Work Text:
She had only entered the room to retrieve some small item— upon taking just two steps inside she could not remember what it was. It was then that she was confronted with all the familiar things one expects to find but is unprepared to see: piles of books, quills and ink laid haphazardly, letters unfolded and resting wherever was convenient. The ledger, she saw, was open, his handwriting so meticulous, so even, numbers aligned and sums added, all of it so regimented and purposeful, she forgot for a moment the chaos that existed on the other side of the door.
It was odd to feel so much like a stranger here. She had been gone so long, and things had stayed so much the same that she felt all the differences—the alterations of self as much as of place—more in that moment than she had previously. This house did not belong to her anymore, nor she to it, not in the way that Pemberley had embraced her, the way that it had felt like her future, even on that first visit when she had been merely a tourist. It seemed rather disloyal, standing in her girlhood house, feeling this sudden, fierce longing for home.
Perhaps, at one time, the warmth of candlelight, the heat of a fire, the wry smile on a familiar face had dampened her guilt over leaving, over making her home somewhere else, without him. Now though, it haunted and stung, the glowing embers, the emptiness, the bleak November weather. The tableau of the gentleman at work, sans gentleman.
None of them had expected the end to come so suddenly; for some reason he seemed the type to suffer quietly for years, to languish in this life as he had in his library, to simply neglect to live any longer.
Instead it had been loud and conspicuous, had drawn more attention than he would have liked. It had produced wailing, sorrow, a histrionic grief, but without the corollary of teasing and mockery that would somehow legitimate such turmoil. Without that, it was all spectacle, show, yet it was all they had to cling to, the only routine they knew, even if half of it was missing. As she stood there, her toes just touching the worn rug, Elizabeth felt an unparalleled desire for a different time or place—for the beauty of Pemberley in the spring, the exuberance of her twelfth birthday, or even one of the giddy days of her courtship. She yearned for one of those moments that had been so deliciously perfect that it had passed by, unheeded, unmarked, uncherished.
He found her there, just through the open doorway, a look on her face that he could not name, could only feel. He placed a hand on her back as he approached and said, very softly, “Elizabeth.”
She turned into him then, eyes closed, seeking something familiar, solid. He held her tightly, in an embrace born of comfort and not passion. He thought of a day, long ago, when he had wanted to be held, had wanted to cry as she did now, alone in a father’s study. So he guided her until she sat near the window, locking the door with a gentle click behind him.
They stayed there for a time, in that room where he had once asked to be able to do just this, to have and to hold her.