Disclaimer- I own nothing. So sue me if it makes you happy, because that's about all you will get out of it.

A/N- I owe so much to Pame Islava. Without her, this story would absolutely never have happened. And I'm so glad that it did happen. Because it's become quite dear to me. Anyway, this is an AU modern day Will/Elizabeth story. They are becoming much more common, and that makes me happy, because I rather like that genre of story. Hopefully mine is original though. Or at least, original enough to make people read it and NOT say "Another one of these!" Not that there's a lot of similar stories out there so that they are becoming old. Oh good god, I should just stop. Just read it, okay?

The Sun and the Moon

"Will?"

The receiver felt heavy in his hands, cold and unfriendly. Her voice was too far away, and no matter how hard he gripped the smooth plastic of the phone, it remained unyielding to his need to be there with her, to hold her and to smell her and to feel her and know she was all right.

"Will... can you please come..." she whimpered. She was crying. Sobbing, in fact. And pleading with him to come to her. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed deeply. Only she could do this, chip away at him so that all of his resolve, all of his sense lay in broken shards at his feet.

"Will..." she trembled, "Please. Please, Will... Say something!"

He knew he shouldn't. But he also knew he would.

"I'll be there in a couple minutes."

After she sobbed her gratitude to him, he gingerly hung the receiver on the cradle. He felt the frustrating contradiction of wanting to rush to her side and pick her up again and of leaving her to do it on her own.

Sighing heavily, he pulled his shoes and a sweatshirt on, and grabbed his keys off of the table.

"Will?" came a sleepy voice from his bedroom.

He turned to see Amy, blurry eyed and wrapped in what appeared to be the bed comforter, standing in their bedroom doorway.

"What's going on? Where are you going at this hour?"

He walked over to her, pulled the comforter tighter around her body, rubbed her arms, buried his head in the bend of her neck.

"Will?" she said, the sleep seeping out of her voice at her alarm at his sudden rush of affection.

He pulled back and looked at her. She knew right away where he was going and pulled back from him.

"I'll try to be back tonight, Amy, but... She's really rough, she needs me," even he could hear the justification in his voice, and he wasn't sure whose actions he was justifying, his, hers or Amy's.

"She always needs you," Amy said with a defeated shrug, and turned from him back into the room. Will grabbed her fingers quickly, pulling her back to him.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he whispered in her ear. He brushed his lips across hers lightly.

"I love you," she whispered in reply, a hint of desperation in her voice, a last plea for him to stay with her.

Will paused and scanned her face. "Get some sleep," he said softly and watched her eyes cringe away from his. Her fingers slipped from his hand as she turned into the bedroom, looking strangely swallowed beneath the heavy folds of the blanket.

Leaving his apartment quickly, he knew he was leaving one crying girl for another. Because of another.

Will turned the key, and his car slowly rumbled to life. This was wrong. Deliberately slow, Will turned the lights on. He shouldn't be going to see her. He unnecessarily adjusted the rear view mirror. He had made a promise to himself. He put his foot on the brake, testing it. He had made a promise to Amy. He shifted the car to reverse.

No, no this was all wrong. He couldn't do this, not to Amy and definitely not to himself. She could be so selfish sometimes. It was so unfair to himself, and completely cruel and uncaring to Amy. If he wanted to have any future with Amy, he knew he had to cut the ignition. He had to stop going to her every time she called him. He had to stand up to her for himself and for Amy and for their future. Amy had put up with her relentless phone calls for far too long. At first she had thought Will such a good person for rushing to her side every time she fell down, but now she was a division between them. She was the third person in the relationship, and there was only room for two. Will had to make his decision. Who was it going to be?

Letting out a frustrated groan, he shifted back to park. He ran a hand through his unruly, slept on curls.

But he couldn't just cut her out of his life. She had been in it longer than Amy. Hell, she had been part of his life for longer than any other living person. She was his childhood playmate, his best friend all throughout school, the only steady face he could count on when his parents had their accident, his only encouragement throughout his years at university, the only thing real about the world after he finished up his education. It's not like she hadn't done a lot for him. Maybe now it was his turn to be there for her. They went together, they always had. They were as dependent on each other as the day and the night. And about as different. But still, you couldn't have one without the other, a day wasn't complete without the night, and Will wasn't complete without Elizabeth.

And so Will shifted the car into reverse, and slipped into the night. There was never much of a choice for him.

"Liz?" he called, letting himself into her apartment after hiding the spare key back in the bottom of a flower pot with a fake plant. The apartment was dark, and Will was blinded for a few seconds before his eyes adjusted. It smelled foul, as if it had been closed up for the past couple days. It was hot and the whole place was heavy and suffocating. He walked forward into the living room and even his footsteps seemed muffled. The four tall windows facing the street caused the moonlight to pool on the wooden floor eerily. The apartment was at least a hundred years old, and Will had always been convinced it was haunted. Will couldn't hear Liz at all. He wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing. Suddenly, he felt something rubbing against his ankles, a furry shadow a little darker and denser than the haziness of the room.

"Hey, Shakespeare," Will said, pausing to give the cat a few rubs before moving on toward Elizabeth's room. The cat mewed pitifully, eyed him dolefully and then walked to his empty dish, begging Will to fill it. Will wondered when Elizabeth had last fed him. After quickly dishing the cat some food, he turned and went to her room.

He hesitantly put his hand on the closed bedroom door, half fearful what he would see behind it and half still wanting to turn around and go home. But it was too late for that. He had made his choice. So he pushed it open and found her, curled up into a little ball on the floor by the foot of her bed. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red and swollen.

"Will," she cried, a sound as pitiful as her cat's starving mew. He smiled at her, a sad half smile to reassure her that he was there for her. He turned on the lights, and he saw Elizabeth flinch at the unwelcome and unfamiliar brightness. Next he went and wrenched her stubborn window open, trying to get some circulation in the stuffy room. After making those amends, he went and sat beside her, leaning back against her bed. She uncurled herself and sat up so they were next to each other.

"So, who was it this time?" Will said, prompting her to tell him what had happened. His voice was cordial, he was trying to keep somewhat of a distance between the two, but his voice was softened with the old familiarity of her. And seeing her so obviously upset made it impossible for him be cold to her.

"It was Dave," Elizabeth offered with a resigned sigh. At least she was beyond crying. Will couldn't stand it when she sobbed out these stories. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable or awkward, it was just that he felt so helpless when she was in that state. He never wanted to see her crying, but he never knew what to do to fix it.

"Okay. When exactly did you meet Dave?"

"A month ago. In a bar, it was right after the Jason episode," she explained sadly. "The Jason episode" was referring to her last winner of a boyfriend, a micromanaging prick who had constantly picked apart Elizabeth so that he controlled everything about her: what she wore, who she spent her time with, what she could eat, how often she could go out to with her friends. Will had absolutely despised him, and it had been mutual. Jason had not allotted any time for Elizabeth to spend with Will. After three months with the control freak, Elizabeth finally cut loose.

But apparently she cut a little too loose. Will could already see where she was going with this Dave guy. She walked into the bar, finally free of Jason and ready to have some fun. She would drink more than wise, now that Jason wasn't there to glower at her disapprovingly. She would be tipsy and carefree and have absolutely no judgment. Dave, whom Will had only met briefly, not long enough to get to know the exact details of his and Liz's meeting, but long enough to deem him a creep, would see an easy mark and snap her up into his jaws like the wolf he was.

"He was the exact opposite of Jason. I think that was why I liked him."

That and the fact that she had been dead drunk. But Will let that go.

"He wasn't controlling at all. We both sort of just did our own thing. I guess that should have warned me," Elizabeth said softly, and Will suspected that she was talking to herself as much as she was to him.

"So when did you find out that he was cheating on you?" Will asked, guessing where this was going.

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. "You knew?" she asked, the betrayal breaking her voice and hardening her eyes.

Will just smiled sadly at her. "It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going," he said gently.

"God, I'm so stupid," she said, her anger at Will draining out of her body as she slumped back against the bed, burying her head in her hands.

"No, Liz, you were taken advantage of," Will said, pulling her into his arms. Her body seemed tiny and shrunken against his. He hated this. He hated every single man who had ever taken a bite out of Elizabeth and then tossed her aside like she was rotten. She deserved so much better than this -- loser boyfriends and then a bruised and battered self-esteem when they mistreated her. None of them truly appreciated her for herself. They saw her long legs and big lips, and that was all that they needed to see. They never saw Elizabeth, the spunky girl still half-teenager, the happy, childlike innocence of her, the intellectual and gorgeous twenty-seven year old who would take no shit. Unless it came to men, unfortunately.

"Come on," Will said softly, whispering against her hair. "I'll go make you some tea. And I think Shakespeare needs some love."

Elizabeth sighed heavily and nodded, allowing Will to pull her to her feet. She wavered a bit, as if she hadn't used her legs for awhile, and leaned heavily against Will as they made their way through her little apartment to the kitchen. Will sat her at the bar and set about making their tea. Shakespeare wandered into the kitchen and eyed Will with disinterest, choosing to curl up in the chair beside Elizabeth instead.

"Do you remember when we were eleven and Jonny teased me for being shorter than all the other boys?" Will asked Elizabeth, trying to keep her mind off of other things.

Elizabeth smiled at the memory. "Yeah. You tried to be all logical with them and explain that both of your parents were short, so you would naturally be short like them, and that Johnny's dad was a giant, so it made sense that he was taller than you. Probably not the best approach with Jonny," she said with a small laugh.

"You're right. I probably lost him at the first word longer than five letters. But as always, you came to my rescue," he said with a warm smile at her.

"Well, it wasn't so hard. Seeing as I was a girl hitting puberty, I was a good six inches taller than him. All I had to do was stand right in front of him and say 'You might be taller than Will, but you are still shorter me.' I was such a bully!"

"No, I'm pretty sure you saved me, Liz. He teased so much about my height, that I probably would have stayed a four foot seven shrimp all throughout the rest of my life just trying to shrink away from him. I would have been maimed for a life. A freak. You saved me from that tragedy just by narrowing your eyes and growling at him," Will teased lightly.

Elizabeth laughed. "I guess we are even now, then," she said softly, breaking Will's gaze, stroking Shakespeare as she blushed under Will's kind, understanding stare. It was as close as she could get to saying thank you.

It was enough for him.