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She’s Caroline the daughter of entrepreneurs who worked their way up from nothing, Caroline the brother of soon-to-be doctor Bing Lee, Caroline the friend of hotshot young CEO Mr. William Darcy.
Since as far back as she can remember, she’s always been the “daughter of”, and “friend of” and “sister of”, and by now, she has no idea where the titles end and just-Caroline begins.
o
“It’s not Darcy.” She says. And she thinks this might be courage, that this might be just-Caroline speaking for once.
“It’s never been Darcy.”
(God knows she’s tried, she’s tried so hard for it to be Darcy, because her parents would love that, and it would be perfect, and she would finally have done something of value in their eyes.)
She can see the exact moment it hits Lizzie, the initial panicked glance and the flush rising up those porcelain cheeks, as she takes Caroline’s words in.
“Oh.” Lizzie says faintly, and there’s confusion in her voice, mingled with surprise and embarrassment and maybe even a little bit of pity. Caroline is acutely aware of every inch of the other woman’s body, or she wouldn’t have noticed the subtle sliding back, the palpable need to put distance between them without making it obvious.
“Don’t worry, Lizzie.” Caroline says, the condescending smile painted perfectly on her lips. “I’m hardly going to pounce on you right here and now.” She snags a cocktail from a passing waiter and rises up out of her seat. She sashays over to greet that acquaintance from last Friday’s gala, more conscious than she wants to be of Lizzie’s eyes following her every move.
(It’s the pity she can’t bear, more than anything.)
o
Caroline doesn’t know where it happened. Somewhere between loving Lizzie Bennet and hating her for making Caroline feel this way, she starts wondering who the fuck she herself is.
Maybe it’s all those videos she’s been bingeing on, watching Lizzie figure out what she wants to do. Or maybe it’s that everyone in her life seems to have a future and she has nothing at all except the soul sucking parties, and the blind dates her parents set her up on.
(She hates the parties most of all, how charmingly they all listen to her, as if condescending to this new money girl who so desperately wants in on their circle. She hates it even more, because some part of her does want in on their circle.)
All of that gets her nowhere.
She has no idea who just-Caroline, who isn’t the daughter or sister or friend of anyone, is.
(She thinks that maybe she wants to find out.)
o
“You know,” Lizzie starts. They’re at one of Gigi’s bashes and they have spent the evening laughing and it’s been…fun. Caroline tries to pretend that Lizzie wants to be here next to her, that this is not just happening because Darcy got held up at a meeting again and couldn’t make it.
“You’re not so bad.” The other woman finishes, as she makes a face and downs the shot of what Caroline thinks might be Gigi’s idea of good tequila. (She needs to remind that girl to leave picking the alcohol to Fitz.)
“Not so bad?” Caroline laughs. “Lizzie, you sound like something out of some bad afterschool special.”
Lizzie tilts her head quizzically and stares at her, the very picture of puzzlement.
And maybe Caroline is more than a little buzzed or maybe it’s just that the other girl’s words have made her disproportionately happy. Whatever the reason is, she just smiles widely at Lizzie and begins to explain.
“It’s like we’re in one of those lame high school shows and I’m be the head cheerleader and you’re the…” She trails off because Lizzie is still staring way too intensely at her face, and it is sparking things in Caroline’s stomach, or maybe even lower.
“What, is there something on my face?” she asks, more nervous and breathless than she is used to ever feeling.
Lizzie just shakes her head mutely and holds her gaze for so long that Caroline thinks she might go crazy with fear and want and ache and all the other things that she’s learned to hide away deep where they could never reach her.
“God.” Lizzie finally speaks, and her voice sounds more than a bit shaky as continues staring at Caroline. “Where did you hide away that smile all this time?”
o
She thinks maybe she knows herself a little better now.
She’s Caroline who spent all night with Bing, listening to him recite the answers to all the interview questions for med school that she’d never get to answer herself, because her parents don’t think it’s fit for a girl to be a doctor.
She’s Caroline who’s done everything her parents wanted without question, attended all their events and smiled at all their friends, without ever finding any meaning in it.
She’s Caroline who wanted to hate Lizzie and love Darcy so badly, but somehow ended up doing the exact opposite.
She’s Caroline who has always cared too little and too much, and right now she’s hurting so bad that she’s not sure anyone, even Lizzie or Bing or Darcy, can staunch the wound.
o
"I want to enroll in university again” she tells her parents, at one of their rare family dinners.
Her parents laugh, politely, at what they take to be yet another of their daughter’s off-color jokes.
“I mean, I have do have some elective credits from biochem lying around, which I can transfer.” she continues doggedly, referring to the major she had taken with Bing. (Because she’d had no idea what she wanted, and following her brother’s footsteps had seemed like a good idea at that time.)
She can pinpoint the moment when their lips purse and the tight smiles set in. Her parents won’t shout at her, not here in front of the servants, but the chill that settles over the room is palpable.
“I was hoping to do a marketing specialization, with a focus on non-profits, and get some hands on experience while I’m at it.” She forges on, seeing no way out but forward, now that she’s thrown down the gauntlet.
(She’s already talked to the head of the local branch of Education Beyond Borders, and casually mentioning her trust find managed to snag her a spot on the next tour to China, faster than any heartfelt declarations of dedication to the cause would have.)
“We’ll discuss this later.” her father says, after shooting a brief glance at the butler waiting ready behind him. “Later.” he repeats, when she opens her mouth, and his face is all hard angles and planes .
Caroline shuts up, her hands clammy and her heart sinking.
The rest of the dinner passes in cold silence, but the one time she looks up, she sees her brother staring at her intently and when he sees her looking, he winks. It’s a small thing, but she feels her heart rise.
“I’ll give you my notes for the electives,” Bing says later, grinning at her, but his eyes steady and firmly fixed on her. “Although I can’t guarantee you can read my writing.”
She feels something warm bubble in her chest, and she loves him more, although she could have sworn it wasn’t possible.
“I’d think I can if anyone can”, was all she shoots back, though. “Seeing as I was the one attending your morning classes, all those times you were passed out from your frat parties.”
(What? She’s still Caroline and she still owns bitch like the word was created just waiting for her to exist, and that opening was too perfect for her resist.)
o
Fitz has thrown a huge bash to celebrate the three year anniversary of him and his boyfriend. It seems to Caroline as if all of Los Angeles is invited, and yet she finds herself stuck between Darcy and Lizzie during the ride to the paintball arena Fitz has hired for the night.
The conversation is rife with awkwardness and second hand embarrassment for Caroline, and so she keeps her attention trained out the window, occasionally rolling her eyes behind her shades at something particularly cringe-worthy the other two say.
“And dad told her to calm herself down before she worked herself up into tacky…touchy…what is that thing Bing was talking about?” Lizzie has been talking in an unusually fast pitch the whole ride, perhaps to make up for Darcy’s quietness. It’s not doing wonders to the headache that Caroline can feel developing right behind her eyes.
“I do believe I don’t…I’m not very well versed in medical jargon.” Darcy is replying now, awkward in the way that only Lizzie Bennet could render him.
“Tachycardia.” Caroline hears herself say, unable to keep silent any longer.
They both pause in their painfully stilted conversation to stare at her.
“It’s tachycardia, the word you’re looking for.” Caroline repeats.
“How did you know that?” Lizzie asks, and Caroline can see, without looking at her, the adorable scrunched-up look of confusion that would be on her face.
“Lucky guess.”She smirks, and turns her attention back to the window.
(A part of her wants to tell Lizzie about how she was the one Bing came to when he was studying for an exam, and needed someone to quiz him on the material. A part of her wants Lizzie to know of the sleepless hours spent asking him mind numbing technical questions because he was her brother and wanted nothing more than for Bing to succeed in this one thing he has his heart set on. And most of all, Caroline wants Lizzie to know that she did that because Bing was the only thing in the world that Caroline thought she could truly love, until she met Lizzie. )
o
Somewhere along the line, she becomes Lizzie’s friend. Or perhaps, a cautious ally, united against overbearing parents and the diabetic sweetness of Bing and Jane spilling their happiness everywhere.
They meet sometimes, to chat. Lizzie talks about her job and Caroline talks about whichever event her parents cajoled her into going that week. It’s a little bit painful and a little bit awkward, and Lizzie never mentions Caroline’s confession. But she never hints that she wants the meetups to stop either, and Caroline…well, Caroline hates to admit it, but she’ll take what she can get.
So, she’s not surprised at receiving the text on Friday evening, with a rare free night ahead of her.
“Bing and Jane are making googoo eyes at each other again, and mom is going on incessantly about wedding plans, and I just want a time out. Come meet me at the regular? I’m tearing my hair out over here.”
Caroline has to smile, because this is another of Lizzie’s quirks that she loves, her tendency to write texts that are far too coherent and have to arrive in multiple parts because they are too wordy to be contained in one.
“K. C U 15 mins from now.” She texts back, running in record speed to her closet as soon as she hits “Send”.
The bar is crowded, but they manage to find a secluded corner. They have fun. Caroline laughs.
It doesn’t even hurt that much.
o
Turns out this going back to university thing is harder than she thought. Getting approval for the specialization she’s drawn, especially with the 6-month trip included, is harder than she thought. For the first time, money isn’t opening doors as fast as it used to. Her parents barely talk to her, preferring instead to leave passive aggressive voice mails on her phone, and this takes a whole lot more time without their contacts to fall back on.
Sometimes, Caroline just wants it all to go away, just wants to go back to the carefree, meaningless life she led before Lizzie Bennet came into her life and turned everything upside down.
o
One night it all gets to be too much, and it’s Bing who finds her in the end.
She’s sitting hunched over a table in the farthest corner of a bar she would never even consider entering at any other time, but her brother still finds her.
He hauls her stone drunk form over his shoulder as easily as if she were a child, murmuring soothing words in reply to her bleary comment on how his hours in the gym has paid off.
He carries his baby sister himself, all the way out of the cab and up to his apartment, where he sits until 3 am into the night with her crying intermittently into his shoulder. He listens to her tell him about the parents who want more of her than she can ever give them and the people who smile at her and laugh at her behind her back for being so presumptuous as to attend the same parties they do, drink the same wine they do, breathe the same air they do.
He listens to her cry over the boy who won’t notice her, and the girl she has tried so hard not to love. And even when his face hardens in anger, his hands are gentle in her hair, and he murmurs “I know, I know.” to her over and over again, even though he doesn’t know at all.
o
They’re at Bing and Jane’s engagement party and Caroline is seated next to Lizzie in what is probably the most awkward seating arrangement ever. She is trying to make the best of it, because this is what she was born to do, after all. She is holding court, she has already charmed half the Bennet relations into forgetting whatever they had heard of her from Lydia and Lizzia, and she’s going to enjoy herself if it kills her.
(So what if it hurts that Lizzie keeps avoiding her gaze, and looking down at the ground like she wants to be anywhere else than right here next to Caroline?)
“I’m surprised, Lizzie.” Caroline drawls out, in a rare moment when they’re not both approached by garrulous relatives, “I’d think your mother would have wanted you seated right smack in between William and his sister.”
“Oh, she tried,” Lizzie replies sardonically, but her head is still turned away and if there’s one thing Caroline has never been able to stand, it’s someone who won’t give her their full attention when she’s talking to them.
“Oh that’s right.” She pursues doggedly, waiting for that perfectly formed face to turn back and frown at her, for those eyes to flash angrily. “Can’t be seen publicly holding hands with the CEO of the company you work for, huh?” Like anyone who sees how he looks at you wouldn’t already have noticed.
“There’s nothing going on between me and the CEO of Pemberley Digital.” Lizzie says primly, still not looking at her, her hands folded in her laps. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that such a relationship is strictly against company policy.”
Something inside Caroline sinks at this, at finding out that after everything, Lizzie still can’t trust her enough to tell her even this obvious thing.
“Oh come on, Lizzie” she says lightly, and she prays the other woman didn’t notice that slight falter in her voice, “I know all about that no-fraternization clause, but do you seriously think your very own soon-to-be sister in law is going to snitch on you? Puh-leaze, that is such a tacky tactic.” She tries to wave her hand dismissively, but it just flops limply in the air, traitor that it is.
Lizzie’s hands unfold from her laps then, twisting and turning and almost ripping the folds of her dress, as she shifts to look directly at Caroline.
“There is nothing going on between me and William. Nothing” she says, and her voice is not calm anymore and it has a note that makes Caroline heart leap and her stomach sink at the same time, and it’s all too much.
So she makes some lame joke and almost runs outside to the pool to get in on whatever game Gigi and Fitz are organizing out there, and when she dares to look back, she could swear that Lizzie is looking at her with something perilously close to disappointment.
o
Bing might not be the smartest guy around, but he has his own contacts and when he puts his mind to something, he pursues it single-mindedly. With his help, (and more than a little bit of Darcy involved in the background, she suspects), Caroline finally gets approval for the course schedule she’d drawn out.
She goes to the first class of the semester feeling lost and frightened, like a bird leaving the nest for the first time, but it gets better each day. She makes friends. She learns to have fun with them, and even forgets to make fun of them in her head when they’re talking.
She meets with the admission head, drops a few names, and more than a few bills, and soon she has her own customized co-op program arranged for the next semester.
Life isn’t ideal, but at least she gets to choose her own brand of not-ideal this time around.
o
She doesn’t know who tells Lizzie the news, Bing or Darcy. Or maybe it was Jane mentioning it in passing.
Caroline has been planning to tell her herself, as the months pass and the trip looms closer. She has been drafting emails and then trashing them for the past month, trying to get the wording just right. But it’s all for naught when she’s disturbed in her apartment at eleven in the night by one Elizabeth Bennet banging on her door as if to break it.
“What the…” Caroline starts, opening the door, but all speech leaves her at the touch of Lizzie’s hands clamping around her arm, squeezing so hard as to be almost painful.
“Don’t go.” is all Lizzie says, not greeting, no hello how you do you. Just don’t go, and it’s clear from her face how much effort it has taken her, how much pride she has stifled to come here and utter that simple statement.
It’s only a moment, but it seems like hours, in which Caroline makes what is probably the momentous decision in her life.
“Don’t go?” she repeats, laughing, and if it sounds bitterer than the light tone she’d aimed for, who can fucking blame her?
“Now you don’t want me to go?” She says, dislodging the hand clasped around her own, and for once thank god her voice is exactly the perfect mix of condescension and amusement.
(She has her pride too, as much as Lizzie has hers.)
It’s too late at night, and her parents have not talked to her in months and she might have downed an entire bottle of vodka that night while she watched over a phone that never rang.
“I don’t need this from you, Lizzie.” She says, and her voice is higher than it normally is, and she thinks she might be on the verge of laughing hysterically.
"Caroline..." Lizzie starts, the anger on her face fading to one of concern. "Caroline." she repeats, a little helplessly, as if she doesn't quite know where to go from there.
"Stop that." And if Caroline could think coherently at this moment, she would ashamed at how screechy her voice sounds. Stop saying my name like that stop it stop it stop it.
“Don’t you think I have enough shit to deal, Lizzie? Why do you have to confuse me and fuck my life up even more?” Goddamit, she won't cry, she's not crying, Caroline Lee doesn't cry in public like this, how dare her self control desert her at this moment.
And suddenly, there are soft fingers ghosting around Caroline's face, tracing the lines of her cheekbones and wiping away with her tears. Caroline's mouth, traitor that it is, sighs at this long-awaited contact, even as her hands feebly push against Lizzie's, trying to reject their touch. Lizzie only retaliates by holding her face more firmly.
“Sshhhh.” Lizzie says, a look of panic blooming across her face. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be fine.” She keeps repeating those words, in a tone she probably means to be soothing.
“No, it won’t.” Caroline snaps, because she’s still Caroline when crying like a baby in front of the woman she loves. But Lizzie just shoves past her into the apartment, dragging Caroline with her, and somehow they end up on the couch, their legs tangled up and Lizzie so close to her that Caroline almost forgets to breathe.
o
It’s like a scene out of all the guilty dreams that have plagued Caroline since the summer of two years ago, but they don’t end up doing anything, after all.
They just …sit up until late into the night, talking it out. Caroline hears about all how it broke down with Darcy. And she tells Lizzie a little about her new courses and how things have been with her parents.
(Although, the worst of that will always be reserved for Bing’s ears only.)
They talk a lot and Caroline cries a little more and at one point they even laugh, but not everything can be solved overnight. They fall asleep with their limbs tangled together and when Caroline wakes up in the morning with a blinding headache, Lizzie had already let herself out, and nothing at all has been resolved.
o
The trip is two months away and she’s managed to wrangle it with human resources so that she’s in charge of the PR rather than field work, because she’s still Caroline Lee and Caroline Lee does not like to get her perfectly manicured hands dirty, thank you very much.
She gets acquainted with the other volunteers through the biweekly meetings the local chapter holds, but never makes a lasting connection with any of them. She doesn’t need the words spoken aloud to know what they’re thinking. Poor little rich girl running away from her first world problems.
(She doesn’t feel the need to tell them that fuck you this is her homeland you’re talking about, not some random third world country that rich kids go to project their issues on, and her parents worked every step of the way up to where they are now.)
o
It’s a Saturday morning and she’s just about to head out the door to Bing’s to make some last minute arrangements about her luggage. She opens the door to leave, absentmindedly humming a tune, and then takes an abrupt step back. There’s Lizzie standing there outside with one hand raised to the buzzer and another hand clutching at a bag that is clashing painfully with the purple top she’s wearing.
“We have got to stop meeting like this, Lizzie.” Caroline says. Her voice is even amused and she’s glad she can laugh a little about this, finally.
Lizzie gives her a look, like I cannot believe you are joking about this. “Uh, yeah, we do.” She states flatly. “Seeing as you haven’t been picking up my calls or replying to my texts.”
Caroline cannot believe that Lizzie of all people is lecturing her about neglecting others. “Lizzie, I am going to China is literally less than two weeks. I’ve been a bit busy packing to reply to every message I get.” she replies, staunchly ignoring the voice at the back of her head that whispers liar.
“Besides, this is all too little too late, don’t you think?” She makes to move past the other woman, trying to ignore the shiver that their closeness sends down her spine.
“Oh no, you’re not running away this time.” Lizzie says, and she’s suddenly blocking the doorway with her tiny little body, and it would be a little bit precious if Caroline weren’t in the mood to get pissed at her for something, anything.
“Move away from the door, Lizzie.” She huffs.
“No.” the reply is rapidfire and firm.
“Elizabeth Bennet, you know very well I’m in love with you.” Caroline says, and marvels at her how calm her voice sounds, how practiced, how easily it makes Lizzie’s eyes narrow in anger. “And it fucking hurts for you to be blowing hot and cold like this.”
“Oh, first you tell me to get out and now you’re in love with me, but I’m the one blowing hot and cold?” Lizzie snaps back, “You casually hint at a party that you’re crushing on me, then you throw out some bullshit line about not hitting on me and you’ve been running away from me ever since. And now you want me to throw you a pity party, because I should have known you were in love with me?”
“You must have known!” Caroline snaps, and hates that her face is probably all scrunched up and angry looking now, and all those hours spent perfecting her makeup was for nothing. “There’s only been you.”
“How could I have known?” Lizzie’s is using that controlled angry tone that Caroline has become very familiar with by now, and if looks could kill, Caroline is pretty sure she might have been a smoking pile of ash on the ground. “How was I supposed to know when I barely even see you anymore?”
“Because it’s only ever been you!” Caroline rages back, because she doesn’t see why Lizzie is the one entitled to anger.
She expects shouting right back at her, some crying, maybe even a slap, because Lizzie certainly seems enraged enough to do violence at the moment.
What she doesn’t expect is total silence, not a single word coming out of Lizzie as Caroline stares at her, heart hammering wildly and breath coming is short bursts. They stare at each other and it seems like an eternity passes.
“Good.” Lizzie finally replies and Caroline thinks maybe it’s not her imagination, that Lizzie sounds a bit out of breath herself.
“Good.” Lizzie repeats, She tilts her head up until her hot breath is tickling the exposed side of Caroline’s neck and this is just too fucking close. She reflexively leans back, but now Lizzie’s hands are on either side of her face, gently but firmly holding her in place, and her lips are leaving rough and haphazard butterfly kisses all over Caroline’s face.
“Good.” The other woman says one more time, as if the word were a prayer. There is a note of desperation to her voice, and in the way she clutches at Caroline, as though Caroline might disappear if she lets go. It’s too much and not enough and yet everything Caroline has ever wanted and she thinks there might be tears running down her face, mingling with the wetness of Lizzie’s mouth.
“I ran after Darcy for five years, Lizzie.” She sobs out, and the lips against her face still. “And then I ran after you for two more after that.” She feel Lizzie breathing heavily, right against her ear. “I want to do something for my own sake, for once.” God, her mascara is going to be so ruined. Damn you, Lizzie.
“Just leave.” She mutters, pushing the other woman away and trying to salvage what is left of her dignity. “Bing is waiting for me anyways.”
“Did you not fucking hear me?” Lizzie demands, shifting back to look at her, and the profanity more than anything makes Caroline stop in her tracks, because she has never seen Lizzie swear so vehemently unless she is enraged. “I said no!”
“What’s the point?” Caroline folds her arms, suddenly exhausted and sullen. “What can we do now?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll never find out if we don’t work on it.”Lizzie states. She is breathing hard as if she has run a marathon, but her eyes are fixated on Caroline’s own quite firmly. “If you won’t stay, Caroline, then I’ll go.”
“Go where?” Caroline says and then cringes inwardly at how stupid that sounds. The next word that comes out of her mouth is no better. “What?”
“To China.” Lizzie repeats slowly, as though she’s talking to a very slow child. “I’ll go with you to China.”
“How?” Great, more monosyllabic replies. Goddamit, Lee, you have more game that this.
“I put in for a transfer.” Lizzie replied briskly, taking out a sheaf of paper from her bag and waving it around in the air. “William agreed that it was a good step to add to the executive training program that we worked out. China is like a hotbed for hit apps right now, and international experience is becoming more and more crucial for any manager who wants to make it in Silicon Valley. “
“You sound like you memorized that out of a book.” Caroline says, but a smile is threatening to force its way out and her heart is pounding as if to burst.
Lizzie gives her a look and then caves. “Fine, I got that out of the contract William drew up,” she says exasperatedly, throwing her hands up and rolling her eyes. “But does it even matter? Bottom line is, Caroline, I’m going with you and that’s final.”
Caroline is flipping through the contract, smirking as she skims down to see Darcy’s neat signature scrawled perfectly on the line, stating that one Lizzie Bennet is indeed being transferred to the Zhongguancun branch of Pemberley Digital for a period of six months.
“It’s a bit far from where I’m stationed.” she comments inanely, still unsure that this is real, this is actually happening. “Bing was telling me something about the new transportation laws the other-“
“Oh for Christ’s sake, I’ll take a damn train every weekend if I have to!” Lizzie says, swiping the contract out of her hands. She tilts her head up and for a fleeting moment, Caroline feels the touch of soft lips against her own, but they’re gone too soon and then there is Lizzie staring at her once again with an exasperated half-smile. “Just say you’re happy already.”
The sun is shining and Caroline feels lighter that she has in months, and she thinks maybe she doesn’t have to be Caroline Lee right now.
“Yes.” just-Caroline says, smiling wide. “I’m happy.”
Lizzie stares at her with that entranced look that she gets on her face everytime Caroline smiles at her. “So,” she starts, taking Caroline’s hands and gently lacing their fingers together.”Where do we go from here?”
Caroline stifles the urge to giggle. “I don’t know,” she repeats Lizzie’s earlier words, “But I’m willing to try and find out, if you are.”
oFINo