Title: Ghost's of Boyfriends Past
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Not going to go much beyond the title on this one. Read it and see. Rory has some late night visitors.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show, cause if I did Rory would be back at Yale by now. I also did not write the theme to Ghostbusters, no matter how catchy it is. Some dialogue is taken directly from the show.
A/N: Yes, I should be updating What Lies Within Us, but I got this idea last night and it wouldn't let go of me. I had to write it, my muse was insistent- I stayed up WAY to late finishing it. Let me know what you think, I saw this idea so clearly before I wrote it, and I at least thought it was such a good idea.
And no, no matter how many fics he's in, Tristan was not a boyfriend.
Rory lay twisting and turning in bed, but still sleep eluded her. It had been like this most nights since she had moved into the pool house, but somehow tonight was worse. It wasn't that the bed wasn't comfortable, this was Emily Gilmore's pool house after all, and she had slept on much worse. Yale beds in the frosh dorms weren't exactly designed for comfort.
Yale. At the very thought of it, she punched her pillow in frustration and lay on her other side. Tomorrow everyone would be heading back to classes, everyone but her. It was her choice, what she thought was in her best interests, but at the same time it left a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. While even the likes of Finn were reading Dostoevsky, she was picking up garbage by the side of the road.
But she was doing the right thing, she was. She needed to re-evaluate, figure out where she wanted her life to go. This wasn't giving up, this was just a break. Students did it all the time, it wasn't just her. She would go back. She would.
Frustrated by her lack of sleep she clenched the sheets, trying desperately to count sheep, to do anything that would let her slip into blissful unconsciousness. With the window open she could feel a light breeze on her skin, and it soothed her. Desperately, she tried to slow her breathing and slide out. After all, she couldn't do without her sleep; she had to be up bright and early to go work alongside the delinquents of society.
It seemed hours later that she awoke with a start, but the moon was still full in the night sky and dawn had yet to break. She yawned bitterly, unsure of what had interrupted her slumber. She half expected a bird to have flown in; it had happened once before when she had left the window open. But it wasn't that, it was something even more shocking.
Dean stood at the foot of her bed.
She almost screamed, clenching the blankets to her chest. There was still the hint of summer, and her nightwear was skimpy by her standards. She could think of no possible good or explainable reason for his presence, but knew that if she screamed they likely wouldn't hear her in the main house.
"Dean," her voice wasn't quite steady as she stared at him wide-eyed. "What the hell are you doing?" He hadn't said a word yet, was just staring at the foot of her bed staring intently at her. He was terrifying her beyond all belief, having snuck in there.
But even as he didn't reply, she found herself looking a little closer at him, and started at what she saw. He was an ethereal figure, she could see through him to the bookcases behind him. Slowly, she raised her eyes to his, and 'Dean' gave a little half smile.
"Ghost," was all he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. It looked like Dean, it sounded like Dean, the hair flopped like Dean, but there was still the little matter of her still being able to see through him.
Rory was again tempted to scream.
"Don't you have to be dead to be a ghost?" she asked in a trembling voice, not sure what the proper response was.
Dean just smiled at that one and rested his hands in his pockets. "Let's just call tonight a little exception." He only seemed amused when Rory picked up a pillow and through it at him, and it went soaring right through. "Proof enough for you?"
"I'm dreaming. I'm going nuts. I'm dreaming. I'm going nuts," Rory repeated the words over and over again, not able to believe what she saw. She wanted to believe it was the first explanation, but it was so vivid, so real, just like being awake. She could feel the bed beneath her, and breeze blowing, and could hear the tick of the clock on the wall. This felt like no dream she had ever had before.
"You're not crazy," Dean began, then looked at her a little more sternly. "At least not regarding this."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rory was indignant despite concluding that this was some elaborate hallucination, brought on by the stress of the past couple weeks.
"School Rory, your dreams. You're crazy to give them up." Dean's words were gentle, but firm.
"I'm not quitting school for good," Rory snapped, "I just need to re-evaluate. I don't want to waste time screwing around at school until I get a plan down. I'll go back, this is something kids do all the time." It was at that point she realized she was justifying herself to a figment of her imagination, and clenched her lips shut.
Hallucination Dean raised his eyebrows at her last statement. "You really believe that?"
"Yes," Rory replied firmly, before she remembered her vow to pretend nothing was happening.
He shook his head at that. Up until this point he hadn't moved, just stood at the foot of the bed. But now he held out his hand to her. "Come," he commanded, waving his left hand, in a tone that seemed to leave no room for refusal.
"Huh?" she was confused at the command. In the back of her mind all that kept repeating over and over again was the theme to GhostBusters. If you're seeing things, running through your head. Who can you call? GHOSTBUSTERS! If there's something strange, in your neighbourhood, who you gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!...
"Come on, we're going on a little trip," Dean's voice was starting to get a little annoyed.
Rory stared at his hand for a moment, and decided that playing into the delusion for a little while was easier than fighting it. She was crazy anyway, she might as well see how this played out. Hesitantly, she reached out her hand towards his outstretched one, and even before they made contact she could feel her reality shifting.
It wasn't like physical travel, more like transporting in Star Trek. She could almost feel herself falling, and when she put out her hand to steady herself, she hit something solid. As she steadied herself, she noticed what it was. The desk in her first dorm room at Yale. Looking up, the room came to focus around her. Hallucination Dean was standing beside her, his face unreadable, and when she tried to ask him a question he simply put a finger to his lips and motioned to the scene in front of her.
It was her. At least her the way she looked a couple years ago. Dean was there too. Real Dean, not hallucination Dean. It took her a moment to place the scene, but when she noticed the bookcase he was holding, it all clicked into place, but she couldn't remember what made this day so significant.
Past Rory was saying something, and she stopped trying to remember in order to watch the scene fold out in front of her. "So, are you on your way back to school?" She had directed the question towards Dean who still stood their, hefting up the bookcase.
"Oh, no, I'm just off from work. I'm actually gonna take a little break from that." Past Dean was replying, looking out of place in his construction gear.
"From what, school?" Even now she could hear how incredulous her tone had been.
"Yeah, just for a semester or two, you know."
"A semester or two? But I thought it was going so well."
"It was. It's just that Lindsay and I really need some extra money right now, and this job with Tom has been perfect."
"Extra money for what?" It was a stupid question, that was a given. As much as her and her mother had scrimped and saved in the early years, she had never been responsible for herself, having financial obligations with no backup.
Even Past Dean couldn't understand how she could be so dense, "What do you mean? For life, things. "
"What kind of things?" Past Rory was starting to get indignant, when it was not her right.
"Well, um, Lindsay's got her heart set on having a townhouse by the end of the year, and we're kind of cramped where we are, so I think it's a good idea."
"You do?" There was a slight emphasis on the first word, as she believed it was all Lindsay's doing and he played no part.
"Yeah." Past Dean replied, but he didn't sound convinced
"I don't." And that's when Rory had officially started putting her nose in where it didn't belong.
"What?"
"I think it's a horrible idea."
Rory of the present could hear the absolute condemnation in her voice at that point. It was then that she truly remembered how this conversation had gone. She glared up at the Dean of her hallucination, angry that he would take her back to this scene in her past. Circumstances that were so much different then hers. But Dean wasn't paying attention to her, he was watching the figures in front of them.
"It's just temporary." Dean tried to justify his actions to her
Rory's tone was belligerent when she replied, "Maybe."
"Rory….." Dean's tone was cajoling, trying to get her to drop it and mind her own business.
But Rory had continued on, "A lot of people who drop out say that it's just temporary. It usually doesn't work out that way."
"I'm gonna go back!" But his tone was less convinced now.
"I hope so." Rory's tone was deprecating.
"Have some faith, will you?" His tone was starting to get irritated.
"I just think this is a mistake."
"Rory, I'm married, remember? I have responsibilities."
"You'll lose your momentum." Rory cringed at the words, words that were being said to her now.
"I need the money." At least he had a concrete reason.
"Can't the townhouse wait?" She had been determined to pin the whole thing on Lindsay, daring to criticize the wife whose husband she would steal away.
"Jeez, lighten up." He had said that, as if it wasn't just his whole life they were talking about.
"I just think this is a really bad idea." She was so stubborn in her disapproval.
"Graduating from college doesn't guarantee you a job anymore. It's not like it was with our parents."
"So you're not going back?" she had felt so self righteous then.
Watching from an observer's perspective now, she could see exactly how much Dean had looked like he wanted to strangle her. "You're twisting my words."
"And you're just gonna work in construction?" That hadn't come out the way she had meant it.
"What, are you gonna get all elitist on me now?" This, about the girl who was now picking up trash on the side of the road. As community service.
The whole scene went on mute from there. Rory only watched as Dean left in anger, taking the bookcase with him. "Remember that?" hallucination Dean finally broke his silence as he watched himself leave.
"Yes," she snapped.
He raised his eyebrows at the testy sound of her voice, but didn't comment. "Do you know why I brought you here, to this exact moment?"
She may have a criminal record, but she had gotten into every Ivy League school she had applied to. She wasn't dense. "It's not the same thing at all for me," she still tried to justify her decision to stop school. "In case you're too stupid to realize it, not all my self-righteous anger was because of your decision. I was jealous of Lindsay, and the hold she had in your life." She was talking to the ghost like he was the real entity.
"And you didn't mean all of it?" Dean asked, as if he seemed to realize that deep down she knew that she had meant every word; the losing momentum, the likelihood of not going back.
"Yes…..no…….y……" fed up with her floundering, she decided he didn't deserve an answer and settled on the time treasured Gilmore method of responding to a question they didn't like. "Shut up."
Dean smiled, reminiscent of the dopey grins he used to give her, but this one was filled with a deeper understanding of her that the real Dean had never had. A deeper understanding than Rory had of herself. It was disconcerting for Rory, and she turned away from Dean, unable to look him in the eyes, fictitious boy of her dream world or not. After a few moments of silence, she looked up, only to find the spot before her vacated.
Startled, Rory shot up in bed. She felt the freshly laundered sheets beneath her hands, saw the clock on the wall, and knew she was safely back in her grandparents pool house; as if she had never really left. But she glanced around her, accustoming herself to the familiar sites. She shook her head deprecatingly. It had only been a dream. A realistic one, but just a dream.
She threw back the sheets, knowing that she would never get back to sleep, not now. She had barely conked out the first time. What had happened to the days when she used to be able to sleep for hours? She could fall asleep at a moments notice, dead to the world. Saturdays she'd sleep straight on through until she and her mother would finally drag themselves from bed and make themselves half presentable to go to Luke's, the giver of coffee.
Her mother and her.
She refused to think about Lorelai. It didn't help matters. So what if every day she missed her mother, wanted to pick up the phone and share the most mundane thing with her? Come on, who else would care about the Dawson's Creek marathon that she had watched on television; her mother had taken no mercy on James Van Der Beek's massive forehead the entire run of the show. But she wasn't going to pick up the phone, she wasn't going to call. She didn't want to be berated by her mother for her life choices. Her life, a fact her mother didn't seem to remember. Maybe it was her own fault for not having some independence rebellion earlier in life; maybe that was what made this so hard.
Unbidden, the thought came that maybe her biggest fear was that her mother was right. She was making the wrong decision. A massively wrong decision.
More worked up than she had been before, she walked over to the sink to get a glass of water. As she let the water run cold, she stared out the window in front of her onto her grandparent's lawn. As much as she had believed it was a stupid dream, her thoughts strayed to her midnight visitor. She wanted to dismiss everything, but the dream had planted a seed in her mind that refused to go away.
Startled, she looked down at the sink where the water was running; she had forgotten even what she was doing. Sighing, she shut off the facet and let her hand idle there for a moment, lost in her own mind for a moment.
"Penny for your thoughts?" she heard the voice behind her, and whirled around in shock.
Somehow she should have been more than surprised than she was to see Jess sitting at the kitchen table, lounging comfortably in one of the chairs, but that didn't stop her from gasping.
He raised his hands in mock surrender, "As hard as most would find it to believe about me, I didn't break in." He reached for an apple that sat on the table, and she watched his hand pass straight through. As he shrugged, he quoted, "O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pound."
She knew that if she wanted to keep her sanity, she had to believe that she was still fast asleep in bed and this was just a continuation of her same dream. It seemed easier to play along than fight it, knowing nothing would awaken her until she was ready. As it was she raised her eyebrows at his quotation. "Hamlet, Jess? I didn't think anything Shakespeare darkened your bookshelf. And I hate to break it to you, but in this case the ghost's word isn't work shit, let alone a thousand pounds."
"Touchy," he replied, in the same tone he always used. She had to keep reminding herself that this wasn't really Jess, despite what the half smirk across his face seemed to suggest. "Do I detect a note of displeasure at my presence?"
"I think ghost Jess is more perceptive than the real life thing," Rory's tone was sarcastic, and Jess gave a gruff laugh.
"As much as I'd like to rehash the issue that is us," he began, "I'm really in California right now, so I don't think the conversation would actually solve anything."
"Feel free to leave," Rory's tone was falsely cheerful as she leaned back against the sink, refusing to take the seat across from him.
"It doesn't work that way Rory," he chided her, unsuccessfully reaching again for the apple on the table. "You're a bright girl, at least you were. This evening reminding you of something familiar?"
She shot him a dirty look, "The resemblance to 'A Christmas Carol' is weak at best. The only similarity is calling yourself 'ghosts'. And, I hate to break it to you Jess, but you'd be a ghost of 'boyfriend past' too, just like Dean. And I mean, what's going to come after you, him all over again?"
He ignored her sarcasm, staring directly at her, "Let's get back to one of the main similarities, getting the protagonist to see the error of their ways. We don't need Tiny Tim hobbling around on a crutch to do that, we have plenty of other characters to act pathetic."
"You're the ghost Jess, not a 'character'," she couldn't stop her hostility, even though she knew this wasn't the real Jess setting before her. "And besides, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not Ebenezer Scrooge."
He shrugged, "A moot point. You're just as stubborn, and just as ignorant as he was." She opened her mouth in indignation, but before she could say anything he continued. "Save it Rory, you know what I'm talking about."
He seemed to be looking at her expectantly then, so she replied, "Oh, I get to speak? I was just waiting for you to whisk me off to some long ago conversation we had about college in the past so I can have something I said then thrown in my face."
"Not my style, I think Dean did that well enough," he replied, looking at her smugly, "Probably the first thing I'd think the guy did okay, but then again, he's not the real Dean is he?"
She said nothing in reply, just stubbornly waited for him to continue, so he sighed, "Ah yes, 'difficult Rory'. I forgot how fun that can be. Don't worry, I'll take you on a little field trip too, but let's talk a little first."
"Something you excel at," her tone was sugary sweet in it's sarcasm.
He tsked, "Rory, you forget, ghost Jess. In case you noticed, I already went past the monosyllabic." He leaned forward on his hands, "What the hell is going on Rory?"
"That's a fairly open ended question, but I'd day that 'I'm going crazy' seems to be a good answer," she replied.
He shook his head, "Not what I meant, and you know it. Your life Rory, what the hell? Should I list off all the things that would shock me if I actually came back? You're not speaking to your mother, a woman who I would have sworn you were still attached to by an umbilical cord. You're a college dropout. You're dating somebody your grandparents like, who you had sex with without actually dating. You have a criminal record. You collect trash by the side of the road. And, let's not forget this one, you work in a secretarial role for the DAR." He shuddered at that last comment. "You had potential, even I could see that. Stars Hollow saw it. Headmaster Charlston saw it. Yale, Harvard and the other saw it. So Logan's dad didn't see it, who gives a crap? He's one man Rory. One rich, but inherently flawed, man."
"Shut up," somehow she knew that was going to be her mantra of the evening. But where could she begin to explain? "I'm making the right choice here."
"Yeah, dropping out of college after two years is always the best choice," his tone was sarcastic, "And stealing a yacht, brilliant Rory, just brilliant. I never thought this when we were together, but right now I might actually have one up on you."
"So, get your GED yet?" she asked, not knowing what to do but try to shift the focus onto his shortcomings.
Jess wagged his finger at her. "Nuh uh uh, Rory. This night is about you, remember? But before you start getting your panties all in a twist, as moronic a decision as I think it is, I'm not here to bitch you out about Yale. Besides, I think you're upset with yourself already. But no, that's not my focus of the evening." He paused. "So, that little field trip I mentioned……"
He stood up from the table and held out his hand to her. She just stood there for a moment, not moving, but as she looked at him she sighed and placed her hand in his. She never even felt the touch of his skin before she was falling again, and this time when she reached out to steady herself it was on her old bookcase. She was in her old room at home. But not like it had ever looked before.
She looked in surprise over at Jess, "Future?" she asked, looking at the bareness of the room.
Even as he shook his head she saw her mother walk into the room. She turned entirely away from Jess at that point, intent only on Lorelai.
The room around her was devoid of all that had been Rory. Sure the furniture was the same, but the essence of her was gone. It felt weird to be there in the room that had been hers alone for so long, without any reminder that it was her who had lived there. Her, Rory Gilmore.
She watched as her mother stood there a moment, sipping from the water bottle she carried with her. But the beverage was only a prop. She had been attuned with the woman for far too long not to see the misery that was in her eyes, the defeated slump of her shoulders. She watched as Lorelai sat on the edge of the bed, on the quilt that she had made for Rory when she was twelve and looked around.
She was startled when Lorelai chucked the bottle of water straight at where she was standing, and it went right through her, splattering on the wall behind her, the liquid pooling on the floor.
As the tears welled in her mother's eyes, Rory wanted nothing more than to go and comfort her, hug her like Lorelai had done for her every time Rory was sick or upset. But she could do nothing but stand there and watch. After all she wasn't really there, she wasn't even really in her mother's life. And as she heard Luke's voice call out from the front door, it barely intruded on her reality as she was too focused on the woman in front of her. The woman who had been her mother, and closest friend, forever. And she watched as Lorelai gathered herself, tried to hide the evidence of her emotions as she went to celebrate with Luke an occasion that should have been the happiest moment of her life, except that her daughter, her best friend, wasn't there to share it with her.
It was at that point that she fully understood Lorelai's comment about how it had hurt not to share the engagement news her. As Lorelai left the room, Rory noticed finally that she had started to cry as well.
Up until this point she had forgotten Jess's very existence behind her, but now he finally said, "Still think keeping away from her is the right choice?"
Rory sniffled, "You think I like having no contact with her? But what's the point, she can't live with my choices."
"I know the two of you are stronger than that," he told her softly. "I've seen it in action. She didn't like your choice of me, but you coped. I mean, the woman hated my guts, hated me with you, but you never turned away from one another."
"This is different," Rory replied, staring at the seat where her mother had sat.
"It shouldn't be," was all Jess replied, going to sit himself on the bed.
Rory hesitated for a moment, and then went to join him. "She hated you, you hated her, and your task is to try and mend the relationship I have with my mother?" she asked after they had been sitting there for a minute.
"Dramatic irony," he answered with a smile.
And then he was fading in front of her, and she knew that it was over, that he had imparted whatever message he had been sent there to give her. And, again, she was sitting up in bed, as if just having awakened from a dream.
But Logan was lying beside her, and she assumed he must have come in while she was asleep, dreaming of her two past boyfriends. She had assumed that wouldn't be the end, that there would be symmetry to her dream like there was to all stories written, but she supposed there were no more past boyfriends to come. But, when she leaned over to gently shake Logan awake, she was shocked to see her hand pass right through him to the bed.
That seemed to be his cue to open his eyes, "Hey Ace," he smiled, stretching. He had stopped using that nickname since her dropping out of Yale, knowing how it would hurt her. "Meet the ghost of Christmas future."
Rory found that talking to ghosts was now the norm for her, "First off, you're the 'present' idiot."
"Ah," Logan sounded as if he were about to impart some sage wisdom, "No."
She raised her eyebrows at that, "No? Did we somehow break up in my sleep, cause I missed that part."
"I get the pleasure of showing you our future," his face looked pained at the very idea.
"I didn't realize us being together was such a trial for you," she tried to smack him with her pillow, forgetting he was corporeal.
He rolled his eyes, "Just wait and see." And he held out his hand.
"What?" she asked, resisting for a moment. "No preamble? No rant about my stupidity in dropping out? No explanations or insults?"
All he did in reply was impatiently hold out his hand, and hesitantly she took it, already expecting the familiar sensation of falling. But this time when she reached out her hand to steady herself it was in a room she hadn't seen before. It was a large ballroom, reminiscent of the grandeur that was Logan's parents house, but different. The room was filled with people, all decked out in full formal attire.
It was then that she saw herself. She was older yes, and dressed in a gown worth twice her entire wardrobe, but it was her none the less. She could see she was chatting with Logan's parents and her grandparents, obviously more senior but still recognizable.
She didn't need a word by word rendition of the conversation to know what was going on. She, Emily and Logan's mother were chatting frivolously about some luncheon the garden society was throwing, while Logan's father and Richard were discussing the recent merger of two multi-national companies. As she watched, she kept expecting her elder self to jump right in and offer her opinion, but the more mature Rory was more intrigued by what Stella Hammond had worn that night.
"You stopped trying to join in their conversations after my father told you that you didn't know what you were talking about a couple times," she heard Logan's voice behind her, the first time he had interjected. "You became a doormat Rory, never sure of your own ideas and opinion, never caring about anything that mattered. But, if it's any consolation, you did a stint as president of the DAR."
She was shocked at his words, but she wasn't paying close attention as she was intent on a teenager walking up to the elder Rory, a girl who looked just Lorelai had when Rory had seen pictures of her mother as a teenager. Rory disliked her at first sight, despite the resemblance. She reminded her of the girls at Chilton when she had started, the rich girls with their noses up in the air, condemning of all that around them.
"Our daughter, Antonia," it was these words of Logan's that finally caused Rory to turn to him.
"Antonia?" she mouthed the name as if it were repulsive to her. It wasn't that she had really thought about the names for her children, but somehow she knew that wouldn't have been her choice.
Logan gave a sad smile, "Antonia. Not Toni, not Anne, not Annie, nothing but Antonia. It was my great grandmother's name. You hated it, I could tell, but you caved. And, in case you're wondering, she's sleeping with Duncan, Tristan's son, the boy you went to high school with."
"I obviously had her young," Rory replied, turning back to the view of her and her daughter and noting their relative ages. "Not sixteen of course, but….."
"We got married the year I graduated from Yale and went to work at my father's firm," Logan replied, "The year after you dropped out. Antonia came right away."
Even though this was just a dream, not any sort of reality, it all hit Rory hard. Not just her daughter, the society clone, but the fact she had obviously never gone back to school, never really made something of herself. Not that her grandmother's life didn't have worth, but it wasn't her. Everyone had kept telling her she had been destined for more. And even when she had dropped out, she hadn't thought that was it for the rest of her life.
"Are we done yet?" her voice was weary and defeated. She refused to accept this as truth, but it depressed her all the same. She wanted back to the pool house, secure in her own bed, not being confronted with all her inner demons.
"Not quite," Logan answered her question with a little sigh.
"What else is there to see?" Rory's tone was a little desperate, "Let me guess, tonight's the night I get plastered and go careening off some bridge."
"No, you have to see me," Logan's voice was hard, and refused to meet her eyes as he answered.
Rory turned back around, wanting to see him so they could get this fun experience over with and she could go back to her regular dreams about Brad Pitt, all buff in his Troy costume. She peered around the room, not sure what was so important that she see. Logan with a beer belly maybe? And it was then that she saw him. It was hard to tell, but even with the added years it was definitely him. And he wasn't alone.
He was kissing a woman behind a potted plant, barely concealed enough to be discreet. And she could feel the betrayal deep within her, even though consciously she knew it wasn't really Logan, just a dream.
"We have a bit of an open marriage," Logan's voice wasn't apologetic behind her, even though he was technically describing himself, "Well, at least I do. I may have forgotten to mention that part when I proposed. But after awhile you knew, it was hard not too."
Rory was still in too much shock to say much, so he continued. "Since this is supposed to be your enlightenment Rory, let's have this unpleasant conversation. You grew away from everything that had attracted me to you in the first place. You lost your individuality, and you became just another girl to me. You became like my mother for God's sake. When my family decided it was time for me to get married, I capitulated. I was still infatuated enough with the 'old' you to propose. I believe I was cheating on you for the first time the night Antonia was born."
She wanted him to stay so she could kick his ass, but she could already feel Logan and the scene before her fading away. The ballroom, her daughter, Emily, Logan and his whore, they were all going away. Blindly, she kicked out at him, but it was too late, and he wasn't even solid anyway.
It came to no surprise to her when she woke up in her bed. But this time she was well and truly alone. The breeze was coming in through the window, the sheets were now slightly stained with sweat and askew, and now she was sweating as if from a nightmare.
She sat there in the bed, not moving, for the longest of time. Her eyes were fixed on the clock in front of her, but she wasn't seeing it. She was contemplating. It didn't matter if the visions she had just experienced were "real", or if they were just a product of her subconscious manifesting her own thoughts, they had the same effect. The truths presented to her affected her in a way that community service and social events with old women had not. Tonight she had faced the truth that she had known all along, no matter how much she wanted to deny it.
Blindly, she reached for the phone beside her, not caring about the time. She needed someone to talk to, someone to share with, so she dialled the digits she knew so well.
She answered on the fifth ring, muttering an exhausted, "Hello?"
"Mom," her eyes welled up with tears, speaking to the woman she hadn't had a civil word with in months, but who she knew would always be there for her no matter how fucked up life got, "I think I've made a big mistake."
So PLEASE, respond. Not my usual relationship based fic. I am weak, a doormat too, I need others opinions.
Side note, just to give my opinion on the show, I don't think Rory's character is right as a foreign correspondent either, but that's beside the point. It has nothing to do with the other wrong choices I think she's making, and I think she has to realize she's making too.