Title: In Search of Restitution

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: If I owned "Gilmore Girls" don't you think this (or something like it) would be happening instead of, well, anything that's currently coming out of ASP's warped brain?

Dedication: To Tye/Christie, 'cause she made me write it.

Chapter two: Welcome to Oz...where the hot dogs are always fresh

"Hello?!"

"Yeah?!" A woman with short blond hair poked her head out the door in front of Rory and the crowd of dogs in the front yard ran towards her.

"I'm looking for Jimmy Mariano."

"What, are we going to have teenagers on rotation now?" the woman said, almost to herself.

"Huh?"

The woman came out into the yard and waded towards Rory through the sea of dogs.

"Hey, you look familiar. Do you live around here?"

"Uh, no." Rory dropped her bag and pulled her hair into a low ponytail to get it off her sticky neck.

Recognition dawned on the woman's face. "You're Jess's girl."

"I'm sorry?"

"Yeah. He had a picture of you. Left it lying on the kitchen table once. You're even prettier in person."

"Oh. Thank you."

"I'm afraid yo're not going to find Jess here. He left about six months ago." She walked over to a doghouse a few feet to her right and knocked on the side. "I might have a phone number, but I can't promise it's recent."

A girl who looked to be about nine years old popped her head out of the doghouse. "Yeah?" she asked.

"Do you know where I put Jess's number?"

Before the girl could say anything Rory interrupted. "I'm not looking for Jess."

"You're not?"

Rory shook her head. "I'm looking for Jimmy."

"Well why didn't you say so? I'll take you right over. You want to come Lil?"

The girl nodded and pulled herself the rest of the way out of the doghouse. Once the rest of ehr had appeared Rory realized (from the book in her hand and the reading light attached to it) that she had been using it as a literary escape.

"I'm Sasha, by the way, and this is Lily."

"Rory."

"Nice to meet you, Rory."

Dante's Inferno was the busiest stand on the beach when Sasha, Lily, and Rory arrived. The walk over had been fairly quiet, at least on Rory's end, but Sasha spent the first half telling her about life in Venice, and once Lily got over a bout of shyness she insisted on showing Rory every detail of the town she grew up in.

"And that's the Inferno," Lily finished up as they approached the crowd. "Jimmy's great uncle used to own it, and Jimmy reopened it last year about the time that Jess came. He says he's going to leave it to us, but I don't know what Jess would do with half a hot dog stand. I think he'd probably ban the hat and apron Jimmy used to make him wear."

Rory laughed at the visual. She could see the uniforms that all the employees were wearing, little white and red caps with full aprons to match. She couldn't believe that Jess had ever agreed to put one on, but according to Lily Jess had spent a good part of the previous summer serving dogs to anyone who asked.

"Rory!" Sasha was beckoning her over to the side of the building, where a man who looked like an older, slightly scruffier Jess was standing. "Rory, this is Jimmy, Jimmy, Rory," Sasha introduced them.

"Hi."

"Hey. Sasha tells me you're a friend of Jess's? Is he okay?"

Rory shook his hand. "Yeah. As far as I know anyway. I haven't talked to him much since last year."

"Oh. Then, not to be rude or anything, why are you here?"

Rory tucked her hair behind her ear. "Um. Do you think we could maybe sit down?"

The fact that Jimmy actually found them a quiet bit of beach was somewhat shocking. The sun was high and the entirety of Venice, California, seemed to be out. The pair sat down on a sand dune and Rory started to talk, rambling and nervous.

"I dated Jess for about 6 months, and he was immature and unreliable and wonderful the entire time, but he left without saying goodbye about a year ago. That was when he came here. I don't know what happened while he was gone, but in February he showed up in Stars Hollow, told me he loved me, and left. And I haven't been able to sleep well since then. Then, last week he showed up again, but at my dorm this time, and he asked me to come away with him, to go to New York and live some sort of wild bohemian lifestyle that we're always reading about but that I'm too afraid to embrace. So, of course, I said no, because that's what any sane person would say, but I'm beginning to think that Jess is the sane one and I'm just Courtney Love flashing Letterman and throwing mics around, because I'm about as destructive. I mean, I slept with my married ex-boyfriend last night, which I would never in a million years do, but I did do it, and then I ran away, which seems even more unlikely, and I haven't talked to my mom, or to my best friend, or to anyone.

"But I realized that between last May and last week Jess grew up, or something akin to it, and I think I'm growing down, and whatever changed Jess happened somewhere between here and New York. And I know it's crazy to ask, and I'm perfectly accepting of a 'no,' but I was wondering if, maybe, I could stay with you and your family. And now I'm realizing how stupid that sounds, and how, maybe I should just go back to Connecticut." Rory got up, brushing the sand off her butt and turning so that he wouldn't see her blush. "I'll, well, thanks for listening and, yeah."

She started to head down the beach hoping she wouldn't end up lost, but Jimmy caught up with her. "Rory, wait!"

She stopped but didn't turn, fully embarassed by everything she had just said.

"Now, Jess didn't talk to me a whole lot. He made a few confessions his first night here, but that was about it. Pretty much the only thing he did tell me was that he'd left a girl back in Stars Hollow, and that he thought that maybe he loved her. Now, unless he was a terrible cheater, and I don't think he was, because he never struck me as that type, you are that girl, and I trust Jess's judgement."

Rory had turned during his speech, and now she stared at the older man, wondering where this was going.

"Sasha seems to have taken a liking to you, and Lily gets along with everyone, so I'll have to ask if it's okay with them, but I don't see why you wouldn't be welcome in our home."

Rory smiled and impulsively gave Jimmy a hug. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

While Sasha sent Jimmy to get pinapple pizza Rory and Lily discussed books on the couch. Lily, it turned out, had read many of the same book Rory did at her age.

"How could you think that Jonah died at the end? That's such a depressing way to put it."

"I don't think so. I think the world he was living in was more depressing. No one knew their parents, no one made any of their own decisions. I want to decide my own job, not have a bunch of old people decide it for me."

Rory sighed and gave in, they'd been discussing it (or, rather, arguing over it) for about twenty minutes, and neither had been successful at changing the other's mind. "And what do you want to be when you grow up?"

"Oh please," Sasha called from the kitchen, "not this question. She'll still be telling you a month from now."

Lily smiled at Rory. "Ignore her, she doesn't know what she's talking about. She's the one who's filled my head with possible careers." She paused for a second before continuing. "I either want to be an explorer, a book critic, a professional surfer, a novelist, a travelling bard, an artist, or a lawyer."

"That's an interesting collection of careers. You know the town I'm from has a troubadour."

"What's that?" Lily pulled her knees up to her chest in the corner of the couch and rested her chin on them. She was small with big glasses that made her eyes look a bit owlish. Her peasant top and flared jeans gave away the California girl in her, even if her mousy brown hair and the writer's bump of a determined fourth grader tried to hide it.

"He's a man that hangs out around town singing and playing the guitar, like a traveling bard without the traveling part."

"Oh. Cool. But I think it would be way boring without the travel opportunities."

"I think you're probably right."

"So, what are you going to be?"

"Well, I'm studying to be a journalist. I want to be a foreign correspondant."

"What's that."

"That's kind of like a travelling bard, too, only I'd be reporting the news instead of singing." Rory smiled at the nine-year-old. She had never really liked kids, mostly because she found it hard to talk to someone when she was always having to explain what she meant, but Lily was smart and once you got her going she liked to talk. Aside from the glasses she wasn't that different from what Rory was like at her age.

"Okay, pizza's here!" Jimmy called as he came in the front door, "although I can't for the life of me understand why you wouldn't all want juicy pig sticks from the Inferno."

"Huh, I don't know," said Sasha coming to greet him, "maybe it's because you call them juicy pig sticks."

"That might be it."

Rory smiled as she watched the scene before her. The three were a family, if not by marriage and all then at least by love. They were a family, but she didn't feel excluded. She felt welcomed. She felt just as loved.

"No wonder he changed," she thought to herself as she reached for a slice of the pie.