A/N: Is anyone else bothered by the fact that people are somehow able to publish and sell really bad Darcy fanfiction? Every time I'm at Chapters, I want to ask how this happens. Angrily. Consider this a protest piece.

It was a cold day in October when Fitzwilliam stepped from what was supposed to be a perfectly ordinary carriage ride out onto the southeast corner of Bloor and Yonge in the bustling 21st century city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and found himself face to face with a buxom hot sauce promoter waving a flyer and a hideously labelled red bottle. He found her so much like the fish sellers in the dingier parts of his own London that, for several seconds, he was able to convince himself that he had not been out far too late and imbibed far too much and was now creating fantastical illusions and – he took the bottle and nodded curtly to the girl as she turned to her next victim.

If this has been the first time he had been rocketed into a suspicious circumstance, launched through the time-space continuum to an unfamiliar street in the frankly disturbing future, or shoved unceremoniously from a hackney without so much as a "by-your-leave", Fitzwilliam Darcy would perhaps have not brushed himself off quite so casually. As it was, he had long ago resigned himself to being summoned by the heartfelt cries of lonely young women from across the centuries, and so was all set to make the best of yet another mildly entertaining situation.

"Excuse me," he began, trying to get the attention of the hot sauce girl. She was animatedly explaining the merits of her brand to a young man who looked more like a deer in the headlights than a potential customer. "I say," he tried again, to a rather harried-looking businessman gripping his briefcase for dear life.

"My name is Darcy –" to a woman in flats with a decidedly uninterested curl to her upper lip.

"Oh please," she responded. "You're as outdated as the Beat Generation. I wish you hipsters would try something a little more avant-garde when you go out and try to pretend you're not trying desperately to impress people. Your ascot isn't even correctly tied, you shameless fool," and walked away, shoes clicking on the leaf-strewn cement.

Darcy sighed and wished heartily to be back in the comfort of a library – any library – where the women whose wishes summoned him knew who he was and, more importantly, how he liked his tea. Reminding himself that at least this wasn't the American Midwest in the early 1900s, and he was as unlikely to be shot here as in his own carriage back in comfortably familiar Hertfordshire, he began to slouch westward with the air of a man who has seen it all and doesn't think very much of any of it.

Yrred Nacnud had reason to lament his bizarre name, his lack of romance, his accursed hair which would never do anything right, his inexplicable affinity for Tilda Swinton, and his inescapable desire to be Dame Judi Dench. He also lamented – to anyone who would listen – the shiftless indecision of an undergraduate life, or the hideous fact that boat shoes were too comfortable NOT to wear even though wearing them made you look like a complete prat. At the moment when Fitzwilliam Darcy was getting his temporal bearings in front of one of the tasteful Holt Renfrew window displays, Yrred was listening to his director prattle on about how his character didn't realize how dull he was being in his treatment of his sons and lamenting his ever auditioning for King Lear in the first place.

"Does that make sense, Nac?" she warbled, and he turned his formidable glare on her and layered his tones as dramatically as possible, for maximum persuasive power, "Les, I think we should cut this whole section. It adds nothing! Nothing, I tell you."

The artistic director piped up, "Nac, seriously. It's Shakespeare! We can't cut Shakespeare just because you don't like Gloucester as a character."

Favouring her with a withering stare, Yrred intoned, "Lia. Please. I despise Gloucester. And this section is irrelevant to the play as a whole, so we should cut it because it's Shakespeare showing off."

Les: "You know I'm uncomfortable cutting anything, Nac."

"Fine. I will cut it for you. THERE," he flourished, sweeping his pen through his script haphazardly as he watched Les and Lia cringe from the corner of his eye, then tore the page out and crumpled it, on the spur of the moment, for effect.

Les and Lia looked at each other and smiled secret smiles. "I guess this means you're off book?" Les said in the most off-hand manner possible, and he silently cursed himself for underestimating her. "So we'll take the scene from the top when you get back from getting yourself an iced coffee as a reward for all of that memorization." He saw them high-five as he walked out and pretended not to notice.

Les was right, though – he had needed a walk and a cold drink to calm him down. He normally found interpreting characters simple, though no less enjoyable for the ease with which he slipped into role after role. There was something difficult about Gloucester, though, and he had a nasty suspicion that Les and Lia, with their uncanny insight into actors and their incredibly deep knowledge of the play, knew that the part would cause him no end of grief. "They trust you," he tried to remind himself, "they trust that you can bring Gloucester to life." But of course, that meant that they were going to push him as hard as they had been.

"Small iced cappuccino, please. No, I don't need a 'flavour shot'. Thank you."

It didn't help that the majority of his scenes were with a completely inexperienced actor who was both terrifyingly good and had no concept of sharing energy onstage, so that Yrred left every rehearsal absolutely drained from supplying all of the energy himself. And also, if truth be told, from keeping up with the boy's raw talent. Les and Lia were never anything less than helpful and fair, but they were definitely not compensating for –

And here Yrred lost his train of thought as, at the entrance to the Tim Horton's, he ran into an exceptionally dressed man who looked like he had stumbled from the early 19th century.

"Is everyone intolerably blind in this century?" Darcy grumbled, glaring peevishly at the tall, slender young man pushing dirty blonde hair from his eyes with a grimace.

Yrred calmly sipped his drink, unfazed. "Yes."

Darcy was a little taken aback at the audacity and the rich, deep tones of the voice, but collected himself quickly and demanded to know where he was, what century it was, and where he could find a hot bath and a decent cup of tea.

Yrred raised an eyebrow and thought to himself that if he brought this impersonator or highly priced male prostitute, or whatever he was back to the rehearsal space, maybe Les and Lia would be so distracted that they would let him off the hook and he could go home and memorize that scene that they obviously were not going to let him cut.

"All your questions will be answered," he said, mysteriously, eyes wide and hands sweeping through the air (much to Darcy's bemusement), "just follow meeeeeeeeeeee…" and began walking at a stately pace back towards the college.