Options

Disclaimer: Not mine, unless you don't recognize it.

Summary: Post-revival, Rory faces the options open to her. Warning: Controversial topic matter inside. Because Rory's not a kid anymore.

AN: Whatever one's personal feelings, this is a story about Rory Gilmore's exploration of her options. Do not assume any character reflects my personal thoughts, nor that flaming me is going to alter my intent to kill the fluff and bring up some stuff.

GG GG GG

"Y'know, Gilmore, I can find people who'll take a kid with that pedigree."

Paris Geller's statement jolted Rory out of her ice-cream-induced quasi-coma. "What?"

"Well," drawled Paris, "you've talked a lot about how terrifying this is, and I understand that. When I found out I was pregnant, I wanted Nanny to wake me up and tell me it was a bad dream." She tapped her spoon against the empty ice cream carton. "And eat about twenty of these. With hot sauce on the side. On some fries. The point is," said Paris, shaking herself a little, and leaning back to regard her friend, "talk about the other stuff. Get it out there. Let's hear it."

"Hear what?" mourned Rory. "I'm a failure? I'm single, pregnant, homeless, and my job is running a newspaper that can't be saved? I got all that, thanks, it was in my morning memo when I pulled a full-on Exorcist routine in the toilet!"

"Hormones," said Paris calmly, "make people stupid." She gathered up empty cartons, spoons, and a plastic bag with which to handle the pile of used tissues. "I'm no expert on motherhood. I did pregnancy fine. But with Doyle playing hipster out in California, skinny jeans and all, with a tramp named Boobie…"

"Bambi," corrected Rory, though Boobie was not an entirely inaccurate description of Doyle's ahem-ahem "personal assistant".

"I'm stuck with two kids who love the nanny only a little more than I do, and how the hell am I supposed to bond with them when I didn't know how to bond with my own parents?" She dropped the trash noisily into a receptacle in the Crap Shack kitchen, and tapped her foot. The noise drilled through Rory's eardrums. "And that jerk Doyle deciding he's some James Franco wannabe…" She stopped, her posture indicating that she was reliving nightmares. Rory began to ask if Paris was all right, when Paris sat down at the table and said flatly, "I can get parents for that kid. Your pedigree alone means offers."

Sluggish as she found herself, Rory nonetheless managed to comprehend Paris's words. "Adoption?" she squeaked. "But I'd still have to, y'know, have a baby. Alone. With people pointing and staring and whispering and wondering where's the daddy…"

"Who's the daddy," muttered Paris under her breath.

"What I did to deserve being left alone like this…"

"Huntzberger's a douche," came Paris's commentary.

"How I could turn into my mother…"

Paris merely rolled her eyes.

"Let down my friends, my family, everyone who thought I had what it takes and now it turns out I'm lucky the roof over my desk at my so-called job hasn't caved in," ranted Rory, voice growing shrill, "and I'm supposed to be a mother. A good one! I can't be a good mother! I'm not even a good me yet!"

"Annnd wow, you did all that in ninety seconds. It took me over a hundred," marveled Paris dryly. "OK, let's talk options."

"Adoption option?" sniped Rory, cuddling deep into an old, worn afghan for comfort. It also served to cushion her knees in case of emergency toilet visits.

"That's one option, but let's take them in order. Your first option is, you woman up, tell Logan, he leaves Odell…"

"Odette," corrected Rory wearily.

"Whatever, and you live happy ever after in a mansion."

Rory sat up straighter, swallowing hard. "And option number two?"

"You embrace the suck, tell Logan, he doesn't leave Odette, and you're a single mom."

Rory sank back into the chair, moaning softly to herself.

"Option three, good genes, white kid, sure to be a cutie on Facebook, you adopt it to a loving family with tons of money, you feel some remorse, but your life essentially goes on uninterrupted after you lose the baby weight."

"Oh my God, this is not helping me feel better!" snapped Rory, a hand on her abdomen in case it betrayed her secret to the world.

"And I send you to my girl for the stretch mark work," Paris went on cheerfully, if a stick of dynamite could be termed cheerful. "You're done, you gain wisdom or whatever ya-ya it is, over, out."

Breathing carefully, in case she forgot how, Rory asked, "And the next option?"

Paris shrugged, quick and careless. "Abortion. It's legal, it's medically safe, and I doubt Logan wants a kid with you if he's really going to marry Odette. I mean, c'mon, we knew at Yale he likes to share his genetic material early and often."

"Ew," choked Rory, who suddenly recalled what happened to her breakfast this morning, both early and often.

"So there you go. Have a kid and raise it alone, have a kid and raise it with Huntzberger, have a kid and let someone raise it who wants it, or don't have the kid. You're what, not even six weeks in?" Paris snapped her fingers. "Cinch."

"But…" stammered Rory.

"Does Logan know?"

"No!"

"So who does?"

"You, my mom, Lane, and Luke because Mom can't shut up," replied Rory promptly, stomach roiling dangerously. "Paris, don't make this a thing, it's serious! This is my life!"

"You built this life," said Paris coolly, "don't blame anyone else if the roof leaks."

When Paris had left, Rory flung a pillow at the door. It did not make her feel better.

GG GG GG

Heart racing, Rory studied the material before her. Her laptop screen was occupied by an adoption agency, so discreet that the website had a secure log-in password provided only to a select few, and Paris. By her cup of ginger tea sat a slim booklet called Basics of Pregnancy that had come from Planned Parenthood. The third and fourth objects were photographs, one of herself with Lorelai in her Chilton years, and another of Anna and April shortly before April arrived in Luke's life and he found out he'd had a daughter. The fifth object was a sad, worn You are cordially invited to the wedding of mock-up, dated June 3, 2007. A sixth item was a photograph of the potting shed behind the Independence Inn, and a seventh was a photograph of the pool house behind the Gilmore family mansion. The final item was an extensive printout of statistics by respected research institutes such as Pew, and that was inside a file folder labeled, in neat Rory style, Or this.

A crashing thud brought her out of her study daze.

Expecting her mother, Rory saw Luke Danes, her finally-official stepfather.

His face was white under his stubble. His eyes cut dangerously to hers. "Tell me you're gonna tell him he's got a kid," he growled, and stabbed a finger at the laptop screen. "And don't tell me you're gonna just give this kid up like it's a, a, a…" He gesticulated at the aged dog dozing in a corner. "Paul Anka!"

"Paris said I should look at my options," retorted Rory, "and you dropped the groceries!"

"On the counter," snarled Luke, "they'll live."

Rory pointed. "One's leaking."

Without looking, Luke pushed the paper bag into the sink. His hands curled on the counter's edge, his head shaking. "No. You're not doing this. No cute diversions, no pouting, no pretending this is normal! You're having a kid, Rory, not buying a car, you can't go comparison shopping!"

As he spoke, he lifted her pages of printed out information, shaking them. Rory reddened.

Luke literally staggered a step, though he stood still, when the words registered. "This says…"

"I know what it says!" yelled Rory, shooting to her feet. "It says abortion, Luke. Voluntary termination of pregnancy! Legal, medically safe, and none of your business! It's my life that's ruined! Mine! Not yours! So unless you're gonna raise this kid and pay the bills and change the diapers and oh God…"

She dove for the downstairs bathroom, grabbing the toilet as if it were a dear old friend. At that point, it had begun to seem like one.

"This isn't you," said Luke coldly. "Your mother didn't raise you…"

"To steal yachts, drop out of Yale, write fluffy features, or sleep with more than one man at once, or Wookies!" spat Rory, pushing wisps of hair behind her ears. Her ponytail remained securely pinned into place with a large, garish plastic Pokémon clip. "Or end up like her!"

Luke exhaled, said, "Never compare yourself to your mother."

Rory tilted up her chin in challenge.

"At your age, she had a house, a car, a full-time job, career prospects, and she was a mother on top of working on her degree, helping out at every stupid town festival, and making sure you never felt unloved for one damn minute!" roared Luke, thumping a fist into the door jamb. "Don't you dare compare yourself to Lorelai! You are nothing like your mother! And get that damn picture of Anna and April off that table," he added rather parenthetically. "Because not telling the father is not an option!"

"Yes, it is!" Rory railed, though being on the bathroom floor did not render her at all impressive in her outrage. "So's adopting this kid to someone who has a freaking clue! And so is abortion so I don't have to deal with it at all! Running away is just like my mother! She did it to you!"

The look she received from Luke froze her mid-breath. "But she never, ever ran from you."

He vanished, his leaving punctuated by a slammed door.

When at last Rory felt steady enough to return to the kitchen table and her cold ginger tea, the picture of Anna and April was, in fact, gone.

She screamed at the house, "This isn't your business!" and was met with a reproachful whine from Paul Anka.

"Or yours," added Rory morosely, head in hands. "Oh God, what do I do? I don't want to be Anna, or Mom, or, or, or…" She hiccupped a tiny, last, "me."

GG GG GG

Lorelai stared at her coffee. It was a rare cup of coffee allowed to grow cold in her presence, but that cup felt as icy between her hands as her heart did in her chest.

"Whatever she chooses," said Lorelai quietly, "I'm going to support her choice."

Luke looked around the diner, and yelled, "Everyone out!"

Kirk said, "I'm the only person here."

"Well, then, you're everyone! Out!"

"Good night, Kirk," Lorelai called kindly, and watched as Luke flipped the sign to Closed.

"You heard me tell you she's talking about…"

"I heard you," Lorelai agreed with a heavy sigh, and took her cup to the diner kitchen. She dumped its contents and set it in the sink. When she returned, Luke was energetically smacking chairs upside down onto half-cleaned tables.

"How can you do that? Talk her out of it!"

"She's an adult, Luke."

"Well, then, we kidnap her and lock her up till she sees sense!"

Déjà vu struck hard. Lines of pain in her face, Lorelai shook away memories of a proposal many years before, in that selfsame diner. "I love that you love her so much, Luke, but this isn't our choice. It wasn't up to us to force her to go back to Yale, or get a job, and it's not up to us to decide for her now. I told you then, or I tried to, that she was old enough to need to face reality…"

"You left her to Emily!"

"By getting a job or continuing school, but not just going all…" Lorelai blinked back tears, twisting her head to keep Luke from seeing. "Rootless. It was… Is… Too Christopher."

That hated name elicited a deep growling curse from Luke. "Which is why we have to…"

"No, we don't! I don't like it, Luke, okay, I don't! That's a tiny little maybe-grandbaby of mine, but you have no idea what it's like to be raised by people who don't want you, who think you're in their way! You don't know! And I won't force Rory to have a baby that's going to be that to her!"

Luke flung up his hands. "You don't know that!"

"How much time does Christopher spend with Gigi? He supposedly raised her and he saw her only a little more often than he saw Rory in the last fifteen years!" Lorelai shouted, swiping at tears. "Sherry didn't want that little girl, you have no idea what that did to her! I saw! And I was that kid! I wasn't the kid they wanted, Luke, and that's all that mattered! I'm still not the kid my mom wants! She told me she thought I'd order pizza at my father's wake! Like my dad meant nothing to me!" She pushed him away, in no mood for comfort. "All my life, Luke, it's how I ruined Emily's dreams! Rory's dream is to be rootless, whatever the hell that means, to go explore and find herself, and now she's pregnant, no relationship, not even a chance the father will pay child support, that's the one damn thing she's ever done that was exactly like me! But she's thirty-two, not fifteen! It'll kill me if she gives up the baby! I can't even think the word abortion without wanting…" Her shoulders and chest hitched, and she tried to sit down, but missed the chair. She ended on the floor by a table, curled up in a ball, rocking herself. "But it's not mine, Luke, it's not me who'll leave that kid feeling the way I felt. It's not…" She sobbed once, swallowed, and choked, "A kid who'll feel like Jess did with Liz, Luke. Growing up with a mother who wants no ties, no roots, to find herself…"

"Rory has nothing in common with my sister!"

"No, she has an inheritance from Richard Gilmore that means she can do whatever she wants," whispered Lorelai, her fingernails marking her skin where she grabbed herself in an attempt to stop shaking. "A fat trust fund, no debts, everything people say they want out of life, and she wants to write a freaking memoir, she's thirty-two, what the hell's she done that's worth a memoir? Oh my God, I'm ranting like you!"

She cried into her hands, dimly aware that Luke was groaning around popping knees as he sat by her, and held her, and said something that might have been, "Geez," in a tiny voice.

Long after she had run out of tears, Lorelai risked asking, "Well, aren't you going to say it? Let's raise the baby and make sure…"

"No," said Luke, and he looked a decade older than his true age. "But… At least have her tell that son of a…"

Lorelai coughed meaningfully.

"So they can agree…"

"We don't have to like her choices in order to still love her, Luke," said Lorelai around an immense exhaustion. "My mother didn't understand that. She still doesn't, not really, not deep down. If you love her, you do what she wants. And if you do what she wants, she loves you. Without yelling and name-calling and all the Mommie Dearest stuff."

Luke stroked her tangled curls. "I hate this."

"I know."

"I hate that she's thinking about it."

"I know."

"I hate that you're right."

Lorelai almost smiled. "I know."

"But if it was April… I'd love her no matter what she did. I just… Did they ever think about it? For you?"

"The Haydens did," said Lorelai, not bothering to misinterpret this cryptic reference.

"My dad… He wanted Liz to either give him up or… Y'know."

"Why didn't she?"

"It was her way to keep Jimmy Mariano in her life. God, what a friggin' stupid…"

After some more time passed, Lorelai said, "She may give us a grandkid, y'know."

"Or we might never know them," replied Luke sourly. "The way I almost never knew April."

Lorelai drew him into an embrace. It was easier, at the moment, to give comfort than to find any.

GG GG GG

"Y'know, Ace, I wish you could quit me," was Logan's greeting when he took Rory's call. "What can I do for you?"

The words plummeted, stony and cold, into Rory's heart. I wish you could quit me. Logan meant it one way, but it could be taken many others, and most of those others were tearing through her mind and soul.

Rory blurted, "I'm pregnant, it's yours, now what do we do?"

There was a crash, a shuffle, and a hasty, "I'm fine, overbalanced my chair," and a female voice in the background. She heard Logan call, "Brandy, it's a tough night," and then he was on the telephone again.

"So…" said Rory. "I, uh, caught you at home with Odette. I forgot the time difference."

"Yeah, well, y'know," said Logan, and Rory could picture him, eyes dancing, hair a little rumpled, in a button-down shirt and jeans, near a large-screen TV. Or perhaps, she mused, that was how she wanted to picture him. For all she knew, he was naked and watching internet pornography when she called.

"What now?" she reiterated, pacing the porch of her mother's house in a parka over a bathrobe over her jeans and top, in case she caught cold or fell down and needed cushioning. "That last, um…"

"Auld lang syne, nostalgia, farewell, good-bye, and all that, yeah, I remember, I was there," came Logan's sharp reply. "Look, what do you want me to say?"

The audio became muffled again, yet Rory heard a feminine laugh, a chuckle from Logan, and a distant closing door.

"Okay, so that door's out," she said softly, and sank to the porch stairs.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," said Rory dully, and shivered from an inner chill. "We have options to discuss, Logan. Do you want me to have an abortion?"

"Whoa, slow down, it's kinda hard to think right now."

"Try not drinking brandy, it'll help," snapped Rory icily.

"What are the other options to discuss here? You're pregnant, you say it's mine…"

"It is yours!" shrilled Rory, breathing hard, and with no idea how she had levitated out into the yard amidst the fallen leaves.

"And I'm otherwise engaged. Literally, Ace. We agreed. One last time, and no more. What do you want me to say? Hurray, let's ruin my reputation, my life, Odette's life…"

It lay in the order, concluded Rory, face cold from her tears. His reputation, his life, his fiancée's life. Her life, her reputation, did not make into the top three.

"I can give financial support to you, and I don't have a problem with that, Ace, that's only fair…"

It was more than her own biological father had done.

"But my life is here, not there, and I'm where I want to be, Rory," said Logan more gently. "Things are good. I don't want to sound like a…"

"Too late," spat Rory under her breath.

"…But can't you, I don't know, let your mom and Luke raise the kid? Or something like that? I'm not ready to be a father."

"I'm not ready to be a mother!" cried Rory angrily and stomped a foot Logan could not see, though she dearly wished to plant it into his groin, and follow it up with something healing, like a flamethrower.

"And I'm not willing to lose Odette."

"You were willing to have sex with me and cheat on her."

"Yeah, but Ace, c'mon, you said yourself, it was just fun."

Head spinning, Rory confronted the cost of her words.

"So you… This is your final answer?"

"I'm already a millionaire," joked Logan.

Rory maintained a silence that implied Logan suffering torture by grapefruit spoon.

"Yeah, that was bad timing," admitted Logan at last, "but yes, that's my final word. You've met my parents, what kind of dad am I going to be? Hell, I doubt I'll be much of one in person, let alone four thousand miles away. It's better to just… Cut our losses."

"So it's all up to me," said Rory unsteadily, and exhaled hard enough to hurt her throat.

"There's always adoption, and I can set aside a fund, Odette'll never know, it'll…"

"Take your money," declared Rory bitterly, "and shove it up your gold-plated ass, Huntzberger. If anyone asks, I'll put Chewbacca on the birth certificate."

She glowered at her cell phone. It was impossible to slam down a cell phone, or hang one up in a satisfactorily angry way. Stabbing an "end call" icon gave no visceral release of emotion.

She considered hurling the phone into a tree, then shoved it into her parka, plodding to the house with a thousand scenarios spinning in her mind at once.

She could not bring herself to enter the house.

She sat on the steps again. She was effectively on her own. How had her mother done this as a teen? Without money? Without a supportive parent?

She knew she sounded like a selfish little girl when she whispered, "It's my time. To be rootless. To have adventures. To explore. To…"

To revive the Stars Hollow newspaper? To write an autobiographical ode to Gilmore-ness?

A memory of Lane popped into her head. Be their Lorelai.

Her godsons barely saw her. She did her best, with them, with Paris's kids, but the truth was…

Around a lump in her throat, Rory confessed to the night, "I'm nobody's Lorelai."

How long she stared bleakly at that truth, and at the darkness, she did not know. She did know her mother came and led her to the couch, and covered her with quilts, and tiptoed upstairs to bed with Luke.

Then, sometime in the haze between waking and sleeping, Rory knew what she would do.

GG GG GG

The past is a terrible joy. It convinces us that we had times of perfect happiness, and mistakes we can undo if we simply repeat the dance often enough. It comforts us with the blurring of pain, and deceives us with the sense that unchanging is a continuation, rather than stagnation.

The past holds us, because we hold it. To some extent, this is unavoidable. The past helps to make us. We bear the fingermarks on the clay of our souls.

Beyond that, we have choices.

When we make them, we make our future. The pity is, we do not know what that will be until the choice lies, ironically, in the past.

GG GG GG

AN: Decide yourself what Rory does. No matter where I took it, I was unsatisfied. Rory is, in the revival, very much at loose ends. Leaving this story as a loose end seemed appropriate to me.

The last bit, in italics, was derived from my own journal, as part of therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.