There had always been something untouchable, inexplicable, about my mother. An intense vibrancy of spirit, something that had always drawn people to her. Her brilliant dark eyes, her slender restless hands, her clear light voice which grew very quick, the words tumbling over one another, when she was excited. She was someone who seemed to radiate joy, a joy which became quieter but no less profound as she grew older.

My uncle spoke, his sombre, sorrowful voice carrying to all corners of the chapel. "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Had he been very devout? I could hardly remember, my thoughts overwhelmed by loneliness and grief. He had never spoken the Lord's name casually. There had been reverence if not great humility. Could he be content in calm serenity of paradise? How he had loved a good debate, although quarrels he disliked intensely. Was he even now insisting on some obscure doctrinal point with the angels of heaven? Was he really there, somewhere? Or had he left utterly, gone beyond recall?

"Hello, Edward," she said dispassionately. I stared. I knew not what I had expected, but it was not this. She was pale and colourless, but utterly composed. Yet the feeling of wrongness did not abate, it threatened to overwhelm me, I did not know what to do. It was as if everything that had made her mother had been drained out, and this white indifferent creature was left in her place. She truly seemed not to care about anything.

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" I thought of Anne's face, frozen in a mask of beauty and despair. My dearest Anne, she had been so like him, she loved intensely and immoderately and kept no part of herself back. Father had been the world to her and she was lost without him. We were all lost. But she had become cold and remote, speaking to no-one, not until one day when I pressed food on her and she said, quite clearly, "I wish I were dead. Why could it not be me?" My aunt always said that men did not cry, and I had never seen my father do so, but at that moment I could not contain myself and sobbed like a child in my sister's arms.

"Mother," I said, and pressed my lips against her cold cheek. Her hand was quite steady, and she managed the household as efficiently as she had ever done. "Are you well?"

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ." No-one thought much of Elizabeth during those dreadful weeks. In that great house full of people, she was left to herself. Only Amelia thought of her, found her in the library where, as a child, she had waltzed with our father, whirling high above the floor in his arms. She was trembling so violently she could not stand, and Amelia wept with her.

"Yes, of course," mother said, her voice utterly without inflection. She went about her duties, having rooms opened for the guests, the entire family pouring in to pay their respects. I could not see that she cared at all, and the very foundations of my world were shaken. In his quiet, austere way, my father had loved her, as much as any man could; and it seemed somehow an insult to his memory that she did not even seem affected by his passing. It was Mrs Gardiner, my great-aunt, who sombrely told me, "You do your mother an injustice, Edward. She cannot grieve — yet, she does not dare."

"Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. Amen." If Anne was devastated, my aunt Georgiana was desolate. She had always been a reserved, elegant woman, with a quality of stillness, of containment, that reminded me very much of my father. Now she was like a child, bewildered and unhappy beyond reason or recall. Her grief only seemed to increase as time passed; she withdrew more and more, her temper becoming erratic, despair settling more deeply on her until we hardly dared let her go anywhere by herself. "Aunt Georgiana — " I said, and she looked at me, her hair loose about her shoulders, eyes wide and blank and dark, and said, "Fitzwilliam?" "No, no, it's Edward, I'm Fitzwilliam's son." She burst into noisy tears and ran away. We knew not what to do — what could be done? Nothing would bring him back to her, to any of us.

Even once most of the family had been disposed of, mother seemed incapable of feeling. She embroidered, day in and day out. She never touched the pianoforte. My aunt Jane did not leave even once her husband and children did. "She needs someone," she told me, and I replied sharply, "She has us." Aunt Jane smiled in her gentle way, and said kindly, "I'm sure you mean well, Edward." Dear Aunt Jane. Mother did seem a little better when she was there, not so much empty as frozen.

"We give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee, that it may please thee, of thy gracious goodness, shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect, and to hasten thy kingdom." If there was one thing I could not do, it was give thanks. Gratitude? For this? Perhaps he had been elevated beyond the temporal world, but he had been happy here, he had not wanted to die, he had loved mother and us and Aunt Georgiana, and he had loved Pemberley, and I had heard him say more than once that if he had any choice he would never leave it. When Mr Collins expressed his condolences to my mother and siblings and I, I almost thought something flickered in her expressionless eyes. Alexander and Elizabeth had no such scruples, and lashed out at him. When he peered at me and began sanctimoniously, "Mr Darcy — " somehow it came crashing down. Not only was father dead, but Mr Darcy was dead, and I was Mr Darcy, the head of this family, and — dear Lord, how had he done it? How would I do it? No-one was left sane in this world — how could the world be sane at all, a world that would take a man such as my father with no warning? If there was any justice it would have been one of the Wickhams or Collinses or Elliots. Even one of the Bingleys or Fitzwilliams. Anyone but father.

She never went outside, although she had always loved Pemberley's grounds. She used to laugh that she had begun to love father when she first saw his grounds. They had hardly changed in the intervening years, father never bowed to the dictates of fashion, only propriety, and the family liked Pemberley as it was, thank-you-very-much. I'm not certain why I asked her to accompany me for a walk that day, perhaps I thought it would do her good to get out of the house. I talked away incoherently, about my cousins, how John and Jane were faring, did they have any children yet, George was doing very well, young Reynolds seemed a little nervous, could something be done for her; and mother mm-hmm'ed and nodded at appropriate moments, until we reached the little bridge over the stream.

"You walked here once," I said.

"I have walked here many times," she said disinterestedly. "Shall we continue?"

"Yes, of course." There, the other path came towards us; and I stopped again.

"Edward — " mother said tightly, but I pressed on.

"This is where he came back — you did not think he would, did you? He could not see you, but you could see him. Ironic, isn't it?"

"Edward, I would like to return to the house."

"No, I think we had better stay here." Where the strength of purpose came from, I didn't know. Perhaps, once upon a time, my father had been just as lost and overwhelmed as I, and only sheer strength of will had kept him afloat. When I was very small, mother would pick me up, and point to my father as he went about being Mr Darcy, and say, Do you see your papa, Edward? He is the very best of men, and someday, you shall be just like him. And then she would laugh, because she always laughed after making any grave pronouncement.

Mother stood very still, but she was still such a little delicate thing, in frame if not character, and I held her where she was.

"Today is the fourth of August, mother. The same day, all those years ago, that you met him at this very spot. You were very young, weren't you? You didn't really care about what he felt, except as it related to you. He told me, once, what he was thinking then. He wanted to please you, he could not think of anything else. But he was very young himself, wasn't he? He did not think you would ever come to love him, because —" I smiled humourlessly — "you had told him so yourself. But he hoped you would respect him and that would be enough."

She turned pale, and said, in a steely voice, "Edward, you would do well to remember that I am still your mother."

I went on, raising my voice. "Did you ever regret saying that? Did you think of it at all? Or were you so certain that you understood his character, even after his letter, that you dismissed any feelings he might have as unworthy of your notice or regret? What about my uncle Wickham? You were angry at grandfather, but you did the same thing, didn't you? Did you ever care about that?"

I could see, now, how brittle her composure was. She trembled, not a great deal, not like Elizabeth, but just a little, as she stared at me. I softened, reached out a hand to touch her cheek. "Perhaps you were not worthy of him, although he would laugh if you said so, but you loved him. You loved him beyond reason, and he never understood how it had happened, but you made him happy. He never really knew how to be happy before you. You gave him that."

"Fitzwilliam," she whispered, looking away, at the path he had walked out of all those years ago. Then, with a bewildered, wounded expression, she turned to me. "Edward," she said, astonishment creeping over her face, "he's gone."

"Yes, mother," I said gently, and in that moment, she fell to her knees, covering her face with her hands, gasping for breath as sobs tore out of her throat. She rocked back and forth, and after a brief awkward moment, the sun shining brightly through the trees, I knelt beside her and put my arms around her. "Mother," I whispered, resting my cheek against her hair, "I love you — I'm sorry — I'm so sorry — "

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen."

"Edward," Aunt Jane began sternly, and I gazed at her, catching my reflection on the opposite side of the room. It was easy to forget that I was my father's son as well as my mother's, until I looked in the mirror.

"Please don't call me that," I said abruptly, and she stopped, stared.

"I beg your pardon?"

I sighed, and set down the letter I had been reading on my desk; and now, somehow, it was my desk. I was no longer an interloper playing some ridiculous game. "Aunt Jane," I said calmly, "my name is Fitzwilliam Darcy."

A/N: I'm a bit sorry myself. This one, as you might guess, has been a fairly traumatic experience. I wanted it to be a little fractured, reflecting Edward's reactions to his father's death and its consequences, which is where the jerkiness, from Edward dealing with Elizabeth, to the funeral service, to his reflections on how the rest of the family is dealing with it, comes from. It was originally AU but I fixed it so that we don't really know when this is occurring. Or perhaps I should say you don't know. : )