The Shield

“Aapko kya hua hai? Aap pareshaan kyun hai?”

“Ye khud ro rahi hai! Fir bhi isne meri pareshaani notice kar li!”

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Ahaan Veer Malhotra won in life whenever he wished to, claiming whatever his eyes desired. Eyes though for his heart was yet to find something or someone he could truly yearn for. His life was simple. Work and his family! Having lost the  protective embrace of his mother at a tender age, he had to take over the responsibilities abandoned by his mother. Under his shelter, he let his sister bloom. He might have stumbled, fallen, and got hurt several times but never once had he allowed a scratch on his sister. 

Ahaan Veer Malhotra had always been the giver. The protector. The shadow that followed his loved ones, taking care of every harm before it could reach them.

Not even in his wildest dreams, he had imagined that someday he would have someone who would do that for him. He was taken aback when she grabbed that stress in his eyes that he had thought that he had concealed. How did she see through his facade? How could she? He had no idea but he knew, never before that day, he had someone who put aside her tears and caught his unshed ones.

He was clueless about the reason for her tears and if someday, just it someday, he would come to know that directly or indirectly, her tears were for and because of him – he might just have a meltdown. While he was busy enjoying the marriage rituals of his sister, she was busy, making sure that- that marriage actually happened. While he was calling her out for breaking everyone’s trust, she was letting everyone brutally murder her dignity and respect just to make sure that his sister wouldn’t get shamed.

Without him being even slightly aware, she was becoming a shield to him. The shield that was protecting him while burning herself down to the ashes. Just for him! 

The man who had always played a protector to others had finally found the woman who could turn the world upside down, verbally and physically put the creep in his place who had dared to molest his sister and even… ruin herself just to watch him stand tall!