Lizzie returned to the office, sank back to the bench and rubbed her aching cheeks. Well, that was wretched. Darcy, here at Collins and Collins. And somehow pretending nothing had happened with Bing and Jane. Heartless robot. All morning she had been in a great mood, and now it was completely shot.

She glanced at her bag of costumes. Huh. Guess the newsie cap would come in handy after all. That was some consolation. Her dark mood lightened just a little bit. Impersonating the heartless robot. It might be just the cure she needed.

It helped again in the next video, and the next after that. Fitz was surprisingly eager to mock his supposed friend, though she had to acknowledge his performance was more of a straightforward imitation than mockery. In any case, just seeing that newsie hat perched atop his enormous hair was hilarious.

Charlotte had never performed as Darcy before, but it wasn't that hard. There wasn't much to reenact from Lizzie's weird, mostly one-sided conversation with him. Costume theater wasn't as useful this time, though. She thought it might make some sense of Darcy's bizarre behavior. Nope. After filming the video, she was as stumped as ever.

Later that week, she went from being stumped to being furious.

How could she even process what Fitz had unwittingly revealed to her? The sheer scope of Darcy's interfering, arrogant cold-heartedness was too much to even comprehend. The newsie cap and bowtie, which she could always depend upon, were useless. Before starting her video on Sunday, she picked up the cap, twisted it in her hands, and tossed it back down in disgust. There was nothing to reenact, and even if there were, she just wasn't in the mood. Costume theater couldn't fix this. She couldn't distance herself from this with props and exaggerated voices and mannerisms.

What she really wanted was a straightforward rant. So she ranted and ranted and ranted until the real live Darcy showed up in her video. Then the costume became utterly irrelevant.

That night was one of the worst of her life.

Charlotte had insisted they take turns using her tiny apartment's bed while the other slept on the couch, but Lizzie hadn't taken her up on the offer until now. She didn't mind the couch; she could fall asleep practically anywhere. But not tonight. Tonight, after she finally relented to having a turn in the bed, she tossed and turned, rearranged the pillows and blankets a dozen times and still had no rest.

She could see the bag of costumes silhouetted in the moonlight, resting on a nearby chair. Though it was too dark to see the newsie cap distinctly, she had the irrational feeling it was mocking her. Thought you were so clever, didn't you? Make fun of Darcy on your silly little videos and everything will be fine. Until you blurt out a sarcastic suggestion for him to watch them, idiot. Now he'll see every moment with the cap and bowtie. He'll be furious. It doesn't matter that it's accurate or witty. No one likes to be repeatedly insulted, and this isn't exactly Mr. Good-Natured here. This is the guy who never forgives. You've really dug yourself into a hole with this one, Lizzie Bennet. Maybe you should flee the country while you still can.

She wanted to shout at it. Oh really? Then I'd better burn you, because you're the most damning evidence. What do you think of that?

That would probably be a bad idea on the chance that it woke up Charlotte and convinced her that her best friend was in need of emergency psychiatric help for arguing with a hat. So she rolled over, buried her face in the pillow and tried to block out everything.

As the week wore on, Lizzie's anxiety eased just a little. She didn't see or hear from Darcy, so there might be a chance he wasn't planning a lawsuit. Not that she had any idea how long it took to arrange such things. Maybe he was just waiting for her to let her guard down so he could spring it on her when she least expected it.

Well, he did spring something on her, and it was definitely what she least expected.

Back at Charlotte's place, she read the letter for what must have been the fourth or fifth time. Every re-read made her more confused. Except for his over-formal tone and the arrogance of thinking he knew what was best for Bing, nothing in this letter matched what she thought she knew of Darcy.

She tucked the letter away, deep inside the bag of costumes. Maybe she'd find more answers in the video footage. She opened the file and skipped through the intro with Charlotte to the moment of Darcy's surprise entrance. She flinched in tandem with her video-self. The guy sure was good at sneaking up on people. Was he some kind of secret ninja?

And what was up with the bowtie? What did it mean, that he had deliberately chosen to wear one after seeing the costume she had used to mock him? All that time she had prided herself on being able to skewer Darcy, and it turned out her barbs didn't even affect him. Yeah, she was relieved there wasn't going to be a lawsuit – assuming Darcy was telling the truth about that – so it was stupid to wish he had been more insulted than he was. Was that really what was bothering her? That her mockery wasn't nearly as clever and cutting as she thought it was?

No. She knew it wasn't. The Darcy from the letter and the Darcy in this latest video were not the Darcy she had made up with costume theater. She had created a simulacrum, a construct that bore a superficial resemblance to the real person, but nothing beyond that. It wasn't easy to admit it, but his written words offered her a glimpse of hidden depths she had never imagined. Like the possibility that he was a human being with feelings.

That was what was bothering her. He had feelings, and she might have hurt them. Maybe he had deserved it. It didn't matter. If she took a step back and looked at who had behaved more badly, it had to be her. She was the mean one, the nasty one.

It got worse when Caroline showed up. Was Lizzie really any better than her? Sure, Caroline was deceptive and sneaky while Lizzie had put everything out in the open, but both of them had been caught, one way or another, by Darcy. Caroline's panic was painfully familiar.

When she put the cap on Lizzie's head, it made her sick to her stomach. She managed to disguise it with a sarcastic smile, and eventually caught Caroline in her lies. That was admittedly satisfying. But it didn't change the fact that Lizzie had serious misjudgments of her own to deal with.

After Caroline fled, Lizzie turned to her costume bag. There was the newsie cap and bowtie, right at the top. She hesitated, then snatched up the cap and stuck the letter inside of it. Let that remind her of the real Darcy, if she was ever tempted to turn to costume theater again, tempted to take the lazy route. Then she upended the whole thing, buried the cap and tie at the very bottom, and stuffed the rest of the props on top of them.

Maybe she would burn them after all, when she got back home.