A/N: Sorry for the long A/N. I'm going to try to keep them shorter on future chapters. This prologue is primarily told from Liz's perspective, however this will lessen over time and by the time Jess is seven the story will be primarily told from his perspective. The chapters will be spaced approximately two years apart, and my current plan is to have eight chapters after this one.

For those of you who have not read Guilt, my version of Liz is primarily based on my impressions of her during the early seasons rather than her later characterization.

I'd like to thank christinegrrl for betaing this story and for her encouragement. If you haven't already, check out her story about Jess called "Hard to Express." Thanks as well to everyone who reviewed/sent me PMs about my first story. I can't even really express how much more confident those messages made me and how much I think they helped me improve my writing. They are also a big part of the reason I was inspired to write this story.

General story warnings: child abuse (of multiple kinds), some swearing (mostly during arguments, and not in every chapter). Those apply to the story in general so I won't repeat them in the future, but if there's anything not covered by those warnings in a particular chapter, I'll add another warning at the top.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Gilmore girls universe. I also don't own the story title or any of the chapter titles, as they are direct (or in one case, slightly paraphrased) quotes from the musical Hamilton.

Prologue: Who Are You?

Her name was supposed to be Liz Mariano. It wasn't supposed to be Liz Danes anymore. She was supposed to be happily married to the love of her life, Jimmy Mariano. She wasn't supposed to be sitting there in a small, crappy New York City apartment thinking about how it all went so wrong so fast and finding no answer other than the small, brown eyed boy in front of her. She certainly wasn't supposed to be stuck raising his brat alone. It wasn't supposed to be this way. This wasn't the way her life was supposed to be. This wasn't who she was supposed to be. It wasn't fair, and it was the brat's fault.

The boy didn't know what day it was. He didn't know it was his first birthday, nor did he know that it was the first anniversary of his daddy leaving his mommy. All he knew was that his mommy was sad. He reached up to her. She snorted and shot up off the couch. She made her way to the kitchen for another one of the bottles he wasn't allowed to touch. The boy struggled to his feet and took a few wobbly steps in an effort to follow her before losing his balance and falling backwards onto his behind. The impact startled him and he began to cry.

The crying grated on Liz's nerves. Sometimes it seemed like all he did was cry. If she'd been objective, she might have realized that in truth he cried far less than his peers, but she wasn't objective. She was annoyed. Every pitiful shriek was a reminder that this was her life now. This was her burden to bear alone. She couldn't stand it.

"Would you shut up!" She barked at the child, slamming the fridge door. The tears themselves only multiplied, but the boy swallowed his next sob. If she'd been objective, she might have realized it was amazing that her 1-year-old son was even capable of suppressing his cries for her sake at all, but she wasn't objective. So Liz rolled her eyes and turned away from him, wondering why he couldn't have just done that to begin with. It was like he was trying to piss her off.

She wasn't cut out for motherhood and she knew it, not that she would ever admit that to anyone else. She'd thought about giving him up after Jimmy left. She'd passed a fire station when he was two weeks old and nearly left him there. The only real reason she didn't was because she knew her father and brother would never forgive her. They wouldn't send her money, that was for sure. They'd fallen in love with the boy the moment they saw him. Lord knows why. She never did, and she was his mother. Although she tried to forget that fact as much as she possibly could.

Behind her the boy's suppressed sobs were piling up in his little chest. It was an uncomfortable, tight feeling. He was barely breathing, and eventually the boy couldn't help but take a small, ragged breath. Liz whipped back around to face him and charged towards him. It was the last straw. She picked the boy up roughly by his upper arms and tossed him none-too-gently onto the corner seat of the couch.

"I told you to shut up!" Liz yelled, pointing at the boy. The child swallowed another broken sob as Liz walked over to the other side of the room to get one of her young son's few belongings. It was a young child's fabric version of "Goodnight Moon," and it had been a present from her father. She didn't see the point at first. He couldn't read, and she wasn't going to waste her time reading to him. Books were pretty useless in her opinion, anyway, but this one proved its worth. He must have liked the pictures or something, because it was the one thing that would consistently shut him up. He'd just stare at it in virtual silence for hours.

"Here, Jess," she said harshly as she tossed the book at him. "Look at the book and be quiet. Understand?" There was a vague threat in her tone. He nodded his head, eyes wide, and did what he was told.

Liz left Jess alone and went to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her, and collapsed on her bed. The bed she should have been sharing with Jimmy, she noted. The bed she could at least have shared with a number of lesser loves who had run off at the first sight of Jess. He was running men off left and right. All he ever did was ruin her life. He sat. He stared. He followed her around. He wanted attention. He wanted to be taken care of. It was a constant stress. The little idiot couldn't even talk yet. Never said a word. Not that she really tried to talk to him, anyway. The only thing he was ever good for was conning her older brother. Now that their father had passed on, they were all the family they had.

"Jessie needs diapers," she'd tell him, "and I'm all out of money." Of course, the money rarely actually went to diapers. Or, "I can't be homeless with a baby, Luke! I just need a little rent money!" He always came through for them. He rarely said no to Liz. He never said no when it came to Jess's needs. She resented that a little. The boy was only connected to Luke through her, after all, so she should take precedence. She should come first to her brother, but she didn't. Yet another man the brat had taken from her.

Liz knew, on some level, that she was supposed to love the boy. She should have been naturally overcome with motherly love. She should have found him breathtaking. Adorable. She should have thought he was the sweetest, smartest little boy in the world, with or without evidence, and gone around bragging about him to everyone she knew. It just never happened. A larger part of her thought that if the boy was all that special, then Jimmy would've stuck around. He wasn't exactly overcome with parental devotion, either. The common factor was Jess. It must have been the boy's fault. It couldn't have been theirs.

Liz leaned back against the pillow and let her bitterness devolve into grief. Jimmy was gone, and the hope that he would come back had slowly faded. He'd been perfect to her. Luke didn't like him, of course, but what did he know? Nothing. Jimmy was perfect. The only true love of her life. She missed him, terribly, all of the time, and the boy was nothing but a constant reminder of her loss.

He'd been a mistake, of course. An accident. They were in love, and they were in a rush, and Jimmy wasn't prepared and, well, Liz wasn't always that reliable with those pills of hers. They were so easy to forget. She was horrified when she saw the result of the pregnancy test. She was too young to have a baby, and she never wanted to be a mother, anyway. She feared that Jimmy would leave her, but he didn't. He was surprised, and scared, but he didn't leave. They got over their shock and talked about their options. Liz didn't want to keep it. She'd even scheduled an appointment at a local clinic to get rid of the problem. It had been Jimmy who wanted him. He'd been the one to convince her to cancel that appointment. He'd been the one to go out and buy a crib months before they needed it. He'd seemed happy. Excited. They'd gotten married. He'd told her they'd be in it together. He'd told her they'd be a family. He'd told her that he'd help her be a good mother. He'd told her he'd be a good father. He'd painted her an image of the perfect family, and then he'd abandoned them both.

She knew she should be mad at him. She should hate him. She shouldn't take him back even if he did show up. The anger at him would come, she knew, but at the moment all she could do was miss him. She still loved him. She still loved the life they'd had together. She still loved the life she'd thought they'd have together. She couldn't blame him for leaving. She couldn't blame him for the tears streaming down her face. She couldn't blame him, but the blame had to fall somewhere.

Occasionally, when she was clean and sober and in a reasonably good place, a very small part of her recognized that she was in the wrong. There were moments when she'd look at the boy and she wouldn't see Jimmy. She wouldn't see her loss. She wouldn't see her father's disappointment or her brother's judgment. She wouldn't see the string of men who'd left her because he existed. She'd look at him and just see a little boy whose only real crime was being born and, that tiny part of her knew, that wasn't really his crime at all.

Those moments were very few and very far between.

A/N: I hope to post an update on this story about once a week.

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