A/N and Disclaimer: Don't own GG. Thank you all for your wonderful reviews. Sorry it took so long to update but I was on vacation. And hey if anybody wants to see something happen, let me know maybe I can work it in. And don't give me the get Rory and Logan together line. That is going to happen, I assure you it will. But yeah, I've basically got this story planned out but if there are any small plots you want me to explore give me the heads up. Oh and send you're questions, so I make sure that I answer them all.
So if you actually read what's above then you can now enjoy the chapter. Oh and I know there are some greedy bastards out there who just skipped to the story, I'm watching you. Enjoy!
Chapter Four: How the Princess Fell for the Frog's Devious Tricks
Casey looked at the empty hallway then at her friends. She didn't know what to do. She could go after Rory and make sure everything was okay or she could scream at Logan for how he treated Rory in the past. She chose the first option, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to yell at Logan later.
She opened the door to her roommate's room and spotted the brunette on her bed staring at the ceiling. Casey walked in and slowly closed the door. She didn't want Logan to come in. She plopped down on the bed next to Rory.
"So? You're the infamous Ace." Casey started. She felt like an idiot for stating the obvious but she didn't know what else to say. Rory turned her head and looked at Casey but didn't say anything. Casey now had a foot hole in her past and Rory liked to keep her past in the distant past. Besides it was nobody's business but her own and of course those directly involved.
"You did go to college. You went to Yale." Casey silently cursed herself for being so moronic around one of her closest friends.
"Logan, he's well a jackass for what he did to you." Rory looked at her and snarled. She hated pity, the reason she ran away from her past was because of all the pity and sympathy cards people were sending her. She didn't want the pity parade on her past relationship with Logan too.
"Everything happens for a reason, Case. Logan broke up with me, you met Logan, I met Todd. Then I met you." Rory told her friend. She got up from the bed and went into her closet. She pulled out a cute black leather mini skirt and an olive green halter top.
"Please just leave me alone, okay? I prefer to keep my past…"
"in the past." Casey finished for her. Rory nodded her head and took off her shirt.
Casey glanced at Rory and her eyes automatically fell to the large scar on the left side of her abdomen. Casey had seen that particular scar many times before and every time she couldn't help but feel the pain that it caused Rory. Sure, Casey was in an abusive relationship but he never tried to kill her. She always wondered what Rory had felt then, how she had gotten over it. And then she remembered that Rory never did get over it. And then she remembered the first time she saw Rory.
Casey was just walking into the community center which hosted the group therapy for domestic abuse victims when she bumped into a woman. This particular brunette woman had a scar right under her right eye. She was holding a knitting bag and Casey automatically thought that she was in the wrong place.
"Knitting class is in the other building." Was her snooty remark. She watched as the woman pointed to her scar under her eye.
"You don't get that from a knitting needle." The woman paused.
"A crochet hook maybe?" The woman finished then started on her way into the classroom.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Did he, was he wearing a ring?" Casey asked as she too walked into the classroom.
"Oh yeah. If you count a nine inch cooking knife as a ring? Then yes, he was wearing a ring." The woman joked and Casey felt obligated to laugh.
Casey took a seat down in the chair next to the funny lady. She felt that she should give her the basic run down of the meeting. To Casey the woman didn't look like she had ever been in one of these. She leaned in to tell the blue eyed brunette when the ring leader entered the room.
Mrs. Pallo looked around the circle of chairs and her eyes fell on the woman sitting next to Casey Jones. She looked down at her seating chart and picked up her pencil.
"And you are?" Mrs. Pallo asked her. The woman stood up and Casey half expected her to make a humorous comment.
"Rory." Casey looked at her. She had thought that name was reserved for old retired men. So she laughed thinking it was meant to be funny. But Rory snapped around to look at her and shot her a pretty evil look.
"Something wrong with my name?" Rory resisted the urge to yell. Casey shook her head. This woman was intimidating. And that was saying a lot considering Casey grew up in the Manhattan elite. She was used to intimidating woman.
Halfway through the meeting Rory started to talk. Actually she started to yell which, to those who had been there awhile knew, was just to stop herself from crying.
"When do you get better? I mean when do you come to terms with the fact that someone tried to kill you? 'Cause I've been wandering in and out of these meetings all over the east coast for two years and I still feel like crap. Well not crap, just I don't know how I feel." Her voice started to crack and her ocean blue orbs filled up with tears, her eyes glistening. She was looking up at the ceiling willing her tears to be absorbed back into her eyes.
"Sometimes I just want to go back to Todd and have him finish me off, 'cause I'm already dead. And other times I just want to go back to feel loved 'cause nobody wants to love a battered woman. They're all afraid that if they yell or raise their hands in any way that I'll freak and call the cops." Her tears broke through and she was looking at the ground so nobody could see her at her weakest moment. Her voice was shaking and it took all her energy to speak through her vulnerability.
"I just, when do you feel better? Like you can live again?" Rory finished.
She just couldn't speak anymore. She just stood there in the center of the circle crying into her hands. Casey stood up and put her arms around the once forthcoming, intimidating woman. She led the fragile girl back to her chair and just rubbed her back hoping it would soothe her. Whatever talk that continued for the next hour was lost on Rory.
Casey sat with Rory well after the end of the meeting. She tried to recall what Mrs. Pallo had said in response to her outburst. Time. How many times could this girl hear that time would solve everything.
"There's no quick fix, Rory." Casey had told her as they were leaving the building.
"I'm beginning to think there isn't a fix at all." And with that Rory walked away from Casey. Casey didn't expect to see her at her apartment the next morning applying to be her roommate.
"Where are you going, now?" Casey asked Rory as she put her shirt on.
"Well, I still haven't gotten laid, and it's beginning to be a problem." She raised her hands in emphasis of exactly how big the problem was.
"I mean how many times can you satisfy yourself until it doesn't work anymore?" Rory asked as she changed into the black mini.
"Did you ever sleep with Finn? No, never mind that was inappropriate" Casey couldn't help but smile as she shook her head.
"Do you think I could woo him into my bed tonight?" Rory turned to her vanity mirror and started to put on some eyeliner.
"Rory, let's talk." Casey stated in a serious tone. Rory turned around sharply to look at her with her eyes brimming with tears.
"You're not breaking up with me, are you? 'Cause I don't think I can handle it." Rory sucked in her breath and looked up to keep the tears from falling. Casey shook her head violently as she tried to hold in her laughter.
"What and give up a sweet ass like that? Never!" Casey joked then burst into laughter. Soon afterwards Rory started laughing too before joining Casey on the bed.
"No seriously let's talk." Casey heard Rory sigh and look down at her hands.
Rory traced the tiny scars on her hands with her fingers. It became a numbing mechanism to just trace them gently, counting them and recalling how exactly she got them. Trying to figure out which shard of glass caused the tiny imperfection on her delicate hands.
In the beginning it was only a nervous habit, something to do while she was bored. She never meant for it to become the key to shutting out the world, to separate herself from reality. But there were a lot of things that Rory had never meant to happen. The biggest being that she never meant to fall into an abusive relationship.
She looked down at her hands while Casey spoke. Rory gave the appropriate responses, she nodded and 'uh huh'-ed. But Rory Gilmore didn't have a clue as to what Casey was saying.
Casey looked over at her roommate after Rory had agreed to being raised by wolves. She noticed that Rory was looking down at her hands, a classic sign that she wasn't paying attention and Casey scolded herself for not noticing before starting her 'you can't run from the past' speech. Casey grabbed Rory's hand and held it tightly in her fist causing Rory to look up at her shocked.
"What'd you do that for?" Rory shouted, or maybe it just sounded like she was shouting because it was so quiet, too quiet. Casey got up and tip toed over to the door. Rory, who had caught on to what Casey was doing started to talk bullshit. Casey held up three fingers and mouthed the numbers as she counted backwards. When all fingers were down Casey roughly opened the door and Finn and a glass came crashing down to the floor. Not far from Finn was the lovely Stephanie and boring Colin eavesdropping.
To the intruding trio it looked as if Rory wasn't phased by their childish antics. To Casey, Rory was fuming. But Rory was neither pissed nor un-phased by the act. She had spent a year of her life with these people and expected them to be listening outside her door, and she was relieved that Logan wasn't also invading her privacy. Yes, that's right, Rory still harbors feelings for one Logan Huntzberger.
"Hey!" Finn shouted as he hit the floor, the glass falling from his hand and shattering a few feet away from his head. Rory jumped at the noise and the memory of crashing through a glass table.
Casey turned her head away from the guilty party and looked at a frightened Rory. It was obvious to everyone in the room that Rory was scared but Casey was the only one who knew that she was reliving her abusive past. Casey found it odd that she knew Rory's most inner secrets and scars (as Rory referred to them) but not any of the basics.
Rory, after regaining her composure left her room. Casey let her go knowing it would do no good to try and stop her. On her way out of the apartment she bumped into Logan who was pacing the front door obviously trying to decide whether to leave or stay and try to talk to Rory.
"Oh sorry." They both said in sync.
"Rory, do you want to talk?" He asked noting her shaken composure and foggy eyes.
"Yeah, but not to you." Rory went into the kitchen and grabbed a slice of cold pizza.
"Oh, okay. I um, I know you're on your way out, but um, I'd like to talk to you. Could I maybe wait 'til you get back, if you get back to talk." She passed him to get to the door and nodded her head. It was always cute when Logan Huntzberger was unsure of himself.
"Hey, I'm watching Willy Wonka, want to join me?" Casey had asked her new roommate. Her not so financially stable roommate but one that she could form a support system with.
"Uh, no. Memories." Rory had remarked.
She hadn't quite warmed up to this roommate yet. She had only lived with three people her entire life, her mother, Paris and Todd. Her mother was everything to her, her life giver, her comfort, her hero, idol, friend, and so on. She didn't just live with her mother out of necessity but out of love. And Paris was quite possibly the best roommate ever. Sure, she was intense and sometimes a pain in the ass, but it was painfully obvious who she was. She was goal driven and a little crazy but she always had a solution to a problem, she would always try to help in her own unique way, and more importantly she was a friend. And the Todd experience explains exactly why she is so apprehensive about moving in with a new roommate.
"Bad ones?" Casey had turned her body a little on the couch so that she was now watching Rory cook dinner.
"No. I mean I guess. You know, scars." Was all Rory said as she continued chopping the onions for the stew.
"Huh? How are memories, bad ones, scars." Casey was confused.
"They're the ones you can't see and can't feel but hurt so much more." Rory paused.
"Most of my life was filled with good memories, but after a while, after Todd, I went numb to it all. Everything I viewed as good was somehow construed into bad. And I can't really explain it, but it's like I had all these people, after Todd, who've known me forever and they just used my memories to make me forget, to make me smile, to make me feel better and so on." She paused again while throwing the onions into the pot. She started on the carrots.
"And I guess I resented them, the memories, because it hurt, because I couldn't understand how a life so good fell into abuse. So I try to forget them, you know, you can see what Todd did, I've told you, I've told a room a strangers what he did. And yes, you give me sympathy, but it doesn't have strings attached. You didn't know who I was before, so you can't add that extra special look of misunderstanding. How the princess fell for the frog's devious tricks." She threw the carrots into the pot as well and started to clean off the cutting bored. She checked on the stew before sitting down at the kitchen table.
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. But you know how they say that emotions build up and eventually burst. I feel like the opposite. I feel like my memories are the ones that will destroy me, because they hurt so much. Because I can't look back on the past and not want it back. It's the pain beneath the surface. You can't see it, but it's there." Rory paused thinking back on what all she said.
"And scars are really just memories that hurt." Rory looked at Casey and brushed away her tears.
"Look Casey, You won't understand what I'm about to say, and I'm not insulting your intelligence or anything, it's just others before you haven't. I don't talk about my past, before Todd. Everything behind that is blank to you. I like my past in the past for all the reasons I've stated before. Everything you'll know about me is from Todd up, and not a whole lot of it. Pretend I'm an amnesia victim from a few years back, all I have is waking up in the hospital." Rory returned to her stew and stirred it a little, knowing that she had probably ruined it.
"I understand Rory." Casey lied. She only half understood, and she didn't like what she heard.
"Do you? Doesn't the past make us who we are? I mean surely you've heard of people running from their past but erasing it?"
"What I understand Rory is that you're just a frightened little girl who doesn't want anyone to get close to her. I think you're philosophy is ass backwards. Yes Rory, the past is who you are. You're just too tired to run from it." Casey paused, her tone was venomous and cold. She didn't want a distant roommate, she wanted someone who understood what she had gone through and could help her through it if need be, she wanted a friend not a shell of a woman who had been destroyed by an evil man.
"I'm watching the movie, hope it doesn't hurt you too much." Casey turned back to the screen and pressed the play button on the remote.
Rory sat down in the chair across from him. She sighed and brought her hands to her face. She didn't know why she was talking him. When she removed her hands she looked at him.
"I hate you." And then after a second adds. "Which isn't really true because I'm still in love with you."