A/N-Sorry for the length between these updates, school has been kicking my behind royally. I promise I'll try not to take so long from now on.

Bittersweetbloodbaby-Fluffmost definitely. I'm trying to rip the band-aid off and end up happy with this chapter. Hope to please.

Great thanks to--Spinaround, Kylie1403, Gilmore-Girls&Lost-fan, just hidden, moon,gates,slaying, LitGG1982, whatever13245, miloluver, Kal's Gal.

Music4mysoul-Thank you! I really hoped to have a family vibe with that chapter, glad you saw it!

GG1982-Your review made me smile so big! I can't believe that mine's the best you've ever read, it's my first and seriously mediocre. BTW-Your English was fine as far as I could tell, what's your mother language?

Kat461-You. Rock. I guess we're both at a loss :-D.

Rory woke up a week later in a hotel room. They stayed in the same hotel that they had stayed in the night that Rory had insisted she and Lorelai followed Luke and Jess to Brooklyn. They had gone home for a few days while Jess and Luke stayed behind to make funeral arrangements. Rory somehow had managed to make it through the school week. She wouldn't admit that she hadn't learned a thing. In the words of the Tralfamadorians, so it goes.

Lorelai had had a similar week. Having a very Sookie-ish Sookie and a very annoying Michel were wearing on her nerves quickly. Not to mention that she had been deprived of Luke's good pancakes for nearly a week. When he got back she was demanding them, no matter if he was mourning or not.

Luke called on Wednesday to inform them of the funeral the next day. They drove up that night and checked into the hotel, Luke had rebooked them a room. Lorelai and Rory tried not to speak the entire ride. There's nothing good or right to say to someone on the way to a funeral. A comic relief can come off as insensitive and wishy-washy, Hallmark Card sayings can make someone seriously rethink the level of their enthusiasm for attending. Once or twice they stopped at gas stations for junk food, but they kept on going until they hit Brooklyn again.

Jess mostly sat on the makeshift balcony of the hotel room with a cigarette in his hand. Luke had felt bad enough for him that he ran out and bought him a few packs. The idea of it shocked Jess into a ten minute catatonic state. Luke wasn't in the room to witness this, but when Jess managed to become unfrozen, he laughed hysterically until he had another cigarette in his mouth.

He almost didn't pick up the phone on Monday night. He and Rory hadn't had a real conversation since their date on Friday. They had a stolen moment outside of the hospital before they departed. He wanted to call her room that night, but he figured she had gone right to bed. Lorelai had, but Jess didn't know that Rory stayed up that entire night, sitting in the bathtub (all the while with tears in her eyes), reading his copy of The Sun Also Rises that she had stolen almost unknowingly from his room, one day when he left her unsupervised in the apartment.

She finished the entire thing.

Cumbersome but adorable notes-in-the-margin and everything. That was what brought on the tears for real.

And he had spent the night, crying like a baby, sitting on the bathroom floor. Luke walked in a few hours later, when the noise seemed to subside. Mistaking this silence for slumber, Luke walked into the brightly lit room. Only to find Jess, still sitting on the floor, but no longer sobbing. His face was entirely tear stained, and tears still fell regularly and routinely from his eyes and onto his shirt, his lap, the floor, into his mouth, wherever they may fall.

Luke felt stupid with a blanket and pillow in his hand, ready to tuck him in inconspicuously and slip back into the other room, fall asleep, and know that Jess was alive but tired. Instead he came to find the boy in misery. Complete hopelessness. Well-rounded, fully matured despair. And Jess did nothing but stare at Luke for a minute, his eyes reflective, let a few more tears fall, accept the blanket and pillow, accept the extinguishing of the light, and fall asleep there, in a pool of his own grief.

When he got the nerve to call Rory on Monday, she was lying atop her bed, trying hard not to think about Jess and their lack of recent conversation. The phone ringing she saw as a good distraction and leapt from her bed. Their conversation managed to last two hours. Two hours of basic conversation, smart-ass remarks, and cute little nothings that managed to satiate them in saccharine until the funeral. After that, they could actually try to figure things out. For now, they knew it had to be all right if he could joke about The Fountainhead and she could complain about Hemingway. Generically true of them, but true nonetheless.

So when Rory awoke on Friday morning in the hotel room, beside her mother, squinting against the faint morning light, she felt the despair of the day on her, heavy as a blackout curtain.

She didn't know that this would be one of the last desperate mornings.

For the first time in a long time, Rory had dressed in just a tank top and panties to sleep. She knew all too well the hotel sheet mantras and the risks that she was probably taking by being only partially clothed, but she couldn't stand the way the fabrics felt from her pajamas that she had brought. They had felt like home, and she understood that she wasn't.

Jess, just down the hallway, slept in the second bed in the room, across the way from Luke who was sleeping soundly. Jess probably hadn't slept a full night in a week, but the idea of that wasn't wearing on him as much as the idea that this needed to be it. He needed to get this over with; say goodbye and move on.

This, he vowed, would be his last night in Brooklyn.

Jess finally whipped off his sheet and comforter, rising to shower. Halfway into the bathroom, he realized that it was 5:30 in the morning. Without thinking of this fact as reason to not go knocking on the Gilmore's door, he took a keycard, put it into the pocket of his-God save him-flannel pajama pants, and slipped silently out the door.

Four doors down, he saw the tray from their late-night meal last night. He knew it was them automatically, they were the only room on the floor that trusted food from a hotel in Brooklyn. He also refused to acknowledge the fact that he was shirtless, and instead started steadfast towards the door.

Inside, Rory was having an internal battle on whether or not to get out of bed and start getting ready. The funeral didn't start until 9:30, which not only meant that she would have to drag Lorelai out of bed, but it wouldn't hurt to be ready beforehand. Regardless, her Gilmore tendencies told her that anyone who leaves bed at 5:30 in the morning without good reason is shunned led her to instead lay there and stare at the wall.

Then there was a knock at the door, faint enough that it wouldn't awaken Lorelai, but sudden enough that it shook Rory to full consciousness. She went immediately to the door, not caring that she wasn't wearing pants, and undid the security chain to find Jess standing there, looking unreasonably tired.

"Hey," he said, smiling minutely when she caught his eyes. He saw her fashion the chain so it held the door open for her while she stepped out into the hallway, wrapped her arms around him, and entangle her fingers into his mess of undone hair.

Rory had never just set herself onto somebody so suddenly. Everything Rory did was methodical, set out, and calculated. She never took a step without thinking it through. Often time, there were lists involved. But for some reason, something snapped inside of her heart, held taught by missing him and his presence. His smile so reassuring.

"You are so strong," she whispered, her voice breaking tremendously as she uttered the words, so unknowingly dear to him. He blinked rapidly as he wrapped his arms around her too. Shocked at her lack of clothing and her sudden attack, his senses went wild, causing the smartass in him to make a prize appearance.

"You're making me sound like a girl," he said, smiling at her, trying to get her to a happy place. He could tell the pain that everything going on had caused her, and he knew that no matter what she said that he was a part of it.

"Shut up. You are holding up so well Jess. Provided it's 5:30 in the morning and you're awake for virtually no reason, you're doing so much better than anyone else would've done. I envy you."

"Don't." They stood there for a minute, holding one another strongly.

Rory always knew that their relationship could go one of two places under stress. Either it would go into the gutter because Jess would close himself off and shut her out, even though she and he would both know that he didn't want to. Or it would flourish because he would trust her.

Jess's strength had taught Rory to savor her victories and pick her battles. So she loved him even more. Her victory had been had, now she could sit back and watch it mature, love every waking moment of it, and work for the best like she always did. No more of this, "the battle's already been won" bullshit.

"But I do," she insisted, squeezing him tighter. "I don't get how, I, who have suffered zero losses in my life can find it so hard to just love somebody, but you, with as hard of a life as you've had, can open up to me and just want to be happy."

He kissed the top of her head and tucked it under his chin. "You learn to savor the small victories and slowly chip away at the larger ones."

xxx

Rory and Lorelai entered the funeral, already emotionally stripped. Rory had stood in the hallway with Jess until Luke frantically opened the door, looking for him. When he found him he dragged him back into the room to get ready and greeted Rory a good morning and told her that she needed to wake up Lorelai.

By the time that they were ready, Luke and Jess had already left after many warnings. They finally piled into a cab and sat in silence, each processing separate thoughts. Rory had spent most of the cab ride thinking about what Jess had said. Savor the small victories and slowly chip away at the larger ones. Isn't that what she had done all along? Slowly chipped away at the victory of Jess and enjoyed the stolen moments?

Then it dawned on her that she hadn't. Anytime that something small but good had happened to them prior to their relationship, she ran. Whether it was to Dean or to Washington or her mother, she was constantly trying to escape the small victories. Now she had the large one, and she knew the way this time.

Lorelai was wondering what was going through her daughter's head. She had been so peaceful since her early morning rendezvous with her lover boy, but she was past suspicion. She knew better than to assume that because Rory was with Jess that they were doing something that they weren't supposed to.

More than anything, Lorelai thought that the peace was brought on by faith. Something that Lorelai had been in serious need of for quite a while. She and Luke had been at odds for a few days. The stress he was under was unimaginable and he had frankly had issues with the fact that he was supposed to be in a relationship. He promised himself that when he was out of New York, it had to work.

The funeral went by in a blur, and before anybody knew what was happening, they were on their way back to Star's Hollow.

"Home! Salvation!" Lorelai called when she opened the front door to their house and collapsed in the entrance hall, exhausted. She lay there for a moment, Rory staring at her, not amused. Finally, Lorelai stood up, brushed herself off, and went upstairs.

"Hungry?" Rory called, holding her stomach. They hadn't eaten anything that day but dry cookies at the funeral home, both too eager to get home.

"Luke's! I have to change, give me minute," Lorelai called. Rory went into her room in submission, dropped her stuff on her bed, changed into a pair of sweatpants and waited for Lorelai again.

While standing in the entrance hall, a thought occurred to her. What was she going to do about college? She couldn't very well leave Jess behind, and if she had to, she wasn't willing to venture out to Boston. With this thought floating in the airspace, Lorelai galloped down the stairs and went toward the door.

xxx

"You're back!" Lane called to Rory from across the street on the way to Luke's with her mom the next morning. Rory turned her head and smiled at Lane, who was risking her life, running across the street frantically to meet Rory and Lorelai.

"Lane!" Rory and Lane crashed into one another in a hug and stood there for a minute, reveling in their reunion.

Lane pulled back and examined Rory. "Was it awful?"

"Jess cried."

"I wanted to take a picture but Rory said people might frown upon it," Lorelai chimed in.

"Most people find flash photography offensive at funerals. Other than that?" Lane inquired.

"It wasn't as awful. We just tried to bear it and move on."

"Are you hanging out with Jess today?"

"Tonight."

"Are you up for something this afternoon?" Lane said.

"Possibly. I'm pretty tired, we've done a lot of traveling in the last few days. We can grab some coffee and I can regale you," Rory said as she gestured off in the direction of the diner.

"Sounds good. Call you?"

"Definitely." Lane paused.

"I'm really sorry that you guys had to go through that."

"Don't feel bad for us, feel it for them," Rory said.

"Can you imagine losing a parent? I don't understand how you outlook can remain so exceedingly normal when your life is like that." Rory shook her head, now knowing the answer herself.

xxx

"Jess!" Luke called from the kitchen. Jess was behind the counter reading and pretended not to hear it. Suddenly he felt the back of his shirt grabbed and he was being dragged into the kitchen.

"Gee Uncle Luke, somehow I think child labor laws prevent violence on the premises," Jess said as he refolded his book and shoved it into his back pocket.

"You're my kid. And it doesn't count if you're not actually working, Jess. There are customers, one of them is probably your girlfriend. Maybe you ought to wait on her."

"Are you actually condoning selective waitering?" Jess asked dryly.

"That's not what I said."

"Oh I see, you're more worried about my girlfriend's mother coming in here. Luke, if you're going to have ulterior motives, I'll gladly accommodate as long as I get forewarning."

Luke shoved him back out the doorway and behind the counter. "Quit being such a smartass." Jess smiled (which was the first time in about a week he realized) and walked back into the diner to find, surprisingly enough, Rory and Lorelai seated at a table much too large for the two of them, like usual.

He walked over with two mugs and the pot of coffee in his hands. Rory saw him coming and he bent down to place a gentle but intimate kiss upon her waiting lips and then set the cups in front of them.

"I thought we talked about these diner PDA's," Lorelai started again. "There is food being served in here."

"I'm sure Luke will be out in a minute to even the score," Jess said as he filled her mug and walked back behind the counter.

Rory looked at her mom, hopeful yet again. "It feels good to be back."