A/N: I haveno idea why I'm writing this. I'm usually into the fluff, but this idea came into my head today and I was procrastinating from my English homework, so I wrote it.

Warning: Character death...

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

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Year: 2025

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I had always been jealous of the relationship my older sister had with Mom. They weren't mother and daughter, they were best friends. Mom's eyes would light up and she would get this big smile, no matter what her previous mood was, whenever Rory showed up. I never understood why I couldn't have that too. Why wasn't Lorelai my friend?

Don't get me wrong, she was a great mother. She provided me with everything I needed and more. But that's where it stopped. We never had that special connection that she has with Rory.

I could never come up with any explanation why. It seemed that Rory and I were born under similar circumstances, at least as far as I knew. I had no father to help raise me, but neither did Rory. We even had the same name! (Although mine was shortened to Ellie.) Then there was the fact that she already had money when she had me—but that should have made things better, right? Then she didn't have to work so hard. The only obvious difference I could find was in her age. She and Rory are only sixteen years apart… but why should that matter? It's not like either of them actually act their own age anyway.

So what was the problem? Why couldn't my mother love me that way? I could always see it in her eyes that she was holding back. What was it keeping her from letting me in?

.0.0.0.

By my seventeenth birthday, I had had enough. I wanted answers, but I couldn't very well go to Mom. How do you ask you mother why she doesn't love you? Especially since I know that's not true. I know she loves me… but just not as much as I would like.

Rory was my only option.

I stuck a note to the refrigerator with a Betty Boop magnet, grabbed my coat, and headed out the door.

Not wanting to be too far away from mom and me (but mostly mom), Rory and her husband lived in Stars Hollow too. I had a feeling that if I hadn't been in her old bedroom, mom would have insisted they lived there with her.

Nervous, and trying desperately to think of what I would say, I knocked gently on her door. Almost immediately, it swung open, startling me just a bit.

"Ellie. Hi." Rory said, curiosity etched into her features. I nodded back at her and stepped through the door, which she had pulled further open as a silent invitation.

"So, not that I'm not thrilled to see you," she began, "but what—?"

"I need to talk to you."

"Um… okay. Do you want to sit down?"

"That would probably be best."

Rory led me over to her living room, where I sat down on her couch and she sat across from me in her lazy-boy chair. I rested my head on the arm of the chair and stretched out my legs, suddenly aware of the fact that I must look like a patient talking to their shrink.

"So, what's this about?"

"I want to know why." I said simply, positive that she would understand what I meant. She was smart right? At least, that's what everyone kept telling me—though it didn't seem that way from the confusion she was suddenly displaying.

"Why what? I'm sorry, have I done something?"

"No, I think I have. And I think you know what it is."

Rory sat in silence, clearly still unaware of what exactly I was saying.

"I'm sorry. I really don't understand."

I just stared at her for a while, trying to get the words to come. I had never said what I knew to be true out loud before. This was a lot more difficult than I had expected.

"Why… why doesn't she love me like she loves you?"

Realization finally dawned on her face, before she frowned and got out of her chair, making her way over to the couch.

"Oh, honey." She put her arms around me, and tears began to fall silently down my face. I dared not make a noise, wanting to hear everything Rory had to say. "It's not that she doesn't love you as much. She loves you. She just hates that you remind her. Everyday, every time she looks at you, she has to see him."

"Who? My father?" I didn't know much about my dad. No one ever told me, and whenever I tried to bring the subject up, whoever I was talking to would get this really pained look and not-so-subtly change the topic. "Was he that bad?" I was afraid of her answer. Oh, god! What if I had been a rape-child? How had that never occurred to me before? It would make so much sense. If he had been this terrible person, would I grow up to be like him?

But my fearful thoughts were interrupted by Rory as she began to slowly rub my back in comfort and support, and she spoke again. "No. He was that good."

Now I was the one who was confused. "What do you mean?"

And so she told me:

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Year: 2008

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"Oh god! Holy fucking hell! It hurts." Lorelai shouted as she was wheeled down the hallways of the Hartford Hospital. "Please, Rory, make it stop."

"Shhh, mom." Rory tried in vain to comfort her very hormonal mother. "It'll all be over soon."

"No!" Her mother protested. "It can't be over soon! Luke's not here yet."

Rory sighed. "I know mom. He'll be here soon though. You know he'll get here as fast as he can. He's been waiting for this day since the moment he saw you"

"Do you think so?"

"Or at least, from the moment he saw me. Once he knew you bore such wonderful children, he knew he just had to have one." Rory joked, trying to keep her mother's mind away from the fact that her husband was quite possibly going to miss the birth of their first child. She had called him a half hour before, but he had been doing… some sort of diner business. Rory had sort of blocked that part out.

The nurse stopped outside of an empty room. She turned to Rory and asked "Are you going in with her?"

Rory glanced down at Lorelai, and frowned for a moment. "Only until Luke gets here."

The nurse nodded and rolled the pregnant woman into the room, getting her situated on the plain white hospital bed.

"She can't come out, yet, Rory! She's got to wait!"

"I don't think it works like that, mom. Besides, she's almost three weeks overdue. She's gonna have to come out eventually."

Lorelai sighed in defeat, before promptly letting out another earth-shattering screech.

"Jesus fucking Christ! Shit, Rory, how did I forget that it huts this much?" Rory grabbed her mother's hand and told her to squeeze through the pain. Pretty soon, her fingers were purple. But she didn't mind. Any pain she could take away from her mom right now was worth it.

'C'mon Luke.' Rory fell back to her last resort: telepathy. 'Hurry up, and get here! Mom needs you. You don't want to miss this.' She knew obviously that that would never work, but it helped ease her own mind, anyway.

.0.0.0.

Many hours and much swearing later, Lorelai Gilmore-Danes held in her arms one of the two most beautiful baby girls she had ever seen in her life. She smiled tiredly down at her second child as she ran a hand over her almost-bald head.

Rory smiled too, thrilled to have her first sibling. Well, second if she counted Gigi, but she didn't. "So, what's my little sister's name?"

The smile fell from Lorelai's face. "We haven't come up with a name yet. Luke said we'd know when we first saw her, but he's not here yet. She'll have to wait a while more to get a name."

"So, no Lorelai IV?" Rory joked.

Lorelai laughed a little. "No. I don't have to be feminist now. I've gut the husband to love and support me."

Rory smiled. "Don't worry, mom." She said, knowing what Lorelai was thinking. "He'll be here."

"I know he will, hon. I just wished he hadn't missed the birth. It would have been nice to have someone to blame."

"You had me."

"You're amazing, but you did not get me pregnant."

"True." Rory agreed with a slightly disturbed look on her face. "Hey, let's turn on the TV until he gets here, okay?"

"Alright." Lorelai picked up the remote and began flipping through the channels, stopping on the news.

"Woah. What is this?" Rory asked.

"What?"

"The news? What about your hands?"

"You hands can't turn black from the television."

"I hate to break it to you mom, but they don't actually turn black from the newspaper either."

Lorelai just gave her daughter a 'duh' look, before explaining that she watched the news sometimes with Luke.

"Man, that looks like some accident." She said turning back to the screen in front of her.

"Yeah." Rory agreed, before her eyes grew to twice their normal size. "Oh my god! Is that…"

She couldn't finish her sentence, turning to her mother who had begun breathing at an unusually fast pace.

"Mom! Mom, calm down. I'm sure that's not Luke."

"B-but that looks just like his truck! Except that the last time I s-saw it, his truck wasn't bent that way."

"Why don't I go make some calls and find out? Would that make you feel better?"

"I don't know. It depends on what your answer is."

Rory left the room and left her mother lying helplessly on the bed, clutching her newborn child against her heart.

Fifteen minutes later, Rory stepped back through the door, tears streaming down her face. As soon as Lorelai saw her she started sobbing, her chest heaving with the power of her emotion. The baby too woke up from its peaceful sleep and started to wail, unaware of the situation and only knowing that her previously gentle resting place was now moving almost violently.

A nurse came in to take the baby back to the nursery, leaving the two mourning women alone to their grief.

"Oh, god." Lorelai mumbled into her daughters hair as they sat huddled together on the small bed. "If only I had gone into labor sooner. Or later. Any other time! Just a minute of difference and he'd still be with us."

Rory just sniffled in response, hugging her mother tighter.

"I guess..." Lorelai whispered desolately, "I guess she will be Lorelai Gilmore IV after all."

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Year: 2025

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I sat in shock. My mother and father had been married? I had always assumed that I too had been born out of wedlock. In fact, I didn't know my mother had ever been married.

More important, was that fact that I, however inadvertent it may have been, was essentially the cause of my father's death. Rory saw what I was thinking and jumped right in.

"Oh, Ellie. She never thought it was your fault. She just misses him so much, and you are so much like him. I think she'll always be hurting from this, and it's just that every time she looks into your eyes, she sees his. She loves you though. She loves you very much. You're all she has left of him."

No matter what Rory said, I felt it somehow. Everything was suddenly clear. Everything but what I should do. How was I supposed to deal with this knowledge? I guess it's true when they say ignorance is bliss. How are you supposed to go through life, knowing that part of your mother, even if it is a very, very small part of her, blames you for taking away the only man she's ever truly loved?