AN: You reviewers rock. I feel so bad, you all keep telling me I'm making you cry. Which is kind of the point, it's supposed to be sad, but I feel so bad that you're so sad. . . I wish I could make you all smile. This chapter probably won't help. But it will reveal why he left. . . enjoy. (or just, cry less)

"Tristan, please. I have to know," she put her hand on his arm, after he continued to be silent.

He sat up, moving away from her. He couldn't get the words out if she were touching him. She sat up straighter as well, following his lead. Knowing her penchant to run scared, part of him wished that she were fully dressed, ready to leave the house. He knew this was not news she'd be able to swallow at first. He knew now that she hadn't wanted him to leave, she'd said so much. But his reasons for thinking so weren't ones she was going to like.

"Okay, just let me get it all out before you say anything," he paused as she nodded. "First of all, I don't think I've ever been terrified before or since that night in my life."

The car was completely crumpled in on the passenger side, and she wasn't moving. He wasn't completely sure if he'd passed out for a moment or not, but there was someone yelling outside, asking if they could hear him. The first thing he saw was the time on the dashboard. 4 a.m. Tristan looked to the man, and shook his head. He looked back at Rory, and moved to touch her arm.

"Rory, can you hear me?"

No movement, no answer. The man was pulling his door open, trying to help him out. He'd called 911. He'd seen it all, having just been a coming behind them along the road. The other car, the one that'd hit them, had landed on the opposite side of the roadway. All of this information the man was feeding him seemed unimportant, as she still hadn't moved a muscle. There was too much blood around her; it was all he could focus on.

Ambulances came, three of them, and suddenly the Jaws of Life were cutting the car apart, in attempts to get to her. He wanted to touch her, talk to her, but they were putting him on a stretcher as well, insisting that he calm down and let them examine him as well. He looked over, seeing the EMTs performing CPR on the driver of the other car, a mobile crash cart on the ground. He tried to hear what they were saying about Rory's vitals, but he couldn't hear from the distance he was at. They just kept telling him that they would be rushed to the same hospital. He'd see her soon.

He yelled as loud as possible, before they shut the doors to take him to Hartford Memorial, telling her he'd be there waiting for her at the hospital. It didn't matter if she could hear him; he'd never broken his word to her.

"After I got checked out, and I found you, Lorelai and your grandparents were there. Lorelai and Emily went off to talk to the doctors, and to see you. They wouldn't let me in, because I wasn't family. Richard stayed out there with me, sitting in those horrifyingly uncomfortable plastic chairs in the hallway."

"She's going to be fine, son, she's a fighter."

Tristan nodded numbly. He'd seen her through the window, and didn't have the heart to tell Richard how fragile and weak she looked. Things were going so quickly, but too slow at the same time. He just wanted to get in there—sure Lorelai would help him convince the staff to let him to be with her..

But she never came out of the room. Emily slipped out, her own face now pale and set, stopping in front of Tristan.

"Well, I hope you're happy with yourself."

"Emily," Richard admonished, "Get a hold of yourself."

"I will not. I won't, not until . . ." she trailed off, as Richard dragged her down the hall. Tristan heard their strained voices like brush strokes. Their tones went from mixed anger and compassion, to just anger. She swallowed him into her mindset, and they were soon in front of him again. He stood, not liking the look on Richard's face. He looked stunned and hurt.

"You need to leave. Your presence isn't required here now," Emily said, not caring how her words affected him.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Tristan, look what you've done to her—she might not live, is that not clear to you? She just needs her family now. She's in that hospital bed because of you, and she doesn't want you here."

He shook his head, not quite understanding. "She's awake?"

"She opened her eyes while Lorelai and I were in the room. She said to send you away," the older woman looked down, almost as if she were sorry to deliver the news. He didn't believe her, and made no move to leave.

"Son, I think it's time you go. Go home."

To hear Richard saying this, the man that had been so pleased at their relationship and plans to attend Yale together, something inside of him deflated. He looked at both of them for a moment, then his parents were calling out to him, his mother enveloping him, grateful that he was seemingly unharmed.

He wanted to tell her it was the furthest thing from the truth.

"And you just left?" her voice was timid.

He nodded.

"I don't understand, that doesn't make any sense."

"What the hell else was I supposed to do?"

"No, I mean, I didn't wake up for another day and a half. Mom told me so, the nurses told me, even."

"You didn't wake up that morning?"

She shook her head, numbly. "I didn't know—when no one told me anything, I started asking if you were still in the hospital. They said you left after you got checked out."

"I didn't give up—not then. I wrote you letters, I found out that you'd been released and went off to Europe with your mom and Emily—sort of like you'd planned. I tried to explain, but when you didn't answer the letters, then I figured it was true. You'd wanted me to go."

"I never got any letters."

"You didn't?"

Rory paled for a moment, pulling the blanket up over her chest. "Oh my God."

Dread and understanding mixed in her voice, and she closed her eyes. Suddenly, as if he'd slipped in a lost puzzle piece, she saw the whole picture of that night. She had no memory of the actual remains of the accident, or the driver that had pulled out from that nearly hidden side road in the middle of the night, and she certainly hadn't realized that this much manipulation had gone on.

Emily had told him to go, and she knew why.

"I knew she didn't like us together," he said slowly, trying to ease her pain of the betrayal. "I thought that she was just trying to use the accident as an excuse as why I was bad for you. She thought it was my fault. I wasn't going to leave, not until Richard seemed so convinced that you wouldn't want me there."

"She did more than that, Tristan."

He looked at her, not quite understanding. "The letters?"

She nodded. "I don't think I can do this right now."

"Rory, please," he pleaded. "Please, let's not stop now. It's all out in the open now. No one can," he began, but she was shaking her head adamantly.

"I can't. Not now."

He hated seeing her like this. Breakable—hell, breaking. She was so much stronger than this, but he couldn't blame her for not dealing with all the reality she'd been forced to handle just in the past week.

He wasn't doing so well himself.

He'd never wanted to kill someone with such ferocity in his life. He understood now, as he had in that moment at the hospital, that Emily's words had been out of fear more than anything. He'd been afraid, too. What he couldn't understand was why she would out and out lie, taking away the one thing that made her granddaughter happiest. How had she expected Rory to feel when she woke up and found that he wasn't around?

"I think you should go now."

"Rory. No, listen to me," he said calmly.

"Tristan, I can't do this now. Do you hear me? Can't it just be enough for now that you knew I didn't say that? I wanted you there. All I could think about was you. It was the first thought I remember having, when I woke up in the hospital. I thought of nothing else for weeks—months even! I don't remember anything about Paris, Berlin, London—all I remember is the pain of finding you had left me."

Her words cut into him, and he moved to stand up. He gathered his shoes, and looked at her from the doorway of the bedroom. The fact was that he shouldn't have left her, and if she wasn't able to forgive him for leaving her he couldn't blame her. He hadn't forgiven himself, even though he now knew how he'd been manipulated. There was just still a part of him that wasn't ready for her to be out of his life again.

"I'm going to be staying in Hartford, at my grandfather's."

She nodded, closing her eyes for a minute. When she reopened them, he was still there, waiting for her verbal response.

"I'm sorry. I just can't deal with this right now."

She'd repeated that several times now, and he couldn't imagine what exactly she meant past the fact that she couldn't wrap her mind around finding out Emily had sent him away just the day after she buried her mother. It was enough to crack anyone down the center.

"Okay. Take your time. You can find me if you want to—and Rory?"

She lifted her chin a bit, to meet his eyes.

"I want you to find me."

She nodded, her eyes tearing up yet again. She wished she'd just run out of tears. He turned and moments later she heard the front door click softly behind him.

She was alone now.

And she'd never needed her mother more.

It was too much to process. Tristan was back—and he'd never wanted to leave. Not to mention one of the people that supposedly loved her and was 'there for her' after he left was the one that sent him away? She was livid, and soon found herself pulling on a coat, jumping into her car.

-

Knocking on the large door, a maid opened it quickly, smiling at her. "Come on in, she's in the living room."

Rory marched through the foyer to the living room, to see her grandmother sitting on the couch, reading a book. She looked up when she heard Rory approaching.

She stood, ready to console her granddaughter. She'd been so unapproachable the day before, not really responding to anyone's condolences. She knew how close Rory and Lorelai had been all their lives, and she hated to see Rory in this much pain. Glad she seemed to be reaching out for comfort, she tried to hug her.

Rory backed away.

"How could you?"

"What? Rory, what's the matter?"

"Tristan. You sent him away. You told him I didn't want him at the hospital!"

"Rory, dear, are you feeling okay?"

"Answer me, Grandma, did you tell him that I didn't want him at the hospital, the night of my accident?"

Emily looked aside, "It was for the best."

"Really. Huh. You know, I always supported you, told Mom she was paranoid when she told me how controlling and manipulative that you were. She was always convinced that you wanted to run her life and all that. I guess I was naïve, I just never thought that you would it to me."

"Rory, that boy," she began, but Rory was on a roll.

"That 'boy' was the man that I was in love with. The one that I should have spent my life with. He's the one that has been moving on, away from me for the last nine years because my own grandmother lied to his face and told him that I wanted him to do so."

"Rory, you know the circumstances. You think things would have turned out differently if I hadn't said anything?"

"Yes."

"Then you are naïve."

"No, I'm not. You didn't know him, I did."

"Trust me, dear, this was for the best."

"If the best is you ruining my life, then fine. It was for the best."

With that, Rory turned to leave, leaving her shell-shocked grandmother standing in the middle of the living room.