This story takes place around the time of the solar eclipse that occurred in August of 2017 and includes spoilers for up to 7.06 of Game of Thrones.

"This has gotten completely out of control."

Lorelai glanced up at her husband from where she was sequestered at her usual table by the window, surrounded by her laptop, piles of eclipse glasses in various colors, assorted boxes and tubes sprinkled in glitter and confetti, and a pile of streamers that had half fallen to the floor.

"This is a major celestial event, Luke", Lorelai insisted. "A once in a lifetime opportunity to escape the daily drudgery of life to celebrate standing in the middle of the street for two hours and looking at the sky while we are treated to the spectacle of the universe pretending to usher in the doomsday a way too significant portion of the population are eagerly anticipating at any given moment –"

Luke put up his hand. "I get it."

"You're the one that spawned the super genius scientist daughter, " Lorelai replied as she reached down to shove the recalcitrant streamers into the oversized shopping bag she had used to cart them into the diner. "Hasn't this all been explained to you by now?"

"She said something about coronal mass ejections and space weather and something called an occulter –" Luke waved his hands. "I have no idea what the hell she was talking about," he admitted.

"Usual state of events, right?" Lorelai tossed half of the glasses into the other side of the bag, and winced when the other half dropped on the floor.

"Here, let me –" Luke picked up the remaining pairs of glasses and carefully placed them back in the bag. He reached around for Lorelai's other bag and stacked the tubes and boxes in it before plopping down in the chair across from her. "She texted yesterday, said she was driving down to Tennessee to see it at some national park down there. Said you could see the shadow of the moon right afterwards, or something like that. I figure that's exactly the variety of trouble you want your 24-year-old daughter to be involved in."

"So you know I'm right about this, then", Lorelai retorted with a wink.

"I said no such thing. As far as I'm concerned, this is just an elaborate excuse to sell doughnuts."

"Which you already have, and thank you," Lorelai replied as she shoved the remaining bite of chocolate glazed doughnut into her mouth.

"I never said it was a bad excuse," Luke said, reaching for her hand. "Besides, you have certain ways of talking me into things," he continued with a sexy half smirk, running his thumb over her wedding ring.

Lorelai smiled and covered her hand with his.

The quiet moment was interrupted by a high-pitched wail from upstairs.

"I didn't know Rory was in the apartment today," Lorelai commented. "She said something this morning about driving all the way out to Philadelphia –"

Luke shook his head. "She came in here at about ten, but I told her it was too hot to trek all the way out there with the kid being as young as he is. I guess Jess agreed, because the next thing I know he's at the door. They said they can juggle some book edits and a five week old, so –"

"How long have they been up there?" Lorelai asked.

"Two or three hours, I guess."

"Maybe I should go up, " Lorelai fretted.

Luke smiled. "She seems to do okay when we're at work all day. They'll be fine." He checked his watch. "Aren't you supposed to meet Sookie right about now?"

"Yeah," Lorelai replied. She picked up her laptop and placed it back in its case. "Oh, look!" She reached around to the other side of the now-vacant table and pulled out a miniature pair of eclipse glasses. "We can all get into the act –"

"No," Luke insisted.

"But look, teeny tiny baby glasses –"

"I'm not letting either of you take a kid that's too young for direct sunlight out in public for some sort of cataclysmic planetary event," Luke replied.

"But Luke, these are super accurate eclipse glasses," Lorelai argued. "Once you put them on, you will be able to see all the wonder and magic of our quaint little town being temporarily turned into a harbinger of doom –"

"If you need the glasses to see all of that, then there's no point in believing that this is anything more than a marketing ploy," Luke retorted.

"Fine. Have it your way, Grandpa," Lorelai pouted. She gazed up at him and let forth an irrepressible giggle. "I can't get over that it isn't an expression anymore and it's actually something I can call you."

Luke couldn't help the same grin from spreading across his face. "Pretty amazing how that worked out, huh?"

"It is," Lorelai replied as she leaned over to kiss him gently.

Sookie squealed when she saw Lorelai approaching the gazebo from halfway down the street. Lorelai tried to walk faster to get to her, but her own aging muscles and the armload of bags she was carrying quickly impeded her progress.

"Get over here!" Sookie yelled.

"I'm trying," Lorelai insisted as she crossed the last few yards to the steps. Sookie quickly wrapped her arms around her in an embrace.

"We've gotten way too old for the running and squealing thing," Lorelai remarked.

"We just take it like sophisticated elder stateswomen now," Sookie replied as she let go of Lorelai and turned to face her. "Speaking of that –"

"Hold on," Lorelai replied as she pulled herself down to the steps. "I think this part of the conversation calls for some coffee."

"I'll just take your lead here," Sookie responded as she sat down beside her. "Sooo –" she began.

Lorelai handed her a cup of Luke's coffee in a disposable cup and took a long sip of her own. "Sooo –" she continued.

Sookie chortled. "How's newlywed life? I want to know everything."

Lorelai grinned. "Great. Really great."

"You've got to give me more than that," Sookie pleaded. "I've been married for fifteen years, Lorelai. Come on."

"And I've been with Luke for almost that long, " Lorelai interjected. She spun her wedding ring around her finger. "I don't think that much has changed, really. It's more like –" She shrugged. "We're more together, I guess. Not that we weren't before, but we seem more settled into each other. It's not just about making up our own life with no guidelines. I mean, we already did that. It just means something more to know that we're finally in a place where we can see what's in front of us and know it doesn't look any different from our old life, you know?"

Sookie nodded. "I know." She bumped shoulders with Lorelai. "And how about other things?"

Lorelai beamed. "Oh, that part's better than ever."

Sookie giggled. "Really?"

Lorelai nodded. "Oh yeah."

Sookie took another sip of her coffee. "Only you two."

Lorelai sighed. "Enough about me," she said. "How's Jackson? How are Martha and the boys?"

"Oh, you know," Sookie replied. "An old married couple embarking on the organic lifestyle with their three rabid pre-teens. Things are always interesting, that's for sure." She fingered the edge of her cup. "Davey's addicted to punk rock and locking himself in his room. Martha's got a boyfriend –"

Lorelai's mouth hung open in mock horror. "A boyfriend –"

"Yeah, yeah," Sookie continued, waving her hand in the air. "Kid's such a flirt, I'm surprised she waited until fifth grade. And Hank's main interest seems to be video games and destroying the edges of the property."

"You guys like it out there, though," Lorelai prodded.

"We do," Sookie replied. "Lorelai, I shouldn't have left you hanging for so long. I just kept putting off making a decision, and –"

"It's okay", Lorelai insisted. "Really."

"Yeah, but then everything with your dad and Rory and –" Sookie shook her head. "I should have told you we weren't planning on moving back."

"It's really alright," Lorelai replied. "I mean, it's a big change, you and me not working together. I guess I was in a little bit of denial about it, too. I should have just asked you what you wanted to do." She sighed. "We built a good thing together, you and Michel and me. It's a different thing now, but we still started it together."

Sookie smiled. "I'm glad." She nervously fiddled with the seam of her pants. "So, as far as other things go –"

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Just say it."

Sookie squealed. "How's it feel to be a grandmother?"

"Well, first of all, we haven't quite decided on that name," Lorelai quipped. "It's weird. I don't know. Rory seems to be adjusting okay. Luke's been great. He's been so excited. Plus, when I held that baby for the first time –" Lorelai's eyes glazed over.

"Yeah?" Sookie prodded.

"He was so Rory and not Rory, you know?" Lorelai replied. "He was like her when she was a baby, but he wasn't her. He was hers. And then I passed him to Luke, and then I saw the two of them and I knew that it was the first thing we'd really share together, as a family." Lorelai wiped her eyes. "Good thing we got married just in time. I don't think Rory and I know quite as much about little boys as we should."

Sookie wrapped her arm around Lorelai's shoulder. "You'll do great. I'm still not sure I know anything, and I've managed to keep my two alive for over a decade."

Lorelai rubbed her shoulder in return. "Thanks." She drained the last of her coffee and slowly hauled herself to her feet. Sookie slowly stood up beside her. "Well, I know you've been itching to meet the kid. Come on."

Sookie and Lorelai walked back towards the diner, carting Lorelai's eclipse paraphernalia between them.

"This setlist is insane," Lane remarked as she picked up the battered piece of notebook paper from the coffee table.

Zach continued to tune his guitar, seemingly oblivious to her comments.

"ZACH?!"

He uttered a grunt in her direction as he continued to adjust the strings.

"We can't fit all those songs into the two hours it's going to take for the moon to make its appearance."

Zach glanced in her direction. "I don't think you're really seeing this the right way."

"Really?" Lane admonished him as she sat down on the floor and spread out several tattered pieces of cardboard and black construction paper on the table. "Why don't you enlighten me on how I should be seeing it?"

Zach reached into the drawer of the end table and retrieved some duct tape and Elmer's glue. "Here. This should hold it for the next few hours." He gently placed the guitar down and sat down beside her.

"I wish someone would have told me that the key element in raising twin boys is the endless supply of duct tape that it would require," Lane said as she taped up the ends of two of the pieces of cardboard. She handed the two other pieces to him. "You can do this one."

Zach peeled back the loose scrap of construction paper and slathered the glue underneath it. "It's going to be boring to play Total Eclipse Of The Heart in the same way over and over for two hours."

"I don't think we can manage all of these different versions," Lane retorted as she taped up the other ends of the cardboard, plopping the contraption on its side.

Zach passed the glue to her. "Well, they won't all be exactly the way I wrote them down."

"I'll say," Lane remarked. "Just how on earth are we going to be able to do the Nikki French version of the song? We don't play electronic music. And why do you want to resurrect a dance hit from the dregs of the 90s anyway?" She carefully glued the construction paper over the duct tape with a practiced hand.

Zach haphazardly patted the paper to his pieces of cardboard and bent the ends to make them stand up before he started wrapping duct tape around the edges. "I was thinking it could be like Mumford and Sons. I mean, not the way they earnestly cover other people's songs, except maybe The Avett Brothers because it already sounds that way, but the way their songs used to sound before they got all muted and pop-ish. That way we could speed it up and not have to lug around any extra equipment that doesn't sound like us."

"Okay, but we can't open with that," Lane replied. Zach passed the duct tape back to her as she wrapped it around the other ends of the cardboard. "Why did you write Tori Amos down there? Why not Jill Andrews or The Dan Band or something –"

Zach looked up. "The Dan Band?"

Lane held up her hands. "I'm just saying that all emo acoustic versions of this song sound the same."

"Lane, I do have some standards here." He motioned to the side of what now somewhat resembled a box in front of Lane. "That paper's coming loose again."

Lane reached for the glue and applied it the loose corner of paper. "Fine, we can trade off on that type of version, maybe. One for you, one for me. But what the hell is Straight No Chaser doing on there?"

Zach shrugged. He tore a long piece of duct tape off of the role and used it to tape the remaining piece of construction paper over the hole at the end of the box. "I was thinking we could do a jazzy Cassandra Wilson does Cyndi Lauper type thing or something." He plopped his box down on the table and raised his eyebrows. "Mine's done first."

Lane chuckled. "Rub it in." She wrapped the duct tape around the other edges of the box. "We're going have to space out the slow versions, though. The Tragedy version's a good thing to lead into maybe two or three songs in. Probably the Cassandra version needs to go first, though."

"Fine," Zach replied. He finished scrawling STEVE on his box with a silver metallic pen and hastily scribbled on the set list. "I don't want the Love Me Electric to go too far towards the end, though –"

"Nah, that part looks good," Lane responded. She picked up the pen and carefully lettered KWAN across the top of her box. "I figure a punk version near the end is a good idea, only –" She looked up and giggled.

"What?" Zach asked.

"Judah and the Lion don't do a cover version of this song," Lane reminded him. "I don't think they could sustain that energy level for this long –"

"I want to break out the mandolin," Zach insisted. "We can kind of do a hip hop thing with it to finish off –"

Lane looked down. "Sounds good." She gestured towards the closet. "Think we can stash these in there until tomorrow?"

"Worth a shot," Zach replied. "How they'd get ripped up this time, anyway?" He picked up both boxes and hauled them on top of the blankets and discarded toys in the closet before closing the door.

"I think zombies and light sabers were involved this time," Lane said.

Zach shook his head. "Day ending in Y."

"A Game Of Thrones marathon?"

Rory looked quizzically up from where she wearily rested against the couch cushions. She pulled her hair back from her face and adjusted her position on the sofa.

"Why not?" Jess asked. "You said you were behind. This kind of thing is just what you need to free your brain of all that pesky emotional debris. Dragons and snow zombies, boobies and beheadings –"

Rory smiled. "It does sound tempting, but I don't want the baby waking up and being exposed to all of that, and it's unlikely he's going to sleep for more than two hours, and I know that once we start watching that will be just the time when he's wake up and it will take a lot longer than usual to get him to go back down –"

Lorelai looked up where she was scrounging through the laundry basket on the other end of the sofa. "So don't do it here. There's a perfectly adequate smart TV at the apartment. Luke and I can put the baby down."

Rory smiled wanly. "Really?"

"This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last", Lorelai replied. "I think we can handle this. Go enjoy your nerd marathon."

Rory's son looked up at Lorelai from his carrier with an expression seemingly resembling wariness.

"No spoilers until April visits next week, okay?" Luke asked as he picked up the baby, gingerly holding him to his chest.

"I doubt April is going to hold out for an entire week without saying something, " Jess remarked.

"Still," Luke insisted.

"I won't tell," Rory insisted as she hauled herself up off of the sofa and took Jess's outstretched hand. "I'll be home by eleven, okay?"

The baby whimpered into Luke's shirt. Rory hesitantly took a step in his direction.

"Go," Lorelai insisted, hauling herself up from the sofa and reaching her arms out to Luke to hand over their grandson. "We'll be fine."

Rory strolled towards the door, nervously looking back over her shoulder at Luke and Lorelai, who were already absorbed in their charge.

Jess ushered her the rest of the way out the door.

"I think it finally worked that time," Luke remarked a few hours later as he carefully closed the door to Rory's room and sat down to join Lorelai on the sofa.

"I'll take the next round," Lorelai offered as she tucked her foot under her leg.

"So what deeply disturbing programming is on the docket for tonight?" Luke asked as he picked up the remote control."

"Penny Dreadful."

Luke took a sip from the glass that Lorelai handed to him. "We're watching a show called Penny Dreadful? Your tastes are really running on the gothic side these days."

Lorelai looked down at her nails. "What can I say? The possibility of being sucked into another dimension brings that out in me."

Luke put his glass down on the table. "You OK?"

Lorelai tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I just think there's something going on that Rory's not telling me."

"The kid?" Luke suggested.

"I don't know," Lorelai replied. "She seems to be taking it a little . . . too well, you know? I thought she'd need us more."

"But that's good, right?"

"I guess," Lorelai responded. "She always looks so tired, and I keep wanting to step in and do more, but –" She shrugged. "I needed more help than she did. Lane needed more help than she did. I keep thinking she's taking on too much."

"You were sixteen. Lane was twenty-two and had two," Luke reminded her. "Rory's older. Maybe she was more ready for this whole parenthood thing."

"Well, the circumstances of how this whole parenthood thing came to be seem to suggest otherwise," Lorelai replied.

Luke shot her a knowing look. "Neither of us have much room to talk about that one."

"I just expected more –"

Luke arched an eyebrow. "More –"

"Drama!" Lorelai exclaimed. "My daughter gets knocked up by her engaged ex boyfriend and the biggest mess that came out of it came from you –"

"Hey," Luke interjected. "That was only once. He came here screaming at Rory and April ends up getting the back end of it. What was I supposed to do?" He shook his head. "I'm better now. It doesn't matter how old the girls get. I have to protect them."

Lorelai rubbed her hand over the seam of his jeans. "I know."

"I think maybe I helped the guy out in the end," Luke reminded her. "I was in his position once. He may have started this whole mess –"

"He didn't start it by himself," Lorelai replied.

"But I still didn't want him kept away from his kid until she was half grown," Luke continued. "Besides, if everyone's actually getting along, then I don't want to mess with it."

Lorelai nodded. "I know. I just keep thinking things can't remain this peaceful. Sooner or later that gauntlet's going to drop and it's going to be all –" Her eyes widened. "SPLAT."

"You know, maybe we should watch someone else make a disaster of their lives instead of expecting for it to happen to us," Luke suggested. He gestured towards the TV.

Lorelai grinned. "You know, this show has Frankenstein. And Dracula. And Dorian Gray. And Jeckyll and –"

Luke rolled his eyes. "This is just like that wretched movie that forced Sean Connery into retirement."

Lorelai opened her mouth in mock horror. "You remember! I haven't made you watch that in years."

"Oh, I remember," Luke replied drolly. "So what storied British –"

"Scottish," Lorelai corrected him.

"- Scottish actor are we going to watch destroy his career this time?"

Lorelai glanced at him in sympathy. "Nobody you know."

"Lucky me," Luke replied as he hit play on the remote.

"Ignorance is bliss, babe," Lorelai responded as she rested her head against his shoulder.

"I don't think she's that evil," Rory argued.

Jess looked up from where he was sprawled across the other end of the sofa. The TV had long been turned off, but the detritus of paper cups, discarded food containers, and abandoned notebooks conspired to make the apartment look more like a typical hipster den than the new home of a single mom and her newborn. The late night pop culture bullshitting session was only adding to the overall atmosphere.

"She is evil," Jess contended. "She's the villain. She burned her daughter in law to death because she was a threat. She poisoned a girl in front of her mother and made her watch –"

Rory shook her head. "She dispatched the people she saw as a threat because it the only way out. And she poisoned Ellaria's daughter because Ellaria poisoned her own daughter. It's not like it was in the books –"

Jess scoffed. "You only made it through a book and a half."

"Excuse me!" Rory interjected. "New mom! I don't have time for luxuries like reading and sleep anymore –"

Jess held up his hands. "Point taken."

"It's not like they're ever going to be finished anyway," Rory reminded him.

"I just don't think you're supposed to root for her," Jess replied.

"I'm not rooting for her in quite the way you think I am," Rory said. "There's something admirable about a woman who revels in her evil because she doesn't have anything else to keep her grounded anymore, who just sees why she wants and takes it. There's an entire genre of fairy tale retellings dedicated to telling things from the villain's perspective. Tanith Lee, Wicked, The Mists Of Avalon –"

"So how did I get sucked into this?" Jess asked her.

"Well, actually it's you and Luke and April sucking me in, but I like to think it's because of all of the gratuitous sex and violence," Rory told him with a grin.

"Oh, I'm that kind of guy, am I?"

"Maybe," Rory suggested. She rocked back on her heels, which were tucked underneath her on the sofa. "This is fun."

Jess smirked. "Fun, huh?"

Rory giggled. "I haven't sat down and talked about literature and pop culture for ages," she remarked. "It's all been about the book and the baby for months. Even before then, it was all about scrambling for the next freelance job on some subject I had to pretend to be interested in. There hasn't been a point where I could take a breather and say this is what I want to talk about for a long time."

"You'll still have time for that in the future," jess encouraged her. "You just have to find a space to fit the kid into it, that's all."

Rory looked down at her hands. "Yeah," she remarked quietly. She shifted her position and rested her feet on the floor. "You know, all of this stuff reminds me of school. College."

"You don't need to go to college to have informed opinions about cultural things," Jess argued.

"No," Rory agreed. "But you have more time to pursue those things. I kind of miss being in an environment where I was surrounded by people who were interested in the same things I were, where we had time to lay around and discuss this stuff."

"College isn't the only place to find an environment like that," Jess contended. "You can find that anywhere. It isn't difficult to find people who are passionate about the same things you are. Money can't buy that sort of thing. Curiosity and initiative are what gets you there. It's not something that's solely reserved to those who can afford a very specific kind of intellectual life."

"Jess, I didn't mean –"

Jess held up his hand. "It's fine. Look, I'm sorry. I'm being an asshole."

"Jess, you're one of the smartest people I know," Rory said softly. "I know there's more than one way of being engaged in the world. I wouldn't be half as far along with this book if it weren't for you."

Jess shook his head. "That's not true."

"Yeah, it is," Rory insisted. "I guess I just miss when my life was simpler, that's all."

Jess nodded.

"So how does being involved in an incestuous love affair with your Aryan look alike brother qualify you on the villain Richter scale?" he asked, steering her around to a less thorny topic of conversation.

"I don't think anyone's rooting for that," Rory replied. "This isn't a show that rewards investing in romance. Everyone's just a little too related."

The silence hung thickly in the air. Jess cleared his throat.

"This is a show that's asking us to want the hero to hook up with his aunt while his sisters passive aggressively threaten to murder each other," he said. "I don't think conventional moral standards really come into play."

"If it were me, I wouldn't really be that intimidated by a bag full of Scooby Doo masks," Rory remarked.

Jess chuckled.

"Or by a paraplegic who's been absorbed into the tree of life and has thus obliterated his personality," she continued.

"It's kind of weird at the start of the season there was this big showdown between Sansa and Jon about who was going to rule the North, and it didn't end up being about that at all," Jess replied. "It's this huge dynastic battle between all of these different elements, and now they're all in the same place after so many years, and it's just odd, because there seems to be a couple of pieces missing."

"I imagine that half of them will get knocked off pretty soon what with the gigantic zombie dragon and all," Rory contended.

"You know, some people say that Bran actually is the Night King –"

"People?" Rory mocked. "People on the Internet?"

"Shut up," Jess retorted, playfully tossing a pillow at her.

There was a decidedly otherworldy aspect to the Eclipse festival the next day. The town was decked out in silver and black streamers, and the majority of the storefronts in Stars Hollow were decorated with models of the sun, moon, and stars in the same colors. Miss Patty had installed a black disco ball in the middle of the dance studio, and her usual entourage of pint-sized ballet dancers had conglomerated in the town square with the rest of the town's kids, trading homemade eclipse boxes and tubes with the standard-issue eclipse glasses that Taylor had insisted on distributing to every resident who had gathered for the festivities.

Michel was supervising a desultory gathering of Dragonfly Fly inn guests, remarking every so often under his breath that he hoped that the planet would suck him into another dimension sooner rather than later. Kirk, ever the entrepreneur, had set up a kiosk a few feet away from the diner, where he had unsuccessfully attempted to hawk imitation glasses until Taylor had discovered him and confiscated them. Zach and Lane had set up shop just outside of the gazebo with their guitars, where they were performing various versions of Total Eclipse of The Heart, to the amusement and occasional confusion of the townspeople gathered around them. There was a definite tension in the air of newfound anticipation that felt slightly different than the town's usual year-round festivals: although most people knew that the end results wouldn't be quite as magical or apocalyptic as they imagined, there was still a smidgen of hope that they might be.

Lorelai met Luke and Rory outside of the diner, where Luke was juggling various tubes of sunscreen without dropping them.

"Do I even want –" she began.

"Kirk," they responded in unison.

Lorelai took several of the tubes form Luke and followed him back to the diner. Rory remained on the sidewalk, looking up at the sky with a dazed expression on her face.

"So, um, where did Jess get off to this morning?" Lorelai asked as she and Luke stocked the sunscreen in the storeroom.

"He went back to Philadelphia," Luke told her as they walked towards the counter. "Said he had a bunch of projects he was working on and he could see the sky just as well there as he could here." He stopped and nervously turned to face her. "Hey, you don't think he and Rory –"

Lorelai chuckled. "Well, it's not impossible at this point, but the answer is most likely no." She patted his shoulder. "Too soon."

Luke grimaced. "Well, thanks for small favors, I guess."

Lorelai looked around the diner. "This place is mostly dead," she remarked. She leaned into his shoulder. "How would you feel about witnessing this planet get sucked into a far more interesting dimension with your one and only wife?"

"I don't know –" Luke shrugged. "Well, I guess we're okay for about fifteen minutes or so."

"You okay in here by yourself for a few minutes, Sookie?" Lorelai asked her friend, who was comfortably ensconced into a table near the window with Luke and Lorelai's grandson by her side.

"I have an enormous cup of coffee and an adorable baby who's not mine," Sookie replied. "I'm fine." She picked up the miniature pair of eclipse glasses and carefully placed them on the baby's face. "We're all set."

Luke flipped the sign on the outside of the diner to closed and strolled with Lorelai to the gazebo.

"Well, it's starting to look sort of Outer Limits like out here," Luke remarked as he took Lorelai's hand. He gestured up to the dim sky with his other hand.

"Dork," Lorelai retorted.

"It's not catching, you know," Luke replied.

"My daughter has been officially initiated into your medieval soap opera cult and you tell me it's not catching," Lorelai grumbled as they clumsily lowered themselves onto the gazebo steps.

"Well, not catching to you, maybe," Luke quipped.

Lorelai gazed around at the townspeople lounging on the grass and the sidewalk. She saw Liz and TJ and Doula sprawled a few feet away from her, eschewing the official glasses and handmade boxes and tubes for a collection of rusting pasta strainers. She and Luke wanly waved at them as Doula hauled herself to her feet and chased after one of Lane's boys. She squeezed Luke's hand. "This is nice", she whispered.

He gazed warmly back at her and squeezed back. "It is," he remarked.

Lorelai fingered the edge of his wedding band. "It's been almost nine months, "she whispered.

Luke brushed her hair away from her face. "It has," he replied.

The strains of Lane and Zach's guitar playing started to get more frenetic as Zach's voice rose to a higher pitch.

"It's starting," Luke remarked as he pointed to the sky. Lorelai let go of his hand long enough to hand him a pair of glasses from her pocket as she placed her own pair on her face.

The pit of light in the dark sky momentarily caved in on itself as a dazed silence filled the atmosphere.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Lorelai said in a small voice.

"Yeah," Luke replied. "Pretty cool."

Rory thought it was the glasses at first.

Why did the sidewalk seem like it was encroached in fog? It was the middle of August, after all.

She removed the glasses and rubbed her eyes.

A white blur passed over her vision. Rory stumbled and righted herself before she fell down.

Shouldn't the sky be slowly returning to normal?

Rory blinked and looked around. Everything still seemed too subdued and somnolent. And why was it so quiet?

She yawned and started to walk towards the front door of the diner.

Suddenly she felt a whish of air go over her head.

Almost like the same whish of air that came in the wake of giant wings –

Rory stared up at the sky. It was slowly beginning to lighten, but the only wings she saw were of harmless bluejays flitting from one tree branch to another.

Well, maybe not the only wings.

Since when were there so many dang crows in Stars Hollow? They seemed to be listless flocks of them everywhere. Lounging on the grass, skittering around the lamppost, feebly wandering in the middle of the street . . .

They looked bored and depressed. Like they had been waiting for some sort of doomsday event, but it hadn't quite happened and now they didn't know what to do with themselves.

Weren't groups of crows actually referred to as murders –

And what was that?

It couldn't be –

Was that an enormous zombie polar bear lunging at her?

Luke and Lorelai were strolling back to the diner hand in hand when they saw Rory fall flat on her ass from across the street.

Rory blinked and came to her senses just as her mother and stepfather rushed to her side.

"Rory, what –"

"Mom –"

Lorelai looked at Luke with concern as he carefully moved her to a sitting position.

"I'll get her some water," Luke said as he rushed off and disappeared inside the diner.

"Rory, hon, are you OK? Maybe we should get you to the hospital –"

Rory cleared her throat just as Luke practically sprinted to her side with a bottle of water. She took a drink, and color seemed to return to her face a little. Lorelai felt her panic start to subside.

"I'm fine", Rory said in a hoarse voice. "I'm just tired, I guess." She rubbed her forehead. "And the crows –"

Lorelai furrowed her brow and looked to Luke, the worried expression on their face practically identical.

"I'm not crazy," Rory insisted. She pointed at the crow that was currently pecking at the heel of Luke's boot. "There's just so many of them, that's all. They look sad. I just got distracted and wasn't looking where I was going."

"We better get you home," Luke insisted as he helped her to her feet.

"But the baby –"

"Sookie can bring him home," Lorelai replied. "I think you need to get some rest. Come on." She nodded to Luke.

"I'll be home early," Luke told her.

Rory weakly attempted to protest as Lorelai led her in the direction of the Jeep, her arm around Rory's shoulder.

Rory awoke several hours later to see her mother nervously sprawled on the other side of her bed. She could hear the smell of bacon sizzling in the background as the warm aroma of breakfast food drifted in through the open door.

"Wow, how long did I sleep?" Rory drowsily asked.

Lorelai smiled. "Just a couple of hours." She nodded in the direction of the kitchen. "Luke thought having breakfast for dinner might be the right thing to bring a little life back to you."

"Right," Rory answered as she tucked her hair behind her ears. "Where's Rick –"

"Richard Gilmore's namesake is being his typical erudite self and entertaining Jess in the other room," Lorelai replied.

"He came back?"

"He was worried about you," Lorelai responded. She reached for Rory's hand. "I'm worried about you. What happened out there, kid?"

Rory shook her head. "I'm fine. It just caught up with me, that's all. I had a late night out with Jess, then Rick woke up three times during the night and –" She shook her head. "I'm tired. I'm just tired."

"I thought part of the benefit of you living with Luke and me was that you didn't have to do it all on your own," Lorelai told her. "We can take some of these midnight shifts. We can give you a break. It doesn't have to be just you, Rory. You don't have to do everything by yourself."

"I just wanted –" Rory began. She stopped herself. "Mom, I'm thirty-three. I should be able to handle this. I don't even have a full time job. I can handle one baby. You did it, Lane did it, Paris did it, Dean did it –"

Lorelai shook her head. "None of us were completely alone. Not even me."

Rory looked down and beaded the top of the sheet between her fingers. "I just feel so ashamed. I'm coming up on this huge milestone behind everyone else and I'm not getting it. It just gets so hard, with the exhaustion and the pain and the crying –" She paused. "It's not at all like I thought it would be."

"Oh, Rory."

"Lane made it look so easy. Like she had everything under control. And she had two," Rory looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. "Why can't I handle one?"

Lorelai smiled. "Rory, do you really think that first summer when Lane was alone with the boys that I wasn't running over there twice a day? That Luke wasn't on call to help out when she and Zach couldn't figure it out?"

Rory wiped her eyes. "I guess,"

"You haven't been around a lot for all the little crises, but trust me, they happened," Lorelai told her. "Look, there's probably still a lot I don't know about little boys, and Luke and I might not have lived 24-7 with a little kid, but we did pick up on some stuff. And what we haven't retained Lane probably has. Parenthood's always partly a learning curve. We all fumble until we get it right."

Rory nodded. "I know. But I just –" She looked down. "It's stupid."

"What?" Lorelai asked.

"I just wanted to not fail at something," Rory cried. "I mean, after the shock wore off I knew I wanted to do this because I could do it. I could be good at this. I could be a mom. I could settle down to this quiet life and write while he was napping. I just saw this life in front of me that was possible, you know?" Rory paused. "And now I don't know if I'm even capable of it. I always feel like I'm not doing a good enough job."

"Rory, you are good at this," Lorelai insisted. "I've been half jealous. I've wondered why you didn't need us more. I thought you were doing too well."

Rory sniffled. "Definitely not."

"Look, I've not wanted to crowd you too much on this," Lorelai admitted. "I always felt like that's what my parents did to me, like they couldn't trust me to take care of my own daughter." She reached out to rub Rory's leg through the blanket. "I never, ever wanted to give you a reason to want to run away, or to make you feel like you couldn't do it. I know you can. You're going to be a great mom."

Rory smiled wistfully. "I don't know how you did it. Just you and me in a garden shack. For ten years. You made it all seem like this wonderful adventure."

"There's a lot of stuff you don't remember," Lorelai replied. "A lot of stuff I'm glad you don't remember. It was hard. I knew that we had to make a life on our own, but I want it to be better for you."

Rory wiped her nose. "It is better," she admitted. "I sort of feel like I pushed Logan away with all of this, when all he wanted to do was help. I waited four months to tell him, and then when he tells me he's ready to move here and give up his fiancé and support me and he doesn't even mind that I don't want a relationship with him I got mad and stopped returning his calls and he has to come all the way here and get in a screaming match with Luke and you and Luke have to talk me down before I'll even speak to him –" Rory stopped for a breath. "I can't see me fitting in his life or his apartment there in New York, and I'm not sure we have that much in common anymore, but I know he needs to see Rick more and once every two weeks probably isn't enough after he moved all this way." Rory bit her lip. "I'm still trying to figure that part out. It was easier just to pretend I didn't need more from him."

Lorelai frowned. "I'm not sure I can really help you all that much with that sort of thing," she responded. "That's going to be something else that's tricky. But having the father of your kid want to be involved with no strings attached isn't anything to scoff at."

Rory tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I thought that was going to be the hard part," she said softly. "It wasn't. It was easy. I thought Logan was going to be like Dad, that he wouldn't want to be involved if I didn't want him anymore. But it was the opposite. He was ready to give up everything to be a dad even if that didn't include me. He isn't like my father at all."

Lorelai contemplated letting the subject go, but decided to push forth. "Rory, do you –"

"No, Mom, I don't", Rory replied. "I don't want to be with him, not in that way. I just want to be fair to him and to my son." She scoffed. "Sometimes I think it was just an excuse for him to get away from being sucked into his old life before he couldn't get out. But I don't think that matters anymore. I know he wants to be here for him either way."

"You know, I think Luke has long gotten over his impulse to pummel him to bits whenever they're in the same room," Lorelai replied. "I'm not saying it's going to be exactly comfortable, but we'll make it work. He's our grandson's father. He's more than welcome here if he wants to help out more."

Rory frowned. "About that," she began. "Mom, I –" She fiddled with the ends of her hair. "I'm not ready to move into the apartment yet."

Lorelai smiled in affirmation. "I think maybe that's best right now."

"Not forever, mind you," Rory insisted. "But I do think – you're right. It's not just up to me. I'm not going to be so insistent on doing everything on my own."

Lorelai rubbed her daughter's shoulder. "Good."

Jess stepped into the room with Rick clutched against his chest. "Is everything copacetic here?"

Lorelai spun her head and gasped when she saw the baby's attire. "Is my one and only grandchild wearing a black onesie with a blue zombie king on the front of it?"

"Hey, don't knock my sartorial choices for the kid," Jess replied. Rick cooed when he saw his mother, and Rory reached her hands out for the baby. Jess crossed the room to hand him to her.

"This is a cult," Lorelai insisted as Luke appeared in the doorway. "A sick, sadistic, nerd cult, and you, my husband, have started us down a path we'll never recover from." She turned her head to glance at Rory. "Please tell me you're having second thoughts about this newest obsession."

"Not a chance," Rory replied as her gaze met her stepfather's just as he chuckled and looked down at his shoes. "Not a chance."

THE END