Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, otherwise this would be happening onscreen.
A/N: To you, dear Ara :) With special thanks to NotThereNeverAround for her help in editing this :)
137 Shingle Hill Street
PROLOGUE
NEAR 137 SHINGLE HILL STR. West Haven, there is a small unpaved road that leads off the main street and then curves up towards the hill. People of West Haven never call this road anything different than Shingle. It ends blindly with a Georgian building set almost on top of the hill. This is Ashton. It's an orphanage.
1920, West Haven, Connecticut
PEOPLE OF WEST HAVEN thought themselves highly virtuous. They went to work every week day and to church every Sunday. They obeyed the law and respected all town rules. They cared about charity by means of donations and, of course, the annually held Spring festival, where all Ashton scholars were also welcome.
Anyway, it was always awkward when those kids came down from the hill. Not that people of West Haven were snobbish. God forbid. Still, it was obvious that those poor Ashton souls somehow didn't belong in a place like West Haven.
Missis Connolly, whose husband ran the only shop in town, once thought about the reason why people of West Haven didn't feel comfortable about Ashton.
'It's not that we don't like the kids. We love kids. And those poor creatures are no exception but... I think the building is to blame. Yes, definitely such a building doesn't belong here in Haven, with our mowed green lawns and white picket fences... A building like Ashton just doesn't belong here and this is the simple truth.'
Perhaps that was why the road to Ashton had adopted the name of the main street it started from. No one dared give it a name of its own. No one dared remind West Haven this road even existed. Because just like the place where it led, somehow it didn't belong.
I
1927, West Haven, Connecticut
SUN WAS HIGH above Jones Hill Road gas station.
Dean Forester wiped his hands in the cloth that hung from a long rusty nail down the side of the wooden door and lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the blazing sun as he watched the Rolls-Royce pull into the gas station.
A new car in West Haven. That didn't happen every day. In fact, it happened so rarely that it almost didn't happen at all. Haven was four kilometers down the road, but such cars didn't belong in a place like Haven. The guy was surely passing by.
Another rich moron on his way to the Big Apple. Looking for success, business, popularity... whatever.
Dean shook his head. They were all looking for something and ended up with nothing.
'Lost your way?' Dean asked as the stranger stepped out of the car. He was a young man in light beige suit and black shades. Gangster shades, Dean shook his head mentally. Neat.
He wiped his forehead with an oiled sleeve and waited the newcomer's approach.
'Been awhile, Dean,' the man said, taking his shades off.
Dean's jaw felt stiff, as if punched with memories seven years old.
'Jess?'
~Seven Years Ago~
AT THE BEGINNING OF 1920, Europe was an explosive barrel, still smoking with the ashes of millions of souls. The States had saved the day, entering the war under the lead of Progressive ideology. Life went on, a new age coming, and people woke up to life.
In Ashton Orphanage, West Haven, however, time had stopped.
One cold February afternoon in 1920, Missis Daughtry (who was Ashton's director at the time) announced that a new boy would be joining their company. The boy was the son of an Italian soldier and was born under the name of Jess Mariano.
Many kids joined the orphanage during those first months after the war. And Jess Mariano was just another war orphan. That's what Rory thought when she heard Missis Daughtry's announcement.
Rory was one of those kids who had no other memories than the ones they had acquired in Ashton. She was brought here the moment she was born, she had been told. Sometimes she even thought she was born here, in Ashton's big wooden foyer, appearing out of thin air.
Rory wasn't stupid, though. She knew, of course, children didn't appear out of thin air. In fact, Rory was the smartest girl in Ashton. She was sixteen and by now she had reread all books in Ashton's library. She anticipated Haven's Spring Festival each year, when she would go downtown and get some books. There were all these donations people from West Haven made, all those charity baskets, but why were there never any books in those baskets, Rory wondered. Why would people never assume that a child from Ashton would be more concerned about reading a book than about wearing a new pair of mittens?
Rory was one of those kids who had no second name because her parents left her in Ashton before she was old enough to remember it. Irony was, she thought, when children without families got family names. She had neither. And she found nothing disturbing in that. After the war, many children with family names started to come. And, strangely, they had family names but no families left. Rory found this sad. This Jess Mariano was one of those kids.
However, when Rory first saw Jess Mariano, she didn't find him sad. She found him interesting. When he entered Ashton's Common room for the first time, he put his stuff down, took a book out of his back pocket and sat on his old worn-out suitcase. And started to read. And to him, the rest of the world disappeared. Rory watched the scene mesmerized.
'Dean?'
'Yeah.'
'Who's this?'
'New kid. Jess something. Why?'
'Just asking.'
And that's how Rory and Jess met for the first time.
# # #
1920, West Haven, Connecticut
Ashton Orphanage
DEAN KEPT TRYING to make friends with Jess. No, not friends. He wanted to 'mingle', be 'buddy-buddy'. And there were two reasons for that.
The first one - Jess Mariano was intimidating. Kids in Ashton feared him. The few people in town who had met him feared him. Dean suspected even some of the teachers in Ashton feared him.
There was something... reckless about that boy - you never knew what to expect from him. Truth be told, Jess couldn't care less what was expected from him. Jess didn't do what was expected or what he was told. As if someone could tell him what to do, anyway. And it was always wiser to get on those guys' good side, as Dean's father said. 'Because you wouldn't dare stand in their way, it's much safer to follow them on theirs, my boy'. And Dean Forester was anything but reckless.
The second reason why Dean was trying to snake his way closer, was, of course, her. It was a chain reaction. Jess was close to Rory. So, Dean was trying to get close to Jess.
The only exciting thing in Dean Forester's life was his obsession with Rory. He had laid his eyes on her the moment he entered Ashton, three years ago. She would always keep her distance, though. She did so with everyone and Dean was no exception. Until that Jess kid appeared. He became quite the exception. Their connection was weird, almost mystical. Sometimes even creepy. Rory and Jess. Jess and Rory. Saying the name of one without adding the name of the other sounded wrong, somehow... incomplete.
In a strange way, Dean liked them. They were all those things he never dared to be. They were like the books they read - interesting, full of imagination... special.
Dean Forester had never been special. He was one of those kids who were always considered uninteresting. Like his good-for-nothing father, Dean feared that one day he would turn out owing a whole lot of money after gambling them away, and end up in jail. He feared that he would be someone weak and mediocre and... and bad. Or worse - a no one. Just like his father. How can you be someone if your father is no one, Dean wondered.
And it was the excitement he got out of his vague relation to Rory (ergo Jess) that distracted him from the memories of those years before Ashton when his mother got on a ship to Europe and his father told him that maybe it was better this way. But Rory and Jess were different. Because they had magic in their lives. Magic that Dean's life, as far as he knew, didn't have.
One day Dean approached Jess who was sitting in the shade of a maple tree in Ashton's yard, reading.
'We need to talk.'
'Piss off.'
'Jess, this you'll wanna hear.'
'Wanna bet?' Jess asked dismissively without tearing his eyes away from his book.
'Jess, a family's coming. Tomorrow morning. They're looking to foster a teenage girl.'
Jess' eyes froze on the page.
'Word goes they're set on Rory,' Dean added with a hinge of apprehension.
Jess kept silent for a while, but his thoughts were racing.
He didn't ask Dean if he was sure. Dean was always sure. He had been in the rumor mill ever since he entered Ashton, 'keeping himself informed' over a cup of tea with the teachers. Teachers, especially female teachers, liked Dean. He knew how to keep up appearances and how to pay a compliment. In Ashton, it seemed, both qualities were highly appreciated.
But let's get back to the present.
1927, West Haven, Connecticut (Present Time)
Jones Hill Road Gas Station
'She doesn't live here anymore, Jess.' Dean repeated sadly, knowingly. He had been half expecting Jess to come back for her one day. After all, he had said he would, hadn't he?
'Her grandparents showed up and took her. That was almost seven years ago.'
Jess' features expressed neither surprise nor disappointment. But Dean supposed they were there somewhere.
Of course, Jess couldn't have expected her to wait for him ceaselessly, rooted to the spot. Seven years. Quite some time. Many things could've happened for seven years. Many things did.
Dean let out a sigh and left the dirty cloth on top of a barrel.
'They showed up in Ashton on her eighteenth birthday and presented some papers, claiming she's their long lost granddaughter. Just like that.'
Jess' eyebrows furrowed. Long lost. Miraculously found. Grand Duchess of Russia fashion.
'Any idea where I can find her?' Jess looked to the side and swallowed, his eyes narrowing for a moment.
There, Dean thought. Disappointment. Apprehension. Of course they were there somewhere.
'Her grandparents live in Hartford. High class. Ask for the Gilmore Mansion.'
Jess nodded briefly. Then, after a short pause, started for the Rolls-Royce.
'Jess...' Dean's voice carried behind.
Jess turned.
'She...' Dean rubbed the back of his head, unsure of how to pick the right words. 'She's different now,' he finished carefully.
A beat.
Then Jess gave him another curt nod and opened the car door.
'Thanks, Dean.'
Dean's eyes followed the Rolls-Royce as it pulled out of the gas station and disappeared into dust down Jones Hill Main Road.
II
1927, Hartford, Connecticut
The Gilmore Mansion
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE PARTIES when music was loud (the Charleston, the hymn of the decade), boys were impatient to have fun and girls - to find a rich husband. More often than not, said boys and girls had nothing to actually say to each other. So they filled conversation gaps with dances and alcohol.
Rory Gilmore (after her grandparents took her from Ashton, almost seven years ago, they attached a family name to her because, as her grandmother said, she had a family now) was staring out of the french windows and into the garden. Her slender fingers were closed around the neck of another empty glass.
Then she saw him. For the first time, after all these years, she saw him again, and her heart stopped.
He was there, right in front of her.
The boy who always kept a smirk at the corner of his mouth and a shrug by the side of his shoulder. The boy who enjoyed reading even more than she did. The boy who argued about Dickens as fervently as he denied having read Austen's full collection two times in a row. The boy who let her lead him on to one of Ashton's attics one rainy afternoon and stared at her wide-eyed as she started slowly unbuttoning his shirt.
She remembered how still she was and how he was the one who shivered, how his hands trembled against her bare waist. She had always thought a girl was more nervous on such occasion. She remembered the look in his eyes as he opened them afterwards. The way he bit on the inside of his lip when they looked at the smudged blood stain over his worn shirt they had used as bedding.
'Why me?'
'What do you mean, why you?'
'What did you see in me?'
'Everything.'
One quiet May afternoon a couple of months later, they were sitting up on the hill and she told him she feared turning eighteen.
'Why?'
'Where are we gonna go from here? We've got nowhere to go to. No one waiting.'
'You've got me.'
'So I'll always be coming back to you?'
'Yeah. Something like that.'
Then she told him that story she had once read and imagined she had a grandmother who would read it to her goodnight. There were all those boys and girls up in Heaven who weren't born here on Earth yet, and were waiting to be descended. And each of them was given one wing, attached to the side of their backs, so, when they came here on Earth, each of them came with one wing only. So that no one would be able to fly alone, she finished. I will kiss you now, he whispered.
She also remembered her hand over the cold window when they took him away. The way she sped down the stairs and ran after the car until she was out of breath and her lungs started to hurt more than her heart.
'I don't wanna fly alone, Jess.'
'You won't.'
'I can't fly without you.'
'You won't have to. I'll come back for you, I promise.'
'No.'
'Rory. I promise.'
All of this, she remembered at once. It was not so much of a cascade of memories, but a surge - a wave that splashed over her and swallowed her whole. It was like adding a missing part in a puzzle, a lock inside her clicked and the world started making sense again.
Then she heard someone say 'How much did she have?' And her grandmother's anxious voice, 'I... I don't know. Oh my god, she... she never got so bad... please, please help her, doctor.'
She woke up the next day in a white room with big wooden windows with no curtains. When, later, a woman entered the room, carrying a small plastic cup and a bigger one, full of water, Rory asked where she was. The woman answered this was a hospital and there were some pills that would make her feel better.
It was a lot easier now that they were grown-ups, Rory thought a couple of weeks later, while sitting in her four-poster bed (the doctor had ordered that she rested more and took her pills on a regular basis).
When you were a kid and your parents were not around, everyone kept asking, 'Poor thing, dear, where are your parents, sweetheart?'.
When you were a grown up, no one asked about your parents anymore.
She liked to think that people were some kind of story characters. And what else could they be, when story characters were based on real people anyway...
For example, she thought that it would be funny if people's noses grew longer when they lied.
She imagined the length of people's noses according to the amount of untruths they said at her grandmother's parties. Emily's nose would be a sufficiently long one ('Isn't Jeremy such a lovely decent young fellow, dear? His father owns the biggest East Coast Petrol Fund and he really seems to like you...'). And then, nurse Eleanor's nose would quite impress, too. 'These pills will make you feel better, dear child. Here's your water, drink up.'
These pills would make her feel better. Funny. When they didn't, they would just change them for some other pills. Also intended to make her feel better. You'll feel better, sweetheart, I promise. How could this be true, when she knew there wasn't anything that could make her feel better? Well, maybe there was this one thing. But it was just a temporary mend, wasn't it?
She started seeking under her mattress until her fingers closed securely around the glass neck of a bottle.
III
1927, Hartford, Connecticut
The Gilmore Mansion
JESS LEANED BACK AGAINST the trunk of an old oak tree and lit a smoke. He watched as more cars steered into the driveway leading to the mansion.
The Gilmore Mansion was a building designed to impress. Three floors, four wings, countless rooms. The duly fountain with a naked statue in front. A small pond about half a mile away.
A soft gust of wind passed through the trees and he remembered another time, a time when he was sitting on a precipice with a girl who told him stories, an orphan home behind them and a dusk sky above their heads. He still heard the sound of leaves whispering her name, the hum of the breeze carrying it downhill and along the shore, accompanied by the distant lullaby of waves crashing against the cliffs.
His lips quivered around his smoke. He took a deep last drag before he crushed the fag against the bark.
'You've dressed up,' she lifted her eyebrows, amused.
Jess held a breath as he uttered the two syllables.
'Rory.'
After seven years, it was the first time he pronounced her name to actually address her. He'd been afraid he forgot how to. He hadn't.
'Yeah,' she smiled sheepishly, her eyes half shut.
They were in a study that overlooked the garden. In another part of the mansion, her grandfather was holding a 'business party' and Jess managed to sneak into the inner part unnoticed while her grandfather's 'business fellas' played cards and smoked cigars drinking illegal beverage from the speakeasy ten kilometers down the road.
Jess made a tentative step closer. She was sitting in a big baroque armchair, her feet were tucked under her and she looked slightly surreal in her feather-light chiffon dress. It embraced her slender frame and pooled in heaps at her ankles, forming a puffy blue-grey cloud.
Bare feet. Bare shoulders. Her outlines were almost palpable in the twilight. There was the distant echo of music in the background. A half open window behind her.
Like electricity, he could feel her presence in the air and it made his skin tingle.
His voice was hard to come and when it did, it was raspy.
'Hey.'
Her brows furrowed beautifully. For some unknown reason, an image popped up in his head - the image of a dark-caped figure sneaking through the open french window behind her to grab her. The arch-villain taking the damsel away.
He took another step closer. He wouldn't let her disappear this time.
'You remember me?' he tried. She couldn't have forgotten him... or could she?
Her smile grew wider. There was something wrong about her smile. He couldn't pinpoint what.
'Of course I remember you - this is the only way I remember you.'
He considered the structure of her reply rather weird but ignored the notion, saving his questions for a more proper time.
'There something wrong?' she asked, not really interested in the answer. She seemed uncharacteristically... careless.
'No, it's just...' he blinked in concentration and then let out a nervous chuckle. 'You don't seem surprised, I guess.'
'That's because I'm not, silly.'
He stayed rooted to the spot. Her cheeks had the slightest tinge of rose and she reminded him of one of those porcelain dolls with a constant glassy glow in their eyes.
'I knew I would see you,' she giggled. 'I wanted to see you,' she whispered conspiratorially and then giggled again.
She's different now. Dean was always sure, wasn't he? Jess took a breath,
'Rory, you're drunk.'
'Of course I am, silly. I told you - that's the only way I can still see you.'
There it was, Jess thought, the dark caped figure. He tried to swallow a sour lump in his throat.
'You're not real...' Rory sighed with a distant smile. 'I love you anyway. You're all I have left of him.'
She paused and then averted her eyes.
'The worst part comes when I wake up and I don't see you there. I have to lose him each time I wake up. Over and over.'
Blue turned deep under her lashes. And then, suddenly, she shook the mood off and was smiling again.
'But let's not talk about sad things now. Sadness makes me so blue. Come here.'
He obeyed in semi-trance. His steps were heavy. Muffled thuds against the soft carpet. He stopped right before her.
'Come closer. I wanna feel you.'
She reached forward and started unbuttoning his vest. He watched numbly, unable to move. She tucked his shirt out and undid a couple of buttons to slide one palm up and lay it flat against his chest.
Jess' throat felt tight.
'Your heart beats so fast,' she whispered, closing her eyes. 'So fast, like a bird's heart.'
She smiled, her eyes still closed. She slid a second hand under his shirt and his mouth started to feel sticky.
'Come here,' she encircled his waist and pulled him still closer. He made a reluctant step forward and froze as he felt her lips over his abs. She kissed once. Twice. Then pressed her cheek to his stomach, stroking the skin along his waistband with her thumbs.
'You're safe with me, scared bird,' she said soothingly. 'Don't fly away. I miss you each time you fly away. God, I miss you so damn much.'
Jess looked down at her for a long moment before he managed to step back. He knelt down in her feet and buried his face in her lap.
'It's okay,' her fingers curled up in his hair. 'It's okay,' she repeated and stroked his head.
Chiffon balled into his fists, but he let her smooth his hair.
'Jess... look at me.'
He lifted his head. His face wasn't giving any sign of emotion, but his voice box was moving. Up and down, telling what he'd never said out loud.
Rory sunk into soft brown and suddenly she was seventeen again and they were up on the hill and the wind was grazing their faces.
~Seven Years Ago,
Ashton Orphanage ~
'What are we gonna do?'
'I'll think of something, okay? Just don't do anything until I've figured it out.'
'Jess... what if they take me?'
'They won't.'
'And if they do?'
'They won't. Rory. Look at me - they won't.'
'We don't have time. I think I got an idea.'
###
'Who is responsible for this?' Mrs Daughtry's voice split the silence that hung above two rows of boys and girls, standing tall in Ashton's Dining Hall.
'Do you realize what could've happened? Someone could've died in that car...' she trailed off, pausing to take a breath and steady her voice. 'God is my witness - I have been patient with you, but this, this' she shook her head, 'is beyond any limits.'
'Mrs Daughtry, if you let me...' the policeman cut in, touching her shoulder. 'My name is Sergeant Stevens,' he introduced himself in a low, composed tone. A pro.
'Kids,' he addressed the two rows of Ashton scholars, giving them a long scrutinizing look.
'I know that, whoever did this,' he made an indefinite gesture towards them, 'didn't mean any harm. But,' he shook his head and let out a slightly emphatic sigh, 'there is this thing in life - when you do something, you have to stand up for what you did.'
Then suddenly his voice took on a spiteful vibe and his cold blue eyes flashed with a quick spark. He looked like one of those people who understood justice as some form of revenge. He looked... excited. A huntsman.
'We're gonna find out who did it,' he smiled humorlessly, his steel blue eyes inspecting the kids closely, 'One way or another. It's in your best interest to tell us by your own will.'
'I did it,' Jess stepped forward, his face dangerously pale.
'What?' Rory jumped in her place and stepped forward, too. 'That's a lie, I did it. I did it so I wouldn't be taken away by the foster family. I didn't mean to blow up the car, I swear, I just...'
'That's fuckin' nonsense,' Jess cut in, the look in his eyes blatant.
'Jess...' Rory looked back at him pointedly. Don't do this, her eyes said.
'I did it, everyone will confirm.'
'He didn't!' Rory's voice was desperate. 'He didn't, he even tried to stop me but I was so stupid. I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't make me go, that they wouldn't want me to... Don't you see - he's only saying this so he can protect me.'
'Enough, Rory,' Mrs Daughtry raised a hand to stop her rambling. 'Jess, follow me and Sergeant Stevens.'
###
'You have to take care of her now.'
Dean's hands were sweaty and he kept wiping them into his jeans.
'Jess...'
Jess took Dean by the shoulders and turned him towards himself, something between a warning shake and a gesture of trust.
'One day, I'll come back for her, but until then, it's you and her.'
'Jess, what's gonna happen to you now?'
Dean was scared. He couldn't figure out how Jess wasn't.
'I'm gonna stand a trial and most probably be sent to spend some time in a Juvenile Delinquent.'
'Jess...' Dean shook his head, refusing to believe.
'She has no one else now, Dean. You're all she's got.'
'O... okay.'
1927, Hartford, Connecticut (Present Time)
The Gilmore Mansion
Blue streamed in transparent salty streaks down her cheeks.
She watched him numbly, faint smile frozen over bitten lips, drops rolling steadily down as a vein became visible across her forehead. Her palm was still lightly touching his cheek, her head slightly bent to the side as she studied him.
Beats passed. Seconds. Minutes. How many, neither could tell.
The salty streams turned into thin wet streaks over milky skin and she was touching his face with only her fingertips.
Forehead. Eyelids. Nose, cheekbones, jaw. Lips. She was checking if he was real.
Then she drew back and swallowed. Allowed herself to blink. And slapped him, right across the face. Hard.
He winced but didn't move. His cheek started to color.
'What took you so long?' Rory asked shakily.
I'll come back for you, I promise.
Jess swallowed and looked down. He was gonna take it all. He'd deserved it, hadn't he?
A beat passed and both stood in silence.
'It hurt?' Rory breathed in.
He met her gaze openly in silent confirm. She licked a lip.
'Good,' she nodded and reached for his bright red cheek. He leaned into her touch.
'Never leave me again.'
She woke up this morning and he was there. Jess was back. She only prayed he'd be here to stay this time.
The Roaring Twenties.
A new age. A generation, marked by regrets. Stained with an incessant rush. Live more. Breathe less.
Girls, there's no time, you may become widows before you've had time to be anybody's wives. Boys, those lovely ladies won't be sitting around being young forever - you're heroes in the making, you don't even need a gun to prove it...
The Twenties roared. Crying out for attention. Screaming for life. Loud. So loud, it was deafening.
IV
HE KNOCKED ON the door frame. No answer.
Downstairs, her grandmother was giving a party and music carried as he slowly pushed the door open.
'Ror?' he stepped into her room reluctantly as his eyes searched for her. 'You here?'
Then he saw her, sprawled onto the floor next to the huge bed. She looked small. Minimalistically, childishly small. Hugging her knees and shaking.
At first he thought she was crying. She wasn't.
She was shivering. So hard her teeth were chattering. But she was not crying.
'Hey. Ror.' he knelt down next to her, trying to catch a glimpse of her face.
When he did, she watched him with wide eyes. She was sweating and when he pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, her skin was damp and cold.
He drew an inch back. He knew what this was. She wasn't upset. Nor feverish. She was abstinent.
It took him a moment before he clicked into gear and took his coat off to put around her.
'Come on, let's warm you up.'
He reached up behind her shoulder and dragged the bed cover off to put around her, too.
'I'll get you some water,' he rose, looking around.
Rory looked up at him with those wide lost eyes, lips pressed white.
Where were you?
Jess paused for a second. The look in her eyes was transfixed, a trace of insanity crossing dull blue.
...
Next time she opened her eyes, she was clutching onto his sleeves.
He had wrapped the bed cover around them both now, trying to conduct some of his own body warmth to her. His shirt was damp with her cold sweat.
Her eyes fluttered shut again.
...
'Ror.'
She shifted.
'You have to drink some water.'
She shook her head.
'Come on, Ror. I'm here.'
She started sobbing.
'I'm not going anywhere, I promise. I'm here.'
I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, he repeated like mantra and the words ricocheted in her head, trying to chase the past seven years away.
...
She woke up and the room was bright. She had no idea of time and day.
She blinked and squinted into the sunlight.
Then she sat up and looked around anxiously, remembering he had been there last time she woke.
Had she dreamed that, too?
She closed her eyes and opened them again. Nothing.
Something caught her eye. A white male shirt over the desk chair's back.
Slowly, she climbed off the bed and made a few unsteady steps.
The white cotton met her fingertips, slightly grazing her skin, swallowing the doubt. She closed her eyes.
Water was running in the bathroom.
When she stumbled in, Jess straightened up, squeezing the towel in both hands.
She paused at the door, staring at the bare-chested man in her bathroom. Dark-haired and well built, his trouser braces hung loose by his sides and he was holding a dry hand towel in both hands. His stubble was still damp and there were also miniature water drops edging at the ends of his lashes.
She didn't know this man.
She knew a boy, up in an attic. A boy who used to intimidate his peers but seemed to tremble at her girlish touch.
Logic said this boy had grown into that man.
Rory looked down and then to the side.
'Leave.'
He didn't move.
'Go. Away.'
Suddenly her voice was full of spite. He couldn't figure it out.
'Rory, what's going on?'
'I want you to leave,' she insisted coldly.
'Rory...'
'Just get the fuck out, okay?' she burst, glaring up at him.
He remained completely calm.
'Not before you answer me. What's going on?'
Her face was dangerously pale and her lower lip was quivering.
'When are you leaving?'
Jess' eyebrows furrowed.
'I'm not,' he answered simply.
They looked at each other in silent battle until her feet started to shake and she lost ground.
'I don't...' she breathed but trailed off.
She meant to tell him she didn't believe a word he said, she didn't want, didn't need him here, didn't remember, didn't feel anything about him anymore. But she couldn't finish the sentence. She stumbled, her feet failing her.
He caught her thin form and carried her back into the room.
When he put her onto the bed and leaned over her, she opened her eyes and her look was blank.
'You don't exist,' she whispered sadly and the room started spinning.
A trick of the mind. You're an unfinished book. An unsung song, you keep echoing in my mind, but the final notes are never there. Never were.
'I miss you every time I wake up,' she blinked and a plump teardrop rolled down her cheek.
Jess brushed it off with his thumb.
'It's real, Ror.'
'Stop it,' she hissed and pushed his hand away ardently.
He looked at his hand with a bitter smile, then rested it on the bed next to his thigh.
'I missed you too, you know?' he admitted quietly.
'No,' she shook her head violently and sat up in the bed, her eyes going wild again.
'Stop this,' she breathed out and the room started spinning faster. 'I have to keep some sanity, don't you understand? You have to leave. Please. Leave now, before it's too late.'
'Rory, what are you talking about?'
She laughed humorlessly.
'You're talking in my head, Jess. I don't know what's real anymore,' her voice was trembling with every word.
'You know what's real,' he insisted. 'This is real. I'm real. We're real.'
'Oh yeah?' she looked at him accusingly.
'Then, would you please tell me where - where have you been for the last seven years, Jess? How come you decide to appear just now? Or maybe you can explain to me, where the hell is everybody? Why are we alone in my bedroom, why hasn't any of the maids come to serve me breakfast, why hasn't disgusting nurse Eleanor come to feed me her magical pills, or where, where is Emily?'
Words came out fast, almost two at a time.
'She's my grandmother, you know?' she continued exasperatedly, trying desperately to pick up some remains of reality, 'She must've been here a hundred times by now, asking me if I'm feeling better, encouraging me to dress nicely and meet somebody's loaded son, then marry him and give birth to a million loaded snobby children. Or why, why hasn't anybody noticed that there is a half naked man in my room? You can't imagine the way voices carry in this damned house...'
She stopped her tirade to take in a choked breath.
'It's only been a day, Rory,' he said evenly and sighed defeated, turning to rest his elbows over his knees. 'Only one fucking day,' he put his head into his hands.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be waiting. He was supposed to come and find her and they were supposed to be happy. She wasn't supposed to be an alcoholic. He wasn't supposed to be helpless.
He didn't know what to do. How did you prove you exist? He couldn't get rid of that stupid image, the one of the thin black caped man with handlebar mustache and a top hat, the villain who took the girl away. How did he keep the girl? After seven years, how did he even know the girl?
That's ridiculous, he nudged himself. He knew her. And she knew him. She knew, knew, knew him, no matter how messed up she was right now. Rory and Jess. Jess and Rory. That's all it took. There was a time when that was all it took...
Rory was staring at his back, suddenly lost for words. She reached forward and touched his skin lightly, as if he was going to dissolve into thin air if she pressed any harder.
'You...' she swallowed, unable to finish.
Her eyes went blurry.
Mesmerized, she watched the tattoo that covered the right half of his back. A wing.
So that no one will be able to fly alone.
Jess realized what she was staring at and turned to face her. Their eyes met in silent surprise. Silent apology.
I'm sorry I made you wait for so long.
I'm sorry I told you to go away.
There was a knock on the door.
'Miss Gilmore...' a woman's voice said, 'It's Tanya, your grandmother sent me, are you awake? Miss Gilmore... Lunch is served.'
Suddenly Rory was laughing and it was a good-natured, bubbly sound. One that made Jess smile back.
She reached for him and her hands closed behind his neck. He held her - tentative at first but then, as if reminded that nothing lasts forever, he held her tighter. So tight she couldn't take deep breaths.
Right now, she didn't want to, anyhow. She only wanted this to be real.
V
'TRY THIS ONE,' she sat up in the grass.
'My heart's like an old house, abandoned years ago. It has no people left in it. Only a bunch of ghosts haunting the attics.'
He quirked an eyebrow in mock appreciation.
'Broody,' he smirked.
They were sitting in one of the gardens. This morning she had faked an excuse to miss breakfast and hurried to meet him by one of the west walls.
'Come on, your turn,' she bumped her shoulder in his and then lay back on her elbows.
He lay down in the grass and crossed both hands under his head.
'When they tell you not to do something,' he started, 'it's very important that, when you do it, you do it right. Echoes of what we didn't do are scaring one's mind away.'
Rory stared at him bluntly, then shook her head.
'It's not fair,' she dismissed, 'yours isn't lame enough.'
They had that game. They used to play it back in Ashton. They would start thinking of pseudo-wise memorable remarks, pretending they were one of those worldwide-famous politicians, poets, artists or whatsoever. Whoever made a wittier lame remark, won. It was cynical, they realized, but they had made it a habit of theirs and it was way too much fun to abandon.
'Sure it is lame enough.'
'No,' she shook her head. 'It isn't. It applies.'
Their eyes met in silent battle, and, like many other times, she won.
'Okay, then,' he let an exaggerated sigh and lifted to rest on his elbows, too. 'Try this one,' he narrowed his eyes, processing his next words. 'They paint Death like a woman. He sees Death with her face. His Death has her face. Every damn woman he meets has her face. And he knows he's well ready to die, eyes wide open.'
Rory smiled contently and lifted her chin, squinting in the sun.
'Could do,' she said lazily, knowing she was only teasing him. 'Creep,' she let a smirk of her own pull at the corners of her mouth.
Jess didn't object. A witty reply hung at the tip of his tongue, but he kept it at bay. Instead, he stared at her profile and the way her hair reflected the sun.
It was late afternoon and they were back in the house. She had led him on to the study where he had found her, two weeks ago.
'When are you gonna tell me about that lawyer thing?' Rory asked absently, flipping another page of her book.
Jess put Hemingway's Three Stories and Ten Poems back into its place on the massive bookshelf and gave her a sideways glance. She was sitting in that favorite armchair of hers, pretending to be caught up in her book ever since they came back into the house.
'There isn't much to tell,' he answered vaguely and there was only the sound of another page turning.
He was a lawyer now. It was what he did for a living. What else was there to tell?
'Is this what took you seven years?' she continued. She was cross-questioning him with the politeness of an impassive stranger. God, she was getting on his nerves and she perfectly knew it.
'It does take some time,' Jess answered pointedly, his hand feeling for the cigarette pack in his pocket. 'Mind if I smoke?'
She shrugged without caring to tear her eyes off the Emily Dickinson Anthology she was flipping through.
'So you wanted to become a lawyer before you came back,' she half-questioned, half-stated.
Jess closed his eyes, hung his head back and sighed, putting the cigarette pack back in his pocket. Of course she would ask questions. How could she not? It still felt awkward.
'I wanted to become someone before I came back for you,' he answered, stressing the words. 'I wanted to give us a chance for a life together. Whatever life you wanted, I wanted to be able to provide for it.'
'You had other women, Jess?'
His eyebrows quirked up. She had left the book on the coffee table and was facing him now.
'Excuse me?'
'Did you have sexual intercourse with other adult human females during that time apart, Jess?' she said directly to his face, without even wincing. So, she was in one of those moods.
Jess' eyes met hers and crystal blue stabbed him with a million pins and needles.
Can't you see? I don't know you anymore. You won't talk to me. I wanna know about you, why won't you talk to me?
'It's fine,' she shrugged. 'It doesn't matter anyway,' she lied, facing away.
She stared ahead for a while, but then stood up abruptly and jerked her head to the side.
'Why don't you tell me you'd never replace me? That each second you breathed, you missed sharing your breath with mine? That what we had, you can't ever have with anyone, anyone at all... that I fit you, I fit you in a way no one does... That...' she took a breath and let it out quickly, 'That I know you - even though you always keep things from me, I know you like no one else does... Why aren't you telling me all this?'
Jess was staring at her wordlessly.
'I hate you,' she hissed and trembled under the weight of her own words.
'You don't,' he shook his head and stepped closer.
'I hate you!' she cried out in a strangled voice, struggling with his arms as he put them around her, pulling her into an embrace.
'You love me,' he whispered, his breath brushing her ear. 'You love me, you love me, you love me,' he repeated soothingly, as she stopped fighting him.
She gasped for air and met him midway.
Kissing was not a matter of pleasure right now, it was pure necessity. And there they were - back in an old attic, she was unbuttoning his shirt, the muscles of his stomach tightened involuntarily as her thumbs trailed the skin under his waistband and air almost smelled like wet wood.
Without letting go of her face, he staggered backwards until his back hit the massive desk. Dress was brushed up above her knees and he climbed her on his waist, using the support of the desk behind him.
Her breath caught in her throat. Both of them stilled.
'You okay?' he asked hoarsely.
She gave him a short nod, biting her lip. Thoughts of where they were and the possibility of someone peering through the window were completely forgotten. Her heart was pounding wildly. Her ears buzzed and she knew her cheeks were burning. But she was okay.
He offered her a small smile as he lifted her hand to kiss the inside of her palm.
You love me. You love me, you love me, you love me.
The whole time in the world wouldn't change this single fact.
She felt a sudden shift within her chest, a burning need to cry, cry out loud, like a little girl, and she sought for something to hold on to.
Then she gripped at his shoulders and moved further onto him.
'Open your eyes,' she breathed out into his neck and his eyes opened.
Stay with me, her eyes pleaded.
He moved and the dusky room moved, too. She gasped for air. His eyes stayed locked with hers.
I'm not going anywhere.
Right at this moment, there was no one but them. Jess and Rory. Rory and Jess. No one else. Nothing else. The world washed away with each brush of his lips as seven years drowned in the blue of her eyes.
'Where were you?'
Her head was resting over his shoulder and his thumb was absentmindedly tracing lines under her left breast. They were in her room and it was getting dark outside. Soon the maid would come calling her for dinner.
'Huh?'
She looked up at him pointedly. His features tensed into stubborn silence. He was not telling her.
She shifted to sit up in the bed, dragging some of the sheet up with herself.
'I waited for you, you know?' she asked in a distant, bristly voice.
'When my grandparents showed at Ashton, I...'
She narrowed her eyes, reminded of that day. An October 8th, seven years ago. Her eighteenth birthday. The most awful day in her life. And all she remembered was a feeling of loss. Oh, and the drizzle, too. It was drizzling, the rain too light to produce actual sound against Ashton's old windows, but enough to get you soaked to the bone.
'I completely freaked,' she explained. 'What if you came back and I wasn't there? I was about to start dropping bread crumbles along the way from the backseat of the car.'
But she didn't, she remembered. She simply watched idly as Ashton was left further behind, the silly image of her crumbling along the way passing through her mind.
She winced and Jess watched adamantly. He didn't speak. He didn't move. She wasn't sure if he was actually breathing.
'I hate it when you won't speak,' she stated sadly and looked away.
He blinked. Once. Twice. Not a word still. He was not telling her.
He watched as her eyes clouded. He hated that her eyes would cloud like that. And as silence clouded up into her eyes, replacing forgiveness, blue got colder. He was not telling her, though. There was no way in hell he was telling her. Ever.
It wasn't his fault, though. He wanted her to somehow know that much. But if she did, she'd have to know everything. And there was no way he was telling her. Because if she did know everything, she'd feel guilty and she'd never forgive herself. He knew better.
~Seven Years Ago~
'All rise,' the judge began after taking his place behind the tribune.
'Mister Mariano,' he turned towards Jess, his pale blue eyes aiming directly at Jess', 'the jury has found you guilty of deliberate arson. The court has come to the decision that you will see the inside of a prison for six months, counted from today on...'
Jess' mind blurred, the word prison playing over and over on the background, accompanied by his layer's 'Objection, Your Honor, he's only turned eighteen during the trial, he should be attending a Juvenile Delinquent and not a correctional facility with older inmates...'
Back then, he didn't know that six months would turn into eighteen, once he tried to escape and was caught mid-run on his way.
'I have to go back! You don't understand, I promised...'
It was an October 8th. It was raining and he got all soaked, salty streaks merging with the cold raindrops down his face. He had to be sweating, he thought, or that would be the first fucking time in his life he'd be crying.
It wasn't her fault either, he thought.
He had spent an year and a half in there. That's where he got the tattoo. His roommate was a forger ('You dunno shit, bro, I'm an artist, ya know? One day I'll repaint the Sistine Chapel all over.')
At the end of his first year, Jess got into a fight with another inmate and got stabbed in the back. ('Shit, bro, your wing is bleeding.') Twelve months turned into eighteen.
It wasn't her fault. But she'd blame it on herself, he knew. And he didn't think she'd ever truly forgive herself. So, there was no way in hell he was telling her.
~Seven Years Ago,
Ashton Orphanage~
'Roots,' she said strangely, while running her hand down the bark of an old oak tree in Ashton's backyard.
'Huh?'
'It's good to have roots,' she explained calmly.
'Oh.'
'You and me,' she said then, looking up at him, 'we never had roots.'
Jess' eyebrows rose.
Rory offered him a shy grin before sliding her hand over to his and entwining their fingers.
'We do now.'
He stood still, staring at their intertwined fingers.
Present Time
'Rory.'
She kept staring at the side table, standing perfectly still.
Jess let a breath out through his nose and stepped closer.
'You know,' she said in semi-trance, 'I just like that this Rory feels so imperfect, compared to the one before.'
His eyes moved from her profile to the bottle on the side table.
'The more I tried to look perfect for them,' she motioned towards the window overlooking her grandparents' garden, 'the more rotten I felt inside. A ragged Rory just feels so... true.'
'That's bullshit, Ror,' Jess huffed. 'This...' he made an indefinite gesture with his hand towards the bottle on the table. 'This isn't you.'
She lifted her eyes to meet his. There was a broken glitter of blue, her former naivety dulled by the shadow of self doubt.
'I tried to be me without you,' she confessed. 'I failed.'
She hadn't given up on him, he realized. She'd given up on herself.
'Can you walk?' he looked at her.
She looked back, bemused by his sudden determination.
'I think so.'
'Come on, we have to go some place.'
BACK TO WHERE it all began. Back to the place where all winds changed direction.
The old stone wall was covered in ivy, the engraved letters almost lost beneath. The yard was overgrown, the path sleeping for years under rustling knee-high grass. No one lived here anymore. The building had been taken by the state a few years ago, intended to be turned into a golf center. The plans lay unfinished for a year before the government labeled the project frozen.
Ashton. A sleeping giant, a grumpy old man left by his family, his face somehow somber and stubbly, yet familiar now, after all those years, bringing up memories of a previous life.
Jess looked around, seeing the past as if it was happening now. Was he too late? He would spend the rest of his life trying to prove that he wasn't, wasn't too late.
He turned to look at her. Sun was setting down behind the hill and he caught a glimpse of light, reflected in her eyes. There was still light in her eyes.
'Jess...' she uttered, 'I feel a bit weak.'
'Just hold on to me then,' he said and took a firmer grip round her arm, supporting her. 'We're gonna be okay.'
They started walking towards the hill.
EPILOGUE
NEAR 137 SHINGLE HILL STR. West Haven, there is a small unpaved road that leads off the main street and then curves up towards the hill. People of West Haven never call this road anything different than Shingle. It ends blindly with a Georgian building set almost on top of the hill. This is Ashton. It used to be an orphanage between the two world wars, but then the building was abandoned to never be reconstructed again. Some tragedy took place not far away and ever since, word is the house has been haunted. There was that couple - a young Hartford aristocrat and her lover who tried to run away together. However, on their way out of the mansion, they got caught by the girl's grandfather. There was a scene and then the old man shot the boy with his hunting gun. Overcome with grief, the girl put an end to her own life shortly after. Local people say that sometimes the two youths can still be seen up on the hill, walking hand in hand, talking.