A/N- I've been rewatching this scene over and over and over again and it breaks my heart every damn time. Stupid YouTube, giving me access to something so tragic... I know what I said about the TRPA rewrite, but frankly, this took its place on my list of Favorite Things I Ever Wrote. The title is also the alternate title of the song Shattered by O.A.R., which, quite honestly, is such a perfect song for Lit it almost makes me *die* every time I listen to it.

Last Week Fights, This Week Tights

He has it all planned out. He knows exactly what he's going to say.

I love you.
I'm sorry for everything.
I love you.
I want to be with you.
I love you.
I'll find a way to make it work.
I love you.
I'll do whatever it takes.
I love you.
Please come with me. Just for the summer.
I love you.
After that, I'll come back with you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you
I love you...

But the minute he steps into the hallway outside her dorm, there's a six-foot-endless goliath of a man standing opposite Rory. What's he doing here? Jess doesn't know, but it scares the living hell out of him. Earlier he heard Dean say that he was married now. Frankly, though, he's not sure that would stop the Jolly Green Giant if he really wants to start something with Rory. And if they're together again... Jess just might have a breakdown.

"What are you doing here?" Rory asks, feeling stunned, staring at him. Her heart accelerates just looking at him. God, she misses him...

She can't allow herself to feel that. She can't set herself up for heartbreak like that again. It's too late, of course, but if she doesn't put a name to it, she'll be okay.

"I need to talk to you," Jess says. He can hear the desperation in his own voice, but right now he doesn't care. All rational thought has flown out the window; the sight of Dean is making him panic, and she looks so pretty...

"Jess," the monolith grunts threateningly.

He interrupts. "I need to talk to you," he says more forcefully, not bothering to look at Dean. He only has eyes for Rory.

She is transfixed by his voice, by his stare, which is as intense as ever. She can't even find her voice to speak to him. Luckily, Dean finds his words easier (for once). "What's going on?" he demands protectively. Rory is grateful for his sheltering instincts. She can't deal with this now.

"Rory, please," Jess says, and she feels her resistance give way. She can't say no, not when he says her name like that.

"Rory?" Dean asks.

She stumbles over her tongue for a moment, still not quite sure how to form words, before she's able to force out, "Go. Go home."

Dean shakes his head stubbornly. "No." Suddenly she's desperate for him to leave. She can't deal with this as it is, but she really can't deal with her ex with her other ex standing right there!

"Yes, go. You should go," she insists, and wordlessly he obeys. Then she turns to face Jess. "Why won't you leave me alone? You won't go away!" She's not talking about his physical presence. He's barely around. She saw him back in February, and she has seen him today. Beyond that, they haven't had contact since this time last year. So no, she's not referring to his appearance in his dorm. She's talking about his appearance in her head, in her heart. He still lives in her, a tiny little piece of him that won't ever leave her alone. He's synced up with her heartbeat, and she can't get rid of him to move on. It hurts, and seeing him like this just makes it worse.

He sighs. "Rory..."

"What do you want?" she demands.

"I don't know. I just wanted to see you, talk to you. I just..." It's not entirely the truth. He had a reason for coming here, right? It's nearly forgotten in his panic. "Come with me," he blurts out. That's not all, but he's too distracted by her presence to focus. He wants so much to pull her close and crush her soft body against his and kiss her until they're both delirious, but he can't, and it's driving him mad.

She stares at him. "What?"

"Come with me," he repeats, and the rest of the thought is in his head and he thinks momentarily that he ought to clarify. Just for the summer. But this is Rory. She's the only one who ever truly saw him. She would know he will never ask her to leave everything forever. He doesn't deserve to have her all to himself, and it would make her unhappy. She knows he's not asking that... right?

"Where?" she stutters out, not able to process what he's asking. Leave Yale, leave her mother and her friends and Stars Hollow, all to go running off with Jess? She can't possibly! And yet it sounds... strangely appealing. No, not strangely. She knows why it's appealing. But again, she's not admitting that, not even in her head.

Jess shrugs at her question. He hasn't thought that far ahead. "I don't know... away!"

It figures that he hasn't given it an ounce of forethought, she thinks bitterly. That just proves what she feared from the moment she saw him- this visit was spur-of-the-moment, unplanned. He doesn't yearn for her (like she yearns for him). He was just in the area, thought he would drop by and make an insane proposition and throw her off-balance again. "Are you crazy?" she asks.

"Probably," he says, barely preventing himself from saying something cheesy and lame. (Crazy in love with you.) "Do it. Come with me. Don't think about it." He keeps pressing, he doesn't know what else to do. Now he's started, he can't stop. He wants to. He wants to stop and apologize for running out on her as he had originally planned to do, but there's no time now. If he stops pushing forward, it'll throw on the brakes on this conversation, and then it'll be over.

Rory stares at him, feeling like her stomach is falling out from underneath her. "I can't do that," she says, barely getting it out around her pounding heart. Quickly she turns away from him before eye contact makes her lose her head and say something she doesn't want to. Occupying herself with unlocking the door gives her a chance to collect her thoughts, but it doesn't last long when he follows her into her dorm.

"You don't think you can do it but you can. You can do whatever you want!" And dear god, she can. Rory Gilmore, he knows from experience, can do anything. She can turn Jess Mariano inside out, for a start.

He's starting to sound desperate. She doesn't want to hear that edge in his voice. It's time to lie. "It's not what I want!" she says, hoping that volume will make up for the lie.

"It is. I know you," he insists, because the terror is starting to mix with the adrenaline in his veins and he's actually feeling physically sick as she continues to say things that sound like rejection.

"You don't know me!" Rory all but yells, and once again it's a lie. Jess was never very forthcoming in their relationship, but he was so good at reading her, at knowing exactly what was going on inside her head. She hopes to god that he can't tell what she's thinking right now.

Jess advances on her. Proximity is distracting to her, he remembers, and hopes that now it will help. "Look, we'll go to New York. We'll work, we'll live together, we'll be together. It's what I want. It's what you want, too." Dear god he hopes so!

It sounds so appealing that Rory is hard-pressed to continue resisting him. It doesn't help that he's suddenly much closer to her. All she wants is to throw herself on him and kiss him forever, but she can't do that. She can't risk her heart like that again. She's only just stopped crying over him every couple of nights, and she can't go through that again. And it's going to hurt that much more the next time he decides he can't stick around, because she's already got all these mixed-up emotions and they're only going to get stronger if she were to jump into something. "No!" she insists.

"I want to be with you, but not here. Not this place, not Stars Hollow. We've got to start somewhere new," he says. That's not true, though. He'll go anywhere, he'll live anywhere, to be with her. He would even swallow his pride and ask Luke for a job in the diner again if she asked him to. But he can't show her all his cards. Despite his desperation, he can't bring himself to open up the last of himself for her inspection. This isn't going as well as he'd hoped, not by a long shot, and her continued attempts to turn him away are chipping at his resolve. God damn Dean Forrester... why was he here in the first place?!

Rory shakes her head. "There's nothing to start!" she says, and it's true. There's nothing to start because she's in the middle already. She's in too deep for this boy and she knows it, but she'll deny it to the ends of the earth if anyone asks.

Jess has been on the edge of full-out panic during this entire confrontation, but those words push him past it. "You're packed! Your stuff is all in boxes! It's perfect. You're ready," he says, the desperation that's been bubbling beneath the surface finally breaking through in his voice as he speaks louder and faster, so terrified because her rejection is going to kill him. "And I'm ready. I'm ready for this. You can count on me now. I know you couldn't count on me before, but you can now. You can!"

It's the honest-to-god truth. His life isn't perfect. His apartment sucks. But he's getting there. He's going to make it and he knows it. He's not perfect either, and he never will be. He's always going to be rough around the edges. But when he's with her... he feels whole.

But she says, "No!" and it's too much for him to take.

"Look, you know we're supposed to be together. I knew it the first time I saw you two years ago, and you know it, too. I know you do." Jess doesn't believe those words anymore. He did when he walked in the door, but he suddenly doubts that she does know it. It's as if she has no idea how much he loves her! But he says this anyway. He has to.

Rory shakes her head, turning away from him to avoid his gaze. "No, no, no, no, no!" she gasps out, shaking her head more forcefully with each word of rejection. She can't hear these things coming from him. She can't hear these words that make her knees go weak, and she can't see the desperation in his eyes, because if she does, she'll start to believe that he really meant... that thing he said to her. And if she starts to believe that, she'll throw herself willingly into his arms and he won't be around to catch her.

"Don't say no just to make me stop talking or make me go away!" Jess insists. "Only say no if you really don't want to be with me."

"No!" The word slips out before she can stop it.

And Jess shuts down. She can actually see it happening, like a brick wall descending behind his eyes. She was looking right at him as she said it, and now she gets a front-row seat to Jess Mariano breaking. He looks... she can't even describe it. He looks desperate and heartbroken and sick.

Seeing this look on his face is enough to make her own heart break all over again, and she is on the verge of saying something- anything- to make him look like there's still something alive in him. The words get stuck, though. She doesn't know what to say. And so, just like the last time they spoke to each other, she remains silent as he walks away from her.

Once he disappears, however, the stupefying effect of his presence lifts, and Rory nearly falls apart herself. She wants nothing more than to sink down on the boxes that contain her meager belongings and have a good cry. The memory of the dead expression in his eyes, however, is haunting her, and she knows she can't let him leave looking like that. Jess always drives recklessly when he's upset...

Panic sets in as that thought trails to its logical conclusion, and without wasting another second Rory sprints for the door.

She catches up with him halfway to his car. "Jess!" she exclaims breathlessly. He turns around, and she sees to her amazement that he has tears on his cheeks.

In a rare moment of honesty, Jess once told her that he hated seeing her cry. And in that instant, Rory discovers that she can't stand to see him cry, either. It's as though someone has punched her in the gut. The only thing she can think to do is to launch herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder.

He's too surprised to react at first, but Jess recovers his wits enough to envelope her in his arms. He doesn't know what this means, but for just a second he stops thinking, instead storing up memories for when she disappears from his arms. Suddenly he hears her whispering into his shoulder. "Please, Jess, please don't leave me again," she says, barely audible. "Please stay with me. I can't take it. Please don't leave."

Jess strokes her hair and holds her close and tries to process the words she's saying. He doesn't have much luck. Finally she stops clinging so tightly to him (though she still keeps her arms firmly around his neck) and leans back just enough to see his face. He looks down at her and only then realizes that he's been crying since he walked out of her room. "Shit," he mumbles, mortified, and tries to wipe away the moisture on his face.

Rory does it for him. Without removing her left arm from its position around his neck, she reaches up and brushes away a few stray tears with the fingertips on her right hand. "I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I'm just... confused. I panicked."

"Makes two of us," he replies.

"I can't go with you," she tells him.

"I know." And he does. That's the really sick thing. He knows she will not- cannot- do what he was asking of her. But he had to try.

She buries her face in his shoulder again. "You're so mercurial," she says honestly. "I'm afraid that if I say yes to you, you'll change your mind. I can't survive that, Jess. You've messed with my heart too much already, Jess. I can't take anymore. I just... I don't know what I want."

"I do, though," he says. "I want you."

Rory's heart pounds even harder at the sincerity in his voice. She musters up the courage to meet his eyes again. "After I saw you last time... you kind of left in a hurry," she said.

"Sorry," he says.

"You didn't get to hear what I had to say."

He feels his pulse speed up, wondering where she's going with this. He knows what he wants her to say, but the odds of that are ridiculously low. "Yeah?" he asks as casually as he can with her arms still around him.

"I love you, too," she tells him quietly.

It's too much. He kisses her, the only way he has to explain how she's made him feel. All rationality goes out the window as their lips meet again and again, desperately, passionately, achingly. He hasn't kissed her in far too long, and dear god he missed this! When he's finally had enough to satisfy him (for the time being- he doesn't think he'll ever really get enough of her), he pulls back, still holding her close. "I love you," he responds quietly. "You know I do."

She didn't. Not until just now. She didn't want to believe it, maybe, because it would have validated her own feelings- feelings she didn't want to be having (again, until just now). But his kisses have left her breathless and overwhelmed, and all she can do is nod. Once she's found her voice, she asks, "What now?"

Jess shakes his head. "I'm not sure."

"Me either."

They just stand like that for awhile, her head resting against his chest, his cheek resting in her hair, their arms around each other. Eventually, Rory feels she has to say something. "I want you to move back," she tells him. When she feels his body tense, she shakes her head. "I'm not saying you have to move back to Stars Hollow or anything, but... closer than New York would be good. You could come down to New Haven, or Hartford or something. I just need you near me."

"That's mutual," he replies with a chuckle. After a contemplative silence, he says, "I haven't got much in New York, but it's mine."

"And it would be just as much yours if you found a place in Woodbridge or somewhere. Please, Jess?"

The pleading tone works exactly as she probably planned. The things he does for this girl... "I'll see if I can find a place- and a job. No promises, but I'll try."

She gives a delighted squeal and hugs him even tighter. As she does so, she realizes that they haven't let go of each other since she chased him down. And then she realizes something else, something that really shouldn't be shocking at this point, but which is nonetheless- she doesn't ever want to let go. Not ever.

"It's been a really long year," she says.

"Believe me, I know," he says, kissing the top of her head.

A/N2- Of all the Rewritten Scenes, I think this one most deserves a sequel. The Paul Anka one stands pretty well on its own, as does the Raincoats and Recipes one. This one and the Keg! Max! ones... not so much. They don't feel quite complete.