Hey, look who finally updated! Sorry it took so long but I hope it was worth waiting for. Here's the final chapter.

Gilmore Dramaqueens

When Lorelai came back home, Luke was already in bed. Although she tried to be quiet, he woke up as she crawled into bed. He turned to her and instantly noticed that there was something wrong.

"Hey, you're back..." he mumbled. "What's up with the sad face?"

"Nothing..." Lorelai turned away from him and pulled the quilt up over her shoulders. Luke simply put his arm around her. He didn't ask again. He knew she'd tell him what was on her mind, she just needed to think it over first. And he was right. It only took about ten seconds before Lorelai turned around to face him.

"Well, you know... It's just the usual thing. My mum..." she mumbled. "I'm not even quite sure what we were fighting about, actually." She turned away from him again before she continued. "I think it was about Suzy...you know, about how Mum treats us differently and everything."

"And that's why you look so sad?" Luke didn't quite understand.

"And then this thing she did to us four years ago came up...I don't know why I threw that in, it didn't really have much to do with the rest." Lorelai sighed, and Luke pulled her closer to him. "I don't know anything right now," she whispered. "I just want to sleep."

In the mean time, in Hartford, Emily passed Suzannah's bedroom door on her way to bed. She stopped for a second to listen and see if the girl was awake, like she always did without thinking about it. Most nights there wasn't a sound, but tonight she heard some weak wimpering. As she went into the room, she could see that her daugther was crying in her sleep. Emily sat down next to her and carefully ran her hand over Suzannah's shoulder. This made the girl wake up.

"I want my Lumpy..." she whimpered. Although Emily had heard those words dozens of times during the last couple of days, this time they made her more sad than annoyed.

"Oh, angel, if only I were able give you Lumpy back, I would, I swear" she whispered, and she knew she was telling the truth. For some reason, these words seemed to be what Suzannah had wanted to hear. She lay back down and closed her eyes.

"Thank you, Mummy," she yawned and Emily had to smile.

"Does that mean you're not mad at me anymore?" she asked. Her daughter just managed tonod her head slightly to respond before she went back to sleep. Emily remained by the bed for a little longer before she left the room, relieved that half of the burden she had carried five minutes earlier had been taken off of her.

The next morning, as Lorelai was about to leave for work, she realized that she hadn't brought her phone home with her, when the only reason why she went to her mother had been to get it. She considered going back, but decided she wasn't up for that right now. She grabbed her keys and left the house through the kitchen door just as Rory came out of her room.

"Mum? Mum?" she called just before she heard Lorelai's car pulling out of the driveway.

Ugh, bad luck she thought to herself. She looked down on the paper in her hand, this was something she really needed to talk to someone about. Ah well, if Lorelai wasn't availble, she'd have to find someone else. Rory resolutely walked out into the hallway and put on her jacket.

Not too long after, she walked into Luke's diner and found Lane behind the counter, pouring coffee into a cup.

"Hey Lane!" she called out. Lane jerked and spilled out some of the coffee.

"I had just gotten used to not having you come in here anymore, and then you're back!" she said with a smile. Lane was glad to have her best friend back in town, and the two of them had spent a lot of evenings going over Lane's old cd-s lately.

"Listen, I have something I need to talk to you about..." Rory sat down on a stool by the counter. "I got another e-mail today," she said as she handed Lane the paper. Lane skimmed through it.

"Wow, you're swimming in job offers while I'm stuck here, flipping burgers," she giggled.

"Swimming, huh? I've had two offers, that's all," Rory said with a grin. "And now I can't decide which one to take."

"Okay..." Lane thought it over for a second before she made a suggestion. "Let's look at the pros and cons of each of these jobs."

"Fine." Rory started counting on her fingers. "The first one is well-paid. I can live in my old appartment, where all my stuff is. It will look good in my future job applications...well, that's it."

"Good." Lane nodded. "What about the other one?"

"The other one doesn't pay as much, and won't give me the same status. And if I take it, I'll have to find a new place to live." Rory sighed, and Lane smiled at her.

"Sounds like you've already decided on what to do," she said and turned around to put the coffee pot back.

"It's just one thing, though..." Rory rested her elbows on the counter. Lane turned back to her.

"What?" she asked.

"The second job is closer to Mum...," Rory mumbled. This was going to be more difficult than she had thought.

Suzannah was sitting at the dining table, drawing, when Emily came into the room and sat down next to her. Yesterday's drama was still setting its mark on how she acted around her daughter. She somehow treated her with more care and forethought than she usually would. Suzannah's behaviour, on the other hand, was just like on any other day. Lorelai was probably right – she didn't mean anything about it, Emily thought to herself. She tucked her daughter's hair behind her ear and gave her a peck on the cheek.

"Look, Suzannah, Daddy's coming home tomorrow. Would you like to decide what we should have for dinner then?" Suzannah looked up from her crayons.

"Can Lorelai and the others come?" she asked. Emily looked away.

"I don't think so, angel..." she answered. Her daugther didn't settle with that answer.

"Why not? I can call and ask them," she offered. "Please, Mummy? I just need a little help with dialing the number?" Suzy smiled at her mother eagerly.

Emily hestitaded for a second, but then she nodded.

"All right, then. I guess asking can't do any harm...," she concluded. Suzannah ran to find the phone, and handed it to her mother. Once Emily had dialed the number she gave her daugther the phone back and left the room. She certainly didn't want Lorelai to think she was trying to make Suzannah call for her.

It was Rory who answered the phone.

"Hey Suzy, what's up?" she asked, glad to get her mind off her dilemma for a while.

"Do you and Lorelai and Luke want to come here for dinner tomorrow? Daddy's coming home, and Mummy said you could come," the girl explained.

"Uhm, I don't know. The others aren't here right now, I'll have to ask them later..." Rory began, but she was interrupted.

"Please, Rory, can't you promise that you'll come? You never come here anymore..." Suzannah complained. Rory had to laugh.

"What are you talking about? We were there yesterday! And you lived here for a week right before that!"

"Oh right...But please, pretty please, Rory?" Suzannah begged.

"Oh, okay then. I know Mum and Luke aren't working tomorrow night, so I guess we'll be there." Rory hadn't heard a word of her mother's and grandmother's discussion the night before, so she had no idea what she had just promised. She talked to her little aunt for a few more minutes before they hung up.

Later that day, when Luke and Lorelai came home, Rory had made dinner for them.

Lorelai sniffled deeply and smiled as she sat down by the table.

"Pizza, yum! Are we celebrating something?" she asked. Rory nodded and told them about the other job offer she had gotten.

"But I've finally decided to take the first one," she exclaimed. "That's the biggest step on my career ladder yet."

"Good for you!" Luke smiled at her and Lorelai gave her daughter a hug.

"I'm so glad you're done with the thinking, I know how much this has been bothering you!" she said and Rory nodded.

"Yep. I'll start packing right after dinner, I have to leave on Monday morning," she said before she reached out for a slice of pizza. Lorelai's chin dropped.

"That soon?" she asked, clearly disappointed . Rory had to swallow her first bite before she was able to answer.

"That's the only way I'll get the job..." she explained. "But hey, at least I'll be around for the dinner at Grandma's tomorrow." Both Lorelai and Luke stopped eating and turned towards her.

"Excuse me, rewind that for me, please?" Lorelai couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Right, I forgot to tell you. Suzy called earlier and invited us over for dinner tomorrow. Grandpa's coming home." Rory couldn't understand why the other two seemed so surprised.

"She made Suzy call? What does she want now?" Lorelai turned to Luke, who shrugged. Rory was more confused than ever.

"Am I missing something here?" she asked her mother. Lorelai nodded.

"Let's just say things got rough between me and Grandma when I went back for my phone yesterday." She quickly explained the situation to her daughter. When she was done, Rory had a question to ask.

"Does this mean we can't go to dinner? I mean, I was hoping to say good bye to them before I left..."

"Well, it was them who invited us, not the other way around..." Luke commented and looked at Lorelai questioningly. She boggled at first but then she shrugged and gave in.

"OK then, I guess we can go," she agreed. "But only because I want to see what my mother is up to!"

"Whatever you say," Rory went back to eating her pizza. She knew her mother well enough to know that fighting with her grandmother hurt her more than she was willing to admit, even though she was used to it. Rory hoped this particular conflict would be solved before she had to leave.

The next day, just as Emily and Suzannah were finishing their breakfast, they heard some noises from the hallway, before Richard entered. Suzannah jumped of her chair once she saw him and ran into his open arms. Emily wanted to ask her daughter to remember her table manners, but something inside of her still held her back when it came to rebuking Suzannah.

Richard noticed that there was something unusual about the atmosphere in his home right away. When he had handed out the mandatory little gifts he always brought when he had been away, and Suzannah had spent a few minutes on his lap updating him on what new letters she had learned, he sent her upstairs to put the new toys in her room. Once she had left, he turned to his wife.

"So, has anything happened here since the last time I saw you?" he asked. Emily looked down and nodded.

"Suzannah and I had a little...discussion...the other night when she didn't want to go to bed. I don't really think it meant anything, she just had a little outbreak. Anyway, Lorelai came over right afterwards, and...well." She told him about the conversation she had had with their oldest daugther. Richard listened carefully. When she was done, he seemed troubled. So, he had been right all along, there had been a bit of bitterness in Lorelai's voice every time she compared her own childhood to Suzannah's.

"I suspected something like this," he admitted. "I think Lorelai might have felt this way from the very beginning."

"That's awful!" Emily seemed shocked. "We have to do something about it!" Richard nodded.

"We should talk to her. Any chance of her coming over any time soon?"

"Yes, somehow Suzannah convinced her to come over here tonight." Emily still didn't know how that had happened. "I'll...I'll talk to her then." She wasn't sure how that talk would go, but she knew she had to give it a try. Richard was relieved that she seemed to leave him out of it. He wasn't fond of having serious conversations, especcialy not with Lorelai. She was always one step ahead of him...

"Good! Make her understand that...uhm..." he wasn't sure how to finish his sentence. Luckily Suzannah came running back into the room and crawled up to his lap before he had the chance to say anything.

Later that night, Rory and Lorelai were getting ready to go while they were waiting for Luke to come home so they could leave. Lorelai was brushing Rory's hair in front of the mirror in her room.

"So, what do you think Grandma will say when we get there?" Rory asked. Lorelai shrugged.

"I don't know. The talk we had the other night was so...confusing!" Lorelai struggled to get rid of a tangle in her daugther's hair. "One minute, we're talking about why me and her aren't as close as you and I are, and then the next thing I know, we're screaming at each other and everything...," Lorelai sighed. Rory thought about what her mother had just said for a moment before she opened her mouth again.

"Well, about the you-and-me-thing, I can understand her. We make a good jing-jang," she said with a smile.

"We sure do..."Lorelai smiled as well, as their eyes met in the mirror.

"I missed you a lot when I lived in New York..." Rory looked down. Lorelai put the brush away and started running her fingers through Rory's hair instead.

"I missed you to. All the time..." she answered in a low voice. Rory turned around to look at her.

"Say I go back there, and then..then I fall in love again," Rory began to describe a situation.

"I'm with you so far." Lorelai sat down next to her.

"And then I get my heart broken again. You won't be there if that happens!" Rory said. Lorelai shook her head.

"No, I won't..." she whispered. Rory leaned her head on her mother's shoulder.

"I want you to be there. I want you to be there every time I need to be your baby again... I don't want to plan it two weeks ahead before I can visit you." Rory could feel that her eyes were filling up with tears. Lorelai had the same feeling, but she kept quiet and listened as her daughter continued talking.

"I don't want to move away again, Mum. I want to live around here somewhere...I can't leave once more, I just...can't! I'm taking the other job..."

This time Lorelai couldn't keep her feelings to herself anymore, she put her arms around Rory and allowed the tears to run slowly down her cheeks. Rory hugged her back, and they remained like that for a few minutes before Lorelai pulled back and put her daughter's head in her hands.

"Are you sure about this, honey?" she asked. "Are you sure you want to spend your life in this corky old town?"

"Mum, I was formed by this town, I was born to be a Stars-Hollow-original!" Rory smiled now. "25 years from now I'll be right up there with Babette and Ms. Patty!"

"Wow, that's kind of a scary thought..." Lorelai smiled as well and hugged her daughter again. Two seconds later they heard someone opening the kitchen door, and Luke's voice calling out that it was time to leave.

When they arrived at the Gilmore Mansion a little later, they were met by an eager Suzannah who was jumping up and down on the doorstep. Rory ran over to her and carried her inside to the livingroom, where her grandparents were waiting. Lorelai and Luke followed them.

"Hi, Grandma. Hi Grandpa, how was your trip?" Rory asked while she tried to keep Suzannah from messing her hair up.

"It was fine, thank you." Richard came over to her and took over his youngest daughter. "Uhm, Rory, why don't you and I bring Suzannah out to the kitchen for a second? Suzannah has demanded jello for dessert, and I think we should give it a try."

"Eh, sure, OK..." Rory said as her grandfather literally pulled her with him out if the room.

Luke realized that he had been left alone with the battling forces.

"And I...uhm...I'm just going to...use the bathroom," he said before he left the room in a hurry, leaving Emily and Lorelai to themselves. Lorelai turned to face her mother.

"And then there were two..." she mumbled. Emily simply nodded.

"Yes..." she said and cleared her throat before she continued. "Your father and I thought it was important that you and I have a little talk..."

"Look, Mum, if this is about yesterday, I just...I don't know...I don't really want to talk about it," Lorelai said. She crossed her arms over her chest and sat down on the couch.

"Actually, I was kind of hoping you would say that," Emily said as she sat down in the armchair facing Lorelai. "I wouldn't really know how to have that talk with you without sounding like...a clichee." She took a deep breath before she continued. "Let's just have dinner and let this go, can't we?"

"I guess..." Lorelai sighed, but she didn't move. Emily was about to get up, when Lorelai opened her mouth again.

"It's just...it's so typical, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically. "It's like you said, we don't know how to talk to each other. We just pretend to forget that the bad stuff has happened, time after time. We really suck at this mother-daughter-thing..." she stated, clearly dejected. Emily wasn't sure what to say at first. She thought it over for a few seconds before she answered.

"You're right. We do have many battles, and we don't go through any dramatic, emotional reconciliations. We simply move on, until the same thing happens again." Emily made sure she had eye-contact with her daughter before she continued. "But if you look at the glass as half-full instead of half-empty, maybe what we're doing isn't such a bad thing."

"What do you mean, mother?" Lorelai didn't understand.

"I mean that even though we have more discussions than any other people I know, we've always managed to put up with each other. Again and again. Do you see where I'm going?"

Lorelai had to think as well, before she could see what her mother was saying.

"You mean...how we're not talking for weeks, and then somehow we still manage to get things back to normal?" she asked in a faltering voice. Emily nodded eagerly.

"Exactly. Even when it took us 16 years, we still managed to get back into each others lifes."

"So...this is our...our thing." Lorelai was really beginning to understand. "The thing we do. We argue, and then we forget about it!"

"Yes. It's not the thing every mother and daughter long to have, but at least it's something!" Emily stated. "And it's certainly better than the alternative."

"Yeah! I mean, the only other option would be to have no contact at all. That wouldn't work," Lorelai said. "I let you back into my life for Rory's sake. Now we have to keep it that way, for Suzannah's."

"And for ourselves," Emily interrupted her. She had planned to say something more, but couldn't think of anything, so she just kept quiet. An awkward silence occured that lastet for a few second before Lorelai broke it.

"Well...at least that's something," she said in a low voice before she got up and headed towards the door.I can't believe it ends like this, she thought to herself. "Let's see if the dinner is ready, huh?"

"Lorelai?" her mother called after her just as she reached the door. Lorelai turned around, as Emily got up from her chair and came towards her.

"Listen...even if it probably will sound like a platitude, I just thought you should know that..." Emily looked down on her own feet as she went on "...that even though you might feel somewhat envious of your sister sometimes, because...well, you know...her relationship to me and your father is different from yours...I just...I hope you know that I'm sorry you never got to have what she has. And also...that the love I have for the two of you is different in many ways, but...not when it comes to strength." Emily looked down for a few more seconds before she looked back up at her daughter, just to find out that Lorelai was staring at the floor as well.

"Thanks Mum..." she mumbled. "And I...I want you to know that...well, I know that yesterday you wanted me to say that you're better at the whole mother-thing this time. I didn't want to say it then, but I'll say it now. You're doing great. Suzy is a super kid, defidently on my top two list of all times..." she looked into her mother's eyes, only for a spilt second, but long enough for both of them to smile at each other.

"Well, we'd better stop now. We don't want to break our traditions..." Emily said. They both chuckled as they left the room together.

The third and final Suzannah story is called "Complications", if you're interessted in more of these...I hope you liked this story, and I hope you'll give me a review. THANKS TO MY BETA INCA!