A/N: Not a long A/N this time, 'cause I don't want it to be longer than this chapter. Um, sorry about the lack up updates on the Utterly Ramblacious front, it's mostly 'cause my computer's being a stupid head. It keeps turning off randomly, and I was writing a new chappie and went to lunch, and I came back and it was completely screwed up…now it just won't turn on. I blame the sock gnome. Little bugger, always plotting my demise. I'm typing this on the 'family computer.' But don't give up hope.

This is a "Lorelai getting pregnant and going to Stars Hollow" fic. Not sure what the technical ff dot net lingo for it is. But it's going on as long as I feel it should, which should be very, very long. 'Cause I've been in school three weeks and it's what I spend class time doing, when I feel like the lessons are getting either pointless or boring, which I'd have to say is about 90 percent of the time. I may fail this semester, but at least you'll be happy.

AHEM.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls! I'm shocked! I'm bleeding! Get the tourniquet! No, the tourniquet is dirty 'cause Rory wouldn't wash it with her stuff!

Faucet still flowing loudly, the steady drip of the shower keeping the beat of the world she was not in, all she could see was her face; stark and sharp in the spotless mirror… Eyes outlined with fuzzy blotches of red, the uneven scrawl of her bitten lips as they hung in sudden abandonment. A tangle of hair crisscrossing pale forehead and intertwining with cold numb fingers as they trespassed her scalp, pressing down, scratching hard without feeling, catching in the greasy knots she hadn't brushed in two days.

There was nothing different about her features. Same nose, same chin, same dark eyebrows highlighting her eyes- it was something else that made her stare. Something had been lost over the course of ten minutes in her face, and something rougher had replaced it. Slyness turned to worry. She worried it would never come back.

She tore her puffy eyes away from the face in the clean cut glass and to her the bathroom seemed alarmingly normal, marble floor shining, toothbrushes color coordinating with their individual containers, blue rug neatly aligned with the bathtub's square edge. She had thrown up in this bathroom, had, chuckling to herself, trashed it a few times when rolling her eyes stopped working its magic. The days after those bad days, when her trashing and nausea was gone, she always returned to this spot, bare feet against cold floor, and it was always the same. It was always the same- she could not change this room, or anything in this house. Her outcries and yelling and anger and tears were stifled as soon as they came. She was trapped in a place where emotion wasn't normal.

Shocked out of her thoughts, it came; a smart rap on the door and an attempt at turning the locked doorknob. Emily. One more glimpse at the floating head, and her hand grabbed at the strip on the counter, protecting the truth from the woman now three feet away in case the thick wooden door between them decided to defy all common physic laws and crumble to let the frost in.

"Lorelai? Lorelai, are you in there?"

It took exactly five seconds for Lorelai to gather the strength to voice an answer normally.

"I'm almost out, mom."

"Well, hurry up. Rosetta needs to clean."

"I'm almost out."

Emily Hmphed, perhaps at the strangely wit-free response that Lorelai had practically whispered. She stormed away, muttering something about cotillion.

When Lorelai resumed her gaze, the lines, the colors in her face were blurred- stretched out and mutated through a cloudy mess of tears. Her eyes were magnified; she tried to identify the expression. Anger? At whom? The only thing she could feel was a sort of deep burning between her heart and her throat, and the loud thumping of her heartbeat in her head, echoing over and over. Everything else was numb. She felt as if she was carrying baggy, loose, nerveless skin on her body, pulling away from her muscles and slipping from her bones.

Her hand slowly released its tight clench on the test trip, and slowly dropped it back onto the countertop.

Pink. Yep. Pink.

Pink.

How had this happened?

She knew how it happened. 7th grade Health and a very misguided conversation with her mother when she was nine had informed her, thoroughly and with plenty of visual aid, of how exactly this happened. The point was that it had happened. It had happened, and now she was staring at a pink line that confirmed, in its unknowing, unintentional way, that nothing would ever be the same again. It wasn't an overly dramatic way to describe things, at all- it was true. In every sense, in every aspect of her life, it was true.

Yes, it had happened, "it" being the new queasy sensation in her stomach, in the exact vicinity of where something else, something small and unthinking and powerful and alive was now beginning to grow.

It had happened. The unthinkable had happened. Those repetitive words could circulate in her mind forever, but they weren't going to do anything. She was responsible for the pink and the nausea and the feeling, she had done this, she and Christopher and a few swigs of vodka on an empty stomach and the intoxicating smell of those bluebells by her balcony and the sweet warm breeze, that odd warm spell that had graced Connecticut this early spring but it had made heads mushy, hands fumbling, skin seem softer and the sun more welcome on exposed skin. They had done this, culminated together into a single moment where caution was thrown and bodies were aligned- and that moment and some form of pure chance had created this moment, these tears, this urge to fall asleep for a very long time.

Words, she wasn't sure what words they were, but they were trying to come out of her mouth. What was she trying to say the girl in the mirror? She didn't know but her head was spinning with the past, until something told her to think. Just think.

Plan- she needed a plan. Christopher should know. When her throat began working normally again, she would tell him. Three words, that's all she needed- a proper noun and a contraction and another noun, that's all she needed. She was sure she could handle the first two, but the third was the hard one… It made her hands shake and her legs melt. And his face, and the questions he'd ask- the new set of answers she'd have to come up with. She'd tell him. Soon.

Emily and Richard. She could predict their faces as she spoke; the cold glares at her abnormally small voice, morphing into shock, panic, anger- then all three at once. What about our friends? How can they find out about this? Question marks into exclamation points and then silence, when she'd slam the door to her room. And then yelling again. They wouldn't heal from this. It wouldn't be like when she ditched second period last week and the principal called; it would be twenty years of them reminding her of her mistake. All of her mistakes. And she'd hate them for it.

Soon.

School… school would be bad. There was nothing to do about that but stocking up on baggy sweaters and hoping her charm could carry it all off as something light, something relatable.

And the future…tomorrow seemed like three years away, the tissues she'd have to wrap the test strip in three miles. The future was not important right now. A smile was, a big fat pretend smile to plaster on her face, and at least a semblance of normality. That meant brushing her hair, lipsmackering her mouth, leaving this room with the toilet seat closed and the rug aligned because normal in this place meant still, unmoving. She and the flowers and Christopher had changed everything. The house and its owners wouldn't like it.

"Lorelai…dinner begins in seven minutes. Are you planning on making an appearance today or should I donate your roast to a relief fund?"

Keep your voice normal, bright…"I'll be right down…"

"That's what you said twenty minutes ago. What are you doing in there? Are you sick?"

"Just…Hold on."

Her voice was stronger already. She clasped both hands calmly to her stomach and stood there a moment. Hard was something she knew. This would be hard from now on. Why did she feel safe somehow, now, liberated? When her future had just been warped into something hazy and unrecognizable from where she stood?

"Lorelai!"

"Mom! I'll be right out!"

Cold water against skin- her face was washed, her hands scrubbed, the strip embedded in crumpled tissues and buried in the trash. Not that anyone but the current maid ever glanced at the trash.

She unlocked the door. The bathroom was free of suspicion, it was identical to the one she'd walked into an hour ago. How did it do that? How does a place experience such a moment and then withdraw with no physical or emotional souvenir but what appeared to be a large wad of tissue at the bottom of the trash? Even in her head, it seemed cold and lifeless and unassociated. She might as well have found out she was pregnant at sixteen on an anonymous park bench.

That was its magic. That was its danger.

She turned the knob and stepped through to the other side.

Woosh, so much bloody angst, its killing me. Now press the pretty review button and get your rantings out. That's what I'm here for. And can you believe that season 6 is only ELEVEN FREAKING DAYS AWAY? It has been so long… yet somehow it seems only yesterday that I was freaking my dad out when I screamed at the "What…" BOOM AMY SHERMAN PALLADINO. And wouldn't stop shaking for about two days… God, I can't wait.