Disclaimer: Rory, Lorelai, and all other recognizable Gilmore Girls characters belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions, the WB, etc. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: It's the first time she looks down in Rory's crib and hates her when Lorelai realizes she needs to leave, needs to run far, far away, because this is one type of hate she's never wanted to experience.
Bonds
by Potterworm
Lorelai is staring down at Rory in her crib when she feels this outburst of emotion burrowing in her stomach. It makes its way through the perfectly cooked lamb she's just eaten for dinner and scuttles around through her veins. The electricity of it crackles through her shoulders as she rolls them and her hands as she lifts her tear-streaked face from them.
Rory's baby face is calm as she sleeps. Lorelai stares at her and the burst of realization as to what she's feeling hits her. She hates her, hates this baby who's done nothing but be born to (the wrong) parents almost a decade earlier than she should've been.
This jolt of emotion surprises Lorelai. It's not as though she's never hated before, because, hello, major disappointment, party of one, but still, this isn't a type of hate she's expected to experience.
Hating herself - that something she's understood ever since she stared in her bedroom mirror and realized why she didn't fit into her clothes anymore. (And she felt all that self-confidence bolstered with zany references shatter just for an instant.)
And hating her parents, well, she's walked that walk, sung that song. Now though, with the maturity of someone who knows a little bit better, Lorelai realizes that she never really hated them until that day she sat down at the dining room table and told them she was joining their elite little parental club now, and wasn't that cool, because clubs always had cute little matching jackets, and all clubs were better once she became a member. They planned her marriage and future and wrapped it up with ribbon and bows before the week was over.
She's hated - hated herself, hated them, and hated the world, because Christopher wasn't going to college or traveling Europe, but everyone still blamed her, would always blame her, forever and ever, for his wasted future. They all seemed to forget that she hadn't married him so he would able to have one. (Because that was the only thing she, Straub, and Francine had ever agreed on; that both of their futures needn't be put on pause.)
Rory baby-babbles in her sleep for a moment, jolting Lorelai from her path down memory lane, and she stares at her child for a minute, then two, then twenty. She's just spent the night eating an early dinner with her parents. For almost a year, ever since Rory was born, Lorelai's spent dinner eating fancy-foods and drinking club soda that sink to the bottom of her stomach along with all those accusatory expectations.
Rory used to eat dinner next to Lorelai. She was a buffer at a month old, because, somehow, Emily talking about her wasted future was easier to tune out when she was feeding Rory some strained vegetables.
A month or so ago though, her parents hired a live-in nanny without consulting her. Rory doesn't eat dinner with them anymore.
Tonight, Lorelai sat with her parents and actually ate her dinner, and there was no buffer, so every crack at her emotional wall hit hard, crumbling bits of her. Because, really, what kind of person was a single mother at seventeen? She would never have a career, never have a husband (not now that she had turned Christopher down.) Her parents didn't say those words, but they talked about things at the D.A.R. and newspaper scandals, and somehow, it always came back to Lorelai. Because when they talked about that scandalous unmarried woman who lived a few blocks over, Lorelai knew what they were insinuating. (She may not have gotten her G.E.D. yet, but she wasn't stupid, no matter what they thought.)
Their insinuations and accusations were nothing new… but at this dinner, for the first time, she didn't speak up. She ate her lamb, drank her club soda, and said nothing, even when they stopped the mere insinuations and started in on her. Round and round they went. "What are you going to do with your life now, Lorelai? You won't marry Christopher, so are you just going to live here forever? Why aren't you eating your food? Don't you sneer at the table, young lady! I heard Rory crying last night; why didn't you quiet her?" (A good mother would've quieted her went unsaid, but not unheard.)
Never mind that Lorelai had plans to get a G.E.D. Never mind that she planned to move eventually and that they'd kill her if she left before she was eighteen. Never mind that she was eating, not sneering. Never mind that it was the nanny's job to quiet Rory and that they would have scolded her for getting up to care (care, not quiet - she was a baby, not a pet) for Rory.
Normally she would've defended herself as they attacked her, but instead she ate her meal silently ("And why aren't you answering your mother's questions? These are valid concerns, Lorelai. This isn't a game.") and excused herself. She stalked to her room and slammed her door while her parents left for some function, and she thought about how little they understood her and how much she hated them. Then she looked in the mirror and saw herself staring back in ten years, stuck in a time warp she never really saw coming.
Then she looked down at Rory and hated her, because this wasn't how her life was supposed to turn out. She is supposed to have dream and plans, and her parents aren't supposed to be able to break her, but they are. She feels herself breaking everyday. The arguments aren't fun anymore; the accusations physically hurt her now. And every time they imply she's a bad mother, she doesn't speak up, because she's starting to wonder if it's true.
Now Lorelai looks at Rory, and the hate is fading. She knows none of this is Rory's fault. Lorelai walks away from the crib and sits in the rocking chair in the corner. She rocks back and forth to the beat of a lullaby.
The hatred's gone, but Lorelai can already see where its residue will lead her. She'll be this cold outline of the person she used to be, and she'll be at the dinner table across from a husband she doesn't love, both of them telling Rory she'll never be good enough. Rory will push her food around in circles for an hour, excuse herself, and climb out the window, shimmy down the drainpipe, and hop into her best friend's car. She'll never look back.
Lorelai is shuffling through Rory's things before she has time to burst into tears again. Baby blouses and future-socialite dresses wrinkle as she paws through everything. Suddenly, Lorelai's in her room grabbing a duffle bag from her closet. An entire drawer of Rory's things are packed before Lorelai has time to think.
When she does, her whole body freezes in horror. ("What kind of mother can you possibly be? You're a child, Lorelai. An impulsive child.") She unpacks the items slowly, puts the duffle bag away, and stops thinking about where she'll sleep tonight.
Lorelai slows and thinks, because she has to; she can't just run away without thinking. She may have been impulsive once, but she won't be now, not about this.
Rory makes a baby-sound in her sleep. The tear-tracks on Lorelai's cheeks are fading.
Her thoughts are running faster than her mouth ever has. People will say she's selfish, that she's taking her child away from money and security in a fit of teenage rebellion. People will look down on her, hate her as they have for a long, long time.
She won't be running because she hates her parents though. She'll be running because she finally understands how they became who they are.
She can't change what people will think, but this is something she can change, another mistake she can stop before it happens. It'd be easy to stay here with money and pretty things, but she can't do it. She reaches down and tousles Rory's hair. It's a bond she feels now, the bond of a mother and a child, and it's one that she doesn't want to break.
An hour after having entered Rory's room in a fit of teenage angst, Lorelai walks out a mother with the knowledge and forewarning of someone who knows the path easiest to walk and that she never can take it.
Two months later, Lorelai snaps the bonds with her own parents like a rubber band pulled too far, so she won't be doing the same with Rory sixteen years from now.
Author's Note: This is my second Gilmore Girls story. Hope you enjoyed it. I would love to know what you all think, so please review.