Well, I finally caved. I wrote Lizzie Bennet Diaries fanfiction, and I regret nothing.

Gigi's dealings with Wickham are left deliberately vague because of reasons, mostly the fact that I'd like not to get canonballed, which I'm sure will happen eventually anyway, but hey. A canon-freak can dream.

Takes place after episode 78, and lord I wish I owned this perfection, but sadly, I am one mere fangirl.

What Are Sisters For?

Gigi was feeling pretty proud of herself as she skipped toward her brother's office at the end of business hours. Sure, she didn't know exactly how the rest of Will's conversation with Lizzie had gone after she'd left the second time - much as she may have wanted to continue eavesdropping, she didn't particularly want to be hanging around when those two exited Lizzie's office - but the fact that they'd been forced to sit down and talk to one another had to count for something.

Anyway, I'll probably see the results soon enough, she told herself with a grin. She had a feeling Lizzie, for all her protestations, wouldn't simply edit out the meeting. The girl was nothing if not committed to the truth.

And yeah, sure, her part of the scheme could have gone better - Fitz had tried to convince her to practice a stalling conversation, but she'd insisted she could wing it if need be - and she had a feeling Fitz would be sighing his exasperation, but it had worked in the end, even if remembering her lame attempts to keep Lizzie on camera made her wince. God, she had been awkward. Though, she amended with a mental giggle, not nearly as awkward as Lizzie and Will.

But if it could have gone better, then it also definitely could have gone worse, and Gigi was giving herself full permission to feel proud.

Phase Two is complete, she'd texted Fitz as soon as she'd seen Lizzie head out of the office.

"Knock knock," she said, swinging into Will's office, her buoyant mood making it hard to keep from bouncing energetically. Will started at the sound of her voice, and she hid a grin. Very obviously, her brother had been lost in his thoughts - thoughts of one Miss Bennet, perhaps?

But upon seeing her, Will's face grew stern. "Gigi," he said in a serious voice, and Gigi knew that older brother scolding was on the horizon.

"You didn't forget our dinner plans, did you?" she asked brightly, untroubled by his dour expression.

"Gigi, we need to talk," he said, and yep, there it was.

"Okay," she said airily, "but Fitz'll never let you hear the end of it if we're late, Mr. Punctuality, and he is expecting us in 20 minutes." She tapped the face of her watch significantly and plopped into the chair opposite his.

"Gigi, what were you hoping to accomplish this afternoon?" he asked, and she arched one eyebrow in response.

"Exactly what I managed to accomplish," she informed him. If he was expecting her to act embarrassed or avoid admitting her actions, he had seriously misjudged the situation. "You and Lizzie, in the same room together, having a conversation."

"You put both Lizzie and myself into a very uncomfortable position," he said, scolding her, but she waved it away with a single gesture.

"Will, that position was going to be uncomfortable whenever and however it happened," she said bluntly, "and this way, it happened without the compounded awkwardness of knowing that you've been avoiding each other for days, possibly weeks, which is what would have happened had I left you to your own devices. Because true or false," she said loudly, speaking over his attempted interjection, "your intention was to do everything in your power to keep her from running into you?" Will shifted uncomfortably, which was answer enough. "I am trying to help you, big brother," Gigi said, allowing a hint of her exasperation to creep into her voice.

"And you think I so desperately need help?" Will asked in that dry, sardonic way of his that so easily came off as snobbish or pretentious.

"I've seen the videos, Will," she said flatly. "I know you desperately need help. You are a brilliant individual with an impressive mind for business, but you kinda suck at people. Which really is a shame, because you're awesome, but people don't see that. And I want Lizzie to see it." Her voice changed, shifting from gentle teasing to all-out earnestness. "She deserves to see the kind of amazing person you are when you're comfortable and in your element and not acting as the robotic newsie that you do, in fact, become when you're forced into unfamiliar waters."

"I wouldn't think a robot would do well in any sort of waters," he said after a slight hesitation, and Gigi smiled, both at the joke and because she knew Will made fun of her purposefully mixed metaphors whenever she'd won an argument and he didn't want to admit it. "Why does this mean so much to you?" he asked awkwardly then, and Gigi almost rolled her eyes.

"Because you're my brother," she said, as if that should have been obvious. "I like her," she added a moment later. "For whatever that's worth."

"Like her for me, or just in general?" Will asked with that dry edge and arched eyebrow making an appearance again. Gigi pulled a face.

"Both," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"Why?"

"Why do I like her for you, or just in general?" she asked, teasing him by throwing his own words back at him. He fixed her with a level gaze.

"Both," he said, and she couldn't hide her smile.

"I like her for you because she doesn't put up with your nonsense," she said simply, and Will looked mildly affronted, but Gigi ignored it. "And because you two complement each other in ways you don't even see, and if we could wipe your memories of all previous interactions and reintroduce you to one another, I think you'd get along famously." Will looked away, uncomfortable, pained at the memory, she was sure, of all he'd done to alienate the woman he'd been falling in love with. "As for why I like her in general," she said, not unaware by any means of his thought process, "well, that letter you wrote." Will's eyes flicked up to meet her immediately. Unconsciously, Gigi lifted her chin and met his stare almost defiantly. "It was about me, wasn't it?"

"It was about many things," Will said softly.

"But it was about me," she pushed, wanting her brother to admit this. "And — him. At least in part?" Silently, she dared her brother to deny it.

"Yes," he said finally.

"All of it?" she questioned, determined to prove to him that she could talk about this, that he didn't need to walk on eggshells around the elephant in the room, and while she hadn't thought this would be something they discussed tonight, better now than later.

"Not in graphic detail," he said, still in that quiet, reserved voice. "But yes. I left little out."

"Then Lizzie Bennet knows how stupid I was," Gigi said, her tone pointed, daring her brother to disagree. "Because I was, Will. I was stupid, and naive, and an absolute idiot, and the repercussions will follow me for a very long time, and Lizzie Bennet knows it. But unlike everyone else who does, she doesn't look at me like I'm some tragedy to be pitied or some broken, sullied girl fallen from grace."

"No one looks at you that way, Gigi," Will said then, a reprimand in his voice, as if the very idea was offensive to him, and Gigi let out a breath of humorless laughter.

"Everyone looks at me that way, Will," she countered with rock-hard certainty because she was, after all, the one living her life. She was the one who had to find a way to look her classmates and teammates in the eyes and live with the whispers. "It's not malicious, usually, but I am the poor, overly innocent little girl who let herself be taken in and taken over by a pretty face and a mountain of charm, and you'd be amazed how easily a single look can communicate the certainty that the only reason I'm not in jail or on a street corner is because I'm independently wealthy and my brother is a very influential man."

Will looked away again, pain and guilt and regret mingling with the denial he wanted so desperately to cling to, and it was in moments like these that Gigi felt that maybe, what had happened with him sometimes affected Will more powerfully than it affected her. He just felt so responsible at the end of the day, and damn it, but she hated it when he went around feeling guilty on her behalf, as if he didn't already have enough to worry about.

She reached out and touched his hand, pulling his attention back to her. "Lizzie doesn't treat me that way," she said simply. "Not once has she looked at me like that. I wasn't even sure that she knew, and that's what makes her so extraordinary. It's not that she's willing to ignore what she knows about me; she doesn't even let it color her opinion in the first place. I can see very easily why you love her, Will, so get used to the meddling because I am going to do everything in my power to see to it that she is one day able to love you, too."

"Well," Will said after a long and heavy pause, "that is quite a feat you have ahead of you, because Lizzie Bennet hates me."

"See, that's the thing," Gigi said, sitting back in her seat. "I don't think she does."

Will's eyes snapped to hers again, barely suppressed hope shining out of them. "You — you don't," he said, just a hair too casually, just the slightest bit too disinterested. Gigi did roll her eyes at that.

"Have you watched any of her videos since you wrote that letter?"

"No."

Gigi nodded decisively. "You might want to do that," was all she said. "And you also might want to ask her to dinner."

"She'll never say yes," he said, a twinge of regret evident in the words.

"She will if you say I insisted on it," Gigi countered, "and she will if it's me and Fitz and Jordan along as well. And speaking of Fitz and Jordan," she said, standing, "we have five minutes to get to the restaurant."

He followed her out of the office without another word, and the ride to the restaurant was quiet, as both siblings sat in the back of their personal car, lost in their own individual thoughts.

When they arrived, however, before Gigi could head inside, her brother stopped her with a hand on her wrist. "I never saw you as broken," he said earnestly when she turned to face him. "You know that, right?"

Gigi smiled. "Yes," she told him, perfectly serious. "That's part of why I wasn't. Even when I thought he had taken every good thing I had to offer and left me behind in pieces, you showed me that he could only break me if I let him. So I became determined not to." She squeezed his hand and let him lead her up the steps and through the doors.

"So, these tweets about tigers and eagles," Will said as they were led to a private table. "I'm assuming Fitz was the mastermind behind all of this?"

"A, I can neither confirm nor deny that I have any idea what you're talking about, B, if I could, I would stress that I consider us to be partners in crime, and C, can you blame him, hypothetically, for wanting to help after he failed so spectacularly at wingman-ing the first time around?"

Fitz's arrival with his boyfriend ended that line of conversation between the Darcy siblings, but as Gigi accepted Fitz's surreptitious high five under the table while Darcy arched a knowing eyebrow in their direction, Gigi couldn't help but feel that, after the absolutely awful year that 2012 had been, maybe things in her life were finally, finally starting to look up.

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