Life On Planet Earth(1), Pride and Prejudice Fanfiction
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Life On Planet Earth ~ Section IBy Annie
Section I,
Prologue OnePosted on Thursday, 5 July 2001
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~~Winston Churchill
I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress. ~~Jane Siberry
You're callin' my name but I gotta make clear
I can't say, baby, where I'll be in a year.
~~Aerosmith
Darcy Williamson paced back and forth in the lobby of the de Bourgh building, staring at the floor. As the time increased, his pacing grew more frenetic and his mind, already in turmoil over the recent trouble with his sister Ginger, filled with such fear that his hands, clasped behind his back, started to shake. He could see his face in the polished floor and closed his eyes, hoping he could erase the look of sheer terror written there.
I have nothing to fear from my aunt. I have nothing to fear from my aunt. I have nothing to fear from my aunt.
He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the lobby. Who was he kidding? His Aunt Catherine petrified him. Being called into her inner sanctum only made things worse. He had never been called to the top floor of de Bourgh Enterprises' building unless he was in for it. And he knew exactly why he was there. The pacing continued as his fear rose.
That does it. Tomorrow morning I'm calling my therapist and firing him. "Conquered your fear of your aunt," my foot.
"Darcy!"
He stopped pacing and turned around. Catherine de Bourgh stood in the doorway of her office, looking more imposing than he had ever seen her. Her silver hair was cut short like a boy's. Her dark eyes might have been thought pretty if they were not so cold. Her face was impassive except for her thin mouth, which had almost disappeared, and had it not been for the fact that the summons had been issued through her trusted assistant, Ruth Jenkinson rather than being sent directly, he would've been hard-pressed to think himself in trouble.
"Aunt Catherine," he replied politely, trying not to betray his nervousness.
Too late, of course, because she'd caught him pacing. She knew he paced when he was nervous.
"Step into my office," she said.
Said the spider to the fly, Darcy thought drearily. Wish I didn't have to be the fly today.
Darcy slowly made his way through the office door, trying not to look around at the opulent room in which his aunt worked. She had spared no expense to furnish her work space when she'd taken over de Bourgh Enterprises. Her priceless Picasso hung against the wall opposite of her desk. Her collection of antique Greek vases sat properly aligned in an antique curio cabinet next to the painting. The "vanity" wall behind her was filled with pictures of herself with important celebrities.
When Aunt Catherine had first assumed guardianship of Darcy and Ginger after their parents' death in a car accident seventeen years ago, Darcy had gaped at that wall, unable to comprehend that his aunt actually knew famous people like Vice-President George Bush and Donald Trump. (The picture of Catherine with Larry Bird continued to escape him because his aunt hated basketball.)
Today he had no time for the pictures on the wall. He was in Trouble.
"Darcy, you cannot pretend you don't know why I've asked you to come," Aunt Catherine said, sitting at her mammoth desk. Darcy knew he wasn't going to be offered a chair, and if he sat, Catherine would refuse to speak to him until he stood.
"I know why you have sent for me." Darcy looked down at the floor, wishing that his parents were still alive, that Catherine hadn't offered to take him in, that Ginger hadn't been so foolish. He wished to be Dare Williamson again, the eleven-year-old kid who'd bloodied more noses than he could remember because of his real first name. He wished his therapist hadn't been so lousy.
Mostly, he wished he could go to the bathroom.
"I made it perfectly clear to you when your sister got in trouble that she was no longer part of the company or family," Catherine said, warming to her subject.
"I know." Darcy hung his head so that his aunt could not see his true feelings on the subject.
"I warned you that you were not to give her money, grant her any favors, or contact her in any way."
"I know."
"She has made her bed, and by God, she shall lie in it."
There's my aunt for you. A walking cliché, he thought in a rare moment of disrespect.
Not that he would ever consider saying it to her.
"I know."
"You keep telling me that you understand, Darcy, yet I have been informed that you have sent Georgiana money. You have helped her find a job with Westendorf Inc. You have even contacted her--against my command."
He looked up at last. "Aunt Catherine, I only wanted to be sure she would be all right. She is my only family-"
"I am your family. Have you forgotten that, Darcy? Anne is your family."
Darcy could not prevent a shiver of distaste from rippling through him at the thought of what she was implying. Catherine had her heart set on Darcy marrying her protégée, Anne Ripley. Anne was the daughter of Catherine's closest friend and while Anne was nice, she was also another way Catherine would control him.
Catherine had chosen the prep school he had attended (Andover) and also the college (Harvard). She had chosen many of his so-called friends from those hallowed halls. She had chosen when he would go to Europe and Japan to oversee de Bourgh Enterprises' interests. She had ordered him and criticized him and now, she had cut off his only link to the world he'd left behind as a child, his sister.
By God, she wasn't going to choose his wife as well. If he had to share his life and his bed with a woman, he'd do the choosing.
"Ginger is my sister," he said calmly, amazed at how firm he sounded. "I cannot turn my back on her."
"Cannot or will not?"
"Both."
Catherine's dark eyes narrowed at him. If there had been any warmth to her at all, he would've believed her to be furious. But Catherine de Bourgh, the Lady Titan of the business world, hadn't gotten there by being a sensitive, generous woman. She'd never learned these traits and never would, for she saw them as signs of weakness.
And she could not understand or forgive them in him.
"I see," she said after a cold silence. "You are determined to be stubborn?"
"I...I am sorry, but I must."
There was another cold silence. Darcy expected to be thrown out of her office, but Catherine just sat there, staring at him. If he hadn't known better, he would've sworn she looked surprised, as though she couldn't believe that he was refusing to cave in to her demands.
"Loyalty such as yours is quite admirable, Darcy Williamson," she said at last. "Were it not for the fact that it is misplaced in this case, I would be extremely proud of you. But, I have always said that bad blood will tell, and it certainly has in your sister. Georgiana has become as foolish a woman as my sister Amelia was. And she does not deserve your assistance."
Darcy's jaw clenched and he wished he could tell his aunt exactly who was undeserving in this instance. His mother did not deserve the slanders Catherine had heaped upon her name over the past seventeen years any more than Ginger deserved them now. But years of living under Catherine's rule prevented him from saying so, along with the pleading look in Ginger's eyes when he had told her he was meeting Catherine.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Catherine, but we must agree to disagree on this point. I will not abandon her."
"I'm sorry as well, Darcy, because you realize that I cannot allow you to go against my wishes. Despite being my nephew, you are still my employee and I cannot have people accuse me of nepotism. For your sake, I let Georgiana go without receiving the punishment she deserved. But I gave everyone in this company strict orders to stay away from her, and being her brother doesn't exclude you from that rule."
"I understand," he said. He had no idea what on earth he was going to do with his life once she'd fired him, but anything had to be better than this.
"If I wished, I could disown you as I disowned Georgiana," she said.
"You mean...you're not going to?"
"I may consider it at some point in the future. But I've always seen much of myself in you, Darcy, and I don't want to lose the potential you have. Plus, Anne cares for you a great deal and it would mean so much to me and her if you would consider making your relationship a more permanent one."
I wasn't aware I had a relationship with Anne.
"But you do need to see the error of your ways, and I have decided exactly what you shall do for the next twelve months." Catherine smiled, and Darcy again felt a chill run down his back. "I believe you are acting this way because you have no idea of what life in the real world is like. You do not know what it is like to have to actually work for a living."
What do you call the work I do for you? Child's play?
"You have been coddled by my lifestyle too much. The blame rests partly with me, for I should've done this long ago, as I did with Anne." When he didn't say anything, she continued. "I own a franchise of pizza restaurants in the Midwest. They are quite profitable but nothing out of the ordinary. I think what you need is to spend a year working there, understanding just how good you have it here."
Darcy's mouth dropped open. "You want me to run a pizza corporation?" he asked in disbelief.
"No. I have a perfectly capable man as the head of it."
Darcy swallowed. "You want me to run one of the stores, then?"
"No. I believe the people running it are good at what they do."
"Then what, exactly, do you expect me to do?"
"You are going to wait tables."
Darcy couldn't stop himself from laughing for a minute. When Catherine just stared at him, he realized that she was serious.
"I won't do it," he said when he stopped laughing. "I quit, effective today. I'll find work elsewhere. I'm sure that somewhere in this city, someone is looking for a person with my skills."
"They'll never consider you without a good reference from me. And if you do this, Darcy, you'll never get one."
The trap slammed shut. Catherine had him just where she wanted him. He wasn't fit for any sort of work other than what she'd groomed him for-taking over her company. If she didn't give him a reference, everyone would suspect something was wrong with him.
"You'll spend a year waiting tables at Planet Earth Pizza. Hopefully you'll learn people skills and understand that some people don't deserve your sympathy. I'll check on you every three months."
"You can't expect me to spend a year waiting tables!" Darcy exclaimed.
"I most certainly do. But I will give you the opportunity to come back into the fold. If, when I check on you in three months, you are willing to apologize for your disloyalty to me, I will forgive you and you may return here to work for me. This arrangement will stand until the year is over."
"And if I refuse at the end of a year?"
Catherine didn't even raise an eyebrow. "You won't last a year, Darcy. You don't know how to survive. You have become accustomed to my life, which is what I hoped would happen when I took you and...well, when I took you in. I think three months shall help you see the light."
"And if I refuse? Will you disown me as you did Ginger?"
She did raise her eyebrows this time and brought her hands, folded as if in prayer, to her lips. She gave the matter some thought and said, "No. I shall strike a bargain with you. If you last the year, I shall give Georgiana a small allowance. Not what she is used to, mind you, but enough for her to get by. But as I said, I do not see you waiting tables for a year. I did it myself, you know. It's disgusting, degrading work. I shall expect you back here within three months."
"And if I come back before the year is up?"
"She gets nothing, because you will have promised me that you shall never see her again." Catherine smiled again. "So, what shall it be? Am I to wash my hands of you and your worthless sister today? Or are you going to take your punishment and return the better for it?"
"I shall take the punishment," he replied quietly.
Catherine nodded. "Very well. You shall spend the next month here, training the gentleman who shall be taking your place and preparing to move your things from your apartment. You shall need to find an apartment of your own. When you are ready, I shall inform Sean Fitzwilliam that you're to be hired at once. Is there anything you are unclear about?"
"No, I think you've managed everything," Darcy said, barely able to keep the venom out of his voice.
Why do I do these things? he asked himself. Sadly, he knew the answer, and he didn't like it at all.
"Oh, Darcy," his sister groaned when he told her of his fate. "I wish it hadn't gone so badly."
"You and me both," Darcy replied. He glanced about his surroundings. His sister's apartment could've fit easily into Catherine de Bourgh's office with room for another apartment of this size to spare. He wished he could've found something better for her, but this was the best she was going to get until she had some money saved.
And yet, for all the heartache which had ensued from her expulsion from the family, Darcy saw something in his sister that he greatly envied. For the first time in years, Georgiana Rose Williamson looked happy. Happier than him, as a matter of fact.
"You shouldn't have helped me," she said quietly. "It's costing you too much."
"If it were the other way around-I had done something to get fired from the company and disowned by Aunt Catherine-would you abandon me?"
"In a heartbeat." But Ginger's eyes told the truth, and Darcy knew she would no more abandon him than she would willingly stop breathing.
"How are things at Westendorf?" he asked.
"Going well, I think. No one seems to know what happened with Aunt Catherine, for which I am truly grateful."
"She said she didn't tell anyone out of respect for me."
Ginger laughed bitterly. "More likely she didn't want to have to admit that she had a relative who'd been so foolish," she replied. "Bad for her image, you know."
"It wasn't your fault, Ginger."
"Yes, it was. I should've been smarter. I should've seen through him and I didn't."
"You're only nineteen. Aunt Catherine should've remembered that."
"I don't think she was ever nineteen. Cantankerous old cow."
"Ginger!"
"Don't deny it. You know she is. You're just afraid to say it to her."
"Well..."
"I knew it. No gumption." Ginger sighed. "It was a long time coming, Darcy. She was looking for anything she could use to get rid of me. I remind her too much of our mother. And now she's got her heart's desire. I'll never set foot in that place again."
Darcy knew of his failings as a brother, and it caused him great shame. He should be able to stand up to his aunt and tell her that he wasn't going to be her lackey anymore, and that what happened wasn't completely Ginger's fault, and that he didn't need her money. Dare Williamson could do just fine without it.
But deep down, he was scared. Dare Williamson existed only in his mind, the memory of a boy he'd once been when his mother was an angel in his eyes and his father was invincible. The reality he saw every day in the mirror was Darcy Ambrose Williamson, who at the age of ten had looked up at his imperious aunt without realizing how different his life was going to be.
The first words out of her mouth after being introduced to her niece and nephew were, "What foolish names. Your mother, foolish girl that she was, gave you distinctive names worthy of the position you might have had if she hadn't run off with that worthless Ron Williamson. Darcy, you were given your mother's maiden name, and a proud one it is. I shall hear no more of this Dare nonsense. Georgiana, you were named after our illustrious father, George Darcy. Ginger is a spice, not a name. You are not to refer to yourselves by those silly names again."
Ginger, being only two and a half at the time, screamed, "No! No! No! Ginger my name!"
It was the only time Darcy could remember his aunt ever losing her temper, yelling at the toddler and ordering him to take control of her. "Just like her mother," Aunt Catherine had muttered as she'd taken them away from their family home. Even then, his aunt had had little use for the pretty girl with the pale blonde curls. Darcy hadn't understood just how deep Catherine's dislike of his sister ran until recently.
"I'm so sorry, Ginger," he said softly. "You must hate me very much."
"No," she replied. "I love you, Darcy. You didn't have to defy her for me, and yet you did. I feel honored that you took a stand for me...even if I think you shouldn't have done it." She frowned. "But you can tell that woman that I won't take a dime of her money. I don't want it anymore, not that I ever really did. If you go for the year, do it for yourself, not because you think it would help me. I'll be fine."
"Catherine was right, you know. I won't last the year. I'll be lucky if I last the three months she said she'd give me."
Ginger's lips curled into a smile. "I have a feeling you're going to do better than you think, Dare."
Prologue Two"In the history of life, no good news has ever followed that sentence ['We have to talk']."
~~Paul Reiser
Elisabeth Bennet knew something was wrong because she was cold.
She never could explain it to anyone, but she always knew something bad was going to happen because she would start getting goosebumps all over. When her sense of impending doom was really bad, she would start shivering. She'd had her worst reaction a couple of years ago, right before Matt Philips, one of her close cousins, was involved in the car wreck which had left him in an irreversible coma. She'd been so cold that night that her teeth had chattered for nearly an hour in spite of the sweltering heat of the night.
This was nothing on the level of that horror, of course. All she was feeling at the moment were goosebumps. They made her want to snuggle further under the covers and closer to the warm body in bed with her.
Only there was no warm body there to snuggle.
And then she knew why she'd gotten goosebumps.
Elisabeth opened her eyes and saw George Wickham tiptoeing out the door. She could've called out to him to stop, but she knew, deep in her heart, that she didn't care. George had been interesting, but outside of her bedroom or his, they had very little in common. Though they were both in management at Planet Earth Pizza-he was the assistant manager here in Effingham while she managed the store in Newton-they had fought constantly when they'd been working together.
Come to think of it, they'd been fighting a lot ever since they'd gotten together, too. It seemed as though yet again, Elisabeth's cousin Charlotte Lucas was going to be proven right. It had been nothing but physical attraction between the two of them.
George shut the door quietly, and Elisabeth felt a moment's gratitude toward him. He was taking the coward's way out, but at least she didn't have to deal with the Big Deal Break-Up Scene, crowned with the big deal break-up speech. She closed her eyes and willed herself to go back to sleep. She'd deal with these nagging feelings in the morning and wonder why her goosebumps hadn't gone away yet.
A moment later, she heard flesh striking flesh, followed by a loud thud as someone fell to the floor. Elisabeth sat up in bed. When the expected howl came a moment later, she threw back the covers and reached for her clothes.
"You hit me!" George yelled.
"You deserved it!" Charlotte yelled back. "You weasel your way out of everything else, but by God, you're not weaseling your way out of this!"
Elisabeth put on her shirt, not noticing that it was on backwards. If she didn't hurry, Charlie would kill him, which wouldn't be a bad thing but then she would get stuck having to pay the rent on her own.
She opened her bedroom door and walked into the living room, where Charlie glared down at George, who was holding his left eye.
"George?" she said, feeling a little colder now that she was fully awake.
"Damn," he whispered. "Uh...Elisabeth."
She put her hands on her hips. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"
"Um...we have to talk."
"How original," Charlie muttered.
"Do you mind?" George snapped.
"Not at all." Charlie leaned against the wall and looking as though she fully expected to have a front row seat for this.
Elisabeth looked at her for a moment before saying, "Charlie, could we have a minute?"
"Are you sure?"
She nodded, and Charlie walked toward her bedroom, but not before giving George one final death look.
When they were alone, or something close to it, Elisabeth walked over to her couch and sat down. "You were saying?"
"Look, you're...I'm...this...well, I want to see other people."
"Uh-huh."
"I can't get tied down right now. I'm only twenty-two, and that's not an option for me right now. I don't want to get tied down. I-"
"George?"
"Yeah."
"It's okay."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, save your speech for the dumb blondes with bust sizes larger than their brain cell count. I don't need it. It's not like we were actually dating."
That caught him off guard. For once, he had nothing to say, and for her wounded female pride, it was priceless. "You were just a fling, and it wasn't that great."
George blinked. "You mean you don't care?"
She shrugged. "Why should I care? I'm twenty-six. I don't want to be tied down any more than you do." She reached for her cigarettes and lighter sitting on the end table. She took a cigarette out and hoped he didn't notice that her hands were trembling as she lit one.
"It's nothing personal, Elisabeth."
"It never is with you, George." She kept her voice calm.
Not that she was really ticked at him. Not that she really cared. She'd known this day would come eventually-working with the jerk for nearly a year had given her a good idea of how he operated.
The person she was really ticked at was herself, for being dumb enough to fall for his cornball crap and feel sorry for him after his return from New York. He'd given her a sob story about how terrible it had been and how everyone had treated him like a hick, and she'd bought it all.
"We don't get along well outside of...well, you know," he protested, like she was begging him to stay. "I'm not even sure we like each other."
"Who are you trying to convince-yourself? I already told you that I don't care. You can go with a clear conscience. I'm not going to commit suicide or anything."
"Something's bugging you."
Elisabeth took a drag off her cigarette. "Cowardice always makes me mad."
"Cowardice? I'm not a coward."
"Sure. That's why you were being so quiet when you put on your clothes and walked out my bedroom door. That's why you didn't turn on any lights. If Charlie hadn't caught you, I wouldn't have realized until morning. Were you planning to write a note, or were you going to leave without any explanation?"
"You really are mad," George said, looking pleased. "Look, I'm really sorry about this, Elisabeth."
"I'm not mad because you're walking out. I'm mad about the way you're doing it." She reached for the ashtray, tapped her ashes into it, and had another drag. Smoking, though she knew she needed to quit, helped steady her nerves.
"I wanted to avoid a scene like this one."
"I see." She shrugged again. "All you had to do was tell me you didn't want to go out anymore. And you didn't have to sleep with me beforehand. What was that, anyway? One to remember you by?"
"I didn't mean for that to happen. It just-"
"Spare me. I don't care, I really don't. Just get the hell out of my apartment."
"Fine. Whatever." George's favorite last words, Elisabeth thought to herself as he found his shoes and put them. He slammed the door behind him.
Elisabeth finished her cigarette and set the ashtray back on the end table. She wished she'd brought a blanket, because she was still cold and she would be for a while.
George Wickham isn't worth this reaction.
Charlie walked back into the room. "You okay?" she asked.
"Sure," Elisabeth replied. She noticed that Charlie was wearing her Planet Earth Pizza uniform. "You're sleeping in that thing now?"
"No. I was in the bathroom when you two came in, then went to my bedroom to read. So..."
"So, I guess that's it." She shrugged. "We're over, not that we were ever going to make it. You'd think that after Walter I'd have learned my lesson about dating people I sort of work with."
"Are you going to be okay?"
Elisabeth looked down at her hand. It was shaking slightly, which might've been what Charlie was reacting to. "I'm going to be fine. Trust me. George Wickham is just a bad memory."
The next morning, Elisabeth sped into work, checking her clock and seeing that she was just in time. She turned off the engine and realized that there were two cars in her parking lot that shouldn't have been there. Thomas Palmer's company car was nothing unusual-he was the district manager and he was at her store about twice a week. But the other car made less sense.
It was a truck, actually. George Wickham's fire-hydrant red truck.
Elisabeth used the driver's door to enter the building, as she did every morning. Thomas was looking over a stack of papers, leaning against her front counter. George was nowhere to be seen.
"Good morning, Elisabeth," Thomas said with a grim look on his face.
"Hi, Thomas. Where's Marianne?" she asked, referring to her prep cook who should've been preparing buffet pizzas.
"She called and said her sitter was running late. She'll be here in about fifteen minutes. Where were you? She said she couldn't reach you on your cell phone."
Oh, no. She'd taken it out of her purse to charge it up last night and had forgotten to put it back this morning before she'd left. Too bad Charlie had been off to St. Louis with a doctor's appointment-she would've noticed it and told Marianne not to panic. And she certainly would've told her not to call Thomas.
"I'm sorry, Thomas. I must've forgotten it. I had a bad night," Elisabeth said, glaring at George when she saw him walking from the back of the store.
George just smiled at her.
"So it appears. Elisabeth, we need to talk about something...George, would you mind excusing us for a moment?"
"Not a problem," he replied, still smiling as he walked away.
Elisabeth knew immediately that whatever Thomas wanted to talk about, it had to do with George. Oh no. Please don't be giving me George as an assistant manager. Anything but that! I'll kill him!
"I want you to know that I've received a lot of praise ...
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