Chapter 1: Watching Her Sleep

It was a beautiful winter's night in Stars Hollow, just before Christmas. At Number 37 Maple Street, a single light emanated from a room upstairs. Inside, Lorelai Gilmore prepared her 11-year-old daughter, Rory, for bed. The little girl clambered in between the comforters at her mother's coaxing. "Time for bed." Lorelai kissed Rory's forehead. "Good night, sweets. I love you."

"Mom?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you play my show tunes CD? Until I fall asleep?" Rory's doe eyes melted Lorelai's heart in an instant. How could she refuse her?

Lorelai went to the CD player in the corner of the room, and popped a silvery disc in. Soon, sweet music began to play:

"There is a castle on a cloud... I like to go there in my sleep. Aren't any floors for me to sweep. Not in my castle on a cloud."

Les Miserables. This was one of the first songs Rory had ever learned; funnily enough, Lorelai had sometimes caught her singing it from time to time, during her menial chores she accomplished while they lived at the Independence Inn. In such a context, the song sung by a young Cosette seemed both tearfully beautiful and chillingly haunting. "There is a lady all in white / Holds me and sings a lullaby. / She's nice to see and she's soft to touch. / She says 'Cosette, I love you very much.'" Lorelai always found herself whispering Rory's name in place of Cosette. Rory smiled, perhaps recalling these memories, as she nestled into the pillows. "Perfect," she sighed. Within a few instances, she was asleep.

Lorelai kept the CD playing for long after Rory dozed off. The young mother watched her daughter sleep, from the rocking chair in the corner. The rocking chair that had once been inside the old potting shed behind the Inn, the same rocking chair she had used to lull Rory to sleep when she was a baby.

Interestingly enough, the CD that now played was not an Original Broadway Cast recording, of Les Miz or even any other show. Whenever they passed by the music store in town, Rory would beg her mother to buy just one, but Lorelai could never afford it. It had always filled her with shame, especially in the pair's early years on their own, to see her daughter's disappointed face when they could not afford nice luxuries such as that. So, the Inn had surprised Rory on her most recent birthday - just two months ago - by burning a CD with all of her favorite musical theatre songs on it.

The song now changed. Beautiful piano chords and a lilting voice now came over the sound waves:

"No beauty could move me / No goodness improve me / No power on earth / If I can't love her... / No passion could reach me / No lesson could teach me / How I could love her and make her love me, too / If I can't love her, then who?... No pain could be deeper / No life could be cheaper / No point anymore / If I can't love her. / No spirit could win me / No hope left within me..."

The Beauty and the Beast song was intensely moving, and listening to the lyrics - so raw in their poetic elegance - made Lorelai suddenly begin to silently weep. The little girl in the bed, her child, lay at peace, so innocent and unaware of the harsh world she had been brought into, the trauma and pain of her birth. But how could perfection incarnate possibly wreak destruction? Could such a thing be? For Lorelai, Rory was a piece of heaven sent down to Earth on the wings of angels; God only knew how she - a lowly teenage mom turned hotel maid - deserved to be blessed with such a gift. And yet, how could anyone else but her have received such a blessing? If Lorelai didn't have Rory... well, then, the words of the song were true, and damningly so. What could have moved Lorelai to love anything or anyone, other than someone so beautiful, pure, bright, and disarmingly sweet? Nothing. No one, other than the preciousness which lay before her. The gods themselves - Yahweh, Buddha, Mohammed, Vishnu, Krishna - were jealous that one so perfect dared to live beneath them.

The song shifted again - to another time and another place far from a Beast in a castle, and instead into a very real country once ravaged by war. And Lorelai felt herself hit right in the feels all over again:

"You who I cradled in my arms / You asking as little as you can /... I know I'd give my life for you. / You didn't ask me to be born. / Why should you learn of war or pain? / To make sure you're not hurt again... / I swear I'd give my life for you. / I've tasted love beyond all fear / And you should know it's love that brought you here. / And in one perfect night, when the stars burned like new, I knew what I must do. / I'll give you a million things I'll never own / I'll give you a world to conquer when you're grown. / You will be who you want to be / You can choose whatever heaven grants / As long as you can have your chance / I swear I'll give my life for you..."

Who knew the words of a Vietnamese barmaid with a love child born from an American G.I. could speak so profoundly to... a hotel maid with a love child born from an American scion within a wealthy family? Once more, the lyrics spoke truth to power. Lorelai knew, if anything ever threatened Rory, she would jump in front of any gun, bear any burden, shield her daughter's body with her very own if she had to, in order to ensure Rory's safety; indeed, her very existence. Maybe Lorelai could not give Rory everything, but she would try to come damn close. Give her the life that she, Lorelai, had given up.

The song changed once more. Another Les Miserables song, opened with beautiful piano chords. The character Eponine sang:

"On my own, pretending he's beside me / All alone, I walk with him till morning. / Without him, I feel his arms around me. / And when I lose my way, I close my eyes... and he has found me... / And I know it's only in my mind, that I'm taking to myself, and not to him / And although I know that he is blind... / I love him, but when the night is over / He is gone. The river's just a river... / I love him, but every day I'm learning / All my life, I've only been pretending! / Without me, his world will go on turning... / I love him, but only on my own."

Lorelai now thought not of Rory, but of herself, ten years younger. In an instant, she flashed back a decade, to the winter the destitute Gilmore girls had arrived in Stars Hollow. In those days, in the freezing potting shed behind the inn, Lorelai would put Rory in her cradle and play this song; back then, it had come in a tape cassette and accompanying player - some of the few belongings Lorelai had brought with her from Hartford. Listening to this song, and watching Rory sleep, Lorelai would find herself crying over and missing Christopher - the baby's father - and wondering why he wasn't there, with them and for them.

Just then, Lorelai's cell phone rang. She quickly answered. "Hello?"

"Oh, shit! You're whispering; I forgot you're three hours ahead. Rory's asleep, isn't she?"

Lorelai sat up a little straighter, putting on her best poker face at the sound of Christopher's voice. "Yes, Christopher, our daughter's asleep; I'm watching her right now."

"Oh, good. I just wanted to call and confirm our plans for my weekend with Rory."

"Yes. A weekend which starts tomorrow. Actually, it technically started today. So why...?"

"Is it just me, or is that music I hear in the background?" her baby's father interrupted. "And what is wrong with your voice? Have you been crying?"

"Oh, it's just Rory's CD she got for her birthday. Apparently, show tunes can really cue the waterworks!"

"Show tunes?" and Lorelai could hear a hint of amusement in Christopher's inflection. "As in Broadway show tunes? Is she really our daughter?"

"Last time I looked. Besides, my boobs are not small enough for me not to have gone through childbirth at least once!"

"Pah!" Christopher blasted out a laugh. The sound made Lorelai jump, and she frantically shushed him as Rory mumbled something in her sleep before rolling over. "But really - show music?"

Lorelai shrugged. "It's been a fixation for us lately."

"Us? Or just Rory?"

Lorelai ignored the question, allowing Christopher to plow on. "Do you think maybe you should sign her up for voice lessons? Wait - don't answer that! If you discover she can't carry a tune, Rory will be crushed!"

Lorelai chuckled. "Little perfectionist that she is. Even if she can't, she'll make herself carry a tune, and no mistake!" Chris laughed with her. A pause, and then she asked. "So, you are cool for tomorrow, correct?"

"Yes, Lore, I promise..."

"Really? Because I've heard that before and ended up consoling a blubbering child, with her heart in a million pieces!"

Christopher groaned. "Lor, please let's not fight now! The conversation was going so well, too... Look, I know I've backed out before, but I can't do that now, even if I had to. I'm here."

Lorelai frowned. This was not the Christopher she was used to. "In Connecticut, you mean?"

"I'm crashed in a hotel in Hartford. I'll be by in the morning. Say, 10?"

"That's great! She'll be so excited! So you better the hell be there at 10 sharp, or your ass is grass!"

Christopher chuckled. Good old Lorelai. "I will. Give our princess a kiss for me."

"I will. Good night."