A few days later Darcy was still sleeping on her couch. It was a hot and sticky night and they spent it eating take out ramen in front of the air conditioner. She had gotten home at eight that night from work with take out in hand. She took a quick, cold shower and had just started to blow dry her hair when the power went out. She couldn't help but feel a little guilty for her use of extra power that had possibly sucked the system dry.

The lights had flickered and, in the next moment, the room became black.

"Ugh. A brownout," Elizabeth groaned, sliding the flashlight app on her phone. "I can't believe how hot it's been these last few days. Let me see if I have some candles."

Darcy stood by the couch while she felt around the room in search of the few candles she kept in her bedroom, silently cursing that she didn't remember to store emergency candles from the last time she thought of it when the power went out.

She returned with only three scented candles and a half-used packet of matches. She lit the candles on the coffee table and sat back against the couch on the floor. The candles created a small circle of light that illuminated the two of them and not much else.

Darcy stayed perched on the couch. Elizabeth patted the floor next to her.

"You cannot be serious."

"About what?"

"Why should we sit on the floor when there is perfectly good furniture?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "It's more fun. It's like camping. Let's tell ghost stories."

Darcy groaned and slid onto the floor next to Elizabeth, mimicking her by crossing his legs. He had misjudged the distance between them and now was sitting knee to knee with her. She didn't seem to mind, but it was all he could focus on. She began to talk again, telling her childhood ghost story, but all he could do was contemplating moving away from her with her noticing. The other part of him wanted to get even closer without her noticing.

She was asking him a question. "So spooky enough?"

"Very," he lied guiltily. He hadn't heard a thing.

"Do you have one?" She asked, uncrossing her legs and stretching them out. Darcy had gotten used to Elizabeth's choice in nightwear: a small garment called shorts and a tee-shirt, but he had never been this close to her while she was wearing said nightwear. Her legs practically glistened in the candlelight, smooth and long, and with little effort, he was imagining her legs wrapped around him.

"Darcy?" she interrupted his thoughts.

"Oh, yes. A ghost story? I do."

"So tell me," she said, smiling, nudge his ankle with her foot.

"Right. When I was a boy, I was playing in the servant halls below the house. My mother asked me many times not to play down there, but it could get very lonely in that big house for a child. I also had a friend who often coaxed me to do things I shouldn't. While down there, I saw a ghost. I quickly ran away and never ventured down until I was quite a bit older."

Elizabeth looked at him blankly. "That's it? What did it look like? How do you know it was a ghost? Had someone been murdered down there?"

"Murdered? Of course not. Nothing like that ever happened at Pemberley. It looked like a ghost; shadowy, yet pale."

"I feel like that story could have been told better."

"I told it the best I could." He shrugged. "I never boasted to be a master storyteller."

"No, you did not."

They fell silent. Elizabeth drew her knees to her chest, unwittingly exposing more thigh. Dazed, Darcy thought about running his hands up and down those thighs, grasping her ankles, how easy it would to cup, and then graze, and then spread...He shut that train of thought down quickly, ashamed of his naked lust.

"What were you singing?" he asked abruptly.

"What?" She asked, her cheeks flaming, knowing what he was referring to.

"You were singing earlier. While you were bathing." His face to turned hot at the mention of the private activity.

"Yeah, sorry. I thought you couldn't hear me."

"I don't mind. It was pleasant to hear your pretty voice."

Elizabeth let out a bark of a laugh. "Yeah, right."

"You have a sweet voice. What was the song?"

"Uh. Just a song I grew up with. It's old. Like twenty years old."

He gave her slight smile, "Not so old then."

They sat in silence for a moment and then both began to speak at the same time.

"You first," Elizabeth said, sitting back into the couch and trying to relax.

"I wanted to inquire of your day. I hope it went well."

"Uneventful," she smiled. "But next week I have a couple of night shifts where I work all night." She pulled a face. "I loathe the night shift. But it's a perk of being an ER doctor."

"Perk?" he looked confused. "Oh. You are being ironic."

Elizabeth brushed her fingertips along his jaw. "You already have a bit a beard."

Darcy repressed a shudder and the urge to grab her fingertips and kiss them. "I believe this is the first time in my life that I've had one."

"Oh! We can go get a razor. Is it uncomfortable?'

"No, I'm getting quite used to it." He drew his hands down his cheeks.

"Good. I like it."

Darcy gave her half smiling, willing her to touch him again. She kept her hands in her lap.

Elizabeth instead asked, "And you? How was your day? What did you do all day while I was gone?"

"In full disclosure, I mostly have been perusing the internet."

Elizabeth laughed too loudly. "Really? Doing what?" She suddenly wondered if she should be worried.

"Educating myself on what has passed in the last 200 years."

"That's a lot of education."

"It does fill up my days. But, still I find myself getting restless."

Elizabeth's face dropped. "That makes sense." She supposed it was natural for him to feel that way, but she still couldn't help being disappointed that he wasn't enjoying their temporary set up as much as she was. Of course, she had a lot more freedom than him.

"Oh. Hey. I was going to tell you. Meg's birthday party is tomorrow night…"

He looked at her waiting to go on, but she got frustrated by his lack of response.

She sighed, "Well?"

"I'm sorry. I was waiting for the other half of that sentence."

She rolled her eyes. "I have to go. Obviously. Do you want to come?"

"Of course. I would go with you anywhere."

She blushed. "Well, I want you to come. I mean I don't want to abandon you here. But I don't know if this will be your scene. It's rooftop party. Alcohol. Dancing. A bunch a people just standing around and talking over loud music."

He smiled. "Elizabeth, I've been to a great many gatherings that fit that exact description. I am quite sure I will be fine."

"Ok. I'm just nervous. We'll leave if you hate it. I mean I have to stay at least an hour, but then we can go."

He just smiled and shrugged and they both sat back into the foot of the couch, albeit a little closer than before, so when she turned to remark on his new-found ability to sit on the floor and he turned to make eye contact, she was a little startled at the closeness of their faces. She decided moving away would draw too much attention to the fact that they were so close or that she had finally noticed how close they were. It was one of those situations which makes being attracted to someone so unbearable but pleasant at the same time. She finally got her floor comment out and he murmured some reply that she missed because she was concentrating on his hands, which were lightly tapping his knees. She had also become aware of his chest falling and rising at a slightly elevated rhythm.

They made eye contact again and she thought of how much she adored his dark eyes, which were impossibly familiar and new at the same time. If he kissed her now, she would let him. But, she couldn't kiss him. The unknowns were too great. She still had a grip on her reasoning, which was shouting, 'what will happen tomorrow?' After a too long a moment, Darcy looked back down at his lap. Elizabeth sighed in frustration at the inability of either of them to act.

"Do you…" she started. She wanted to ask him what he was thinking. She wanted to know what he was feeling. It almost like she wanted to be coerced into an action, but Darcy was a gentleman. This how gentlemen from the 19th century acted, she assumed. But what she wanted most was for him to tell her he was feeling the way that she was feeling, that when they were together, it felt like they had always been that way. When they met, he had confessed he thought she was his dead wife, but that wasn't a comforting thought. It didn't mean anything because she couldn't believe it. She wanted to know if he felt this incredible pull like two magnets. It was exhausting to keep apart but feel what ever was drawing them closer to each other.

She forced herself to stand up, feeling the loss of the closeness of his body. "I better go to bed. Do you need anything?"

"Thank you, no." Darcy gave her a small smile and then looked away, lost in his own brooding.

…

At 3:30 that night she woke with a start, her face wet with tears. At first she was disoriented, and unsure if she was awake or dreaming. She heard someone enter her room and blearily realized it was Darcy. At once she was pulled out of the haze of dreaming.

"What's happened? Are you hurt?" he asked, keeping his distance in the doorway.

She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of hand.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I just. I dreamt I died. But it was so real. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. Was I talking in my sleep?"

His heart began to pound and he crossed the room in two strides, forgetting about the propriety he was trying to keep. He kneeled in front of her. "Tell me about your dream."

She rolled her eyes and patted the space next to her on the bed. He hesitantly perched at the edge of the mattress next to her.

"Are you uncomfortable? Sorry, I'm fine, really. It was just a dream."

"I believe I am the one who barged into your bedroom. Tell me about your dream." He was anxious to hear it. He wasn't one to put stock in dreams, but he couldn't deny that Elizabeth dreaming about death frightened him. Life was incredibly fragile; he had known death most of his adult life. What if he had traveled to a different time, just see Elizabeth die again? He forced himself to see things calmly.

Elizabeth shrugged slightly. "It's getting fuzzy. I just remember a little now. You don't want to hear this. It's morbid."

He waited for her to continue.

"There was just a lot of blood. I was lying down and I couldn't get up and the bed was soaked in blood. I was trying to get up and I couldn't. I was so frightened…and alone. I wanted someone, but they wouldn't come. I was crying in my dream, I must have started crying in my sleep. Strange, huh? It was so lucid."

Darcy squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't been with Elizabeth when she died; he had been in his study, attending to letters of business. The midwife didn't alert the servants to fetch him until it was too late. By the time he arrived, she had passed. When he had entered the room, the stench of iron was so strong he had to close his eyes to ward off the nausea. As he came closer to the bed he saw her body there, her face lifeless and cold, her blood covering the sheets. The scene had haunted him everyday until the day he had been transported here. Coming here had been his only reprieve. To be with her again, he didn't have to think of her dying and alone.

Her voice broke his thoughts. "I'm sorry. You don't want to hear this. It was such weird dream. Creepy, right? I hate dreams like this. It feels like they follow you for days."

Wanting to wrap his arms around her and fold her into his body, he only sighed instead, trying to mask his own pain. He didn't want to frighten her. He needed to comfort her. "It's not pleasant. I wish you didn't have to experience that."

"Well, it was just a dream. I've had some weird ones. One time I dreamt that my sister was trying to kill me."

Darcy twisted his mouth into a small smile. He did have the advantage of knowing how to comfort Elizabeth. She did not like to dwell on what brought her pain.

"It may sound funny, but it was scary!"

"I have had that dream about my own sister as well."

"Maybe it's a common one. In my dream my sister was trying to stab me. It was a gory one as well. Maybe I watched too many horror movies as a teenager."

"I have never watched a horror movie to my knowledge, but in my dream, my sister was trying to trample me with her horse."

"Ah, the old horse murder. Seen it a thousand times."

"Really? Is it common in movies?"

Elizabeth laughed. "No, I was only joking."

"Ah." He let his eyes drift across her room, taking in what he could in the darkness.

"I'm glad you're here, Darcy. Usually when I have a bad dream I just stare at Facebook for an hour."

"What book is that?"

She laughed softly, reaching for her phone one the white bedside table. "Are you sure? You're in that blissful state of ignorance now." She then introduced him in the wonders of her newsfeed. After five minutes of perusing, she said, "It's not that interesting. It's just political posts mixed with pictures of old college friends either going on vacation or getting married."

"You have so much at your fingertips. You take it so lightly as if it were nothing."

"One of the perils of technology. But you're right. It some ways it's such an advantage to have access to so much information, but sometimes, you just don't care if someone has gotten the flu two times this year and counting." She gave him her phone and he mimicked her scrolling, mesmerized by the endless stream of news and photographs. She leaned against the upholstered headboard and closed her eyes and he let himself relax a little, leaning against the headboard as well.

He wanted to stay with her like this all night. When he and Elizabeth were married, an unexpected pleasure of marriage was talking in his bedchambers at night. When they were first married they could stay up all night talking and languidly making love. He had never envisioned marriage being like that. When Elizabeth passed, he ached for those nights with his whole being, mourning the loss of his dear companion and friend. Especially considering the time they lost.

After being married for two years and not conceiving, their relationship became strained. Intimacy became a duty for both of them. They nursed their pride instead of comforting each other, and neither of them wanted to admit their worries for fear the other would be wounded. Sometimes, he would hear Elizabeth cry at night in her room and he would be frozen with a petty pride that she would not confide in him—and fear of saying the wrong thing. He cursed those nights bitterly. When she finally conceived things became light and easy again, but he could never forgive himself for acting the coward when there were difficulties.

He glanced at Elizabeth now, who lay beside him with her eyes still closed. Something in him told him that she would let him stay in her bed tonight. But he also couldn't help but adhere to propriety. They had no understanding. He also couldn't help feeling that it would be taking advantage of her vulnerable feelings. The dream had seemed to disturb her enough, whether she suspected that it was based on truth or not. He wondered how many memories Elizabeth might have experienced in her dreams. What a horrifying memory to carry, he thought. He ached to hold her close to him. Standing up, Darcy resolved to speak with her in morning and declare his feelings and give her everything he had to offer.

When she felt him stand up, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it, glancing up at him with a sleepy smile. She let him go and snuggled down into the down comforter. "Night, Darcy," she murmured.

"Goodnight," he whispered and retreated to his couch alone again.

AN: :) Sorry for the morbid chapter...