Chapter 9

Upon his return from the meeting with George, Will found a Chris who was in full-on schedule mode. Usually he appreciated Chris's organization and efficiency, but right then Will's mind was elsewhere. Yes, the following day would be a busy one, but Will already knew the itinerary. He didn't need to hear it again. He wasn't listening.

And so it took him a moment to realize that Chris had paused in his soliloquy. When he finally heard the silence, he looked over at his friend.

Chris said, "We don't need to do this. You're not even registering. Call it a night."

There was no reason for Will to be annoyed, but all of the sudden he was. "Do you have somewhere else to be?" he asked.

Chris shrugged, not catching the tone of the question. "Probably go over and see Janie."

Chris was exasperating, honestly. This was getting ridiculous. Will had to say something. Didn't he? As a friend?

He said, "Chris, you can't be serious."

"What do you mean?" Chris asked in a measured tone. He was beginning to catch on the drift of the conversation and sat down in a nearby chair. He waited for Will's reply.

But wasn't it obvious what he meant? Will sat down as well, searching his mind for a good away to put things. He couldn't find one. But he forged ahead, as carefully as he could. "I just don't think you're at the same place with this—you and Janie."

Chris was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You don't think she likes me."

Frustrated, Will ran both hands through his hair. "I don't know. I just think, she's hard to get to know, isn't she? I mean, we've known her for a couple of weeks. What can we possibly know about her intentions and—"

Chris interrupted. "Darce, you really need to stop thinking that everyone in the world is waiting to stab you in the back. Really. For your own good."

True, it was true, but he waved it aside. "Tabling that argument, what exactly do you expect this to look like? You're never going to see her. Maia is as remote as remote gets."

"They're off this planet in a year and a half," Chris said quietly. He had given the question some thought already. That wasn't necessarily a good sign.

"And wouldn't it be wiser to wait and see where you are then? A year and a half is a long time."

It was. It was a damned long time.

Chris didn't reply. He stood up and made to leave. Will sighed. "You're pissed," he said.

"No," Chris said. It was hard to tell from his tone whether this was true or not. "You've just made your point. And you know the itinerary. So I'm leaving." And he went.

And Will was alone.

It was a bit of a walk from the military base to the station. Most days, Elizabeth enjoyed the exercise. Today her head felt full and her thoughts were heavy. She quickened her pace. She wanted to get back to the distraction of work.

As she neared the station, she saw a figure leaving it. It took here a moment to realize who it was. Drew Collins. Clandestinely walking out of the station. Suddenly, everything about Char's behavior made sense—his secretiveness, the comments about compensating. Elizabeth stopped walking and waited till the departing figure was out of sight. Then she continued on her pathway, pace slow again.

It couldn't be true. Dear God, it could not be true.

When she entered the station, Char was cooking dinner. He didn't cook often—none of them did—and Elizabeth attributed the impulse to a guilty conscience. He glanced over as she walked in and said conversationally, "Hey. That was a quick visit."

But everything seemed riddled with meaning. Had Elizabeth been the passive aggressive type, she might have played along or tried to set a trap for him. But she wasn't. She would rather confront him outright than play games to get him to admit the truth.

So she simply said, "Char. Please tell me I'm misinterpreting what I just saw and you are not sneaking around with Collins."

For a moment he had paused in his cooking efforts. But now he continued. He didn't look at her. "Do you want me to tell you that, or do you want me to tell you the truth?"

It was difficult to believe this was actually happening. Char, her best friend, an amazing and smart and funny person, was secretly seeing the most detestable of Will Darcy peons. And what was this anyway? A hook up? A relationship?

"You cannot be serious," she said. "Char, what happened to standards?"

"Okay," he said, putting down the spoon with which he had been stirring a pot and turning to face her. She had heard the annoyance in his voice. She now saw it on his face. He continued. "It's easy enough for you to talk about standards, Elizabeth, but not all of us have boyfriends falling out of our ears."

"Excuse me?" she said, beginning to be offended herself.

"Oh come on," he said. "Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

"I do not have boyfriends falling out of my ears."

He looked at her, examining her silently for almost a full minute. Then he asked with deliberate clearness, "Do you deny George Wickham?"

She thought it over. "No," she admitted. "But that's just one—"

Char interrupted. "Do you deny Will Darcy?"

She froze.

"What?" she finally coughed out. It was all she could manage. Char didn't reply. He waited. She had told Char her Darcy stories from the Bisbee trip, and tough he had been an active listener he had never made any insinuation about Darcy like this. Now it just seemed like a defense mechanism. Because it couldn't be anything else.

"Yes," she said firmly. "I absolutely deny Will Darcy. What the hell, Char?"

He waved dismissively, as if this was neither here nor there. "The point is, I know judging is kind of your thing—and if you're wondering why I didn't tell you in the first place, there you go. But I don't think you're in a position to judge me. So just lay off."

She felt attacked and struck back. "Do you like him?"

Char looked at her impassively. "I'm not going to answer that question. It's a double-edged sword. You'll damn me if I do, and you'll damn me if I don't."

She was silent. He added, "Look, I'm just saying. I've got my shit and you've got your shit and maybe you should get your own shit together instead of getting all up in mine. Because I'm dealing with mine."

He turned his back on her and continued cooking. She turned around and walked back out the station. Outside it was beginning to get dark. Elizabeth's mind was on replay. She had never fought with Char before, not like that. She couldn't get the things he had said out of her brain.

Judging is kind of your thing.

Get your own shit together.

Do you deny Will Darcy?

She took a long walk. It didn't help. And so she set of again towards the military ship. She needed to get centered. She was going to the Earth Room.

Will couldn't explain how he had ended up wandering the halls of the military ship, but here he was.

Or maybe he could explain.

Maybe he wanted to run into George and have this out. Because the thing with George was affecting everything else. It was making him irritable with Chris and suspicious of Janie. It was probably the reason Elizabeth was so set against him.

But however many halls he wandered, he didn't run into George. Will was relieved, and disappointed at the same time. And he kept wandering, eventually finding his way to the Earth room. Someone was there, but it wasn't George. It was Elizabeth Bennett. She was sitting on a bench beneath a spectacularly large tree.

And Will saw the crossroad in front of him. He could go talk to her. Or he could leave.

Elizabeth didn't know how long she had been sitting under the tree when she saw someone walking towards her. She thought it was Wickham, and was frustrated because she didn't want to talk to him just then. But then she realized it wasn't Wickham at all.

Will Darcy was the most dressed down she'd ever seen him. That is to say, he was not wearing a suit coat or tie, his sleeves were rolled up, his top button was undone, and his hands were in his pockets. He looked good this way, she thought. And she watched him, silently, until he was before her.

"Hi," she said.

"Can I sit?" he asked, and she nodded. He sat down beside her, and they were quiet—him taking in the Earth Room, her taking in him. She hadn't expected to see Will Darcy again.

Finally he spoke. "It's pretty incredible. I wish they'd build one of these on my ships."

"I love these rooms," she agreed. "Sometimes an Earth Room is the only place I feel at home."

He said, "You grew up with them."

She nodded and smiled. "You did your homework on me, didn't you?"

Darcy laughed. She liked the sound of it. "Well," he said, "Chris did anyway. He does my homework."

"Must be nice." She was joking, but Darcy had gone silent again. Why had he come to talk to her if he wasn't going to say anything? What was he doing here anyway?

When at last he spoke, he had moved beyond the small talk. He said, "You and I got off on the wrong track. I mean, I expected it in a way once George got here, but you didn't like me even before then."

Elizabeth didn't know what point he was making or what question he was asking or what she was meant to say. She replied, without sarcasm, "I wouldn't take it personally. I mean that. I was just told judging is my thing."

He sighed and averted his gaze. "I was just told I need to stop thinking everyone's waiting to stab you in the back."

She hesitated. But he seemed to be asking. "I guess that was it," she said. He looked at her and his face was a question mark. She explained, "Why I didn't like you. You sort of come off… closed off. You're hard to get to know."

He looked as though she had slapped him in the face. Which she didn't understand. She thought she had been putting it nicely.

Then he said, "I'll tell you anything."

She laughed—a short laugh of surprise. She thought he was joking.

But he wasn't. "I'm serious. Ask anything. Except, you know, government secrets."

The question came out of Elizabeth's mouth before she could stop it: "Who's George Wickham?"

"My brother."

He said it helplessly. His voice didn't crack exactly, but there was a roughness to it, like the words had been pulled from him from a place where he had locked them away and they'd hurt him on their way out. She knew Will Darcy didn't have a brother. But she also knew he was telling her the truth. Somehow, it was the truth. She could only see his profile, but he looked so sad. He had gone so quiet. She was struggling against the urge to do something completely inappropriate—to take his hand or gently push the hair off of his forehead. She wanted to make him feel better. She didn't know what to do.

But then he laughed, and shook it off. "Elizabeth Bennett," he said, "you are a bloody piece of work, getting that out of me."

"Sorry," she apologized. She meant it sincerely. She felt like she might have crossed a line into a place Will Darcy didn't like people visiting. "But you did say I could ask you anything."

He didn't seem to be cross with her. He was meeting her eyes again, and actually teasing her a bit. "Well, you certainly tested the extreme limits of that. Did I pass?"

He didn't mean anything by those words. But a realization hit her.

Will had meant to move the conversation back towards something lighter. Truth games were risky, although maybe he should've expected that she would ask about George. It was George on her mind, even now as she was sitting with him. And he had hated the sound of the catch in his voice as he had admitted, "He's my brother."

So he'd said afterwards, joking, "Well, you certainly tested the extreme limits of that. Did I pass?"

And because he'd meant it as a transition back towards small talk, he was surprised by the expression on Elizabeth's face—she looked mortified. He was even more surprised by what she said next: "Oh God. I am always doing that, aren't I? Like you said. I'm always making people audition for me. I just did it to you."

Okay, he remembered saying that to her at one time or another. And it was sort of true. But he hadn't meant his comment to come off as an attack or a teaching moment.

"It's okay," he said, with a shrug and a smile. "It's good practice."

And he wondered why he was trying so hard to bring the conversation back to surface level, when really he wanted to know everything about her, especially the things that were meaningful. Perhaps it was because he knew that was one sided. She wanted to talk about George. She didn't want to know everything about him.

She said, "Right. For your presidential campaign." Her voice was listless, almost disappointed. She was staring ahead of her with a blank expression. He was losing her. He wanted to bring her back. If confessions about George were what it was going to take—

But first he tried a different kind of confession: "I'm not as glad to be leaving as I thought I would be."

He paused. She had turned to look at him again, and her eyes were expectant and probing. He looked at those eyes.

"I'm not glad at all," he said.

She understood. He knew she understood.

He wondered if she would let him kiss her.

And she did.

Char was still awake when Elizabeth returned to the station, although it was late. Very very late. He was sitting on the couch, watching grainy sitcoms on the TV feed from Bisbee, the volume turned very low.

"Hey," he said, as she walked in. "Sorry. I got pretty mean earlier. I didn't mean to get so mean. I was just pissed, so you know, half of what I said was probably largely exaggerated."

She sat down beside him on the couch. She wasn't mad anymore about anything he had said. Enough of it had been true. And yeah, the Collins thing was still a little creepy, but she was even willing to let that one slide. After all, she misjudged people. She did it all the time. She felt magnanimous and optimistic at the moment. She was willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

So she just asked, "Are there any left-overs?"

And she and Char both knew that they were fine.

"A little," Char said. "Sorry, but your sister eats like a high school football team."

She didn't get up to look for the food, because she wasn't really hungry. She had just been asking as a sign of peace. She and Char fell into silence, sitting side by side listening to the sitcom's laugh track.

"Will Darcy is full of secrets," Elizabeth said.

Char looked at her sideways, but he didn't comment or ask. That was probably for the best. She was full of secrets too. Yes, she had kissed Will Darcy—that was one secret.

But the bigger secret was that she had wanted Will Darcy to kiss her.

She had wanted it so, so much.

A/N: Pleeeeeeeeeeeease review! How can I bribe you people? Review = love and I need some love.

Anyways this was the eye before the storm. Next chapter it all goes to hell and then we are on to Part II. Whoohoo!