So:

a) I'm getting a new computer any day now, and my internet is being upgraded at the same time, so my posting ability might disappear for a day or two.

b) You appear to be a little concerned over Jane, currently under the surgeon's knife. Fair dos. I'm glad you're so caught up in the story.

c) You also appear to be impatient for some Will/Lizzie action. Again, fair dos.

d) You got me past 200 reviews. You deserve another post.

e) I don't own What's Up Doc? I wish I did.

A masterpiece of understatement

"You're not dead then."

For someone whom I considered to be a good friend, Will looks remarkably nonplussed at both a) my arm is encased in plaster, my face is one massive graze, I have cracked ribs, bruised muscles and large amounts of pain killers coursing around my blood and yet, b) as he says, I'm not dead.

"What?"

He rubs the back of his head, causing his hair to stand up on end, as always. He shakes his head, and walks into the room, before sitting down heavily in the plastic chair at the end of my bed. "You're not dead."

"Oh good. I thought I imagined the disappointment in your voice the first time but look, there it is again."

He raises an eyebrow at me.

"I was in a car crash, you know."

"Yes," he says, rubs his forehead, and sighs. "Sorry. I know. How are you doing?"

"Oh all right," I say. "I'm on massive amounts of pain killers. It's making me feel a bit woozy."

"That might account for the sarcasm."

"And the purple spots in front of my eyes," I say, blinking hard.

"What happened?" he asks, bluntly.

"Pleasantries over, then?"

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, fingers pressing against the edges of his eye sockets. "Charles, Lizzie is down stairs, fighting for some semblance of composure as she freaks out about her sister. I just want to…"

"What's happening with Jane?" I ask, panic rising in my throat. "I was told she came out of surgery safely."

"She did," he says, "but then passed out and was taken back in."

"WHAT?"

He sighs. "That's all I know, and all she appeared to know."

I lean back against the pillows, trapped in my bed my plaster casts and IV lines, feeling helpless.

"What happened?" he asks again, gentler this time.

"I don't entirely remember," I answer, truthfully. "We'd picked up the food for the party, and Jane was laughing at my Christmas music collection on my iPod, and then another car just got out of control on the ice, I think. We were fine one minute, and slammed into a tree, the next."

Will sighs and leans back. "There wasn't any fighting or crying or…you know?"

"Why would there?"

He shrugs. "Lizzie was worried that she'd have to kill you."

"Oh."

He sighs again, and rolls his head, easing his neck out. "OK," he says, and stands up. "I'm going to go and find out what's happening down stairs?"

It's a question. Not a statement. His eyebrows are raised, waiting for me to reply. "Oh, yeah, please."

"OK," he says again and pauses in the doorway. "Was Lizzie going to stay with Jane?"

"I…think so," I say, not entirely sure. My head is too full of Jane and operations and a future tossed up in the air like salad leaves to know any straight answers right now.

"OK," he says once more, smiles briefly, and leaves, shutting the door behind him.

"I didn't know what you'd want, but you looked cold, so…" He places on the coffee table in front of her a couple of lidded cups, before emptying out his pockets to reveal paper sachets of sugar, tiny plastic cups of milk, and a whole host of junk food. He smiles apologetically, and sits down next to her. "There's barely passable coffee," he says, gesturing, "not at all passable tea, and then your general, run of the mill vending machine junk."

Slowly, Lizzie uncurls stiff limbs, and reaches out for the coffee. "Thanks," she says, and sips it.

"Seriously, have something to eat," says Will, taking the tea, taking a sip, then pulling a face of disgust. "I bought all kinds of crap."

"Something to suit every palette," says Lizzie, quietly, tiredly.

He smiles. "Something like that." He pauses. "Was there any news?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing yet."

They slip into silence for a few minutes until a man emerges from behind the ominous double doors down the corridor, his white coat flapping in an official looking manner. "Miss Bennet?" he asks, surveying the clustered people waiting in the rows of plastic chairs. Nearly dropping her coffee, Lizzie moves to jump up.

"That's me," she says, as Will lifts her coffee out of hands, and out of danger of exploding on the floor.

"Miss Bennet?" he checks again. "Are you the sister?"

She nods. "Lizzie," she says, hands wringing.

"Lizzie," he repeats with a grandfatherly smile. "Your sister has sustained injuries that we would expect to see with this kind of accident and they are eminently treatable."

She frowns. "I'm sorry, I don't know…I really know what happened."

"Oh," he says, "well. I understand that another driver lost control of his car on the ice, and it hit your sister and her fiancée's car hard enough to plough them off course, onto much icier conditions, and into a tree."

"A tree?"

"I believe that they, and it, are going to be fine."

"It?"

"The tree."

Lizzie rubs her forehead with one hand. She pauses, bemused. "What?"

"So how is Jane doing?" asks Will, getting up from his seat.

The doctor turns to him. "She's…you're Will Darcy!"

He smiles, somewhat insincerely. "Yes. How is Jane?"

"Oh, you ran a fabulous campaign. Can't wait until January."

"OK. And Jane?"

"Oh she'll be fine. We set her leg, and her arm in the first surgery, and then it turned out her spleen was ruptured so we repaired that as well."

"That's why she lost consciousness?" asks Lizzie in a very small voice.

"Yes," he says, matter-of-factly. "It was all very straight forward. She's still in recovery, but you'll be informed as soon as she's back in her room." He pats her shoulder and nods at Will. "Good to meet you Will," he says, and walks away, leaving Will shaking his head slowly.

Lizzie stays standing there for a few seconds, breathing heavily.

"Lizzie?" says Will. "Are you all right?"

She turns to him. "It wasn't Charlie's fault? It was another driver and the ice…?"

He shrugs. "That's how it sounds. Charlie didn't remember it entirely, but he did know that they had been laughing just before it happened."

She lets out a long breath. "OK," she says slowly. "I should go and phone my family."

Still standing in front of her in the gloomy waiting area, Will puts up a hand to wipe away the tears of relief on her cheeks. "OK," he says softly, and when she lets out another long breath and closes her eyes, more tears brimming against her lashes, he pulls her into his arms and holds her tight. "She's going to be all right," he murmurs against her hair and she nods against his shirt front.

"I know," she says thickly, and eventually pulls back, and smiles. "I really should phone them."

She pulls her boots back on and finds her phone, as Will sits back down and hands her the coffee.

"Thank you," she says, and smiles, a little brighter. One hand holding her phone, the other delivering sips of coffee, she wanders down the hall, the strains of "Kit? She's going to be all right!" drifting back to Will.

It is only when Will is at the top of a short flight of stairs, unlocking a door, with my bags in a pile next to him, that I realise that a) I have no where to stay tonight (re: my sister, unconscious in the hospital) and b) this very well might be Will's house. With that in mind, c) did I ever tell him I had no where to stay, and whilst I'm at it, d) did he ever say, 'Lizzie, would you like to stay at my hilariously massive gothic mansion?' Except it is not all that massive, it's just a decent sized townhouse, and it only has a bit of that Victorian fancy thing going on, and right now, I'm teetering between nothing and everything being hilarious. It's a fine line when you haven't slept and have waded through tons of emotional trauma.

"You all right?" he asks as the door swings open.

"This is your house?"

He frowns a little with a look of vague bemusement. "I should hope so," he says, "otherwise I've just broken in very easily to some strangers house, and I have lost my own."

My head feels a little woolly. It's that unfortunate state when you're so tired that you no longer get jokes. "Your own what?"

He bites his lip, pushes my bags inside the door, then holds out a hand to me, as if I were a toddler. "Come on," he says. "I think you need some half decent food, and somewhere that doesn't smell like antiseptic."

"Where are we?" I ask, attempting to mask the fact that this short flight of stairs feels like a mountain.

He smiles.

"You know, because I think I may have fallen asleep in your car."

"Yeah," he says, as I reach the top of the stairs. "I think so too." He propels me in front of him into the house, and shuts the door, leaving us in a dark hallway, lit only by the street lights shining through the glass in the door. "George?" he calls, shrugs, then snaps on a light. He opens a door on my left, turns on a light, and pushes me in. "Sit down," he says. "I'll go and turn on the kettle and see where George is lurking."

"Oh, don't do anything on my account," I hear myself say, and remember that he has dragged me (not exactly kicking and screaming) to his house as what may amount to a massive favour. Damn it.

He grins. "It's not just for you." Then he disappears.

He gives me just enough time to get to that dopey, spaced out stage of tiredness, before returning with two steaming mugs, some kind of Tupperware jammed under his arm, and a piece of paper between his lips.

"Coffee, right?" he mumbles through the paper, and puts the drink down on the table next to me, puts his own down on a coffee table, hands me the box, and drops the paper next to his mug, before dropping to his knees in front of the fire place and poking the debris of a few days fires in the wood burner. In the time it takes him to get a good blaze going, I only just figure out how to open the Tupperware. Yes. That dopey. He rocks back on his heels and fishes out a cookie from the box, then gets up to sit down in the other armchair by the fire. He smiles slowly whilst I contemplate the cookies.

"Can't chose?" he asks, sipping his tea.

"Too many choices when I'm this tired."

"Have one of the chocolate fudge nut ones. They're George's speciality."

Sometimes, someone being bossy is bliss. I obey, and follow his example, dunking it in my coffee. Feeling instantly revived, I take a second to prise off my boots, and curl up in the chair, then take another bite of cookie, and another sip of coffee.

"Better?" he asks, as I sigh my self evident reply.

"Mmm. Hey, where is George?"

Over his tea, he nods to the paper on the table. "She left a note. She's out getting dinner."

I pause. "Will, am I staying here tonight?"

"Unless you have somewhere you'd rather be."

I roll my eyes. "You never asked."

He shrugs. "You looked like you were barely up to understanding speech. You looked confused by 'hi'."

I grimace.

"I mean," he continues, "another time, I'll start a rousing conversation on the senate races if you like…"

"Fine," I say. "Thank you."

He raises his eyebrows. "For making your decisions?"

"For letting me stay here."

He smiles slowly. "Any time."

"So," I continue, "if George is out getting dinner, which I assume I am included in, unless you summarily starve you guests…"

"Yeah, we do."

"…then shouldn't you phone her and tell her that I'm here too, or do you guys just eat like massive dinosaurs?"

"Massive dinosaurs?"

I grimace again. "Shut up."

He grins and nods towards George's note again. "If you can decipher her illegible scrawl, you'll see that she already knew."

"She's a psychic?"

"Yeah," he deadpans.

"Will?"

He sighs and takes another drink from his mug. "I phoned her this afternoon to check that it was all right with her that you stayed."

"And was it?"

He gestures once again to the paper. "She's out buying ingredients."

I sigh, content for the moment, and sink back in this ludicrously comfortable chair. We sit in silence, gazing at the fire, and feeling snoozey, until the front door slams and a wave of freezing air wafts in.

"Hello?" calls a voice, and a second later George, looking pink cheeked and laden with bags, appears in the doorway. "Hey," she says, disappears for a second, then comes back, sans bags, and starts pulling off her gloves and coat. "Lizzie, I'm so sorry about your sister. How is she?"

"Doing better," I say, and feel the relief of that truth. "I mean, still bashed up but compared to, what, eight hours ago, she's looking a lot better."

"Good," she says and sits down, reaching for a cookie. "Now, I was thinking turkey sausage lasagne."

I hear myself groaning out loud. Will and George laugh.

"I think that was a yes," he says, and drains his tea. "Come on, I'll help you. We'll leave Lizzie snoring by the fire."

"No, it's fine, I'll help."

"No offence, but I don't want to be responsible for you falling asleep with a knife in your hand and, you know, slicing anything off, so you stay here and watch any of George's sad and sorry DVD collection."

"Hey," she says, standing up to go and make dinner. "I'll have you know that there are some classy, classy films there."

He gets up, stretches, and picks up the now empty mugs. "Yeah, OK. I have four words for you. The Prince And Me."

She follows him off into the kitchen, debating the various merits of various romantic comedies, and soon it is accompanied by the comforting sounds and smells of the construction of a turkey sausage lasagne.

Will, used to finding himself wide awake, momentarily panicking that he hasn't, in fact, balanced the budget, is not at all surprised to find himself seeing his alarm clock register two AM. However, he has not been having White House chief of staff anxiety dreams. He's not sure that he's been dreaming at all. He lies still in bed, listening to the silence. Except it isn't silent. Between the odd siren zipping through distant streets, and the odd creak and squeak that comes from living in an old house, he hears the unmistakeable hum of his old television, and a mumbling whisper, both coming from downstairs. Reasoning that even the worst criminals are unlikely to break in, just to watch late night poker, he pulls on comfortable old sweats over his boxers and finds his only just respectable college hoody, to stave off the cold night air. He manages to make it down the stairs in the dark without tripping (thank you patchy light through the front door) and pauses to hear slightly louder muffled mumblings through the living room door. Cautiously, he opens it, and finds Lizzie, looking up at him from her seat, huddled in the middle of the couch.

"Hey," she says, and smiles, awkwardly. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"

He scuffs into the room, closing the door behind him. She has put on a light in the corner, casting a hazy glow over the room. Otherwise, the corners are huddled in shadows. "No," he says, eventually, sitting down with a good space between them. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shrugs as well as a person can with their arms wrapped around their legs, knees drawn up to the chin. "Didn't appear to. I kept thinking about Jane."

"And sometimes it more tiring just lying there, so you got up and came down here."

She nods, flashing him a quick, tight smile. "Something like that."

He pauses. "They think she'll be all right."

"I know," she says. "It just doesn't stop my mind from wandering, imagining that she's not. That any minute I'm going to be called back in to, I don't know, say goodbye?" She glances down at her cell phone, resting on the edge of the coffee table, open. "Is that really dumb?"

Will smiles, and settles back in the cushions of the couch. "There's something very comforting about living in a near opposite time zone to your sister most of the year, just so when your mind races in the middle of the night, you can phone her."

"And not incur wrath by waking her up."

"Exactly."

They settle back and both watch the television screen for a few silent minutes. Then, "I recognise this."

Lizzie smiles again. "It's What's Up Doc?."

"Near the end, right?"

"Yeah, I think so."

They watch it together for a few minutes, until the flow of the story is interrupted by commercials.

Lizzie turns to Will, and bites her lip, suddenly hesitant. "Will, I never thanked you."

He turns from turning down the volume. "Sure you did."

"No, it was nothing…just an email, I…"

"I printed it out and carried it with me since then."

She stops. "What?"

Will leans back and shrugs, smiling. "I don't know. It certainly wasn't nothing. I think…I think it reminded me of something."

"What?" she practically whispers, her face a map of unspoken concerns

He smiles again. "That maybe it could work out. That maybe I should stop imagining the worst. That maybe I've got a lot more than just an expensive education and a chip on my shoulder."

She frowns. "Of course you've got more than that. You've got so much to give, and, I mean, you give it all."

He smiles.

"I've been so wrong."

A frown grazes his forehead. "No, you…"

She smiles, perturbed. "No, I have. Everything I said to you last Christmas was wrong. You acted in all our best interests and then took no credit. You tried to be honest and I smacked you down. I mean, seriously, Will. You've done so much for my family. I just…I'm ashamed of what I said."

He pauses, and turns properly to Lizzie, ignoring the film as it once again continues on screen. "You were right," he says, "about everything. I might have tried to act in your best interests but it didn't work out like that, and I didn't do much to mend the fences I had broken. I ignored and chastised you, and then had the gall to be offended when rather than fall into my arms, you told me that you'd rather not spend a single minute longer with me."

"Oh, don't remind me." She winces.

"No, you were right. I was too full of myself and doing things alone to let anyone else in." He smiles at her, slowly. "When I think of all the things I could have had by now…" He pauses, and shrugs. "I feel like a massive idiot."

She smiles back at him, and almost imperceptibly, they move closer on the couch, until she is right next to him, his arm casually along the back of the cushions, neither touching the other, but closer. They smile, relieved at each other, and breaking away, Will turns the sound up on the television as Barbra Steisand tells the lady on the plane that she's a transfer student.

"I'm sorry Will," Lizzie says, quietly.

He glances down at her, and moves his arm to round her shoulders. "I'm sorry too."

The silence following their words is filled by Barbra Steisand again.

"Let me tell you something. Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Will glances down at Lizzie, and sees dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks. Slowly, she leans more into Will as she falls asleep. He looks back up at the screen and silently mouths along with Ryan O'Neal.

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."