Tossing and turning in her bed, she couldn't sleep at all, her mind constantly being nagged by the hodgepodge of thoughts, Ayyan's being the top one as it stifled the others.

Stretching her arms, she drew the drapes and let the soft breeze brandish her sleep sunken face. She was a living robot as of now, running on caffeine only.

As she clamped her mouth to muffle a yawn, her gaze fell on a figure digging something up besides the plant: mud. She found it amusing. Mr. CEO playing the gardener was a sight to behold.

Retiring down the stairs, she maneuvered her way towards the garden. The aroma of beautiful manicured lush green grass and hunter leaves lingering in the air as it wafted through her nostrils like an ointment to her bruises. Everything was so serene.

"I didn't know you were a gardener, too."

She smirked.

Engrosssed in the plants, he turned his head around to look at her and then got back in his business.

"Yes, I believe a human should know everything."

He put seeds in the hole he had dug up.

"Everything?"

She raised a perfect eyebrow.

"Yes. Just a bit if not whole. You know, just a know how."

He glanced at her as he put the mud on the seeds.

"So in case if you land yourself in some sort of a problem, you'd at least know how to figure your way around it."

"Hmm."

She pouted, mulling over his words. Maybe, he wasn't as much stupid as she had thought he was.

"Besides, if it weren't for plants, you wouldn't be alive, right now. So there's that."

"I hardly believe that this plant of yours is keeping me alive which, by the way, hasn't even grown yet."

She said before her lips graced the rim of the coffee cup.

"Well, hello there!" He gestured towards the extended garden plenished with plants and trees as he stood up.

"Yeah, alight."

She rolled her eyes.

"Anyways, ready to go?"

He asked, putting all the gardening stuff in the bag.

She nodded.

"Alright, I'll be back in few."

His face devoid of any expression whatsoever.

******

The melancholy still hadn't left her side as they rode towards the hospital. The ride was spent in utter silence. None of them tried to make a conversation. None of them wanted to either. But the calm that was ensued in that silence was something so absurd. So abnormal. Because who were Safa Hayat and Azlan Shehryar without bickering? Strange, how some people, some situations, can let you forget your problems when it comes to them. How they can make you realize that there are far bigger things in the world that need more importance.

"Strange!"

She muttered to herself in trance in merely a whisper but it didn't surpass his ears.

"Huh?"

He turned his head around a bit, his aviators fixed on his neatly trimmed stubbled cheekbones.

"What?"

"You just said something?"

He focused his eyes back on the road ahead.

"Yeah, I was talking to myself."

She shrugged.

"Wow! So you really are lose on top department of your head."

He jibed.

"Either that or even you being around, I still prefer to talk to myself."

Even he didn't know how to respond to that comeback of hers.

Seriously, who were Safa Hayat and Azlan Shehryar without bickering?

*******

"The food here is so good. Way good than Api cooks."

Ayyan chirped with a toothy grin, his effete figure snuggled in Safa's arms.

"So that means you're not giving everyone a hard time with your eating habits."

Azlan softly pulled his cheek from where he was sitting on the edge of the bed. A smile reached Safa's lips.

"Why would I? I love food!"

He exclaimed as he took a sip of his chocolate shake and Safa wiped away the thin streak of it formed on above his upper lips with a napkin.

"Oh, then you'd really hit it off with Raina."

Azlan teased Ayyan's hair.

"Who's that?"

He scrunched his brows together.

But before Azlan could utter anything, the door of the room suddenly opened with a clank and in walked Mansha. Ayyan perked up as he squealed her name, putting the glass on the side table.

Her tears strewn face broke into a graceful smile on seeing his brother as she almost ran towards him and enveloped him in her embrace.

A lone tear escaped Safa's eye and she flicked it away before anyone could notice. But someone had noticed and felt the pain, too.

"I missed you so-"

The next words died on his lips as his excited countenance got overshadowed by the fear on catching the figure leaning by the door. Crumpled clothes. Unkempt hair. His father's eyes were drinking in the sight of his children reunion. Children he had abandoned for so long that right now he felt nothing short of a stranger in their lives. A nuisance none of them wanted anymore.

"It's okay."

Mansha cupped his scrawny face. "He's here to meet you."

Ayyan's eyes wiggled between his father and his sister, not aware when he said those words. As if in a trance.

"But he'll beat me for not being a man and falling sick."

A whimper left his father's throat no long before it insinuated to big rounds of sobs. He didn't dare to step forward, neither backward. Frozen there. Crying. Regretting. Oh, but he didn't know it had been too late to regret. Way too late.

Azlan walked towards him, taking long strides and wounded his one arm around his shoulder, the other one holding his shaking hand. Supporting him, he made him sit on the couch as his tears pattered on his pristine white ceaseless crisp shirt but he let them pour even when it came to his office shirt, he was a complete douche. But this wasn't the time. The man needed a shoulder to lean on and he wasn't the one to turn his back on people who needed him.

"I'm sorry, my child. I did you wrong. So wrong that sorry is such a small word to compensate for what I've put you both through. For making you feel like orphans while having a father. For depriving you of the love of the parent who still lived with you under the same room. For making you feel like you were nothing but a burden on my shoulders."

He had put both his hands together in apology.

In an attempt to muffle his cries, Ayyan's small innocent face had ballooned into a pout, his nose flaring as he looked at the destructive state of the man sitting in front of him. The same man who had always sat on his throne with his head held high in pride and glory was, right now, breaking down in a hospital room, clad in the most shoddy apparel, muttering sorry over and over again with hands clamped together.

A fallen king.

A failed father.

A ruthless human.

"Baba."

The word scratched its way through Ayyan's clogged throat making him crane his head up, his eyes sparkling in hope. A hope that his son would forgive him. But would he ever be able to forgive himself?

Ayyan hopped off Safa's laps and splintered towards his father. His small hands brushed the tears away from his father's marred face. The same son who had shed umpteen tears due to him was now wiping away his.

"It's okay. I still love you, baba!"

He locked his hands around his neck and leaned on to him. A tight slap on his ruthlessness.

He held his tiny figure tautly in his embrace as he rubbed his back, tears cascading down his sleep deprived face like a broken faucet.

"I promise, I'll make up for everything, bachay. I promise."

His voice breaking into fragments as he kissed the top of his head, inhaling his scent. The same scent as of his mother.

Little did he know it had been too late. Too late to make things up.

******