's death. She had seen Rehman's body, let out a single gasp, a whimper, her beautiful eyes had rolled up and she had simply fainted.
Uzair had caught her at the last moment, his broken chest splitting open a bit further on seeing the rest of whatever flickering of life was left, drain out of his sister in law's once vibrant gaze completely.
The light ever burning in her hazel orbs had gone out with a cruel flick.
For the next few days, as Ulfat lay listless and raging in the claws of a grief stricken fever, Uzair had prayed and prayed and prayed like he had never before. He had been certain at one point, seeing the doctors' helpless faces, that he would have to bury his sister in law with his brother too. He had roamed the silent halls of the house Rehman had made with his wife and his kids, like an unwanted spectre, begging any sort of reprieve from this endless chasm of darkness.
Feeding Faizal, carrying him to bed, shaking with him while they pretended to sleep, as Faizal curled up tight into his chest, trying to stop himself from bawling alongside his young nephew as he muttered tremulous, gentle but ultimately empty consolations in his soft hair.
Faizal smelled like Rehman.
The scent of petrichor and the faint whiff of rosewater - not the iron tang of rusted metal and gunpowder or that comforting fragrance of bitter tobacco and old papers.
Ulfat as usual defied all expectations and rose up, sweating, fever broken on the fifth day, eyes empty but clear. She had done all her raging, begging, bargaining and screaming in her fever driven delirium. She bundled up her crying son to herself and stared at Uzair. There was not a hint of that perennial warmth and love remaining in her eyes.
There was only a yawning darkness. Like a person forcibly returned from the grave. And a hint of newly awakened bloodlust.
"I want his head on a platter."
She had said. Calm. Unconcerned.
And Uzair knew he had lost his sister in law.
Rehman's Ulfat had died with her husband. This was just a phantom of her presence, holding on for her younger son's sake. A mother - not a person anymore.
Just a title.
Arshad's continuous snivelling brought Uzair back to the present. Back to the cloying scent of blood and the tangerine flavour of revenge sitting heavy on his leaden tongue.
"Do you have any idea what you have taken from me?", Uzair yelled again. He had to make this fool understand. He had to make someone understand.
The words had tied into unforgiving knots inside his aching chest. He has been hollowed out like a papaya skin whose insides have been scooped up completely.
"Tumne sirf mere bhai ko nhi maraa. Tumne mujhse mere rehbar ko cheen liya! Mere guroor, mere wajood, mere khuda the woh!"
The proclamation was hysteric and opened up a dam Uzair had kept locked since the past decade.
"You broke my spine! Ripped it out of me while I wasn't even looking", he shook the other man so hard one could hear his broken teeth clacking, "You! You aren't even worth licking the dust off his feet let alone touch a single hair on his head! You spineless worthless weasel! I should have killed you the moment you colluded with that jackass of a SP that day!"
Uzair snarled and threw the man right back on the ground with as much force as he could muster. Arshad didn't even get time to groan before he was being barrelled by punches.
Every punch was punctuated by Uzair's words.
"He was my big brother! My father! I worshipped the ground he walked on! You took that from me! You murdered him and half of me as well! I didnt even get to say goodbye! He died and I wasn't there! And you want me to spare you!"
Every hit was followed by a new spray of blood.
How much blood did a person have in their body anyway?
The same question had lingered in his mind, when he had seen Rehman battered for the first time that horrifying night, all those years ago.
That night which suddenly flashed in Uzair's mind - almost like a mocking taunt. Reminding him of all the ways he has failed the man he loved the most in his life and all the ways the latter has always protected him - seen and unseen.
It almost felt like a different lifetime.
-----------------
Poverty as a concept was still fairly new to Uzair. The death of his parents and Haji Laloo's men clearing off all their assets and money had left him with literally nothing except the clothes on his back and a burning need for revenge.
And an older cousin who for some reason had unilaterally decided that Uzair should come and live with him.
Now Uzair had always been a little starstruck of Rehman, who wouldn't when they saw a teenager with such a magnetic aura that even the elders deferred to him. So he had accepted the proposal easily enough.
It would only be later that Uzair would marvel how Rehman had made it sound that living with him was an option Uzair had chosen himself instead of the only option he had left if he didn't want to die on the streets from starvation and disease.
But the problem was that Rehman Dakait, the illicit bastard son of Babu Dakait was also, not as well off as he would have liked to be. And taking in another mouth to feed seemed rather irresponsible of the seventeen year old. He had also spent two years in prison for killing his own mother. And Uzair was half certain, Rehman worked in a gang.
It wasn't a very healthy proposition to stay with a person like him for a ten year old.
But who even cared about orphaned, invisible, ordinary, malnourished, bones peeking, Fate's least favourite children like Uzair and Rehman.
Anyway, so Uzair was staying with his older cousin for the moment. In his mind, it was but a temporary arrangement and he would move out as soon as he could find another place to stay.
The only caveat to his brilliant plan was that for getting a separate place, he needed money and for getting money, he needed to work and his dear stubborn cousin, for some god forsaken reason, had gotten it inside his supposedly smart head, that Uzair should go to school instead.
"But how will I earn money, if I go to school and don't go to work?", Uzair had whined for the thirtieth time since the morning.
Rehman who was busy tying his shoelaces, raised an eyebrow at the petulance in his younger cousin's tone.
"How will you work without learning how to work that only happens when one does go to school?", he asked calmly.
"You haven't been to school since the past two years, I know. How are you working then?", Uzair countered smartly.
Rehman smirked, a hint of a canine and a dimple on his left cheek.
"Shut up and go to school, you witty brat. I don't need to go to school because I am older than you and you will listen to me-"
"But whyyyy---"
"Because I am older than you. Now go and be a good boy. Here's your tiffin", he stuffed the half rusted steel box inside the worn out second hand school bag and cuffed a grumbling Uzair upside his head.
Suddenly a honking sound broke the familiar sounds of their small one room flat. Rehman pointed Uzair to sit down and went outside, tugging on his patchy ash blue kurta, almost nervously.
Uzair, always ready to disobey his older brother, peeped outside from the window curiously. He saw a big black car at the front of the squalor that was the building that their rented room was in. Rehman opened the door of the car and a big burly man stepped out.
Uzair's eyes widened. He knew this man. He would recognize this man anywhere. The screams of his mother still rang in his ears at night. The way they dragged his father out - the finality of the door shutting behind them. The loud bang following it. The sneering glee on the giant's ugly face.
This was Haji Laloo.
Sudden terror gripped Uzair. What if he dragged off Rehman with him too? He couldn't let that happen. Rehman was the only person left in the world who gave a damn about him.
They were supposed to go to the docks in the evening.
Rehman had promised to finish reading his Urdu lesson with him tonight.
He can't... he can't----
Uzair was about to storm downstairs and forcibly drag his brother upstairs if possible or become a human shield in front of him when he noticed the giant gangster's hand resting on Rehman's bony shoulder.
He didn't seem to threaten him. He was leaning in a way which suggested easy familiarity. Uzair's mind churned. He knew his older cousin worked for a gang. He had seen Rehman come back home with shadows underneath his eyes and unexplained bandaged wounds on many an occasion. There would be voices of strange men at odd hours in the night from outside the building, his brother's comforting cadence being one of them.
It was all a lie then!
It was a carefully crafted plan to hold Uzair hostage!
Rehman was working for Haji Laloo.
Betrayal pierced like stinging tears in Uzair's eyes and he furiously wiped them off. He couldn't afford to be weak now. Everyone around him was a lying cheating selfish bastard. What if Rehman catches him like this and realises that his cover is blown?
Would he give Uzair up to his master to tear into shreds like a stray cad?
They were supposed to read his Urdu lesson together...
Uzair hatched a plan. Rehman had not yet returned. Dusk had broken on the horizon painting the Lyari sky into shades of vibrant purple and orange.
His father had always been fond of the saying, 'Offence is the best defence'.
Uzair would kill Haji Laloo. And then he would run away. Away from this smelly damp one room flat and the half filling meals and the tattered second hand school books and overused clothes falling apart at the seams being stitched by unperfect hands again and again.
The Urdu lesson was boring anyways.
It was much later that Uzair would realised how stupid his plan had actually been. Where would he have gone? How would he have even gotten past the first round of guards to even reach Haji Laloo, let alone kill him? He hasnt killed a fly before this, how would he kill a man?
He was caught even before he could slink in the narrow gates of Laloo's three storied mansion. The men grasping at his lean arms had the hold of a pair of mountain trolls and the figures to match their personality. Their tobacco stained foul laughter and meaty grasps pulled Uzair inside as he flailed uselessly between them.
"And what was the plan, you little Baloch snake?", Laloo leared from his throne.
"I'll kill you!", Uzair screamed.
The men just burst into raucous laughter. Humiliation was burnt into tears fighting to escape him even as the guards holding him between them, tightened their grips impossibly painfully on his impoverished biceps.
"Bring the whip. Let's have some fun!", Laloo smirked and his men cheered as what looked more like a horror story than a bullwhip appeared in one of the men's hands.
The whip was a leather monstrosity, scarred and tough, smelling of an entire tannery, one side lined with what appeared to be small metal spikes. It would tear through skin and muscle faster than any normal whip.
Uzair felt the first stirrings of fear.
They would kill him.
Maybe he would get to see his mother then and the constant hunger burning inside his stomach would finally rest.
They threw him in the middle of the cement floor and forcefully made him kneel. He was slapped mercilessly for his resistance till he finally acquiesced. Better to get it over with. He knew when he was beat. The whip cracked in the air, cutting across the jeering mirth of his demonic spectators and came down with a frightening agonizing vengeance.
It hit flesh with a sharp thud.
But no pain blossomed on his back as Uzair had expected. But the whip had hit something. There was a strange silence in the aftermath and he opened his tightly screwed eyes only to see a wall of light blue and dark hair and long arms around his small body.
Rehman grunted so faintly it was hardly audible.
Uzair tried looking upwards at his cousin's face but he was pressed too tightly against his bony chest to escape. There was a strange unforeseen desperation in Rehman's embrace. It spoke of a mute terror and a fierce edge of helplessness.
"What is the meaning of this? Rehman, get off him this instant!", Haji Laloo roared like a lion denied his prey.
"He is a child. He didn't know any better", Rehman said through gritted teeth.
"I said move. I won't ask again", Laloo growled.
"He will die...", Rehman struggled for a moment and then spoke with the effort of pulling teeth, a word Uzair and everyone present knew he despised with a wild abandon, "please."
Haji Laloo seemed to consider something. The giant stalked in front of the two boys kneeling at his feet and felt the beginning of that pleasurable hit of sadism he enjoyed so greatly.
"You said he will behave if I let you take him in. That was the only reason I didn't let my boys have a taste before I sent him to his parents--", his voice was a whisper. A malevolent hissing of a snake.
Uzair felt his body freeze. He was still enveloped in his older brother's heat, almost violently shielded from the gangster lord's sickening vision. The ten year old might not have been able to grasp the true meaning of Laloo's words but he knew it was something remarkably unpleasant by the tightening of Rehman's arms.
"He didn't know. I will tell him. Let him go. He is just.. a kid", there was a distinct note of pleading in Rehman's otherwise stoic voice now.
Uzair felt sick.
Rehman never pleaded. Never begged. He always commanded.
"I might... considering you have proven yourself to be quite useful to me. But...I had already promised my boys a show, tonight. What to do about that then, kid? Haji Laloo doesn't break his word--"
Rehman sighed deeply and Uzair understood what was about to happen before the words were even out.
"They can have me instead. I will last longer than a starving ten year old anyway‐"
"No!"
"Uzair shut the fuck up! You have done enough already!", Rehman snapped sharply and Uzair couldn't help the shame flooding his body like a tidal wave.
"Good boy, I'll let your cousin watch..", Laloo said, saccharine sweet, almost magnanimously.
"But--"
"No buts boy. I can still change my mind. Now let go and let my men have their promised fun."
Rehman forcefully pushed Uzair away from himself, almost flinging him at the side as far as possible. Uzair skidded off and scrambled back till he hit the wall. There was a brilliant line of fresh dark blood blooming through the torn line on the back of Rehman's blue kurta.
The hit he had taken.
The hit meant for Uzair.
Uzair Baloch would never forget that night as long as he lived.
They had whipped Rehman till he couldn't sit up, till the blood pooling around his body had transformed into a stream, till the silent acceptance of pain had turned into small audible grunts which then had turned into whimpers and tight groans and finally screams, till Uzair's voice was hoarse from crying, till Rehman's back was a messy canvas of ribbons and rivulets of maroon and torn pieces of flesh.
At last the monster had had his fill and had carelessly thrown a stack of money on Rehman's upturned body.
"Get your back checked out. I want you first thing in the morning at the docks, tomorrow. My latest shipment is going to land there"
Then he had stared lasciviously at Uzair's sobbing form and licked his lips. As if he could taste his fear, his guilt, his pain from the very air itself.
"And remember little Baloch. The next time you try something foolish, I will pluck your brother's eyes out and feed it to you before I tear your stomach open and rip them out again."
Uzair had just flinched violently like a coward and sat trembling till Laloo and his men had cleared off. Then he had half run and half scrambled to where Rehman laid half delirious with blood loss and pain.
"Bhai.. bhai.. wake up. Please.. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry..... please I am sorry....please— ", Uzair had cried and cried and cried.
He would've done just about anything to make Rehman open his eyes at that moment. The chill of the night had seeped in through Uzair's knees on the icy stained cemented floor. He kept begging.
He would happily stay in that storeroom for the rest of his life, go to school without complaints, never ask for second helpings of the precious little tasteless rice and vegetables they managed to scourge, even do his homework on time, never grumble about his stained faded clothes, never cry for his parents in his sleep.
If only Rehman would open his eyes, get up and yell at Uzair for all the trouble he has caused him. But his cousin was blacked out from the blood loss and Uzair didn't know what to do.
It had been a kind auto driver who had found them and taken Rehman to the hospital.
Uzair had refused to go home or eat or even clean his brother's blood off his body till Rehman's eyes had finally fluttered open. His gaze was cloudy for a second, head full of cotton wool due to the anaesthesia and his back a mass of layered agony. They had kept him on his stomach on the paltry excuse of a bed in the emergency.
"Bhai..", Uzair had whispered fearfully, his little hands trying to encircle his brother's bigger one but failing.
"Uzair... did they.. do anything to you? After I.. after I.. did he touch you?"
Rehman's words were confusing, his tone fractured from screaming and dehydrated from blood loss. But there was still a hint of fear in his voice.
"No. He.. went away. Said something about the docks and shipment-"
Rehman's eyes cleared off immediately like a light had been switched on, and he struggled to get up.
"Bhai, kya kar rhe ho? Stitches hain.. khul jaengi.. you can't even get up, let alone go to work."
"I have to Uzair. Haji Laloo, as you have seen, is not a very forgiving man. Nor remotely reasonable."
Rehman stood up, knees trembling violently, took a moment and then slowly straightened up. Uzair was in awe of his brother's strength. The man was a machine. A machine of unparalleled strength and reserve.
Then Rehman finally seemed to notice him, sitting crumpled into a ball on the chair, clothes still stained with Rehman's blood.
"Why are you still here?", Rehman frowned, "You have school in an hour. I told you--"
"Why did you take me in?"
This was the first time Uzair had cut Rehman's words in the middle. The ensuing silence pressed into the room like a boulder.
Rehman's dark eyes softened, and he sat on the bed, hiding his wince even if he couldn't hide the greenish tint of nausea on his face. He patted beside him with a gentle hand beckoning Uzair, who climbed up the bed to sit in the space beside.
His brother's large hand ran through his dried crusty curls with a tenderness, which brought tears to his swollen eyes.
"Mujhe maaf karde. Maine baat chupai tujhse. Par mere paas aur koi rastaa nhi tha. Lyari me sabse khatarnak gang abhi do hi hain, Haji Laloo aur Babu Dakait. Mujhe kisi ek mein toh janaa tha zinda rehne keliye. Haji ne Chachajaan ko maar diya aur tujhe bhi maar deta agar----"
"Agar aap ne mujhe nhi liya hota", Uzair completed for him.
Rehman nodded slowly. Uzair settled closer to Rehman and leaned against him carefully. The bandages wrapped around him made his bony lean frame look more fragile than ever.
"I'm sorry. I was reckless and you--"
"Learn from your mistakes Uzair. We need to be smart about this. Diving headfirst into danger impulsively or because of ego will get us all killed in a second."
Rehman tugged at his smaller form closer to himself and leaned his own head against his smaller one, bending down to accommodate the difference in their height, which must have been quite painful with his injuries.
But the seventeen year old didn't even flinch.
"Ab hum kya karein?"
Uzair asked, feeling like a little bird being pushed under the massive wings of a hawk. As if he was being protected by the harsh winds outside.
Rehman breathed above his head, ruffling his hair.
"We lay low and watch. We prepare and wait for the right moment. We strike when the iron is hot and we build our own empire."
There was a strange fatedness to Rehman's quiet declaration. The ever-present exhaustion in his tone was bellied by a wildfire of ambition and the thirst for revenge.
"We stick together. Always."
Uzair felt Rehman's dried cracked lips press feather light on top of his head, more a blessing than a kiss and felt the certainty of those words dig roots inside his bones like the universal truth - Undefeated, eternal and destined.
"Always", he echoed after his brother.
-------------------
You promised me. You said 'always together' brother and you left me adrift in this ocean alone. Like an anchorless boat stuck in a cyclone.
"You will never know what you have taken from me", Uzair sneered into Arshad's face and stood up, dragged the other man up by his collar yet again, the blade now raised above his own head.
The blow was swift. Fluid. Unhurried yet lightening fast.
Just like Rehman had taught him.
Arshad Pappu's last words were lost midway as his head flew off the side. His decapitated body fell on the ground listless. The men didn't cheer. This wasn't triumph. This was retribution.
The fire inside Uzair was quenched. But the drought left behind took root like the desert itself - his heart a barren prarie. A wasteland of his dreams.
The sun was overhead and Lyari was still dusty and blood soaked.
Uzair closed his eyes and tried remembering how his brother sounded talking about building an empire out of blood and bones in these very lanes.
He couldn't recall the exact cadence of Rehman's tone, try as he might. It escaped him like he was trying to catch clouds with a net.
They never did get to finish reading that stupid Urdu lesson after all.
Tag list : @hum-suffer @sebbymybaby21 @akshi-the-nirmata @helios1960 @ramayantika @natures-marvel @rhysaka @yalina-rangi @stxrrynxghts ( I tagged ppl who might be interested and anyone else who wants to get/or removed from tags plz comment)
[Rehman x Ulfat]
A/N : I was really inspired by that one scene if you can't tell. This is basically written from Rehman's perspective, but I'll delve a bit on Ulfat as well. It's more on the topic of Rehman's grief over the murder of his son rather than particularly over a pairing, but it will focus on his relationship with Ulfat quite some bit as well.
The soft warm glow coming from the foyer of the house had lit the three men in a splendorous display of light and shadows, their chiselled visages and warring expressions brought into sharp contrast against the almost deadly quiet of the night.
The meeting with Major Iqbal seemed to have left a palpable fog over all of them.
Hamza’s passionate rebuttal to the arms deal with the ISI had only thrown the uneasiness of the night into further disarray.
“What did you say to me?” Rehman saw the indignation in Hamza’s face falter into something resembling fear the very moment he advanced onto him.
Good. Let him be afraid. Let everyone be afraid. That is what Rehman Dakait was good at. Inspiring terror with just a look.
The satisfaction of seeing the young man cowering in the face of his slowly emerging fury would have satisfied the gangster king some other time— only if the bitter truth in Hamza’s outrage hadn’t slapped the muggy drunkenness right off Rehman’s hazed brain.
And with that red hot rage had come an onslaught of such a vitriolic pain that it was almost like a freight train had hit him right to the chest. And with that anger the actual truth of the matter had slipped out before he could stop it.
Spilling like blood from a wound so deep inside his soul that it was impossible to scab over.
Like puss oozing out of a rotten carcass his body had become from the inside.
“Baccha khaa gye woh mera! Toh maine kuch wapas leliya unse toh kya galat kiya!”
His vision was going white at the edges, the alcohol loosening his inhibitions like the silver tongued Devil that it was— and with it came the suffocating weight of grief and regret mired into an impregnable, bottomless, fathomless pit.
Because that was the truth of the matter in all of its rank glory.
Three years and his son’s body was rotting underneath the empire he was building. One would think after so much time, the pain would have dulled. It did. Agony dulled like a blunt spoon scooping out the flesh of Rehman's heart since the day he had seen Naeem's body freezing in the cold impersonal morgue of a nondescriptive hospital.
The sharp frothing betrayal - his blood killing his own blood. The violence catching up to him finally. The city extending its price and the weight of it, finally shattering him with one clean strike.
“Bhai chod dijiye! Baccha hain bhai! Chod dijiye bhai… galti ho gyi usse.. Abbe Hamza jaa yaha se! Dimag kharab ho gya hain tera bewakoof! Nikal yaha se.. jaa!”
Uzair’s arms were two steel traps around the older man’s lurching frame, his raspy beseeching and mad scramble to hold him back was the only thing keeping Rehman from letting himself lose on Hamza. Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew that he wasn’t being completely fair to the kid. Hamza was new, still wet behind the ears, too much fire in him to realise the ugly truth behind the frivolity of this useless concept - his kaum didn’t care one shit about him.
They never had and they never will. They only take and take and take till there is nothing left to give.
Hamza was backing away from him, stumbling, face pale with fear. Maybe he had seen the wisdom in Uzair’s words finally.
Uzair has always been calm in stressful situations. His younger cousin was the only one except his wife, who could stand in front of Rehman’s anger without being completely burnt. He was also perhaps the only one who could hold him back physically without getting his arms hacked clean off for such a detestable offense.
But right now, Rehman could care less.
Three years.
And now the dam had finally shattered and his blood was spilling and spilling and now it was a gushing river.
“Baccha khaa gye woh mera…”, he said again, this time his voice gravelly and so low that one would have had to strain to hear the words if it hadn’t already been deafeningly silent around them.
The fight had suddenly gone out of him like a blazing light going out with a measly flick.
The alcohol must have completely muddled him.
Rehman Dakait showing even a slight waver in his voice was an anomaly as rare as a blue moon.
The man would die before he showed an ounce of vulnerability.
But now, his walls had finally weakened. Cracked open by the force of an ancient grief. The likes of which not even the so monikered Sher-e-Baloch could fight and win against. With the insides of his father’s head splattered across the streets of Cheel Chowk, the bubbling boiling lust for vengeance quenched had only given way to the buried scream Rehman could no longer keep in.
Uzair had dropped his hold over Rehman in shock. Hamza flinched violently and looked slightly ill. He must be remembering that horrible night.
“Mera baccha khaa…”
The rest of his words couldn’t even materialize and Rehman’s knees buckled. Uzair’s arms shot out immediately, steadying his fall till he was leaning against the pillar, half sprawled on the stairs beneath. His limbs seemed to have given up on holding him upright. Or maybe his so-called iron will had finally given way.
“Bhai.. sambhaliye apne aapko…”
Uzair’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle and Rehman wanted to snarl. He wanted to hit and slash and scratch and gouge. Wanted to curl up like a kicked dog and growl at everyone till they left him alone.
“Mera bachha…”
Yet as mortifying as it was, all he could do was curl inwards like he had been kicked on the chest repeatedly and bray like a dying animal, his heart continuously howling for Naeem, the absence of him cutting chunks of his flesh out with a poisoned blade.
Why couldn’t Hamza understand, why can’t anyone — that none of the power, wealth and fear in the world would bring his boy back to him? And nothing else mattered now. Not his empire, not his principles, not even the Kaum, nothing at all.
Rehman gripped his face, trying to stop the stinging burning scorching beneath his eyelids.
My boy, my boy…
My sweet innocent child…
What he wouldn’t give to feel him breathing against his chest again - alive and full of vigour. To rip open his ribcage and stuff his oldest inside alongside his decaying heart and close everything back up.
To feel his gangly limbs wrapped around his body like a clingy octopus, the smell of Ulfat’s favourite pomegranate shampoo in his silky hair, his eyes, so dark like him yet so different in the vitality and wonder of life that the fifteen year old hadn’t lost yet.
Ulfat hasn’t forgiven him yet.
And neither should she.
He will never forgive himself.
Naeem’s blue tinged face, rigid under rigor mortis adorned with the foul stench of decay and formaldehyde, lying peacefully on a cold metal slab, Hamza’s waiter’s uniform covered in dried blood, the sky blue kurta torn and shredded from bullet holes, stained maroon, Faizal’s cries, Ulfat’s screams, the grunting prayers masking the evening in a grief filled shroud on the day of the funeral — would haunt Rehman’s nightmares and his every waking hour for the rest of his days.
Ulfat slept alone, his side of the bed empty. She couldn’t even look at him. He could barely look at her, the accusation in her dark beautiful eyes would kill him faster than any bullet. He could barely look at Faizal. Terrified that the demons circling him would touch his youngest as well and if something happened to Faizal— Rehman knew it would be the end. Neither Ulfat nor him would be able to survive that.
They were barely holding on as it was.
He didn’t want his men to see him like this. But he couldn’t take it anymore. The silence in his home. The distance from his wife and younger son. The haunting absence of his older one. The pity in his closest men’s lowered eyes, the empathy in his cousin’s. The leering half caved blood soaked gleeful expression of his dead father — the fucking alcohol swirling in his blood.
Rehman knew he was scaring Uzair and Hamza.
The nausea he had abated somewhat had come roaring back as Naeem’s last moments flashed like an unforgiving reel in front of his tightly closed eyes.
The bitter truth of what his betrayal would do to his tribe, his kaum, to the people who have placed all their hopes and dreams and unwavering faith in him was taunting him.
Rehman was tired.
He wished those pieces of trash had shot him that night instead.
A groan escaped his broken chest and he… oh!
He was crying wasn’t he?
The tears he had swallowed down like shots of venom since that fateful day, forty days ago came roaring out with vengeance and he could do nothing but hang on for dear life. He only hoped Uzair and Hamza would be wise enough to let him escape this purgatory with some semblance of his dignity left intact.
Suddenly, a gentle touch on his shoulder startled Rehman into looking up from the cage of his hands and his heart missed a couple of beats.
Ulfat was kneeling beside him, her hair moving in the cool night air softly across that tired beloved beautiful face. Her eyes were dry but sad as has been the usual since losing their son and the pain in them mirrored so strongly his own that the anguish curdling his insides threatened to drown him.
Ulfat was holding his hands.
Touching him on her own will after what felt like eons.
Her lips quivered once and then steadied. She had learnt to grieve in silence just like him. Her dupatta had fallen over him like a shawl. It was almost like she was trying to shield him from the world.
What a ridiculous thought…
Her fingers stroked over the tear tracks on his right cheek and his eyes met hers with trepidation. She was holding his entire self at this moment. One gentle push and he would topple over and fall into an abyss and break all his bones from the momentum or the impact.
Sometimes the power she had over him terrified Rehman.
Ulfat smiled as if sensing his inner thoughts. The pain on her face, in that gentle quirk of her rose hued lips added to the mountain of crushing weight over his ribs. His breath stuttered and shame caught his throat in a chokehold.
Breathing was a process written in some old latin manuscript forgotten to Rehman Dakait for those few moments.
“Yahaan akele beithe hain meri jaan? Bhul gye iss dard pe mera bhi haq hain…”
Her words were like a songbird’s first cry after a heavy downpour.
Beautiful, full of yearning and hit Rehman with such a baffling, such a devastating force that it nearly caved his aching chest in.
