Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Rory Gilmore recollects.
A/N: A melodramatic approach to what never happened.
* Taðakkur (arabic) - m. remembrance, recollection.
'Name?'
'Rory... Lorelai Leigh Gilmore.'
The interviewer stops writing to give her a look. Rory meets it openly.
No, she's not one of those shattered to their soul foreign correspondents who lost their mind in the face of the war. No one called it war, anyway.
Conflict. Like having a fight over dinner. I don't want broccoli. Eat your broccoli. No I won't. A conflict.
She called it war in one of her articles and the response was an almost immediate disturbed phone call from NY. Her editor. He was normally an averagely bored middle-aged man who never picked up his phone before the fifth ring. He told her she was being irrational. She replied she was just being uncensored. It was an uncomfortable conversation.
A conflict.
She feels a little nauseous, but lets the notion pass.
'Citizenship?'
Miss Gilmore, you're an American citizen and as your editor I'll have to ask you to keep that in mind next time you discuss American conspiracies in the Middle East.
'Miss Gilmore?'
'American.'
The room is hot and she feels a drop of sweat roll down her neck. She doesn't brush it off. She keeps her hands in her lap instead.
'Occupation?'
'Journalist.'
'Spouse?'
She looks up.
Does it have to be all or nothing? Yeah, it does.
'No.'
She comes back to that day sometimes, the day she found out this wasn't the man of her life, and she tries to look at it as if she were holding a magnifying glass.
Why did it have to be nothing? No, really. Why?
Someday you'll meet someone, and you'll just know it's right. You won't want to hesitate. You'll just know.
And you won't be sorry.
And she wasn't. Sorry. She isn't.
Come with me.
She snaps up.
'What?'
'I said, come with me,' the woman repeats, making her a sign to follow.
Where?
I don't know, away.
Rory hesitates, but follows.
Sometimes she misses that longing, that intensity of his look, conveying something deeper than affection. It said, you are the last person on Earth, I wanna feel everything there is to be felt with you. It said, I'm gonna hold on to every word you say. Even to the ones you don't. Especially to them.
And every little thing with him meant big something, meant everything.
I never had anyone in my life, and now that I'm looking at you, I'm looking at everything I ever read about.
He never said those, did he? No. But without saying them out loud, it was enough to just think them.
Back then, it was. Enough. At the beginning of that adult life, the one they read so much about, the one that was full of so much promise, it meant everything.
Right before it went back to meaning nothing.
Big words, big hopes, big boy, big nothing.
He is a dying accord that still keeps echoing in her head, for years. She can still feel the aftertaste of his last interference. His words, his yell, his lips. He rearranges her atoms every time he passes through her.
"Faithless King," cried he, "with ingratitude have you treated me. I leave you your long nose and ass's ears as a souvenir."
''Then he turned three times round on his right heel, wished himself far away, and before the King could call for help, he was gone.
Where Little Mouk wished to go, no one ever knew; but it is certain that with the help of his stick, he became a rich man. And with his wealth he returned in time to his own native city, and lived in an eccentric manner until his death; and, as I told you at the beginning of the story, only went out once a month, and then much to the delight of the street boys, owing to his droll figure and extraordinary costume.''
He's always on his way to something. Oh, no, she corrects herself, last time she was the one who was out on a soul search. Right.
An open book. A stolen look. A muffled chuckle before her eyes open into his. And they dive into that chance they never got around to get.
She on top. He on top. Both up against the door.
It just sounds a little too rough for you.
Well, it's not a little too rough for me.
His hand catching hers over his belt, then letting it go. They had to get there at some point, didn't they?
He's that unfinished book lying open on her desk, the one she was so excited to start but then too scared to finish.
Images flash through her mind. Almost like memories. Only, those memories she doesn't have, because they never really happened. But she thought of them, over and over, and somehow she almost felt like they did happen. Well, they did. In her mind, they did.
It's just that he's the perfect guy to have an affair with. She always had a soft spot for the boy who could make her melt and freeze all at once. And for the man he grew up to be. A guilty pleasure, someone to cheat on your boyfriend with, a lover. Because that's what an affair was supposed to feel like. Intense, intimate and a little melodramatic. No one marries their lover, though. Who could handle the intensity of destructung and reconstructing each other every other day? Does it mean that you can never last with the person you felt the most for?
Like a piano piece for beginners, she goes back in her memories and replays the tunes over and over again, trying to do better this time around. Next time, she thinks, she won't wait for a next time. Next time is in another life.
The official leads her on and leaves the door open after herself. Rory follows. They walk into a small room with a table and a wooden chair.
Rory throws a look at the uniform over the back of the chair.
'You can change here,' the official says and leaves her alone.
"Though the body was buried, the soul went either to heaven or hell."
"Then the heart is buried?" said Peter.
"Certainly," said Ezekiel, "the heart is buried."
"But if a man has no heart?" continued Peter.
Ezekiel turned on him furiously.
"Do you wish to insult me? Do you mean to suggest that I have no heart?"
"If you have one it is made of stone!" said Peter.
Ezekiel stared, looked round to see if any one was listening, and then said: "How do you know? Is yours stone too?"
When the official comes back, Rory is dressed up. All dark orange, she waits for the other woman to speak.
'You have visitor.'
Rory snaps up. Before she can form the question, the other woman steps to the side and Rory sees hope.
'I hear orange is the new black around here. Hey, grasshopper.'
Wow. A dog. A lot has changed.
A lot and then... not so much, also.
'Hey, mom.'
Rory thinks she feels peace. She feels home again, roaming the streets of Stars Hollow on a warm June night, breathing in the smell of the golden chains blossom, crossing the wooden bridge, looking at her own reflection in the water.
'I'll get you out of here,' Lorelai says with trained determination.
Rory's lips fade into a smile.
'Let me see them,' Rory demands.
'See what?'
'The blueprints. You've got to have them tattooed on your back, don't you?'
Lorelai smiles. The tension breaks for a beat.
'Right, blueprints,' Lorelai slaps her forehead, 'I totally knew I missed something.'
'We'll have to think of another escape plan, then.'
'Oh, we will. We're Bonnie and Clyde.'
'Batman and Robin. Totally.'
'I found a lawyer,' Lorelai says then.
The distant roar of new hope rising, like the sound of a helicopter approaching. A helicopter and a flute, playing a sad Oriental melody. Imagination has its strange ways. Because there is no helicopter. Only two Gilmore girls in a small interrogation room in Damascus.
'I know,' Rory nods, thinking the situation over.
'We'll get you out of here,' Lorelai insists.
'Yeah,' Rory smiles, 'you kind of mentioned.'
Their eyes meet. There it is. Hope.
''... and all the hearts began to pulse and beat, till it seemed as if it were a watchmaker's workroom.''
Rory hears that sound again. The helicopter and the flute. They aren't there. But she can feel them getting closer.
A/N: Story excerpts used come from Hauff's Fairy Tales, totally not mine.