A/N, the first: Warning! There will be some very mild allusions towards an attack. Very tame and very not-graphic, but wanted to have a warning in case anyone needed one. I have excuses and promises at the bottom.
Recovery was a slow and painful process for Darcy. It was painful precisely because it was so slow and he – who was used to all the minutes of all his days being filled with some sort of activity or other – itched at the confinement to his rooms, away from the running of his business, away from his friendship with Bingley and away from having the latitude to act on Elizabeth's behalf.
The family physician, Doctor Channing, had been uncharacteristically stern during the most recent of his periodic house-calls. An older man with a fatherly mien, he had summoned one of his sterner looks and told Darcy in the bluntest possible terms that he had been extremely ill and that if he ever wanted a return to his "absurdly busy life" – the doctor's words, not his – then he would need to be a very model patient in the recovery stages.
Channing had then cleverly enlisted the aid of Georgiana, who had commandeered all the servants in the household and Darcy was not permitted to do anything more taxing than sitting up in bed and reading.
The troubling thing was that he was often too tired to do even that. It was a dragging sort of fatigue that seemed to cloud his mind and pull at his eyelids, no matter how much he slept. In truth, attempting to read only gave him a headache as the concentration required to make sense of a whole page of text was the mental equivalent of a 10 kilometer run.
Moreover, he found the tedium of recovery to be broken only by chaotic dreams. It seemed he could not even think on a single subject for longer than a few moments before his weary mind would wander and the next thing he knew, he was waking up from an unintended slumber. The first several times that had happened, he had thought at first that he had slipped into a vision, for the sensations were much the same.
But if these were visions and not fever-dreams, they were nothing he could ever hope to make sense of and so he decided that it would be safest and sanest to just treat them as dreams. After all, he reasoned, it was highly unlikely that Bingley should have some sort of surgery to change his face to that of a pig and even less likely that Bingley would be able to convince him to change his face as well. The implications that he himself might choose a donkey's face were mildly disturbing, but after all, it was only a dream.
His brief times of alertness and lucidity were spent thinking of much pleasanter things, such as the things he might say and ask when next he and Elizabeth met, but his subconscious toyed with him even in this, bringing back his prior fever dream of Elizabeth telling him coldly that she wished to never see him again.
So when he Saw a vision of his darling Elizabeth coming to serious harm at the hands of an unknown assailant, Darcy found himself out of bed and half-dressed before it even occurred to him that it might have been only a dream.
Already dizzy and sweating from the efforts of standing and beginning to pull on the first articles of clothing he could lay his hands on, Darcy sank momentarily to the edge of his bed and considered what he knew.
Up to this point, all his dreams of Elizabeth had been the same one. It was something he had noticed happening before in times of sickness. It was as though his mind got caught in some sort of loop, always conjuring up some terrible dream that would keep him waking up what felt like every few minutes, never quite reaching the deep slumber that would be needed to aid in the healing process.
But this dream of Elizabeth had been a different one, if dream it was. She had been walking in a dark place. No, it had simply been dark outside. Nighttime, most likely. She worked nights now and Darcy had no idea of what her transportation situation was like. A point in favor of the whole thing having been a vision, Darcy thought grimly and began to struggle into his shirt, fumbling with the small buttons down the front.
There weren't many more details that Darcy could summon to mind about where or even when she might have been. There were only horrific images of a man, attacking her from behind and of her struggle being brutally ended with a backhanded blow that had seemed to daze her into a state of near unconsciousness.
So there was nothing – nothing! – to tell Darcy whether this was a nightmare or a vision. If a vision, there was nothing to tell him where Elizabeth might be or when it might happen. There was only a sick feeling in his stomach and a sense of fiercely protective urgency that could not be ignored.
It didn't matter whether it was a dream or a vision, he decided as he stomped his foot into a shoe. If there was even the slightest chance that she might be harmed and it was in his power to prevent it, he would find her and follow her every movement without ceasing until he could be certain that she would be safe. His doctor and family and servants could not prevent his taking this action, either.
What was his own health in light of Elizabeth's safety? It was not even to be considered and he would gladly drive himself to the very brink and even over the very edge if only it would keep her from harm.
That thought gave him momentary pause as he realized just how much he already loved her. It was inexplicable, really. He scarcely knew her and much of what he did know had come second-hand from her sister. They had been in each other's company for perhaps a total of six hours, all of which had been at least partially monitored by some third party. But on the basis of no more than the utter rightness and happiness of what he had seen in his visions of their life together, he knew he would be as willing to sacrifice himself for her as he would be for Georgiana.
Staggering as the thought was, he reminded himself wryly that they would not have that life together if he did not take care for both himself and her. There was time enough later to ponder over the implications of his hasty actions this night, whatever they might be.
After fastening both of his shoes, Darcy stood up again, fighting off another wave of sick dizziness, and paused only long enough to retrieve a coat. It was the middle of the night and would be cold outside and he was willing to take at least reasonable precautions about his own health if they would not interfere with his finding Elizabeth.
The small problem of how to go about finding her had been turning itself over somewhere in the back of his mind, so he was able to go without hesitation to the servants' quarters and quietly wake his driver.
Fitch looked briefly startled to see him, but Darcy had been prepared for any number of well-meaning but ill-timed questions or protestations and headed the other man off at the pass.
"I'm sorry to wake you," he said, and it was true. "But I've an emergency and I don't have time for questions or debate. Please get ready as quickly as you can. I need to get to Blue Line."
"Yes, Sir," Fitch replied automatically, though his face was full of immediate conflicts about whether he ought to be doing as he was told. Tonight's activities flew in the face of Georgiana's orders, but he was a good servant and knew his place and so moved without any hesitation or impertinent questions to do as he was bid.
Darcy had resorted to pacing outside the back door by the time Fitch appeared, dressed in a less haphazard way than Darcy was but clearly not having wasted any time about niceties such as ordering his hair or washing up.
"Do you know where Blue Line is?" Darcy demanded, falling into step beside Fitch as they strode across the open ground to the small outbuilding where the automobile was kept. Gravel crunched under their feet, the cold sound of it seeming to be the only other noise in the whole city.
"I do, Sir," Fitch confirmed. "Be about a fifteen minute drive, Sir."
"Can you make it any faster?" Darcy demanded, lengthening his stride just slightly even though they were nearly at the outbuilding and Fitch was clearly trying not only to keep up but also to get ahead so that he could open doors for his employer.
"Dunno, Sir," Fitch admitted. "If you're not opposed to my driving a bit unsafe like, I could probably save you a few minutes."
"Do it," Darcy commanded, reaching the door first and pulling it open. He half turned to fix Fitch with a serious look, made all the more austere by the pale wash of moonlight across his already-pale face and the cloud of breath that curled up like a smoky mist around him.
They were both in the automobile in the next minute, Darcy opening the front passenger-side door for himself and sliding in before Fitch could even reach for the handle to open the back door. The driver tossed a wide-eyed glance of surprise at his employer, the departure from the social norm seemed to disconcert him more than anything else had this night.
Darcy ignored both the look and the unspoken surprise, adjusting the skirts of his coat around him.
"As quickly as you can," he reminded the driver and then turned the whole of his attention inward to the voice that seemed to echo the pulse of his heart in an endless chant:
Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurrryhurryhurry.
Elizabeth, he thought, Hold on. I'm coming.
Author's Note, the second:
First of all, I'm sorry that it's been... uh... a lot of months since I updated and that my last update implied I would be better about posting. I'm a filthy liar.
Secondly, I have some decent excuses that include a small amount of cross-country travel and a larger amount of house-buying and a moderate amount of working on an original novel. But the truth is that I am mostly lazy. And a filthy liar.
Thirdly, great thanks are due to my secret beta, who wishes to be anonymous and who knows exactly how to light a fire under me. She rocks.
Fourthly, this chapter is shorter as I threatened they would be the last time I posted. That's the bad news. I mean, other than the fact that I left you all where I left you with this one. The good news is that I have the next one well underway and hope to have it up by the end of the week or beginning of next. After that, I have no idea. I'm not great with the writing in advance thing. I'd promise to try to keep on top of this better, but I think we've already established that I'm a flthy liar.
But I'm a filthy liar who loves and appreciates everyone who takes the time to read and to comment!