It's still dark and dreary, cold and chilly, when he trudges into the Citadel on Monday. His hands grip the back of Lizzie's chair - a holy item desecrated, and wishes he could be holding the usual occupant instead.

Did she have the right to say everything she did on Friday night? Yes, maybe she did. Did he have the right to expect her to be available anytime he wants her to be - to be his ever on-call partner in fighting crime and childhood friends-turn-nemeses? No, frankly, he did not. He clearly can't expect her to leave her life and all its trappings just to join him in facing Wickham every time he needs her to.

Still, she did it before.

So it hurts more when she doesn't do it this time.

"Early day, Miragem?"

It's odd of Matlock to address him this way. Darcy, or even William - sure, that's normal.

'Miragem' is not.

"Anything wrong, Colonel?" Darcy turns to face his cousin, still nursing his weekend wound.

Matlock shakes his head, offers a grim smile, and walks over until they can both face Lizzie's myriad of grey screens.

They stand there, men in their quiet troubles, for about five minutes.

"I'm worried about him," the older cousin says. His voice is soft, but it sounds loud in the stillness of the hour.

Darcy frowns a bit. "Bingley?"

"Well, yes, him too." Matlock chuckles quietly. He crosses his large, powerful arms - then lets them fall back to his sides after a short moment. In his civilian outfits, he doesn't look like he's much more than the average hipster gym-hitter. It's just that Darcy knows better. "It's about Jim."

Darcy frowns instantly. Worries about any potential victims of the Silver Cobra and his silver tongue get momentarily replaced by worry for his baby nephew.

"Is he alright? Is he ill?"

"He's alright, if it's health we're talking about." There's a sourness - a heaviness - to Matlock's smile. "He's too healthy, if anything."

"Too - healthy?" Darcy turns until he faces his colleague fully. "Richard, what do you mean when you say - "

"He's a carrier." The Colonel's broad hands look silly when he scrunches his fingertips together to pinch the juncture between his brow and nose. "We've suspected for a while, but we got confirmation from the specialist two days ago."

"Oh."

Where are the women and their emotional quotients when you need them?

Matlock sighs again, his third sigh since the start of this unexpected conversation. "How am I gonna raise him, Darce? I always knew what I wanted to do with my powers. Marianne was always determined to use hers for good. Is that how we're going to raise him? Is the Alliance his destiny just because his parents started it? How do we know that he'll end up fighting villains - instead of becoming one?"

Darcy loves his baby nephew.

But the ideas Matlock is sharing now are even newer to him that the realization that George Wickham is the Silver Cobra.

George Wickham - again, in rapid succession, the thoughts of one problem chase away any remaining considerations of another.

Darcy grabs Matlock's arm. His boss looks up sharply. "I found the Silver Cobra."

Matlock straightens immediately. "Where is he?"

"No, I mean, I found him - his - identity." It's Darcy's turn to shuffle. A part of him almost wishes turning invisible would shield him from the trajectory of this current topic. Too bad he knows he has to brave it. "Gia told me something - and it clicked."

"Who is it?" Matlock, of course, is very no nonsense about it all.

Darcy frowns, swallows, clenches his fists, and sets his jaw. Saying the revelation out loud to someone else who has known and cared for the guy is causing him more pain than he's anticipated.

"Darcy, speak up. Dude, I - "

"It's George Wickham. He tricks women with the promise of marriage and makes them transfer their life savings to him." Darcy talks quickly, as if speediness can make the news more palatable. "He proposed to Gia and made her think they were - that they were getting married out of love."

"The bastard."

"I know."

"Go on."

Darcy nods. "For the first few weeks since we got her back, Gia's been unable to come out of his spell. Then, just recently, it all melted away. It's almost as if he has powers that make her listen to him until he - "

Darcy stops abruptly. Matlock freezes too.

The cousins exchange long, revelatory glances.

"George Wickham - "

"Really was a carrier," Darcy finishes for him. His frown is now etched on his face like swirls on immutable marble. "He can control minds for days on end. He can make people - oh my goodness, how many times has he used his powers on us?"

Matlock is frowning just as harshly. "Enough to make us want him in the Alliance, at least."

"But the reasons we expelled him - "

"They don't stand anymore, but his villainy does." The look on the boss's face today is dangerous and stormy.

"If we had only known, we might have stopped him. We could have - "

"He didn't want to be helped, did he?" Matlock tosses his rhetorical question out in coarse, bitter tones. "To think that Jim could one day be - "

"He won't, alright?" The topic shifts dramatically in two simple lines. "Your son has you for a father. He won't just - "

"Wickham had Uncle George!"

"It's different." Darcy flinches. "Look at the others - look at Bingley. He never had the influences of a father figure who had powers himself. He could have - "

"He's not here, is he?" There's a frantic edge to Matlock's voice - a crack in his armor.

Darcy pauses.

"Estate or not, he should have been back days ago," Matlock goes on, talking pretty much to himself. "Then he has to get sick and make excuses. Darcy, what if we try our best with Jim and he - "

"Bingley's sick?" It feels odd to be fixated with something so small, something mentioned in such an off-hand manner.

But he has to know.

"I think so? I mean, he's been using his sick leaves."

"Since when?"

Matlock shrugs, clearly preoccupied with other topics. "I think he's been back since Fridayf or something. Told me he needed the weekend off to rest. I figured that he - "

"Was sick." A gnawing suspicion starts to grow in Darcy's chest. He doesn't want to believe it - doesn't think it's true. He knows he knows her better than that. She wouldn't blow off a date just to -

But how much did he really know her?

"And where was Lizzie?" The question is the only coherent thing he can form now.


Given her field of work, Lizzie's pretty well acquainted with both the heroism and stupidity that an overdose of testosterone regularly offers. She's seen her men at their finest - and at their worst - often in the very same moment. It's almost as if being men and carriers and Hiros all at once messes with people's brains.

That, at least, is what she realizes when she almost walks in on this conversation.

"And where was Lizzie?"

She can't tell if his voice is accusatory or heartbroken. A spare thought whispers that it's probably her conscience inventing the latter. She stays her feet, just a yard away from the big, wide, open non-door.

"Lizzie?" The voice is clearly Matlock's - a sleepy Matlock's. "I don't know where she's been this weekend."

"I see."

Still hiding (rather unladylike-ly, but who cares) behind the platform entrance, Lizzie frowns.

"Does it matter where she was?" Matlock asks for her.

"It's just - I thought - "

In her mind, she can see what he looks like - shuffling, uncertain, angry.

"What?"

"She said she was playing nurse and I thought - maybe - well." Darcy stops himself.

There's a fine line between feeling protected and insulted.

Right now, Lizzie finds herself smack in the middle of the line.

"That she was with - Bingley?" At least Matlock sounds incredulous.

"No, I mean, I - maybe - but who - " Darcy groans. She hears him pacing. She remembers him pacing - his broad shoulders and troubled face too large and heavy for their tiny pretend apartment. "Just ignore me - please."

It's that word, just that small, simple word that every child in preschool is taught if his parents have even the most basic of manners.

William Darcy doesn't say 'please.'

At least, she likes to think, he doesn't say it to anybody else.

Right where she is, half in and half out of her actual office, Lizzie wages war against herself. It's almost comical, really, the way she thinks out her battle plan. It's inconceivably girly, even anti-feminist, what she's about to do.

Aren't brave, modern women supposed to know in their gut what they want?

Aren't they trained, by generations upon generations of sacrificial women, to fight for what they think makes sense for them - men's comments be damned?

She's embarrassed how much, and how little, she thinks this through - but she acts anyway.

"Darcy, a word?"

She watches him swish around, clearly surprised. The dark circles under his eyes - they move her. The invisible weight on his shoulders beckon her, as if she's some doctor who can fix everything and make it right.

She swallows, wishing for once that she was as drunk as Caroline Bingley was half the time.

Then she clears her throat. "Will?"

She watches him stiffen, pause, then obey.

His humble stance is almost ironic given what she's really planning to do.

He walks towards her until they both stand in the hallway. She steps to the side, and he follows.

Safely away from Matlock's line of sight, she sighs - and talks. "Thanks for - you know, dropping by the other night. I was - I was taking care of Jane, and I really wasn't in the mood - so I'm sorry if I said things that I didn't really mean. It's almost as if - my brain shut down or something."

She chuckles at herself.

This is nerve-wracking.

"I - I heard you and Matlock just now, and the ideas about Bingley," she rambles on, eye roll and all, "to think that I would skip our date to be with Bingley. Will, I thought better of you. There really is no reason whatsoever that I - "

"I'm sorry," he interrupts.

She snaps up to look at him. There's genuine contriteness on his face - as well as genuine sorrow.

She softens, too instantly, in her own opinion. "I was with Jane - okay?"

"Okay."

Maybe it's the fact that they're both apologizing. Maybe it's the effect of standing alone with each other in a very deserted hallway after a very tiring weekend.

Whatever it is - it's making her step closer.

And it's also keeping him from pulling away.

"Lizzie?" It's both question and caress the way he says it - his lips just inches from hers.

"Mm hmm."

"I'm sorry."

She barely hears him, barely hears anything above the banging of her heart.

"Don't be," she answers.

Then she closes the gap between them.


A/N: And that's where the last chapter was supposed to end before I chopped it into two. I know our heroes can be very silly in this story, and I am inexpressibly thankful to everyone who gives the weird premise and twists and turns a try. Thanks for all your support! Darcy and Lizzie still have their own share of feelings to sort out, but at least they seem to be on the same page now!