CHAPTER VII HOME IS WHERE MY STAR IS
A/N: Tara (Hindi) ?? Star (English)
Enjoy!
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The car didn’t roar through the gates.
It crept. Somehow the surroundings reflected the heavy boulder from under which the youngest Rajvanshi had crawled out.
The Rajvanshi gates opened with their usual mechanical obedience, wrought iron parting like it always did—but tonight even the metal seemed to hesitate.
No horns. No voices raised in greeting. Just tires rolling slow over gravel that had heard worse secrets and learned to keep its mouth shut.
The headlights washed over marble and hedges and statues that had stood witness to too many versions of power, too many arrivals that mattered less than this one.
Amaya sat rigid in the passenger seat, arm strapped into a sling, jaw clenched so tightly it looked like bone might give way before she did.
Her eyes never left the backseat. Not when the guards straightened.
Not when the front door burst open and Devika came tearing down the steps barefoot, hair loose, dignity discarded like it was a luxury she couldn’t afford tonight.
Ishaani was in the back.
Not sprawled. Not dramatic.
Folded in her own space maintaining it the sole safe space she could be positive about.
Like someone had taken her apart and tried—gently, clumsily—to put her back together without checking if the pieces still matched.
Her head rested against the seat, eyes half-open, lashes too heavy for a face that young.
Bruises were healing, technically. Yellow and purple still bloomed along her cheekbone and her jaw.
Her lips were dry, cracked at the corner.
A bandage peeked out from beneath the collar of the hoodie she wore.
The hoodie was the thing closest to home because it smelled like Vedika, and Ishaani tethered to it like the anchor it served as.
That detail landed like a slap. Someone else’s clothes. Someone else’s fabric touching her skin. It was her sister's yet somehow for the singular time in her life, she felt it like a violation so deep in her bones because of the treatment she had been under.
Devika reached the car first. She yanked the door open, a sharp inhale turning feral when she saw Ishaani properly, when denial finally lost its footing.
Though she has barely seen Ishaani at the hospital, yet an older sister's mind would never rest knowing her youngest was in pain and hurting with each fibre of her being.
“Finally,” Devika whispered. Then louder, rawer, “The house was a breathing corpse without you.”
Her hands hovered, useless for a heartbeat, like she didn’t know where it was safe to touch.
Then she crouched, cupping Ishaani’s face with the kind of care she usually reserved for explosives.
Her crouched form looked slightly upward to find Ishaani's brown eyes already matched to her movements, like a sailor looking for her pole star.
“My baby,” Devika said, voice cracking despite every instinct she had. “Ishu. Look at me.”
Ishaani blinked slowly, dragged herself into focus. "I missed you, Devi di.”
That was it. That was the kill shot.
Devika straightened and pulled Ishaani out of the car from her seated position and forward into her chest, careful and brutal all at once, like she wanted to protect and punish the universe in the same breath. “You stupid, brave, reckless—” Her voice snapped. “You scared the shit out of us.”
Devika had her arms around Ishaani's torso, in a wide embrace as if she could guard Ishaani from each vile energy of the world if only she could tuck Ishaani away.
Her big hands caressed down Ishaani's back, who in response pressed her face to Devika's neck, like she was accustomed to when the world was too hurtful and inconsiderate towards her.
Devika bent slightly in the hug, only because she realized Ishaani was on her tip-toes to reach her sister's neck.
Amaya leaned across the seat after a few seconds, “Easy,” she muttered. “She’s sore everywhere.”
Devika froze as guilt crept across her face.
She pulled back at once, palms up. “Sorry. Sorry, shona. I’m here.
” Ishaani wished to protest, wished to say how it didn't hurt her as much as what had been bestowed upon her since the past 6 days had, and that she felt safer than ever in her sister's arms yet she didn't utter a word, fixing herself with a nod and smile.
At the top of the steps, Sneha Rajvanshi stood perfectly still.
Silk saree draped with surgical precision.
Jewelry immaculate as ever, chin lifted and mirroring the exact image of a self-sufficient and proud woman she portrayed.
To the outside world, she was the image of composed aristocracy—the woman who did not bend, the matriarch who ruled with restraint and silence.
But her hands betrayed her.
They were clenched into the fabric at her waist so tightly her knuckles had gone bone-white. Her lips were pressed thin, not from disapproval, but from holding something back. Something wild, something maternal and furious and feral.
Vedika stood a step behind her. Her arms crossed and jaw locked. Her blue-brown eyes scanned Ishaani as Devika curled herself around Ishaani to support her as she walked around the driveway. She hadn’t rushed when the car arrived. Hadn’t paced. Hadn’t moved at all.
That was worse.
Vedika Rajvanshi only went that still when something inside her had already fractured.
When Ishaani was finally guided out—slowly, carefully—Sneha descended the steps.
She didn’t run like a 2000's Bollywood mother, finally reconciling with a long lost offspring. She walked like a queen reclaiming stolen ground. She knew her Ishaani was home, after a lot of hardships but now she was.
The moment Ishaani was within reach, Sneha’s composure split clean down the middle.
If you silenced the environment enough, the RIPPPP!
! of the demeanor could be heard perfectly.
She pulled her into her arms with a sharp inhale, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other firm against her spine, anchoring her to the world.
“My Ishu,” Sneha whispered into her hair. “My shona. You’re home.”
Ishaani for the first time ever since she was rescued out of that hellish room, and since after she had hugged Tara like her life depended on it, was she now relaxing and genuinely hugging another human being.
She did not collapse, did not let go when she felt her legs were about to give out.
She simply leaned, until she felt her mother's wrap tighten around her built shoulders, and hooked her arms from under her mother's shoulders.
Like she trusted home again.
Sneha’s eyes closed for a brief, treasonous second, savoring the presence of her only child in her arms. Then she straightened, smoothing Ishaani’s hair back, her voice already snapping back into authority. “Inside. Slowly. Someone bring water. And for God’s sake, close the gates.”
Devika barked orders like it was a war zone. Guards moved and staff scattered. The house snapped into motion.
Vedika approached last.
She stopped in front of Ishaani and simply looked.
Really looked.
Her gaze tracked with surgical precision—face, hands, posture, the way Ishaani favored one side, the hitch in her breathing when she shifted her weight. When Vedika finally lifted a hand, she cupped Ishaani’s cheek gently, thumb brushing just under her bruised eye.
“You did well,” Vedika said quietly. “You survived.”
Ishaani nodded. Something flickered there—pride, maybe. Or just bone-deep exhaustion.
The house swallowed them whole.
Lights dimmed. Voices softened. Even the furniture seemed to rearrange itself around the fragile gravity Ishaani carried with her. Water was pressed into her hands. A blanket appeared. The doctor murmured reassurances that landed and slid off like rain.
And Tara Kapoor stood near the doorway.
She hadn’t planned to be there. Hadn’t announced herself.
She hadn’t trusted her legs.
She watched everything like it was happening underwater. Watched Sneha’s hand linger on Ishaani’s shoulder. Watched Devika hover like a sentry. Watched Vedika double-check the locks without realizing she was doing it.
And she watched Ishaani.
Watched how her eyes kept lifting as though they were searching for a needle in the sand.
Until.....
they found her.
The moment their gazes locked, something in Ishaani’s face softened in a way that nearly dropped Tara to her knees. Not gratitude. Not politeness.
Just Relief.
Like the last door in a burning house had finally opened. Or a sudden escape from the thought of a vertigo.
Tara’s breath stuttered. She looked away for half a second—just long enough to pull herself together.
This wasn’t about her. Not yet, that is.
Yes, she wished to march in there and pull Ishaani flush against her, so tight that Ishaani forgot about anything crude or vile from the past six days, a grip tighter than a lion's jaw, something which Ishaani could focus on without jumping head first into a whirlpool.
That she would do, but, later.
At night, they settled Ishaani into her room like she was something sacred and breakable.
Pillows adjusted. Curtains drawn. Instructions repeated too many times.
Sneha kissed her forehead as Devika scolded her gently.
Vedika lingered longer than necessary, her hand resting on Ishaani’s shoulder like an anchor.
Tara stayed back.
She would come later. When the house finally exhaled. When Ishaani was safe enough to cry. When she was certain no eye would look or ridicule the bundle of a heroic tragedy in her arms.
The lights were dimmed. Never off. Never dark. Just softened, as though harsh illumination might expose damage no one yet possessed the vocabulary to articulate. The bulbs hummed faintly, their glow cautious, indulgent, as if even electricity feared being accused.
Ishaani lay propped against the headboard, surrounded by pillows that failed spectacularly at pretending to be comfort.
They were too stiff, too deliberately placed, like everything else people had done for her since she had been brought back.
The blanket wrapped around her, however, was not hospital-issued.
It was hers.
Pale blue. Frayed at the edges. Thinned in places where her fingers had worried the fabric over the years without conscious thought.
That mattered more than anyone said aloud.
When Devika had placed it over her earlier, Ishaani’s hands had curled into the cotton instinctively, gripping with the reflexive urgency of muscle memory acting before courage could interfere. Home, reduced to texture and familiarity. Home, rendered small enough to clutch.
Her room had not changed.
The realization struck harder than it should have.
The bookshelf still leaned stubbornly to the left, ignored and uncorrected.
The chipped mug on the bedside table still held pens she never used but could not bring herself to discard.
The fairy lights above the window were still tangled, looped incorrectly because she had lost patience halfway through fixing them and decided that crooked was acceptable.
Life had paused here.
As though it had been waiting.
Tara stood just outside the doorway.
She had not knocked. She had not announced herself.
She hovered with one hand braced against the wall, fingers splayed, grounding herself as though the floor might tilt if she did not anchor down.
The threshold felt ceremonial. Crossing it felt like an admission she was not convinced she would survive.
She looked wrecked.
Her hair was tied back poorly, strands slipping free like they had renounced discipline altogether.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and raw, as though she had spent days arguing with grief and lost every round.
Her jaw was clenched so tightly it looked painful, as if she were holding herself together by force alone.
The hoodie she wore was old, sleeves chewed at the cuffs, the fabric softened by overuse and an impressive catalogue of bad coping mechanisms.
She looked like someone who had not slept and had fought every mirror that dared reflect her.
She had not come earlier because she did not trust herself not to fracture in front of everyone. Not Devika, with her steel-spined composure. Not Vedika, with her quiet, predatory stillness. Not Amaya, whose jokes functioned like tourniquets.
This moment was private.
Sacred.
Untouchable.
Ishaani turned her head slowly.
And saw her.
The world narrowed.
Everything else—the ache in her body, the buzzing pain, the static hum of survival—fell away like a dream dissolving under morning light.
“Tara,” Ishaani whispered.
Just the name. Bare. Exposed.
Tara inhaled sharply, like the sound had struck her square in the lungs.
“Hey,” she said, voice low, measured, as though she were approaching something skittish. “Hey, sunshine.”
The word landed like a memory Ishaani had not realized she had been mourning.
Her lips trembled. Her eyes filled instantly, pride absent, restraint abandoned. Tears slid sideways into her hair, unchecked and graceless and devastatingly sincere.
“I thought—” she choked, swallowing hard. “I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”
That was it.
Tara crossed the room in three strides and dropped to her knees beside the bed as though gravity had finally claimed her. She took Ishaani’s hands—both of them—and pressed her forehead to Ishaani’s knuckles like a prayer she had been repeating for days without knowing it had words.
“Don’t,” Tara whispered. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think that shit.”
Her hands shook openly. Violently.
Ishaani let out a fractured laugh through tears. “You’re swearing.”
“Yeah,” Tara said hoarsely. “I earned it.”
She lifted her head then and looked at her properly.
The bruises. The shadows. The sharp prominence of her collarbone. The physical evidence of absence—of harm, of days that had stolen something no apology could return. Tara’s jaw tightened until it hurt.
“They almost took you from me,” she said.
Not loudly. Not theatrically. Just a fact. A truth already carved into her bones.
Ishaani lifted trembling fingers and brushed Tara’s cheek. “You look worse than me.”
Tara huffed a laugh that fractured midway. “I lived off coffee and spite for four days. I win.”
Ishaani’s hand lingered, thumb tracing the edge of Tara’s jaw as if mapping proof of existence. Her breathing slowed. Settled.
“I kept hearing you,” she said quietly.
Tara froze.
“What do you mean?”
“In my head,” Ishaani said. “When it got really bad. When I couldn’t tell day from night anymore. I kept hearing you say my name.”
Her voice broke. “I thought I was making you up.”
Tara leaned forward until their foreheads touched, her eyes burning.
“I was saying it,” she whispered. “Like a mantra. You weren’t imagining me.”
Something in Ishaani finally gave way.
Not softly. Not poetically.
Her body folded inward, shoulders shaking, breath hitching as though she had been holding it for years. Tara wrapped her arms around her without hesitation, ignoring soreness, warnings, invisible boundaries drawn by others.
“It’s okay,” Tara murmured into her hair. “I’ve got you. Cry. You’re safe. You’re home.”
“I was so scared,” Ishaani gasped. “I thought—what if you move on? What if you think I’m dead and you just… live?”
Tara pulled back sharply, hands framing Ishaani’s face.
“Don’t you ever,” she said fiercely. “Ever put that idea in your head. I don’t move on from you. I don’t replace you. I don’t forget you. You’re it.”
Ishaani nodded, tears streaming. “I was so sure I’d lost you.”
“No,” Tara said. “You lost your phone privileges and your personal freedom.”
A broken laugh escaped Ishaani before collapsing into another sob.
Tara held her again, tighter now, rocking her gently as if she were something irreplaceable. She kissed her hair. Her temple. Her cheek. Each touch reverent, grounding, declarative.
They stayed like that for a long time.
When Ishaani finally pulled back, exhausted, eyes swollen and glassy, Tara brushed her thumb beneath her eye.
“You scared me,” Tara said. “I imagined everything. Hospitals. Coffins. Police at my door. Your sisters with that look they get when they’re about to erase someone’s bloodline.”
“Devika almost did,” Ishaani murmured.
Tara snorted. “Of course she did.”
Silence followed. Weighted. Intent.
Outside, thunder rolled.
The storm had been building all evening. Lightning flashed through the curtains, brief and violent.
“Of course the sky’s being dramatic,” Tara muttered.
“When the thunder got really loud,” Ishaani said softly, “I screamed.”
Tara stilled.
“I wailed your name.”
“I was outside,” Tara said. “Devika dragged me back.”
“You were there?”
“I never left.”
They leaned toward each other, grief and relief pulling them together. Their noses brushed. Their lips hovered.
They stopped.
Restraint, trembling.
“We shouldn’t,” Ishaani whispered.
“I know.”
“But I want to.”
“So badly.”
They stayed there, foreheads touching. It was not desire.
It was need.
“I buried you once already,” Tara said. “I hated myself for surviving it.”
“I’m here.”
“I know. I just need to hear it again.”
“I’m here.”
Thunder cracked.
Tara laughed weakly. “Even the universe is unhinged.”
“It missed me,” Ishaani said.
Tara kissed her forehead. Slow. Intentional.
“I love you.”
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just placed there like a truth she’d finally stopped choking on.
I love you.
And Ishaani—
Ishaani forgot how to breathe.
It wasn’t poetic at first. It was ugly. Panic seized her chest like she’d run headfirst into a wall she hadn’t seen coming. Her fingers spasmed around the blanket, knuckles whitening, eyes widening like the room had tilted off its axis.
Her lungs refused to cooperate.
She stared at Tara.
Like Tara wasn’t a woman sitting beside her on the bed anymore but something carved out of myth and salt and devotion. Like a goddess wearing exhaustion and loving her anyway.
Her lips parted. Nothing came out.
Tara noticed immediately.
“Hey—hey,” she said softly. “Breathe. With me.”
She placed Ishaani’s hand against her own chest. “In. Out. Copy me.”
Ishaani did. Shakily. Again. Again.
Her eyes never left Tara’s face.
“You said—” Ishaani tried.
“I know,” Tara murmured.
“You weren’t supposed to,” Ishaani whispered.
Tara blinked. “What?”
“I had it planned,” Ishaani said breathlessly. “Stupidly planned. Timing and everything.”
Tara smiled. “Of course you did.”
“I was gonna wait,” Ishaani rushed on. “Till it wasn’t heavy. Till it wasn’t a hospital room. I didn’t want it to feel like a last thing.”
Tara’s throat tightened. “Oh, Ish.”
“It’s not too fast,” Ishaani said desperately. “It’s late.”
Relief cracked through Tara like sunlight. “Good. Because it just fell out of me.”
“I love you too,” Ishaani said. Clear. Certain. “I’ve loved you longer than I was brave enough to admit.”
They didn’t kiss.
They stayed.
Claimed. Breathing. Alive.
Outside, the storm eased perhaps, sensing the avalanche of emotions Inside Ishaani's battered body was a higher comparison to its intensity. Inside, something settled. Not healed, but just fixed.
And held.
And for Ishaani—it felt like devotion had finally been returned. Her cathedral was right in front of her, preaching a sermon Ishaani knew all too well.
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A/N: Dear Readers,
Hope you all had a great day/night, wherever you're reading from. This one was somehow a tad more difficult to write. Not because it was emotional (I'm bad with emotions, if you couldn't tell), but because this reflected Devika's true character.