Chapter Text
The next time they meet, it’s over sushi.
They order dragon rolls and spicy tuna, and Darcy insists on some plain salmon nigiri because he loves plain salmon.
If someone had asked him before, he might have said that the truth they’ve told each other should make them uneasy in each other’s company. It’s quite the opposite, though; they neither of them have anything to hide.
For the first time in…a long time, Lizzie teases him. She teases him about the amount of wasabi he mixes into his soy sauce.
“Really, Darcy?” she says. “That’s it? And here I thought you would try to impress me with your macho wasabi eating prowess.”
It reminds him of being at Netherfield—Lizzie teasing him, him trying not to respond. “There is,” he tells her gravely, “no known correlation between the usual measures of manliness and the eating of wasabi.”
“It’s good for your teeth,” Lizzie says, and he doesn’t believe her until she forces him to google it on his iPhone.
“I would concede the point,” he replies after having stared at the studies in bemusement. “But this isn’t really wasabi. It’s horse radish dyed green.” She doesn’t believe him until he googles it for her.
By the time they’ve made their way through the spicy tuna rolls, she’s challenged him to wasabi bombs—basically, eating little balls of straight wasabi.
Darcy does it without flinching. “Actually,” he tells her, “it’s less painful eating it straight. When you mix it with soy sauce and dip it in rice, there’s more surface area for the wasabi to interact with your tongue.”
“That is such bullshit,” she says passionately, but then he makes her try it both ways, one right after the other, and she agrees.
It might very well be the perfect afternoon with her. It’s not some time stripped out of a low-lit fantasy. It’s the Lizzie he fell in love with, charming and sweet and passionate about life, only this time, she’s not trying to insult him. She’s having as much fun as he is.
He doesn’t want their time together to end. But while they’re dawdling over the check, Lizzie’s phone beeps. She picks it up, casually; her face falls. She glances over at Darcy once and then starts reading.
He can almost see her turning white. Her hands start to shake.
“Lizzie?” he asks. “Is everything…” No. He can see already that everything is not all right. “Is there anything I can do?”
She hands him the phone. Jane has forwarded him a list of demands, all sent by Wickham. Standard issue extortion—so standard, that Darcy has seen it before. Literally. He swallows, hard.
Her phone dings again. It’s another message from Jane. She reads it, and then hands it to Darcy once again.
As much as I feared breaking the news to Lydia, Jane has written, I can’t help but wish that she was around to hear it. Her room is a mess. There’s a note on the table. Lizzie, I think Lydia has run away—and it looks like she has no intention of coming back.
Lizzie is trying not to cry. He can see it in her features. As soon as she has her phone back, she pulls up Expedia. He can’t help but see over her shoulder—there are no flights out tonight, not with seats left. None tomorrow, unless she doesn’t mind being routed through St. Louis.
“Maybe I should just take the train,” she says.
“Let’s get you back to the office,” Darcy tells her. “Maybe with a full keyboard and internet access you can find something better.”
In fact, Darcy already has a better idea.
#
“Darcy,” she says, her voice shaking.
“Yes?”
“I can’t accept this.” She holds up her phone, pointing to what must be the reservation request that she’s been sent. “It’s too much.”
Darcy frowns at her and wonders what he should say. After all—
“Don’t pretend,” she says. “I freak out about not being able to find any flights, and forty-five minutes later, Jane e-mails me that my uncle has been able to use frequent flyer miles to get me down tomorrow morning? In first class? Darcy, did you really think I would fall for that?”
Darcy swallows. “I didn’t actually want you to know that I was responsible.”
Lizzie tilts her head. “Didn’t think I would want to know?”
“I had rather hoped that you would…be so relieved to have that burden lifted from your shoulders that, under the circumstances, you wouldn’t question too much.” He shrugs.
Lizzie rolls her eyes. “Darcy, I won’t let you pay nine dollars and sixty-two cents for my lunch. You can’t imagine that I’m just going to accept a first class ticket—”
“Technically,” he says, “it didn’t cost me anything. I did use frequent flyer miles—”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” she says. “I’ll have to pay you back. Somehow.” She sets her jaw.
Darcy doesn’t know what to say to that at first. It’s nothing to him—almost literally nothing. He won’t even notice it.
He finally looks up at her. “Did it make you feel any better?” he asks her.
“Yes, but—”
“Then you’ve paid me back.” He says. “Because there isn’t anything I could buy that would bring me more joy.”
She doesn’t seem to understand that, not at first. She opens her mouth to protest, then closes it, then opens it again. Finally, she raises her head and looks at him. “You really mean that.”
He nods.
“Then next time,” she says, “ask me first. Because that would make me feel best of all.”
It’s a really fair request.
“In that case,” he replies, “may I offer you a ride to the airport tomorrow morning?”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble. My flight’s at 6 AM. I can take BART.” She grimaces, perhaps remembering that BART doesn’t run that early. “Or a shuttle…”
She stops, looks over at him. He doesn’t say anything, but she looks in his eyes and then nods slowly, as if finally understanding that he will, in fact, consider himself better off waking up at three. Making sure that she gets to the airport on time, with no hassle. That it’s worth it to him if it makes her life better by even the tiniest iota.
“Fine,” she says. “I mean…I’d love the company. Thank you.”
He nods to her. “I’d love to take you. And since I’m supposed to ask… I have, as you know, some experience dealing with Wickham on these matters. Do I have your permission to pursue a few avenues of inquiry?”
He holds his breath.
“Sure,” she says. But there’s no hope in her voice.
#
Truthfully, there isn’t much to say. He’s already said everything. And…
He pulls up in the departure zone. She doesn’t look at him as she gets out of the car. She’s already searching through the myriad airline signs for the right direction. In her mind, Darcy suspects, Lizzie is already on the plane, flying away from him, flying back to her home and the family that needs her.
There’s no reason for her to come back to San Francisco. There’s no reason for them, and he had just begun to harbor that sliver of hope. This isn’t about you, he reminds himself.
And it isn’t.
There are more important things than his own foolish imaginings of a rosier future. Like her sister. Her family. The fact that what has happened is at least, in part, his fault, and he has to make it right.
He takes her luggage out of the trunk, pulls out the handles, makes sure that the smaller bag is clipped properly to her suitcase, so that she can bring it inside the terminal on her own. The morning is gray and cold; he can hear a traffic officer blowing a whistle, somewhere, but he concentrates on this one little thing.
When he looks up from that task, Lizzie is standing beside him. Looking at him. Just looking at him, with an unreadable expression on her face.
He has always known he would say goodbye to Lizzie. He just didn’t know it would be like this—surrounded by the early morning bustle of the airport, by gray fog and grayer concrete, by headlights coming out of the mist.
“You have everything?” he asks.
“No.” She shakes her head, not looking away from him. “There’s one thing I don’t have yet.”
“What is it? I can—”
She sets her hands on his shoulders, stretches up—
Darcy’s heart starts beating, hard, but he steps away. “No,” he says, a little more forcefully than he ought, because what he really wants to say is yes. “Don’t. I don’t want that kind of thanks from you.”
She raises an eyebrow at him. “That wasn’t a thank you, Darcy.”
His mind stutters to a halt because he can’t fit a kiss from Lizzie anywhere else in his mind. “Oh?”
“These next weeks are going to be awful,” Lizzie says. “And in the midst of all that awfulness, I just wanted to…to remember.”
“Remember what?” His words sound thick.
“That there is something real in this world. Something good. That there are people who care about me.” She’s trailing off, sounding smaller and smaller, but she hasn’t looked away from him. “That…” She takes a deep breath. “That you’re…you’re one of them.” Her voice rises on the last word, making that final statement almost a question.
He can’t leave her questioning that.
Instead, he takes her hands in his. Her fingers are so cold, and he doesn’t have time to warm them up. He pulls her close. And this time, when she tilts her head back—when she stretches up to him, he bends his neck to her.
He had always imagined that when he kissed Lizzie, it would be something electric—electric and erotic. That the sensation of her lips on his would shove him into sensory overload, that he wouldn’t hear or see anything else.
He was wrong. He’s aware of everything—of the honking of horns behind him, of the clammy cold of the morning, seeping through his jacket. Of her hands in his, her body, so close to his. He’s aware of the kiss, breaking through him like a sunrise even though it’s not yet five in the morning. And he’s aware that this is an illusion—that this is not the morning of a dawning relationship, no matter how it feels, no matter that she gives a little gasp and steps into him.
He’s aware that this is farewell.
She pulls away from him, turns, then stops, and turns back. She touches her hand to his cheek, almost tenderly.
And then she draws in breath, as if for strength and courage, takes her luggage, and disappears into the terminal.
Darcy watches her go. It won’t be the last time he sees her—there’s always the videos, after all—but he knows in his heart of hearts that this is the last time she’ll see him.
He waits until he can’t see her anymore, until the bright flame of her hair is swallowed up by the airport, before he gets back in his car. He starts the engine, pulls out into the far lane.
He doesn’t get back on the freeway, though. Instead, he follows the signs for the airport return, and this time around, he parks his car.
Everything he needs is in the black bag on the back seat, and he’s not coming back. Not until he’s set everything right.