We can make it, we can make it…

Fr: joshlyman at whitehouse

To: williamdarcy at charlesbingley

Subject: Brutal honesty

I'm going to be honest. Bingley is looking terrible. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about polling here, or public opinion. I'm talking about how his skin appears to be grey. And Will, if you don't get him looking a little more exuberant soon, I'm telling you, you are going to loose any advantage that having a young, hip candidate gave. Because I'm telling you: he looks old.

So, do what you have to do, but right now, is he even going to get through to the convention next week?

Well. Got to go. Wrangling with TV stations to televise even a little of the thing.

J

Fr: williamdarcy at charlesbingley

To: joshlyman at whitehouse

Subject: re: Brutal honesty

I know. We're trying to make him stop work, but frankly, what can I do? If this doesn't get any better, I'm calling in doctors. It's getting to the point that I don't care what the voters think. I just want to make sure that my friend is still alive. Seems a bit over the top, but you haven't seen him close up. I mean, I don't really remember when I last properly slept, but I'm not sure that he's even trying. I caught him the other day, when he was supposed to be asleep, and for once we'd managed to clear all speeches off his schedule, and he was up watching reruns of Zimmerman speeches. I could have smacked him across the face.

Well, let's not let that get out, all right?

See you next week. I'll be the one who looks like the undead.

Will

"WILL?"

I wince. This is getting to be quite the routine.

"Where's my computer?" bellows Charles, striding down the hall. "Oh, and my cell, my Blackberry, my pager?" His voice, if possible, raises several notches as he appears in my doorway. "What the hell have you done with them?"

Now is the time to be calm. Now is not the time to yell back. I bite down all the retorts that bubble up inside me. "I confiscated them," I say. "You need to sleep."

Charles practically growls, like some crazed wild animal. "I can't sleep," he spits at me. "I can't get a freaking moment of peace without people barging in, or speeches and people running round in my head. I might as well work, rather than lying there, getting more and more angry."

I frown. "Are you actually suffering from insomnia?"

He drops into the couch in the corner of my office, head in his hands. "No, Will," he mutters in a low tone. "I'm saying that the convention is days away, we have mountains of work to be doing, and the last thing I need to do is sleep."

"Have you seen yourself in the mirror recently?" I ask, pushing my work aside for a moment.

"What?"

"I'm serious. Go look at yourself in a mirror." I turn back to my work, and ignore him.

Slowly Charles stands up, watching me in disbelief. "You're serious? We're only leading by one or two points, Zimmerman is coming up, fast, and you want me to sleep?" he says.

I nod, not looking up. This will only work if I hold my nerve.

He sighs heavily, spins on his heel and walks out of the room. A few minutes later, he is back.

"OK," he says. "I look horrible."

"Like the undead."

He raises an eyebrow. "Not unlike yourself."

"Yes, but I am not the youthful and exuberant face of this campaign."

He regards me in silence for a second before slumping back into the couch. "Dammit," he mutters, and leans his head back against the wall. He looks back up. "We're going to loose."

I don't move.

"What, no superstitions? No spitting, no turning round?"

I shrug. "Right now, I agree."

He raises an eyebrow. "Rule one, Will. Never, ever tell your candidate that you think he'll loose."

"Rule one, Charles. Honesty."

He smiles, ever so slightly. "OK," he says quietly. "So, what do we do?"

Thank God. "We draft in everyone who can write worth a damn. We have them write drafts for your speeches at this convention. We'll piece it together while you sleep."

He laughs. "Funny," he says. "Now what are we really going to…" Clearly he sees my face, as he trails off. "You're serious?" he asks. "Oh, Will…this is a bad plan. What about interviews, meet and greets…?"

I shrug. "It's all we've got. You need rest. You stand up, the first night of the convention looking like that? They'll be prepping to pronounce you dead in a month. No one would choose you."

"Comforting," he mutters.

"Yeah, well. This is what we've got. You are going to look rested, young, fresh, and ready to take on whatever those meat-heads throw at us. I am bringing in a doctor, he will let you sleep, even if it means pumping you full of drugs."

"Will…" Charles groans.

"Yes. You will be so chock full of all kinds of vitamins that Superman himself would look up to you as a specimen of good health. All right?"

Charles lolls back, looking both relieved and resigned. "All right," he says. Slowly, he stands up. "Well," he says. "I'll be in my room…sleeping."

"Great."

He shakes his head slowly, then walks off down the corridor. Immediately that his door closes, I call Jaime, and the underground save-the-campaign plan springs into action. We'll be up for this next week, solid, but we've got a chance at pulling it back.

Whilst the hotel had before been busy, phones constantly ringing, people running up and down stairs with sheaves of papers, now suddenly, the place comes alive. It buzzes with work, twenty-four hours straight through. The only place of relative quiet is Charles' suite, only interrupted for a few hours a day when he is permitted to work, comes out for speeches, meet-and-greets. When he is back at the hotel, he is under strict rest orders.

Jaime stretches out tired arms above her head, then returns to typing up the illegible scrawl that has been dumped on her desk. Copy upon copy of speeches is made, previously undiscovered, budding speechwriters sprawled across conference tables, thrashing out plans, thumbing through hotel copies of the Bible, hastily bought Dictionaries of Quotations. And Will, who is surprisingly looking less and less like the undead, despite his waning hours of sleep, takes speech after speech, highlights sections, words, phrases, in yellow neon pen. And when people have dropped off for a few hours to get some rest, he stands by a window, blind to the scenes of people coming and going below, and realises what he's going to have to do. And he feels sick about it.

Fr: williamdarcy at charlesbingley

To: ebethbnet

Subject: A favor?

Dear Lizzie,

Thank you for replying. It would have been easier to leave it, but I'm grateful. I'm emailing however, praying on the hope that a) you're still keeping an eye on the campaign, b) that you don't hate me so much that you never want to help me, and c) since your sister has started working for Zimmerman, that you haven't also defected.

At present, we don't have a speechwriter, meaning that Charles has decided to take extra workloads on. Due to this, as you've no doubt seen, he has seriously overworked himself. Therefore, I've ordered him to rest before the convention which, miracle of miracles, he has agreed to. However, we still have convention speeches to write. I've got the whole staff, plus extra speech writers scribbling night and day, but I haven't dared take anything to him yet as even I can see that they're not right yet. Could you possibly, at all, look through them, give me some pointers as to what would work, that kind of thing?

I'd be grateful for any help you can give us right now.

With best wishes,

Will

"You did what?"

Will rubs a tired hand over his eyes. "Seriously, Caroline, it's fine."

"FINE?"

"Could you not yell?"

Caroline whirls away, and stalks back to her desk. "Will, you sent someone who no longer works here, doesn't particularly want to work here, and who could make a freaking packet out of selling her story to the press," she snarls, then affects a simper. "I'm a simple country girl who has a political secret to tell," she squeals in a tortured Tennessee accent.

"It's not like that."

"You said that she hated you!"

Will leans back in his chair. "Huh. So I did."

"Will!"

He sighs. "She won't say anything. The worst that'll happen is that she does nothing."

"No," says Caroline, all angles and hard edges, "that's the best."

"You sent someone who hates you, sensitive information about the campaign?"

Will looks up slowly, mentally wishing Louisa Bingley-Hurst away. "Yes," he says, slowly, "but it's not really like that, and Caroline knows it."

"Dude, that was a stupid mistake," says Mitch Hurst from where he is lounging in the corner.

"Thank you."

Caroline leans forward, for once ignoring her new friends. "So," she says. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Do about it?"

She gives him an incredibly stern look. "Yes," she says, coldly.

Will shrugs, stands up and fishes his Blackberry out of his pocket. "Oh," he says, glancing at it. "I'll go and…" He gestures out of the room, and the walks out.

Caroline leans back in her chair, and smiles at Louisa. "See?" she asks. "That's all he really wants. A woman who won't take no for an answer."

"Absolutely," says Louisa, smiling right back.

"Huh?" asks Mitch, and then turns back to Twitter.

Fr: ebethbnet

To: williamdarcy at charlesbingley

Subject: re: A favor?

Will,

Sorry it took so long to reply. I was out all day, but once back, I didn't stop. I know you with your ant-like work ethic might appreciate that.

And of course I knew about the Senator. You can recognise a Charles Bingley speech from a mile off. They're almost as beacon-like as a Seaborn.

Anyway, I took it a little further than you asked. I hope that's all right. I pieced them together. You had some good stuff here, in parts. Together it might be a cracker. No doubt you're confining the Senator to as little work as possible, but give this to him in time for him to add his own little Bingley polish to it. That's what he always liked to do.

I hope this works. Let me know if there's anything else I can do. I mean, I'll always be on side with Charles Bingley for America, despite the fact that Jane is now thriving with Zimmerman. And I don't hate you.

Best,

Lizzie

Charles is looking better than he has in months. It is midnight, I'll grant you, but it's an improvement that he said he'd be heading off to bed after this meeting. It's a little miracle that has happened over him. I just hope that it lasts. He finishes reading the speech, puts it down, and then looks at me keenly.

"So," he says. "Is she back?"

"Is who back?"

He taps the speech with his pen. "Lizzie, Will. This is Lizzie's."

I shrug. "In fact, it's everyone's."

"Will…" he says, warningly.

"Fine, she did piece it together, and smooth it out."

"She wrote it from scratch."

I lean forward, and take it off the table. "No, really," I say. "She pieced together what I sent her, brilliantly, I'll grant you. See, that was Matt's." I point at the page.

"What, the paragraph?"

"Well, more like those two words together, but they all pulled together."

He shakes his head at me slowly. "I can't believe she came back for you."

"What do you mean?"

He smiles a little. "I don't know what happened, and I'm not going to ask you, but she was clearly fuming."

I frown. "No, I meant, she did it for you. She wants to see you win."

"Really?" asks Charles, smiling even more cryptically. "You're sure it wasn't for you?"

"Why would it be for me?"

Charles shakes his head slowly, and picks up the speech again. "For a smart guy, you can be an incredible idiot sometimes," he mutters, before standing up. "I'll have another look at it now, and then rewrite tomorrow. All right?"

She came back for me? Well, not came back, but wrote for me? Why the hell would she…?

"WILL?"

"Oh, yeah, sure."

He smiles again. "Wow," he breathes. "This is going to be interesting." And with that, he goes off to his rooms.

So I realise some of you thought that Lizzie was heading for Pemberley, and clearly, she hasn't yet, so sorry if you're disappointed, but first, we have a Democratic Convention to take by storm. Or not. We shall see.

Thanks and love and all that. You truly are all fab. Like the Thunderbirds.