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"I thought you were Chinese."
"I can understand the confusion."
~Lizzie and Will, Episode 98.
Will is in Chicago trying to persuade a room full of corporate fat cats that Pemberly Digital will be the best damn thing they ever invested in for their own company. He's certain that none of them are the avuncular type who will smile indulgently and give him fatherly advice if he tells them he has a girl whose been driving him spare with distraction. They're more likely to snap off their smiles, snap their briefcases closed, and quietly withdraw their business.
And yet, her name is Lizzie Bennet and she's making it extremely difficult for Will to pimp Pemberley.
They're interrupted by a quiet knock on the glass door. All heads swivel around to stare at the newcomer who dares disturb this meeting. Will merely raises his eyebrows and frowns, puzzled, at his sister.
"Uh, Will— Mr. Darcy? I need you out here for a second. It's — it's an emergency."
Gigi was never the kind of girl who texted him with omg 911 come quick, only to reveal it was a fashion emergency. If nothing else, the whole long-drawn affair with Wickham made her even more conservative and cagey with her words, and knocked everything but good clean sense out of his baby sister. If she says it's an emergency, then it is.
"Excuse me," he murmurs to the company's CFO, and steps out.
"It's okay," he hears Gigi tell the conference room. "I'm his PA. It really is important."
"You need to check your phone," says Gigi when they're alone in the hallway. He stares expectantly at her. She elaborates: "It's a Very Important message."
He rolls his eyes, trusting her nonetheless, and takes out his Blackberry, thumbing open his voicemail box. He ignores the one from Caroline, because he's recognised the one he's been waiting for. Probably his whole life, and definitely since she ran out of Pemberley in a cab with tears in her eyes and her head spinning with thoughts of her sister. The one he thought he would probably never see after that day, except on a computer screen and later at Bing's wedding to her sister.
The voicemail's sister. Clearly. He means the message, not the woman who left it.
"I saw her call you on her latest video," says Gigi carefully, watching him. "I didn't think you'd want to wait to know because of a meeting."
"Thank you," he says, pocketing his Blackberry and walking back to his meeting. He can't afford to hear it. Not now. Not when his concentration is so near to being completely blown. He walks back into the meeting and promptly trips over a chair.
*
He hears the voicemail.
In the privacy of his hotel room in Chicago, he presses his Platinum card into Gigi's hand and sends her out shopping. Then he sits down on the bed, presses replay on the message over and over again, and buries his face in his hands and quietly tries to hold it all in.
The only part that registers is that she doesn't think he's a paternalistic, domineering, egocentric bastard who thinks he can use his money to buy her attention. The worst part is that she thinks he did it for Lydia, for her family. She doesn't get who he did it for, or maybe she does, and this is her way of letting him down easy.
Maybe the phone call is just a courtesy. He can't call her back and have his heart break again over the phone, even though she'll never hear it.
Fitz calls him on Domino. He's still on vacation, apparently, which is mildly annoying to Will, who feels like he can never catch a break. "You're an idiot," Fitz says patiently, upon hearing Will's secret fears. "She called you. She angsted about it before she called you. Either you've never read a romance novel in your life, or you lived on Mars before you met a real woman. Peace out, Willie D.," he adds, smirking, before he hangs up.
He replays the message so many times, just trying to figure it out, that he can now recite it backwards.
Will deals with the mess that is his head by going for a walk. He despairs of clearing his head two minutes out in the fresh air, because Lizzie's voice is all he hears between his ears.
The nearest Chinese restaurant is what he turns to save him from himself. He parks himself at a table, grateful for the dark of the red lighting and hanging paper lanterns, and hides behind a menu. All he sees is her YouTube page, not the letters dancing over the menu.
"Hey, it's me," is what stumbles out when the waiter tries to take his order. The waiter blinks, not recognising Will. Will could die of mortification, because he's evidently at That Point where he can quote her voicemail without realising it.
Will does die of mortification minutes later, because he lowers his menu to reveal himself to the world, to discover that Caroline Lee is standing over his table, manicured hands on her hips, pink glossy lips pursed, kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed dangerously as she glares down at him.
"You blew me off."
And because Will is a man, and a born gentleman, he immediately feels guilty. Caroline used to be his friend, until it struck him (via vlog on YouTube) that maybe she wants to be something more. Which he can never give her. Which she doesn't take to very well.
"I didn't know we had an earlier engagement," he says honestly, and she flips her perfectly straightened hair in annoyance.
"Uh-huh. That's why I left you a voicemail. You never replied."
Oh. He remembers it vaguely now. Caroline is staring him down, and he tries to maintain the ignorant façade. He doesn't know how to tell her that a better voicemail came along, which is why he ignored hers.
"You were supposed to meet me like thirty minutes ago," she says acidly, "but it's fine. Come on, we're leaving."
"What? Where." Going anywhere with Caroline is not a good idea. This repeats through his head like a mantra, temporarily drowning out even Lizzie's voice.
"You'll see," she says cryptically. Then she grabs hold of him by the sleeve and physically hauls him out. "You can order Peking Duck even in Passé Suburbia," she mutters, and he mostly tries to figure out just how she got so strong.
Caroline shoves him into a waiting Lincoln towncar, and the driver knows where to go. It strikes Will belatedly that he's capable of making his own decisions (hell, he has a lifetime of experience making decisions for other people) and that he's entitled to object.
This is practically kidnapping.
"Caroline—" he begins, but that's how far he gets. She clamps a hand over his mouth, and tuts impatiently.
"No," she says, killing the conversation.
At least Gigi will know to alert the police when he doesn't come back to the hotel. And the waiter at the Paper Dragon is a witness who saw him with Caroline. She's too rich to hold him for ransom, so Will supposes that Gigi is going to be well-provided for, in case he doesn't survive this.
It's also a very good reason for why he hasn't called Lizzie back yet.
Does she wonder why he didn't?
The car stops. Will's pulse goes erratic when he sees where they are. Caroline presses a crisp white envelope into his hand, and he can feel the tickets in it.
I am capable of making my own decisions, he starts to say, angry that Caroline really is trying to make this one for him, just as she tried to make it for Lizzie. Then he admits that it's a decision he would have made on his own, nonetheless.
He looks at her, unable to speak. She scowls as she critically examines the tip of her crocodile-skin stiletto. Will kisses her cheek, and dashes out of the car.
*
He finds his seat in business class, next to a redhead, who turns not to be Jane Bennet. What are the odds that she isn't?
For the first time in years, Will has a little too much complimentary wine (three glasses) and dreams that it really is Jane Bennet in the seat next to him.
She looks flush and happy, and more beautiful than her sister because she is happy. "I cannot find the words that will make this right, undo my mistakes," he says haltingly, because he said it to Bing, and has no idea how to say it to the woman his best friend loves so much.
"Don't be," she says, forgiveness in her smile. "Are you going to find Lizzie?"
"Yes."
Jane is still smiling, but it's sad around the corner. "She's happy where she is. Don't take that away by complicating things for her."
She sounds like the voice of reason, and that bothers Will.
It takes him a long time to figure out that she is the voice of his fear of rejection. Once burned, after all.
*
There is no drama, no fanfare, no comet in the sky, or anything faintly extraordinary when Will Darcy rings the doorbell of the Bennets' house. It's so anti-climactic that it feels like a portent of certain failure.
Charlotte Lu answers the door. He nearly thinks he has the wrong house, and she looks at him like that must be true.
"You're not Chinese," she complains.
"I apologise for that," he says sincerely.
She's a blur of green, rising shakily. Will's vision tilts at the edges and spins around the corner. Everything in his head slows down and stops making sense.
It isn't even romantic, the first thing she tells him. "I thought you were Chinese," she says, her voice catching.
"I can understand the confusion." He really should have lodged a complaint about this with his family when he had the chance. Being himself is clearly a disadvantage in these matters.
But when Lizzie Bennet kisses him, she does not think so, and that is all that he needs.