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crack_van2013-04-23 12:29 pm
stars-inthe-sky.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2013-04-23 12:29 pm
Entry tags:
"Ten Minutes to Midnight" by mos (T)
Fandom: THE LIZZIE BENNET DIARIES
Pairing: Lizzie Bennet/William Darcy
Length: ~5600 words
Author on LJ: Unknown
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read: A thoughtful and thorough backstory on Darcy, "Ten Minutes to Midnight" is one of those fics that you'll accept as headcanon halfway through. It's just that good.
The next few hours pass by in a blur. There are papers to sign, calls to make. He leaves Cate in his bed at Harvard and catches a red-eye flight to California and Tahoe, where Reynolds has arrived ahead of him and meets him at the hospital. He signs whatever they put in front of him. Their words fall and crumble around his ears, never really reaching him. Reynolds's hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him grounded, and he manages to hang on until they're in the plane again, heading to San Francisco, and only then does he break.
He's allowed to lose it. He has to do it now, because his sister is flying back from her swim meet this evening and she doesn't know yet, and the worst moment of his life will be when he has to tell her, and he'll have to be strong for both of them.
In the end, though, he doesn't have to say anything. He sees her before she sees him. She's laughing with her friends on the swim team, and his heart feels heavy, because the moment she spots him will be the moment he destroys her. And he does. That little line forms between her brows when she sees him in place of their mother, and she slows in her step, and then stops altogether.
She isn't willing to come forward into her new reality, and so she stands there while people jostle and bump and move around her, while her friends move off. Finally the coach lays a hand on her shoulder, and robotically she moves forward, her eyes never leaving his face.
She's so small, like a fawn with her wide eyes. She's always been tiny, like a sprite always stumbling after him growing up, begging to be taken along or inserting herself into his activities. He remembers her breaking his telescope and how he'd made her cry, and their mother's words: You two are going to have to get along, because someday you're going to need each other.
That was supposed to be decades in the future. Not when they were not yet fourteen and twenty.
The tears are there before she reaches him, and he moves forward to take her up in a hug, unable to stop his own eyes from leaking. He ushers her out of the airport and the driver is taking them home when he tells her everything. He has to tell her that no, they're not hurt. Not anymore. He has to tell her about the black ice in the Sierras. He has to tell her they're not coming home.
She's making some sort of heaving, retching sound, and he can't do anything but watch as his sister dies inside. They cling to each other, and if there was anything left of his heart to break... but there isn't.
It's like a bomb went off inside his little sister, and he's left to pick up the pieces of her that's left. Only he's just been hit by the blast, too, and he's got to crawl around bleeding while he does it.
He's glad that he doesn't have to walk into the empty house alone, because he comes undone all over again when he sees his father's coat left slung over the back of a chair in the living room, and his mother's briefcase on the counter. Pieces of their life, left strung about all over the house. Gigi collapses in the living room and he sits beside her on the couch, and they stay like that for hours. She doesn't stop crying. The phone rings. Reynolds checks up on them. Aunt Catherine is flying up. Bing will talk to his professors. Fitz is coming over tomorrow, skipping out on class like he used to do in high school.
It's Gigi that pushes him into motion, into some sort of living, though not intentionally. He's aware that he's responsible for her now. She doesn't see him cry, but sometimes she sees him with red eyes in the morning, or after he gets out of the shower.
It isn't easy, being the strong one, the responsible one. It's her that keeps him pushing forward, though.
Ten Minutes to Midnight
Pairing: Lizzie Bennet/William Darcy
Length: ~5600 words
Author on LJ: Unknown
Author Website: AO3
Why this must be read: A thoughtful and thorough backstory on Darcy, "Ten Minutes to Midnight" is one of those fics that you'll accept as headcanon halfway through. It's just that good.
The next few hours pass by in a blur. There are papers to sign, calls to make. He leaves Cate in his bed at Harvard and catches a red-eye flight to California and Tahoe, where Reynolds has arrived ahead of him and meets him at the hospital. He signs whatever they put in front of him. Their words fall and crumble around his ears, never really reaching him. Reynolds's hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him grounded, and he manages to hang on until they're in the plane again, heading to San Francisco, and only then does he break.
He's allowed to lose it. He has to do it now, because his sister is flying back from her swim meet this evening and she doesn't know yet, and the worst moment of his life will be when he has to tell her, and he'll have to be strong for both of them.
In the end, though, he doesn't have to say anything. He sees her before she sees him. She's laughing with her friends on the swim team, and his heart feels heavy, because the moment she spots him will be the moment he destroys her. And he does. That little line forms between her brows when she sees him in place of their mother, and she slows in her step, and then stops altogether.
She isn't willing to come forward into her new reality, and so she stands there while people jostle and bump and move around her, while her friends move off. Finally the coach lays a hand on her shoulder, and robotically she moves forward, her eyes never leaving his face.
She's so small, like a fawn with her wide eyes. She's always been tiny, like a sprite always stumbling after him growing up, begging to be taken along or inserting herself into his activities. He remembers her breaking his telescope and how he'd made her cry, and their mother's words: You two are going to have to get along, because someday you're going to need each other.
That was supposed to be decades in the future. Not when they were not yet fourteen and twenty.
The tears are there before she reaches him, and he moves forward to take her up in a hug, unable to stop his own eyes from leaking. He ushers her out of the airport and the driver is taking them home when he tells her everything. He has to tell her that no, they're not hurt. Not anymore. He has to tell her about the black ice in the Sierras. He has to tell her they're not coming home.
She's making some sort of heaving, retching sound, and he can't do anything but watch as his sister dies inside. They cling to each other, and if there was anything left of his heart to break... but there isn't.
It's like a bomb went off inside his little sister, and he's left to pick up the pieces of her that's left. Only he's just been hit by the blast, too, and he's got to crawl around bleeding while he does it.
He's glad that he doesn't have to walk into the empty house alone, because he comes undone all over again when he sees his father's coat left slung over the back of a chair in the living room, and his mother's briefcase on the counter. Pieces of their life, left strung about all over the house. Gigi collapses in the living room and he sits beside her on the couch, and they stay like that for hours. She doesn't stop crying. The phone rings. Reynolds checks up on them. Aunt Catherine is flying up. Bing will talk to his professors. Fitz is coming over tomorrow, skipping out on class like he used to do in high school.
It's Gigi that pushes him into motion, into some sort of living, though not intentionally. He's aware that he's responsible for her now. She doesn't see him cry, but sometimes she sees him with red eyes in the morning, or after he gets out of the shower.
It isn't easy, being the strong one, the responsible one. It's her that keeps him pushing forward, though.
Ten Minutes to Midnight