A/N- Heroes is canceled. I am devastated. If my writing quality suffers (and I really think it did, because this chapter is, in the words of Zach, "so emo I wanted to shoot myself"), this is why. *goes to eat Rocky Road and cry a little more over the loss of Sylar and Peter and Emma and evil!Matt and all the rest* Anyway, the point is, after carefully consulting all your reviews and suggestions, this is going to be not a two-parter, but a three-parter. That gives me enough room to explore all that I want to, without dragging it out interminably. Enjoy!
2. All These Years
"I will be chasing your starlight
Until the end of my life
I don't know if it's worth it anymore.
Hold you in my arms,
I just wanted to hold you in my arms..."
-Muse
Jess comes into town two days before the wedding. He would have come sooner- though he probably wouldn't admit it, he loves spending time with his little sister- but he was tied up at work. With a major project nearing completion, he had to put in several extra hours of work over the past few days to finish up before the wedding. But he arrives in time for Luke's bachelor party, and that's all that matters.
They sit together in a bar in Hartford, sipping at a couple of beers and watching TJ, Jackson, and Kirk shoot pool (very badly on the parts of all except Kirk). Luke doesn't say much, and neither does Jess. They've never really needed words to communicate. Jess just hopes that Luke understands how much he esteems him; Luke really is like a father to him. Maybe before Luke's wedding is the appropriate time to reassure him of that, but Jess doesn't voice it. He doesn't think he needs to.
Jackson misses the cue ball wildly, and Jess snorts, brought out of his thoughts by the produce man's muffled swearing. "Having a good time?" he asks sardonically, looking at his uncle.
Luke grimaces. "Fantastic," he responds, equally facetious.
"Just think, if you'd listened to me way back when, you'd have been over and done with this years ago," Jess says lightly.
"Yeah, well, things turned out pretty okay the way they are," Luke says.
It's true. His uncle has got all his ducks in a row. The diner is as successful as ever, he's got a surprisingly strong relationship with the daughter he didn't know he had, and he's about to marry the woman of his dreams. And Jess can't help but feel a pang of envy.
When he was a teenager, he fancied himself to be Jack Kerouac, perfectly happy not to be tied down to anything, living a bohemian life and wandering with the wind. The thing about that, though, is that eventually you have to land somewhere, and Jess realized some time ago that he just wants- crazy though it sounded- to settle down. He wants what Luke has. A dependable job and a steady relationship. The first part he's already got- for six years he's been working a stable job, and he can't imagine doing anything else with his life. The second part, though... finding someone to share his life with... not so much.
After stewing over it for maybe half an hour, Jess finally works up the nerve to ask, "So how's Rory?"
It doesn't escape him that Luke suddenly looks nervous. "She's... successful," he says. But there's more to it and they both know it. The look in Luke's eyes says it all.
"But...?" Jess prompts.
"Something's wrong with her," he admits. "I think she thinks she's alright, but she's not. She's quieter now, and she's so thin, and she's got these dark circles under her eyes all the time..." Luke shakes his head sadly. "It's like her light has gone out completely."
This idea terrifies Jess. He saw her once at a time when her innate glow had faded and she was difficult to recognize as herself. But the spark was still there, then. The idea of her calm fire being completely extinguished is something he can't imagine. He isn't sure if this is love or just obsession anymore, but he knows that whichever way it falls, she's still tremendously important to him. He sabotages every relationship he's had that's been anywhere close to serious because he just can't let her go. It's sickening to him, sometimes, but he's come to accept it. She's always going to be magnetic to him, and these feelings are never going to go away. It became much easier to deal with once he accepted that.
When he doesn't speak as a result of his constricted heart, Luke continues: "Lorelai blames that Huntzberger kid. Thinks she's pining over him."
Jealousy bites at him, but Jess fights it back to say, with as much calm as he can muster, "Bastard."
"You're tellin' me!" Luke exclaims. "I knew that jerk was trouble from the beginning."
"Cheating, self-centered dickhole," Jess mutters, not really responding to his uncle, now just seething over the idea that Rory can still be in pain over that jerk. He doesn't know any of the particulars of what happened between them- he doesn't think he could stomach them- but imagining Rory in pain, Rory suffering for any reason, makes him want to put his fist through a wall. He doesn't care that she's hurting because she's still in love with some other guy (her words from years before come back to haunt him again, but he doesn't allow that to touch him anymore). The reasons don't matter. Only the end result matters.
Luke looks at him, and there's a surprising amount of understanding and sympathy in his gaze. Jess wonders how much his uncle guesses about his feelings for Rory.
It's the day before the wedding, and the diner has been left in Caesar's capable hands, with Lane and Jess backing him up. It's good to be back here, just for awhile, working the diner. For a moment, it's like he never left. Jess wishes he could go back and change things. He doesn't regret leaving- it was absolutely necessary, and he grew from the things he experienced that year- but if he could have fixed the circumstances... if he could have just said goodbye properly... maybe things would be different.
Jess learned long ago not to torture himself with what ifs. Working the diner is just making him nostalgic. He half-expects to see Rory in her Chilton uniform launching herself through the door and begging to be fed.
The bell over the door jingles, and he looks up quickly, already preparing mentally to berate himself for his assumptions, but what he sees freezes him cold.
It actually is Rory, but a very different Rory from the one whom he was just remembering. The woman before him, twenty-five and a successful career woman, is a far cry from the girl he used to know. It's as Luke said. Rory was always thin, but now she's a waif, and she does in fact look tired and worn-out. She's still beautiful, but it's not the same robust, girl-next-door beauty he recalls. She looks... fragile. Delicate and fragile, as if there were something constantly on the verge of shattering apart inside her.
"Hi," he tells her.
"Hi," she replies softly.
And in that instant, when he hears her voice, the same beautiful voice, he knows. This isn't obsession. It isn't some psychological complex he's developed over the years. This is it. This is love. He can hardly breathe for staring at her.
As soon as it's possible to do so without giving herself away, Rory flees the diner. She should have known he would be there, but she wasn't thinking. She just walked in, expecting coffee like usual, and there he was. It's the first time she's seen him since Truncheon, five years ago, and if she'd ever had any doubt about her feelings, the sight of him, clad in an apron with the sleeves on his shirt pushed up past his elbows and the tiniest hint of a smirk hovering about him would have erased it.
Rory races back to the Crap Shack and barely manages to make it to her room before the tears begin to fall. She knows she would have had to face him eventually, seeing as their duties as best man and maid of honor would undoubtedly bring them into contact, but she expected to have some forewarning, to be able to prepare herself for it! She closes her bedroom door firmly behind her and curls up on her bed, hugging a pillow to her chest and leaning her cheek against the headboard, allowing the tears to slip down her face.
She's supposed to be strong, confident Rory Gilmore, and she hates that she can be reduced to this point, that the mere sight of the man she loves can reduce her to tears. But strong, confident Rory Gilmore is a lie, and she knows it; she was never as strong as everyone thought she was- that's her mother's job. And knowing that it's all her fault makes it worse. If she had just had the courage- the strength, the confidence- to admit to herself what she really wanted when she had the chance, she could have had it. She might be with Jess right now, if she hadn't been so determined to run away from her feelings. At the thought, her silent crying turns to sobbing, and she settles in for a good breakdown. It's been too long since she cried over Jess Mariano.
She abandoned her self-control too soon, however. "Rory, have you seen my--?"Lorelai freezes in the doorway, taking in her daughter's appearance, the moisture on her cheeks and her erratic, pained breathing. "Oh Rory," she whispers.
And then she's sitting next to her on the bed as Rory buries her face in her mother's shoulder and sobs wildly. All the pain and the hurt she's been storing up over four years, which she thought she'd safely let out bit by bit- like opening the cap on a shaken soda bottle slowly, rather than all at once- comes cascading over both of them and it's all she can do to cling to her mother and cry so hard it becomes nearly impossible to breathe.
Eventually, though, she manages to control herself, and for a few minutes they just sit like that, with Lorelai rubbing her daughter's back soothingly. Then, hesitantly, she apparently feels compelled to say, "Rory, honey, I tried to ignore this. I tried to pretend that there wasn't anything wrong, but it's pretty obvious that there's something very, very wrong here. I thought it would take care of itself with time, but it's not. You're not getting better."
"Mom, I'm fine--" Rory began, but Lorelai cut her off.
"No you're not! Sweetie, you've changed. I've heard you crying once or twice in the night when you come to visit, and you haven't dated anyone in four years, and you don't look healthy. It's not normal, Rory. I think... I think maybe we need to get you some help."
Rory shakes her head. "No doctors. No shrinks." There isn't a doctor in the world that can mend a broken heart.
Lorelai sighs. She didn't really like that idea much either, but she had to suggest it. "Okay, Sweetie. No doctors. But I think maybe you should try to contact Logan. Try to get closure. Because this... this just isn't normal--"
She stops talking when Rory bursts out in bitter laughter. She has long suspected that her mother blames Logan for the changes in her life, and it's understandable, considering the timeline. But hearing it out loud is strangely hysterical at the moment. "Mom, no, it's not Logan!"
"What?"
"Logan's not the problem because... well, Logan was never it. Not for me. He was a great guy, but he just wasn't The One."
Lorelai stares. "Then you're really going to have to enlighten me, because there has to be a reason you're in here, crying your eyes out."
Rory has to look away, staring at her hands, which are twisting the quilt on her bed absentmindedly. This wasn't something she ever really planned on telling her mother. It would have been nice to have an ally, someone who knew about her pain who would be able to hold her up when it got hard to breathe sometimes, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It's not logical, but she wanted to keep her hurt to herself, like curling the body up to protect a flesh wound.
But when Lorelai again prompts her to speak, Rory has no choice but to say quietly, "A few years ago I realized that I'm still in love with Jess. And I blew it. I treated him so badly the last time we saw each other."
Her mother handles it better than Rory expected. Rather than allowing her natural reaction- which Rory is sure would involve some bug-eyes and a jaw on the floor- to show, she simply says, "Oh Sweetie. It's been years since then. Why didn't you ever try to contact him?"
"I wouldn't have known where to begin. I don't even have the right to speak to him at all, after everything I've put him through. I broke his heart, Mom. I really, truly did. And even though he hurt me first, there's no excuse for what I've done to him. I was just too scared of getting hurt again to act on my feelings and commit to it, and he wound up getting hurt. He tried to pretend he was fine--" Rory wants to start crying again as she remembers the look in Jess' eyes that last night in Truncheon, but she breathes hard and controls herself. "--But it was really clear that he wasn't. I'm not good for him. I had to stay away, see?"
Lorelai just shakes her head and pulls her daughter into a tight hug.
The wedding is beautiful, and Rory manages the nerve-wracking walk down the aisle on Jess' arm without losing her poise for an instant. She stands between April and Lorelai and keeps her eyes locked on her teary mother and Luke (who isn't as dry-eyed as he'll later insist, either), and carefully avoids meeting the eyes of the best man. She cannot, however, avoid noticing that he looks very good in a tux.
It isn't until the reception that things get hairy. Rory has been consulting with Lane- who, naturally, wound up as the DJ- about the music selection for her mother and step-father's first dance when she spies Jess standing across the room. His eyes are locked on her, and as she looks up, their glances collide. He stares at her, and Rory stares right back, unable to stop drinking in the sight of him.
That is, until a leggy blonde detaches herself from the crowd and flings an arm around Jess, distracting him enough to break their silent staring match. Rory is too far away to hear the words the blonde whispers in his ear, but a reluctant grin spreads across Jess' face. He says something in reply and the blonde giggles and plants a kiss on his cheek.
Feeling nauseous, Rory turns on her heel and sprints for the door...
A/N- Ugh, I'm not the biggest fan of this chapter. It's okay, I guess. The writing itself is good. I'm just sketchy about the story. Because, as the lovely/fabulous watram mentioned recently in a PM, it's weird and unrealistic for them to go from zero contact in years to suddenly being together. Eh, whatever. It's fanfic. Besides, GG never really obeyed the rules of reality in terms of how long a relationship should take to develop. Just try to suspend your disbelief for a moment, m'kay?
