Stars | completed

35. Babydoll

✿ ✿ ✿

name: Babydoll
word count: 4300 words
published on: 19th January, 2020

✿ ✿ ✿

[ Stars was unpublished for a while, which means it has been removed from most of your reading lists. Incase you want to re-add it, please do :)]

[unedited]

M A N I K

"I remember that day way too clearly," I start, "It was exactly two months after you left, and everything was a mess. Mukti was missing, Smaran– that detective wasn't really being able to do his job, and admist all that, my mom–, Nyonika–, step-mom– whatever, she found the reports of Inaaya's pregnancy."

"Aunty didn't know Inaaya is pregnant?" Nandini interrupted, biting on her nails, worry written all over her expression as I leaned a little backward on the car's board, my eyes at the night sky as I avoided looking at her, the day playing in my head for the hundredth time.

"She did," I reply, "But that day, she found the real pregnancy reports."

[ a/n: flashback scene set two weeks before chapter 26. Consequences , i.e two and a half months after Musicana & all the mishap ]

"Manik," My mom caught my arm the second I walked into their house, dragging me into a nearby room. I was tired, so tired. It had been two months since Nandini left, and I hadn't visited our apartment, home, even once.

I just couldn't. I couldn't stand being there without our memories flooding in my head, her voice still echoing, her smile still encrypted, and not to forget the way her scent enveloped me the second I stepped in there, throwing me into an abyss; and at this moment, I couldn't afford being lost.

I had shifted back here, much to my own disappointment, but I barely spent time here. Most of my time was spent at the police station. Mukti was missing, and the detective who was very closely observing the case since the beginning, Smaran, wasn't able to hatch a single egg yet. The time that was remaining from that, I spent in the office, trying to learn my father's business skills before flying to London as soon as Smaran gives me the clear card.

And not to forget, Fab5 disbanded. The more free time I had, the more the guilt conquered me. I abandoned them. They depended on me for their career, on each other, and I just walked in that day and told them I can't be a part of them anymore. It was all justified, their anger, their taunts, everything.

In the past three months, I had lost every single person close to me. I tried occupying my mind as much as I could until I was dead tired to only sleep so that my thoughts don't kept returning to the memories I was trying so hard to suppress.

"What is it, Maa?" I said, freeing my hand from her grip as I sat on the bed. My head spinned.

"What is this, Manik?" She said placing a file in between us and then crossing her arms against her chest.

"Inaaya's pregnancy report?" I said. We had gone through this discussion over and over again, my family and her, of how we wouldn't get married but I'd always play a supportive role in the child's life, emotionally and financially.

"Inaaya's pregnancy report that says that you are not the father of her child," she almost shouted, and a shiver passed down my spine as I bolted straight.