Written for the Soulmate AU: one of your eyes matches your soulmate's eye color until you speak to each other.
Hello, everyone!
I'm really, really sorry to those who're still hanging on me from MTMDF, but I needed a break, and PPAAOR is on hiatus until further notice. I challenged my sister and myself to make a soulmate AU on one of our OTPs. Her work will either be published on my account, marked as hers, or on her account, in which case I"ll link ya to hers.
She's not done yet, though.
This soulmate AU came kind of out of nowhere (and Tumblr). It contains influences from Walking Together, a Johnlock soulmate AU, and Touch, a P&P Lizzy/Darcy based on the former. That influence is in a later chapter, but I hope you enjoy this one. Hopefully you'll stick with me... because this is a multi-chapter! I meant it to be a one-shot, but it got away from me.
I've been rambling long enough. Allons-y~
~Alex
Elizabeth Bennet loved the colour of her soulmate's eyes – not that she could tell which eye was hers and which her soulmate's, but her left was a soft dark brown that was almost black, and the other was a deep, deep blue, almost indigo in its intensity.
Her eldest sister, gentle Jane, had one bonny blue eye and one grey one that changed from blue to turquoise to green to true grey, studious Mary had one amber eye and one hazel eye, shy Kitty had one deep blue eye like Elizabeth's and one brown eye, and boisterous Lydia had one blue eye and one nut brown eye.
Elizabeth was hoping that at least one of them would find their soulmates at the upcoming Assembly, where the new addition to their neighbourhood, a Mr. Bingley who her mother had persuaded her father to wait upon, was to be present, along with his party. Jane was already in her twenty-second year and was not yet mated, in an age when most women met their soulmates within four or five years after coming out, and Jane had come out at sixteen.
As her mother fussed over Jane, Kitty, and Lydia, Elizabeth stared curiously at her dual eyes and tried to deduce which eye was hers. Judging by the fact that three of her sisters had one blue eye, it was probably a close enough guess that the darker eye was her soulmate's.
She studied it closer. It was a rich dark brown, like fertile soil, with streaks of black and grey twining through the brown like stone. Elizabeth quite liked that eye, despite her mother's constant bewailing of the fact that it threw off her colouring entirely – which was not false.
"What do you think, Lizzy?" a suddenly-self-conscious Kitty murmured, standing up and turning around in a cornflower dress that matched her blue eye with a brown sash that matched her brown eye.
Elizabeth smiled. It was so rare that she got such a moment with her two youngest sisters that she enjoyed every single one. "You look lovely, Kitty. Meet your soulmate in that and he will be speechless." Kitty threw her arms around her sister's neck and whispered, "I hope our soulmates are wonderful."
So much for that, Elizabeth thought. Jane had met her soulmate – and almost fainted in the process – but no one else had, and while Elizabeth was happy for her sister, she was bored.
Mr. Bingley's friend, Mr. Darcy, seemed unlikely to even have a soulmate. He was a very aloof character, and the hall was so dim in the corners he sulked as to give her no chance of ascertaining what colour his eyes were. Because there were so few gentlemen, Elizabeth sat out a few dances and amused herself with watching him until Mr. Bingley came up to press him into service.
"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."
"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with." His tone was haughty and cold. Elizabeth inwardly chuckled.
"I would not be as fastidious as you are for a kingdom!" Mr. Bingley looked reprimanding. "Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty."
"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at Jane, although, Elizabeth was pleased to note, without malice.
"Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld!" said Bingley happily. "But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I daresay very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you." He looked as though he wished to say something else, but did not.
"Which do you mean?" His eyes flicked open in her direction for a second – and Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a flash of deep blue, almost indigo. Like her or Kitty. "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."
Elizabeth burst into laughter as soon as Mr. Bingley walked off, and Mr. Darcy's gaze wandered in her direction once more. She met it boldly, if with a tingle of presentiment, and was shocked to see that one of his eyes was indeed a deep indigo blue – a shade to match hers or Kitty's.
Oh my God, no.
He started, and straightened, and cocked his head. His eyes fixed on hers for what seemed like years, before he turned away with obvious indifference.
Rude, Elizabeth inwardly snorted, and resolved to tell this little anecdote to Charlotte as soon as possible.
She kept running into him!
Elizabeth was ready to tear her hair out, despite the fact that Mr. Charles Bingley and Miss Jane Bennet were confirmed as a match, and had been courting for several days now. Mr. Darcy kept following her, with his indigo eye and his uncivil silence.
Their eyes had met again and again, until one evening at Lucas Lodge, she could stand his eavesdropping no longer. Charlotte had challenged her to confront him about his hanging about.
So she did. "Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself uncommonly well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster to give us a ball at Meryton?"
"With great energy; but it is always a subject which makes a lady energetic."
Before she could come back with her ready retort, he stumbled. And despite her dislike of him, she did not wish to see him injured. "Mr. Darcy?"
His eyes went wide – his eyes – and Elizabeth felt a sort of shock as a bolt of lightning must feel like. Her heart skipped beats erratically and her gaze fixed on the man in front of her as his indigo eye faded into rich dark brown, with black and grey threaded through the iris.
It matched his right eye perfectly.
Please, no.
Anyone but him.
She came back to herself and realised that she was leaning heavily on Charlotte while Mr. Darcy was half-sprawled rather awkwardly on the floor. He raised his eyes to hers. Rich, dark eyes, velvety and decadent. Somewhere vaguely in her mind she registered that someone was calling her, but she only responded once the spell broke and he looked away.
"Lizzy!" It was Kitty, holding her tightly but gently. "Are you alright? What happened to –? Oh." The younger girl's question died in her throat when her sister looked at her mutely.
With two indigo blue eyes.
Mr. Darcy staggered to his feet, and everybody saw that his eyes were now the same colour – and the colour matched the one eye Elizabeth Bennet had so admired on herself as a child. "What happened?" he asked thickly.
Sir William, still a bit shocked, brought him a small mirror, and he stared at his reflection, dumbfounded, blinking. "Oh, dear Lord."
These words seemed to snap Elizabeth out of her trance, and she stood on her tiptoes to get a look at the mirror. "What? Let me – oh my God." Nothing could have prepared her for what was staring back at her: one pair of dark-columbine eyes, and one pair of dark-earth eyes.
"We…" he and Elizabeth spoke at the same time, then stopped.
The same hiss – of relief, of pleasure, of shock, but from the pair of them a mix of horror and joy – escaped everyone in the immediate vicinity. "Soulmates."
