A/N: Hello everyone! This is the first of the last three/ four chapters (I'm not sure how many yet, so don't eat me if I'm wrong), and I'm getting very sad, because I have to end something I've been working on for three years now. But no worries, it will be done.
I do want to keep writing, and I have some ideas, but so far I've had writer's block about how to start them. Anybody have ideas about stories they want to see?
I'm going to be a.) really annoying and b.) in denial about actually needing to write the chapter by answering some reviews. Now's the time to jump on the bandwagon and review if you never have before, because I'm almost done and I hope you love me enough by now to let me be greedy and want more of you. Natty shall stop laughing now. I know it's far-fetched, but I would like to get 1000 reviews by the end of the story. If you did review the last chapter, please feel free to feel special and read my reply. Danka.
Mouse: First of all, thanks a bajillion for being the constructive criticism kid. Not enough people do it, and I'm really glad you're trying to help me make my story better. However, my dear friend, I think I'm going to differ with you in opinion on this one. I realize that my writing for Lizzy is completely the opposite of subtle, and that's the point. You hit the nail right on the head when you said that Lizzy isn't subtle. She's not into description, she's into emotion. Lizzy's the kind of girl who is brutally honest with herself, to the point of being wrong, and so I think that rather than hide behind my method of writing, Lizzy is better represented by keeping it blatant and blunt. It's her character, it's who she is. In my other stories, though, you're absolutely right, I can be, and am, more descriptive. Just different media, that's all.
Berry Scary: You can have all the money I have in the world for your bills…all two dollars and twelve cents of it. Don't spend it all in one place, now.
Silvestria: I'm glad someone commented on it, because I thought I was being brilliant and no one else said anything. Thanks!
XxTristan: As long as I have a foot in both camps, I'm cool with being horrible, evil, and totally awesome at the same time.
Magewhisperer: Exactly. There was no kiss, because it's a prelude to a kiss. Which means that somewhere in the near future, there just may be a kiss. Jeez, instant gratification… Cheers.
Kiki: What does Tiy mean?
Check6: If there was no lovey-dovey crap, would it really be that satisfying? But you know me well enough that it's not gonna go all "Oh John," "Oh, Marsha" on you, now is it?
TheBrassPotato: Ah shucks, a jig just for me. I also read all Harry Potter on the 16th, and cried, and called my friend Tessandra, and cried, and talked to my brother, and cried.
Anamika29: I agree, they never should have been married. But then, they never would have had Lizzy, and none of the brilliance would ever have happened. Funny old world, innit?
Percyismine, Lucifer'sLair,anti-botox, Nat the Pheonix, Li Hudson, mistikalolo, cloris, mairenifh, nebulia: Why thank you, loves, same to you, peace, love and happiness.
Forgotten-kiss: Well, I don't really know how much longer I can go without having "Fame Whore" tattooed on my forehead. In Austen's version I think it ends pretty much where it should, but I may have a tiny epilogue to wrap things up. I don't know, I'll see where it takes me.
Belligerent-road-pylon: I know, I saw it and I was amazed. My brother flipped out, he thought the hook-up scene was brilliant.
Hunni07: Hey, I'm not a horse, lady, I gotta go at my own pace. Cheers.
TriGemini: I always look forward to your reviews, because you always know exactly what's going on with the characters. You do me proud, grasshopper…
Severus-Fan: Well, if that's your pen name, then I understand why you were angry. Sorry, kid, that's gotta suck for you. Thank you for helping me with my Shine-envy complex (I get jealous, and then I can't control myself, and things fly around on their own, it's crazy), I need the confirmation.
RoonilWazlib: New Penname, eh? Always happy to expand a HP fan's fic horizons, as I am a bit (cough) of one myself, and I understand…too intense, and they seem almost idiotically happy now.
Gia: I'm hurt, you skimmed my chapters? Why? I didn't think they sucked? Maybe the Will-free environment? , which, though Tess may laugh, is the only way I can describe my sadness.
White Camellia: Mission Trip? Where'd you go? I personally went to my local CVS on the 15th at 11:57 and browsed the store only to find that they didn't display any paraphernalia of Harry Potter, then I bothered the poor Russian girl at the desk who had no idea what I was talking about, and got funny looks from the kind of people who come to CVS at midnight on Friday. Apparently, it was way past my bedtime.
Elfwood: please don't die, then you won't see the ending! Thanks for being so exuberant, you made my day (it's hot and humid here, and it sucks, ask TheBrassPotato if you don't believe me).
Okay, so that was significantly longer than I though it would be. For all you wonderful non-reviewers who just skipped that part, here you go!
And if you feel, like I feel Sugah, come on, OH come on, to
Chapter 36: Whalers on the Moon
It took me about ten minutes to get down the stairs. And this is not because I was primping in the bathroom because when you have nothing to primp the whole "I'd better look good for mah man" thing becomes a bit irrelevant. No, it took me about ten minutes to get down the stairs because for a little while I could barely walk and/or breathe, let alone do some dangerous domestic mountaineering all by my lonesome. It took a whole lot of banister-clutching, deep-breathing, one-stair-at-a-timing, talk-to-myselfing determination to get to the bottom.
"Lizzy? Are you all right?" Charlie asked, and it occurred to me then that I had forgotten an important geographical aspect of my house: the bottom of the stairs is in the living room, in plain view of the people I was not prepared for. Therefore (prepared for, therefore, it's all so poetic), everyone, and I mean everyone, had witnessed my banister-clutching, deep-breathing, one-stair-at-a-timing, talk-to-myselfing determination since the seventh stair from the top.
So much for preparation and Audrey Hepburn-like grace.
"Uhh, yeah," I said, firing back with my ever-present wit, "I, umm, twisted my ankle on the way home today, and I was—"
"So Charlie," said Kat, stepping in and saving me from myself, "why'd you come back? We thought you were going to sell the place."
I limped over to the couch on the other side of the room from where Darcy stood, arms folded. I didn't look at him any higher than his shins. This could be for two reasons: firstly, that his shins were perhaps the most beautiful part of his and any other male body, though underappreciated, and secondly I knew that if I looked any higher (at, say, his eyes/face) I would see that he knew I was lying about the whole ankle thing, and right now I was like a teenage boy with a beer can hidden under his pillow.
Will not think about alcohol, will not think about alcohol, will not think about alcohol…
"Well, I was," Charlie was saying, as I repeated my new mantra to myself, "but I realized that I like it here, what with all the company and the militant Irish population and the bars that close at two and the company," here he looked at Jen, who looked right back before blushing and staring down at her lap. "And I wanted to see the old place again. By the way sir," he said, addressing my father, "I didn't mean to insult you with the whole militant Irish population thing, I'm sorry if I did."
"Don't mention it, son. I am militant and Irish, and I populate this general area, so you're okay."
This was interesting. Dad like Charlie, Charlie was suddenly both fluent in English around Jen and eloquent to boot, and Jen was obviously (more than usual) in love with Charlie.
Eeeexcellent…And I mean that in every Mr. Burns finger-tapping maniacal hand gesture sort of way. This was all going according to The Plan (the capital letters make it more important), and I, the Supreme Mugwump of all things Bennet, was very pleased.
"Oh, great. Thanks. Right," suave Charlie to stuttering Charlie in 2.6 seconds. An all-new record for the Boston area, even beating out my best time by one tenth of a second (of course for me, that was assuming I was ever suave to begin with, which, of course, is laughable).
"How long are you staying this time?" I heard myself ask.
See? Like I said, the whole suave bit was never my gig.
"Well, I'm not really…see, we haven't made any kind of plans, I don't even know how long Will…A few weeks at least. Definitely a few weeks, at the very least."
I glanced at Will again, this time looking him in the eyes. He glanced away from where my sister and his friend were smiling at each other like there was no tomorrow, and caught my eyes. And even though he had no expression on his face, I couldn't look away.
Lizzy Bennet, good sister, awful debater, charming socialite, deer in the headlights.
But for once, I didn't really care that I was making a complete idiot of myself (which I am by default, even in a situation where no one is paying attention to me, so I can assume that the old rule was true in this case as well), because I got to see him again, and he wasn't pointing a shotgun at me or siccing his dogs at me or thrusting a restraining order in my face. And while he didn't look particularly happy to see me, at least he wasn't threatening to chew my face off and feed me to the bears.
Ahhh, life's little victories…
I tried to smile at him, but managed only to hitch one side of my mouth a little higher than the other like my friend Marcus's Cloppy the Horse costume from Captain Skippy's. He took no notice of my face-shape-changing, just looking at me without even batting an eye.
Way to be cool, Will. Big points. Cool, robot impassion had replaced human warmth and emotion. Marvel would be proud.
I think I'd prefer that stupid eyebrow shrug thing to nothing.
But I'd prefer nothing to nothing. If that makes sense at all.
Just when things were getting nice and nice in the Charlie-Jen department, the door opened, and in walked the Blair Witch and Maleficent and Kathy Morningside and Dolores Umbridge all rolled into one.
My mother stood right inside the door, goggling the scene in front of her.
You can't blame her, though, because if I was her, I would have been freaked out to see my estranged husband, two daughters, nephew, his girlfriend, a pregnant fifteen year old, and her twin sister sitting in a living room with two of the richest men in the world, one of whom happens to be in love with her daughter.
All very confusing and angsty. You can't blame her.
"Hi, mom," I said, standing up and offering her my seat. Charlie and my father had stood up when she came in, but my poor father had no idea what to do now, seeing as how they hadn't spoken to each other for two years straight. Out of character though it may have been, I was offering her the chance to get most of the room and a coffee table in between the two of them.
But she didn't move.
Instead she stood there like a statue or a really lifelike garden gnome, the kind with the jolly faces that look evil when you stare at them too long, and gaped at the room around her, trying to find something to say.
But you all know my mother; she wasn't quiet for long. Her eyes fell on Charlie, her lungs filled with air, her mouth opened, and words came out. Shrill, overexcited words.
"Why Charlie! I am so excited that you're here! You simply have no idea! This is wonderful timing, you must be staying in Boston then! Wonderful!...And er—"she looked at Will, "Darcy, is it? Thank you for stopping by, I'm glad you could fit us into your schedule."
Oh you idiotic, tactless woman.
"Mrs. Bennet," said Will, whose jaw twitched but who otherwise remained inscrutable. "How are you?"
"Fine. I'm fine. Bur tell me, Charlie, how is everything going for you? Where have you been? Tell me everything!" And she settled down on the arm of the sofa, right next to my father.
Awkward.
In the little silence that followed, I made a decision. Yes, I know, you all stand in shock and wonder that I am capable of split-second decisions that don't require endless internal monologues, but there are some cases that I can decide what to do without a whole lot of deliberation.
This was one of them.
I reached down and grabbed the keys to Lydia's new car, and said "Actually, mom, I was hoping you could come shopping with me today."
A word of advice, duckies: Sometimes split-second decisions can be very painful to you. So the whole inner monologue is actually a good idea in a whole lot of scenarios.
Everyone in the room, especially my mother, looked at me like I had three heads and a hunchback and an entire city full of people who sang and danced to the same number in perfect harmony. I snuck a glace over at Will, and for the first time his face had softened, and he wasn't Darcy-bot anymore. In that split second, he was the man who had looked at me while I played piano in Pemberley and had told me he loved me at Rosings Park. Hopefully, by the smile he was telling me that I was doing the right thing and not dooming my mother or myself to eternal torment.
So I kept smiling and shrugged and said, "Yeah, I wanted to go get some things for the house, and you know exactly what we need and I thought it would be fun if we went together. Sorry," I added to the shell-shocked and thoroughly relieved living room congregation, "but you guys were kind of a surprise."
And while Charlie assured me it was fine and that he, in fact, apologized for interrupting all our plans, my mother smiled at me and said, "Okay."
I have dug a grave for myself and stepped into it. Like hell the road to, well, hell, is paved with good intentions. It's a bumpy ride full of pit falls for me to stumble into while trying to keep my sister's love-life intact and relatively embarrassment-free.
The room was quiet as I made my way around the coffee table and over everyone's legs. I winked at me father, who, like everyone else, knew how anomalous this was.
Laugh it up, fuzzball. Just let Jen hit a homerun.
You know, in all ways that does not denote sexual contact. Because siblings and sex are not a good combination. At all.
Going past Charlie's chair, I tripped and fell over the corner of the rug like the ever-graceful she-goddess of love and laughter and butterflies, kittens, and backgammon (sheshbesh) that I am. An arm grabbed me before I did a face-plant characteristic of graceful she-goddesses of yadada and backgammon. I looked at the hand, whose knuckles were bruised and purple, to the arm, to the shoulder, to the face.
Yes'm, m'ladies and gents. The only person in the room with the kind of strength to catch me safely milliseconds before breaking my nose on our horse-pattered shag rug was none other than William T. Darcy.
He was smiling now.
I smiled, and would have winked, but a "ping!" similar to the cartoon kind when the light bulb appears above the character's head had just gone off in my brain.
"Your knuckles," I said quietly as he helped to my feet, and I took a little self-deprecating bow to the rest of the room so they'd go back to their business, "they're bruised."
He looked down and self-consciously wiggled his fingers into a fist, then put it behind his back.
"Hazards of the trade," he said, his eyes still laughing.
"Indeed. Well, you have fun here. I'm going to get coasters."
"That was your shopping plan?"
"Well I didn't really have a plan, maestro. Whenever I got out with my mother, she tries to make me buy coasters, so here we are. Have a nice day."
Still smiling, suddenly ridiculously happy for no apparent reason on the verge of giggling like a short-skirted school-girl, I left the house, got in the car with my mom, and drove off to buy coasters from the Martha Stewart Living Collection.
Ain't life grand?
"And this is the first time we've gone shopping together in I don't know how long, this is a fantastic chance for us to catch up on things with each other, because I have really no idea how long it's been since we last talked and it's been so hard to see you go around and not know what's going on with you, don't you think it's been hard not knowing what's up with me?"
"This is the first time we've ever been shopping, we've never had a real conversation, and you know what's going on with me because you live in the same house."
Silence.
"Elizabeth, you need to turn on your turn signal sooner than that, they're not expecting you to make that turn!"
"This is Massachusetts, mom, it's their own fault that they're not prepared. I mean I could pull a U-ey right here—"
"Don't you dare! Elizabeth, stop! Stop!"
"And see? Only one guy honked his horn. Seriously, they take more offense at stop lights than we do at illegal turns… Are you okay?"
"Do…you have…a death wish?"
"Do you need a paper bag or something? Because if you're gonna start hyperventilating..."
"You almost killed us!"
"Stop worrying, it was almost completely safe, and besides, we were going the wrong way, I had to turn around somehow."
"This is why we don't talk! You never listen to me!"
Pause.
"Yeah, well it takes one to know one, sweetheart."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you never listen to me either."
"Don't be ridiculous, of course—"
"You mean like last week? Yeah, you earn big points for both listening to me and believing in me—"
"Last week was—"
"—Indicative of all of our discussions and conversations and meetings. That's pretty much the way we always function, minus the part about me being responsible for getting Lydia pregnant, something I still can't get around the absolute physical impossibility of—"
"But you're—"
"Not the oldest in the house, or in my family. I'm not supposed to be the role model, and I shouldn't be because up until a couple weeks ago, I've never worked a day in my life. I'm not particularly responsible. But you continue to expect me to be the one who takes care of everyone's else's problems. I can't do that, mom. Sometimes I can help them with their problems, or give them advice, but I have to live my own life, too. I can't be held responsible for their actions. But you never understood that."
"Yes, I did!"
"No, you didn't!"
"Yes, I did! What about your piano career? You wanted that!"
"No, I wanted to play piano. I didn't want to be some talent whore whose entire life hangs on my instrument! I wanted friends other than Jen and Rowan, and for teachers to not smile pityingly at me whenever I walked down the hallways. That's what I wanted. You never listened to me when I said I hated it."
"I wanted what was best for you!"
"Oh, good, I'll remember that for when I have kids. 'Honey, I know you're socially awkward and have no friends younger than twenty-five and are absolutely miserable in what you're doing, but that's okay, because I'm your mother, and I know what's best for you.'"
"I don't need your sarcasm."
"And I don't need your censure! Dammit, mom, you've always told me I was wrong and you're right, but this time I'm telling you you're wrong! I'm twenty-one years old and I make my own decisions, and I'll be damned if I'm going to conform to your ideals of who I should be. And anyway, we both know who you want me to be, don't we?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Jen, mom. You want me to be Jen. Another perfect child, sweet, smart, pretty, popular, polite, kind, who always listens to you. Sorry to disappoint, but I can't be her, and I never will be, and I don't want to be."
"I don't want you to be Jen, you idiot! I wanted you to be special! I wanted one of my children to have an amazing, special talent, and to be somebody and go somewhere! Jen's gorgeous, but she doesn't have the kind of talent you have!"
"What's wrong with me on a regular basis, then? Am I not somebody? Without that professional music career, will I not go anywhere? Does my not having special powers or accomplishments suddenly mean that I'm not even worth the effort, just the blame of it? I went my own way to get away from you, but you just yo-yoed back and sucker-punched me with all the guilt you had building up. I don't need it, and I never deserved it."
"You disappointed me, Lizzy. What was I supposed to do, just let it slide and smile and be happy while you throw your life away?"
"Yes, mom. You were supposed to forget it, and let me do something I wanted to do. I wanted to go to college, and be an English major. This year, I wanted to take time off to get a job and actually do something for myself and my roommates. I made those decisions for good reasons, not 'just because,' so maybe I am more responsible than I thought."
"Well, I'm sorry if we don't see eye to eye on that."
"We never did see eye to eye. I've been sorry about that my entire life. Better late then never, I guess."
"Shut up, Elizabeth."
I drove us back to the house an hour and a half later, Lydia's car weighed down with twelve boxes of coasters and three placemat sets. As I turned off the engine, I looked over at my mom, who had been determinedly filing her nails for over twenty minutes.
"Mom."
Nothing. Not even a flicker.
"Mom, we're never going to get anywhere if you don't talk to me."
Nothing.
"I know you're disappointed about Dad, and I know I remind you of him too much, but I don't want to spend the rest of my young adult life being mad at you."
"Then don't."
"Two way street, baby cakes. You have to let things go, too."
Nothing.
Sighing, I unhooked my seatbelt, and opened the door. Then I leaned across the stick shift, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
"Cheer up, mom."
Before I got out of the car, I saw her hand go up to where my lips had been.
A/N: Okay, so that didn't go as far as I wanted it to, but that's okay, it was a long chapter anyway, even without the review responses.
I saw "Hamlet" on the Boston Common this week (twice, actually, because I loved it). It's a program run by the Wang Center that sponsors a run of a Shakespeare show over the summer, which is free and outside and always really good. Jeffrey Donovan, the guy from "Touching Evil" played Hamlet, and it was fantastic, and I was so excited to catch the last show yesterday. I'm out-dorking myself right now, so you're going to have to forgive me, but if any of you come to Boston in the summer in the future, and like Shakespeare, you should check this out, because it's really cool.
So again, because this story is almost over, if you haven't reviewed it ever, or for a really long time, it would be fantastic if you could do it sometime in the near future. Cheers!