So here it is. After all the angst, I've got an entire platter full of sappy, cheesy fluff. Hope you like it. Also, I enjoyed so much getting into Lizzie's head that I've started something similar from Darcy's perspective. Anyone interested?

Thanks again for reading and reviewing!

97

The nice thing about hitting rock bottom was the feeling that she had nothing left to lose. When Charlotte showed up for their birthday, Lizzie knew exactly what to film for her video. She knew her viewers had been anticipating Darcy's call almost as much as she had, and after spending four days in miserable uncertainty, she couldn't help spreading the misery around with a big, gleeful fakeout.

Charlotte punctured her false cheer pretty quickly. She wasn't being cruel, though, just wise. She gently brought her around to a confession and after Lizzie broke down and let herself be honest and completely vulnerable, Charlotte was there to help her pick up the pieces.

She was also there to answer the door and send William Darcy into the den.

After, when Lizzie was curled up in his arms on the sofa, having long abandoned the camera and the stools she used for filming, editing was the last thing on her mind. At some indeterminate point between his arrival and the present moment he had changed from Darcy to William, and she had transformed from a mopey, heartbroken mess to pretty much the happiest person on the planet. He was currently tracing a pattern up and down her arm, making her shiver, and she was trying to determine which parts of his face she hadn't kissed yet. Then her stomach let out a traitorous rumble.

"You're hungry."

She considered denying it, but lying at the very onset of their relationship was probably a bad precedent, even for something as insignificant as this. "Yeah. Are you?"

He shrugged. "Not especially. I had a meal on the plane ride. Although airline food isn't particularly fortifying…"

"Did you come straight here from the airport?" she wondered, the thought filling her with an absurd pleasure.

"Of course. You were the only reason I came here."

In the back of her mind she knew she was wearing a positively nauseating lovey-dovey expression, but as long as he didn't mind, she didn't either.

Finally dragging her gaze away from him, she pulled out her phone. "We can order something. What do you feel like?"

"Whatever you like."

"You know if you keep being obliging and agreeable all the time it's going to drive me crazy – oh, look. Charlotte tweeted at me."

He leaned closer to look over her shoulder, his breath tickling her neck. She only half-registered the words on her screen until he said, "Honey walnut shrimp?"

"What?" she said, her voice coming out far dreamier than she intended. "Oh. That was the Chinese that Charlotte ordered for us."

Comprehension dawned on his face. "I see. Well, I'm sorry you didn't get any."

She set down her phone, took both his hands and said, "I'm about to say something so sappy and sugary it'll probably make your teeth fall out. Just to warn you."

"All right," he said, a smile tugging the corners of his mouth.

Lizzie leaned close and whispered, "I got something much better than honey walnut shrimp."

His smile widened. "You're right. That was very sappy." He gave her a short, sweet kiss that left her wanting more, but he pulled back and indicated her phone. "It's still not a replacement for food, though. Dinner?"

"Mmm." She blinked. "Just a second." With a wicked grin, she sent a reply to Charlotte's tweet. "Happy bestie bday to TheCharlotteLu who deserves all the honey and the walnuts and the shrimp in the world. There. Now let's order something."

A few minutes later, after they found a place that was still open this late and placed an order for more Chinese, Charlotte tweeted an incredulous response. Lizzie had to reply again. "What," she said aloud, "I can't make out with my boyfriend and also tweet? I'm a multitasker."

Since this was the first time she had called him her boyfriend, the occasion naturally called for more making out.

Charlotte's final tweet made them change direction just a little. "Send her things to edit," Lizzie said, looking at the screen thoughtfully. "Huh. Things to edit."

"Do you want to put all of that online?" William asked, his mouth contracting into a frown as he glanced at the camera.

"I…don't know. But how do you feel about it?"

"They're not my videos."

She let out a sound of exasperation. "That's not what I mean. I can only imagine how it must have felt when I put up those other videos of you – you know, the early ones." She fingered his tie, eyes downcast. "I didn't even consider your feelings when I exposed you to the entire Internet. I'm so sorry."

He lifted her face and ran his hand along her cheek. "Your apology means a great deal to me. But I understand. At that time you didn't believe me capable of feeling."

"How does that make it better?" she demanded.

"You had good reason to assume I was incapable of decent feeling." He took a breath. "I was cold, standoffish, inconsiderate. In all my struggles over my growing feelings for you, it never occurred to me to show you any kindness or warmth."

"You did try a few times," Lizzie objected. "I just – didn't recognize it. I refused to see anything other than what I wanted to see."

"We were both gravely mistaken. We can agree on that." He pulled her close. "Perhaps we should just be happy we've both changed."

She rested her head on his shoulder. "Agreed. Now, what about the video?"

"I have no objections to being included in it." A soft sound escaped his lips, and she realized it was laughter. It was the first time she had ever heard it from him. "It paints me in a far better light than past videos. It may even be essential to redeeming my character."

"Well, from my viewpoint you were redeemed a long time ago, if you even needed redeeming in the first place. But my viewers will probably kill me if I didn't include some kind of resolution to that phone call." She sighed. "I like this, right now. Just the two of us. It's private. I don't know that I'm ready to make it public just yet. Maybe it can wait till Thursday."

"They'll be expecting a video tomorrow though."

"Mmm." She straightened, a grin lighting on her face. "Oh, I know. I have footage from before you showed up. Talking to Charlotte. It'll be a perfect lead-up."

William quirked an eyebrow. "Lizzie Bennet, are you intending to torture your viewers?"

"Maaaybe. Just a little. Would you like to see what we shot?" Without waiting for his reply, she hopped up from the sofa and went to get the camera and her laptop.

He was silent and stoic as he watched her tease the unseen audience, then bring Charlotte into the frame. His expression remained unchanged, but as the conversation progressed on the screen before them, he pulled Lizzie tighter and closer until she could hardly breathe. She paused the video just as his torso appeared.

"I'm so sorry," he said in a low voice, giving her that hypnotically intense gaze. "I had no idea how much pain I caused you."

"How could you know?" she said, easing back a bit. "I certainly wasn't being open about it."

"I wish I could have come sooner."

"Yeah. But it's in the past. Time to forget the bad and only remember the good, right?"

"It might be hard to forget the bad when you post videos like this."

"All right," she laughed, "it's not like it's erased from my memory. It just doesn't hurt anymore." She gave him a sideways glance. "On that note, do you want to see my browser history?"

He actually blushed. "Are you sure?"

Wordlessly, she opened the browser window and showed him.

She had looked up his name in the search engine a lot that week. Among other things.

She sent the footage to Charlotte with explicit instructions to end the video just after Darcy showed up. Then she spent the next three days in a glorious blur, coming up for air only long enough to cackle at the frustration of her viewers. Even William seemed to enjoy leaving Gigi and Fitz in the dark with the rest of them, evidencing a smugness that made him all the more irresistible.

98

It was impossible to keep a straight face while filming the intro to Thursday's video. Heartbreak was hard to suppress, but hiding her effervescent happiness? That was downright impossible. At least she managed not to openly giggle while pretending she wasn't going to show her viewers what happened. She didn't bother attempting a second, more stoic take – not with William smirking and smoldering on the sidelines.

She kept in all the remaining footage for Thursday's video. A nice, brief editing session left her plenty for time for other more enjoyable activities.

99

William Darcy was full of surprises. Last-year-Lizzie would have scoffed at the very notion of Darcy donning a ridiculous wig to play costume theater, or scooping his girlfriend up in his arms to make a playfully dramatic finish to her Q&A video. (Not to mention the idea that she would be that girlfriend.) There was so much more to him, so much warmth and intensity and humor that she never could have imagined. After a full week spent almost entirely in his company, she felt like she had really come to know him at last. And then he took her completely by surprise again.

"You want to take over my video?"

He ducked his head. "Not the entire thing, necessarily. Just the introduction."

She finished adjusting the camera and stepped back. "Of course you can, if you really want to. But why?"

He took her hand. "Because in each of your previous videos that I've appeared in, I've been an intruder. Sometimes you invited me in, and sometimes I was less than welcome, but either way I was an outsider trying to make my way in. I would like, just once, to present myself as something other than an outsider in your life."

"Well, that's fair." She stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. "Go ahead. Break a leg."

He was adorably awkward, and she had to come in and rescue him after less than a minute – as well as resolve the six-days versus one-week debate – but when he offered his modified version of her catchphrase, she had no complaints about his ability to make an acceptable video.

This video also contained one of the rare occasions when Lizzie completely forgot about the camera. This necessitated a rather large cut that even Charlotte couldn't have made seamless. Not that Lizzie asked for her help editing this time. There was some footage she couldn't share even with her bestie. One particular sound she made when he started planting kisses along her jawline - well, some things were intended for William's ears alone.

As she watched the finished cut, she couldn't help noting that it marked more than one major transition in her life. The establishment of her relationship with William was only the beginning. She was also finishing grad school, embarking on her career, and moving to San Francisco. Her days of being a single, unemployed student living at home were over. It was the end of an era.

Then she knew what she had to do.

100

Filming the last video was hard, but not as hard as she thought. It was a celebration as well as a farewell. She was moving on to bigger and better things, and the same was true of all the important people in her life. She was proud of her videos, flaws and all. A good storyteller knew to end on a high note.

The editing was a joint effort between her and Charlotte. It seemed appropriate. There was really only one crisis during the process, and that was deciding whether to include her mother's surprise appearance at the end.

Well, maybe it was only fair to let her mother have the last word after all the jokes at her expense.

Postscript

It was such a relief to go about her life without self-censoring or worrying what she would have to edit out later. They went out for a celebratory dinner, she and William and Charlotte and Lydia, and she felt completely comfortable in her own skin for the first time in weeks.

There were a few wrinkles, of course. They asked the waiter to take a picture, not realizing he was some sort of aspiring photographer who proceeded to document the entire saga of Ricky Collins showing up and inviting himself into their circle. But afterwards, the pictures gave her a good laugh.

It gave her an idea. Why not throw her viewers one last bone? She wouldn't even have to edit anything.

There would be plenty of video editing in her new career. But she was done editing her life.