Five days pass before Elizabeth answers Darcy's text.

Life has begun anew. Normalcy. Pleasant enough.

Elizabeth visits Jacky in the hospital. Jacky is 83 years old, one of Elizabeth's fathers' tenants. Jacky lived all her life in the old, crummy Bennet building, where Elizabeth's dad has not raised the rent for twenty years. Not done any repairs ever; that should even out, he says.

Elizabeth and Jacky laugh a lot in the little hospital room they call the family lounge, on the pneumology floor. About life and death, about the irony of getting lung cancer at 83 when you've never smoked in your life.

Elizabeth leaves, gets into the big metallic elevator, pushes the wrong button, gets out in one of the hospitals' sublevel. When she realizes it, she already has wandered a bit.

It's dark. No windows. Narrow corridors, low ceilings, pipes and containers.

She stops.

The Minotaur Labyrinth. Cosy and warm. Hidden machines humming. Eerie.

Time stops.

Elizabeth leans against the wall. She thinks. Of her own little labyrinth of tepidness and normalcy. She looks at Darcy's text again:

** Does that mean you would condescend to speak to me? **

"Maybe." she texts. Send.

Then she adds, ** I am always in the strangest places when I text you. **

** Where are you now? ** is the almost instantaneous answer.

Elizabeth does not – answer immediately, I mean. She finds her way back to the elevator and then to the bus and she sits and thinks.

What the hell is she doing?

Time passes. Going home. Studying. Leaving her minuscule cosy one room apartment. Climbing the creaking, old wooden stairs, saying hello to Mr. and Mrs. Philips, her father's tenants also, vaguely related to the family.

The main apartment upstairs. Helping her mom. Helping Kitty and Lydia with homework. Laughing with Jane.

Going back to her place. Sleeping.

Walking in the street the next morning, cold, rain, grey (in a good way). Elizabeth loves rain. Puddles opening glittering windows everywhere in the world.

It strikes her.

Maybe Darcy is waiting for her answer. Hoping.

Again, that thought.

Passion.

An intensity of feelings that has no place in normal life. This speech of him, in Hunsford pub, unforgivable, but… wild. Something ferocious has shaken her existence. If Elizabeth ignores it, IT will win.

It is her worst fear, she realizes.

She does not want to define IT yet. (Indifference, routine, and yes, normalcy are part of IT, but IT is worse.)

Is Darcy waiting for her answer right now? Looking at his phone? And yes, begging her silently, hoping for her answer?

The idea warms her. She feels powerful. A little sadistic even. But all those things he said, in the semi darkness. About her family, her education, her way of life. He deserves cruelty. Maybe she should never text again. Raising his hopes and dashing them, just for fun.

Then his text appears: ** I told Bingley that Jane still has feelings for him **

Unexpectedly. While Elizabeth is in the bus, thinking of him. Thinking of him thinking of her.

That floors her. So it was not only in her (cruel) imaginary world. Darcy really was waiting. This text is a desperate attempt to get her to answer. Elizabeth feels so guilty, a horrible person, heartless, manipulator, John Keats' Belle Dame sans merci, she answers instantly, hands trembling.

** Thank you. ** Send.

It's not enough. ** Thank you so much. ** she adds. Then she pauses, she wants to add something, she does not know what.

Minutes pass.

** So, are you in a strange place now? As you are texting me. ** (Darcy says.)

** In the bus ** (she answers.)

To regret it immediately. Feeling self-conscious. Poor. Proletarian. ("Your way of life," he said. Such spite.)

Ten minutes pass before he texts again.

** Do you want to get coffee? Later this afternoon? **

Elizabeth looks at her phone for a long time before typing:

** No. **