A/N: For Mai, who demanded it. If it sucks, blame her. ;) Just kidding. It's all me and my sleep-deprived self.
Words should have formulated by now, he knows. But they aren't there, and he cannot will them out from beneath the dumfounded expression he is wearing. Luke, understanding what needs to be said, elaborates.
Jess paints a picture in his head, and this ferments itself as the truth that shouldn't be.
She is waiting at the foot of the stairs, a book in hand. Instead of reading, she wonders how long it will be before her mother emerges. They are late enough. And then, she feels guilty. Sometimes she forgets that things aren't the same.
Lorelai is sick.
This is new territory for them both; Rory is sure she's handling it horribly. Every moment hangs in the balance, her sanity swinging in an unsteady limbo. As much as she tries, she finds that she cannot commit it all to memory.
While she chides herself for being so pessimistic, there is something that tells her she should be. "Mom, hurry! We're gonna be late!" Today marks the first day she has been home in months. Time doesn't permit it, but ironically, when she learns about her mother, the schedule clears itself. She leans against the banister lazily and sighs. "Mom! What are you doing?"
With what little patience she can muster, she trudges up the stairs.
Jess closes his eyes and shakes his head. "She didn't."
"Yeah," Luke nods slightly.
The house that isn't hers anymore looms around her, claiming its territory. Every corner is a reminder of memories she doesn't have, the surroundings displaying life she never breathed.
Her hands touch it all, and she is amazed at how quickly she re-learns the shape of things. Visions swirl around in her head, and a slight smile graces her solemn face. This is still home, one way or another.
In her mother's absence, the quiet is deafening. Rory believes that she is still in the hospital, but perhaps it's too late to visit. Her legs carry her into the kitchen, bare feet sticking against the cold tile floor. "Mom, are you home?" she calls out, already knowing the answer. Even so, the effort is made because she has to try.
She settles in an hour later on the living room sofa, awaiting Jess's arrival. In the meantime, she claims some much needed sleep.
"Congestive Heart Failure," Luke explains away Lorelai's passing indifferently, but Jess is smarter than to trust his monotonous drone. His eyes always give him away, and he sees an infinite emptiness in his uncle's eyes.
"And Rory?" he asks the question without truly wanting to hear the inevitable answer.
Luke sighs, shuffling around the counter. "Rory took it pretty bad. I knew she would, hell, we all knew she would but..." he stops, clears his throat, then continues, "They put her on some meds. Called it Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, but I think it's more than that. She was okay for awhile, then she stopped takin' them."
"Why?"
"Said they made her feel funny," he shrugs.
"Huh."
"Yeah. That's when she started showing up here, asking about Lorelai. We told her and she was a wreck all over again. She figured it out, went home, was back a couple months later. Nobody said anything, just to see."
"What the hell does that mean? Just to see what?" Jess's eyes narrow. He imagines them, the town, the people he thought he had escaped years ago, tricking the one girl who might matter.
"To see what she'd do. We played along." If Luke senses the hostility in Jess's tone, he dismisses it. "Worked out a lot better."
"For who? You and the fucking rednecks in this place?" This remark warrants a few stares.
"You wanna hear the rest or act like a shit?"
"Fine."
"She figured it out on her own, went home. She remembered," he finishes.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"She remembers. She goes home. Rory's okay, she just forgets sometimes."
"Forgets her mom's dead? Doesn't sound too okay to me. You're all morons, playing along to this shit," he snarls, pulling himself to his feet.
"You got anything better? Cause I'd love to know," Luke retaliates.
Jess is too tired to argue and too overwhelmed to offer better suggestions. He thinks that there has to be something better than this, than letting her live in a delusion. As he slips his jacket back on, he nods a goodbye to Luke.
"You gonna be around?"
"Don't really have a choice, do I?" he mutters.
When he lets himself inside the house, he has every intention of finding her and explaining what little he has learned. There is a proper way to handle this, and lying to her doesn't seem fair.
But as he slides off his shoes, he catches a glimpse of her sleeping form on the sofa. And she looks content. He is both unnerved and relieved at this.
Padding quietly into the living room, further into a house that has never felt less alive, he takes a hard look at the woman in front of him. The girl in front of him, at times. Something about her, as long as he has known her, is childlike. She's innocent and sheltered in ways he doesn't know, and broken in ways he cannot imagine her being. Her equation is paradoxical; she balances a fine line between being both naïve and cynical.
Jess watches the rise and fall of her chest with hooded eyes for a few moments, watching her unsteady breathing drift into a rhythm of sorts. He pulls the blanket that covers her higher, ensuring her what little heat he can.
She shifts slightly, and he takes it as his cue to leave. He contemplates a peace offering, maybe a kiss to her forehead, but decides against it. It's a venture too risky for him, for her, for the situation he has unwittingly put himself in.
A fleeting thought tells him he doesn't mind the compromise.