Author's Note: I'm still alive and writing, down worry. :D


He was awoken by a noise over by the front door. Sleepily, he got up, trying to figure out what was happening. With his eyes still closed, he stumbled over to the door when he ran into to someone. He grunted as he opened his eyes, but before he could open an eyelid, he knew who it was.

"Lorelai? What the hell are you doing here now of all times? Is everything okay?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?" She breaks into his apartment in the middle of the night, and all he gets is a "yeah?"

"Uh, okay. But why are you here?"

"I need coffee."

What? She wasn't making any sense. Well, the coffee part made sense. But why did she come in the middle of the night to get it?

"What? Lorelai, did something happen?"

"I didn't want to just walk away."

He was becoming more frazzled and confused with every word that left her mouth. What on earth did she mean? He was used to her normal, perplexing randomness, but this went bit too far.

"Lorelai, you're not making any sense. At all. Now come one, tell me what the hell is going on!"

"For walking away earlier. I shouldn't have."

Oh. Their fight. She had left. And she left her car, too, he randomly thought. He opened his mouth to tell her that he had the keys to her Jeep when she continued.

"There was just so much left unsaid."

He looked up at her. Everything other than her face was blurry. Her face was all he could focus on.

"Yeah. There was."

Silence.

Neither spoke for a moment. He was unsure of what to do.

"Well, what did you want to say? What was left unsaid?"

He turned over suddenly and opened his eyes.

It took him a second to realize what had happened.

Crap. It had just been a dream.

He slowly got out of bed to get a glass of water, taking some time to figure out what was going on.

The day before... their fight... she left. Once again, she just left. And once again, he didn't stop her.

He didn't stop her.

The words of his thoughts echoed in his mind, over and over again. He grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and leaned against the edge of the counter, rubbing his hand on the back of his head.

The same thing had happened the first time she left him wherever he was, standing and speechless. If felt like he was immobilized. He had tried to yell out "Lorelai, wait!" but the words just wouldn't come out. They right on the edge of his lips, just bursting to be said, but some odd, unnamed force stopped him. So, once again, he was left speechless.

Just like last time.

The worst part of it all, he figured as he made his way back to bed, having drunk his water quickly, was that he could never figure out exactly what went wrong. Exactly what had happened to make whatever fight it was as big as it was. It was the never ending confusion.

But as he thought about it a bit more, what had happened became a bit more clear. All that had happened, how they had progressed... they were okay again. She wasn't avoiding him or being all weirded out whenever they got talking. They were friends. They were making progress, and it was a hell of a lot more progress than a few months before.

But still...

He felt stupid even thinking it. I mean, he didn't want to push his luck on this thing with him and Lorelai, but... he didn't want just okay. Maybe good... maybe nice... but definitely something more than okay.

How could it be more than okay if I still don't forgive her?

He remembered his thought from earlier that day. He said he forgave her. And in a way, he did. He had been hurt by what she did. Beyond hurt. He had been crushed inside. And as much as he wanted to hate her and as much he couldn't think of why she would do something so cruel, really deep inside, he knew that, in some odd, alternate way of thought, that there was some sort of explanation. He knew her. And he knew that often, when she did things that were wrong, she simply hadn't thought about it at all. There were many times where she would just block all her sense and emotions out.

But why couldn't she have not done that, just that once? When she went to Christopher's house, why couldn't she have just said no? Why did she go there at all?

He was confused. He was contradicting himself, and he didn't know which side was right.

But he knew one thing, which he thought of before he slowly fell asleep. She had hurt him. Regardless of whatever reasoning there was, or what she was or wasn't thinking, she had crushed him. And he still wasn't sure of what he thought about, she had crushed him. And he was still trying to heal.


A random book went flying through the air. Next it was one of Rory's converse. Soon to follow the same air travel were a scarf, an extension cord, a fly swatter, some sort of odd, large, fuzzy picture frame, and the other one of Rory's converse.

Lorelai took a step back from the closet, breathing heavily. It was only eight thirty in the morning, and she was already frazzled. But she wanted to find it before she had to go to the Inn, and her time was running short.

She had just bought the damn thing a few days ago! How the hell could it be lost already?!

She gave up her closet crawl and decided to try upstairs. She went to her room and looked around. A hint of blue underneath a blanket on a chair in the corner caught her eye. She walked over and pulled off the blanket. Yep, that was it. She picked it up and held it gently in her hands. She held it above her head and checked, for about the millionth time, if it was green on the inside like his old one was.

She let a small smile escape as she set it on her dresser. She had bought it a few days ago when she was in the drugstore. It was on a display rack, along with random tans, grays, and greens. The one blue one caught her eyes. She had inspected every inch of it, and had declared it identical to the one she had given him many years before.

Glancing at the clock, she realized she was even later than she had thought. She made a beeline for the shower.

After a couple minutes, she stepped inside the shower and let the hot water splash against her face.

She had always liked taking hot showers. The steam always seemed to clean her head, it seemed like it helped her think more clearly.

There's wasn't much to clear up this time, though. She didn't know why she walked away the day before. It had all been too much, she had been overwhelmed with so many thoughts and emotions... she still couldn't deal with all that. She was still a bit weak. As much as she hated it, it was true.

She stepped out of the shower and made her way quickly back to her room. She hurriedly got ready for work, throwing on one of the first things she saw, which she almost never did. But, there was no time. She had to leave. Now.

Still in her room, grabbing everything she could to make herself look halfway decent, she caught another glance of the hat right before she left the room. When she bought it, she had planned to wait until Christmas to give it to him, but with the current conditions, she had something else in mind.

She made her way downstairs, and frantically grabbing her purse, hse made her way out the door. She stepped on the porch and made it halfway down the steps before she stopped in her tracks, having looked up and found her car missing.

"What the..." Oh, yeah. She remembered that she left her car at Luke's the day before. When it was raining.

Oh, how smart it was of me to walk home in the rain when my car was right there. You're a natural genius Lorelai, she thought.

She really was trying to block her thoughts from going to what had happened after that walk home in the rain. She didn't want to remember the horrible feelings that she had no idea why they were there, she didn't want to remember not even feeling the cold or the soaking wetness of the rain because her mind was so far off, she didn't want to remember the sobbing that she did, that she didn't know why she did, and the crying that she couldn't stop for no reason.

She figured she could either just walk to work, or go the diner and get her car.

Hm...

It would be a chance to see Luke... a chance to clear up what had happened, a chance...

No. Too soon. It was always too soon, even though all she wanted to do was move forward.

She let out a long breath as she headed off, starting her walk off to work. It'd give her awhile to think, at least.

Crap.


It was dark. Incredibly dark. And quiet. You could practically touch the silent that went through the air. It was, like most nights, a quiet night in Stars Hollow, even with the holiday season going in full force. There were a few light gray clouds in the sky, but it was a mostly clear night, with a sky full of stars.

A dark, shadowed figure seemed to appear out of nowhere. It tried discreetly walk towards the diner, but ended up slightly tripping halfway there. Letting out a small giggle, the figure continued on, looking around to see if anyone else had seen or heard what happened. The figure had a box in it's hands, wrapped and complete with a bow. Taking one last look to see if anyone was around, she bent over and set the box right in front of the door to the diner. After standing back up, the shadow stood there for a second, and then slowly bent back down and lightly kissed the lid of the box.

The figure sprang back up, turned around, and in a flash, disappeared into the night.


tbc
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