Three Days Later – Leh, Military Base Mess Hall
The canteen smelled of boiled lentils and diesel. Conversations were hushed. Boots echoed across the linoleum, chairs scraped in quiet submission, and outside the glass windows, snowflakes pirouetted with indifferent grace. Life here didn't stop for tenderness.
Dr. Kavya Malhotra sat alone at the corner table, flipping through her notes between reluctant bites of tasteless aloo paratha. The therapy sessions had drained her—grief was contagious when it lingered unspoken in tight rooms with men who refused to cry. But her eyes kept drifting toward the far end of the mess, where Major Shashwat Rajput sat.
He never looked around when he entered. He didn't need to. The room made space for him instinctively, like the tide retreating from an immovable rock.
He wasn't beautiful, not in the way poets wrote about. But there was something sculpted about him—like he'd been carved with necessity rather than affection. Gray eyes too knowing. Fingers too still. And that coin.
He always rolled it between his fingers—smooth, practiced, like a ritual. Heads. Tails. Flick. Catch. The metal caught sunlight like a sliver of history.
Today, Kavya couldn't help herself.
She got up.
"May I?" she asked, standing beside him.
He glanced up. For a second, he didn't reply. Then: "You can. But I don't promise conversation."
She slid into the seat opposite him, ignoring the flicker of interest from two other soldiers nearby.
"Fair enough," she said. "I'm too tired for small talk anyway."
A pause.
He resumed flipping the coin. Tails. Heads. Tails. The gesture was soothing, like a heartbeat.
Kavya leaned forward. "What's the story?"
He arched an eyebrow.
"The coin," she clarified.
His fingers stilled.
He looked at it for a moment, almost like he didn't want to hand the story over. Then he set it on the table between them. A small silver rupee, worn smooth on one side. The engraving was barely legible.
"My brother gave it to me," he said, voice low. "Before his last patrol. Said it had gotten him out of three ambushes. I carried it when I went up to Siachen. First frostbite, I held onto this so tight I didn't even feel my fingers blacken."
Kavya touched the edge gently. "You kept the coin and lost the fingers."
He offered the ghost of a smile. "Fair trade."
She didn't ask about the brother. Not yet. Some stories have to breathe before they can bleed.
"Why do you still carry it?"
He met her eyes. "So I don't forget the price of surviving."
A silence wrapped around them like fog—thick, wordless, intimate.
Then he asked, unexpectedly, "What about your necklace?"
She looked down at the silver pendant—Kashmir, etched into a tiny map. It glinted faintly against her sweater.
"My fiancé was an IAF pilot," she said. "He died two years ago. Engine failure. His last mission was over Kupwara. He wanted to be buried there. So I wear it. It reminds me... that he existed."
Shashwat nodded slowly, then said something so quiet she almost missed it.
"We keep carrying them, don't we?"
She looked up. "Yes."
"And sometimes," he added, "we mistake that weight for strength."
The ache in her chest felt old and new at once.
Later That Day – Medical Bay
Captain DK was sorting supplies when Kavya walked in.
He looked up and smirked. "You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The I just had a conversation with a war-sculpted Greek tragedy and now I don't know what feelings are anymore look."
Kavya rolled her eyes but smiled. "You're insufferable."
He grinned. "Only mildly."
DK handed her a file. "New intake. Sepoy Arjun Mehta. They're keeping him here for a week. Frostnip. Early signs of survivor's guilt. Thought you could talk to him."
She flipped the folder open. "He asked for me?"
DK shrugged. "He asked for 'the one who doesn't talk like a shrink.' I assumed he meant you."
Kavya sat across from Arjun fifteen minutes later. He was barely twenty-three. Baby-faced. His fingers trembled when he picked at his blanket.
"I saw my best friend blown apart," he whispered. "We'd swapped seats in the convoy."
Kavya leaned in. "And now you think it should've been you."
He didn't nod, but he didn't have to.
She waited. Silence is a therapist's scalpel.
"Major Rajput was the one who pulled me out," Arjun said after a pause. "He carried me three kilometers with half a squad down. Didn't say a word. Just handed me a glove soaked in my friend's blood and said, 'Hold it tight. You owe him that much.'"
Kavya blinked.
That glove now sat folded beneath Arjun's pillow.
That Evening – Officers' Quarters
She knocked on Shashwat's door before she could talk herself out of it.
When he opened it, she noticed the room was spartan. Bed rolled. Desk bare. But on the wall, clipped discreetly behind his military commendations, was a torn sheet of paper.
Poetry.
In Hindi. Faded ink. But unmistakable.
"ज़िंदगी की बर्फ़ में
जब हर सांस जंग लगे सिक्के जैसी हो—
तब भी उम्मीद की आग जलानी पड़ती है।
वरना आदमी सिर्फ़ वर्दी रह जाता है।"
(In life's snow,
when every breath is like a rusted coin—
you still have to light a fire of hope.
Else a man becomes only a uniform.)
He noticed her staring. For once, he didn't hide it.
"It's old," he said gruffly. "Not meant for anyone."
"It was meant for someone," she replied. "Even if it was just the man you used to be."
He looked away. "You think poetry changes anything?"
"No," she said gently. "But it saves the part of you that war can't touch."
Their eyes met. She wasn't sure who leaned first—but the space between them shortened.
"I came to say thank you," she said. "For Arjun."
Shashwat shrugged. "I didn't save him. Just carried him."
"Sometimes, carrying someone is enough."
He didn't move. But his eyes softened. "You keep coming back."
Kavya smiled. "You keep giving me reasons."
Midnight – Base Radio Room
The power flickered. The sky outside was pitch black.
She couldn't sleep. So she wandered. Ended up at the radio shack where old transmissions played in loops.
One voice echoed from a long-archived file.
"...weather over Nubra remains volatile. Hold positions. No flight clearance. Repeat—no clearance."
A name flickered on the log: Squadron Leader Neel Singh.
Kavya sat on the floor. Her eyes burned. He had sounded so calm. So casual. Like dying was just another day.
Then—
"Tell Kavya... I'll land. Then I'll call."
She broke.
She didn't sob. She crumbled.
A quiet, salt-drenched collapse.
The door creaked behind her.
She didn't need to turn to know it was him.
Shashwat didn't say anything. He sat beside her. Close, not touching. Offering presence instead of platitudes.
After a long pause, she whispered, "He died mid-sentence. That's the part that kills me."
Shashwat reached into his pocket.
He held the coin out to her. Not to keep. Just to hold.
It was still warm from his palm.
"Sometimes," he said, "carrying something that's survived longer than grief helps."
She held it. Pressed it to her heart.
And for the first time in two years, the silence didn't feel like a grave.
Next Morning – Parade Ground
They stood side by side during inspection. Snow crunching under boots, sun glinting off rifles.
Kavya leaned in and said, "Why 'Lion'?"
Shashwat kept his eyes straight. "Lions don't mourn. They move."
"Even when wounded?"
He turned slightly. "Especially then."
She looked at him, hair tousled in the wind, frost scars catching the light.
"I don't think that's strength," she whispered. "I think it's surrender disguised as pride."
He didn't deny it.
But that night, tucked behind his uniform buttons, a new slip of paper rested—written in ink, unfinished:
"तुम्हारी आवाज़ सुनकर...
जैसे बर्फ़ भी पिघलना चाहता हो।"
(Hearing your voice...
even the snow longs to melt.)