A/N: For an explanation as to my disappearance, see my profile. For a story, see below. WARNING: infant death and other delicate topics explored in this piece. Proceed with caution.
Fitzwilliam Darcy was no stranger to tragedy—why, just several years prior he had dealt with the tragedy of his fifteen-year-old sister's almost-elopement—and he was no stranger to death. Throughout his life, he had lived through the loss of a brother, his first sister, his mother, and his father.
Losing a child was much different.
A mourning midwife's grievous error had led him to catch a glimpse of his stillborn brother when he was only six years old—she had, carrying the silent infant, walked through the main hall where the young Fitzwilliam was standing. The memory had stayed with him throughout his life, sometimes making appearances in his nightmares.
But he had never held his brother. He had never bent down to kiss his cold forehead, as he was doing now to his son. "Fitzwilliam," he muttered.
His own name sounded different in his voice. It did not belong to him, anymore. It belonged to his son. His son. His son, who he would bury the following morning.
When Elizabeth woke, it was to a bloodied bed, a sweaty forehead, sunlight streaming through the window, her husband sleeping beside her, and the crashing realization that her first child had never taken a breath.
A line of poetry sounded in her head: "the world is too much with us, late and soon." She remembered not the subject of the poem nor its author, but it seemed appropriate. The world was too much—she couldn't, just then, quite come to terms with her reality.
Her eyes filled with miserable tears, and before they could fall, she had fallen back asleep.
Elizabeth hated funerals. She hated that her husband tried to hold her hand—she didn't want human contact just then. She hated that Jane's stomach was bulging with her second child. She hated that Georgiana and Kitty leaned on each other for comfort—she didn't want anyone experiencing any sort of happiness or companionship at all.
She knew that she was irrational and she knew her thoughts were unjust and cruel, particularly those directed towards the man that she loved more than any other, who was going through her same pain.
She still hated them all.
Fitzwilliam was an introverted man, known for retreating into himself whenever he experienced any kind of discomfort. Tragedies typically brought out this aspect of his personality. When he lost his mother upon the birth of Georgiana, he spoke not a word to anyone for almost two months.
It was surprising, then, that upon the death of his son he did not retreat into himself. It was another one of the many ways in which falling in love had changed him. In his extreme sadness, he wished not for his own company but for her's. He just wanted to hold her as she cried, to kiss her forehead and let her know that it would all be okay. He wanted to lie next to her, neither of them speaking with words but communicating all the same.
She, who had almost gone insane with loneliness during her confinement when she couldn't travel with him, did not want him near her. When he touched her, she shied away. When he knocked on her door, she did not respond. When he looked her in the eye, trying to communicate in that one simple way, her gaze moved to the floor.
And so his grief had company: loneliness, hurt, and extreme vexation.
It had been two weeks and Elizabeth had not cried. She walked around, zombielike, receiving guests with a consciously-donned smile and refusing to take part in conversation of any significance.
Those closest to her were shunned. The world was too much with her. She needed time.
Fitzwilliam Darcy had thought that nothing could break the kind of bond that he and his wife shared. They were one—since their marriage, they had spent not one night apart.
This was, of course, excepting the last two weeks, when she closed her door and responded to no one.
Georgiana couldn't sleep. After the servants had put out all the lights, she tiptoed across the house to Kitty's room and quietly opened the door. This was not the first time that she had done this.
Kitty was awake. Georgiana got into bed next to her.
"Kitty, I am so worried," Georgie confessed. "Elizabeth has hardly uttered a word since it happened, and Fitzwilliam barely sees her."
"I know; I've witnessed it."
"That is not all. Kitty," Georgiana whispered, her cheeks flaming red. "They do not share a bedchamber anymore. If there is no love between the master and mistress of Pemberley and no heir…"
"Surely you do not think that this would ruin their marriage? I have never seen two people so in love."
"I so hope, dear Kitty, that it is enough."
The servants, too, noticed the distance between the master and the mistress.
"I haven't heard one word pass between them in a fortnight," Etta said, a worried tone to her voice.
"Oh, Etta, you can't be knowin' what goes on behind closed doors. I'm sure they's just grievin' in private, is all."
"I am tending to the Mistress all day," she whispered. "She hasn't been alone with him once in these two weeks."
Elizabeth was lying in her bed, willing sleep to overtake her, when suddenly her son's face came to her mind.
He wasn't a beautiful creature—no newborns are, really, and the ones that aren't breathing even less so. But he had the beginnings of his father's hair. She knew that hair so well. It was coarse and manly but somehow soft, as well, not straight but not curly…
And that beautiful hair was a part of her son, the baby that she had created, that was a part of her, that had died, and all that she could see was his blue face…
"Oh," she breathed. "Oh! Oh!" And suddenly, she couldn't breathe for the sobs. They were overtaking her, consuming her, and she couldn't stop them if she tried.
She knew how loud she was, but it was unimportant because it was so beyond her control. She couldn't help it—the sobs were wracking her frame, making her convulse and robbing her of her capability to breathe. Tears leaked from her eyes.
Suddenly, the door opened, and her husband appeared. Quietly, without ceremony, he walked over to her. She rose from her bed, and they remained three feet apart, his face expressionless and her body still shaking as she cried.
"Oh, Fitzwilliam, I—" she started through her sobs and heavy breathing. "I—"
"I know, Elizabeth. I know," he muttered, and he went to her and held her in his arms.
"I cannot believe that we lost him," she cried with a quivering voice into his chest. "he's gone. And I loved him so wholly, so completely, I—"
He silenced her with a kiss.
Her response was violent. The world was too much with her, and so she lost control. She gave up the burden of trying to hold on to her emotions.
She sobbed and she kissed him so violently. He felt the tears leak from his eyes as he responded in kind. Without hesitation, she began removing his clothes, tossing them to the side without care. He hitched up her nightgown.
As he entered her, she felt herself release, completely, and then suddenly she was mending. She knew not how, but as they lied there afterwards, sharing in grief, she felt her shaky insides solidifying again, grounded in her love and the knowledge that time would pass and time would heal.
It was nine months and two days later that Edward Fitzwilliam Darcy was born, healthy and very vocal, with his father's hair. The next year brought Lillian, who was inexplicably blonde. Henry came, and then Anne, and over a decade and a half later came Clara.
Sometimes, Elizabeth was too busy to devote much thought to little Fitzwilliam, and sometimes, she purposefully stayed away from the subject because of what it did to her spirits. Fitzwilliam thought on his first child sometimes. They both stopped, occasionally, and thought about what the little boy might have been like had he survived. But there was little satisfaction in this, for there was no knowing, just as there was never complete relief from the pain of such an ordeal.
There was, however, one positive lasting consequence that resulted from a promise made by Elizabeth to her husband after Edward's conception.
"Elizabeth, promise me something, please," he said, the first words he had spoken to her since the birth.
"Anything you might wish I will do everything in my power to grant," she told him, sincerely.
"Never sleep in any other bed but ours."
And so it was. When Henry got terribly sick at age four and Elizabeth refused to leave his bedside, she declined offers to have a bed made for her. She slept next to him, in a chair, and when his fever broke on the sixteenth day, she found her way back to her husband's chamber without interlude.
A/N #2: a) I feel that too often, the life given to our favorite characters is too happy. In reality, the chances of them having a stillborn child (considering infant mortality rates during this time) are high. b) This story is compliant, as some of you might have noticed, with "The End"--this is the "sixth" Darcy child that Elizabeth speaks of in the first chapter. c) Forgiving Pride readers: I'm still here. Sort of. Sorry!!!
Review if you have the time and inclination; it really means the world to an author. Thanks so much!