Chapter 36
Rajveer
A year and a month have passed, when the day comes that your mission is finally completed. It has taken you that long to identify their leader, to finally have the knowledge to bring them down.
Thirteen months and god how you have counted them. Thirteen months of which you have been alone for ten without even Irfan's company. In these thirteen months you have not felt safe for a single moment, have constantly been on edge fearing the discovery of your identity, knowing that you might be killed and that nobody would ever even know what had happened to you.
You still don't know what happened to Irfan, whether he lived or died after you dropped him at the hospital. It was the most you could do for him without exposing your own position and you hate yourself for it. He had been caught sabotaging one of their plans, his actions saving hundreds of civilians that would have otherwise been dead. You had known at that moment that you couldn't save him, that it was the end. He had given you just one look which was enough to say it all, that you should not reveal yourself by helping him, that you should finish the mission, finish them all off once and for all.
When he had gone limp from the beating you had stepped in, telling them that he was dead and that you would dispose of the body. Instead you had driven as fast as possible to the nearest hospital, begging him to hang on, carrying him to the door as another part of you died.
You had never abandoned a friend before, never… and in order to achieve victory you had needed to.
Now, with the mission completed, you have finally arrived at headquarters, freshly showered and shaved, your hair cut and your uniform neatly pressed… a uniform that you have longed to wear for years, which has now been given back to you along with your rank and honour. Today you will find out what has happened to your friend, and if fate is kind then another day will not pass before you see your beloved again. All these months while you have been separated from Naina, not a day has passed when you haven't thought of her, wondered how she is, longed for her. The memory of her is the only thing that has gotten you through this dark period, your hope for a future with her keeping you going when you would have otherwise long since given up.
You snap to attention in front of General Joshi. His expression falters as if he has no idea what to do with you now you've arrived, as if he had never expected this day to come.
It doesn't surprise you, you imagine that after so much time had passed he had never expected you to return at all, that perhaps he had even hoped…
"My mission has been successfully completed, Sir," you inform him, "The group's leader and his inner circle have all been either arrested or killed, those captured alive are currently being interrogated which should lead to more arrests… I have handed them over to the appropriate agency and my work on this case is finished."
You choose not to think about what will happen next to these men, who you have lived with for more than a year now. What happens next is not your responsibility, you have done your job and it is now over.
"You have exceeded my expectations, Captain Shekawat." General Joshi tells you, "Everybody at Headquarters is extremely proud of you and I imagine that your friend Captain Irfan is going to be very happy when he hears that you have returned alive and well."
General Joshi speaks of pride but he does not ask how far you compromised yourself to complete this mission, or what new scars you bear on both your body and your conscience. You know that he won't either, because he does not want to know. Regarding him, you notice how awkward he appears, how he fidgets slightly in his chair, how he does not meet your eyes. There is something… but first…
"Then Irfan survived?" you confirm, breathing a sigh of relief. "He's recovered? Am I able to see him?"
"Captain Khan is recovering and is still on medical leave," General Joshi informs you, "You can certainly visit him whenever you wish, he's currently living in his parents' house."
You nod, knowing that this is one of the first things you will do, that he will be the second person that you will go to see. But first… first you will see Naina. You will hold her in your arms, breathe her in, allow the sight and the touch of her to heal your wounds, to make you feel alive again. Then you will take her with you to see Irfan, although they must have met by now… Irfan had always promised that if for any reason he returned before you did that he would protect her, keep her safe until you came back. You know that he will have kept her hopes alive all this time, encouraging her not to give up.
"And Captain Naina Singh Ahluwalia, Sir?" you ask the General, trying to keep the eagerness out of your voice. "Has she been informed of my return? I would like to see her as soon as possible, if you could tell me where she is posted now."
There is silence and General Joshi looks at you, his lips set in a thin line, an unhappy look on his face as if he is trying… trying to….
No… No.
"Nothing has happened to her, has it?" your voice takes on a desperate tone, "She's fine, isn't she? Sir… what exactly is the matter?"
"Nothing has happened to Naina Singh Ahluwalia…" General Joshi finally says after a long pause, "She is no longer a member of the armed forces however."
You wait for him to continue, to explain, and the silence stretches on, becoming more and more uncomfortable with every moment.
"What do you mean that she is no longer a member of the armed forces?" you grit out between clenched teeth when an explanation is not forthcoming, "As far as I know Naina, the army is her life, she would never quit. What is it that…" You want to say 'that you have done to her', yet you know that at this time, you cannot start accusing him without knowing the facts. "What is it that happened?"
"I'm afraid, Captain Shekawat, that the circumstances surrounding Naina Ahluwalia's resignation from the army are classified," he tells you, his lips still tight, sweat now on his brow. "I am unable to tell you the reason."
"Damn it Sir, you can't…" you stop, trying not to overstep your boundaries, "Fine, Sir, in that case I'll have to ask her myself. I'll travel to meet her at her house."
It is at this statement that General Joshi looks even more uncomfortable, almost as if he would like to begin squirming in his chair.
"Sir…"
"Naina Ahluwalia's whereabouts have been unknown for almost ten months now." He informs you, "She disappeared soon after she submitted her resignation."
You grip the arms of your chair tightly, because if you were to let go right now you would grab him by the collar, shake him until he told you the truth, about exactly where she is, and exactly why it is that she left. Instead you stand up suddenly, with so much force that your chair almost falls over.
"Then if you cannot help me, Sir, I'll be going to find somebody who can." You tell him tersely, and without waiting to be excused, you stride out of his office. You are shaken, scared, because if he doesn't know where Naina is…
They had promised you before you left, promised you that they would not allow anybody in the army to move against her while you were gone, that what had happened with Mr Patel would never happen again. They had promised you and…
And you should never have believed them.
You turn over what to do next in your mind, whether you should go to her parents and directly ask about her or try to gather some information first. In the end you decide that you will see Irfan before anything else, so that you can both reassure yourself that he is fine and also ask him if he has any information about where Naina currently is.
Because before now Irfan has always known, always had the right information, and you can only hope that this is still the case.
/
Knocking on the door of Irfan's parents' house, you wait until a diminutive older lady opens it, a questioning look on her face, changing to one of distrust when she sees your uniform.
"Aunty, I'm a friend of Irfan's, is he at home right now?" you ask her and she nods, guiding you to the living room without saying a word before she disappears upstairs, presumably to find her son.
You hear the uneven steps before you see him and you look up to see Irfan descending from the stairs, a noticeable limp as he walks. His eyes light up as soon as he sees you.
"Well if it isn't Captain Rajveer Singh Shekawat, returned from the dead!" he grins, closing the space between you quickly to embrace you. You hug him back tightly, unable to help yourself from smiling because he's alive and god knows how you had feared coming home to find him dead.
"How are you, Irfan?" you ask him finally when you feel able to speak, "All these months of not knowing… when General Joshi told me that you were fine I was so relieved, I was afraid that…"
He gives a short bark of laughter, shaking his head. "I'm not that easy to kill," he tells you, "No matter how much they might wish that I was. I'm more or less recovered, although the limp has become my constant companion these days."
You do not laugh at his joke, because there is no mirth in his tone, only a slight bitterness.
Irfan's expression changes as he realises something, and he looks up at you suddenly, and the expression in his eyes is one of wariness. "If you've spoken to General Joshi then you must know…" he begins to say before spotting his mother, standing near the doorway with an unreadable expression.
"Ammi, this is my old friend Raj," he tells her simply, "We've got a lot of catching up to do, we'll just go out for a walk so we don't disturb you." She nods without saying a word, watching you both as you leave the house, her eyes trailing after Irfan as if willing him not to go.
"Don't mind Ammi," he tells you as you both walk down the street slowly, "You coming in uniform would've been a shock to her. She doesn't know what to think about the army anymore… doesn't know what to think about me anymore either. For more than seven years I've been their heroic martyred son and now suddenly here I am back with them again, alive and unable to tell them anything about where I've been or what I've done. She doesn't seem to know whether to not let me out of her sight or run away from me." He laughs and it sounds tired, defeated. "Sometimes I think it would've been better for them if I'd just stayed dead."
You place a hand on his shoulder in support, unable to say anything because there is nothing you can tell him that can make it better. All the dreams that you'd both had of your freedom, all the things you'd planned… you should've realised that the reality was going to be something completely different. Unlike Irfan, you at least had somebody who knew you were alive, somebody who was waiting for you to come back and now… now Naina…
As if sensing your inner turmoil, Irfan glances across at you, observing the emotions that are playing across your face. Gesturing off the road he leads you up a small path to a clearing, sitting on a fallen log that looks like it has been there for years. Perhaps it has been here for more than seven years… perhaps it is one of the only things that has not changed since he left and returned.
"Irfan… Naina…" you begin, "I need to know what happened, I need to know where she is and why she quit the army. I know Naina… know her better than just about anybody. She would never quit without reason, never give up her dreams in that way."
"So then I'm guessing that General Joshi didn't tell you the reason," Irfan comments, shaking his head, "Oh your Naina had reason alright, by the time she quit it was the only thing she could possibly do, she wouldn't accept any of their other options… refused point blank from what I've been told. Your Naina is strong, Raj. She fought to the end and when she found that there was no escape, she chose to remain true to her decision."
"Please Irfan, just tell me what happened, I'm going crazy here wondering why she left and where she is… even more than why it happened, do you know where she is, do you know where I can find her? Did she go back to her parents' house?"
Irfan shakes his head, "She was supposed to go to her parents' house… she had set out from the base for there, however somewhere along the way she changed her mind, decided that she couldn't do it… couldn't go home like that. She left everybody behind, didn't tell a single person where she was going… only sent a postcard saying that she was fine and she was sorry, that she couldn't…" he breaks off, clearly frustrated. "If only I hadn't been in a coma at the time I could've helped her somehow, at least given her hope… she came to see me while I was in the hospital, apparently she sat with me for some time, spoke to me… and I don't have a damn clue what she said."
"But why would she do such a thing? I know you're avoiding the question, I know that you don't want to tell me… please for god's sakes just say it once and for all, did something happen to her? Who was against her?"
"The whole damn army was against her," Irfan tells you angrily, "There was a disciplinary enquiry, she would've been thrown out or at the very least demoted… Naina chose to go with her dignity intact and in the end she chose to separate herself from everybody, to leave her old life behind and…"
"But why?" you break in frustrated, "Why the disciplinary hearing, why…"
"Because three months after we had left, Naina's superiors discovered she was pregnant." Irfan finally says and the words hit you like a punch low in the gut, knocking the wind out of you. For a moment you cannot breathe, cannot even think and you feel faint, as if the world is spinning around you. You place your head into your hands, taking long deep breaths when really all you want to do is cry because Naina… Naina….
"She refused to tell them who the father was, refused to explain anything, her friends offered to help her, but she wouldn't accept it… wouldn't allow anybody else to take responsibility."
Pregnant, alone, with no options and no real support. What the hell have you done to her? What choice did she have except leaving or living the rest of her life in shame? What pain have you put her through and how can you find her now? How on earth can you fix this, how are you ever going to make it alright?
By now, if all has gone well, your child must be four months old. In what condition are they living, are they both well, are they safe, are they happy? You're not sure whether you should feel happiness or grief at the knowledge that you now have a child, because you have already missed out on so much, have not been there for Naina when she truly needed you.
You hate yourself for what you've done to her, hate yourself for ever letting her know that you were alive in the first place. Hate yourself for loving her and allowing her to love you in return. At least when she didn't know that you were alive she had her friends, her family, her career and honour… now she's somewhere alone in the world, raising your child and in all probability believing that you're dead.
"And General Joshi… he did nothing to intervene?" you ask Irfan, "He did nothing to try and help her?"
Irfan sighs at this, knowing that you're not going to like the answer, "General Joshi was in charge of the disciplinary hearing. He could've helped her if he wanted to… he chose not to. None of them thought we were coming back alive, they wanted to wash their hands clean of us, get rid of any evidence that we'd ever existed at all."
You stand up angrily, not sure what it is that you want to do but needing to do something, anything to fix this somehow.
"I'll go to him," you seethe, "I'll demand an explanation, they'd better damn well find her because if they don't… if they don't…"
Then you will tear this world apart at the seams, set fire to it; whoever it is that has hurt her they will live to regret it, they will wish they'd never allowed her to be treated in this way.
You will get her back… no matter how long it takes, no matter how far you have to go to do so. You will get her back…
You keep telling yourself this, because the world is not so large that she can disappear entirely. Because destiny cannot be so cruel as to separate you in this way when you can finally be together.
Right now only one thing is certain in your life, and that is your quest to find her and your child.
You've never given up easily, you've always believe that while there is life there is hope. You'll fight until the last breath.
And if you don't find her… then you'll turn the whole world upside down, you'll make them wish that they never even heard the name Rajveer Singh Shekawat.
You can promise that at least.