by Anastasia Athene
Disclaimer: Seriously. They're not mine. But oh, if they were…
A/N: This has all been done before. But this is my attempt at it, I guess. I have to keep my denial about the finale alive, haha. Oh, and a huge thanks goes out to my reviewers from the last chapter—you guys rock! Here's the second part to She; look for the third part (hopefully) soon. Enjoy!
She stands in his doorway and he has to remind himself to breathe.
She is here.
She is here. In all her translucent firefly glory, she is here, a duffel bag at her feet and two paperbacks clutched between the fingers of her left hand. Her toes turn into each other; she looks like a child, he thinks briefly, then he looks again. She may look like a child, but she also looks…tired. Something is off. He can't place what it is exactly, but at the moment he doesn't care.
She is here.
Fragile, she flutters in his doorway for silent moments that crackle like cooling glass; neither of them is sure what to do except stare. The silence continues; he wordlessly lets her in and she chews her bottom lip with ferocious anxiety.
"I…" She breaks the silence suddenly, and the sound is like falling rain around him. "I, um…Can I use your bathroom? I need to change." He only nods numbly, pointing to his left at the faded white door. She ducks her head, and rushes past him, mortified at how incredibly stupid she'd sounded; showing up out of the blue, without explanation, and the first thing she utters is "Can I use your bathroom?" Then again, she's not sure as to what she really wants to say, anyway. An apology? A confession? She doesn't know. Frustrated with herself, she wants to slam the door, but this isn't her house, and so it politely shuts with a click.
Meanwhile, he sits at his makeshift kitchen table (it's really a card table, but he eats at it, anyway) and simply breathes. He's unsure of what to do; he's imagined this scenario a hundred million times but now he can't seem to remember any one of them. Maybe, he thinks, maybe this is all a hallucination. Maybe the repetitive buzzer and her fluttering voice were just an illusion created by his lovesick mind. Yeah, that's probably it.
But he had felt the breeze her body created when she brushed past him. He had felt that strange and wonderful thickness in his throat when her image appeared in his doorway. He had seen her with his eyes, heard her with his ears, tasted her presence on his skin.
She is here.
And she is crying. His self-induced trance fades with the realization that there is a soft, low sobbing coming from the other side of the bathroom door. Concerned, he does not knock, but places his right hand on the door.
"Rory?" he calls softly. "Rory, are you all right?"
The sobbing continues. He does not call again, but tries the knob. It is unlocked, so he slowly turns it, unsure of what will greet him next.
She is huddled in a heap on the floor, wrapped in a silver silk robe and shivering violently. So many questions enter his mind. What's wrong? Why is she upset? Why is she wearing a robe…? Why is that important? Why…? His mind focuses on the physical.
It is an impossibility that the robe is hers; he wonders why she is wearing it in the first place. Is she planning to stay here that long? He cannot stop the thought from entering his head, and he responds bitterly to himself.
No, that would be the impossibility.
Her crying forces him to focus again; he crouches down tentatively and puts a hand on her silk-clad arm. "Rory?" She pulls away as if he'd burned her and curls up into herself; hurt and concerned, he asks her, "What's wrong?"
She shakes her head like a frightened child—again with the child comparison, he thinks—and clutches the robe tighter around herself.
"Rory…"
"It's—not mine! It's—it's not my robe! I don't want it! Why would I wear—it's not—it's only five o'clock in the middle of June and I was just—just…I was looking for my sweatshirt, but I must have forgotten it and packed Mom's robe by mistake, but I need something—I'm freezing; God, I'm so cold, and I figured, it's better than nothing, right? But it's not! It's not! I feel so—so bad! I can't do this, I can't—" Her rambling becomes incoherent, melding with gasping, racking sobs, and he moves forward a little, keeping his voice low.
"Hey, Rory, it's okay. Here, you can just take the robe off, all right?"
"No! No! I—I deserve it!" she cries, dissolving into the faded tile of his bathroom floor. He has no idea what she means by this; but, choosing not to focus on it, he slowly gets up.
"Stay here," he tells her, wondering if she'll catch the double meaning later, when she's coherent and probably dissecting this series of moments with her mother. Shaking his head, he goes to his bedroom and roots through his small dresser, producing his worn, gray sweatshirt. It's not silver, he thinks, it's not silk.
But it will do.
"Hey," he says, moving back to her inside the bathroom. She looks up at him, all stained eyes and trembling lips. He resists the urge to say, "I love you" and merely hands her the sweatshirt. She looks at it like she's never seen one before and they sit there in silence for a minute or so.
Kneeling, he moves forward slowly, still quiet, fingers hesitantly reaching for the silver collar around her neck. He pushes it, down down down, until he thinks, fleetingly, that her arms have never been so glorious to him.
"And I have known the arms already, known them all—arms that are braceleted and white and bare, but in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair…" He murmurs the verse, almost subconsciously, under his breath, and she freezes, her intellectual abilities getting the best of her.
"Eliot. T.S. Eliot," she whispers, somewhat triumphantly, although she has no idea what her victory is. He simply nods and settles his sweatshirt around her shoulders, the zipper glinting in the faint fluorescent light.
Still sitting in the pool of silver, she lifts pale hands to his face and simply breathes. The sweatshirt falls off her shoulders; he's frozen. He cannot move and she drops a kiss lighter than spun sugar on his lips and looks away, a tortured star burning slowly behind her eyes.
"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me," she says finally,
seemingly deflating before him. Again, he has no idea what she is talking about, why this verse of Eliot is relative, but he can always figure it out later.
He helps her put the sweatshirt on and stands up, offering her his hand. Blinking, she accepts it, but she cannot stand on her own.
"What happened to you, Rory?" he asks, more to himself than anyone else. He sighs, and asks her directly, "Are you tired?"
"Yes," she whispers simply. Very much so.
"All right."
Their exchange is simple; he picks her up and carries her carefully into the bedroom. She does not open her eyes, not even when he slips the sheets around her shoulders and pushes a lock of hair away from her forehead.
This is what Lorelai must feel like, he thinks to himself as he shuts off the lights and closes the blinds.
"You weren't lying, Jess." Her voice comes through the pseudo-darkness, and he starts; he thought she had fallen asleep.
"What?"
"You weren't lying. I really could count on you." With that, she falls silent, and he stands there in his bedroom doorway, waiting for the sun to go down.
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