Achilles' Heels: An IPKKND FanFiction

Chapter Eight: Wanderer of the Ruins

Then I guess it's time for my punishment now, isn't it?

His words, mixed with the memories of a terrible time in her life, swirled into Khushi's mind. A time when she had just begun to accept Arnav's importance in her life. A time when she had just started to see the amazing man behind the façade of a businessman. A time when her heart had raced faster than her breaths when she found herself near him. A time when she had all but exhausted excuses to see the man who had suddenly occupied all her time.

How could she ever think of hurting him? No matter what he had done. To her. To her family. To his family. Their family.

If Khushi had ever felt confused in her life to a point where she had thought things couldn't get more bizarre, then it was nothing as compared to what she felt now. Just when she had thought she had her man, the tables had turned - no - the tables had spun so fast that she had to gulp down a frenzy, an urge to spill the barf that churned in her mind as his words sank in. His tone of superficial mockery insinuated an even deeper connotation. Khushi wanted to believe that she could understand the enigma that was Arnav Singh Raizada; she couldn't deny she counted herself to be as difficult when it came to this man, who quite literally was asking himself to be punished. Tonight, she wasn't proven right, but nobody had told her that she was wrong either. She fought her retreating conscious, fought against her mind to momentarily forget his misbehavior - just until she could see things from his point-of-view, and urged her mind to dig into his terms.

No sooner did she try, she found her mind rebel against her wishes. Her mind refused the silent pleas of her heart simply because his sudden disappearance on an important night had left his family in a fragile state. And she owed them.

"I've always been smart, Mr. Raizada," Khushi snapped, incensed at herself rather than at him, "Intelligent - like you rightly said. Just because you never realized my caliber, it doesn't mean there weren't any -"

"Ahh - so you see the travesty. Now you know -"

"- talents that I possessed. I was always the one you lost to in your so-called -"

"- that I was right when I stated about your intelligence," Arnav completed his sentence, choosing to ignore what Khushi had to say outright. His tone didn't hint apathy - it was smug, overly haughty, and proud.

"- challenges, bets, or whatever you call them," Khushi remained adamant on completing her thoughts among all the contemptuous interruptions.

"So tell me. I'd like to know your theories," Arnav shrugged, silently admiring her valor to keep arguing against him even after everything. He sank further down the loveseat he was resting onto, "Khushi," he added with an uncharacteristic calm chirping through his words. As if he was ready to wait; as if he had prepared himself for ages anticipating this very moment.

"You won't budge, would you?" she laughed derisively, "To answer you anyway, you'd be pleased to know that I don't have theories, to be honest. But I do have a theory."

Arnav smirked, flouting her rising temper and irritation, and rubbed his palms over one other with animation, "Which is?" he raised an eye-brow in his unprecedented conduct.

"Isn't it obvious? I've told you this before. That you were a coward, Arnav."

He flinched as her words hit him hard. But he maintained an apathetic façade with poise. "I think we have been through this already Khushi," Arnav sighed as he straightened on his seat, his senses alert, "Don't make me -"

"Don't make you what?" Khushi fumed, "Don't make you what exactly?" she repeated. She scurried across the room to her wardrobe and pulled out her handbag. She winced as the modest weight of the bag pulled a muscle in her shoulder. But she let go. Her hand trembled uncontrollably, shivering under the demons of her thoughts that had gripped her from all sides. She zipped open the side-compartment with one fluid movement, trying to hold her shaking hands steady as much as possible. Arnav watched her palm vanished into the small compartment, which was guarded by the zipper that she had yanked open, almost tearing it apart from the rest of the bag.