Winning is Losing Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Not mine.

AN: A multi-chap. From me. I'm incredibly anxious about this. *meep*

This chapter will center on Lorelai and Emily.

I hate stories that don't obey my orders. Thank you for your patience and kindness.

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Lorelai leaned heavily on the frame of the door to the Gilmore mansion. The cars in the driveway told her it was her mother's afternoon to host something. It didn't matter what. DAR, garden club, hospital committee, Greater Hartford Area Rich Women Society, it all blurred together for her. The same thirty women, rotating from one club or committee or society to another, and back, vying for position and jockeying for bragging rights on whose events were the most successful.

Bleeding though she was, Lorelai risked the sharks. This once, she was going to be unashamed, and admit the truth.

A maid opened the door, saying, "Mrs. Gilmore is busy and cannot…"

"Tell her I need my mom," said Lorelai.

The maid left the door gaping wide. A maw, mused Lorelai. The mouth of a beast that chewed on her and gnawed at her, and yet, here she stood.

Emily bustled into view, the clack of her high heels punctuating her irritation. "For heaven's sake, Dominique, you never leave the… Lorelai?"

"I need my mom," said Lorelai again, and burst into tears.

Mouth hanging open, her mother stared at her.

"I'm sorry, you're busy, I'll go," mumbled Lorelai, and turned, trying not to scuff the soles of her worn canvas Keds. The noise had always irked her mother.

Behind her, she heard, "Dominique, tell the ladies to relocate, there is a family emergency. Then bring tea to the patio. Lorelai, come with me."

"Please, Mom, don't yell, please?" begged Lorelai, stifling sobs as Emily snatched her by the elbow. "Please, I know I didn't call, and I broke every rule, I know, I'm sorry, I…"

"Be quiet, Lorelai."

Chin falling to her chest, Lorelai lapsed into silence and followed her mother along the manicured path that led to the patio. The pool house was clearly visible, and at the sight of it, Lorelai tried to stifle the memories it evoked. She emitted a tiny, agonized whimper, quickly swallowed and turned into a wobbly smile.

Once seated in the shade of a potted row of palms utterly out of place in Connecticut, she pulled her knees to her chest, looping her arms around her shins, and her ancient jeans popped a little as a knee finally gave way to time and wear. A moment later, she dropped her feet to the flagstones and straightened, fixing her face into a blank mask of courtesy. "I apologize for disturbing you, Mom, you didn't have to cancel your meeting, I…"

The look on her mother's face was pure hurt.

"Mom? Are you okay? Is Dad okay? What is it, what's wrong?"

"You came to see me, the maid said you told her you needed me, and you're apologizing," replied Emily softly, and blinked back tears. "Oh, Lorelai."

Battling to keep her shoulders squared, Lorelai quickly said, "Mom, it's not like that, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, I came on impulse and I saw it was a bad time and you raised me better than that and…"

"I raised you to apologize for coming to me when you need me?"

Lorelai's mouth shut into a thin pink line. She dropped her gaze to the mosaic tile on the table and asked brightly, "Did you find this in Europe, it's…"

"It's from Mrs. Kim's store, don't change the subject!"

"I'm sorry, Mom, I only wanted… I had… I wanted to talk to you and tell you something, and I'm messing it up, I mess up everything, you're right, I can't do anything without screwing up, and, and…" Shivering a little, Lorelai clamped her hands around the edge of the table. A fingernail broke. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry."

"What on earth for? This time, I mean?"

Flinching, Lorelai sniffled out, "I'm sorry. I never realized. I mean, I did when Rory left to spend the night here because she was mad at me, and all the rest of the times, I know how it made you feel, how you felt, me turning my back on everything you like, and having Rory walk away from her home for what I ran away from, and…"

"Lorelai, you're babbling." For once, it was said gently, and helped Lorelai regain some fraction of composure.

The maid brought a tea tray. The tea was iced. Emily growled disapprovingly but did not comment. She squeezed lemon into her glass. Lorelai tried, but her fingers did not manage the wedge very well, and some juice squirted onto her shirt. Another failure.

Somehow, that made it all easier. Clearer. Verbal.

"I never understood why you always said my failures made you look bad, why that mattered, they were my failure. And I'm sorry for that, Mom." She cleared her throat, sitting up straight again, her eyes meeting her mother's. "I apologize, Mom. I didn't think people really care what your kid does. Especially an adult kid. That they really do blame you. For everything your kid screws up. But they do, and I'm nothing but a screw-up, and I apologize, Mom. I never really thought anybody would blame you for me."

An odd frown puckered Emily's forehead. "Blame me for you?"

"For me getting pregnant and not marrying Chris back then or all the spectacular loser-ness that is Lorelai Gilmore," explained Lorelai, her voice and her will cracking under her mother's stare. "I mean, it was my mistake. Mistakes. Plural. Not you. You were always telling me I was doing things wrong, I'm the one who didn't do them right, and…"

"What happened?"

The fear in Emily's voice shocked Lorelai into saying, "Luke finally told me the real reason he didn't want me. Near April."

"And this has to do with me?"

"No," snapped Lorelai, and destroyed a vanilla wafer in a fist. "It's because Rory… He said I'm a joke, that he didn't want me near April because Rory turned out to be a felon and an adulterer, and he threw something in there about the vow renewal, and it finally sunk in, it finally hit me, you've had to hear that all my life. And I'm in my thirties. All you've ever had to hear is how you're a screw-up because I am, and nobody ever told me that about Rory, that was the thing I did right, only now I didn't, and I thought maybe Luke and I could talk out our problems, only… Here I am arguing with you. Because that's what we do. We argue. We have to win." Unclasping the crumbs of the wafer, she let them fall onto a plate with remarkably dainty precision. "I don't know what you win, it sure as hell isn't a perfect daughter, but I'm tired, Mom. I'm tired of trying to win whatever weird thing this is we have." Lowering her voice with effort, Lorelai inhaled shakily and concluded crisply, "I needed my mom. I needed to apologize, for how other people treated you because of me. I wanted to tell you that karma came around and bit me in the butt. Thank you for the time and the tea, and I apologize again for interrupting your afternoon. You really didn't have to stop the meeting on my account."

"You came to me."

"And screwed up your day, yes, Mother, I know," sighed Lorelai, pushing herself to her feet. "I think I apologized, but I'll apologize again, I should have called ahead and…"

"Lorelai Victoria Gilmore, sit down!"

Startled into obedience, Lorelai sat down. The patio chair squawked a protest.

Emily's eyes shone. "You came to me. Oh, Lorelai, you said you needed your mother, not my help, me. I never thought you'd need me. You've always been, forgive me, so like Trix."

"I'm like Trix?" grimaced Lorelai, though she had loved her late grandmother, the First Lorelai.

"Oh, so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead," gestured Emily vaguely, and put her hand out to Lorelai. Frowning, Lorelai took it, surprised yet again when her mother squeezed. "Nobody blames you for Rory's mistakes."

"You did," said Lorelai bluntly.

Emily's face flamed bright pink. "And you do, but Lorelai, when she lived with you? Rory was an excellent student, everyone said how polite she was, she read books and worked hard and I… Oh, I wished you'd been that way."

Face falling, Lorelai admitted, "I know."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Lorelai, you were a very good student and that was despite all the parties and nonsense, what I wished was that you'd been that way because it meant…" Emily smiled sadly at her. "It meant I would've done it right. Oh, don't be naïve, people did talk and did say awful things, but I'm the one who didn't stop. Bitty Shelton tells me all the time how she wishes her daughter…"

"Ingrid?"

"That's the one, yes, ankles like a rhinoceros," sniffed Emily in disdain. "How Ingrid needs to have Lorelai's spunk and Ingrid needs to work to get ahead like Lorelai has and Ingrid should have done more than, well, whatever it is Ingrid does."

Scrunching up her forehead, Lorelai went fishing in memory. "She used to make her own skin lotions."

"Well, she can't even manage that, apparently, and…" Emily succumbed to emotion with a sigh and another hand-squeeze. "I had an image of what you should be. You had an image of what you wanted to be."

"And I failed both," interrupted Lorelai, tears dripping down her face. "I'm a lousy person, and a lousy mom. I should've let you raise Rory from the start. She'd have been better off. This is her world." With a sour smile, Lorelai added, "I know she only got onto the campaign because you and Dad pulled strings. Hello? Theft of a yacht? Pretty sure the Secret Service doesn't approve."

"Oh, piffle, that was…"

Lorelai had no idea why her mother stopped. Why Emily drew away her hand, and suddenly choked back an audible sob. "Mom?"

Emily's hand shot up to halt her.

Lorelai shrank back and nervously drank iced tea with far too much lemon in it.

"I could say many things, Lorelai," Emily at last remarked, "about Luke, Rory, and much more, but I think what you need to hear is the truth. I never forgave you for failing to be what I wanted you to be, and that… That is my doing. I've tried to do better."

"You've been great, Mom, you paid for Chilton and…"

"Don't interrupt!"

Lorelai twitched, and bowed her head to accept the rest of the tirade she felt certain would come.

"I couldn't celebrate you as you were, are. You're correct. Somehow, I had to win this strange battle with my own child over who my child would be. It is exactly what Trix tried to do to me, and I hated it. Loathed it, in fact. I had to fit her ideas, her notions, and she set the bar so high no one could possibly succeed."

Sympathy flooded Lorelai. "I know, Mom, I should've been more…"

A quick flash of Emily's glare shut up Lorelai. "And I did that to you. I don't know why. Truly, I don't. At first, I was disappointed that you weren't this ideal child I'd dreamt, and then… Habit?" Emily pursed her mouth. "I don't know. It bothers me. Since your father's heart attack and surgery, I've come to realize how much I rely on you, Lorelai. How much you try, how much you do. I used to be terrified of getting old. Who would take care of us? Who would take care of me? But… When your father was so sick…" Emily blinked and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. "When I needed you, truly needed you, to drive me or to arrange the funeral for your grandmother or… You came to help me. And I realize, today, you came to me. Yet you're apologizing for interrupting my day. As if you're not more important to me than the Hartford Library Association."

"I'm an adult, I should be able to…"

"Lorelai. How many times did you come to me, or try to talk to me, as a child, and I said I was busy or I scolded you about your hair or your clothes or your music or, well, you?" Emily's hand indicated an elegant shape inclusive of all matters Lorelai.

Cringing inwardly, Lorelai answered sturdily, "I stopped going to you so you wouldn't yell at me, so I don't know."

"Whereas Rory comes to you. And when she had that affair with that dreadful boy Dean… When she committed a crime… She came to us knowing you would disapprove of her actions. What's worse, I look back and I wonder…" Emily swallowed, a hand at her throat. "Did I use that to prove I was better than you at being her mother? Sometimes, Lorelai, since she left, I look back and I wonder. Why on earth did we abide her dropping out of Yale or use our connections to mitigate the consequences of her actions? We never did that with you. You came to us, told us you were pregnant, and did we care what you wanted, did we give you the pool house? No. Yet if we had…"

"I'd have taken it," said Lorelai hastily, shyly, "if it meant I raised Rory with help instead of… Um… Never mind."

Emily smiled thinly, reached over, and patted Lorelai's hand. "I think we're both old enough to stand honesty from each other. If I had a diamond for every time your father asked me to shut up about your not being married and about having Rory so young… I'd be hip-deep in diamonds." Her smile warmed, softened. "I do think that he considered taping my mouth shut a few times."

"He wouldn't be the only one," said Lorelai thoughtlessly, gasped, and gawked at her mother in horror at her own words.

Emily laughed.

Lorelai pinched herself. She was awake.

"Trix said it on the wedding day, dear," chortled Emily, smirking at some memory. "If only she could've taped my mouth shut to prevent the 'I do'. Then she muttered, that way she had, 'Oh, I suppose that would not be civilized, Richard will realize his mistake soon enough'!" Snickering, Emily broke a vanilla wafer in half and offered part to Lorelai, then dunked her own into her iced tea, to Lorelai's amazement. "Oh, don't look so mortified, I've been known to dip a cookie into my cocoa at Christmas. My point is, Lorelai, I failed as a mother but not because you had Rory so young or ran away. I failed because I didn't want to admit you were going to be your own person. You did that with Rory. She didn't always make wise choices…"

"I know, and I should've taught her better!"

"But," corrected Emily, "at a certain point, you can't be blamed. You did not encourage her to have sex with a married man or to steal a boat or drop out of Yale. You opposed those decisions. She made mistakes, all children do, and she made even bigger mistakes, as all adults do."

Scowling, Lorelai pushed away from the patio table. "I wanted her to have everything. And Luke's right. I failed. You're right. You'd have been better at…"

"Lorelai," interrupted Emily curtly, and made a show of waving the white napkin in the air. "I surrender."

Baffled, Lorelai stared at the white cloth, then her mother, and stammered, "But. It's not. We're not. This isn't a war, Mom."

"Nevertheless," retorted Emily coolly, tossed down the napkin, and stood. "I surrender. I no longer care who is or is not better or worse. I only want to have my daughter feel she can come to me without apologizing for it."

Through a lump in her throat, Lorelai echoed, "I surrender, too," and rose a little uncertainly.

Her mother embraced her gently. "I love you, Lorelai."

"But I'm a screw-up," Lorelai wept onto her mother's shoulder. "I never got married or…"

"I think I see why your father grew tired of hearing me go on and on about the fact you weren't married," commented Emily with a hint of a laugh in her voice. "Let it go, Lorelai, I'm here. I'm here."

Lorelai sobbed, "Mom. I love you. Thanks for loving me."

"Whyever wouldn't I?" wondered her mother, stroking her curls, and Lorelai understood there was far less to fear in surrender than she'd thought. Perhaps not at sixteen, or thirty, but now?

Now, she could need her mother, and be needed by her mother, without a scoreboard flashing overhead.

.

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AN: Mom-daughter goodness, I hope. But it is also, with luck, showing that these two are well on the way to a lasting reconciliation. There is a reconciliation with Luke planned, but first Luke needs to talk to a relative…