let loss reveal it

SIDHARTH MALHOTRA in A GENTLEMAN (2017)

The immense compassion Hwijid felt for human souls didn't extend to the souls that lingered. For them, they got his pity. He viewed the other spirit as a manifestation of torment. At least his contract provided him with purview under Death. She was toiling in mortal strife with no true connection to the realm. This wasn't her home any longer. "Save your tears for yourself. You haven't any to spare on her for your situation is more dire." Hwijid's warning was absolute. The woman would meet Death on the terms he set. A restless spirit will not interfere, he won't allow it. "Her fight wasn't good, it's left her tired. Old and decrepit, she's kept her back to me just to remain. She will accept her end, embrace Death, and be led to the next plane with peace in her heart. She will not suffer as you do," he says, knowing the realm of mortal minds was his to command. With a wave of his hand, he weaves a warm dream around the woman. Hwijid will not show her visions of perseverance, but quiet, bright calm like he hoped she'd experience through the Void. It's all she had left. "Leave us, you poor thing. This one is mine. I won't allow you to infect her with your pain."

“Callous or not, all are made equal in the eyes of Death. He will have them regardless of the lives they led. Except…” It was never Hwijid’s place to judge and so he never did. A soul’s path was made inherently clear to him, but these days there was only one to follow. He sighed, seeing no point in airing this particular concern to another reaper. It’d only burden him. “Peace, or what I imagine that to look like. Elysium wasn’t mine to walk, but I hope my impression will bring her ease. This part of her journey she must walk alone, but at least in serenity she will open herself up to the fact that I am watching her.” That was the closest to peace Hwijid would ever know, that look of bliss that found its way onto the faces of those fortunate enough to pass in a beautiful dream. They were much rarer these days. “Do you find humanity contemptible?”

Abel looked far away from the woman as the Reaper appeared; he understood the mechanics of it, but witnessing one die, even from natural causes, was almost this unbearable sense of bystander syndrome. "I know not to interfere with a reaper," where once they seemed infrequent and imperceptible entity within this realm, it was a little weird for the Castle to have met not one, but two. Abel didn't understand where Marisol, after making her ultimate sacrifice, would go but there was this strange twist of comfort in the message Abel found now that he'd run into another Reaper. Life had a funny way of translating grief, love, any transcendent message and his lips pulled in a tight line as Abel tried to blur out the haggard breathing of the woman. "I think it's every humans inescapable flaw, to keep fighting when everything else is against you." He still couldn't turn his head to look at her and as such the reaper, too, was not visible to him.

Hwijid wanted no mercy or misfortune for her, only a gentle end to the long life she had walked. Witnessing would serve as his salvation too, granting a sense of completion that was lost beneath the terrible pace of his current workload. The slowness was reminiscent of the old days when he didn’t question his job. “It is not a flaw,” Hwijid corrects, unable to begrudge a human for turning their back on Death. “His inevitability is what makes life meaningful. There is nothing wrong with fighting for life, the wrong comes from thinking like yours. I am on her side.” As inconveniencing as it was to give this amount of attention to one soul, Hwijid still disregarded his busy schedule for this drawn-out moment. Plus, given she was fated for the Void, Hwijid couldn't imagine any greater way to show his allyship than granting her comfort on her final journey. When she was ready, she would look upon his face in the same, unfettered way the reaper looked upon the face of the witch. Hwijid took no offense to being avoided, no mortal should gaze upon a reaper before their time. “When it’s your shadow I walk in, the choice to fight will be yours. I have patience, which is why she won’t be scared when she finally sees me. I have been coming to her for some time now.”

There was always more work to be done. The job of the reaper was unending, and even now Hwijid could feel the call of countless souls waiting on him to show them the way. His backlog was a mile long, but this woman represented a time when Death's pace was less intense. "Sentimentality is valueless, yet it seems most accurate to what I've been feeling. What a pity," he prattles on, waving his hand over the struggling woman's head with hopes that a peaceful dream will help her to accept the inevitable. "I'm ignoring my appointments, all to take a chance on her. I've been behind since His gaze turned to the mortal realm anyway, what's a few hundred more in queue?" Hwijid was confident that experiences like this would help to remind him of something important that was slipping away due to their increasing workload. "You should keep your appointments though. Restlessness breeds trouble for us."

SIDHARTH MALHOTRA as GURU in EK VILLAIN (2014)

[Image ID: two gifs of Sidharth Malhotra as Tariq Hussain from Mission Majnu. He’s lifting a small cup of chai to his lips to sip, deep in thought. He lowers the cup and smiles. The gif is colored a blue-purple. /end ID]: