Disclaimer: Hmm...seems like someone should have figured it out by now. If I were Amy Sherman-Palladino, do you think I would write this badly? And do you think I would ever have let the end of Season 4 happen?

Author's Note: To make the premise a little more clear: all of these things are ghosts. All of these scenarios are coulda-woulda-shouldas that are...hmm...somehow very similar to what was going through my mind watching Season 2 for the first time (I am a sad late-comer to GG, indoctrinating myself with taped eps of season 1 and then jumping right into the middle of 4). In any case, though, because they're ghosts, wishful thinking, in the actual chapters, Rory does what she doesn't do in the episode. Sadly for the whole story, in the S5-Rory-universe, she hasn't actually done these things. But, worse for Rory and better for us, she can see very clearly what would have happened had she done something a little differently. And even luckier for us--after she sees the ghost, she sees where it could have gone, too. Poor kid. It's not her fault that most of the scenarios say she could have married Jess... (And I apologize; my writing still sucks. Someday I'll figure out how to communicate this in a worthwhile fashion...)

Chapter 1: Maybes
(2:21)

She does have to tell Lorelai that she went to see Jess. Eventually. She keeps telling herself that--eventually--and slides into the back of the auditorium with Sookie and Jackson. "Nice suit," she says.

"Thanks!" Jackson beams. Sookie hushes him and points out that Lorelai is just about to receive her diploma. Rory has never been prouder (except, perhaps, that morning when Jess almost admitted that he missed Luke...), and she and Sookie and Jackson stand up and wolf-whistle and holler. Rory's pretty sure that her grandparents are a little annoyed with the scene, but when her grandmother turns to glare, Rory also spots the tears in Emily's eyes. Rory figures she's wolf-whistling in spirit.

After the ceremony, Lorelai gets two grad pictures with her parents--one with Rory, one without. As much as her grandparents sometimes make her mother's life miserable, Rory figures that this, right now, is exactly what family is supposed to be like.

Of course, once they reach the house and she's standing on the steps with her mother, admitting that she skipped school, she doesn't feel quite the same way.

"You what?"

"I cut school and I got on a bus and I don't even know why I did it. I...I have no excuse. I was just standing outside of Chilton, and I don't know, I must have had a stroke or something." She scuffs her toe against the sidewalk and admits to herself, very, very quietly, that she did not have a stroke. Nor did she have any form of disease or ailment. And even more quietly, she admits to herself that she doesn't regret a second of it.

Lorelai just stares at her blankly. She's beginning to get angry. "Rory. Why did you go to New York?"

Well...it's obvious, isn't it? "To see Jess."

"Oh my god! You're me! I can't believe this! My daughter is me!"

There's an argument; Lorelai thinks Jess is no good. Rory, remembering his hands and his almost timid "whatever" and the thing that wasn't quite in his eyes when he asked her why she came, knows better.

She doesn't break up with Dean; she's Rory Gilmore, poster child for literacy, decency, and several other "ee" words, and she doesn't know how. But she isn't surprised when Jess is on the next bus back to Stars Hollow, and when she tells Dean that she went to New York to see Jess, that Jess has come back, and that she doesn't really mind, she's terribly grateful to Dean for doing the breaking up for her.

Because the next time she sees Jess, she remembers the look in his eyes, and the look that could have been in his eyes, and the edge of his smirk when she tells him she missed him...and she doesn't have to remember the quirk at the corner of his mouth, because it's there again. She wants to tell him that it's a very attractive corner, and a very attractive smirk. She wants to touch it.

She kisses him. After he asks her if she wants coffee. After she drinks two cups of it and he teases her for wanting to see him and she reminds him that he was the one who said that, not her, and he almost blushes. After they dance around the subject for a little longer and she watches him serve the other people in the diner and then come back to her, leaning his hands against the counter so that she thinks that his arms are the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. At that point, she figures she's done enough ogling for the day--the corner of his mouth? come on--and she leans up to him and kisses him.

He's a much better kisser than Dean.

A hell of a lot of things happen: habits aren't easily broken, and Jess has seventeen years of lying and running to atone for. He doesn't know how to share what's in his head, not even for this girl who makes him...something--makes him run out of vocabulary! She doesn't know how to trust, or how to leave well enough alone.

Not even Rory can make Jess stay when Jimmy shows in town. But he has a whole year of her to hold on to, a whole year of hand-holding and kissing and wisecracks about Hemingway and Rilke and Queen. In California, the memories surround him like ghosts.

He comes back.

She's missed him too, and she trusts him (even though she doesn't know how; even though she doesn't want to); she has a whole year of hand-holding and kissing and finally, a vocabulary worth listening to, even if he is complaining about Ayn Rand. He tells her he loves her.

She believes him.

(They get married in a little church with a few pretty flowers, and, even though Jess hates dancing, they dance the night away.)