Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls.

A/N: Thank you for all your reviews! This should really be two chapters but I couldn't find a decent place to break it off so I just put it all together. There will be at least one more chapter after this one...

When Lorelai left her apartment the next morning it wasn't much after dawn. She hadn't slept and now that it was light out the only logical thing to do seemed to be to wait outside Mocha Beans until it opened, as there would be no survival to this day if coffee was not involved.

She had seen Luke fall to his knees through her bedroom window. She had seen him sit there until the rain picked up to the point of pouring and the thunder began. She had left the window for a time—tried to eat, tried to sleep—and when she did look back outside she saw what she had expected—nothing. He was gone.

She exited the elevator that she had taken four floors down, walked passed the mailboxes, and stepped outside her apartment building finding at once both the last and the only thing she expected.

At first glance he looked almost dead, and in some ways maybe he was, as his body slumped against the light post outside the door of her apartment building. The way his chin jutted into his shoulder made it clear that falling asleep was an accident. The way his shoulders rolled forward, his arms gripped tightly across his chest made it clear that the sleep was anything but a peaceful one.

The sound of the building door shutting jolted him awake and he saw her immediately upon looking up. For a second they stared at each other, having nothing to say and absolutely everything to say all at once. He tried to act like it was natural to keep his arms wrapped tight around himself. He tried to shift his weight so she wouldn't notice when he shook each time a chill ran through him. He tried to act like her finding him on the ground in front of her building was the most natural thing in the world. He tried acting like he didn't already know she could see straight through him.

She took one look at his dripping wet clothes, clinging to his body, colors darkened by the dampness, glanced skyward at the nonexistent covering he had clearly sat under all night and shook her head. "Damn you Luke," she breathed, just above a whisper and seemingly directed more to herself than him, "damn you."

He coughed once but excepting that made no other attempt at communication. For some reason nothing came to mind. He knew it was cold, he knew he was wet, he knew he probably shouldn't be there. He knew all of that but felt none of it. He was numb, just numb. She could disregard him right now, step over him and go about her day. He wouldn't stop her, he couldn't. And if she did maybe he would still be sitting here when she got back, maybe he wouldn't. Either way it wouldn't matter. He knew that. If she left now, it would be for good.

Biting her lip she moved her head so as to usher him out of her line of vision and took a small step forward. She began another but halted as she felt the wind blow cold, shaking the leaves and branches, howling in a piercing fashion. She turned back to him.

"You idiot," she said, staring at his dripping clothes, "why…" she trailed off. He didn't take offense. He had sat out all night in the pouring rain, stalking a woman who wanted nothing but for him to leave her the hell alone. He thought he was an idiot too. "Damn it Luke," she said as she opened back up the door to her apartment building. She gazed at him just briefly enough on her way back through the entrance that he understood this wasn't her running again. This was a truce of sorts. He would have held out hope for a Switzerland joke except he knew very well this wasn't her accepting him either. She just couldn't bare to see him die from the elements in front of her building.

He followed her wordlessly up to her apartment. He rubbed his hands together, scuffled his feet across the floorboards. Nothing. He couldn't feel a thing, not a damn thing. On the fourth floor she ushered him inside apartment number twenty-two and shut the door behind them. He stood in the door way dumbly and she made no attempt to ask him to come in any further. She disappeared into a closet as he gazed around the small apartment. It was bland he noticed. Not at all a "Lorelai" apartment. Excepting the few framed pictures of Rory, a handful of pillows on the couch, a colorful blanket, everything looked…lifeless. Beiges, browns, and grays flooded his vision. Sookie had been right—she was surviving, but just like him, she'd stopped living. And his heart broke a little further at that.

"Here," she said handing him a towel and avoiding eye contact. He accepted wordlessly and began to dry the water off of his face and neck. She stared out the window, her back to him as she continued, "There's a dryer over there, I'm sure you can figure out how to make it work. I got it in under a week so should be a breeze for you. Just leave the towel…leave the towel wherever when you're done." She turned back around and picked up her purse. "I'm going to work. I have to go to work." She began to walk past him. "Just use the stuff and…"

"Lorelai." He spoke her name softly but clearly, the first time he'd spoken that day. It stopped her in her tracks, him grabbing her arm as he said it really proved unnecessary. He opened his mouth again and she looked him in the eye for the first time in two years. The sight of her blue eyes burning into his once again was enough to stop him in his tracks.

"Luke, you have to get out of those clothes. We were best friends for eight years, I'm not letting you die of phenomena outside my door. But," her breathe grew sharper and less steady as her eyes began to fill, "God help me Luke Danes if you respect me at all, if you do now or ever, ever have cared for me in the slightest as a friend, a human being, or whatever else you will not be here when I get back."

He couldn't gather himself in time to cover his shock. "Lor—"

"No Luke," she whispered hoarsely, willing tears back, "no. I'm going to ask one last thing of you. I have no right to but I'm asking it anyway. Go. Please, just go. Dry your clothes and go. As the last favor you will ever do for me, please…" she trailed off as she began losing the struggle with her voice. In his shock she was able to loosen herself from his grasp. "Just don't be here," she repeated just above a whisper as she disappeared out the door and down the hall.

Luke stood still for a few moments, wondering if this was really happening. And then, breathing deeply, he did as he was told. He took off his clothes and put them in the dryer. He never felt anything. It was like he was walking in a cloud of some sort, like the world around him was out of focus. Or was it falling apart? Maybe it already had. He had forgotten how to tell. He walked around the apartment, refraining himself from touching anything. She wouldn't want him to. There were six pictures, all in brown wooden frames. Rory as a baby, Rory as a toddler on Halloween, Rory in a Bangles t-shirt and butterfly wings, Rory graduating Chilton, Rory asleep on her bed at home surrounded by books, and Rory in front of Yale. That was it. Six pictures. All Rory—no other faces, not even herself. It was as if she didn't want to acknowledge that she had a past outside of her daughter, a past of her own. Luke looked at the two neon pink and green pillows on the couch. A seemingly inappropriate seeming splash of color in the dull room. Rory had bought them for her, he was sure. The purple and blue blanket too. Attempts at bringing Lorelai back to herself. Attempts that clearly had failed. He sank down into one of her wooden kitchen chairs. What hadn't failed?

When the dryer buzzed Luke found he had no idea how much time had passed. He couldn't decide if it felt like it had been minutes or hours. It was almost as if for him time had ceased to exist.

He got up and gathered his clothes from the machine, slowly putting each piece back over his body. He folded the towel she had given him and placed it on top of the small dryer. He wondered why out of all the investments she could have made cramming a washer and dryer into her tiny apartment took priority? He supposed it was a question he could add to the list of Lorelai mysteries he would never get the chance to solve.

After slowly tying his shoes Luke walked to the door, pausing for a second with his hand on the doorknob. He looked back around the room behind him, a sight that if he hadn't already been so numbingly defeated might have broken him the rest of the way. It wasn't right. It wasn't her. It wasn't supposed to be like this—not for either of them. He questioned himself as to what had gone so wrong, so horribly, devastatingly, unforgivably wrong. He lied about April…for two months. He kept her away, he lived two lives, he separated the things most important to him, he took her forgranted. She gave him an ultimatum. He got offended, refused to be pushed like that. The happiest, most important day of their lives shouldn't take place in some wedding chapel in Vegas, or wherever she had in mind. She'd slept with Christopher. She'd slept with her ex, the cause of so much previous hurt and mistrust between them. She'd hurt him in the deepest way she knew how, and then she'd left him. But as he looked around the room, taking in her life now, as he reflected on his life for the past two years…no, no not 'his life', his 'existence' of the past two years…it all just seemed so wrong. As bad as both of their mistakes were, as deep as the hurt was…the consequences felt so unjust, so wrong.

He looked back at the doorknob. Why was he continuing this cycle? He had gotten this far! Why was he letting all that lay to waste? He thought of her words before she left for work, her tears, the way her voice shook, the way the last thing she begged him for was to not make the job of daily survival any harder for her than it already was. He sighed. Maybe Bolton had been wrong. Maybe she wasn't fixing her mistake, not because she didn't know how, but because she didn't want to, because she couldn't. Maybe choosing what she needed in this new life of hers wasn't his decision to make…

"I thought I told her to get rid of this boat." He felt himself growing infuriated again.

" She did. She sold it to me, along with all her other crap. She made quite a killing, actually. I just couldn't stand the idea that you might - someday - regret giving this boat away." She felt she was right, he could see it in her face, and he couldn't believe it.

"Even though I said I wanted it gone." He couldn't believe her. This was incredible. Did she not care for him at all?

"Yes, I know, but you were upset."

"Oh, I was cranky. Now I'm upset!"

"Sorry. I just thought –"

"You thought about you! You thought about you and how you'd feel! You didn't think about me, or the fact that I said I wanted to get rid of this damn boat! I mean, I said it, Lorelai. I said it, you heard it, and you ignored it!" He knew she was crazy. He knew she thought the world centered around her but this was too much. How dare she? How dare she mess with his memories of his father! This was one area that she had no right, no right at all to stick her two cents into.

She looked shocked, actually, as if she'd never really thought that someone else's wishes might truly, and rightly, contrast with what she thought should happen. "Because I didn't want you –"

"You had no respect for what I wanted! This was my dad! This was his boat and this decision was mine! This was not yours!"

He remembered that moment so vividly. He remembered his shock, his rage, his hurt that what he needed, what he wanted regarding such a very personal aspect of his life—indeed one where only he would have authority to say what was needed—would be so disregarded by her. Who was he to cause her that same hurt?

With one last glance around the room, Luke opened the door of the apartment and stepped out. He walked down the short hallway and pressed the down button next to the elevator. As he stood there waiting for it he tried to reassure himself that he was doing the right thing, that the crumbling he felt inside would go away with time, eased by the knowledge that he had put her first one last time.

"Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same, Luke." Who had told him that? Bolton? That sounded like a Bolton mantra. But no, he didn't think so…Luke sucked in a breath—his father, he realized, his father had told him that. And damn it, he sure as hell wished his father were here now. Not a day had gone by since his father's death that Luke hadn't missed him, hadn't felt his absence. But now, after having somehow survived the hell the past two years had brought, after having come so close just to be broken into a million pieces again, after struggling so hard to do the right thing, trying so hard to see right from wrong, well, Luke knew he had never missed his father more than he did right at that very moment.

The doors to the elevator popped open with a ding and Luke stepped forward. Maybe it was all the thoughts of his father but as he stood there, one foot in the elevator and one foot out, something else occurred to him…

"Hey," she said as she slipped outside the dance studio to where she had seen him waiting for her through the window.

He kicked at the ground a bit, having trouble meeting her gaze. "See, there's a reason why I stay away from people on this particular day. It's 'cause I kind of suck."

Her voice was full of sympathy, regret as she responded, "Oh, Luke, I'm so sorry. I should have listened to you. I should have stayed out of it. You were right, I didn't think. I mean, I didn't think like you would think. I thought like I would think. And my thinking is sometimes very, very wrong if you're not me, and occasionally if you are me…"

She was rambling and he felt his anger, his stupidity, his own regret for yelling flow out of him. And just like that he was falling in love with her all over again. He was kissing her before he even realized what was happening.

"You just keep thinking like you'd think." It had taken him all day but he had finally realized just how much she loved him. She loved him because she didn't listen to him, didn't listen to ranting, yelling, 'stay the hell out of my way' him when anyone and everyone else would have. She did not what he wanted, but what he needed—something his father had always done for him, something with which his father had taught him, through actions, was what love was really all about.

With that, Luke retracted his foot and retraced his steps back down the hallway and through the apartment door he realized he'd never actually closed.

Once inside he sat down on the couch, behind the small coffee table, next to the picture of Rory and her books. Resting his elbows on his knees, he put his head in hands and tried to think of what the hell he was going to say to her when she walked through that door and saw that he had refused to comply with the only thing she'd asked.

He had no idea how long he'd sat there when he heard the doorknob begin to turn. It felt like a few moments and hundred hours all at once and Luke briefly wondered if he'd ever again be able to keep track of time with any sort accuracy.

She jumped slightly as she stepped through the doorway and caught sight of his figure in her normally empty apartment. Upon gathering herself he could see her jaw stiffen and her posture straighten. She shook her head in disbelief.

"I asked you for one thing…"

"Lorelai," he said trying to calm her, trying to keep himself calm as he rose to his feet behind the small wooden coffee table with glass paneling.

She cut him off shaking her head, clearly furious with him. "No! No!" she yelled. "You really don't care about me at all do you? Do you?" He opened his mouth but she answered for him, "Clearly you don't because if you did you would not be here! I asked you, no, I begged you, to leave me and my shell of a life alone! Don't you think I've been though enough?" Her anger was starting to get the best of her. She threw the folders she had been carrying to the floor as her voice grew increasingly unsteady and tears began to well. "God Luke! A little peace! Just a little! God, I've been punished alright! I screwed up, I get it! Okay? I left, I did my part, now can't you just let me be!" Her tears began to stream her face and yet, Luke couldn't bring himself to feel sympathetic this time. He couldn't bring himself to walk out that door. All he felt was angry.

"What about me!" he heard himself yell. "What about me! You're suffering here? Well, poor baby!" He stepped out from behind the coffee table and stood within feet of her. He was losing control, losing it to anger, and he just couldn't muster up the will power to stop it. Emotions were flooding through him, pumping though his veins, he could feel the anger pulsating through his temples, the hurt and pain of the past two years rising like the blood to his face as he felt his cheeks begin to grow red. "You left!" he reminded her. "You," he stabbed his finger in front of her face, "left me!" he finished by thumping himself in the chest with his thumb.

"Oh, what was I supposed to do Luke? Huh? Stay in the damn gossip hole of a town and let everyone talk about how I screwed up? About how I ended us—the 'us' they had on a pedestal like we were some sort of biblical figures? What was I supposed to do, stay and let you shut me out, give me the cold shoulder forever…"

"How do you know? How do you know I would have done that! You don't! You never gave me that chance! You ran, you got scared and you ran! As soon as things got hard you ran!"

"And you honestly think you wouldn't have reacted that way? You and your pigheaded stubbornness? Honestly Luke! Wake up! You hate Christopher! You have always hated Christopher! You would have never been able to be okay with what happened!"

"I don't have to be 'okay' with it to forgive it! I don't have to like him to forgive you! You never gave me that chance! You could have stayed and fought for us but you bailed!"

"No Luke, you bailed!"

"I'm not the one who left!"

"Yes, Luke, yes you did!"

"I'm right…"

"No! No, don't say you're right where you've always been because you're not!"

"But you…"

"Yes, Luke, yes I left alright? I left Stars Hollow. But you left first Luke! You left long before that! And I stayed until I realized you were never coming back!"

"I never went anywhere!"

"No Luke, heaven forbid you leave that little diner of yours! You didn't leave Stars Hollow, Luke, you left us!"

"I…"

"You stopped being all in! Ever since April…"

"Don't bring April into this!"

"She is in this Luke! And I didn't bring her in, you did! And that could have been okay, it could have! She's a wonderful girl Luke—cute, brilliant, charming. I like her, I really do. But you hid her…"

"Not this again…we've been through this already! I was trying to protect you!"

"From a twelve year old? Really, Luke I think I proved I don't need protecting a long time ago…"

"Rory had just come back! You were finally happy again! I'm sorry if I couldn't stand being the one to take that away from you so soon!"

"And I understand that! I do! It was the wrong choice but I can accept that your heart was in the right place there! But then what did you do Luke, once I found out? You separated us! You led two lives and refused to let me into one of them! You can't do that and be all in! And you can't get married and not be all in!"

"I waited for you! I waited for you without ever complaining while Rory was gone! You don't think I wanted to be married then? Don't you think I spent time wondering when the hell, or even if, it was ever going to happen? But I waited for you! Because I knew you needed to be whole, before you could get married and you needed Rory back in order to be whole! You were missing a piece of yourself all that time, meaning you weren't all in then either, but I waited for you to get that piece back, to be all in again!"

"What happened with Rory was different! I did not hide my relationship with Rory from you! I did not insist on going to her 21st birthday alone! I did not give you certain times you couldn't come by the house…"

"You've had twenty plus years to figure out how to be a parent, how to deal with putting your kid first while dealing with other aspects of your life! I'd only had months! Months! We were getting married, we were getting ready to take all those damn promises to stand by each other no matter what, to wait for each other, to be there for each other no matter what happened! I figured, I just assumed, that I had you! That I didn't have to work for your affection! I had just found my daughter!" he ripped at the cap on his head, waving his hands like they had a mind of their own as he fought to keep the emotion out of his voice. "You don't think I was scared of losing her? You don't think I knew what a real chance there was that she would want nothing to do with a loner, dumb-ass, like me? I knew I had to work to keep her in my life—I wasn't aware that applied to you to!"

"See! See!" she yelled at him, tears coming harder now, streaming faster than she could wipe them away. "This is why I wanted you to leave Luke! This is why I left! This is why! I can't argue with you like this! I can't do it Luke!"

"Oh and this is fun for me?" he yelled incredulously.

"Stop!" she screamed through tears. "Just stop! I loved you Luke! In a way that I've never ever loved anyone before and I will never again! And you can believe that or not, it doesn't really matter because either way it's just as true! You were it for me! You were it! And I can't stand here listening to you scream at how I didn't love you enough or love you the right way or how I got weak and ran, ran to Chris, ran away! I can't do it! I loved you the only way I could! The only way I knew how! I loved you with everything I had and in the end it just wasn't enough! Do you have any idea how long it has taken me to get over that to the point where I can get out of bed in the morning? To the point that I don't spend every waking moment wanting to die? I've finally gotten to the point that I can survive again but I will never, ever stop hurting!" She grew softer as she began to shake with anger, shake with emotion. "I can't stop loving you Luke Danes, and I hate myself for it, everyday, every night, I hate how much I still love you! I hate you for it! I hate you Luke! Do you understand that? I hate you because as much as it's killing me I can't stop loving you!"

He stared at her, sobbing uncontrollably in the doorway, slightly taken aback by her confession. "Lorelai, what do you think these past two years have been like for me huh? Seriously what do you think? Do you really think I said, 'oh good she's gone, more time for bonding with April?' Lorelai, I spent a year turning the world upside down searching for you. I got a passport. Yes," he reaffirmed as her eyes widened slightly, "me, I got a passport. I went to Paris, London, Germany, to country's I've never even heard of searching for you. I've been over this country coast to coast. Me, Luke Danes, Mr. I'm-Never-Gonna-Leave-Stars-Hallow. Anna didn't let me see April that entire year, Lorelai. She called me crazed and obsessed, and you know what? I was. Any lead, any piece of information, I followed it to the ends of the earth and back again. I barely ate, I barely slept, I searched for you until I had nothing left. So I went back to Stars Hollow, I went back home, and I buried myself in that apartment. I really thought I would die there Lorelai. I didn't want to live without you. I couldn't live without you. You were my life! You were my reason for living and you were gone. I spent months in that room, Lorelai. I never saw light, I barely ate, rarely showered, never shaved, I was a mess. Seven different times I wrote suicide notes. Seven different times I came very, very close. And then one day I got a call from a very terrified sounding little girl, my little girl, saying she missed me. Me, can you believe that? And then I thought about all those crazies we live with, all the psychos that should be put in straight jackets who kept my diner running, who kept leaving food outside my door, who kept waiting for me to come downstairs and out of my 'funk', all the people who weren't running. And you know what? My life still didn't have a point to it, not without you, and I still didn't want to live it, not without you, but I had to get dressed again, I had to go downstairs again, I had to continue to survive in this world again because there were people that needed me to." He broke eye contact with her and stared down at his shoes as he added, "and I thought one day you might come back." He looked back up at her. "But you were never coming back, were you?"

She stood there, shaking her head, her sobbing coming dangerously close to hysteria. "Don't…" she choked out. "Don't…d-do this…"

"Were you?" he repeated.

"Don't…just…g-get out! Get…out!" She began frantically trying to push him out the door, slapping at him, shoving him.

"You're running again! Just stop it! Stop trying to run away!"

"Get out Luke!" she cried desperately, mascara streaking her face, her voice hoarse and shaking. "Please!"

"Lorelai!" He grabbed her arms, forcing them still. "Stop! Stop trying to push me away!"

"Go!" she cried, and as her sobs grew greater her strength to fight against him shrunk exponentially.

Luke looked at the door and he looked back at her, sobbing hysterically in his grasp, and he realized he really had no idea what he should do. So, he did the only thing that came to mind—he kissed her.