Chapter 32

Unsteady

Disclaimer: I don't own GG
Background: takes place in the episode where Lorelai is gone for the weekend and Rory eats in her house with Jess and Paris, which is when Dean comes, Jess leaves and they start fighting. All starts going down after that.
Warning: Some chapters may be really triggering.

"Hold...hold onto me...

Cause I'm a little unsteady...little unsteady...

And if you love me, don't let go..."

X Ambassadors - Unsteady

1.

Rory kept digging in the cake, not really feeling her own weight on the chair she was sitting on. Sookie sat across from her, expectant.

"That's a really good cake you know. And you're wasting it."

"I know." Rory kept looking down on her plate as if it had all the answers. Her face was flushed red. She would have given anything to avoid this conversation. Now though, knowing what she knew, there was no avoiding, no letting this go. "Tell me. Please, Sookie." Her voice sounded foreign to herself and the whole thing felt a bit like she was dreaming. There was a voice at the back of her head, a voice deep inside of her that wanted to shut this down, run and never look back. She fought it. I'm not a child, I'm not a child. I'm here. I'm safe. Indeed, she was there, although she still couldn't feel her fingers. Her brows furrowed, while she was blinking trying not to get emotional.

"I was 15. It was my first real job." Sookie's voice was soft and calm like she was telling a story about someone else. "I was helping out at the kitchen of a restaurant. I was the youngest, the one with the least experience. That meant I was given whatever job was there at the time. Carrying stuff from one cook to another, washing dishes- a lot, cutting vegetables. The chef was extremely good looking, although he must have been at least 15 years older than me. All of us girls had a crush on him. We used to joke about kissing him or dating him. You know, girl talk, not like we actually meant any of it. I had already known for a while that I wanted to be a chef one day, and I was too concentrated on it to really think about boys at all. I had never dated, and I had kissed only one person before. In some of the slower days, he would come to teach me some of the tricks of the trade, and I was happy with that. All the girls - sorry, I guess I should say, women, they were all older than me- were jealous of course. They would joke around about us being together, but it didn't bother me. I was getting closer to my dream. And then...then it happened."

"It happened?" Rory felt like she was dreaming. She would have given anything to wake up from this. She swallowed few times, her stomach and throat hurting in anticipation of the story. Breathing felt harder.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"What? No, no, I'm fine." Rory brought her knees up to her chest on the chair, wrapping her arms around them, as if that would protect her.

"Do you want water?"

Rory looked up from the table for the first time since Sookie started speaking. "I hate this," she mumbled in frustration.

"What?" Sookie went to the sink and poured her a glass anyway.

"This is your story, and still you are here being worried about me. And I feel...I feel..." She struggled and bit her lip few times.

"Like you don't have the capacity to help yourself, let alone someone else? Yeah, I know that feeling."

Rory drank few gulps of water, thankful for the cool feeling washing through her throat. Sookie sat again and continued the story.

"Honey, you need to get better first, before you can help anyone. Anyway, about 6 months into working there, it was a pretty often that me and Jack- that was his name- would stay late after everyone left. Who knows what the rest of the staff was thinking, but we were cooking. Every night, after closing, he would teach me a new dish, new recipe. I still hate that he taught me some of the best things I can cook. But I'm learning to separate the memory from the present. At the time he would only teach me. He would compliment my skills a lot and told me I was a good student. I thought he saw potential in me. There were times when I felt...I don't know...uncomfortable? Like his actions weren't quite appropriate, or his compliments a little too personal...But I thought I was paranoid, and I ignored it..."

Rory's breath almost stopped at that point and she blinked few times in pain and frustration.

"Rory?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm listening. Sorry. I'm sorry."

"What happened? What did I say?" Stupid question, thought Sookie, considering the subject of the story. But she didn't know how else to ask. Something was wrong, something more than the conversation itself.

"Nothing. I d-d-don't know. N-nothing." She drank a little more water, trying to drink slowly, shaking her head. "Something sounded familiar, in what you said. Something that I can't quite...I don't know. I'm sorry. " The answer wouldn't come back to her until way, way later.

"Rory, it's okay. The whole point of today is that you can talk freely to me, you know that, right?"

"Mhm." She felt like she would cry if she said anything else.

2.

"Okay. Okay. So that night, it was just an ordinary night. I was just chopping things for a dish we were cooking, and he was criticizing and correcting me. I was happy because I thought I was learning. And then suddenly, he was way too close behind me and adjusting my arms as I was chopping. It would be romantic, I guess, in any other concept. But it just felt...uncomfortable. I ignored the feeling. He was the adult, he was the chef, the person I admired and I wanted to be. I was uncomfortable, but I wasn't worried yet. Why would I be? We had been working alone after hours for months, and nothing ever happened. Why wouldn't I trust him? And then...then he rubbed up against me, practically hugging me from the back. I could feel his excitement. I tried to move, but his hands were blocking me on both sides..."

Rory felt where the story was goings, and everything in her felt like throwing up. She blinked again, trying to hold back the tears. Nothing about this felt right, nothing about this world.

"I tried to get out of his grip, but I couldn't. It was the first time I noticed that I was trapped, his arms on the table around me, preventing me from escaping, my stomach touching the table, his breath hot on my hair. Until that moment I hadn't known that I needed escaping; but in a blink, I was trapped. He leaned and whispered in my ear, I know you want this too. I barely knew what he meant, and I didn't have the time to think. I tried to move, to escape, but he was stronger. I couldn't understand how it happened. One moment he was showing me how to cook, and the next I was pressed against the table, and his hand was on my mouth, while he used the other one to pull my skirt up. And it happened. I was screaming, I think, and struggling, shifting, but my voice came muffled through his hand. My fighting just made him angry, rougher. I had bruises on my arms for weeks. I had bruises on my stomach from the table. When he was done, he pushed me away. I was standing there in shock, and all he said to me was, you still have a lot to learn, little girl. You'll be better next time. And he just...walked off. I would think it was just a bad nightmare until I woke up in the next morning all bruised and ashamed."

Until that point Rory had been crying quietly, the tears falling down her cheeks and onto her knees. But she couldn't bear any more of the story, and she hated herself for it. So much of it felt so horribly familiar, and she could almost remember how it felt, his weight pressed against her, his hand on her mouth. The crying came from the depths of her chest and turned into sobs. She hid her face in her in one of her hands, resting the other on the table, as if she would disappear if she didn't hold onto something solid and real and ordinary. She was weeping so hard, it came in waves, and she struggled to breathe.

"I'm s-s-sorry Sookie, I'm so, so, so sorry, I'm sorry..." But all she could do was apologize in between the crying, red with shame and guilt because she couldn't stop. The pain that had started as a dull buzzing at the back of her mind has expanded and she no longer knew where she was. She cried so much her chest hurt, her stomach hurt, everything in her hurt, and she still couldn't stop. She felt Sookie hug her somewhere far as if it wasn't her body, and for a first time, she felt understood. She felt like what happened was real, and she wasn't going crazy. And then everything in her just...broke. Every wall, every precaution, every twist her mind had done to protect her from the gravity of what happened, had tumbled down.

And all she wanted, was to feel crazy again.

But it happened to me though. I was raped. I did not ask for it, I did not want it. I said no.

She kept crying helpless, feeling small on the chair, holding onto Sookie like a drowning person. Her whole world felt like it had cracked into pieces on the ground, and there was nothing left to hold onto. "You're okay, you're okay, you'll be okay, I'm here. It's not your fault." Sookie kept whispering in her hair and hugging her until the crying started to slow down. "You're beautiful, and you're smart, and you're a great kid, and you'll be okay, I promise."

It was the simple truth of adulthood, that sometimes there wasn't a way to prevent children from being in pain. Sookie had once been the child in that equation, and there hadn't been anybody there for her. The best she could do for Rory was to let her know she is strong and she is loved so that she can deal with what had happened. To be completely honest with her, so that Rory could ask all these questions she needed to, and get the answers Sookie wished she had been told at the time. And sometimes, that was enough.