And that’s… a promise!
“You trust me, right? Then let go of this topic forever. Not just to me, but you will not ask about her to anyone. You won’t try to find out about her either. Promise me. Promise me, Mr. Shergill.”
His lost eyes could only stare at her as she asked him for something that was way too difficult for him to give and even though he did not want to, he ended up making that promise to her. The promise that she wanted him to make.
“You should get some sleep, Mr. Shergill. I don’t want your migraine to worsen,” she mumbled, pressing her palms on his shoulders as she pushed him to lie down.
His lips curled up at her concern. He did lie down but not without grabbing her hand. “As long as you are with me, I am going to stay alright rather… fantastic.”
She averted her gaze from him to hide the teardrop that rolled down her cheek without her consent.
It fell right on his hand, alarming him. Squeezing her hand, he made her look at him. “What is it about?”
She smiled through the thin layer of tears in her eyes. “It’s just… overwhelming, Mr. Shergill. I didn’t really have time to dream about love and my Prince Charming but I confess today, if at all I had ever… ever... dreamed of one, then I am sure, it would have been just like you. Just like you.”
He laughed. “Alright, that’s enough for today, Mrs. Shergill. Itni taareef. From your side. Kya irda kya hai tumhara? Wo bakre ko kaatne se pehle halaal karte hai na… itni acchi acchi bate sunkar mujhe waisi hi feeling aa rahi hai.”
“This man won’t change,” she muttered, to see his tongue back in action.
He leaned toward her, raising his brows at her. “You want me to?”
“Never.”
She smiled.
He smiled.
She laughed.
He laughed and everything felt perfect.
Just perfect. What else they needed? Cradling her closer, he pulled her in his arms.
He was living the dream that he never thought could come real.
“Di, what are we going to do?” Divya’s anxious voice raised a momentary fear even in Drishti but she was quick to pull herself together.
“Today has to be her last day, Divi. We will kill her.” She looked at Divya with fierce determination in her eyes, “Just the way she killed Mumma Papa.”
Divya nodded. “But how, Di? How are we going to do it?”
Drishti pulled out a folded paper from her clutch along with a small stone that emitted a bright light as soon as Divya’s fingers brushed against it when she tried to take it from Drishti’s hand.
The duo stared at the blue light that disappeared as soon as Drishti let go of it completely. Divya questioned what it was, to which Drishti had no particular answer.
“I don’t know much, Divi. Someone kept this on my window last night. It was like one moment I was standing there and when I turned around, I sensed a movement and when I turned back, I got this. It kind of miraculously appeared.” Drishti unfolded the paper and held it in front of Divya whose eyes widened to read the words on the paper.
This will help you kill Pishachini and make sure you do it tomorrow. She will kill you two otherwise.
“Divi, as per this, she is going to attack us today. We have to be alert.”
“Oh no. Mrs. Shergill.” He ran toward an unconscious Drishti. He dropped himself to his knees, taking her head from the terrace floor in his lap. Pressing his palm against her cheek, he repeatedly attempted to wake her up but all in vain. Panic rose inside him upon seeing her bruised arm, bleeding forehead and her disheveled self.
She had suddenly disappeared after lunch and he had been looking for her since then. He had taken the day off from the office to spend some time with her after she asked him if he could stay home for the day.
“Divya?” His gaze caught her a little later. She was on the other end of the terrace, visibly unhurt, but struggling to get on her feet.
“Rakshit – doctor… call the doctor,” she said, in a heavy voice, tapping his shoulder.
Divya was Mrs. Shergill’s sister. It struck him after he heard her. He immediately got up, picking Drishti in his arms, rushing downstairs. He informed Shikhar to go to Divya when he stumbled upon him near his room.
“Don’t.” He was on the call with the doctor who had left an hour ago, confirming for the third time that his wife had no severe injury that needed her to be hospitalized.
The doctor was busy assuring and reassuring the distraught husband over the call whose concern for his unconscious wife seemed to be touching a different level altogether when the husband caught the sight of his wife regaining the consciousness and attempting to get up, forcing him to warn her not to move.
The call was disconnected within seconds and he was near her the very next moment. Slipping his hand around her back, he helped her carefully straighten on the bed.
Wordlessly grabbing the glass of water from the side table, he held it in front of her.
She stared at him, helplessly. Though he was standing in front of her, his eyes looked at everywhere but her. Everywhere but her. “Mi… Mister Sher…” Her words broke in between when her weakness didn’t allow her to form a single coherent sentence.
Her heart went heavy, watching him gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes before thrusting the glass in her hand. The moment the glass was in her hold, he returned to his stiff stance.
She gulped the water first and when he took the glass from her hand to put it back in its place, she pulled him onto the bed by his wrist. As she let her hand slowly slip to his palm, her thumb caressed his knuckles, urging him to end the silent treatment. “I… am fine, Mr. Shergill.” She fought her weakness to get all the words together without scattering them just to lessen the worries of his unsettled heart.
“Mr. Shergill!” She squeezed his hand, “I really am.”
Oh, how truly she despised to see him that way! Worried-sick for her. She had a fair idea that it must have scared him to see her in that condition.
A few more caresses and she earned his gaze. The next thing she knew, she was pulled into a desperate hug. A hug to assure himself that she was alright and right there with him.
“Tell me why she did this to you.” He pulled back, seeking the answers to the questions that had clouded his mind ever since he had found her on the terrace.
He repeated his question when she chose silence for several long seconds but even that could not get her to break her silence.
“Mrs. Shergill, I know, I did make a promise to you not to ask anything about her but I can’t keep the promise anymore. Not after this. I know she is the reason behind your condition. Just tell me everything.” He sat adamant and determined to find out everything that she had been hiding from him. “Dad left us for her and now your this condition… I want to hear each and every word. The absolute unfiltered truth. Now. I will never see your face again if you still keep your mouth shut.” He made a statement that he did regret verbalizing but then again, he had enough. He wasn’t going to sit pretending as if nothing happened after seeing her hurt. No, he wasn’t. Having her in front of him, unconscious, and bandaged, had evoked a sense of protectiveness within him.
He had lost his father.
He wouldn’t lose her no matter what. He would not. No matter what and for that he needed to know everything that she had been hiding from him.
“Mr. Shergill.”
“You don’t have to get to it right now. You need rest but as soon as you are in the state to talk, I want to hear the truth.”
She winced as she felt a sharp pain shooting up her neck when she tried leaning forward. His hands instantly pressed her shoulders, gently supporting her back her against the headboard again. “Do not.”
His pained expression restrained her from moving.
“There is a deep cut on your back and neck. The doctor did confirm that it will heal but it will take time and it will hurt until it heals.”
As he was done informing her about her injuries, she clasped her hand within his. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“You have always been good rather impeccable at lying, no?” Taunting her at that moment when she was down with pain was the last thing he wanted to do but he couldn’t hold himself when she tried to falsely assure him that she was alright when he clearly knew that she was not even close to being okay.
She shook her head, with a small smile playing on her lips. “Not lying but certainly at hiding.”
“Yeah right,” he muttered and stretched his hand to pull a packet of tablets from the side table and handed it to her. “Have this painkiller. The doctor said that you’ll need it.”
Her smile grew a little wider and he could only wonder how this woman could smile despite being in the sick amount of pain that she was in.
Keeping her hand on his, she pushed the tablet strip away. “I don’t need this when I have my very own painkiller with me.”
It took him a few moments to let it sink in that she called him her painkiller.
When did this woman get this good with words? She wouldn’t even let him stay mad at her, would she? He shifted closer to her, cupping her cheek. “I was scared.” The fear that had gripped him when she was unconscious finally came over his lips.
“I was scared. The thought of losing you is terrifying, Drishti. Don’t put me through it again. Don’t.” He wounded his hands around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.
Something sharply twisted in her heart when she heard his words.
Don’t put me through it again. It was one of those moments in her life when she wanted to change the past. The events in the past. It was the moment when she wished she had never met him. Pishachini was not out of their life. She would attack her and Divya again. There was no way that she could promise him that it would not happen again, that he would never have to see her in such a state again.
Though she would try her hardest for it to not happen, she couldn’t guarantee it.
What would he do if Pishachini killed her just the way she had killed her parents years ago? How would he cope with her loss? Who better than her knew what it was to live with the pain of losing your loved ones?
“Mr. Shergill. There is something that I want you to know.” The urgency in her tone forced him to pull away.
“I know, I am breaking the promise that I had made but I don’t have a choice. Mr. Shergill, your father did not leave you for any other woman.”
Dammit! She knew she wasn’t supposed to blurt it out to him but the mere thought that if something happened to her tomorrow then the truth will be buried deep with her forced her to open her mouth to reveal the secret that his life had revolved around since his childhood.
The biggest truth of his life that he had stubbornly held on to was far away from being true.
She always knew that he deserved to know but she had a promise to keep that never let her enlighten him about the same. Not anymore. She must tell him. He had a right to know.
“Your father… is not alive. He did not leave you willingly. He is not around because…” she paused and held his arm, “…he is dead.”
Her words hit his ears like a wave hitting the coastline, destroying the sand castles over there, taking them away with it. Her words, perhaps, were going to wash away every fragment of hatred and disgust his heart held for his father for cheating on his mother, for leaving and never returning back to check if they were alive or not!
Your father did not leave you for any other woman.
Your father is not alive.
He did not leave you willingly.
He is not around because…
He is dead.
He is dead.
Your father is not alive.
He did not leave you willingly.
He is dead.
Your father did not leave you for any other woman.
He is dead.
He is dead.
His mind froze. He could process nothing but the statements that just had just hit his ears. He kept hearing them in his mind, again and again, over and over.
Her eyes moistened upon seeing him struggling to absorb the information she had just put in front of him. She had a clear idea that he would break down whenever he would come to know that he had held his father responsible for the things he never did, accused and hated him for the crime he never committed but witnessing it right in front of her eyes was heartbreaking.
“Mr. Shergill…” she whispered his name in an attempt to break his trance. Raising her hand from his arm, she curled her fingers around his neck, pressing her thumbs against his cheeks.
He got his eyes on her. “What are you… How do you -” He stopped in the middle. She knew her. She knew that one-eyed woman. He did not have to ask her how she knew if she did.
Was that why she was insisting him to keep away from her? Because she had killed his father and she could kill him too?
“Mahima Ma’am knows it too.”
It had been a very long time for him to experience the feeling of the ground slipping beneath his feet. Mom knew?
She briefly narrated to him, how weeks before her phone had received a video message when she was in the kitchen. Chiranjivi’s message.
Mahima who had overheard everything when Drishti was viewing the message oblivious to her presence and immediately stepped in and recognized Chiranjivi. She had met him a couple of times with her father. If there was one thing that she knew about him, then it was that he was trustworthy.
Chiranjivi hadn’t taken the curtains off everything but the only fact about Mahima’s husband’s disappearance and Mahima did not think twice before believing it for her father had always told her, if anything ever happened to him, then trust Chiranjivi in everything he would say.
“Mahima Ma’am did not want you to know. She made me promise her that I will never let this come in front of you.” Her tone was feeble, knowing that every bit that she was saying was hurting him to the extent that she did not even want to imagine.
He asked. One-word question. Straight and simple. “Why?”
She took a few moments to gain her composure. “Mr. Shergill. It is easy to live with hatred for someone than the pain of having misunderstood them all your life and especially, the pain of losing your parents. Ma’am knew that you would blame yourself for the rest of your life for being disgusted with your father and hating him if you came to know that he was innocent. She did not want you to go through it.”
His muscles stiffened as he heard him reveal the truth.
“Mr. Shergill, relax, please.” She rubbed on his arm, alarmed to see his shaking hands.
He felt himself being pulled into a hug, a soft voice whispering words in his ears that he could not comprehend but they were soothing to his aching soul. He heard an earnest promise before losing himself in the darkness. “Until the time I am here and even after I am gone, I’ll shield you, always.“
His head hurt and he struggled to open his eyes. Slowly blinking, he traveled his gaze around. He was lying on the bed. She was right beside him, visibly worried but relaxing with him gaining consciousness.
The last thing he remembered was her promise.
He smiled weakly at his woman. He did not know how she must have pulled, shifted, and made him lie on the bed when she herself was injured and without a single doubt, in tremendous pain because she had not even had the painkiller.
“How’re you feeling?”
The corners of his mouth curved upwards. He gave her an assuring nod, gesturing that he was good. He straightened himself on the bed. His mind was still occupied with the same thoughts that she had left him with. He was going to need time to accept things and he was sure that with his wife beside him, he would do it, sooner or later.
“Mom should never know that I know. We will pretend as if this conversation never happened,” he told her in a monotonous tone and she, nodded as if she had already seen it coming.
“Aap thik hai na?”
“Remember I said, As long as you are with me, I am going to stay alright rather… fantastic?” He repeated the words that he had uttered the last night to her and it made her smile right away.
“As long I am around and even when I am not… you will stay alright. Always. Always,” she whispered, leaning toward him and pressed her lips on his cheek before engulfing him in a warm hug, “and that’s a promise, Mr. Shergill.”
The End!
This might seem rushed and this indeed is rushed, I admit. I hadn’t planned this, this way. Anyways, had I not finished this now, then probably this would have stayed incomplete forever. So yes, that’s about it!
Thank you for reading.
Drama Name – DivyaDrishti
Chapter 1 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-one-divyadrishti/
Chapter 2 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-two-divyadrishti/
Chapter 3 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-three-divyadrishti/
Chapter 4 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-four-divyadrishti/
Chapter 5 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-five-divyadrishti/
Chapter 6 – https://iadoreyoucreates.com/a-promise-to-keep-chapter-six-divyadrishti/