It goes without saying that I do not own Gilmore Girls.

Chapter 6: HOME

Logan stood there in complete shock and sighed. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know if he should go after Casey and fix their friendship or follow his heart and wait for Rory to come home. He sighed again, checked his watch and then walked to Casey's room. He knocked on the door twice before opening it.

"Mind if I come in here and apologize for being such an asshole?" He asked her. She was sitting on the bed staring at him. He had the pleasure of watching her face turn from angry and unforgiving to sincere and accepting. He smirked his all knowing smirk and watched as she smiled.

"You better get out there, Huntz, it's Saturday she comes home at eleven." Casey remarked, she bent over the side of the bed and searched for something hiding underneath the massive amounts of blankets on the floor. He laughed, Casey never was a neat person.

"Is that so?" He inquired, ignoring the fact that Casey was nearly falling off the bed.

"Yep, but I don't know, lately she's been off routine." Casey replied. She searched under the bottom most blanket and yelped out in accomplishment as she found what she was looking for. She help up the book and heard Logan laugh. She loved his laugh.

"Logan there's something you need to know." She paused for his reaction to her eerily serious voice. He stepped towards the bed and sat down with a sigh. He didn't like where this was going.

"The Rory you're still in love with…"

"I never said I was still in love with her, I just miss her." He clarified, trying to save his balls. She smacked him.

"Please, Huntz, it's way too obvious that you still love her." She smacked him again as he opened his mouth in protest.

"Anyway the Rory, the Ace that you love doesn't exist anymore. She's a different person. Now I don't know what made her change, maybe it was Todd, I don't really know for sure." Logan nodded, he didn't know what else he could say.

"For the longest time I thought she was looking for relief in the wrong places. I mean when I first met her at group she was sharp, snappy, angry and then she broke down. I offered her a shoulder to cry on, and the next thing I know she's applying to be my roommate." She paused, Logan was immersed in her story, she wasn't used to having his complete attention.

"I don't know what happened to change her. I met her a year ago, two years after the Todd incident. Something could have happened in between then and now. I just don't know, I don't know her the way you used to. I only know the Rory that keeps quiet about her past." Casey finished then got up, she left the room and went straight to the kitchen. She pulled out some pizza and took a bite. Logan followed suit.

"So she's not over Todd?" Logan naively asked. Casey shot a sharp warning look at him.

"You don't get over being nearly killed in a couple of years. I haven't gotten over it."

"You weren't nearly killed Casey, he smacked you once. Two years later you should be over it."

"Logan! Abuse isn't something you get over." Casey screamed at him, she couldn't believe he was being such an asshole.

"Come on Casey, don't believe everything they feed you at Group. You don't cry about it, you don't think about it, you just go to that stupid meeting to meet people to help them, which is a great quality, Case. But stop pretending you're still torn up over it." Logan was calm and collected as he said this, he kept an eye on Casey's temper and the door.

"Get out, Logan." It was all Casey had said before opening the door for him. He stood defiantly watching her movement. He didn't come to start a fight with one of his closest friends, and he had ended up starting two.

"I can't leave. You know I can't. I'm waiting until Rory comes home, so we can talk and I can win her back. I'm sorry for upsetting you, but I seriously think you are over what happened, and I think it's about time you realized it too and moved on." He explained and apologized all in one breath. He made it clear to her that he wanted Rory back, which in his mind showed weakness and then he justified his previous words with friendship. Of course Casey saw right through it.

"I'm still in love with you, Logan." She told him, and quickly got rid of his cocky grin on his pretty boy face. Logan's jaw hung open with shock, he was speechless.

"You what?" Logan finally stuttered out. He really didn't want to deal with this right now. He hoped that this was all some sort of joke, something to get him to shut up and to leave.

"I still love you." She repeated.

"No. You can't."

"Don't tell me what I can and can not do, and it's not even like I planned this. Geeze haven't you heard the expression that you can't chose who you love?"

"I have, but I want Rory." He whispered to his friend. He hoped she would understand that his heart was taken. He hoped she was still joking.

" I know that Huntzberger. I just thought I'd get it out there." She paused and observed the obvious tension. She did have a way to complicate matters.

The two of them averted their attention to inanimate items around the Manhattan apartment, anything to keep them from confronting the issues at hand.

Across the city in a little more unstable neighborhood two friends sat on the roof of a bar. Rory was holding an empty shot glass, Amy held a martini glass delicately in her hand. Rory grabbed the bottle of liquor, she wasn't sure what she was drinking, and refilled her shot.

"Maybe you should slow down. Maybe we could do some of that talking you offered earlier." Amy advised. She was met with a spiteful glare. Rory took the shot and cringed. She wiped the excess liquid on her sleeve and sighed.

"I miss him." Rory announced suddenly and Amy was clueless as to who this 'him' was.

"Who?"

"My son. I miss him." Amy was shocked to say the least. She never thought of Rory as a mother.

"Oh, is he with his father?" It was a simple, innocent question that stabbed at Rory's heart.

"His father is Todd." Amy nodded, she knew all about Todd and what he had done to Rory.

"Well then, where is he, I'd like to meet him someday." Amy loved children. She really did, she hoped that one day she would have some.

Rory felt he heart break and she didn't know why. Her subconscious was trying to tell her something, she fought back out of fear the only way she knew how; she took another shot.

"He's in Florida, with some friends of mine. I guess I just couldn't do it, be a mother. Which is quite funny, Ames, because everything I do, I master. And all this time, being so far away from him, not there to hold his hand when he crosses the street, not being there for his first words, to calm him down after a nightmare, and the list goes on, you know. I feel like I've failed. I failed him, I failed my mother, I failed Todd and myself. God I hate myself, every fucking day I blame myself for his dea…" She cut herself off, she couldn't control what she said anymore. Because through all her tears and heart wrenching pain, she could have sworn she was about to say he was dead, that her beautiful baby boy was dead. But she knew the truth, she knew her son was alive and living a life she couldn't give him.

Amy was a smart woman, she could easily fill in the missing words. Rory had a son. Had, the past tense. Her friend's son was dead. But what confused her was how Rory kept speaking about him in the present tense. She didn't know what to do, so she hugged her friend, offering her silent support.

"He must hate me, you know. For leaving him. He is so beautiful, my friends, the ones he's staying with, they send me pictures. He always looks so calm, so beautiful. It's hard to imagine he'd know what hate is. He must hate me, 'cause I hate myself for doing that to him. I left him without with a father and a mother." Rory broke off into another fit of sobs.. Her chest felt so heavy she couldn't breathe. Amy rubbed her back.

Amy was confused. She either misheard before or her friend was in denial. She had no qualms about questioning her own intelligence but for some reason she chose the latter. She figured Rory had some kind of psychological disorder brought on by stress and trauma. The poor girl, she boyfriend randomly attacks her, almost kills her and then her son dies. Amy figured if was her, she'd probably be in a mental institute as she doesn't possess the kind of strength Rory clearly does, to just put the past behind her and live.

"Are you okay?" Amy gently asked her broken and sick friend.

"I wanted to go to my mother, but god, she'd be so ashamed. I mean her situation was so much worse than mine and she managed to make it work. And me, I just bail. I run away, I cower and hide. I can't even face the reality of it. And I still just want my mommy to make it work. And you know maybe, if I stayed with her, if I accepted all the fucking faces of sympathy in that stupid small town, things would've been different, you know."

"Everything will be okay." Amy replied. Truth was she could barely hear the poor girl's tale through all the crying.

"Everything will be okay." She repeated a few times more until she and young John took her home, well to Amy's apartment as they didn't know where she lived.

The next morning found Logan asleep on the couch and Casey frantically trying to get everything ready. Her client was supposed to come over for a meeting. They both decided it would be more welcoming and more productive.

"Logan, get out." She hissed into his ear. She had tried shaking him, she tried yelling into his ear, she was about to push him off onto the floor when he stirred.

"Casey? Where's…"

"She didn't show up, now you have about ten minutes to get your ass out of my apartment. An important client is coming over for coffee. So scoot, come back later tonight."

"Work? On a Sunday? That's just wrong." He rolled off the couch and moved for the bathroom. Seven minutes later he was out the door. He may not be in love with Casey, but he respected her.

Twenty minutes later Casey buzzed her client upstairs and frantically threw the blankets in her roommate's room and closed the door.

"Hey, nice to see you again." Casey greeted her client with a smile and a handshake.

"Yes, now lead me to the coffee. It's far too early for handshakes and business." Lorelai said while surveying the apartment. It was classy but had a hint of crazy. She smiled, it must be Casey's roommate who added the crazy.

"I agree, I had a hectic morning. My alarm didn't wake me up, and then I had to frantically clean, get ready and kick the guy who is madly in love with my roommate out. All in a morning's day." Casey said as she led Lorelai to the coffee, they sat down at the kitchen table.

"So did you get anything done for the dragonfly?" Lorelai asked going straight to business as it was too easy to just sit and chat with Casey all day.

"Did I mention the guy madly in love with my roommate who I am in love with?" Casey knew it was a crappy excuse, but she thought it might work on this particular client.

"Hmm, you did. So I guess we're starting from scratch."

"I'm sorry. I mean it's no excuse it's just didn't get the work done. Yeah, I'm a slacker." Casey sheepishly replied as Lorelai seemed unimpressed.

"It was creative, I'll give you that." Lorelai laughed to try to ease the mood a little. Today was just a hard day for her. It was the day when Rory came home from the hospital after what the monster Todd did to her. It would be two weeks before Rory wasn't in her bed.

"Ok so, I figure we could get the basics done. What do you hope this ad will accomplish?" And so they went about their way talking about the quaint little inn nestled tightly in Stars Hollow.

Across town in the city suburbs in a tiny little two room house laying on a cozy gray couch was Rory Gilmore. After having drunk herself into a stupor and cried herself into oblivion she fell into a restless sleep full of tossing and turning and waking up periodically calling out for her son, Benjamin. When she woke up, for the last time, she was hung over and confused. But she smelled the sweet smell of coffee and followed her nose to the kitchen.

"Want some coffee?" Amy asked her with a bit of an edge to her voice. She hardly slept at all last night because of Rory's lack of a good sleep. And then around three o'clock she couldn't fall asleep so she called up her mother and her good friends to see if they could recommend a therapist to Rory. However, they all thought that since Amy didn't know the full story that she should stay out of it. In fact her mother insisted that even if she did know the whole story to just keep her nose out it considering it didn't seem like Rory's condition was a threat to her life or anybody's life. Amy was a stubborn fool and chalked it up to the fact that she had woken them up at three thirty in the morning.

"Did I do something wrong, you seem bitter?" Rory asked. Her head was pounding.

"I just didn't get much sleep last night is all." However Rory was a good friend and she wasn't in any position to ruin her life.

"Oh I'm sorry. I know how you feel though, I feel like I didn't sleep a wink. And then I wake up with a splitting headache and I didn't know where I was. I must tell you though, I was quite relieved to find you here in the kitchen instead of some creepy guy." Rory laughed. Amy smiled at her story telling ability.

"Yes, well I have to go, brunch with my mom and all. You can leave whenever, just lock up." Amy grabbed her purse and her keys.

"No, no I'll go now. Thank you for taking me home, I must have been a complete wreak last night. And the drinking couldn't have helped either."

"Yeah, I suppose. Tequila seems to be your Achilles heal, Gilmore." They laughed and walked out the door. They went their separate ways.

Rory walked into her apartment. The two women stopped talking to look up at her. Rory closed the door and walked off into the direction of her room while taking off her smelly tequila stained shirt.

"Uhg. Why do I do this to myself? I mean ever time I drink tequila it fucks with my mind and I end up in someone else's living quarter. And I don't even remember drinking it, I just wake up with a tequila hangover and assume it was from the massive amounts of alcohol I drank. And I never sleep either, I'm always haunted by the same fucking tequila induced nightmare. And it doesn't go away. I wake up and that should be the end of it, but no, it isn't I wake again in another hour so to the same disturbing images." Rory stopped and took a breath. She surveyed her room.

"Casey, what did you do to my room?" She yelled.

Casey cringed and looked down ashamed even though Rory couldn't see her. Lorelai looked amused, but was struck with a feeling of familiarity. In fact in pained her to think that Casey's Gilmore roommate was no other than her prodigal daughter. She pushed the hopeful thought out of her head and smiled at their tactics.

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you. Tell me the truth."

"Well your lover boy was waiting at beck and call for you, but you ever showed up because you were in your tequila induced coma, and I gave him some blankets, but you see I woke up late and my client was coming over soon and I guess I might have thrown the blankets in your room to quicken the cleaning process." Casey explained in a childish tone, hoping to get sympathy for being so pathetic.

"Casey! How could you? You know I'm a bit of an organized freak."

"a bit of…" Casey mumbled under her breath. Lorelai laughed out loud, again suppressing the Rory thought.

Rory walked out of her room.

"I didn't quite get that. Oh and to help clear up some misinformation, he is not my lover boy, he's a love sick puppy trying to rekindle something that in all actuality never existed, because if it did he wouldn't have left me." She stopped and stared at Casey's client.

"Oh! Lorelai Gilmore this is my roommate Rory Gilmore. And Rory vice versa." Casey jumped in and introduced the two of them who were stuck in some kind of staring contest.

"Rory." Lorelai stated trying to keep her voice even.

"Mom." Rory acknowledged without noticing. Casey flinched at the predicament. Her secretive roommate was face to face with her mother, who she had no contact with for years.

Rory's eyes shifted to the door and then to the floor. They shifted back to the door and she held her gaze there while considering if it was worth it to run out those doors, or if she should just suck it up and face her fears.

"Go ahead kid, run." Lorelai noticed the shifting eyes and she'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it too. She purposely called her kid because if she ran then she was still a kid in an adults shoe.

Rory was tempted to take her up on her offer but she realized that all she ever wanted was her mom to hold her again after all these years. She took a step forward and then practically fell into her mother's welcoming arms. She felt like she was home.

A/N: sorry for the delay but you see, I'm not used to a social life. Plus I'm back at college and I have to sleep and party. Sorry for the long delay again. Maybe if I get a lot of reviews I would write the next chapter a little quicker than this one.