Please Don't Tell Her
Summary: What if, instead of Lorelai seeking comfort from Chris, Luke is the one who goes to find comfort, and then tries to make it right.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except my pretty new computer, and that isn't fully paid for yet, so in fact I own nothing.
Rating: Teen.
Lorelai stood by Luke throughout all of his arrangements. She had helped him pick out a casket and all the minut details that seemed to plague him. The doctor's were optimistic about April's progress and they thought she might be able to go home very soon.
But the question on everyone's minds was, where exactly was home? To Luke's cramped tinny office, that was more shrine than habitable space? Luke never wanted his daughter to really see that side of him, the melancholy heartbroken side.
Luke fantasized about fixing up the extra room in Lorelai's house and making them a family. A real family, and he knew that it was just as likely as Canada having a soccer team in the World Cup.
He stared at Lorelai as she drank coffee and explained the details of the memorial service she had planned. No one really felt that a funeral would be appropriate, considering the events that lead them to this place. He didn't know where they stood; they hadn't uttered a word about his horrible mistake.
He hoped that her pain would disappear along with Anna. But of course that was a stupid thought. It was naïve and full of what he wanted as opposed to what she needed.
He sat there as she explained to him all of the things that he needed to know for a service that was really for his daughter. April had been silent since she had been told about her mother. And he worried that she would forever lose the spark he had come to know.
Lorelai looked up and she saw Luke staring back at her, and it was the kind of look, that told her more than she ever wanted to know. They didn't speak about what had torn them apart in the first place. Lorelai wished that they could talk about it, so she might escape the minute-by-minute reminders her heart gave her.
She wanted to forgive him, forget about it, and move on with him. She wanted to marry him and love him and kiss him. She wanted to wake up with him, and fall asleep with him. And she wanted April to be part of that as well.
She didn't want to be angry with him, or hurt, and she was tired of being the victim. 'Luke?' she whispered bring him out of his thoughts. 'I love you.' She whispers and Luke is out of the chair in a flash, they are hugging in another second and things seem to feel ok. That's the thing with appearances.
Rory smiled as she saw her mother and Luke embrace and she turned to the person beside her. 'See I told you, it doesn't matter what happens, there it for each other.' But Jess looked at the two of them skeptically. He had seen the how devastated and massacred she looked.
'There is nothing predictable about your mother Rory.' Jess told Rory and he hoped that everything would work out for the two of them.
Time seemed to move on effortlessly, even if everyone else was in turmoil. That's the way things usually were. The town had stood behind Luke and tried to help him in their quirky self. Emily and Richard offered to pay and organize Anna's funeral arrangements, and the nurses offered to look after April.
Everyone seemed to forget that it didn't matter how much help they were, a little girl lost her mother, and that her mother had tried to seriously injure her. Luke and Lorelai were the only ones willing to think about it. April tried to not think about it, and wanted to concentrate on her new school applications.
The day of the ceremony, the small church outside of Woodbridge was full. No one commented on how this tragedy had actually happened. Anna's family surrounded themselves around April all throughout the service. No one knew what to see to her. How do you comfort someone that has lost their mother, but had managed to lose her whole life in the process?
Sure she wasn't dead, she was lucky to be alive. Or so the doctor's had told her and everyone who had come to visit her. She was one of those cases that every doctor wishes he had, rather than the gruesomeness that each MD had come to face each and every day.
But her life as she knew it was gone. No more special dinners with her mother, and a million things that she would never get to experience. She didn't understand why her mother had tried to hurt her, and April chose not to think about it. She looked over at Lorelai who was talking to a relative of hers that she had really never seen before, and she wished even for the smallest hint of a second, that her mother was Lorelai.
Lorelai had come to visit her in the hospital, and she had been the one to make her feel better. She had been the one to hold her when she had cried, and the one who helped her pick out something for the service.
While Luke looked at the two important women in his life, and he felt conflicted. How could he fix all of his problems with Lorelei, and try to help April adjust to all the changes that were bound to happen, but deep down, he felt like ever since Lorelai walked away after he turned her elopement down, that his life was unfixable and permanently broken.
It seemed that Luke was elected to talk at Anna's service. There was no body; her family felt that it wasn't a good idea with what had happened. There was a picture of Anna when she was younger, and she looked so alive. April had told her father that she didn't know if she could say anything, and it was up to Luke to paint the picture that her family felt she deserved.
He couldn't blame them for wanting to paint a picture that Anna was a brave and great person, and she was, but she made mistakes. He didn't know how to keep the bitterness out of his voice. How not to express his pain, his almost betrayal in his voice. He couldn't forget how he yelled at her. A poor injured woman in her hospital room, fighting for her life, and he just yelled at her.
Instead he spoke of her wit, of her love of being a mother. He could talk about April for hours. He looked at the crowd, and he saw a lot of residents of his quirky little town, and some from when he knew her before. He tried to speak eloquently, but who was he kidding? He wasn't the orator of Stars Hallow.
Afterwards, the reception was nice, full of delicious canapés that Sookie had done. Thanks for Lorelei of course. When he looked over to where she was sitting. Everything in him begged to go over there and ask her to help him. She would too, which is why he was pretty positive that he wouldn't do it.
He had been unfair to her. She had gone beyond the call of duty; she had managed to calm down April after one of her hysterical fits before the numbness had managed to capture her. She had even planned this memorial and never once voiced her opinions.
Slowly people trickled out of the funeral home, and finally it was just Luke, April, Jess and Rory and Lorelai. April was talking to Rory and Jess and Luke was content to watch them. Even if it was silly or unrealistic, he liked to think that his children were talking to each other. He had a hand in raising all three of them.
Lorelai sat beside him and took his hand. 'Your eulogy was beautiful.' She said to Luke and they were silent. 'Thank you for doing this.' Luke told Lorelai and they were both silent.
'You know even if you said you could handle it, I would still want to help you with this.' Lorelai whispered to Luke, and she grabbed his hand.
Hope began to flare in his heart, and suddenly, the future wasn't looking so bleak.
Jess looked over at that moment, and he stopped. He had thought things for his Uncle and his girlfriend's mother was over, but there they were, and that spark they have perfected over the years was back. And perhaps even stronger.
TBC
Ok that sucked. Massively horribly sucked. And I hate it when the author bashes their own work, cause why would anyone want to read something, the writer hated? But I think this was the worst, hardest chapter to write. I've been writing it on and off, for weeks, and it's still not right. Which is why it's so short.
GROWL
Darn you muse. Where the hell are you?