Written on a plane ride, and on-line after considerable effort (not writing-wise. I'm not in my home country at the moment, meaning staggering Internet difficulties).

Disclaimer: "How Poignant It Will Be" was written solely for personal satisfaction, and involves no money. Characters are the creation of Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion), but are heavily based off of their Rex Harrison - Audrey Hepburn interpretations. All dialogue is from My Fair Lady.

Dedicated and written for Mama Elsa (suffering from cancer), who thinks Lady awesome, loverly, and grand

How Poignant It Will Be

Henry had grown accustomed to her face.

For now that she was gone, now that she really wasn't coming back, he felt guilty. Now he wished he weren't so brash and that he had somehow, somehow, managed to make her stay. He did not know why he missed her. He did not know why he thought he should have done more to stop her from leaving. In Henry's opinion, he had always treated her just as fair as he'd treat any man; or at least, as any man who was a little less well-bred than Pickering. And yet Eliza wasn't a man; and Henry had always known, or at least known after . . . well, after the ball, naturally, that this made a difference. He couldn't rationalise why. It had always been easy to deal with Eliza before the ball.

But how lovely she had been at the ball! in that pretty white dress; in the diamonds; how fresh-faced and radiant; how poised. She had been, unquestionably, a princess - and he was still somewhat shocked by how he'd felt (she's beautiful) about it. He'd never had to treat the dirty, swearing Eliza; the Eliza of rainy plains and swallowed marbles, of loud, drawling charm - as anything more than a guttersnipe, or at least, anything more than a friend, who understood his moods and nature and could live around them, but now - with his elegant creation, things had changed. The new Eliza couldn't, by mere virtue of her looks and manner, be treated as a flower-girl. She didn't tolerate it. She demanded respect and acknowledgement. She wasn't frightened of him. She could, in some extraordinary way, take care of herself.

Eliza even thought she'd made herself - although Henry, still smarting from his last conversation with her (the last, he thought again; it still wasn't quite registering in his brain), by her - what was it he'd called her? a tower of strength, he thought - found that claim presumptuous, and arrogant. Of course Eliza hadn't made herself -- Henry had taught her everything she knew. Still, the argument had grown stale, and more than that, he knew she'd come out magnificently. More than he'd even expected, really. Most women Henry dealt with faded after a few moments in his company. Eliza, somehow, had come out stronger: more intractable,and brilliant. Her strength was astounding.

He was almost willing to tell her that, just so she'd come back. Except that he had and she'd been offended.

He still didn't know why she'd thrown his slippers at him.

He hesitated another moment on the stoop (he'd been standing over the doorknob, the key half in the hole, thinking) then turned the lock. Stepping into the hall, Henry felt its emptiness acutely. Gone forever would be Eliza's laugh and whistle; gone forever the sense of satisfaction gleanedfrom watching her progress. She had been right to say there was nothing for her to come back for. She'd gotten her part of the deal. Henry'd gotten his. There really wasn't anything else she could do, living with him and Pickering. Nothing really.

But he was going to miss her.

Pickering was only going to make him feel worse about this. Pickering would groan about missing her and make Henry feel, all the more profoundly, that he could have stopped her, that he could have somehow have brought her back. Henry hoped Pickering would leave for India soon. There was only so much one could talk about Indian dialects.

He shut the door with his head drooped, feeling the weight of Eliza's absence in the unlit hallway. The walls, panelled in dark wood, glowed in filtered sunlight that passed through cracks between the thick, velvet curtains. The Persian carpets were soft under his feet. Their ordinarily bright colours seemed dull. The entire house felt expectant. It was hushed and cool. It was waiting for him to move.

Henry slipped his key into his pocket, and went into the recording room, where Eliza had often sat. Her letter book was still on the flat writingdesk -- they'd practised refining her script along with her speech. On one of Henry's machines lay a gridded paper on which Eliza's speech patterns had been recorded. He picked it up, running a light finger over the penciled contours. Such a simple line -- such a meaningless squiggle -- and yet all of a sudden, just because the paper had been Eliza's, it meant so much. He wondered at himself. Why was he taking her disappearance with such difficulty? If she'd just been a friend, as he claimed she was, he wouldn't have cared -- he would have been pleased to lose her acquaintance, after the row they'd had. And yet . . .

Damn the girl!

He made his way, slowly, to the study, where he'd first recorded Eliza's voice on a phonograph. It was a sign of his utter desperation that he'd sunk this level. He hesitated a moment, considering his reflection in the burnished brass horn (you're done for, Henry, he thought) then in one slow movement, switched the record in it - neatly labelled Eliza One - on .

"Aowh, we are proud," said the record (Eliza). "He ain't above givin lessons, not 'im, I heard 'im say so! Well I ain't come here to ask for any compliment, and if my moneys not good enough I can go elsewhere."

Henry sank into an armchair and held his head in his hands.

"Good enough for what?" Henry heard himself ask.

"Good enough for you. Now you know, don't you. I'm come to have lessons, I am, and to pay for 'em too, make no mistake."

"What is it you want, my girl?" said Pickering, kindly. Eliza said Pickering was the sole reason she'd learned anything from Henry. Henry wished he could say that weren't true. Except that he knew it was, to some degree. At least in Eliza's eyes.

"I- I want to be a lady in a flower shop," Eliza said, "stead of sellin' in the corner o' Tottenham Court Road. They won't take me unless I can talk more genteel. He said he could teach me."

Had he? Henry couldn't remember. He hadn't paid much attention to Eliza then. She'd just been another Cockney from Lisson Grove, with a horrible Lisson Grove accent and a temper as hot as his own. Come to think of it, he'd never really thought of her as a woman until the ball. Not even at the races. At the races she'd just been entertaining, another of his crowd; another chum of his managing to utterly disgust his mother's friends. Women (that despicable, gossiping sex) didn't disgust Mother's friends.

Mother and Eliza got along now. Mother had sided with Eliza, not Henry - her very own son! - when it had come down to it. Henry wished he had interest enough in Mother's allegiances to feel betrayed.

"--ll, 'ere I am, ready to pay, not asking any favour, and he treats me as if I was dirt! I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and I'm ready to pay. So you won't get more than a shillin'. Take it or leave it."

Eliza, Henry implored in his mind, and all of a sudden it felt like the world would explode. There was a sharp pain in his chest and he put his head further down in his hands. Eliza wasn't coming back. She was never coming back. Why, oh why, dammit, had he let her go? Why hadn't he just broken down and acknowledged her as marvellous -- well he had, actually, but somehow not in the right way, and certainly not soon enough.

He was beginning to suspect something terrible about himself, but with the slow, wearied way he was now viewing the world, it wasn't so hard to take. He, Henry Higgins, had somehow - although it made no sense to him at all, and, he supposed, fortunately would never need to - maybe he was just being maudlin - fallen in --

"It's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty. I'll take it. I'll make a duchess out of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe."

He hated himself.

There was the nearly inaudible click of a switch; the uncertain step of a woman's heel on the space between carpets, the sliver of dark wood floor.

A hoarse voice said, "I washed my face and 'ands before I come, I did."

Henry sat up with a jolt.

He was dreaming, he thought, bloody dreaming.

"Eliza?" he said; and his heart was hammering.

A dress was rustled uncomfortably. He could hear her breaths, coming clean and even, and his own ragged ones. He knew it was her. He knew it. He didn't even care why she'd come back. He didn't care that Freddy was still in the picture, that she could have just returned to yell at him, that Pickering would be back soon enough and somehow ruin everything (when had Pickering become a nuisance?); that he, Henry Higgins, was acting like a lovestricken fool -- he didn't care about anything but the fact that she was here at all.

Henry's hat was still on his head. He hesitated another moment, not daring to look back at where she had to be. Somehow his whole head felt light. He tipped the hat over his eyes, until it covered his treacherous smile (Eliza couldn't know how much he'd changed; she might laugh at him, and Henry was far too stubborn and imperious to let her think for a moment that she had something to do with it).

Henry said, "Where the devil are my slippers?"

I realise I could have said a whole lot more, and that Henry isn't the most in character (he's supposed to be a damned nuisance, and loads more boyish and confused), but all of your thoughts are welcome.

All strange spellings are British. (rationalise, favour, realise, etc.)