Hi! I was listening to Avril Lavigne's 'Innocence' (don't judge, I'm a sucker for oldish songs) and I thought of this. Wouldn't leave me alone! It also helps me to understand the bigger fic. Right now this is my only chapter, but I think I might post more. Tell me if I should!

Also, if you don't know where this is supposed to take place, it's in the MTMDF (More Than My Dearest Friend) universe, where Darcy and Elizabeth meet as kids and grow up best friends, but they fight and drift apart. William writes about this event in his diary, and explains how he was in a bit of a depression at the time.

While you read, I suggest playing the song 'Innocence'. It'll help with the tone.


"Where are you going, William?"

The soft voice of his twelve-year-old sister halted him. William turned back around. "Outside, Georgie. To Mother's rose garden." The hot room was stifling him. He needed to go, go to that one place he felt connected to his deceased mother. His navy blue scarf, waistcoat, and gloves were making him sweat through his clothes, and his black winter coat did not help matters. "Georgie, please," he pleaded desperately. "I need to go."

"But... it is Christmas." The blonde girl was curled up into a ball before the fire, looking shy and shut up.

"I know... I need to feel closer to Mother this Christmas, now that Father is gone as well..." Without another word, William strode out of the manor house to the frozen rose garden.

A full-grown, if young, man of three-and-twenty, his dark hair was a contrast to his sister's golden blonde, although his cerulean blue eyes were only a slight shade off his sister's bonny blue. The gold that ringed his irises was now gone, like the sunlight that had once lit his darkness.

The cool winter wind sliced at his cheeks as he made his way to the garden. He pulled his hat low over his eyes, and let himself become as cold and dark outside as inside. Ironic, is it not, he thought, that my wardrobe is that of mourning? And I have had it since I was eighteen. Have I always been this dark?

"Yes, I have," he said out loud, opening the gate to his one sanctuary where he was not tortured by the world or his problems. It was a place as though captured from a dream, from his peaceful slumber: a place where the world did not weigh down on his young, stooped shoulders.

The silence calmed him as the gate, squeaking loudly, shut behind him and his footsteps crunched in the snow. What would once have been chilling to him was comforting.

He looked around at the snow-covered, bare bushes, and lay down in the snow, welcoming the numbing cold that lanced into his feverish neck and ears. He closed his eyes, letting his mind go blank, and simply enjoying the solid blue of the winter sky, the blending of the clouds to the moon, and the white, pure glow of the lunar rays.

William felt peaceful - awake - for the first time in a year. Always, his solace had been sleep, dreams, but this in itself was a dream to him, a dream that was a bliss cut off from his world.

When he was dreaming, he was innocent, a boy unaware of all the sadness and corruption death could cause. When he was dreaming, he was blissfully in a world of his own imagination, away from all the cares of his outer world. His imagination was a dark place, true, but it was a peaceful place, where he mattered, where he was not ignored, where he was not a sign of shame or resentment. Here, as he was with Elizabeth, he was himself. Changed by my circumstances, changed by my experiences, but still, essentially, me, William.

He was here, in the night, with the snow and the wind, the trees and the clouds, the moon and the stars, and he was content. Painless, ignorant bliss. His mind was fogging, where he could not see the painful memories that tortured him. His surroundings were beautiful, and for this treasured moment, so was he.

I wish I could stay here forever. Here, I do not have to live in eternal torment, eternal resentment of myself. Here, I like who I am. I am myself, fully, wonderfully myself. This freedom is the best feeling I have had in a long time.

This moment is perfect. William sighed and let himself smile. Smile, really smile, and for a fleeting moment he imagined Elizabeth by his side, and the moment, his innocent moment, was brilliant, perfect. A muted version of happiness drifted into his soul - a contentment born of ignorance. This was not his kind of happiness, but it was all he could have.

I will hold onto this for as long as I can, William thought. I belong here, and I am as happy as I can be. As long as I can, I will stay here, where the ghosts of my past and present cannot tread and all I see is the bright potential of an imagined future.

Fleeting as a summer breeze, his peace faded, and William found himself in pain once more, a subtle, only slightly painful throb in his chest that was slowly poisoning him. The gaping hole in his soul opened, and began to eat away the rest of him in a slow, agonizing meal.

His Mother and his Father, two of the dearest people he knew, were gone where he could not reach them. He could never cry on his mother's shoulder anymore, never look to his father for comfort. William felt the enormity of his loss crashing down on him, and he began to sob, quietly of course.

There was no use worrying Georgiana about this. He was nothing, and never would be. His parents, the only people who really thought he was worth something, were separated from him by the tantalizing veil called Death. "Oh, Elizabeth!" he whispered miserably into the snow. "I wish you were here - so much..." His emotions welling up again, he admitted what he would not say for the world: "I love you, Elizabeth. You are the dearest of all to me. God, do I wish you were here!"

His need for her - her joy, her smile, her humour - felt like a burning hole in his heart and his throat, and he choked on his own tears as the anguish he could not express poured out onto the snow in front of him. It felt like his raw agony was oozing out of his body, but it gave him no comfort to be bleeding. Curled up in a ball, hands clutching at the throb in his chest, the tears that dripped off his agonized face might as well have been blood.

His emotions swirled down the same drain they had come from, and William uncurled, the tear tracks on his cheeks freezing in the cold. He was exhausted after his crying fit, and the silence felt so inviting. Expressing his emotions took so much of his energy nowadays..

I feel so drowsy... sleep is so welcome right now. I want to dream, to escape from this reality that is chipping me away. I will sleep, for a little while. For just a little while...

And, not feeling the cold frost against his body, Fitzwilliam Darcy drifted off into a sleep he did not know he might never awaken from.