The way she waits for them to come back is ridiculously cliché. She stands on the platform, eyes and heart yearning. She tries not to cry, because that's not what heroes' welcome parties look like. They saved the day. They survived.
That's really all that matters.
The loud, buzzing sound of Selenop's augmented wings grow louder. The Colonel's groans reverberate up the wall of the Citadel. It's like he's carrying something - supporting something heavy and large. Gale Lord, aided by his personal cloud elevator, sweeps up into the entrance first.
"Charles!"
Lizzie hears footsteps behind her - and turns just in time to see Jane running into her lover's arms. They hug each other tightly - relief and reunion in one grand, emotional embrace. Jane is still sniffing, but Bingley pulls her close anyway.
The tenderness is contagious, and Lizzie almost sighs.
"A little help here?" Matlock's voice is strained.
Lizzie whips around, sees the heap of limbs their leader is supporting, and dashes towards them with all her might.
"Darcy!" She lowers herself just before she reaches him - and sweeps herself up to support him between her arms. He's conscious, at least. "Darcy, are you okay? The crash I heard - the destruction - "
He clutches her, shifting his weight from his cousin to his new love, and they almost stumble.
"Lizzie - "
She hugs him tightly, eyes watering all over again.
"I can't believe he tried to kill you." The words tumble out of her now. Disbelief, kept at bay during the thick of the action, starts to overwhelm her after the delay. "When the building started crashing, I - "
"Lizzie," he says again. He hugs her tighter and kisses the side of her neck.
"Darcy - " She's officially chocked up anyway - so she finds another, more practical, use for her lips.
"There you go!" Matlock cheers when she kisses him - and when Darcy kisses her back. He's standing a little more strongly now, just enough to keep them both from keeling over.
Either way, she wouldn't have let them stop kissing.
"Miragem, darling, would you - " The words fall short on Caroline's tongue. Her gasp is magnified by the perfect acoustics of the spacious dome of a room they occupy.
Despite her lips being pressed against Darcy's, Lizzie smiles.
"I'm sorry." Darcy pants, when he finally lets her go. She gazes at him in a daze - heady with joy. "I wanted to catch him - and save it - but the people - "
"The victims were more important, of course." She rubs her hands against his shoulders, desperate to assure him. "We'll get him eventually. You don't have to feel gu - "
"His suit protected him," Darcy goes on. The haunted look in his eyes pulls her heart into knots. "I saw him slipping out, but the place was already self-destructing."
"I know." She pulls herself close again, her temple against his chin. "You did what you had to."
"I wanted to get this."
She doesn't realize what he's talking about until she pulls back ten seconds later.
The fabric draped on Darcy arm - tattered, torn, and toasted - looks vaguely familiar.
"The dress?" Her heart swells with astonishment, surprise, and a throbbing sensation that feels dangerously close to love. She remembers the look on his face when he saw her in it - when she felt like a girl in his eyes, for the very first time. For one split second, she almost wants to twirl. "Will, you didn't have to - "
"I paid for it already, I think." He smiles weakly. He's extraordinarily handsome, despite it all.
"Just a deposit." She's soaring, flying - unfettered. This is it. This is it.
He's the one.
And she really wouldn't have it any other way.
"I can't believe I willingly wrote Wickham a two-thousand-dollar cheque." Darcy shudders under her hands.
"Money well spent - to have you safe." She kisses him, stops any further recriminations from arising.
Technically, her reasoning doesn't make sense.
At least the way he's kissing her back - close, demanding, urgent - doesn't indicate that he's noticed.
In her peripheral hearing, she can almost detect Jane and Bingley's sighs, Matlock's celebratory whistles, and Caroline's sneers. She knows paperwork's coming. Clean up's coming.
There's going to be so much more they have to do.
But Will's lips are too delicious - his very existence too important - for her to care about anything else right now. She'll keep him now.
The other things can wait.
The reporters have all been both listless and heartless all afternoon. Even Matlock's suave presence at the podium and the very intriguing backdrop of a crumbled building don't seem to keep their attention. They still have to ask about the large, manly, wholly visible hand she's gripping. They still have to pry and ask if wedding bells were in the works for any Alliance members.
The gasp that escapes her when Bingley actually responds with a diamond ring and a one-knee pose in front of Jane is one-hundred-percent genuine - a trip to sentimental heaven.
"Jane!" Lizzie grips her new boyfriend's hand tighter, feeling the joy radiating off him as well.
The cameras don't freeze Jane, and she shouts her approval confidently. The couple eagerly embraces - framed by the whoops and calls and whistles and smiles all around them.
For a moment, Lizzie forgets this is the same girl tucked in bed just a few days ago. Suddenly, Bingley's mysterious, evasive time off makes sense.
"Elizabeth." She hears Darcy whisper into her hair.
"No, don't." She reads his mind. Audience be damned, she winds her arms around his body. He lifts his hands and place them protectively around her shoulders. "Let them have their moment."
The moment lasts for another fifteen minutes - as the press members shove each other around in a rather violent fight to grab the first pictures of Jane's ginormous diamond ring. Jane herself leans against her man, the ultimate blushing bride, as she obligingly displays her left hand. The ring is large and sparkly and classic and sweet - Jane a thousand times over.
Lizzie smiles happily, and she nuzzles her nose further against Darcy's coat.
"Another time?" Darcy asks, this time against her crown. She bites her lips to contain her smile. It's almost as if the tower rubble contained magical wedding pixie dust.
"In a rush, dear?" She whispers happily. For once, she wishes his powers were transferable - and they could actually be both invisible.
At least he cares enough to stay in place - and to not let her look like an idiot.
"As a matter of fact, I am," he answers, sounding more certain than she expected. He holds her tighter. "Can't risk another Wickham - with no wife to go home to."
"Wife!" She pulls back, meets his eye in shock. She feels giddy, light - almost silly. "Did I hear you - "
"Yes, you did." He smiles, handsome and brave. He doesn't press her to him, doesn't make any gesture that remotely communicates unwillingness to let her consider.
Still, somehow, she feels trapped.
It's not exactly a discomfiting thing to feel.
"Darcy, it's Jane and Gale Lord's day. We can't expect - "
"Not today." He sounds assuring. Then he leans his head a little to the side. "But someday - right, Lizzie?"
It's a proposal of sorts - a pre-proposal. It's a hint of a future that promises excitement and danger, passion and thrill. She knows he loves her, deep down she knows.
So what's so bad about promising she'll consider something she already does?
"Someday." She lights up, feeling extraordinarily happy considering the destructive events and narrow escapes earlier today. "Someday, Will. We'll make it work."
Other people won't understand this, she realizes quickly. Other people can't decipher the light in Darcy's eyes. Other people can't touch his chest and feel the heart underneath it. Other people who haven't spent hours and days and weeks and months in each other's company before actually being together can't understand the speed of her epiphanies - how a person who stops becoming just 'colleague' or 'friend' can suddenly transform into 'future husband' overnight.
She matches him smile for smile - gaze for gaze.
Behind them, the crowd is still yelling their congratulations.
Her smile carries mischief at the recollection of where he kissed her for the first time - ten feet away from this very spot.
"At least I already have a dress," she says softly.
"Looking exquisite with or without it." He leans down to kiss her. She doesn't pull away.
She hears the shuffling instantly. Her instincts know for a fact just how quickly the crowds will be out to get them - how thoroughly their private moments will be displayed on each gossip website home page within five minutes of his kissing her at all.
It's a good thing she doesn't really care.
Ten Years Later
"Sean, you know you shouldn't have shoved your brother." Jane frowns at her youngest. She steadies the three-year-old by the shoulders. "Look at how Owen and Ryan play. Play like them - happily."
"But Jacob pushes me all the time!" Sean wails, a teary mess.
Jane sighs. The magical newborn moments and sentimental milestones make them want kid after kid - these trying times don't.
"Jacob pushes me and Tommy and Owen and Ryan every day!" Sean cries louder, the neatness of his well-combed golden curls contrasting with his sloppy, tear-stained face.
Some days, Jane is irrepressibly thankful only Owen - and all his kindness and maturity - have anything akin to powers.
"Do you like it when Dad helps you fly with a cloud?" She pats Sean's head.
"Yes." The kid sobs.
Jane smiles, her back just a little sore from hunching over in the toddler-sized chair.
"Dad was playing with you - wasn't he? Maybe Jacob thinks he's playing too." In the back of her mind, she's already steeling herself for the other discipline lesson she'll be dispensing after this one.
"Maybe." The sobs have shrunken into sniffs, at least. Sean's fists still clenches into little balls, unlike his older brothers' angular knuckles.
"Good boy." Jane smiles. A whiff of frost on the edges of her house dress indicate her husband's approach. She pulls Sean up, hugs him, and turns him around.
"Daddy!" The kid toddles over.
Jane smiles serenely, enjoying the image of her husband holding their youngest - both of her boys framed by the high-tech sliding doors.
"How's my little man tonight?" Sean giggles with every tickle Charles digs into his chubby folds.
Jane walks over. "Is Caroline coming for Christmas?"
"She said she'll consider it." Charles leans over for a kiss from her before refocusing on Sean's tummy, occasionally planting a well-timed snuggle.
"Lizzie will be glad if she doesn't show up." Jane sighs. "Caroline can be nice but also - trying."
She feels her husband planting another kiss on her brow. She looks up with a smile.
"Sorry we still haven't taken that holiday." Charles's smile hovers between guilt and tenderness. "We really can't in good conscience leave all five kids with your family."
Jane chuckles, snuggles her son, and kisses her husband. Bliss at home is a happy replacement for any of her traveling dreams. "It's okay. I'm happy here."
"You're the best! The one and only Selenop!" The girl squeals before it's even her turn.
She's tired, but showbiz is showbiz - and Caroline swaps her frown for a dazzling smile. She hears the camera shutters click away.
"How did you keep up with such a boys' club!" Her latest fan fawns over her. This career choice is proving the best yet.
"It's tough, but I make it work." Caroline smiles. Her fingers efficiently sign another three page corners before the next admirer - fully prompted to already flip her book to exactly where she wants the signature - slides up for her three seconds with the great Caroline Bingley.
The great Caroline Bingley grins. "Any special reason you're here?"
"You represent independence to the masses!" The next middle-aged-woman squeals, signed book pressed against her voluminous chest. "To think you've survived two divorces!"
It's not her favorite topic, but any sign of weakness is tabloid fodder.
"No man is worth your tears, my dear." Her voice is saccharine to the extreme - rehearsed, perfected. "Don't let the past cloud your future."
"So profound!" Two ladies scream simultaneously.
She's tired, and her eye bags are buried under three hundred thousand layers of makeup - but she's Caroline Bingley, and a flying spider doesn't let itself fall to the ground so soon after reaching the top of its web.
She signs another five dozen copies with impressive efficiency.
"Have you ever thought of getting married again?" The next fan question catches her off guard.
Caroline blinks, evaluates, calculates - truth or untruth?
"No one can catch and keep the eye of the one and only Caroline Bingley!" The woman's friend answers before the author can.
The edges of Caroline's lips twitch and almost make it to a genuine frown before she redirects them into a smile.
"Is that right?" She giggles - mind a million miles away. Sure, in another life, she's already Mrs. Caroline Darcy. In another life, there's never been a Lizzie Bennet scooping in with her ordinary ways and luring away the eye of the truly one and only Miragem.
In another time and place, Caroline Darcy may already be part of the most elite socialite circles simply by virtue of her husband's last name.
Earning a reputation through a bare-all memoir isn't exactly the best way to fame.
For a few seconds, she sees her fans almost as if this were the first signing - almost as if she never wished that other, alternate life existed.
Then Caroline smilies.
"Well, ladies," she says with pitch-perfect finality. "No one's simply good enough."
A/N: One last epilogue chapter to go! I split up everyone's endings just to leave enough space to feel the time passing. Ten years is a long time :)