Darcy's heart was beating a furious tattoo against his chest, and his breath was coming in shallow gasps.
"For God's sake, pull yourself together," he muttered under his breath, and he drew in a deep breath to try and slow his frantic heart beat and calm the rabble of butterflies that had taken up residence in his stomach.
He felt the pair of tickets he'd bought for the next evening's performance of Wicked burning a hole in his pocket.
He paced back and forth outside her door, waging an internal battle for what seemed like the thousandth time.
"What are you doing, William?" he thought "What the hell do you think you're doing? Buying tickets to the theater? For you—and Lizzie? Are you insane?"
Darcy ran his hands up through his hair and down around his neck.
"No…things have been…different. I made her laugh and she looks at me now instead of through me and…Gigi insists that Lizzie's feeling have changed."
"And yet isn't the completely trite definition of insanity doing the same damn thing over and over again, expecting a different result? Seriously, William? You're a goddamn cliché."
Darcy exhaled in a rush.
"No. I have to do this, and I have to do this now. I'm tired of wondering and I'm sick of waiting for the right time. This is it. Rip the bandage off."
Before his brain could stop it from happening, he felt his hand drawn towards Lizzie's door like a magnet and he knocked once, twice.
He immediately stepped back, anxious, and nervously wiped his sweaty palms on his pants.
He heard her call breezily, "Come in!" and he quickly grabbed the knob and twisted.
"No going back now," he thought.
He strode into the room, and quickly shut the door behind him.
"Lizzie," he started.
"Darcy! Hey!" Lizzie was fiddling with a cell phone. "Come sit! I'm just playing around with my new toy," she smiled. Darcy came and sat down next to her, bumping her slightly as he took his seat.
"My old, crappy phone finally died and your sister just brought this one for me to use as a replacement until AT&T sends me a new one. Apparently it has some new app of yours installed on it? Domino, or something? Anyway, I'm trying to figure out how to use it."
"Oh," said Darcy. "Yes. Domino," he said stiffly. "I could help you, if you'd like."
"Really? That would be great!" she looked at him and beamed, and he thought his heart might explode from happiness because God knows two months ago he would have never expected her to look at him with anything other than loathing.
"Of course. It would be my pleasure." Darcy could feel the outline of the tickets against his fingers pressing through his pocket.
"Lizzie," he began again.
She was messing with phone again, pressing the screen at random.
"How do you get it to—," she said, jabbing at it.
"Lizzie," he said, a bit more forcefully than he intended.
She looked up.
"Yes?"
"I, uh, was wondering if you had any plans for tomorrow night."
Lizzie gave him a small smile and looked up at him from under her eyelashes.
"No," she said, "nothing yet. Why do you ask?"
"Well, I have these tickets to see Wicked—I remember that you said once how much you loved the book, but had never seen the musical—and I thought that maybe you'd like to go. With me," he added, his voice dropping as he tucked his chin into his neck. "As a kind of thank you for all of the hard work you've done for us here at Pemberley," he added in a rush.
"What? Why did you say that? Like you make a habit of taking pretty interns to the theater? Stupid, stupid."
Lizzie looked slightly confused by this, and maybe even a little disappointed. He couldn't be sure.
"And I thought," he blundered on (why stop now?), "that it might be nice for us to spend an evening alone together." He cringed and wondered if she could see the sheer panic he was feeling in his eyes as she looked at him curiously.
"What I mean to say is…I wanted to show you that I can—that I'm not the… pretentious douchebag I was the night we met. I wanted to show you I'm sorry…for all of it…and that I've changed." This was coming out all wrong, and more disastrous than he possibly imagined.
But then something wonderful happened. Lizzie reached out and put her hand over his that was currently clawing at his knee, and she said, simply, and seriously,
"I would love to come."
His heart stopped and for a long moment that seemed to last forever, he ceased breathing and looked into her smiling eyes. Then his eyes darted down to her lips of their own volition, pulled by an invisible force, and then she leaned in ever so slightly and he parted his lip—and then her phone buzzed.
She blinked, startled, and then let out all of her breath in a whoosh, and reached for her phone. He started awkwardly at the place on his knee where her hand was just milliseconds before.
"I'm sorry," she began, "It's a notification or a text or something, I don't really know."
She peered at the phone, pressing places on the screen haphazardly. "I'm not really sure how this works…" she trailed off.
Her fingers stopped poking at the phone. "Oh. Oh, God."
"What is it?" Darcy asked in a rush.
"I, um. I'm not sure. Charlotte tweeted me a 911. She must have been trying to get ahold of me, but I haven't had time to text her my new number." Her brow was furrowed as she turned to look at him. "Sorry, I need to call her—hold on just a sec."
She punched in Charlotte's number, and he heard her pick up after one ring.
"Lizzie? Is that you?" Charlotte's voice was faint, but Darcy could hear her alarm.
"Yeah, sorry, I just saw your tweets—what's going on?"
"Have you been watching Lydia's videos?"
"What? Lydia's—no. Not since before Christmas. I was trying to give her space."
"You need to watch them."
"Why? What's happening? Is she okay?"
He heard Charlotte hesitate. "I—I'm not sure. Look, Lizzie. Lydia's been hanging out with George Wickham."
"What? Why? How?" she sputtered.
"She ran into him in Vegas. But it's more than that, Lizzie. They're involved."
"What, like they're…dating? I don't understand. She knows that he's bad news. She knows what happened between him and Darcy." Lizzie looked over at him briefly. He face was stony.
"Lizzie, I'm sorry, but I think you need to see these for yourself. Are you by a computer?"
"Yeah, um, hold on." Lizzie quickly opened up her browser and went to YouTube. She found her sister's page and the most recent video started playing automatically.
Lizzie watched in horror as Lydia spoke with stars in her eyes about how great George Wickham was, and how he put her first.
When Lydia said that she'd come to realize that family was something you were born into and that they might not always be there for you, the words cut straight to Lizzie's heart, and she couldn't stop the hot tears that had been welling up in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.
When Lydia said that she felt good enough for the first time, Lizzie heard every word she had ever said against her sister, well-intentioned or no, echo in her ears.
And then she said she loved him, and Lizzie had so many thoughts buzzing in her own head, she could do nothing but mouth wordlessly at the screen.
She was still clutching the phone to her ear, and so it was Charlotte's voice saying "Lizzie. Lizzie, are you still there?" that finally brought her back to reality.
"Yeah," she said, in shock, "I'm still here."
"Lizzie's there's more. In the other videos. It's weird, how George was acting towards her, possessive and crazy and…he said…he said some really harsh things about you. And Darcy."
Lizzie let out a laugh like a bark. "I'm sure he did."
"I've been trying to get ahold of Jane too, but haven't been able to reach her yet, but I called your house, and your parents said they she hadn't been home much the past couple of weeks. She'd been spending most of her time at George's place, and so they didn't really notice right away, but, Lizzie, no one's even heard from her in days. Not your parents, not Mary, not any of her school friends. I'm getting really worried."
Lizzie had been scrolling down through the comments on Lydia's other videos while Charlotte spoke. All of them were bad, and even though her eyes were flying over them, each warning was like a blow to her gut, all of these faceless viewers who were warning her baby sister, looking out for her when it should have been Lizzie. If it wasn't for her stupid pride and stubbornness and condescension—
"This was my fault, this was all my fault."
She hadn't realized that she was saying this out loud until she heard Darcy respond.
"No, it's not your fault, it's mine. I should have done something more about Wickham, I should have made sure he didn't prey on another girl like he preyed on Gigi."
Lizzie couldn't pull her eyes away from the comments, furiously reading each one, that she almost missed it, but she did a double-take when she saw the three Xs and the words MORE HOT LYDIA BENNET ACTION and a link.
"What?" she asked softly.
She clicked, and then when she saw what filled her screen, the picture of Wickham and her sister, naked in bed, and the lurid, flashing words, she felt her whole world falling apart and her heart, which was already broken, smashed into a million pieces and she began sobbing hysterically.
"Lizzie?" Charlotte's voice called, "Lizzie, what is it?"
"That—JACKASS. That prick, that fucker—oh my God, I'm going to kill him, I swear to God, I will kill him."
"Lizzie?" Charlotte called, sounding near hysteria herself, "Lizzie, what's wrong? What do you see?"
"George," she seethed, "George recorded himself. And Lydia. Together. And posted a link to a website that is counting down the hours until he releases the tape."
Charlotte was silent for a moment.
"DAMN HIM!" Lizzie spat, slamming her hands down on the desk.
"Lizzie," Charlotte finally said, "Lizzie, you've got to come home. Right away. We need to figure out what we're going to do. We need to find Lydia."
Lizzie's head was pounding and her heart hurt and a million questions and worries were running through her mind—was Lydia okay—where was she—was she hurt—did she know?
She had forgotten that Darcy was still there, standing awkwardly to the side, saying nothing.
Lizzie looked at him, and felt all that pure possibility that had blossomed between them disintegrate.
"I—I," her voice caught. "I have to go."
Darcy looked down to the floor. "I understand. Please, go. Be with your family."
"I—"
Darcy gazed at her for a moment, and then turned to open the door.
"Go. Pack," he said shortly. "I'll send a car to take you to the airport. I'll make the arrangements."
And then he walked out, closing the door behind him with a final, metallic click.
And Lizzie, still gripping the cell phone in her hands, broke down into fresh sobs.