First off, let it be known that this is not a work of both Stephie and I (Raven) - to the contrary, it is simply my own. It occurred to me that what will our plotting and conversing with every chapter of Take My Breath, it could be quite a wait between them, and so this is more meant to satiate your infallible hunger than anything else! I do acknowledge that this is Pride and Prejudice and not Pirates of the Caribbean, however, take note as well that it takes place around roughly the same time with a distinct British setting, and the protagonists are Fitzwilliam (Will, anyone?) and Elizabeth. I do not think myself terribly farfetched when I say that if you are a fan of one, you are likely a fan of the other, so perhaps this will tide you over.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pride and Prejudice, nor any of its subsequent characters, dialogue, or plot lines.

Warning: Rated M for sexuality and adult themes.

Elizabeth woke with a luxurious stretch that could only be the result of spending so many hours in the same position - which was not terribly hard to conceive, really, as she had found shortly after their marriage four months ago that Fitzwilliam Darcy's arms were her favorite place in the world.

At first, as she blinked back fatigue to remind herself that she had finished sleeping and therefore her body was misguided in assuming she needed to do so, she could not remember exactly what had woken her. The sun had not yet made an appearance but was rather hovering in the horizon, just out of sight, so that the sky was an eerie pale blue that was stuck somewhere between night and day.

"Elizabeth."

At the raspy, perhaps-still-slumbering voice in her year, the subject being summoned - or rather, named, she supposed - recalled that this was the second, at least, time that her parent-given title had been stated, for it was the first time that had woken her in the first place.

"Yes, Mr. Darcy?" she could not help but ask in amusement. She was thoroughly convinced, now, that her dearest husband suffered from the same sort of affinity that the sky did. He was neither asleep nor awake, and she wondered if he even knew that he was speaking.

He pulled her tighter to him, burying his face in his wife's chestnut curls. "Let's sleep all day," he groaned, and she realized with a start that perhaps she had been incorrect. Was it possible that her beloved could speak in so thick a tone and yet be awake? She carefully turned over in his arms so that she was facing him and found that his eyes were still closed. He was still tired, then (as if his request had not given that away), but certainly coherent.

"I hardly think that would be appropriate, Mr. Darcy," she chastised. Had his eyes been open, he would have seen the mocking grin on her face, but as it was, her husband was disappointedly thinking that she was serious.

"Appropriate?" he demanded, his voice a mixture between a growl and a grumble. "We're married! There is nothing inappropriate any more!"

Elizabeth could help it no longer; she fell into a fit of giggles and he rather unenthusiastically opened his eyes.

"I mean it, Lizzy," he moaned. "I don't want to get up."

"Are you tell me," she began slowly, her eyes glittering but her smile repressed, "that the noble businessman I had been so willing to wed is in fact a lazy rich man with no affinity for the work to be done?"

"Big words, Lizzy," he muttered. "I couldn't hear half of them."

She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to inform him that he most certainly had heard her and that he could not hope to gain her sympathy for his clear plight of exhaustion. However, she suddenly found lips descending upon her own, and recalled with an instant sense of awareness that they had fallen asleep naked the night before to partake in acts that, she would dare say, society would, in fact, find rather inappropriate - outside the confines of their own bedroom, of course.

Unable to do anything otherwise (more because of the fact that she had no desire to than the fact that he had rolled over and she was no trapped beneath him) she returned the kiss with a passion and determination that most men would not be fortunate enough to even imagine of their wives.

When the deed was done - and it most certainly was done - Elizabeth found herself in the same position she had been in before it started, though this time her skin shined with perspiration and her breaths came in choppy, ragged intakes of breath. If he had not been fully awake before, Darcy certainly was now, his own body fairly shuddering as he caressed her face lovingly, meeting her wide amber eyes with his own intense blue ones.

"I love you," he murmured, his voice hoarse but gentle all at once.

She kissed him, softly this time, as a response, and he sighed, pulling her body as close to his as it seemed they could get.

"I have some business in town today," he finally admitted. Elizabeth felt immediately the rush of disappointment that always occurred when she discovered her husband was to be absent for any period of time, but she buried it immediately. For all her teasing, Mr. Darcy was anything but lazy; in fact, she rather aspired to convince him some day to refrain from working at all, which had, up to that moment, proven a rather impossible task.

"How long will you be gone?" she asked, unable to help the almost child-like pout that crept into her normally esteemed voice.

He kissed her forehead and grinned, clearly not put out by the fact that his wife was often every bit as needy as a child might be. "I will be back before sundown," he assured her, "but not likely far away from that."

Elizabeth sighed and accepted this with a simple nod and a begrudging, "All right." Noting his displeasure at her rather ineffectual agreement, she added, "Will you be breaking fast with me, at least?"

She didn't need to see his grimace to understand his answer - silence, after all, was the loudest form of communication.

"I shall expect flowers," she informed him vivaciously, her own lips twitching into a smile. "Perhaps it will repair the hole in my heart that is to be torn by my husband's negligence."

He shook his head, trying not to betray how comical he found her, and rolled out of bed to begin getting dress. "I'll be sure to dote on you even more than usual tonight," he promised with a rather suggestive wink, and despite the fact that she was still warm from their most recent engagement, she felt a blush creep into her cheeks.

She laid her head back on the pillow and watched him dress, and when he looked up from tugging on his pants and noticed how her eyes were fixed upon him, he very nearly stripped them off again and returned to bed with her.

"Do you have any idea," he grumbled, running a hand through his tossed hair, "how difficult you make it to leave when you look at me that way?"

Genuinely startled, Elizabeth blinked twice. "Whatever are you talking about, Fitzwilliam?"

He scrutinized her, attempting to decipher if she was teasing or not. He shook his head in bemusement upon coming to the conclusion that she really was confused, but made no attempt to explain it to her; he simply chuckled to himself and finished getting dressed.

Elizabeth fluttered and paced about the room by candlelight, impatient and, despite herself, concerned. The sun had just disappeared, and though she fully understood that her husband had probably simply been kept longer than he had anticipated and would likely be home at any moment, that did not ease the nerves that she had no doubt inherited from her much-cherished mother.

As much as she wanted him home, she was at loathe to think that he should be traveling the roads in the dark. A man of his stature had few people in the world that he need be concerned about when it came to physical capability, but even so, the idea that he could be hurt anyway, or that more than one person could assault him, or that one of the horses would run astray and tip the carriage... She simply couldn't bare to think of it, but neither could she halt the thoughts as she occurred.

She began to walk back and forth through the room like a cornered feline, determined to do so until he returned. She knew she would not be able to sleep otherwise - and that, if fatigue somehow consumed her and she did, in fact, find herself nestled in the unpredictability (or, in this case, predictability) of the dream-world, she would be ambushed by nothing but the absolute most dreadful of nightmares until she should be fortunate to wake up.

It was after a solid ten minutes of this pacing that she began to fidget, needing something to do with her hands. In her panic, which she had to admit seemed to be a bit dramatic even for her but was no less real, she began to feel extremely warm, and the more she wandered about, fixing the corners of bedsheets and straightening the vanity and refolding the garments in their dresser, the hotter it seemed to become.

For several moments, Elizabeth wondered if she might have a fever and considering waking Mrs. Reynolds, then decided against the idea. Whatever afflicted her clearly was not so malicious in nature that it could not wait until morning, especially since she had already bid her faithful servants goodnight.

A desperate glance around the room showed everything to be in perfect order; there was nothing further to be toyed with and fixed. She seemed to look through it, object by object, convinced that there must be something she had missed, something, anything, that she could continue to busy her mind with.

She found it in the form of an ornate white vase on the counter-like shelf that ran for a short span along the wall of the left side of the room. It had intricate gold designs on it and it occurred to her that those designs may not be facing outward in the best position for the married couple to admire them best, and so she eagerly made her way over to fix such a horrible blunder.

Curious as to what the designs actually were, she lifted the vase to examine it. However, even as she did so and her eyes caught sight of the lovely job someone had done on the beautiful ceramic, the corners of her vision appeared to turn gray. She attempted to blink it back for half a moment, shocked, until she felt as though hot tea was being run through her very veins. She let out a loud gasp, but that was all she could manage before the vase dropped to the ground and, on top of its shards, the mistress of the estate fell as well.

Her last fleeting thought was that Fitzwilliam ought to be home soon, and he would surely find her.

Darcy muttered a curse to the unforgiving night sky as he road as quickly as he could manage back towards their house. It was many hours since sundown, and guilt wracked through him at his failure to return to his wife at the time he had given. It could not be helped, really - the man with whom he was supposed to meet had been unavailable for hours, delaying their discussion but in no way diminishing the amount of time required for it.

Thankfully, it was quite the short ride to the Pemberly estate, for while he was not afraid of the dark nor what it held, he rather disliked the idea of the concept of surprise it represented. Darcy, in general, did not favor surprises - he preferred upfront convictions that could be considered and dealt with on the spot as opposed to having no time to think, and only time to react.

He unlocked quickly the huge front doors and burst through them, into the house. It was completely dark, so he could only assume that Elizabeth had already retreated to her room. A glance at the timepiece on the wall revealed it to be nearly three o'clock in the morning, and he winced, partially hoping that she would be awake so he could apologize but also hoping that she would be asleep so that she wouldn't know how late he really had come in.

In the pitch-black setting, he found himself having to work by memory to get to his room, which was of no consequence to him; this wasn't the first night in all of the years that he had lived there that he had returned after dark.

As Darcy entered his room, he noted that the light, here, was out as well. He breathed a sigh of relief, taking solace in the fact that Elizabeth was already asleep, and shut the door as softly as possible behind him before creeping over to the bed. He felt around to make sure he would not be laying on top of any of her limbs and laid down on top of the blankets to stroke her hair, not even bothering to get undressed.

The problem being that he found no such hair.

He had reached his arm out to run a finger down her cheek, but his hand only met the pillow, and a quick run of his arm down the length of his bed told him that there was no other entity in his bed beside himself. A cold stone seemed to drop in his stomach.

Forcing himself to move slowly - perhaps she had fallen asleep in the living area and he simply hadn't noticed her in the dark? - he rolled over to get off the bed on the opposite side that he had rolled onto it with. However, when he pressed his foot to the ground, he was more than slightly shocked to feel a sharp, stabbing pain as something cut it. He jerked back onto the bed, cussing and trying rather futilely to see his wound in the darkness.

Knowing that the other side of the bed, at least, was safe, he gingerly placed both feet on the floor and moved to the front of the room to light the candle-torch - which, to his surprise, still had a measure of liquid wax in it, as if it had blown out of its own accord not terribly long ago...

With a feeling of dread, he slowly turned around to see what he had cut his foot on, and in the light of the candle, he felt his chest lurch. Elizabeth lay there on the ground, ashen and with bits of the once-beautiful vase all around and, he realized to his horror, even beneath her.

He nearly tripped in his effort to rush to her and got down on his knees, ignoring the pieces of the vase that pressed into them and, even through his pants, no doubt drew blood. "Elizabeth!" he whispered, his voice a perfect reflection of the utter panic that had taken over him. "Elizabeth, can you hear me? Wake up, my love!"

As he pleaded with her, he lifted her swiftly to the bed, uncertain if he should leave her to fetch Mrs. Reynolds, or stay until she woke up, or perhaps take her with him -

"Fitzwilliam?"

He looked down to see her stirring, her eyes opening slowly as color returned to her face. He nearly wept.

"Elizabeth! What happened?" he demanded fiercely, all too concious of the blood that stained his hands and shirt from the dozens of tiny cuts that covered her.

She slowly began to completely regain her wits and, with his (unneeded) assistance, sat up. "I don't remember," she told him earnestly.

"Stay here. I'm going to send someone for the physician -"

"No," she interrupted, shaking her head to clear it. "No, please, don't. The heat simply got to me, I believe - I remember feeling dreadfully hot..." She looked to the vase on the ground, and the color that had been building in her cheeks drained once more.

Darcy did not fail to notice this. "What is it, Elizabeth? Do you remember something else?" He felt his heart beat a bit faster. What if someone had broken in? What if they had done something to her? And what of the other ser -

"I broke the vase," she murmured in horror. He looked about ready to throttle her.

"Damn the vase!" he all but roared. "What happened here?"

She jumped as he shouted and he immediately regretted it but said nothing, waiting for her to answer.

"I remember," she murmured with a sigh. "Yes, it was the heat - I was pacing, you see, and I suppose that that mixed with such a hot night did not agree with me."

Her husband did not look satisfied. "Please, Lizzy, allow the doctor to come and see you."

She shook her head firmly. "No, no," she insisted fervently. "I'm just fine now, see?"

And, despite his doubts, he did have to incredulously note that she seemed to be perfectly normal. A hand held to her forehead - which, she noticed with no little surprise, was cold to the touch and covered in sweat - and he determined her to be without a fevor, and he had to admit that it was, in fact, a rather hot night.

"At least for your cuts," he muttered, still inspecting her for the slightest hint that there was something else amiss.

"All very small," she reminded him keenly. She could feel them, now, sharp and covering her side, arms, and chest.

"But -"

"What is the physician going to do?" she countered. "Cover my body in bandages? I hardly think that would do any good except to deny me any hope to function until they come off."

With a bit more persuading and against his better judgement, Darcy lamented. He set to the unpleasant task of helping her undress, and it was harder to say who it was more painful for - every time she winced, so did he. He considered bringing up that their might be a piece of the vase stuck within one of the cuts, but he knew that her reply would be that it would simply come out of its own accord, and he didn't wish to upset her, lest she have another... spell.

He undressed himself without looking away from her, as if to ensure that nothing would happen without his knowledge. She didn't seem to notice, having closed her eyes, and if it weren't for the fact that her breathing was a tad too steady, he would have thought her asleep. He numbly crawled in beside her, wondering again how he had allowed her to convince him to not run for elp that very moment, for even now, that was what he fought the urge to do.

Careful as it he could be to not inflict any pain on her, he slid one arm beneath her head and put the other overtop of both her and the blanket he had pulled overtop of them.

I am decently confident with this start. However, feedback is always appreciated. I would love (as all other fanfiction writers would, I'm sure) for you to review!

My highest regards,

Raven, Emancipated Rebels