Author's Note: Hello all, I just wanted to apologise for the lack of updates on WS. My computer crashed on Boxing Day and took out everything on it – including all versions of WS. It is by sheer miracle alone that I stumbled upon an old external hard drive of mine with a copy of WS on it. Unfortunately, this particular copy hasn't been updated since 2010.

The good – I now have almost all of the original WS content. The bad – all of the extensive editing – and I do mean extensive – that WS has undergone since 2010 is now officially lost forever. As such, updates will be sparse until I can get some kind of handle on all the editing and rewriting I have to do.


When it Snows

By TheBlueSwan


Chapter 1: Discontented


Wednesday September 8th 2004, Stars Hollow (Forester Residence) 7:21 p.m.

"Could you pass the gravy Barbie? I think you've hogged it long enough," Clara hissed and glared at the bottle blonde woman sitting in front of her.

"Clara!" Bella Forester scolded her daughter's deplorable table manners.

"What?" Clara glared at all seated at dinner table. "She has," the teenager said petulantly.

It was Sunday night, and the Foresters were all gathered around the dinner table sharing a family meal. Dean often wondered why Lindsay insisted they attend dinner at his parents every week. He loved his family as much as anyone else. However it wasn't as if the family dinners were an enjoyable affair. Clara had always despised Lindsay with a passion. Upon meeting Lindsay for the first time, his sister insisted that he should break up with the blonde bimbo. The situation only worsened as his relationship with Lindsay progressed. On the day of their wedding, Clara had thrown a fit, refusing to change out of her sweats and into her bridesmaid dress. Dean couldn't blame his sister. The peach dress, with all of its ruffles and its poufy sleeves, and its giant orange bow tacked at the front was truly awful.

When Dean had seen it for the first time, he had cringed at the sight, and felt rightfully sorry for his little sister. Lindsay, however, had simply smirked, and any attempt from Dean at convincing his fiancee to choose another dress had resulted in a fit. As such, he had ultimately decided to let Lindsay do as she wished, though he was quite certain that she had only chosen the dress in question in order to goad his sister. Clara had grumbled the entire morning of his wedding day. She had even snuck into his dressing room several times to try to talk him out of getting married.

Dean had never heard her cuss so much in his life.

Once it became apparent that the wedding party wouldn't be deterred, Clara became eerily quiet. They had honestly thought the teenager had tired herself out.

They should have known better.

A couple of hours prior to the wedding, Clara had seemingly disappeared. No one could find her. When it neared the time for the procession to start, and it became clear that Clara would not be returning, everyone simply concluded that his sister had decided to boycott the wedding.

Undeterred by this, the bride ordered that the wedding would go on as planned, minus her fourth bridesmaid. Looking back on it now, Dean couldn't help but believe that his wife hadn't been all that phased by Clara's disappearance. In fact, although he hadn't realised it at the time, Dean now knew that Lindsay had been quite pleased to find his sister missing from the wedding party.

Clara had re-emerged just as the bride was about to march out onto the aisle, startling Lindsay. Before his lovely bride to be managed to regain her wits and stop her, Clara had cut ahead of Lindsay and followed the bridesmaids to the altar.

The little devil had preened as she walked down the aisle in her designated peach dress, drawing the attention of all assembled. She had even given the audience a little twirl to emphasize the voluminous layers of ruffles and that horrid orange bow – as if anyone could miss them.

Despite how horrendous it had all seemed at the time, Dean couldn't help but be amused at his sister's antics that day.

She had dyed her hair purple, and wore purple make-up to match.

But the biggest insult, Dean supposed, had been that his sister had tie dyed the dress.

Purple splotches merged with the peach fabric and orange bow creating a nauseating effect. He didn't know how she had managed to pull it off in such a short amount of time, but he suspected that she had simply dumped the dye on, shoved the dress in the dryer and crossed her fingers. Not that he believed that his sister had been all too worried about how the dress would come out, given that making a show of herself had been her intention.

The horrified expression of all assembled that day would forever be branded in his mind. Miss. Patty had looked positively green at the sight his sister made, not to mention the big infuriated scowls the wedding party sported. Mrs. Lister had looked ready to strangle Clara if given the opportunity. And although most of the wedding party had managed to bite their lips and compose their features into a facsimile of joy as Lindsay stepped out onto the aisle, his bride had failed quite miserably on that score.

Lindsay walked down the aisle that day, murder gleaming in her eyes, and her mouth contorted into the ugliest scowl he had ever seen.

That scowl had deepened as she advanced down the aisle, her fury escalating as Lindsay realised that she was not the center of attention. Rather than basking in her beauty, as she herself had put it, the assembled congregation hadn't been quite able to tear their eyes away from the sight his sister had made.

Things had not gotten any better as the ceremony progressed. Although Clara had looked quite serene throughout the ceremony, his bride was less than joyful. Dean had attempted to regain control of the situation by resolutely ignoring his sister, but Lindsay had made the task more than a little bit difficult with her antics. As the priest went on about the sanctity and joy of marriage, Lindsay's pinched gaze had kept straying towards his sister, her face rearranging itself once more into the ferocious scowl which had made his bride look less than attractive.

In short, Lindsay had pretty much spent the entire ceremony scowling.

She hadn't even calmed down when they had been exchanging their vows. Instead, Lindsay had glared at Clara throughout most of the exchange. And his sister, the purple and peach monstrosity that she had been at the time, had simply returned his bride's hostile sneer with a victorious grin of her own.

The cheeky little brat had even winked a couple of times.

Needless to say, any chance that Clara and Lindsay had ever had of getting along shrivelled away and died that day.

Any reminder of the incident in question left Clara smirking and Lindsay in tears – tears of humiliation and utter fury.

On such occasions, his parents, mistaking Lindsay's tears as a manifestation of misery, would scold Clara quite heavily. Then they would sigh in dismay, the expression on their faces clearly displaying their greatest concern…

When did our mild mannered little angel turn into such a belligerent devil?

Although Dean knew it shouldn't, he just couldn't help but be amused by his sister's irreverent behavior as of late – even more so when his wife was on the receiving end.

The stunt Clara had pulled at their wedding turned out to be the most memorable part of that entire day.

The fact that he cherished his sister's antics much more than the sight of his bride in her wedding dress only served to give greater weight to his current discontent.

It served as proof, even before his night with Rory, that he should never have married Lindsay in the first place.

It also made him wish all the more that he had taken his sister's attempts at breaking up his wedding to heart.

If he had, he wouldn't be in the mess he was currently in. Married to one woman and pining for another.

But such wishes were pointless – especially in his case. Dean had known all along that he hadn't really been in love with Dean – that he would eventually regret marrying her. But he had been hurt over losing Rory, and in his grief, he had allowed himself to use Lindsay as a replacement of sorts. Prior to the whole Jessi debacle, Dean had contemplated asking Rory to marry him once she graduated from Chilton. He had set that notion aside quickly enough, knowing full well that Rory would want to go to college first. Though he was the type of guy who would marry right out of high school, Rory wasn't that type of girl. And in the aftermath of their break-up, marrying Lindsay had felt like a return to what was familiar. Rory had been the unobtainable, Lindsay the reality. Only as Dean returned to the familiar, moved forward in the path that he had always expected to take, he had still dreamed of Rory and what they could have had.

Dean had always known what he wanted. For him, Rory had always been it. But he had done everything he could to convince himself otherwise – and had achieved mild success. Though he had still loved Rory, he had managed to convince himself that marrying Lindsay was what was right for him. It was only now, however, that he began to realize that through his own carelessness and stupidity, he'd gotten in over his head, and he had no idea how to fix things. No matter how Dean played things out in his mind, someone would always get hurt. To add insult to injury, his relationship with Lindsay had been rocky since their wedding day. Lately, they had been getting into fights for no understandable reason. Sometimes it almost felt as if Lindsay was looking for a reason to fight, but he shrugged off the entire ridiculous notion.

Why would his wife purposely be looking to start a fight?

At the end of the day, none of these things changed the reality of his situation. He wanted a divorce, yet couldn't bring himself to vocalise his desire to Lindsay. And as awful as it may sound, his wife had little to do with his hesitance. She wasn't the reason he couldn't bring himself to file for divorce – his parents were. They loved Lindsay, and he had no idea how to extract himself from the situation without hurting them. They were both aware of the frequent fights his wife seemed keen on having. After all, he spent at least half the week sleeping over at their house. Despite this, his parents always encouraged him to patch things up with Lindsay and they would tell him that things would get better soon, that the first few years were the hardest.

Dean didn't want things to get better. He just wanted them to be over.


Wednesday September 8th 2004, Stars Hollow (Forester Residence) 8:21 p.m.

Clara Forester sat at the dinner table watching the little melodrama unfolding before her with satisfaction. She felt a tinge of guilt at watching her brother get his head bitten off by his airhead of a wife, but the emotion was squashed quickly enough when Clara remembered the dolt had willingly married the bitch.

Clara yelped and pulled back her leg from under the table. Defensively, she tucked it under her chair and looked at her parents.

They were glaring at her, no doubt taking issue with her pleased expression. Further examination revealed that her mother appeared quite pleased herself. It only took a moment for the teenager to realise that her own mother had kicked her under the table, and with all the eloquence of her youth, Clara harrumphed and scowled in retaliation.

Her father sighed at their antics and looked heavenwards in a plea for help.

"You never want to do anything Dean! I want to go out! Have fun! I'm nineteen years old Dean, but I am living like a little old maid because my husband can't seem to muster up any interest in doing any of the things I want to do!" Lindsay screeched, her harpy of a voice causing everyone else in the room to cringe at the sound.

Clara crossed her arms and glared at all who dared look at her. She just didn't understand why no one else seemed to see Lindsay for what she truly was – a spoiled, self-centered bitch.


Wednesday September 8th 2004, Stars Hollow (Dean & Lindsay's Apartment) 10:02 p.m.

Lindsay slammed the door to her small bathroom, scowling at the much too small, much too plain shower stall. She had wanted one of those nice ones, big enough for two, and adorned with decorative glass. She had also wanted a nice claw-foot bath, such as the one her parents owned. Instead, she had to settle for a stall barely big enough for herself, and a bathroom that was smaller than her closet back at home. Lindsay scoffed as she made her way to the outdated sink, and viciously turned the tap on. If Dean could simply get a move on and buy that damn townhouse for her, she could actually start living like a decent human being again!

It was bad enough that she was stuck in this damn apartment. You would think that Dean would understand her misery – but no. He seemed to think that the apartment was actually quite nice. Lindsay snorted – nice! By her standards, the place was positively decrepit. And Dean expected her to be happy living here, in this den full of vermin, with their cheerful little neighbors scurrying about underfoot. Honestly, ever since Lindsay had moved to Stars Hollow as a child, she'd always been of the persuasion that there had to be something contaminating the water supply, if only to explain the sheer oddity of the assembled population.

But worse of all, she was stuck in this damn apartment day in and day out, with nothing to do. Oh, she had entertained herself whilst her husband was gone away at work, but still. She shouldn't have had to entertain herself – Dean should have been the one doing so. He should be taking her out to nice restaurants for dancing and fun. He should be falling over himself, catering to her wishes. But no. It was always work, work, and work with Dean. And when he was home at a decent time, he never wanted to go anywhere, saying that he was too tired after having pulled a double shift.

Too tired…

As if!

Dean had never been too tired to spend time with that bastard Gilmore! Why was he too tired to spend time with his own wife?

Urgh!

The whole thing just made her so angry! And that little brat sister of his didn't help matters. Lindsay swore, if she could, she would pluck every little blonde strand of hair out of Clara's head and use them to strangle the girl to death. The little tramp, ruining her wedding the way she did! Why if daddy had been able to get his hands on the girl at the time, the little cunt would have lived to regret it. As it had been, all daddy could do was look on sourly as Mr. Forester simply grounded Clara for a couple of months. If she and Dean hadn't been just starting out life as bride and groom, daddy would have set Mr. Forester straight, and told him how to properly punish the bratty teenager. As it was, they decided to set the matter aside for the day, though the transgression in question had never been forgotten, nor would it ever be forgiven.

Lindsay shook her head, and turned to look at herself in the mirror above the sink. She needed to relax and get ready. She had spent the whole week at home, save for the family dinner she had shared with the Foresters earlier that evening. She had no intention of staying at the apartment any longer than absolutely necessary. Lindsay wanted to go out, have some fun and find someone to entertain her, since her husband couldn't be bothered to do so. As was the case more often than not after having spent the evening in the company of Clara Forester, she and Dean had had a fight, and he was spending the night at his parents' house as punishment for his latest infraction. Little did he know that all of those nights he spent at his parents, she spent elsewhere.


Thursday September 9th 2004, Stars Hollow (Gilmore Residence) 4:13 p.m.

Things weren't supposed to happen this way. This wasn't supposed to happen, at least not to her. How was she going to get through this? Better yet how was she going to tell her mother? Rory just knew her grandparents would hate her after this. Would her mother hate her too? She doubted she could bear it if it were ever to come to that. She never imagined a scenario that would make her mother hate her. Then again, she never imagined something like this would happen to her.

She had to tell her mom. The only problem was that she didn't want to tell her; she couldn't even bare to imagine the look on her mom's face when she told her the news. But, Rory had to tell her because she needed her mommy. Now more than she ever thought possible. If she could just get her mother to understand, then maybe things wouldn't be so bad. Maybe this could turn out to be good news. Well, at least in a faraway future... far, far away.

It had all begun innocently enough. She had started getting sick a few weeks into her European trip with grandma. Rory instantly attributed it to the flu or some bug she had caught along the way through all the different cities her grandma had brought her to. It was really not all that big of a deal. Nothing really worth worrying about and certainly nothing worth telling her grandma about. Thinking back now, Rory was glad she hadn't mentioned anything to her grandmother. Knowing Emily Gilmore, she would have been dragged to the nearest high end clinic in order to discover what disease ailed her. Rory cringed at the very thought of having only her grandmother present when the doctor would come in to announce the verdict. She sure as hell appreciated that she didn't have to go through that...It wasn't until mid-July that she noticed the weight gain. But she had written that off as the inescapable result of having indulged in all the rich European food her grandmother had treated her to throughout the summer. After all, fancy dishes were many things, but rarely were they calorie controlled…

Still even after Rory had noticed that her stomach was no longer as soft as it once had been, it took her a couple of weeks to bring herself to admit that she might just be…

She was pulled out of her musings rather abruptly when she heard the sound of her mother entering the house. They were supposed to go to Luke's and catch up on all the mother/daughter time that had been squandered away while she had visited Europe with her grandmother. Rory had a feeling that they weren't going to get to the dinner any time soon now though.

Taking a deep breath, she picked herself up from her seated position on the pink tiled floor of her bathroom, standing as confidently as she could. Turning around, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. It wouldn't do to tip her mother off too quickly, although, her mother was Lorelai Gilmore. Knowing when something was wrong in her daughter's life was one of her many gifts, annoying as it was sometimes.

Rory used the sleeve of her shirt in order to wipe away the tears, a difficult feat to accomplish considering the fact that there were more than a few tears still falling out of her clear blue eyes. Her eyes were puffy. Her nose was red and still running a bit. Not to mention the fact that her hair was in a state of disarray. All in all, she looked like a train wreck. It was official: her mother would know that something was wrong the second her eyes would set on her.

"Lucy I'm home!"

Suffice to say that her mother was a rather unique person, even though she did have some moments which the general populace could term normal.

Rory's eyes darted towards the locked door that kept the elder woman from entering the bathroom, before returning to the four objects laid out on the counter. She grabbed all four of them and shoved them into the pocket of her loose Yale hoodie. Slowly, she walked towards the white wooden door and exited the bathroom. To say that she felt as she was marching towards the firing squad would not be an understatement of any kind.

Her mother was in the kitchen, although what she was doing in there remained a mystery to Rory. It was a well-known fact that Lorelai Gilmore did not cook, just as well known as the fact that anything cooked by Lorelai could be classified as possibly lethal for a person stupid enough to ingest it. Rory hovered at the entrance of the kitchen, not sure if it would be best to wait or just get it over with quickly.

After hesitating a few seconds longer, Rory finally gathered enough courage to enter the kitchen and face her fate. "Hey mom."

Lorelai smiled. "There's my little groundhog. I was wondering where you were hiding."

Her mother had yet to turn around and look at her. For that Rory was grateful, it meant she could stall a little longer. "Nowhere in particular."

Her tone must have triggered something on Lorelai's radar, because suddenly her mother turned around and took in her dishevelled appearance. Without a word the eldest Gilmore made her way towards the dining table. Once she was seated, Lorelai patted the chair next to her, indicating that her daughter should sit down next to her. Dragging her feet towards her assigned chair, Rory mauled over how to give her mother the news.

"So," her mother began in a hesitant tone. "Why the sad face?"

She should answer... However, Rory couldn't seem to find the courage to speak up. And so she remained silent.

"Wow, I haven't seen you this sullen since you lost your copy of Oliver Twist when you were six," Lorelai attempted to tease.

Still, Rory remained silent.

"Look, honey I know you haven't exactly been sunshine and daisies the past few weeks, but, if you want me to help you're going to have to tell me what's wrong," her mother tried to cajole.

"I don't know how," Rory whispered.

Lorelai tensed, her brow furrowing. "Okay, then. I guess were playing twenty questions," she said, hoping to lighten her daughter's spirits.

Rory didn't answer; she only stared at her mother.

Lorelai, having a mind of her own took this as a sign to proceed. "Okay, let's see question number one. Does this have anything to do with what happened before you left for Europe?"

"Yes," Rory whispered.

Lorelai took the fact that her daughter had begun to respond as a good sign. "Does this maybe have anything to do with Dean?"

"Yes," Rory confirmed, her gaze steadily locked on the floor.

Lorelai paused, a slight sense of trepidation coming upon her. "Does this have anything to do with that letter you had me give him two weeks ago."

Rory shook her head no.

Her mother swallowed, her frown deepening. "Do you still love Dean?"

"Yes, but that has nothing to do with what's wrong right now," her mother gave her the all-knowing eyes and Rory conceded. "Okay, maybe a little. But, that's not the real problem right now."

"Then sweetie, what is this about? I'm starting to run out of questions and I still have no clue as to what is actually going on with you. Give me a hint will you?" Lorelai asked, cutting to the chase, nervous of Rory's behaviour.

Rory looked into the loving eyes of her mother and couldn't help but wonder if this would be the last time she ever saw them. She sure as hell knew that her mother would probably never look at her the same way ever again. Rory knew she couldn't do so either. Grasping at whatever courage she possessed Rory reached into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out one of the objects she had hidden there. Slowly she laid it out in front of her mother, making sure that the plus sign was clearly visible. She waited nervously for her mother to realize what this all meant.

Lorelai didn't disappoint, within seconds her eyes were widened, and her mouth dropped open in a silent oh. She reached for the slim positive pregnancy test with disbelief, and examined it closely before looking at her daughter sitting next to her. Rory didn't react, nor did she do anything. Her eyes still stared determinedly at the floor of their small kitchen.

Hesitantly, Lorelai spoke up. "Are you sure this is accurate... Because, you know, sometimes these things are wrong..."

Rory's hand reached into her sweatshirt once more. She placed all three items in front of her mother's gaze. All three were pregnancy tests, none of them were of the same brand, nor did they look similar. All three, however, were without a doubt positive.

Lorelai looked at her daughter. "Oh, Rory..."


Edited May 15 2017