Requiem

Disclaimer: I really want to own "Gilmore Girls." Because I really, really want it to be real. Because I really, really, really want to kiss Jess Mariano. And read his margin notes. And tell him that I fully support his support of Kerouac. Dammit, why don't I ever get what I want?

Author's Note: "Playful banter. Foreplay" belongs to the lovely Airin, whom I have never met and whom I haven't even asked for permission. Her Well-Played, a Rory/Logan story, is a damn sight better than this hunk o' junk, and so my only excuse is that a)my muse made me do it! (and at gunpoint, no less) and/or b)I steal in homage. So, thank you, Airin; you're amazing.

And...sheepish I may actually edit this one. I write fanfiction as...err...something to relax from real writing (I realize this is a terribly unpopular opinion, which is possibly why I don't actually talk to fandom people, I just read and read and read and pretend I'm not addicted). So...err...reviews are quite happy, particularly nice ones that tell me nice long feedbacky things. Because, believe it or not, I might wish I did talk to fandom people...

Requiem: Prologue
Afterwards...

There are a thousand ways it could have been just a little bit different. Perhaps that's why she doesn't want to think about him; that's why she runs in her funny, high-heeled flailing way when she spots him again, why she clutches to Dean, safe Dean, and yells "NO!" over and over again.

The truth is, they cannot fix this. The way it happened it is not reparable, and the way it is now, the strings of her plot have diverged from his. She is dating Logan now, and she does not regret a minute of Logan. She loves Logan.

(Let that be the first thing that is said, as we dive into requiem, that she loves Logan and not Jess and that is how the world works. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl comes to her senses--eventually--and falls in love back. Boy leaves. Girl's heart breaks. Boy's heart breaks. They pick up the pieces and continue on apart.)

So it is not that she wants to be with Jess. Not now, as she is (broken and taped and patched together pieces and she has been breaking since birth, has she not?). Not when she has chosen Dean, again, a thought which half-way makes her stomach turn. Not when she has argued with Logan--playful banter, foreplay--and leaped off a seven-story scaffolding with him, and clutched his hand to her heart. Not now that she has grown more. Not now that she has really loved.

But...she wishes, perhaps, that she could have been with him. She sees all the ways that--had they chosen slightly differently, had they shifted one finger more to the other edge of the teetering divides in themselves...they would have been perfect. So she doesn't think about Jess. Because she's moved on, and it hurts too much, when she looks at him, to see the ghosts.