It was 5:35 AM when her alarm screamed for the third time, dragging her from the edge of a dream she couldn't even remember. She moved her hand absentmindedly and mumbled in her sleep,
"Zoey, turn off the fucking alarm."
Zoey, from the mattress on the floor, said lazily,
"Abby, this is your alarm. You have a shift. Get the fuck up."
Abby buried her face in her hands and groaned, "God hates me."
"No, if He hated you, He would've let you be born in Los Angeles with blonde hair and a rich family. But here you are, fighting for your life," Zoey replied, now slowly waking up.
Abby didn't respond. She just got up, tying her hair into a messy, loose bun. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and one of Zoey's sleep shorts. Sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment, she picked up her phone. Two notifications lit up the screen. The first was from Peter, her colleague from one of her three jobs:
"Hey Abbigail, can you do my shift today after yours? I have to submit an assignment, can't miss that."
She wanted to say no. She tried to yell, to scream, to say I already have three shifts today.
Then, as nature is against her, another notification popped up—a reminder:
"Rent Due."
She sighed, full of pain and frustration, opened the chat with Peter, and typed:
"Yeah, cool."
She locked her phone again and tossed it onto the bed. She sat still on the bed for some time, head buried in her hands. The room is quiet except for Zoey's soft snoring and the soft hum of traffic outside the apartment. She stared at the floor like it might offer a way out, but it didn't.
She got up anyway, dragging herself to the bathroom where a cracked mirror was hanging like it had been forced to be there. She tried to avoid seeing her reflection in the mirror, but caught a glimpse anyway. Her tired face, hair in a messy, loose bun, and eyes, tired like she hadn't slept in a year. She didn't cry; she couldn't, she didn't have time to be overdramatic. She had shifts, pending assignments, a family to worry about, and him. Of course, him...
She opened the tap, and Cold water started falling on her hands harshly like everything else. She splashed her face a few times, then wiped her face with a towel that smelled like weakness. She had no time for a shower.
In the kitchen, she opened the fridge out of habit. A bottle of ketchup, some take-away rice, probably from last week, a half-slice of apple which was turning black from the edges, she closed it and grabbed a granola bar from the counter, the last one. She took a bite and chewed slowly, like maybe if she ate slowly enough, time would pause. She poured herself a mug of instant coffee, bitter, but at least it made her feel something.
While she was changing for work, her mind drifted to where she didn't wanna go. "Rehman Khan," "She hadn't thought of him since… no, that was a lie. She thought about him this morning. While brushing her teeth. While trying not to think." She sat on the small dining table, opened her phone, her heart jumping not from excitement but from something worse. She typed his name on Instagram, and in a moment, her screen flashed with his ID."200k followers." Following only two, she opened his following list "Boney. M and Lionel Messi"; her hands froze for a bit. "Why the hell does someone like him follow Boney. M," she whispered to herself.
"You are stalking him again," came a sleepy voice from behind. Zoey stood there leaning against the door of the room.
Abbigail jumped; she nearly dropped her phone. "No.. umm....why should I stalk him?.... he is no one to me"
Zoey came close and said calmly, leaning on her, " Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, of course I have my mess to worry about," Abbigail replied too quickly, like someone caught her red-handed stealing in the mall.
"Then why are your cheeks turned red?" Zoey asked smiling
"Because I wasn't ready for this interrogation." She replied with a bit of calm now
There was a pause. Then.
"You called Ethan?" Zoey said
"No," Abbigail replied, looking at her hands.
"Abby, your mom called yesterday. She said he was asking about you." She said politely
Abbigail didn't say anything.
"He is changing Abby.
"It's been two years, Abby. You haven't spoken to him since that night. "Zoey said, "You can't ignore your brother forever, you know, right?"
"Casper would be 23 this month," Abbigail said after a long pause
Zoey kept quiet. Abbigail continues
"I'm not ignoring him. I just can't forget what he did. To me. To my mom." There was a pause, and Casper, she said low voice.
Zoey came close, set her hand on hers, and said, "He didn't do it, you knew?"
"He had a gun in his hand, Zoey, when I reached there." Abby said, tears in her eyes, "He had blood on his hands, Zoey. He stood there, didn't do anything, he just... her voice cracked "he just stood there when I reached Casper was down with a bullet in his chest, and Ethan. " She paused." he was standing there, then he ran like he was guilty. He didn't talk, didn't explain, so what should I suppose to think?" She wiped her tears
"It was a setup, Abby, you know that....." Zoey said
"Enough, Zoey, I don't want to talk about the person who took only one thing from me, which mattered," she said, now standing up. "I have to leave, I am getting late. See you in class."
She sat in silence for a long moment, then quietly made her way to the bathroom, the echo of Abby's words still hanging in the room.
***
The bus was quiet with exhaustion and frustration. Abby sat by the window, earphones in, her chin resting on her palm, her uniform still had stains from last week's shift. She hadn't even remembered to change her socks.
She touched the side of her seat. The cold metal startled her, not because it was unexpected, but because it felt like that night. She closed her eyes.
Rain falling. Her dark green sweater was soaked through. Black jeans.She'd put on red lipstick, Casper always said red looked good on her.She remembered him laughing. Teasing her. Calling her "Abby with a double B."
The parking lot under the bridge was empty, abandoned. Where they always met.That night, it wasn't. A yell, not loud, but panicked, cut through the rain.She ran toward it, heart already racing. And there he was.
Ethan.
Standing still. A gun in his right hand. Blood was dripping from his fingertips like it didn't belong there. Casper was on the ground, a bullet in his chest. She screamed.
"What did you do!?"
Ethan's voice shook. "It's not what it looks like."
She dropped to her knees, held Casper's face in her hands, already wet and cold.
Too late. He looked at her and whispered, "I love you, Abby… with a double B."
Then he was gone. She blinked. The bus slammed the brakes, jerking her forward.She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, stood up, and exhaled.The memory stayed where it always did, just under the skin.
***
In the mansion, far away from her small cafe, Rehman sat in the dark, a glass of red wine in his right hand. He was not looking at whatever show was playing on TV; he was staring at the glass absentmindedly. When his phone buzzed, he picked up immediately and said "Baba"
"Beta (Son)" Harris Khan's voice crackled through the line, weighed with the heavy breath of someone who had been waiting to speak. "Settled in?"
Rehman didn't respond immediately. He stood in the common room of his flat, a half-empty bottle of red wine open on the table, ice clinking in the glass in his hand. He could hear someone laughing down the street, footsteps echoing against the marble floor outside his room.
"Same Oxford you always talked about, Baba," he said finally, the words bitter on his tongue, "Books, Bells, The occasional bonfire of ideas and bodies that sold their souls to books. "A soft silence followed.
"Your sister would've loved it," his father said quietly. He paused, the warmth of the whiskey turning sour in his stomach.
"She is here, I know I told this to you before, but she is," Rehman said. There was a long silence.
"You're seeing her again?" Harris asked, more gently this time. Rehman didn't answer.
"Rehman. Listen to me. I know you blame yourself. I know—"
"No," Rehman interrupted, sharper now. "I blame her."
His father didn't have to ask who. He knew who he was referring to. The Defense Minister of Pakistan, Amara Khan his mother
"She didn't let her live," Rehman said, voice low. "She gave her away like a pawn on a political chessboard."
His father sighed on the other end. "She's still your mother."
"She's a general with a uterus, nothing more," he said coldly
His father was shocked for a bit, then said, "You'll have to face her one day."
"Not today," he said, voice sharp as a blade
Silence again. Harris didn't push. He rarely did anymore.
After a few more strained exchanges, empty pleasantries, academic updates, a promise to call again, Rehman hung up. He placed the phone facedown and turned to the window, watching the students scatter beneath umbrellas like ants retreating from a storm.
Zara had loved rain. That's what haunted him most. His sister had been born in the middle of a monsoon in Lahore. His mother hadn't even been in the hospital. She left one hour after the birth of her daughter to give a briefing to the Joint Chiefs about drone strategy in Waziristan. His father had been there, a tired man with shaking hands holding a swaddled miracle, whispering prayers into her ear.
They'd always been closer, Rehman and Zara. Only thirteen months apart, inseparable through childhood, allies against the coldness of their mother and the absence of their father, who tried to shield them both but always fell short. Zara had a fire that Rehman couldn't replicate, a kind of emotional resistance that made her dangerous to people like their mother. She refused to be used.
That's why she was gone.
Rehman picked up the photograph from his desk, one of the last they had taken together. It was in Hunza, two summers before everything collapsed. Zara wore his jacket too big for him. She always wears his things like they belong to her, windswept, laughing at something off-camera. Her eyes gleamed with some inside joke. His arm was around her shoulder, her nails painted black, chipped in places from guitar strings. That summer, she had talked about wanting to study philosophy at Oxford. Rehman had teased her, saying she was too soft for the West.
It turned out Oxford wasn't soft at all.
Neither was she until she was gone.
***
The rain hammered the windows like it had a long-standing grudge. Inside the mansion, Rehman cupped a tumbler of whisky, the amber liquid catching the dim light of his bedside lamp in lazy spirals. He didn't know how long he'd been drinking, an hour, two hours, maybe more. Every sip numbed everything except the familiar ache, cracking along the edges of his ribs and hollowing out his chest.
In the half-dark, the flat was more ghost than home. The books he'd brought from Lahore lay scattered on the floor, Faiz's poetry, Sartre, Mirza Ghalib pages fluttering open. He sank onto the edge of the bed, back bent, fingers wrapped around the glass. The phone lay beside him, unanswered calls from Harris blinking like accusations.
He thought he'd emptied the bottle. A little slosh told him otherwise. He tipped it back, eyes closed, letting the sharp burn trickle down. For a moment, he could almost see her, Zara, standing there, the same midnight hair falling around pale shoulders. He blinked. Nothing.
He drank again. "Zara," he whispered. "Why… why did you have to leave me?"
Silence answered. The lamplight shook. Rain pattered harder, almost in rhythm with his ragged breathing. He drained the glass and set it down, uncapped another. He had no idea how he was still standing. The room smeared and stretched. Faint against the wall, a silhouette took shape, tall, slight, black coat dripping with rain.
He choked on the whisky in his throat. "Zara." His voice trembled on the name as if it were a secret he wasn't supposed to speak anymore.
She stepped forward, tilting her head in that exact way she always had when she was curious, or teasing. It was surreal: he could see the locks of her dark hair plastered to her face, her eyes deep and unreadable. For a moment, it was enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
Then the words came.
"You've been drinking again."
He winced, closing his eyes, squeezing his palms tight. "Why does it matter?"
"Because you can't face me," she said gently at first, and then her voice rose, rasping, raw like crushed glass. "Because you never had the courage. You stop your heart from remembering me by drowning your own."
He didn't know what he was doing, exactly, knee-first onto the bed, pressing his forehead to the mattress. Somewhere down, he felt the wood creaking. "I… I loved you," he rasped into the sheets. "I loved you more than life itself."
She came closer, her footsteps silent, the coat soaked through. She crouched beside him, tilting his chin up so that his face was bathed in that pale, unnatural light. "You never loved me," she said quietly. He could see her pupils dilate, the vague tremble of her lips. "Not truly."
He flinched, a stab of guilt that leapt into his chest like ice shards. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came. It was like he'd clamped his own tongue with steel pins.
"You left me," she whispered. "You turned your back on me. You let her dictate our lives, but you never once stood between her world and mine." She pressed her forehead against his, the tips of her hair caressing his cheek. "You never loved me enough to fight."
Tears stung his eyes. He swallowed. He forced out the words: "I… I was afraid." His voice trembled, unsteady. "I thought if I fought… if I stood up… you'd disappear. I thought… I thought I'd lose you anyway."
She drew back, but her voice stayed soft. "You didn't fight. And when I was gone, you acted like it was easier not to look, like it was less painful to pretend I was dead, though I wasn't." She paused, the silence as sharp as a blade. "There was no funeral. You never saw the body. You never confirmed whether you could stay or slip away."
He felt an electric shock in his hands, his nerves burning. He tried to speak, but the words choked on the uneven air. "I hated that. I hated everything about it. But I couldn't breathe knowing you were lying in a box, a box I couldn't open. I thought if I didn't see it, maybe it wasn't real."
She let the words sink into her shoulders, then she shook her head as though disappointed. She stood, rain still clinging to her sleeves. For an instant, her cloak parted, and he saw the outline of her figure in the haze.
"Then why do you keep seeing me?" she asked quietly. "Why do you wake up with my name on your lips? Why do you pray for me before sleep?"
His breath stuttered. He rose slowly to meet her, shaking, "Because I never wanted to forget you."
Her eyes softened. She swallowed. "I never wanted to be forgotten."
He moved toward her. Their proximity was electric and absurd. He reached out, half expecting to touch warmth, but his hand met emptiness, shawl dampness, air. He gasped.
She stepped closer, so close now that he could feel the chill of her breath. "Tell me you loved me. Don't say it if it's a lie. But if you loved me, tell me."
Tears filled his vision. His voice cracked on a breath. "I loved you. I loved you with everything in me. You were all I had."
There was a long silence. The rain outside paused. Then a tiny, trembling smile flickered across her face, so small it was more memory than expression.
She whispered, so low he couldn't be sure he heard it: "Then let me walk away in peace."
He reached for her, voice thick with pain. "No," he breathed. "I'm not letting go."
Her smile widened, sad, fragile, and she closed her eyes. When her lashes lifted, they were wet. "You can't keep holding me. I'm not yours anymore."
They came together for one long, impossibly close moment. His heart thundered so loud he thought it would break. Then she was gone. The light flickered. Rain began again, softly this time.
He fell to his knees, the whisky bottle rolling beside him, an empty echo. His hands touched the floor, then buried in his hair. He cried in silence, each sob torn from the depths of years.
The room drifted around him until everything was black. Then his senses returned, inch by inch. The lamp was unsteady and glowing. The whisky bottle lay empty. The pages of Mirza Ghalib peeked from beneath his fingers.
He sat there, rocking, waiting for anything to come next, a phone ping, a footstep, but the flat remained hollow, drowning in its shadows.
"Baba," he whispered to the darkness, words for a man who would never answer tonight. "Baba, …"
He pressed his forehead against the floor, closed his eyes, and let the world fall apart, because maybe in that ruin, he could finally start to search for it all: the truth… the memory… and maybe the redemption.
And just for a moment, he thought he could feel her there, somewhere, waiting for him to find her.
***
And then,
"Rehman?" came a feminine American voice.
He turned sharply. Abbigail, holding a notebook to her chest, stood a few paces away, eyebrows furrowed in concern. Behind her, the open quad looked deceptively serene.
He blinked. Zara was gone.
"The door was open, I came to give you your notebook, you left it in the café. Then her eyes narrowed and she asked, "Who... who were you talking to?" Her voice was cautious, eyes flicking between him and the empty air he'd just been arguing with.
Rehman took a step forward, quickly, irrationally, eyes wild. "What did you see?"
Abbigail stepped back, taken aback by the heat in his voice. "I, I didn't mean to intrude. I just wanted to return your notebook, and I saw you talking and, "
He grabbed her wrist, hard and firm enough to shake her, and pushed her against the wall. "What did you see, Abbigail? Don't lie to me. Did you see her?"
Her eyes widened. "Rehman, please, let go. You're scaring me."
"I said, what did you fucking saw?" he yelled
She didn't answer. Couldn't
"Answer me, American," he shouted
"No... I swear I saw nothing let go of me, please," she requested, tears in her eyes
There it was. Realization flickered across his face. His grip loosened instantly, and he stepped back, as if it burned. "I... I'm sorry. I thought you... I'm sorry."
Abbigail cradled her wrist instinctively, slowly backing away. "I should go, I just came to give the notebook," she said, turning back
He took a step forward, not touching them, said," Abbigail, I am not some psycho, I just I don't know... I am....
She cuts gently, "You need help."
Then, without another word, Abbigail turned and walked briskly toward the chapel, her footsteps echoing with urgency.
Rehman stood alone again, chest rising and falling like waves crashing into stone.
The drizzle had turned to rain again, harder now, the sky weeping.
He whispered into the storm: "She never really left, did she?"
Somewhere, beyond the veil of sanity, Zara's voice answered—
"Not until you finally see me."
***
The waiting room smelled faintly of lavender and disinfectant, the chairs arranged with clinical precision, a plastic fishbowl of smooth grey stones on a table, unnaturally polished. The receptionist handed Rehman a clipboard with intake forms. He glanced down at, name, date of birth, and reason for visit. He left the "reason" blank, staring at a pool of dried coffee on the floor instead. He didn't want to name whatever had followed him here.
When his name was called, "Rehman Khan?", he stood slowly, as if expecting the floor to give way. The door to the therapy room was unmarked, beige, with a small window: frosted, opaque, and entirely convenient. He pushed it open.
Inside, Dr. Elspeth Clarke watched him quietly, seated in a dark grey armchair. Beside her, another chair, softer, cleaner-looking, waited for him. A lamp with a pale shade cast an uneven glow. Books lined a shelf: Damasio, Frankl, Jung. A framed quote over the bookshelf read: "Healing begins where shame ends."
She gestured. "Please, sit wherever you're comfortable."
He chose the chair across from her and sat on the edge, unzipping his bag, retrieving a notebook and pen. He scribbled nothing. She didn't comment. He looked at her: late forties, composed, hair tucked neatly behind ears, a calm pair of eyes behind glasses. Without judgment. It irked him more than a glare would have.
He set the notebook on his knee, pen poised, a position of obligation.
She waited.
"Let's start with what brings you here," she said, voice even.
He laughed it off. "I don't know maybe I am bored"
She didn't react. Just held out a tissue box.
"Sure," he said, voice low. "I'm here to ruin your day."
"Okay," she nodded, as if expecting that. "No shame in ruining someone's day if it helps them. How can you be honest with me if we don't begin with that?"
He leaned back, crossing arms protectively. "Let me be upfront. I don't like this. I don't trust therapists. You'll smile, nod, hand quotes of Socrates, maybe prompt me to draw a feeling wheel. I don't need that."
She made a note. "I won't help you if you need a feeling wheel," she replied. "So, tell me what's going on."
He paused, mind whirring, a reflex to defend. "Humor me. My supervisor told me I look like I'm seven miles past exhaustion. That my eyes… stumble on mornings. I told him I'm fine."
"Are you?" she asked.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked, scanning the ceiling, the laminate wood grain.
"That's up to you."
He inhaled, releasing it in a harsh exhale. "Truth is, I'm not fine. I'm not okay. But saying that makes it real. And real… is terrifying."
She nodded slowly. "What's terrifying?"
He closed his eyes, as if opening to an older memory. "That if I admit I'm broken, I can't stay, here, there, anywhere. I… black out. I wake up, and the edges of memory are jagged. I feel my sister's voice. I feel her presence. I… I think I see her."
Time stretched while he stared at her.
"What does your sister say?" she asked softly.
He swallowed. "She says she's disappointed."
Silence.
"Disappointed with what?."
He put the notebook aside and stared at his hands. Knuckles were white where they gripped the cushion. "Truth… I don't know if I'm here because I'm sad, or because I can't stop fearing. Fearing I'll lose everything I had. I had a life before… she died."
He paused, voice unsteady. "She tried to marry. Forced. She was never happy. Then one night… she ended it."
Dr. Clarke nodded. "You think it was about the marriage?"
"No, it wasn't, it never was. He took a pause, then said he was in love with someone at her school. He took another pause. "A girl," he said, "she never told anybody about it, but when she died, she left a note before.
He drew in a breath. "Zara was… she was the fire in our lives. My space. My sanity. When I lost her, I lost my home. I… I didn't speak for weeks."
"What changed?" Dr. Clarke asked.
"She was gone." He swallowed. "Mama… said there was nothing to see. She… she made sure there was no scene. Said I didn't need closure. Said it would damage me. Told me we had to be strong. That people would judge. That our family couldn't be the story."
He rubbed his hair. "So I didn't go to the funeral. I refused. I… I couldn't see. I didn't want her just to exist in a casket."
He closed his eyes, voice breaking: "But she still haunts me."
"I understand," Dr. Clarke said. "What are her words to you, when she visits you in your mind?"
Silence filled the room. The rain outside tapped a hollow rhythm.
His voice came barely above a whisper: "Why didn't you come to my funeral?"
A pause. "Why didn't you fight?"
Another pause filled by the rain's insistence.
She leaned forward. "That sounds painful."
He shrugged, voice small. "I still see her. At night. In the rain. I drink. I avoid. Because she appears every time I'm sober." He shook his head. "I hate therapy for illumination. I want to escape. I want the ghosts to stop."
She nodded, gently. "Talking about them doesn't invite more ghosts. It learns their language."
He looked at her, a flicker of something unshed in his eyes. He opened his mouth. Nothing spilled.
"Today we've given a name to your pain," she said. "That's a start."
He stood abruptly, gathering his pen and notebook. "Great start."
He turned to leave. She spoke quietly: "Rehman."
He paused, his hand on the door. "Yes?"
"This is your first session," she said. "It doesn't have to be your last."
He met her eyes, conflicted. "Maybe."
***
OXFORD WELLNESS CENTRE, LATE AFTERNOON
He stepped out into drizzle, cool raindrops tapping his face—sharp reminders that the world continued. He didn't open his umbrella. He let the water soak through his coat. He walked slowly, head down, tears in his eyes he refused to admit were there. The sidewalk blurred.
He crossed the square, past students huddled under umbrellas, the ground sodden. He crossed the bridge over the gentle stream, pausing to watch the water. It moved outward, calm.
He whispered a name to himself: "Zara."
In that broken whisper, there was something—maybe kindness. Maybe regret. Maybe something closer to forgiveness.
He didn't know if he'd return. But today he had sat. And named. And felt.
And something, maybe enough, had shifted.
OXFORD LIBRARY, EVENING
The Radcliffe Camera lay cloaked in half-light, its dome catching the remnants of a weary sunset. Inside, history wrapped itself around the students like fog, dense, suffocating, and inescapably noble. The walls, lined with shelves that had cradled centuries of thought, bore quiet witness to yet another generation of minds trying to think themselves into meaning.
Rehman Khan sat alone in the northern alcove, beneath the curved frame of a leaded window. Outside, raindrops pocked the stone terrace, a soft, consistent rhythm that barely reached his ears. He had been there for hours. The notebook in front of him was still blank. The pen, a black Montblanc, rested in his hand like a relic, untouched by ink.
It wasn't that he didn't have words.
It was that the words had become too dangerous.
Across the reading room, nestled between books on tort reform and feminist legal theory, Abbigail Rose sat behind a stack of research tomes. She had chosen the table before realizing he was there. Or so she told herself. Her laptop was open, cursor blinking at a half-written thesis proposal she no longer cared about. The coffee in her thermos had gone cold.
But her eyes kept drifting.
To him.
He hadn't moved in over twenty minutes. Not a page turned. Not a note scribbled. He just sat there, the collar of his black coat pulled up like armor. She could see the sharp line of his jaw, the hollowness beneath his cheekbones. The kind of stillness he wore wasn't the stillness of peace. It was restraint. Fragile. Temporary. Explosive.
Nora noticed first.
"He's been sitting there since six," she whispered.
Zoey, sitting two chairs down, leaned closer. "Is he writing a novel or waiting to explode?"
Gia glanced up from her Civil Rights Law compendium. "Maybe both."
Back in the corner, Rehman closed his eyes. The world blurred behind his lids.
KHAN ESTATE, ISLAMABAD – TWO YEARS AGO
The rose garden smelled of rain and jasmine. Zara stood barefoot on the wet grass, hair damp and coiled at the base of her neck. She was wearing a white lawn kurta, sleeves rolled up, an old shawl draped over one shoulder like it belonged to someone else. Her guitar rested against a wooden bench. The sun was setting, the sky half-apology and half-burn.
Rehman approached slowly, carrying a thin book of Faiz Ahmed Faiz poems.
"More verses to make me sad?" she asked without turning.
He smirked. "You need softness before revolution."
She turned, eyes serious. "They're not going to let me choose, Reh. You know that."
He didn't answer. He just handed her the book.
Zara took it, glancing at the pages. She flipped to one, smiled faintly. Then looked up.
"Promise me something."
"What?"
"When it gets dark, when they make you forget what light looks like, promise you'll remember me. Not the headlines. Not the scandal. Me."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Then nodded.
It wasn't enough. He also knew it, but he didn't say anything more.