AN: THIS ONE IS ANOTHER VERY GRAPHIC AND EMOTIONAL SCENE - I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE KNEW THAT BEFORE GOING ON.
I ALSO WANTED TO CLEAR UP THE FACT THAT CHRIS IS DEAD - ALL THE REFERENCES TO HIM AFTER THIS AS HAVING ACTIONS OR HURTING PEOPLE - THAT IS IN LORELAI'S MEMORY AND FLASHBACKS. I AM WORKING TOWARDS LORELAI'S HEALING - BUT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE HURT FIRST. AND THIS IS HOW SHE IS WORKING THROUGH HER ISSUES. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT.
I ALSO WANTED TO TELL ANYONE TO MESSAGE ME AND GIVE ME ANY IDEAS - AND PLEASE REVIEW - THIS ONE WAS ONE OF THE HARDEST IVE HAD TO WRITE. THANK YOU SO MUCH
Lorelai felt the warm sun on her face as she woke up the next morning. Still laying in the same position she fell asleep in, she felt her back was stiff against the floor. But as she slowly opened her eyes, she smiled at the sight of her beautiful daughter peacefully sleeping next to her. Lorelai just lay there, watching Rory sleep, just drinking in the fact that her daughter was right there with her. So many times during the last few months she had tried to imagine her daughter snuggled up close to her again. But when she would imagine Rory, she would feel so selfish because she knew that being with Rory would mean that Chris would hurt her. But here she was, watching her slowly breathe as she slept.
Sore and hungry, Lorelai slowly and quietly left the room, painfully walking down the stairs. Wincing with each step, she held her side wishing she could just make her broken rib heal completely right there. She walked into the kitchen, following her nose to the brewed coffee in the coffee pot. She smiled as she picked up a note that had been taped to her favorite mug.
Went to get breakfast. Be back soon. Don't drink all the coffee. –Luke.
Pouring herself a big cup of coffee, she held the mug up to her nose, feeling the warmth in her hands and the steam tickled her nose as she inhaled the beauteous substance. Sipping, and then wincing at how hot it was, she sat down at the table to enjoy just some one on one time with the coffee.
Interrupting her mid-sip, she heard a knock at the front door. "I haven't had my coffee yet, people!" She was sure it was just Luke who had too much in his hands to open the door. She waltzed over, unlocked and opened the door and said, "We welcome you and the food into our home."
But she looked up to find not Luke, but her mother.
"Lorelai…"
She just hissed through clenched teeth, "Go to hell." And she tried to slam the door. But her mother had already put her foot in the door.
"Lorelai, listen to me."
"Get the hell out of my house." Lorelai said. "I don't want you here. Get out."
Her mother just stepped back when she heard Lorelai's tone. And her mother's tone changed too. "Please. Just hear me out."
My mother? Said please? Remembering Rory sleeping upstairs, she decided to take this out on the porch.
Shutting the door behind her, Lorelai turned to her mother and said, "How do you have the guts to show up here after the shit you caused?"
Emily's face went from apologetic to just a bit angry. "Young lady, watch your language with me. I did nothing to deserve that." And just like she was taking off on her own tangents, Emily took over the conversation. "I need you to come and talk to your father. He is besides himself. I can't believe what he is telling me. I cannot get him out of his office. He refuses to talk to anyone. I remember the last time he was like this, you were able to talk him out. I wouldn't have bothered you, because I know you're grieving, but I don't know what else to do."
Lorelai felt like she had just gotten hit with a bowling ball in her stomach. And now she started talking. And not just talking. But she started screaming at her mother. And this was no little screaming. This was filled with passion and anger. Pent up for months. "How dare you come here asking for my help?" Emily stepped back at the torrent of her anger, fear on her face. "Do you have any idea what the hell happened? Of course not. Because you didn't come over here to see how I was doing. You just came over her to ask for my help to make your life better, because your husband is having a hard time dealing with himself. Well, fuck you, Emily." Emily took another step back, but Lorelai wasn't watching her mother. tHis wasn't just a fight like they had in the past – this was her telling her mother how horrible they had made her life. "If you wouldn't have been so keen on making sure people thought Christopher and I were the perfect couple, you might have noticed that I needed your help. That night in the hospital, you let him out of jail."
"We didn't know that it was bad at home. You didn't tell us…"
"You didn't give me a fucking chance to, Emily! You just did what you thought would be the right thing based on what other people might think of you."
Lorelai paused, now seeing Luke coming up the walkway. But she didn't stop. "And as for Richard," she couldn't even call him her father, "He can burn in hell. And tell him that his daughter, the one who disgraced the family so much with her actions at the party, tell him that she never wants to see him again."
Luke was now on the porch, and he started to herd Emily off of the porch and to her car. "Mrs. Gilmore, I think it's time for you to leave."
Her mother turned to talk to her, but Luke kept pushing her to the car.
Lorelai kept screaming at her. "If you or your husband ever have the audacity to show up here at my house again, Emily Gilmore, I will call the police and have you arrested."
Once Luke got Emily to her car, he opened the drivers side of the car, and said, "Don't come back."
Emily yelled over him, "Lorelai Gilmore, this isn't over. You can't just scream and throw a fit to get your way."
Luke slammed the door to her car, and stood there, blocking her view to the house until she started to back out.
And Lorelai just kept screaming curses at the moving car. "Fuck you, Emily." Ahd she threw the finger into the air as the car turned the corner.
She just stood there, feeling so much anger, but feeling so hurt. Luke walked up to the porch. And she just looked at him, angry tears coming to her eyes, "How can they think that they can just come back into my life?"
He just pulled her into a hug, and she leaned against him. Then she started to calm donw and said, "Thanks for making her leave."
He just nodded. And said, "Remind me to never cross you before you've had coffee."
A small smile made it to her face before she stopped and said, "So pretty much the entire neighborhood heard me scream cuss words at my mother?"
He just nodded again. And added, "And it's Saturday so almost everyone is home to hear it."
She just grinned, and pulled away to look up at him, and said, "Well, that's one way to start out my return with a bang."
"Come on, lets get some coffee in you."
It was dark. She just lay there, curled up in a ball on the desk. She couldn't move. She could barely breathe. She felt liquid between her legs, and she knew it was a mixture of blood and…
She leaned over the side of the desk and puked up all the contents of her stomach – which were just more liquids. She was cold. Completely naked, her torn and dirty clothes thrown all around her husband's office. She sat up, shivering, not sure if it was just from the lack of clothing or from being so violated – she didn't know.
It was dark in the room. She couldn't remember how long she had been there. Jason had come up with just about every way to abuse her body, glorying in his manliness and her helplessness. When he had finished, he had roughly untied her arms, leaving her to try and recover there on the desk. She had heard the door unlock with a key from the inside, and then relock after he left. She couldn't see a clock because Jason had left her in the dark, just waiting for someone else to come and help her – or hurt her.
She heard the lock turning in the door, and she whimpered in fear of the unknown. What if he was coming back? What if it's someone else coming to use her again like Jason? The startling part was that she never wondered whether it was someone coming to rescue her. She didn't think anyone would care anyway.
The light didn't turn on. But she heard someone breathing. And someone walking over to her. She drew back, afraid. But then she heard his voice. And she didn't know whether to be relieved or more sickened.
Chris.
"Lor, come on, let's go."
Her whole body started to shake, and she just said, "I can't move." She sounded like a little mouse, so cowering and afraid. "I'm bleeding."
"Here, cover up with this." She still couldn't see anything, but sudeenly she felt something soft in her arms. A blanket. Slowly she opened it, and pulled it around her shoulders, wanting only to be warm again.
Suddenly the light flipped on, and she was blinded by the suddenness of it. She jumped out of fear when it came on. She saw her husband standing there – in his suit and tie that he ahd worn to make her think they were going to dinner – a dinner she had been looking forward to – a dinner just her and her husband. She watched him go and pick up her ruined clothes up from off the ground.
When he stood up, he looked at her and said, "Get up. I want to go home and go to bed."
Tears that she didn't think she had started to roll down her face as she tried to stand up, and the minute her feet touched the ground, her legs gave up on her, and she almost fell to the ground if she hadn't have grabbed the desk with her hand. Her legs were so weak, and they hurt from being handled so roughly – everything hurt like that.
Chris didn't even look back behind him. He just started walking out the door, and she was left there, slowly trying not to fall as she walked out of the torture chamber. Into the dark corridor, and outside to the cold night, where she started to shiver as he held the door for her to get into the car that was waiting for them.
She got into the backseat, thankful that he was driving. And she just curled up on the backseat, unable to even sit upright.
"Lor, get used to this."
That was what he said. After he had allowed his friend – her ex boyfriend - to brutally rape every part of her body – just like it was a business deal. She was covered in Jason's semen and sweat, and her own blood. Her breasts were cut and bleeding from the torture he had done to them; she could feel blood pooling even there in the car between her legs – her mouth was bleeding from being violently kissed and used by that man. And she was supposed to get used to this?
"Chris, why?" She asked. That was all she could think of. She had been the model wife since leaving Star's Hollow, doing whatever he wanted or needed to make him feel like a man – she had made it clear that she was committed to making the relationship work. But then this happened – and she couldn't reconcile the two ideas.
She heard him take a deep breath and anger enter his voice. And she wasn't scared. Maybe because she was in the backseat and he was in the driver's seat so he couldn't reach her right away. But she thought it was more likely that she didn't think he could do anything worse or more painful than what Jason had already done to her that night.
"I told you I would make you forget about Luke."
She just cried. And cried. She couldn't respond to that – because there was nothing that she could say that would make him believe that she didn't think about Luke. She didn't think about that when she was being raped and tortured. She could just sit there, curled up in the backseat, and cry.
They arrived at home, and he left her to hobble inside all on her own. She found her way to the bed, where she collapsed out of sheer exhaustion, unable to even get under the covers. A few minutes later she felt him crawl into bed next to her. And he leaned over and pulled her to him. She stiffened, so angry that she didn't even want him to kiss her goodnight. But he leaned down and kissed her lips, the bite marks from Jason stinging with the touch of Chris' lips. And then he rolled her to her back, and got on top of her.
She just cried out as even just his body weight touched all of her injuries. "Please Chris."
But he didn't stop.
And she just laid there, the pain echoing through her mind, and she tried to shut off her feelings as her husband used her. He just kept whispering in her ear, "You're mine. I can do whatever I want."
Then he said the words that she thought was the worst she had heard. "I have secured quite a few referrals from Jason after tonight." He laughed, then said, "You're going to make me a very wealthy man."
Rory just watched as her mother just sat on the couch. She had been sitting there for a few hours. It had been a few hours since Luke had left to go to the diner. The morning had been quite fun, they had breakfast together. Rory had gone to take a shower, Luke had left. And then Rory had come out to find her mother just sitting on the couch, curled up and staring out into space.
The doctor had said that there would be times that her mother just needed to be alone. He said that there were so many things that she was going to have to process – and that giving her the time to do it without feeling pressured was going to be key to her recovery.
So Rory had just sat there and watched over her mother. Once in a while, tears would come to her eyes, and Rory would want to go over and take her pain away – but she knew that was impossible. After what happened last night, Rory realized that there would be no way she could understand what had happened to her mother.
And the scary part was that her mother would never be the same person as the mother she remembered. Sure, they could work through things, make her feel safe and protected and in control of her life, but things that happened would never be able to be erased from her mind.
So that was why Rory just sat on the stairs, looking over her mother and making sure that if Lorelai needed her, she was right there with her.
Rory looked up as Luke walked in the door, but her mother didn't even move. Luke's eyes went from her mother's stoic form to her – and Rory just said, "She's been like this for a few hours." And Luke walked over to the stairs and sat down beside her.
"I just want to take her pain away." Rory whispered, her throat overtaken in a lump that had been there for the past few hours.
Luke just nodded. "After this morning, watching her with Emily, I saw how much she was hurting."
"I heard that all the way upstairs." Rory nodded. Then added, "I was kinda cheering her on from upstairs."
Luke turned to her, and said, "Are you doing ok, Rory?"
Rory just said, "No. There's nothing ok about anything that's happening."