A/N: I really liked Saawariya, despite the bad reviews it has gotten. Rani was very good, as was Ranbir and Sonam was very pretty but kind of annoying. She made the audience sympathise somewhat with a pretty unlikable character, so she was good, I guess. Salman looked like a monkey, but gave a surprisingly restrained performance. The music was beautiful as were the sets.

This story is a sort of alternate ending which I thought would have worked better than the actual ending.

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Dreamer

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She waits by the bridge, watching the ripples on the water. The night sounds no longer make her jump and she is calm. This bridge has become her home. It is her strongest connection to her Imaan. She comes here when she is happy and when she is sad. Sometimes she stands here the whole night without realizing it, starting at the first bird's chirp at dawn.

After the first year of wait, she had felt dreadfully lonely and abandoned. She knows that a man helped her, a friend. After those four nights in his company, her grief and anxiety have calmed. He has gone forever, she knows that. She tries to recollect the man's features, but they have blurred in her mind's eye. The memory of this friend, however vague, gives her strength as she waits for Imaan.

Imaan is perfect. He is handsome, intelligent, quirky and loves her very much. She could extol his virtues all day. He is almost too good to be true; it is almost as if she has dreamed him up.

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Night after night, Gulab sees the girl's lone figure waiting at the bridge. Her Saawariya's saawariya. She observes her standing absolutely still and as she drinks the milk she orders at the bar each night, she wonders if the one the girl is waiting for will ever turn up.

Saawariya had told her Sakina's story. Gulab had heard the story with sadness, as it left three love stories incomplete. She knew there was no place in Saawariya's heart for her while he loved a girl who was in love with someone who was not returning.

Gulab feels a strange kinship with this girl, despite having never known her. Both of them have lost their saawariyas and the difference is only that Sakina still holds a hope of hers returning while Gulab knows her own will never come back. He could not remain in the city anymore: almost four years ago now, he and Lillian had packed their bags and moved far, far away.

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Tonight is another sleepless night for Jhumri. She is worried sick about Sakina but at the same time can't deny her anything. Night after night she continues this charade, pinning herself to Sakina's badi ammi.

Sakina has always been a lonely child. She has never had any friends, for though she had been a lively child, she had been confined to the house too often. After her father's leaving and her mother's death, Sakina had become a mere ghost of her former self. Now she still looks like Sakina, and at rare moments is happy, but for the most part she is subdued and Jhumri knows that she is terribly, terribly lonely.

As a child, Sakina had made herself a host of invisible friends. Playing with them day after day and telling them all her secret sorrows and desires, they became real to her. What were once pale substitutes for the real thing became flesh and blood before her eyes and she stayed in her room all day chattering non-stop to them.

Jhumri does not know how to tell Sakina that Imaan will never return. She does not know how to tell Sakina that they have never had lodgers in this house. She does not know how to tell Sakina that her blind badi ammi is not the only one who cannot see Imaan.

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A/N: Well? How was that? Please review!