A/N: This is definitely not my first fic, but I've long-since lost my old account info. This is the first of a series of one-shots and ficlets. Written post-ep 83. Not necessarily congruent with the storyline that dropped today (Domino Day).
Summary: Darcy's thoughts on Lizzie Bennet after viewing her videos. He wanted to hate her like he loved her. Fully. Completely.
Unconventional
How could he have ever thought Lizzie Bennet was in love with him? She didn't know him at all.
William Darcy was no fool. He liked to think of himself as one step ahead of most people. It's how he had always been able to function in social situations – he could predict other people's reactions and act accordingly.
With Lizzie he had never been able to do that. And he liked it. He had thought they were in step, in sync.
Then she had revealed to him just how out of step they were. He was stepping all the while she was running in the opposite direction.
But there were moments, he was sure of it. Moments when she voiced his own thoughts about situations. Moments when her wit would entrance him. And moments when he thought he had showed her just how clever he could be as well.
But he was wrong about those moments.
Every moment he thought they shared, she had mocked.
He wasn't even human to her.
He wanted to hate her. He wanted to hate her like he loved her. Fully. Completely.
But he couldn't. Because every time she said something cruel, every time she decimated his character in front of thousands, she also revealed just how loving she could be. He had never considered how defining her relationships with her sisters and with Charlotte and with her parents were. "I never thought of you that way," he had told her. And it was true. He had never thought of her in the context of her family at all. And yet it was all she ever thought about.
How could he have ever thought he was in love with Lizzie Bennet? He didn't know her at all.
She was not what he had thought. She was not the vision of the perfect woman for him that he had constructed in his head.
She was unconventional.
And William Darcy found he loved her more than ever before.