Next thing I knew, I was in 1800s England, wearing a waistcoat I didn't know how to unbutton, standing in a garden full of roses and unresolved sexual tension.
And there she was.
Elizabeth Bennet.
Now, I never cared about her before. But seeing her in motion, eyes sharp like twin daggers made of wit, voice dipped in sarcasm, and a walk like every step was a rebellion, I got it. I got why Mr. Darcy had a crisis of masculinity just watching her exist.
She saw me watching and raised an eyebrow. "Staring is hardly gentlemanly."
I smiled. "Good thing I'm not one."
Her lips twitched. "Are you a rake or merely American?""Bit of both."We walked. Talked. Teased.
But something was off. I wasn't just part of the scene, I was influencing it. The dialogue changed around me. The music swelled differently. Side characters hesitated, forgot their lines, blinked like confused Sims.
I touched a bush. It glitched.
Not a lot. Just a flicker. But enough.
That's when I knew:
This wasn't a jump. It was a doorway.
I could go anywhere.Any movie, any time. And I didn't need permission.
Elizabeth leaned in closer, brushing her hand along mine.
"Mr…?"
I hesitated.
What was I now?
A traveler? A god? A film parasite?
"Call me… Director."
She smirked. "How dramatic."
I grinned. "You've no idea."
And for the first time, I wasn't part of the script.I was the script.The air between us shifted.
We sat beneath the shade of a willow, the estate behind us a quiet silhouette, her fingers grazing the spine of a book she hadn't turned in ten minutes. My presence had pulled her from her narrative and God, she pulled me from mine.
"Your eyes," she said softly, "carry stories they haven't told yet."
I leaned closer. "Maybe I'm saving them for the right audience."
The wind played with her hair. Her skin, kissed by soft golden light, looked like scrolls ready to be written on if touch were ink.
"You don't belong here," she whispered.
I smiled. "And you do?" That stopped her.
Her breath hitched, just slightly. Her lips separated, unsure whether to laugh or respond. Instead, she reached for my hand.
It was deliberate. Daring.
Her fingers slid over mine, featherlight, curious. She touched me like I might vanish. Like she'd dreamed me, and feared waking.
"I should walk away," she said, but her thumb was tracing lines across my palm like she was learning me by heart.
"Then walk," I murmured.But she didn't.I closed the space.
We didn't kiss. Not at first. Our faces hovered, so close that her breath became mine. It wasn't hunger, not yet. It was something more dangerous: restraint.
Want.
"I don't know who you are," she whispered, brushing her lips against my jaw.
"I don't either."
And then she kissed me.
Not like it was written in a script but like we were rewriting it.
Her hands buried in my coat. My fingers tangled in the laces of her corset, exploring the line between sin and surrender. The garden blurred. The world paused.
The kiss deepened. Hot, searching, unafraid.She tasted like freedom.
My coat fell. Her bodice loosened.
But it wasn't about nakedness, it was about discovery. The way our mouths mapped each other. The way her moan broke like a secret she hadn't meant to spill. The way I almost forgot this was fiction.
I wanted her. Not because she was Elizabeth Bennet. But because, in this moment, she was real.And I was too.
But then,The bush glitched again.The moon flickered like bad lighting.The illusion cracked.She saw it. Felt it.
"Are you… leaving?" she asked, voice laced with something dangerous; feeling.
"I have to," I said, buttoning up emotion like my half-undone shirt. "This isn't forever."
Her eyes didn't plead. They burned.
"Then leave as the man who could've stayed."
I kissed her one last time slow, reverent.
And then I stepped out of the movie.
Back into my apartment.
Back into silence.
But her taste still haunted my lips.
And for the first time… I wondered if immortality was just a curse disguised as choice.