NOTES: Lizzy's POV, short chapter. Hurt/comfort. I had some time on my hands with study hall :)

Might be able to post again tonight— if I'm very lucky. a.. lucky DUCKY, one might say 😂jaja I crack myself up. God. I'm so tired. I'm going to go take a nap.

cuidar, mis queridos 💗

Lizzy had never expected the talk with her dad to go well. It was one of his main traits.. that he had a hard time dealing with real things. With hardships. With addiction. With the effects of his youth catching up to him.

Her father had never been much of a father figure.

"Lizzyyy," he smiled from his sickbed. "There you are."

"Dad," she said, chokingly. It had been so long since Lizzy had seen him healthy, over a year now, but somehow this.. was worse.

Mr. Bennet had always been a thin man. He had been getting thinner, as he stopped drinking (since his solution was to stop eating almost entirely). Lizzy had noticed this before, but it didn't really hit her until she stepped into his hospital room, watching a tube feed him air from her perch at the doorway.

He was so.. fragile, and... thin.

"Well, come on in Lizard," Mr. Bennet said, his grin bordering on annoyance. "Not going to catch cancer just from hovering at the door."

Lizzy sniffled, too tired to laugh right now. "How are you feeling, Dad?" She asked, walking to the bed.

Mr. Bennet threw his arms out into the air, and his heart rate monitor revved the tempo. "Ohhh, I feel GREAT, Lizard! I have no idea what kind of painkillers they put me on, but JESUS I should have come here earlier!"

"Just stop," Lizzy nearly cried, "Stop it!"

He stopped, and looked at her. The yellow around his eyes had grown darker, and blended with the bloodshot veins around the edges. He stared at her, for just a moment.

Then he sighed.

"You look so much like your mother."

Lizzy stayed silent, and knelt down by the IV pump facing his bed. His skin looked raw and peeling, cut through with a tube in his sharp nose. He didn't look away when he caught Lizzy staring.

Mr. Bennet watched the ceiling as he spoke. "She said the same thing— HAS been saying.. the same… thing. Hm. She said I was making a joke out of this.. and I suppose I am!.. in a way. We have no real options. We have nothing. So… why not laugh? Laugh at the idiocy of our situation! Ridicule how I look like a sunflower stalk, and how I… can barely… lift… my head. Hmm. I… I don't want to stop laughing, Lizzy. Let me have the laughter."

Lizzy shook her head. Her breathing was labored, but no sound came out. She felt like crying, but she didn't have any tears left.

"You… you don't think you'll make it…" She ended up whispering, into the lingering silence.

"No, Lizzy," Mr. Bennet said, a touch of melancholy entering his voice. "I don't think I will."

"But—," Lizzy got up, and started pacing around (a habit she had begun to pick up from Fitzwilliam). "But we— you have to— to try! Haven't we talked to the doctor, about— about donors? I— I can reach out to people, and find a match, I—"

Mr. Bennet held up a hand. "Sweetie… even if we could afford that… didn't you hear the doctor? It's a rare thing to donate, and a rough surgery. Even if I do recover this time, at most… I'll get five years before I end up here again. It's.. it isn't worth it."

He looked her dead in the eyes. She couldn't remember a time when he had looked quite this stern.

"You should go home. I can't bear to watch you watch me waste away."

Lizzy started to cry. Mr. Bennet started to laugh; a sickly, demented sound. It was almost as if he was laughing at life, at his misfortune, at the sheer indignity of it all. He couldn't lift his head when she kissed him, maybe for the last time.

As she left the room, looking back, a raspy, half-smiling voice cut out through the heart monitor's steady pace.

"See you on the other side, Lizard…"

She crumpled into Fitzwilliam's arms.

Lizzy didn't know how long she cried this time. It turned out she did still have tears to spend. She wept into Fitzwilliam's shirtsleeve, mumbling god-knows-what to him long after she calmed down a bit.

Fitzwilliam Darcy was wonderful. She didn't deserve someone as wonderful as him.

But she was glad to have him anyway.

Lizzy felt so glad he was there. He may have broken her heart, may she hadn't been without fault in that situation either. She was lucky that he was here, and that he…

He might still love her.

Well. At least she knew, now, unequivocally, that she still loved him.

Lizzy loved that he wiped her nose and face with a soft tissue, and that he found a bottle of water for them to share as the halls got dark. She loved that he covered her feet with the blanket he found, and that he rested his head on top of her curls as Lizzy's eyes began to droop, and her head made its way down to the familiar spot on his shoulder.

They stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, breathing softly, for many hours. Lizzy would have been perfectly happy to stay like that for many hours more, but fate apparently had other plans.

Even so… when, in the middle of the night, he edged away from her and got up, Lizzy immediately felt the loss of warmth. She frowned in her sleep, and whimpered. Warm fingers brushed across her cheek.

"I'll be back in a sec, love," Fitzwilliam's voice whispered close to her face. "Go back to sleep."

Reassured that the boogieman hadn't stolen her boyfriend away, Lizzy 'hmhmm'ed her assent, and sleepily puckered her lips.

After a moment of waiting, she felt Fitzwilliam bend down and quickly kiss her. She smiled, even though he cleared his throat like he was embarrassed, and pulled away quickly.

As she drifted back off to sleep, she heard him say, "Um. Right. So, what is it I should know, Mrs. Bennet?"