Spoilers: Everything up until 5x01 remains exactly as it was in the series. After 5x01 some material from season 5 will make its way into the story, but mostly the story will diverge greatly from canon.
Summary: Dean unknowingly left Rory a souvenir of their tryst in Miss Patty's dance studio. Now she has to face Lorelai, Yale and her grandparents. Meanwhile Dean finally abandons denial and realises exactly what it is he got himself mixed up in while he was pining away for Rory.
Warnings: I originally wrote this story during one of my more melodramatic moods, so adjust your expectations accordingly. I make no apologies.
Rating: Rated M for some cussing.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Hello all! Some of you might recognize this story, as it was previously posted on my original account, tania15. As a result of technical difficulties with the account in question, I was forced to close it down for good. I am now reposting some of my content onto my new account, TheBlueSwan.
To the readers that have followed WS since 2009, I wish you all to know how very grateful I am for your support and continued interest. You are the ones who have motivated me into reworking WS. You should know that this edition of WS is uncut – any and all content that I had originally wrote for WS has been reintroduced to the story. You will also be pleased to learn that, after electing not to write a sequel for WS, I have expanded the story beyond the scope I had originally planned for it, and settled its dangling storylines. All of those little bits and bobs that I had purposely left unfinished are thus resolved is this new edition of WS.
I realise that this AN has been quite lengthy, and I apologise for that. It simply couldn't be helped.
Thank you, and enjoy. Be sure to review, it will help motivate me to finish reviewing this story as swiftly as possible.
Merry Christmas all!
When it Snows
By TheBlueSwan
The Past Is Prologue
Saturday September 4th 2004, Stars Hollow (The Dragon Fly Inn) 11:19 a.m.
Francis Duchesne bustled about the kitchen. It was nearing lunch time at the Dragonfly Inn and the kitchen aids were presently in the process of applying a few final touches to the day's menu. Upon the stove, a lovely concoction of fresh tomatoes, red onions, carrots and basil simmered away, its aroma permeating the air. Francis couldn't help but sigh at the lovely aromatic smell.
Mother Nature had been out of sorts as of late, the weather being quite a bit cooler than the norm. Although the days were quite comfortable, the nights had recently taken to plummeting to temperatures typically observed in late September and early October. As a result the head chef herself, the lovely Sookie St. James, had decreed that a potage was to be served with lunch throughout the week. Today's potage was a creamy tomato basil soup that would certainly prove quite effective in chasing away that morning chill.
Francis eagerly retrieved a small spoonful of the potage and savored its taste. It was almost perfect – but not quite. It lacked, in Francis' expert opinion, a teaspoon of salt.
With no small amount of enthusiasm, Francis retrieved a container of salt and set about measuring out just the right amount…
His endeavour, however, was quite rudely interrupted by the sudden appearance of a wooden spoon.
Smack!
Francis yelped.
… Damnit that stung!
Defensively, Francis pulled back his injured right hand and hid it within the crook of his left arm. As his mind fully registered the attack, his left hand tightened around the opened salt container.
Anger – and a certain mutinous gleam burned in his eyes.
With harsh uncoordinated jabs, his left arm flayed about, brandishing the salt container threateningly in the general direction of the offending spoon.
With a most gruesome scowl upon his face, Francis' gaze found that pugnacious individual that had dared to attack him, intent on dressing down the offender in question for their audacity. His determination, however, woefully deflated in the face of an irate Sookie St. James. Startled, the misguided youth jerked back the hand brandishing the opened salt container.
It was thus, with no small amount of horror, that Francis watched as his hereto weapon of choice ejected a small shower of salt onto his employer.
Silence reigned within the kitchen.
The present staff had all but been struck mute at the sheer absurdity of the scene before them. Daisy, the assistant chef, was barely able to keep herself from laughing at Francis' latest misstep. Several months ago, when Francis had been hired, Dairy had assumed the man's eagerness in the kitchen could one day prove to give her some amusement. Daisy, however, had thoroughly underestimated Francis' propensity towards the ridiculous – and she now happily found herself excessively diverted throughout the day.
Thus Daisy watched, barely able to contain her laughter, as her employer sternly raised the wooden spoon and directed Francis back to his station – the noble cutting board.
Francis grimaced as he slowly, shamefully made his way back to the loathsome cutting board.
For the remainder of their shift, Daisy couldn't help but be excessively amused at the manner in which Francis sulked about at having his culinary aspirations thwarted once again.
Saturday September 4th 2004, Stars Hollow (The Dragonfly Inn) 11:24 a.m.
Sookie let out a frustrated sigh at this new turn of events.
It was enough to convince her that the town had finally fallen into madness – a rather ironic conclusion if there ever was one. It was, after all, quite a well-known fact that Stars Hollow was by no means a typical small town. Many of its inhabitants were considered eccentrics within their own rights, making the ordinary individual the odd man out in this particular corner of the world. Town foolery was always to be found in Stars Hollow, rendering the absurd quite common in this particular small town. But even Sookie had to concede that some of the town's denizens were acting even barmier than typical – her best friend being one such prime example.
Sookie cringed as she thought of Lorelai's behavior these past months. Stalking the halls of the Dragonfly like an unholy banshee, ruling over the employees with an iron fist and scaring the maids half to death by glaring at them. These were not traits typically associated with Lorelai Gilmore. They were, however, traits that Sookie feared the staff had grown all too accustomed to this past summer. She actively hoped that she was wrong in this instance. However, the red head had noticed that the staff had lately taken up the habit of referring to Lorelai in rather colorful terms. This, unfortunately, seemed to support the conclusion that many of the staff had taken umbrage to Lorelai's abrupt change in management style.
Sookie couldn't help but wince as she thought of the entire situation. She could only hope that Lorelai would remain ignorant to the particular atmosphere brewing in her inn. The current state of things being as they were, heads would likely find themselves rolling away if Lorelai noticed that the staff had begun to refer to her as Medusa.
That would not be good to say the least.
If Sookie could just get Lorelai to open up about what was wrong, she was certain that things would get at least a little better. But every time she asked, Lorelai evaded the subject and insisted that nothing was wrong – that everything was fine – dandy even. If Sookie hadn't been suspicious to begin with, Lorelai's use of the word dandy would have certainly raised quite a few alarms. As it was, the word's sudden appearance in her best friend's vocabulary only served to heighten her concern. Sookie had, over the course of the past few months, been able to conclude that Rory was at the root of the problem in question. However, beyond figuring out that Lorelai's unusual behavior was in some way linked to Rory, and possibly Rory's sudden departure for Europe, Sookie remained ignorant of the details. Whatever it was that had happened, the chef truly hoped that the matter would soon be resolved – if only for the sake of her sanity.
After having been forced to evict a petulant Lorelai from the Dragonfly, under the pretext of forcing the woman to take a day off, Sookie had warned Michel to stand guard at the front. Sookie herself would make sure Lorelai didn't attempt to sneak in through the back. With any luck, a few hours to herself might help put Lorelai in a better mood. It was a long shot to say the least – but it was the only option they had at the moment. Truthfully, Sookie wasn't sure how much longer she and Michel could keep this up. She had noticed the maids seemed evermore disgruntled as the weeks passed, and Sookie began to worry that a mutiny might be imminent if Lorelai didn't snap out of it soon.
To add to her litany of growing problems, it now looked like she would have to keep an eye on the enthusiastic twenty year old manning the cutting board – lest he took it upon himself to ruin her menu.
It was just now nearing mid-day, but Sookie was already exhausted.
Saturday September 4th 2004, Stars Hollow (The Dragonfly Inn – On the Porch) 11:27 a.m.
Lorelai exited The Dragonfly pouting. She did not lord over the maids like her mother did…
Did she?
No! Nu-uh.
Not even remotely possible.
There had to be another explanation. She was nothing like her mother, and she would never be anything like that woman. She refused to be anything like Emily Gilmore. Every fibre of her being rebelled against the very thought of having anything in common with her mother.
Lorelai snorted, shuffled her feet and crossed her arms defensively. She was acting like her mother… As if!
Defensively, Lorelai tightened her grip on her purse, straightened her spine and prepared to march back into the inn and convince Sookie otherwise. However, before she could even take a step towards the front door, Lorelai's demeanor faltered. Her posture slumped as she realised that if she were to go through with her hasty plan – that if she were to march back in to the inn and order her best friend to reconsider her opinion – then indeed she would be acting just as Emily Gilmore would.
The thought alone put a scowl on her face. Forced to reconsider her plan of action, Lorelai floundered. She didn't know what to do next. Should she do as Sookie suggested and just go home? Lorelai groaned – the idea sounded less than appealing. Home these days was too quiet – too lonely. At least if she kept busy, than she could ignore the thoughts and worries crawling around her mind, trying to pry their way to the surface. As she mulled over some more attractive options, Lorelai's gaze wandered around and caught upon the sight of her gardener planting a batch of blue morning glories right next to her red woodland fairy bells.
Those would clash horribly.
Cringing, Lorelai approached the man. Just as she was about to suggest to him that he might want to reconsider the arrangement, Rick Springfield's Jessie's Girl bellowed from her purse. Keeping one eye trained on the gardener ruining her flower beds, Lorelai riffled through the contents of her purse and retrieved her cellphone.
A quick glance at the caller ID and her gardener's horrific taste in floral arrangement slipped her mind altogether.
Lorelai's mouth dropped open in surprise, her breath leaving her altogether. She remained gobsmacked for several moments, her mouth open and closing quite a few times as Springfield repeated the chorus. Finally, Lorelai regained sound and emitted a little squeak as air once more returned to her lungs. Flustered, her gaze jumped around before settling upon the porch swing to her left. She advanced towards it with single minded intent, her movement rough and lacking her typical grace. Unceremoniously, Lorelai plopped down upon the swing. She looked at her daughter's name upon the caller ID once more and released a long shuddering breath.
Composing herself she flipped the cellphone open, answering the call.
"Hello," Lorelai said her voice catching. There was a pause, and the mother couldn't help but wonder if Rory had decided to hang up in the interim.
"It's me," Rory replied hesitantly.
Lorelai grip on the cell tightened, "Oh. Hello."
"Is this a bad time?" Rory asked tentatively, "Are you busy?"
Lorelai bit her lip for a moment, her eyes straying back towards the gardener. They narrowed as she watched him mishandling her flower beds before her attention was brought back to the call by the sound of Rory shuffling on the other end. "Uh," Lorelai cleared her throat, "Trying not to be, how are you doing?"
"Good. You?" Her daughter murmurs.
"Good," she responded, her voice clipped. Lorelai wasn't about to fold just because her daughter had finally deigned to acknowledge her existence once more.
The conversation stalled for a moment. "I was at the corner of Bark and Cheese today," Rory declared, her voice very small and uncertain.
The mother smiled, disarmed by the memory. "Bark and Cheese? Really?" Her frosty demeanor dissipated.
Encouraged, Rory laughed. "And it's exactly the same."
"Exactly the same? Was there a tiny, little Italian dog in a basket barking the whole time you were there?" Lorelai laughed.
"Not this time, but I definitely had flashbacks," the young woman chuckled.
A mischievous glint overtook the mother's features. "Did you have a nice piece of cheese with your coffee?"
Rory pouted at the reminder of her old folly. "I still say I said the correct word for cream in Italian. I even pointed at my coffee when I asked for it. How could I be asking for cheese?"
"But cheese you were brought," Lorelai teased.
"Stinky cheese. The worse, don't forget," Rory scrunched up her nose in distaste.
"That you proceeded to eat," the mother laughed.
"Because I hate people who make mistakes when they order, especially in a foreign country, and then make a big to-do when they get the wrong thing. Ugly Americans. Yuck," Rory bit back, her expression set in a grumpy little pout.
Alight with victory, Lorelai jumped upon Rory's little slip of the tongue. "Aha! You admit it was a mistake. You did say cheese," she gloated.
Rory groaned. "I know French, a bit of Spanish, but my Italian – not so good."
"Being trilingual is plenty for a young lady," Lorelai conceded.
"Yeah," Rory paused. "Mom?"
Lorelai stopped laughing at the sound of Rory's sombre tone, "Yeah?"
"I'm sorry," Rory said her voice fraught with emotion.
The mother sighed. After a long moment Lorelai responded with, "It's okay."
Rory choked for a moment, attempting to hold back a sob. "I screwed up. I screwed up so bad. I handled everything wrong."
"Oh, honey," tears sting Lorelai's eyes.
Rory wipes at the tears falling down her face. "I keep reliving everything over and over. It's such a mess. I just want to fix it. I have to fix it," her daughter said, determined.
"You will," she promised.
Rory sighed. "I know. I just - I need a favour."
"Okay," Lorelai answered immediately.
"It's big," she stalled for a moment.
Cautious, but still determined, Lorelai replied once more with an affirmative, and Rory explained hesitantly. "I wrote a letter... to Dean. Could you get it to him?"
Surprised at the request, Lorelai is less than eloquent in her reply. "Oh."
"I don't know how else to do it. I can't just mail it to his apartment. It's a big favor," the daughter conceded.
Lorelai fumbled momentarily with her reply. "Honey, I don't know."
"It's a lot to ask, but I think that this will make everything better. Please. Please. I can't wait until I get home. I have to do something now," Rory pleaded with her mother.
"A letter, huh? Well, get it to me, and I will get it to him," Lorelai sighed.
"Thank you. Thank you," Rory said relieved.
"Have some espresso and limburger for me," she smiled.
Rory laughed. "I will. I love you, mom."
"I love you, too. Bye," Lorelai smiled.
"Bye," Rory said her voice catching.
Lorelai took in a long breath and hung up. Momentarily her body relaxes into the swing and she felt inordinately lighter than she had all summer.
Things will be better now.
She no longer had to be tense with worry. Rory will be coming home soon, and things will eventually go back to normal. She could relax, no longer needing to keep busy at every second of every day in order to keep her thoughts at bay.
Lorelai smiled…
The sound of the gardener shuffling around in her flowerbeds pricked at her ears…
Unable to help herself, her gaze zeroed in on the gardener...
Lorelai frowned as she realised that the gardener in question was presently preparing to add a selection of white Camelot Lilies to her flowerbeds.
After having spent months always on the move, always working, always having an opinion on the work of others, she had grown into the habit of nitpicking every little thing. Before Lorelai even realised what she was doing, she had already begun attempting to persuade the gardener to reconsider the arrangement. And just as she was about to tell the gardener exactly what she thought of his arrangement, Lorelai was startled by a loud thud.
Looking behind her, Lorelai found Sookie scowling at her through the window, tapping and shooing her away with wild, angry gestures.
Saturday September 4th 2004, Rome 6:11 p.m.
Rory stared at the letter. Her stomach was in knots, and she felt that, given half a chance, it would relieve itself of her breakfast quite happily. She looked at the mailbox, and fidgeted with the letter, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. Rory hadn't yet been able to bring herself to drop the letter in the mail box. She'd been standing there, looking like an idiot for a good ten minutes. To add insult to injury, as Rory fought to ignore the bile rising in her throat, she couldn't help but notice that her behavior had garnered quite a bit of attention.
Rory told herself that she was being stupid. She had to send the letter. Rory knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet, she kept delaying. A part of her felt that as long as she simply held onto the letter, she could disregard her situation, and pretend that things were as she wished them to be.
It was a ridiculous notion.
Nothing was the way she wanted it to be.
After she'd had sex with Dean, Rory had justified the incident to her mother by simply stating that Dean loved her.
He was her Dean.
They loved each other.
Dean's marriage to Lindsay hadn't mattered. In Rory's affected state, it had seemed to be just a trifle little thing. Certainly not something that could ever hope to surpass her feelings for Dean, nor his feelings for her. Alas, the harsh truth remained, and in the cold light of day she could only willfully shut it out for so long. In time, Lorelai Gilmore was proven right, as she so often was. Time and distance had invariably done their work, and the reality of the situation she now found herself in had finally presented itself to Rory.
He wasn't her Dean.
He wasn't her anything.
He was, however, someone else's husband. And no amount of justifications on her part would alter that simple fact. What they had shared that evening, though special in Rory's mind, was not the long awaited romantic reunion of two lovers separated by time and circumstance, as Rory had initially convinced herself. It was not the conclusion of a long period of separation, nor was it the climax of a romantic tale. And it most definitely was not the beginning of her happily ever after.
It was, in the crudest of terms, adultery.
She was not the heroine of the tale as she so often imagined herself to be. She was the monstrous villain who sought to tear everything asunder. She was the other woman, a woman of loose morals who had willingly slept with a married man. Worse, Rory acknowledged, she had then attempted to justify the act to all and sundry. Having sex with Dean was wrong. Allowing herself to express her feelings for him, both physically and vocally, was wrong. It might have felt right at the time – perfect even – but it was the worst of follies. Now, with a clearer mind, Rory could acknowledge to herself that that night should have never happened in the first place – though the admission wounded her terribly.
By sending this letter, Rory would be abandoning the fantasy and surrendering to the reality of the wrong she had committed. She would be admitting her fault to another person, to Dean, if not to the person she had wronged the most, Lindsay. This one letter would ultimately shatter the few remaining shards of the fantasy she had built up for them and dissolve any notion Dean might have of a reprise upon her return home.
This letter was her final goodbye.
Tuesday September 7th 2004, Stars Hollow (Doose's Market) 3:35 p.m.
Dean Forester had never been inspired by the written word. He had never dwelled upon the works of famous philosophers and scholars such as Plato or Simone de Beauvoir. Nor had he ever thrived on academic success. And unlike many of his peers, he did not care much for social status of any kind. Dean had always been comfortable with the life he led, and never once had he begrudged the future it would undoubtedly bring him. He would graduate from High School with mediocre grades and, with fate's blessing, attend a third rate college. Soon after, he would settle down into a dead-end job and live the American dream, earning minimum wage, and spending the rest of his life being overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated.
Dean had never believed he could achieve anything more, nor had he ever dreamed otherwise. That had all changed when his parents had decided to leave the city in favor of small town life. Moving to Stars Hollow had irrevocably changed his life, because it was in Stars Hollow that Dean met Rory Gilmore. She had been the one to convince him not to settle for less than he deserved – that he was worth much more than what most thought of him – that he could accomplish so much more, if he only had the mind to reach for it. Even when their relationship was fraught, Dean never doubted that Rory wanted the best for him.
Her support had made a marked difference in his life. His family loved him, that he knew beyond a single doubt. However, they never pushed him to achieve more in life, nor did they expect him to amount to much more than a working hand, going from job to job as needed in order to feed the family. How could they? When they themselves had never expected anything more out of their own lives, nor had their parents before them, and so on. So, why would Dean want more out of his life than that which generations of their family before him had ever achieved?
Rory, however, had loathed the prospect of him settling for less. Even after they had broken up, and he had married someone else, Rory had continued to encourage him, to believe that he was better than he believed himself to be.
Their friendship had survived so much, and yet, it only took him less than twenty-four hours to completely destroy everything. Dean hadn't heard from Rory in nearly four months now. He'd heard that she had gone away to tour Europe with her grandmother during the summer, but otherwise details appeared to be scarce. The timing of it all was not lost on Dean. She had decided to leave right after their night together, and Rory had failed to mention the trip during their time at Miss. Patty's. He had known then that his relationship with Rory was in the process of falling apart, and was desperate for even the slightest chance of putting things to right, lest everything was burnt to cinders.
Yet any hope he had of putting things back to rights dissolved earlier that morning, when a solemn faced Lorelai Gilmore had entered the market and handed him a letter from Rory.
Dear Dean,
I hope you will forgive me for the abruptness of this letter. I spent a long time contemplating how and what I should write. For some reason I managed to convince myself earlier on that if I could just find the right way to go about it, somehow all of this would be less painful. Stupid, I know, but there you have it. Although this fact might have been obvious to anyone else, it took me weeks to realise that there was no right way to go about any of this, nor was there any conceivable way to make this process anything less than excruciatingly painful.
With that in mind I need you to know that the night we shared together was special. You were my first and only – my first kiss, my first love, my first everything. And I know sometimes it might not have seemed like it, but I never did stop loving you. I think that is part of the reason why I couldn't bring myself to see that we had done something wrong in being together that night. But I can't pretend otherwise anymore Dean.
You're married to someone else.
You were married to someone else when we slept together, and I imagine, that despite what you told me that night, you are still married to someone else. As such, I have decided that the best thing for me to do now is to remove myself from the equation.
Love you always,
Rory Gilmore
Tuesday September 7th 2004, Stars Hollow (Doose's Market) 6:52 p.m.
When Dean returned home that night, he immediately placed the letter in a box hidden underneath the floorboards of his closet. Therein he kept a number of mementos from his time with Rory. Mementos he would occasionally take out and fondly reminisce over when his wife was not home.
The letter, however, was different. Dean didn't want to look at it any longer than he had to. There would be no fond remembrance where that letter was concerned – all it would remind him of was what he had lost.
Tuesday September 7th 2004, Rome 9:47 a.m.
Rory looked about the hotel room one last time, making certain that neither she nor her grandmother had forgotten any of their things. She had checked over the suite twice already, but couldn't seem to fight the compulsion to give the place one last final sweep. Not that it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things. Rory had no doubt that given the posh nature of the hotel in question, the staff would see to it that any forgotten belongings would be promptly returned to their owners via express air mail.
Rory fluttered about, a nervous sort of energy apparent in her demeanor. Today at half past noon they would be boarding a plane bound for New York. Her grandmother had decided that they would spend the night in town before taking a limousine home on Wednesday.
All in all, her grandmother had done her best to extend their trip as far as she conceivably could manage.
Rory tried not to be disheartened by the implications this placed upon the state of her grandparents' marriage. Despite these bad omens, she hoped that the storm would settle soon and her grandparents would reconcile. Recent events had created a need within Rory for the stability of the past. Between the mess she had made with Dean, her feuding grandparents and the recent upset with her own mother, Rory had spent the summer in knots, her stomach nauseously churning on and off. Recently, however, the young woman had begun to fear that her upset stomach may be the result of something more than just stress.
Edited May 15 2017
