Everything hurt. From the tips of her eyelashes -Rory knew that eyelashes didn't have pain receptors, but it still felt like they hurt- to the tips of her toes. Everything was an aching, groaning mess, like she'd rolled out of bed and then been rolled over by a tractor, then another tractor, then mashed with a potato masher, just to be sure she was extra mushy.

This is what you get for not making a Pro-Con List, Rory's mind chided her. Nothing good ever comes out of a split-second decision, especially late at night.

When she first blinked open her eyes, all she could see was white tile. Ceiling, she deduced easily. The next thing to register was the unfamiliar prickle in her arm. Looking down, she saw she was hooked up to an IV, and the new knowledge had her heart instantly racing, since she'd never been ill enough to be hooked up to one before. Following the tube with her eyes, her gaze came to rest on the only other figure in the room, head bowed as if the weight of their pain and sorrow was a physical force pressing them down. "I'm sorry, Ace," Logan murmured, and she could hear the tears in his voice, stunning her more than the use of her old endearment. "I'm so sorry I let this happen."

Rory didn't know what to say. She was so known for her words, yet now the right ones seemed as far away as Pluto. So she fell back on the old Gilmore Girl staple: humour.

"Is this a Huntzberger I see before me? And apologizing for things that aren't his fault, no less? My, this morphine must be the good stuff."

Logan burst into tears. It was so unexpected, so not him that for a moment she had no idea what to do. But instinct soon took over, instinct soon had her grabbing his hand and reaching out to him, instinct had her prioritizing his pain over her own.

"Hey, don't cry," Rory rasped, weakly running her fingers through his disarranged locks. "I didn't think my attempt at humour would result in such a a forceful outburst."

He chuckled through his sobs, "That's not why I'm crying, Ace, and you know it."

"I know."

"I didn't think you were going to wake up," in that same shaky tone, and she cursed all these tubes and bleepy things that prevented her from reaching him.

"What, and miss the Fred and Ginger movie marathon on Friday?" Rory snorted a laugh, if only to bring some of the life back into him. "As if."

Logan fixed her with a stern expression. "Now is not the time to be making light of the situation, Lorelai Leigh Gilmore. You almost died. Everyone has been so worried about you."

Rory hung her head. "I'm sorry; I never meant for any of this to happen."

His fingers darted out, grasping her chin so she was forced to look up at him. "Listen to me very, very carefully: you have nothing, nothing to be sorry for, you hear me? The accident wasn't your fault, far from it in fact. All that matters is that you're alive, and that you're going to be fine, that you're going to get better. And I'll be there for you, for all of it."

His words...his words meant everything, were everything she had wanted to hear when she'd gotten in her car in the first place. But still...

"Logan, you don't have to make me any promises, not right now," she urged, settling back against the pillows, subsequently dropping his hand.

He didn't take that well. "Why the hell not? It's my life, Rory. If I wanna be there for you, I damn well will be."

She protested weakly, "We haven't even talked yet!"

"What is there to say?"

Rory scoffed, rolling her eyes, but Logan simply gripped her hand tightly and insisted, "What words are out there in this universe that could ever adequately describe just how much you mean to me? What words could I use to tell you how scared I've been since Colin called me last night? Since I saw you in this hospital bed and had to entertain the possibility of losing you for a minute, the worst minute of my life? There are no words, Rory. There just aren't."

"I didn't want to do it like this," she murmured, valiantly holding back the deluge of tears her eyes desperately wished to unleash, but she didn't know how long she could maintain this iron-grip on her emotions when Logan Huntzbeger, the man she'd loved since she was nineteen years old, was looking at her like that, and saying things like that.

"No?" he arched an inquiring brow, leaning back in his chair with a careless smirk. "What did you have in mind then?"

"I'd get on the plane and I'd prepare my big speech, flashcards and all. That I'd walk up to your door -Honor gave me your address, by the way, don't be mad, she just wants you to be happy- and you'd open it and you'd be shocked, and surprised, and maybe a little annoyed, but it would be you and all the words would have just flown right outta my head like a murder of crows and I'd likely either spiral into some nonsensical ramble or...or I'd just end up blurting the truth."

Immediately, something flashed in his eyes, something hurt and wary and panicked. "Rory, we don't have to do this right now," he insisted, quiet yet firm, "we can talk about it when you're better."

Rory shook her head, as stubborn and determined as ever. "No, Logan, it has to be now. It has to be when I'm doped up and blurry and won't let my fear of what you're going to say or how you're going to react deter me from saying all I want to say, and when I have, like, zero filter and won't hold anything back. I wanted to talk to you, and that's what I'm going to do. Okay?"

"Okay, Ace, have it your way. What heart-stopping truth did you intend to spring on me after all this time?"

"That I still love you," she said simply, "that I'm still in love with you. I think a part of me has always loved you, ever since the day we met-"

"But you gave me such a hard time when we first met!" Logan burst out dramatically. "It was like being dropped in the middle of a verbal reenactment of Gettysburg with a jammed rifle, the way you went at me."

The brunette rolled her eyes at his embellishment, glad he hadn't lost his flair for being hyperbolic since she'd last seen him.

"Exactly!" Rory insisted as if that one word explained everything. "All the more proof. I wanted to see if you could keep up with me, which you did, and then when I realized that, I tried to push you away because I didn't want to get hurt. Besides, it's not like you were Mr. Interested at the time with your ski trips and your no strings and your coffee dates!"

"Oh, I was," Logan assured her earnestly. "Believe me, I was. I liked you so much that I couldn't stand being around you, Rory. Every time we talked, I fell just a little bit more, and I was scared I'd end up losing you or worse...having to give you up."

"I didn't want to lose you."

"I know," he said softly, brushing his hand across her cheek in a light caress. "I didn't want you to lose me, either. I didn't want to confirm every bad thought you'd ever had about me, that I was some rich society kid who abandoned someone when things got too real."

"All my life, I've been so set in my goals," Rory lamented, fingers brushing against the blanket on the bed as if needing some physical touchstone to reality while she got out all these pent-up feelings and thoughts. "I was always so sure about who I was and who I was going to be. Everything mapped out, every 'i' was dotted and every 't' was crossed. And yet, somewhere along the way, I started to deviate from that path. I picked Yale instead of Harvard. I tried to fix something that should have been broken, only to twist it into a newer, uglier shape. I jumped seven stories with nothing but an umbrella and the hand of a complicated miscreant to keep me together, a miscreant I happened to fall for. I let some big idiot jerkhead make me feel small when I've never let someone else's opinion stop me from doing what I wanted. I let myself get lost, and then when I was finally back on track, when everything seemed to be perfect and I was graduating and starting my career, I gave up on the one thing I loved more than anything: you."

Gripping his hand in hers, Rory finally let the tears spill as she cried, "I'm sorry I didn't fight harder for you, to make you stay. I'm sorry that I let you get away, and if I ever made you feel like you weren't good enough, for me or anybody else. Because you are, Logan Huntzberger. You are. You've always been enough for me, to make me happy."

"You're enough for me, too, Rory," Logan replied, and she felt some long-torn part of herself heal at the words, each syllable weaving and mending until she felt like maybe, just maybe, they were always meant to come back together just like this.

"I never expected to feel this way about someone, ever," he confessed to her, but it was nothing she hadn't already known since the day they met. "I never expected that someone like you, good and kind and brilliant and selfless, could love someone like me. But you did. And I'm not sorry, for any of it, because being with you made me a better person, and that hasn't changed. I'm only sorry that I hurt you, Ace, and that we can't get that time back."

She tugged on his hand, then patted the space beside her, clearly indicating, 'Get over here so I can hug you.'

He did comply, and she did give him a hug, Logan taking far more care than she over getting tangled up in wires.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't give you the answer you wanted when you asked," Rory murmured into the fabric of his shirt, leaving a puddle of tears as his hand gently brushed through her hair. "I wasn't made for that kind of life, Logan, no matter how much I wanted to be your wife, be your partner forever and always, in everything. If I'd had said yes...I would have been consigning myself to turning into everything you hated, everything you hated about your parents and their marriage. And there was no way I could have done that to you: you deserved so much better. You still do."

Logan's hand stopped, and he shifted on the mattress, his forehead pressed against hers so that her whole view was just him and his eyes and the strands of hair falling into his face. "I'm never going to do better than you, Rory, don't you see that? I've been on maybe two dates since your graduation, and each one of them sucked so badly I had to get Colin and Finn to stage a fake emergency and bail me out."

Rory laughed, nose skating over his cheek. "That sounds like them."

"I made them swear a vow of silence on the subject, of course, but they knew how miserable I was without you, and didn't refrain from telling me so whenever it came up. As for the rest of it...you're probably right. I'd like to think we wouldn't have turned out like that, that I wouldn't have let my new job get in the way or that maybe my mother would retract her claws somewhat if I was finally married, but it's not likely, and I don't want to lie to you. But what I won't lie about is the fact that I'd rather be jobless, and without a penny to my name, so long as I got to wake up to you every morning, and yours was the last face I saw before I closed my eyes at night. I can't go another day without you, Rory Gilmore, and I really don't want to."

She replied simply, albeit breathlessly -had he always been this good at the romantic speeches? Probably- "Then don't. Stay."

Logan stilled beside her. "Are you sure?"

Rory shrugged. "You said you didn't want to leave, and I don't want you to leave. One plus one equals two, doesn't I?"

"Yeah, but you're not just a one. You're a one plus another Lorelai plus a Luke plus an Emily plus a Richard plus a Lane plus a Paris-"

"Alright, alright, I get the picture, Huntzberger. But I've always been that way, and it's never stopped you before."

"And it's not stopping me now," he promised her, "I just want you to be prepared that not everyone will like this."

"Does it look like I care about that?" Rory pulled her most serious face. "Come on, Logan, I was going to get on a plane and pour my heart out to you. Do you really think I intended to come back without everything fixed, that I wouldn't have stood on your doorstep, camped out there, even, until I got what I wanted?" she questioned him.

Logan merely laughed in answer, shoulder knocking against hers. "Aww, that's cute, Ace," he teased her. "You could have been like my new dog, and I could have put coffee in your doggie bowl instead of water and left out bagels and copies of The New York Times for you to read."

"How generous of you," Rory simpered sarcastically. There was a brief pause, weighted and heavy, but she decidedly broke it with her quiet inquiry of, "We're only delaying the inevitable, aren't we?"

"We are," Logan agreed dejectedly, "but they've had two whole years of you in their life when I haven't. I just want five minutes, five minutes to hold you and know that everything's going to be okay, that we're okay, once and for all."

An hour later, Lorelai Gilmore walked in and found Logan asleep in Rory's bed, his arm tight around her like he was scared she'd disappear, like someone would take her from him. Poor kid. Rory, she noted, was wide awake, trying not to move so she didn't interrupt his heavy slumber.

"Hi, momma," she whispered with tears in her voice and in her eyes, and Lorelai herself almost broke down again.

"Hey, sweetheart. I see even when you're in hospital, you can still charm a guy. How typical. Must be the genes you got from me."

Rory grinned. "Definitely. We talked, and I laid everything out on the table, and he didn't get angry or blame me for anything, bit that might have more to do with his social etiquette and rigid upbringing on not upsetting women in hospitals who have just been in car wrecks, but the important thing is...it's better. Perfectly unperfect, since there are still things we didn't get into, but that's for later." She frowned, lower lip wobbling. "I really wanna hug you right now but," she gestured helplessly to the lump of muscle next to her. "He looks so exhausted, and I don't have the heart to wake him."

"Want me to do it for you?" Lorelai offered knowingly.

Her daughter nodded.

"Alrighty then." Mercilessly, and with a matching smile, the elder Gilmore tugged the blanket off him, the chill of the room almost immediately waking him up. Lorelai had to admit, he did look pretty sweet, with his hair all sticking up, his shirt rumpled and his eyes all hazy. And he won major points when the first thing he did was make sure Rory was still okay.

To conclude: Lorelai Victoria Gilmore was cool with him.

"Hi," she waved cheerfully. "You need to go sleep in an actual bed, Logan. While we Gilmore Girls are known the world over for our cuddleyness, we do not a pillow make."

Logan shook his head, blond hair spraying. "No, no, I'm fine. I was just-"

"Sleeping like the dead after a vacation in Tahiti," Lorelai finished for him, before turning to her daughter. "Sweet Child of Mine, make him listen to me."

"As you wish, Mother Dearest." Grabbing a fistful of his shirt, Rory jabbed a finger in his chest, then at the door. "Go."

"No."

"Go."

"NO!"

Jesus, Madonna and Cyndi, was this a vision of her future? Was evey holiday going to be like this?

She shuddered internally at the thought.

"Logan Elias Huntzberger, get some proper rest, a shower, and some food before I'm visiting *you in here," Rory ordered him.

"I'm not going anywhere, and you can't make me! What if-"

"Nothing 'if' about it, Logan," Rory argued in her no-nonsense tone. "I'm fine, and will continue to be fine when you come visit me this afternoon, since I know you can't stay away any longer than that."

Logan crossed his arms stubbornly. "How'd you figure that?"

"Because I wouldn't, you moron. Now, do we have a deal or not."

"We do." No one could resist a Gilmore for long: it was one of their superpowers. That, and the amounts of coffee they could inbib as if the caffeinated substance was as necessary to their continued survival as water.

"Shake on it?"

The Huntzberger heir raised a brow with a disbelieving scoff. "What are we, mobsters?"

"Yeah, I can see you rocking a fedora," her daughter flirted shamelessly -good for her. "Being in a relationship like ours is kinda like being in the mafia, I suppose: once you're in, you're in."

Lorelai laughed, chiming in helpfully, "Well, we have watched it enough; it wouldn't surprise me if you developed some Al Pacino like qualities via the wonder that is TV osmosis."

"And on that romantic note, I bid your leave." Sweeping a kiss across her forehead -a motion that reminded her of her own true love, Luke, and every time he'd ever kissed her Iike that before he left to open up the diner or lazy Sunday when she convinced him to sleep in, something you did almost unconsciously, just because you wanted to be close to that one person you couldn't be without- as he got up from the bed and made his way to the door.

Like any lovesick schmuck, he turned instantly at Rory's voice calling out to him, "Logan?"

"Yeah, Ace?"

"I love you."

His whole being seemed to brighten to her, and Lorelai secretly marvelled at how much her daughter had changed this one guy in such short a time.

"And isn't that the best the thing I ever heard? I love you too, Rory," he echoed and closed the door.

The two Gilmore's didn't have to speak. They didn't even have to look at each other or make some outward signal: in that telepathic way that mother's have, Lorelai crawled onto the space in the bed Logan had just vacated and held her daughter as she cried.

"Knock, knock. I come bearing coffee."

Raising her head from the pillow, Rory gave her dad -not biologically, but in her heart- a joyful smile as he opened the door to her room, wincing slightly at his wide-eyed expression when he saw her bruises in the unforgiving and harsh afternoon light. He was the third to visit, as the doctors had had to forcibly remove her mom when they had to do some checks.

"It's decaf," he informed her, setting the cup on the nightstand, "and a half one at that, but I thought it might cheer you up a little."

"Hey," she chided him lightly, "you're here: that's all the cheering-up incentive this girl required. How are you? You doing okay?"

Luke scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly, letting out a wry chuckle. "Shouldn't I be asking you that question, missy? You're the one who's paler than Lorelai when she dressed up as Casper last year for Halloween."

"You made a good Cristina Ricci."

"I swear, I don't know how she does it: I just can't say no to her."

"We Gilmore's have a tendency to get what we want, as well as a proclivity for picking up on when someone's avoiding there questions," Rory remarked with a sharp look.

"I know, I know. I just...I almost don't know what to say."

Rory tried to sit up for this serious conversation, conveying that she was giving Luke her full attention, but the man beat her to it, his strong hands propping up her shoulders as he reorganized the pillows in an uncharacteristic display of mother-henness.

"Better?"

She nodded.

Slumping into the chair by her bed, the man she'd known for over half her life stared at his shoes for what seemed an eternity, before beginning in a gruff voice just teetering on the cusp of a sob, "I'm no stranger when it comes to picking up the pieces after something bad has happened, of dealing with the fallout of tragedy. I'm not even much of a stranger when it comes to death, after my parents passed and my uncle and other close relatives. You know me: I don't get scared. Ever. I'm the one that gets rid of all the spiders in the kitchen when they freak out your mom, who has driven through snow storms had gone up ladders to fix things at crazy heights. But Rory, I gotta tell you...hearing that you'd been in an accident, that you might not be okay-" his voice cracked, a tear making a solitary trek down his cheek. "God, I have never been so scared in all my life. I've been worried and hurt and angry and miserable, but never have I felt such terror freeze my heart in my chest. I felt like I couldn't breathe, Ror, and I didn't know what to do.

"But I knew I had to be strong. Because what I was feeling, your mom was feeling a trillion times worse. She looked like she was going to die, Rory, like she couldn't live another second if something happened to you. And there wasn't anything I could do to fix it, nothing I could do to help you. I hated that feeling, all the way on the drive here, having to sit out in that waiting room for hours on end, watching everyone trickle in, the anxiety and fear in the room going up a notch every time a doctor walked in or those intercom things went off."

Luke Danes tucked her hand in his, squeezing tightly, as he implored, "Rory, what the hell were you thinking, going out that late at night? Could going after the guy that dumped you cruelly on your graduation day like you weren't the best thing in the world since the invention of the toolbox, not have waited at least until the morning?"

Rory argued insistently, "Would you have waited, if you hadn't seen mom in two years? Would you have waited another day, another day where things were still broken and awful between you, another day where you could have been happy, but instead spent it feeling lonely and in pain?"

"No," Luke sighed brokenly, "no, I guess not. But still, it didn't have to be you. I could have driven you, I would have if you asked. Better I be in a hospital bed than you."

She shook her head empathically; darn was he stubborn. "No, no, no and no. Who would open up the diner? Who would make sure mom gets her coffee? Who would make people's day better by seeing a friendly face and getting breakfast from a guy with a heart of gold like you?"

"I'm an adult, Rory. You're still a kid!"

"I am not," she huffed petulantly, wanting to cross her arms but being prevented by all the wires. "I'm twenty four!"

"Still a kid," Luke insisted. "You're Lorelai's kid and-"

"Yours," Rory interrupted him. "I'm yours too."

Something like awe sparkled in his eyes, but he still protested with a tired, "Rory, as much as it pains me, you do have an actual dad out there who loves you."

A scoff. "Yeah? Do you see him here?" She lifted the blanket, flapping it around like a sail. "Well, he's not under there. Is he under the bed, is he gonna pop up like Mike Wizowski and do some comedy improv? Where is he, Luke, if he cares so much? All I know, all I care about, is that you're here. That you've always been here, for me and my mom, no matter what. And that is what being a parent is, not genetics."

"You're amazing, you know that?"

Rory laughed lightly. "So I've been told. And I really am sorry that I made you feel like that."

"Did you two work it out?"

The brunette nodded. "We did."

"And you're happy?"

Another nod.

"Then I'm happy for you." He passed her the coffee, of which she took a grateful sip. "Just no more heart attacks in future, alright? I can only pack your mom's wardrobe so many times before she finally leaves my sorry butt."

"Hey," she scolded him, "that will never happen. You put a ring on it, Luke. It's a done deal."

"It's not a done deal until she's walking up the isle, Ror. Even then, she might pull a Julia Roberts on me."

Chuckling, she rested her head on his shoulder as she murmured sleepily, "Poor dude, we really must be running off on you if you can make Julia Roberts pop culture references. Are you sure it's not you who's gonna be sporting those trainers?"

"Nah," he promised her, the severity of his tone not matching with the flippant dismissal, "I'm not going anywhere."

Author's Note: Hi, everyone! Just a quick update here for you. So, this is gonna be longer than two chapters...hope you don't mind. Please leave a review and share your thoughts!

Best wishes for the week ahead!

All my love, Temperance Cain.