Author: Sunday Rain

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: Second season.

Disclaimer: Don't own the characters… 'Scept for Mary and Regina…

Summary: Rory has to deal with her past, while Tristan has to deal with the present.

Better Days

Prologue

Tristan Dugray, winced slightly as an expensive wine flute flew past his head and crashed into the wall behind him. The handsome, young man and the heir of a vast multimillion company felt small and helpless as he watched his angry fiancée Regina Brown interrupt his once idyllic dinner.

"Damn you, Tristan!" Another expensive dinner plate smashed into pieces near his feet. Regina's beautiful blue eyes were stormy and filled with hate and pain as she gazed at him.

"Regina, stop it!" Tristan pleaded. He reached out to her, but she recoiled away from him.

"Don't you fucking touch me!" Regina snapped back. "I'm so fucking tired of this… Of—of you… of the life that you and I have been forced to make because of one fucking mistake!"

"How can you even say that?" Tristan shouted, he was tired of keeping everything inside. Everything Regina had just said to him hit a cord and he exploded. "I thought you said you loved me. I thought you wanted to be with me… I thought, I thought you loved us! What we had, you said it was perfect… I wanted to please you so bad…"

Regina glared at him from the other side of the dining room table. "Don't you fucking play the fucking victim with me, asshole!" But Tristan ignored her and went on with his tirade.

"…I thought I loved you. I'm sorry if Mary was a mistake for you, but she isn't a mistake for me. Now, I love her—I love our daughter and I'm sorry that we ended up…like…" he gestured across the table, "like this, but if you really are unhappy, why don't you just leave? The door is open, I never forced you to stay."

Regina gave a frustrated cry, threw another Ming vase at him, and disappeared from the room in a whiff of Chanel No. 5. Tristan watched her slender figure slam the door behind her.

Suddenly it hit him what he had just done. "Goddamnit!" He slammed his hand on the table. God, Regina, that woman… She just… She drove him crazy. And she'd ruined his life. And she'd walked away from it unscathed to. Just another rich bitch and her ego. So they had a child together and she didn't want it, but no sane woman would just walk away from her own child. Tristan didn't particularly care about the fact she left him, they all did, eventually, after the money and the sex waned or got boring and usual… But this was her own daughter. Their daughter. And so his daughter would grow up without a mother. He felt a horrible sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach. What had he done?

"Damnit, she's awake again…" Tristan sighed, as a loud wail echoed the shatter of the vase on the floor.

Tristan sighed and leaned his head against the wall. His head throbbed with pain. What he wouldn't give for something to hit him hard on the head and take him away from the pain… But no, he could never do that… He headed for the source of the wailing.

His life may have just fallen apart from under his feet those last few moments, but he still could not give up. He had his Mary to think of and care for.

He walked into his Mary's room and looked down at the beautiful creature that was his entire life. Though her small, tiny face was scrunched up and filled with tears, she still managed to touch his heart. Tufts of blonde hair stuck straight up from her head, and she looked so clownlike, innocent and adorable that even when his heart hurt after what her mother had done to him, he still managed to smile proudly at her.

"Shhh… shhh…" He reached in and picked up Mary's tiny body and held her to his chest tightly. "Mary, my sweet, darling Mary. Don't cry, baby girl, don't cry…" He kissed her forehead and he lifted her up to him so he could look in her eyes. What he saw, the innocence there caused him to break down and he began to cry.

"I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry that your mommy has to go… I'm sorry that its just going to be me and you, but I promise you that I will devote my entire life to making you happy, I will take good care of you, Mary, and everything is going to be just fine… I promise."

Tristan looked down at his daughter and saw that she was sleeping peacefully in the crook of his arm. He smiled, he didn't feel so awful anymore.