A/N: Please Read - I'm really sorry, I accidentally posted the wrong chapter as chapter 7. This is chapter 7. So if you already read the wrong chapter 7, then you'll need to read this chapter too. Sorry.
** Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Gilmore Girls. If I were that all powerful then Jess would be staying put! So, in summation... Please don't sue me!**
May 2001
It had been almost another 2 months since they had both admitted how they felt
about one another. They had decided to just stay friends. It wasn't an easy
decision for either of them, but Rory couldn't force something on Jess that he
didn't think was right, and they both knew it.
Rory was still 'coping'. She felt that Jewel has said it perfectly when she
said "You wake up to realize, your standard of living somehow got stuck on
survive."
She was still seeing Jenny, although it had gone from once a week to once every
other week. She had her good days, and bad days. She never knew when the bad
days would hit. They didn't give her any kind of notice, they just fell on her
and she felt like she was drowning.
It was one of those days.
She felt like she was going to scream. She was all alone in the house, and she
didn't know what to do. She looked down at her arms. The veins seemed to stand
out for a moment.
Rory ran her right thumb over her left wrist. She was mesmerized. By what, she
wasn't sure.
She clenched her fists. She had to do something. She couldn't just sit here,
going insane. She rammed her fist against the nearest wall.
There was a smashing noise, and she looked over her shoulder. One of her
pictures had fallen off of the wall and broken.
She sighed and got up to clean it up. Kneeling in front of it she started to
pick up the bigger pieces of glass and put them in a pile to one side. When she
picked up a smaller piece, she found herself staring at it. She sat, staring at
it for a few minutes.
She wasn't sure what she was really thinking. She wasn't sure why she was
thinking what she was thinking.
She pressed the edge of the piece of glass against the skin on her arm just
above her wrist, and dragged it about 2 inches. She barely felt it. She lifted
the glass away from her skin.
Rory watched as it started to bleed. It wasn't a deep cut, but watching it
bleed made her feel better. It was like she was letting out the pain she felt.
She did it again. It felt just as good. A release of everything bad inside her.
She finished clearing up the glass and threw it in the trash. Then she went up
to the bathroom to wash her arm off. The cuts had stopped bleeding. And the
guilt and shame started flowing.
She sat on the bathroom floor and cried. She didn't understand what was
happening to her.
Lorelai opened the front door and cringed as the plastic bags hanging from her arms swung at the wood and made thumping noises.
"There go the eggs." She chuckled to herself, pulling her keys out of the lock sharply and kicking to door shut with her heel.
Rory lay on the couch watching daytime TV in her bathrobe.
"Hey Chica, how are the good folks of 'Port Charles' today?" Lorelai called as she stepped into the kitchen.
"As screwed up and over dramatic as yesterday." Rory smiled faintly.
She didn't know why she was watching it. Maybe it was because she wasn't really watching so much as enjoying having something to distract her. She didn't need to focus or think that much about it, but enough that she didn't really have room in her mind for anything else.
Or maybe it was because it was amusing to watch people live out lives she considered a lot more sad and pathetic than her own. Her existence, compared to their fictional one, was perfect.
"Anyone die today, or… find out they were under the influence of an evil manipulative vixen who had them trapped by a contract they simply couldn't get out of signing?" Lorelai smirked, making her way into the living room.
"Not so far. But that new blonde chick got to wobble her bottom lip almost 5 times."
"Wow, the writers must like her a lot." She laughed softly. "Scooch."
Rory looked up at Lorelai who was stood by her feet at the other end of the couch, gesturing for her to move her legs out of the way. So she did, reluctantly.
"How've you been feeling?" Lorelai asked seriously.
Rory shrugged a little and shifted uncomfortably.
"No words for it, huh?" She sighed, wishing Rory would open up more.
"None that spring to mind. But if I think of one you'll be first to know." Rory said, forcing a smile for Lorelai's sake.
Rory reached up and tucked some hair behind her ear. The sleeve of her bathrobe fell from her wrist to her elbow.
Lorelai frowned and leaned forward.
"What's that?" She asked.
Rory looked up and quickly pulled her sleeve back down her arm.
"Nothing." She replied as casually as she could. "Apricot scratched me."
"Apricot?" Lorelai asked skeptically.
Rory sat up and pulled herself off of the couch.
"Yeah… I was just petting her and she flipped out." Rory said, surprised at how quickly she was coming up with her answers.
"That cat is more docile than Cinnamon was. And it was only on a good day that you could tell Cinnamon was still alive." Lorelai stated.
Rory picked up her cup from the coffee table and started walking into the kitchen.
"Apricot wouldn't scratch you."
"Well… she did." Rory insisted, placing her cup in the sink and closing her eyes as she felt Lorelai approaching from behind.
"Rory look at me." Lorelai sighed gently. Rory didn't move. "Look at me." She said more forcefully.
Rory turned around and faced Lorelai, avoiding eye contact. Lorelai grabbed her wrist firmly but gently and lifted her arm up, pushing her sleeve back.
"What's this?" She asked, tears in her eyes.
"Nothing." Rory murmured, fighting back tears of her own.
"What the hell is it?" Lorelai shouted a lot hasher than she'd meant to.
"Nothing!" Rory cried, pulling her arm back.
"It doesn't look like nothing. It looks like cuts. It looks like lots of cuts!" Lorelai wept, as Rory began to walk away.
"Well if that's what it looks like, that's what it must be." Rory snapped back, wiping her eyes.
"You cut yourself?" Lorelai asked anxiously.
Rory didn't answer.
Lorelai's bottom lip trembled and she stormed out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Rory watched her, wondering what she was doing. Her curiosity got the better of her and she followed.
She found Lorelai in the bathroom, throwing their razors and spare blades in the trash.
"What are you doing?" Rory asked, frowning at her mothers frantic actions.
"I'm stopping you from ever doing that again." She said, hastily wiping the tears that streamed down her cheeks.
"I didn't use razors." Rory sighed, thinking her mother was going insane.
"Then what did you use?" Lorelai asked, dropping the trash can on the floor. "Do I have to throw out all our knives too?"
Rory looked away. If she had to, Lorelai would do it. She'd throw out ever sharp object she could and sand every sharp edge until the house was as blunt and smooth as she could make it.
"Glass." Rory said quietly.
"Glass? From where?" Lorelai asked in surprise.
"A broken picture frame." Rory sighed.
"You broke a picture frame so you could use the glass to … mutilate yourself?!" Lorelai wept. Rory flinched at the last word.
"I didn't break it. It broke. And I didn't… I didn't mean to…" She choked out as she started crying again.
Lorelai stared at her, wondering what had been going through her mind when she had taken the sharp edge of the glass to her soft skin.
She walked past her and into her bedroom, pushing the door shut behind her. It hit the frame as if it had been blown by a strong gust of wind, but didn't close fully.
Rory covered her face with her hands, sobbing as she sat down on the cold bathroom floor.
Lorelai closed her eyes tightly, listening to her daughter crying across the hall. She wanted to go to her, to hold her and tell her it was ok. But it wasn't ok. It obviously wasn't ok!
She felt a tear run down the side of her face and onto her pillow. She reached up and brushed it's trail away with her index finger, folding her arms over her chest and hugging herself.
Why hadn't she seen it? Rory was her daughter, her best friend. Her reason to get up in the morning. Her reason to live. And her reason to live was in agony, and she hadn't even realized how deeply it ran.
She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling. Blank. She felt empty. She didn't understand how she could have missed it. Rory was her heart and soul and she was in some kind of pain that couldn't be fixed. She had tried to take her own life and now she was harming herself.
Lorelai had seen it in movies and wondered why someone would do it. She heard them called 'battle scars' by people who had managed to pull their lives together in the end. Just something they'd gone through and fought past. The scars, evidence that they had come out victorious.
Would Rory come out victorious? Or would her internal warring go too far?
Lorelai's body shook with another sob at that thought. Her daughter was in conflict with herself, and she couldn't help her. What kind of mother was she? She'd always hoped she was a good mother. She took good care of Rory, provided for them both.
Rory loved her, and she loved Rory more than anything. They had a bond like she'd never seen exist between a mother and daughter before. They were more than just mother and daughter, they were best friends.
Had she been too much of a friend and not enough of a mother, or too much of a mother and not enough of a friend? She didn't know what Rory needed her to be right now. Friends, best friends, were supposed to share everything. But Rory couldn't share this with her.
Was it because she was also her mother?
Rory pushed the door to Lorelai's room open slowly and walked in.
She looked at her mother, crying on the bed and it made her heart break. She climbed gently onto the bed beside her. Lorelai didn't look at her, but as Rory lay beside her, Lorelai's hand searched desperately for hers and upon finding it, grasped it tightly.
"I wasn't trying to hurt myself." Rory said meekly.
"What were you trying to do?" Lorelai asked, genuinely confused.
"I'm not sure. I just wanted to let the pain out."
"Like a pressure valve?" Lorelai nodded.
"Something like that." She sighed.
"How long…?"
"Not long. A week or so." Rory said quietly, ashamed.
"Planning on doing it again?"
"I don't… plan… I didn't…"
"I understand." Lorelai sniffed.
Rory rolled over, snuggling up to Lorelai and hugging her tightly.
"I love you, mom."
Lorelai laughed softly through her tears. Her laughter turned into more sobs.
"I love you too, babe." She said, squeezing Rory. "I can't lose you!"
Rory closed her eyes tightly and tried to comfort Lorelai. The only comfort Lorelai wanted, Rory couldn't offer. She couldn't make Lorelai that single promise.
A/N: Thank you to Julia for the idea of writing from Lorelai's POV.
