Title: Shining Red and White

Fandom: Gilmore Girls

Rating: PG

Genre: Angst/tragedy

Pairing: None.

Disclaimer: I own neither Gilmore Girls nor David Gray's beautiful lyrics to Shine

Summary: Rory has no way to deal with her mother's death.

They sat next to each other, walls of white enclosing them, each reeling from their thoughts and their regrets. Her eyes were the kind of dry no one ever wants them to be, her face the weakened colour of paint. He didn't touch her, try to comfort or reassure her, and she appreciated it. What was happening was so alien that neither fully comprehended it. There was only the sound of impenetrable passing time.

Comfort had passed. Somebody was clenching her heart in his fist, defying her to think about what had gone wrong. The ache roared in her all day and thundered through the night. It was all she could do to suffer it silently.

Words were drained of intrigue, music lost its appeal, the world revolved on a deadened axis. Laughter was a foreign sound. It was only that one colour that drew her reaction. The truest, deepest red of fairy-tales. She was disgusted every time she found herself musing on how beautiful it was, pooling against the stark white, staining the paint with life. She cursed the way its serpentine evil commanded her thoughts. When she dreamed, it oozed from every crevice and formed pools of glistening red wherever it fell. Its unwavering redness haunted her every step, her every memory.

People surrounded her who told her it was normal and she barely heard them. People told her how sorry they were and she hardly turned her head. Only one voice told her how it hurt like utter hell. How feeling numb is something so much worse than pain. It was the same voice that told her she was missed beyond belief.

She found herself listening to one song, over and over. She never played it consciously, but she closed her eyes every time and traced the case with her fingers. Around and around. On and on. His lilting voice never settled. She couldn't even recall the words he sang. It was enough that he was unconnected yet familiar.

It was a long time after when she finally heard them. …Don't be hiding in sorrow… Months had passed, though she had no grasp of time. …or clinging to the past…She was staring out the window at falling snow. …with your beauty so precious… The same, pure white she had seen drenched with red for so long …and the season so fast… was suddenly white, only white. …no matter how cold the horizon appear… White without a hint of the darkest red she dreaded, …or how far the first night when I held you near… white that was not the abrasive stark white of the bathroom floor, …you gotta rise from these ashes… but the gentle, playful white of falling snow …like a bird of flame… Twirling snow, eddied by the currents of the breeze, …step out of the shadow… snow so careless, so simple, so natural …we're gonna go, where, we, can, shine… so alive.

It was then that she let herself cry.

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A/N I wrote this tiny story to see what would happen. It began with a description of blood that I was working on and grew to this. It's a rather personal story for me and I would really appreciate any feedback you could offer me.