Work Text:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the ringing of a phone comes at the worst time, even when a call is expected.
Liz Bennet’s phone was ringing.
It was ringing very loudly, despite the volume being turned down, as if it were possessed by the rising octaves of the caller’s tone when she demanded to speak to a manager, or faced off against Susan Lucas at a school bake sale. Across the open plan living/dining/kitchenette room of their small, shared Apartment, Jane raised a judgemental eyebrow at her next-younger sister. Liz, Elizabeth when she absolutely couldn’t avoid it, matched the expression. “I wasn’t about to tell Mum that I’d been attending a trade school instead of the Pre-Med she wanted me to get into while we were in the same house! I suppose she finally found the note I left her.”
The eyebrow lowered, though the Judgement didn’t lessen. “You left it in Dad’s Art Studio on purpose, and you know it.”
Liz didn’t bother denying the accusation. “I thought it would take him longer to remember to give it to her, honestly. Three weeks has to be some kind of record.”
Judgement softened into disapproval, “Honestly, if there was ever a poster child for reasons to just say No…”
Tom Bennet was a brilliant man, but the 70s had done unfortunate things to his attention span, and he careened wildly from one thought to the next, the quintessential absent-minded professor. In his youth, he’d pioneered a number of technical patents vital to developing modern computing hardware, and the royalties from those patents kept the Bennet family living in comfort, 30 years later.
Liz Bennet had inherited his mind and passion for engineering, and their mother’s determination and steamroller attitude toward anything that stood between her and her goals. Francine Gardiner had been a childhood friend who volunteered herself into the role of keeping him fed and clean, and at some point they’d married and had five children.
Liz still had a running bet with John Lucas that they’d gone to Scotland for a music festival around the same time Gretna Green got a registrar’s office, and married on a whim. John’s money was on a drunken bet that both were too proud to call chicken on, like William and Susan Lucas, his own parents.
The phone stopped ringing, then started again, somehow even more shrill than before. Liz ignored it like she ignored shouted arguments between Kenneth and Lydia, and Martin’s attempts to learn the violin; with the undying hope that if she refused to acknowledge it, it would stop existing. Sometimes it worked.
The phone stopped ringing, and lit up with a voicemail, the latest of - Liz double-checked - twelve. It was a good thing they’d never set up a landline, or they’d have neighbours banging on the walls and a noise complaint. The ringing restarted, and Liz sighed and turned it to silent. “Any word from Charlie?”
Jane glanced at her own phone. “He’s been texting me updates on trying to get Darcy away from his books. He’s obsessed with correcting whatever flaw you pointed out on his design.”
She held up a hand when Liz opened her mouth to explain. “Don’t tell me unless you can do it in layman’s terms. I know you hate it when I devolve into medical jargon.”
Liz took a moment to rearrange her answer from the technical one that had poked a hole in Darcy’s draft schematics, filtered through the very simplified version she used for her younger siblings, and into something in-between. “The proposed system had a weakness. It would have worked fine the first few times, but rapidly degraded and broken. Great if you’re trying to make something that needs specialised replacement parts every few months as soon as the warrantee expires, not so much otherwise. I think he's more annoyed that he didn't notice it himself, before I pointed it out."
Darcy - Liz refused to learn his first name on principle, since he was the kind of Old Money Snob who was only at University to get a degree to show off so he could pretend to be a man of the people - had turned an entertaining shade of purple when she’d not only pointed out the flaw, but offered him a working model that proved it. She’d show him a '10 to 15 percent success rate of female engineers', and make him choke on it!
Darcy’s enduring friendship with Charlie, Jane’s fiancé, was an enduring mystery that baffled the University in general and Liz in particular. Darcy was related to five members of the House of Lords within three generations, and could probably trace his ancestry back to the Reformation, if not the Norman Conquest. The Bingley fortune cam from Blue-Collar Industries and Manufacturing, and if Bingley's Grandfather had been closer to Middle Class than a working man, only Charlie's children would really be considered Generational Wealth. Darcy had earned her enmity by loudly voicing a remark on the first day of class about the statistical average of female students who completed Engineering degrees in Liz’s hearing. Charles had escaped the same by pointing out that statistics measured the average, and any woman could be an outlier. His own sister was managing their family company, at a level where women were also minorities, and doing so very well.
If Liz ever found herself in competition with Caroline Bingley, she was sure they would hate each other. Having met socially and bonded over concern for their bleeding-heart siblings, Liz considered the CEO of Bingley Inc to be a casual friend. Perhaps Caroline was just using her to scout the up and coming talent via University gossip, but Elizabeth didn’t mind. It was nice to have someone who supported her studying engineering at all.
Charles Bingley, Charlie to his friends - a quantifier that seemed to include anyone who didn’t actively hate the man - came from a family that had made their money in computing software. As the only son, Charlie had done military service in a non-combat unit, gained a steadfast determination to stopping conflicts rather than participating in them, and was well on his way to becoming a regional co-ordinator with UNHCR.
He and Jane had met in a Foreign Relations course, which Jane had also not told their mother about. Jane had just finished her Masters in Surgery, and was due to start Residency in the next few weeks. Mrs Bennet was very proud, and was too busy boasting about Jane’s success to ask about future plans.
That was probably a good thing, as Jane was specialising in deconstructive and reconstructive surgery, planning to open a clinic to reverse FGM and “husband stitches”, and work with bombing victims to repair disfiguration. Jane’s work would not be in a London Hospital for any longer than required, but in far-flung third world countries and war-zones. She and Charlie would take on the world, hand in hand.
Liz fully expected her sister to send their mother an email from several continents away, then conveniently drop out of phone reception range, only to briefly re-emerge to send wedding photos or pictures of their first baby as a distraction.
Sometimes, the best way to weather Hurricane Bennet was to not be there while it raged, and re-emerge with a ready diversion when the worst had blowing itself out.
Jane’s phone chimed with another text, this one from their middle sibling, Martin, which Liz crossed the room to read over Jane’s shoulder. ‘Give Liz the heads up, Mum found out that’s she’s studying Engineering.’
Much like Elizabeth, Martin had a passion for how things worked. But where Liz could find the links and connections between their father’s seemingly-random leaps of logic, Martin had an analytical mind that envisioned the effects. He’d gone into Medicine because it was what their mother expected, but thankfully caved to Jane’s descriptions of the high-stress environment of residency, and Liz’s less-subtle steering toward medical research. He’d probably end up inventing more cost-effective prosthetics, or an adaptation so that growing an inch didn’t require a whole new false limb, merely changes to the existing one. Something useful and unremarked-upon, that only the people affected would notice.
Another chime. ‘Give it an hour, Lydia is about to tell Mum about her “Leadership Camp” that we all know is her going to Glasto’ with her friends. Ken isn’t happy, but he’s even worse at talking to our parents than I am.’
Liz and Jane both groaned. Hopefully Mrs Bennet would be sufficiently distracted from her outrage to question why she hadn’t heard of this Leadership Camp, especially since Mrs Lucas would have been boasting about how her children were certain to get in. Ken couldn’t tell a lie to save his life, so even if he backed Lydia’s claim, Mrs Bennet would see through it instantly.
Kenneth, the fourth of the Bennet siblings, had not only missed out on being the first boy, but also managed to inherit the worst possible combination of their parents. Mrs Bennet’s Anxiety and Imposter Syndrome, and Mr Bennet’s trouble focussing for any considerable length of time. Ironically, it was those very traits that made him the only person able to keep up with their madcap youngest sister, Lydia, who had taken their parent’s stories of the Free Love era to heart, and seemed determined to spread her love as freely as possible. In High School, that meant flirting with all comers and a new boyfriend every other week, though as far as her older sisters could determine, the relationships never progressed too far, physically, before Lydia moved on to a new conquest.
Now she’d gotten it into her head that she’d get a musician boyfriend, go on tour, and marry him, launching her into a life of fame, parties and notoriety.
All efforts to educate her on the likelihood of that, and the dangers she placed herself in chasing her dream, had been so far ineffective. Ken might be able to keep up with Lydia, but he was more of a follower than a protector, and so scattered (and male) that Liz wasn’t sure he realised that there was anything to protect Lydia from.
But that was for another day. Right now, Liz had her own assignment to finish, a model to test so that Darcy couldn’t find fault with her design the way she had his, and locking down her notes so that Wickham - whose first name Liz refused to use ever since she worked out he was using her to do enough of his work to scrape a passing grade - couldn’t try to steal the idea himself.
Liz Bennet intended to seize every opportunity modern life threw her way, no matter what Mr Darcy, or anyone else, had to say about it!