Sequel to Letters, Autobiography, Futile, Worst Day, Heath, and Tears. This is the second to last installment (I think), the final being Life, which will be up soon-ish.
Sorry for the delay.
Awake
She can't remember the last time she had a full nights rest. It had to have been at least a week, since she'd gotten the call from Jess.
It wasn't as though she didn't know why she wasn't sleeping. Of course she knew. Her daughter, her angel, her shining light, was dead. Dead.
So why should she deserve to sleep?
Why did she deserve to be alive over her daughter? Why did she have to be the one to outlive the other? Mothers weren't supposed to outlive their children. They were supposed to grow old and decrepit and their children were supposed to find them a nice nursing home for them to die in.
Lorelai shouldn't have been the one having to plan a funeral.
She glanced over at the clock on her nightstand. The bright red numbers flashed 2:47.
With a sigh, she crawled out of bed. She wasn't going to be getting any sleep any time soon.
She went down stairs and into the kitchen. Was two am too early for a pot of coffee?
Regardless of what her mind would have answered, she started a pot, her body on autopilot. Moments later, she found herself sitting on Rory's bed, holding on of her pillows tight against her chest, her face buried in it.
She took a deep breath, breathing in Rory's scent.
She doesn't know how long she was sitting there. She can't remember time passing in any sort of normal fashion. She can't remember how she got there. She didn't care. She just sat there, in the overwhelming scent of Rory, thinking about nothing and not thinking about everything.
The doorbell rings, but it takes her a moment to realize. The doorbell sounded so foreign to her ears, like it wasn't from this reality, like two universes had crossed over and the doorbell on the other Lorelai's house sounded strange and abnormal in comparison to her own.
She rose to her feet silently, knowing that the doorbell was, in fact, her own, and not that of another Lorelai.
Glancing at the clock in the kitchen as she found her way to the door, she found that it was just passed three in the morning. Who decided to make a social call at three am? What kind of indecent person does that? What if she'd been sleeping?
It occurs to her, only just as she's opening the door, that perhaps the person knew that she wouldn't be sleeping and therefore knew hew wasn't going to be disturbing her.
"Jess," she greets before she even knows it's him.
"Hey," he replies with a smile. It isn't the sad, pitying smile she'd been receiving from everyone around town, but a happy smile.
How dare he? How dare he smile at her like nothing was wrong, like they were just old friends who hadn't seen each other in a while? How dare he smile when Rory was dead? How dare he?
Then she looks down, at the bundle of blankets in his arms, and her breath catches in her throat.