A/N: Okay, no hunting me down! I did technically make sure to get Oliver's decision in here. I bet you're not liking that word 'technically' right now. But I did. He decided. He says what his decision is…out loud. You'll have to keep reading to know any more, because I have a big mouth and I think it's better I shut it and let you read! Lol

I did intend to include more in this chapter, but the conversations got much longer and more intense and involved than I'd anticipated…and I needed to put the rest in another chapter! Hope you enjoy! Reviews make the world go 'round. So, if it stops spinning and you didn't review, you'll know why! ;-)

Chapter 5. To Be or Not To Be

Usually only two of the five members of the Mariano family were relatively quiet at dinnertime. And one of the usually quiet ones wasn't even there tonight. Still, the meal was spent in relative silence, if one were to discount Laura's lively telling of all of the Stars Hollow gossip, every sparkling remark she could remember that her grandma made during the week (each punctuated with an infectious giggle), all of the misadventures of Boy Kirk and Girl Lulu, attended by the ineffectual assistance of their hapless, frantic father, accounts of how Gypsy was teaching her how to be a mechanic (she'd spent a surprising amount of the week under cars), and the argument that erupted between Gypsy and her grandpa about the stability of the jack holding up the car that his granddaughter was lying down under, laughing as silently as she could at his paranoia. She skipped over some of the more colorful run-ins with a few of the townsfolk who seemed to think that she was more Mariano than Lorelai. They were funny, but not the sort of things it's a particularly good idea to tell parents.

Truth be told, even Laura found it hard to keep up the lively chatter after awhile. While Oliver's silence was that of prospective impending doom, Jess and Rory's was…a louder silence…a silence never experienced at this table or in this house. And nobody at the table seemed to be openly looking at one another…again, except Laura. She gaped at all of them, particularly once her chatter had become stilted, and then run dry. When they'd choked down as much of the dinner as any of them seemed likely to, Oliver and Laura began clearing the dishes. Jess disappeared into his office. Shortly afterward, Rory went upstairs, distancing herself from the office and all it might entail.

The whole atmosphere of the house seemed hushed and solemn, the only sound, the clinking of dishes. The sun was setting, and nobody had bothered to turn on any lights in the main part of the house. Nobody was thinking about lights. So, it was quiet and getting dark. It was not a state of affairs that was tolerable to the youngest member of the family. She was fidgety and curious.

"Psst!" Oliver looked up. "What are you gonna do?" she whispered, unable to stand the suspense. He looked away again. "Ollie…" she whisper-whined, "Why won't you tell me?" He continued to ignore her. She continued to whisper. "You're gonna be stupid, aren't you? That's why you won't look at me, I bet. Stupid, stupid, stup-" She stopped abruptly at the opening of the office door. A shaft of light fell across the floor.

"Oliver," Jess said quietly, inclining his head toward the room behind him. Oliver gave a determined sigh and took a step forward.

"Just pretend to be a grown-up!" Laura urged in a desperate whisper. Oliver shot her a look. Jess' lips twitched. Bundle of mischief though she was, he had to love that girl. He ushered Oliver into the office. The paddle lay across the front of Jess' desk in all its ominous, fearsome glory. Secretly, Jess hoped it would sway his son's decision in the same direction his sister's whispering tried to. Well, not to pretend, but… Jess sighed. He tilted his head again, indicating the futon, and they both sat.

"There's something I've been wondering about," Jess said, scratching the back of his neck. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees.

"What?" Oliver asked, obliging him.

Jess donned a puzzled, speculative look, and pointed his thumb toward the desk. "Time was, you were scared to death of that thing. I mean, not just…" he raised his eyebrows and inclined his head, finishing the thought, "…but, really flipping-out-panicking-scared." Oliver avoided his eyes. "Obviously, something changed." That much seemed clear. "I mean, I know some fears you grow out of - and I'm not discounting the fact that it took guts to hand that thing to your mom yesterday, or to come talk to me at work today… But, I'm still…" He bit his lip with a half-shrug. He shook his head with a frown. "Something changed. What?" he asked, looking at Oliver directly. Oliver shifted uncomfortably.

"That's…not what I was scared of," he admitted softly. Jess' eyebrows lifted softly, and a subtle look of fear and pain lurked behind his eyes, not wanting to show itself. It was his turn to hesitate.

"Me…?" He uttered the single syllable quietly, unable to ask the question more completely, as his son had just hit upon one of his biggest fears.

"No," Oliver assured him. "Not the way you're thinking." Jess' quiet worried look urged his son to continue. "There's something that happened a long time ago that I didn't understand until yesterday." Again, Jess' expression bade him to continue. "You know how you said that…when you…when you finally… You said you were scared you wouldn't stop crying until you…until you died?" Oliver stammered, finally blurting out the question almost whole. Instead of answering, Jess stared at him blankly for a moment…then his eyes closed, and his fingertips skimmed his forehead in a troubled fashion.

"Ohh, Oliver…" he groaned in a hushed tone. "You were awake that night." It wasn't a question. It was a realization.

"Kinda hard to sleep through," Oliver murmured, nodding.

"You couldn't have been more than…" Jess said, calculating, "four or five?" Oliver shrugged. "Oy!" Jess gritted his teeth together, cringing at the thought. "You saw and heard pretty much all of it, then?" he deduced.

"Came down the stairs partway through. Only heard what it was about later," he corrected. Jess paused a moment.

"It wasn't that paddle, though," he said, indicating the desk.

"It was a paddle. That part didn't matter… It was what it did to you that…"

"To me?"

Oliver nodded with a shrug and a troubled look, trying to explain how things appeared to such a small boy, peeping from behind the stairs. "You were my dad. You were…this…rock…this… You could do anything! Nothing could touch you! You were stronger than anybody!"

"But you watched me crumble…saw me broken." Jess was starting to understand.

"I went to Jessica after, to see if she was okay, and we both came and sat in the hallway, by your bedroom door…listening."

As Oliver said this, his father closed his eyes and his head dropped…sunk almost between his knees. "Ohh God…no…" came brokenly. "Neither of you were supposed to hear that… I wouldn't have scared you like that for the world!"

"We held onto each other." That was supposed to be reassuring, but the image of his two children sitting on the floor, huddled in one another's arms, listening to the sounds of their father breaking down into hysterics…he shuddered.

"I'm sorry, Oliver," Jess whispered.

"Sorry?" Oliver was incredulous. His dad was sorry he'd been broken and abused? Like it was his fault? Sorry he'd finally broken down and proved that he was human? Sorry that his son realized he wasn't a superhero?"

"That you had to see that…hear that…that it scared you that much, for that long! And, you thought all of that was from…?" he nodded toward the paddle again.

"Well, it sure seemed like it! I mean, the first time I got it at Luke's, you cried then too!" Oliver explained, wide eyed. It seemed to be a logical conclusion.

"No, I… What?" Jess asked, feeling like he was missing something. "When?"

"What do you mean, 'when'? That only happened once! When you came back up the stairs, you'd been crying. I'm not stupid, and I wasn't stupid then. I could tell. You may have tried to hide it, but I could tell," Oliver said in a tone that bordered on accusation.

The memory took a moment to retrieve, as Jess struggled to recover from the most recent free-fall of the emotional roller-coaster the last two days had turned into. "Right," he said, signaling retrieval complete. He looked at Oliver. "As much as I hated punishing you, the two things were completely unrelated."

"Really?" Oliver asked. This seemed incredible. Jess nodded. "Between the time you marched me and Gary up the stairs above the diner, went down to call his mom, and came back up again, something else happened?"

Jess shrugged and looked away. "Sort of," he fudged.

"Come on, Dad!" Oliver scoffed. Jess glared. "The two things were completely unrelated, but something else only sort of happened. What does that mean?" Jess expelled a loud breath.

"It means I should've said 'mostly' instead of 'completely.' It means that…" He stopped. He bit his lip and shook his head in a way that said I'm not going there.

"Just tell me." Oliver looked at his dad, not comprehending. "Is it so much worse than all the rest?"

"No." Jess said simply. "It's not."

Oliver prodded him forward with his eyes. Jess relented. "Fine. I went downstairs and called your Grandma Liz. I told her what had happened with you and Gary, and Laura and Izzy - told her the girls were fine. And I asked her whether she wanted to come get Gary, and they could deal with the situation at home, or if she'd rather I punish him the same as I was gonna punish you." He paused, and his jaw ticked, just once. "She told me I should know better. That she would never let anybody hit one of her kids."

Silence filled the room.

"Maybe she didn't know," Oliver ventured softly…tentatively. Jess looked at him inquiringly. "Maybe she didn't know what your step-dad did to you." Even if Oliver's limited outlook were complete, it would have been small comfort. Jess laughed a low, voiceless, tortured laugh…with absolutely no idea what to tell his son. That he had no idea what she knew or didn't know because she was high half the time, and drunk often, on top of being completely off her rocker? That even with her ridiculously small window of conscious memory, she had to remember some of it, considering the fact that he was beaten almost every day of his life until he was seventeen? That he'd JUST told her that Luke had, in fact, used her father's old paddle on him when he was a kid? That, even if she didn't remember a thing, and somehow wasn't calling him a liar, or disowning him, that she WAS accusing him of child abuse? SHE was accusing HIM of child abuse… Oh, and the extremely minor point that she didn't express one iota of concern for her grandson…only her Gary. Nah…he had no reason to lose it that day and need Luke to haul him out to the truck just so the kids upstairs wouldn't hear him finally snap and start screaming about the kind of mother their mother/grandmother was, or hear him fall apart when the screaming finally stopped. No reason at all. Oliver didn't need any more nightmares unleashed. He didn't need any more of his dad's scars emblazoned on his young mind. Even if he couldn't be certain his words were completely and technically true, they expressed the essence of the truth.

"She knew."

"I'm sorry, Dad."

Jess twitched a shrug, making light of it. "I was the camel, it was the straw. It was a bad day." Jess sighed heavily, retracing the steps of the conversation back to the point. "So, you thought that, me using a paddle was gonna trigger some kind of breakdown?"

"At ten I wouldn't have known what that meant, but…basically. Yeah."

Jess swallowed. "So, with all the trouble you were in, and as much as you knew it was gonna hurt…you weren't scared for you…you were scared for me?" Jess asked in amazement, pain and love mingling in the look he gave Oliver. The boy nodded, blue eyes like two full moons slowly rising and falling. Suddenly Jess could hardly breathe. He stood, taking a step to where Oliver sat. His arm went limply around the boy's shoulders and he placed a kiss on his temple. "And you expect me to punish you after that…" he choked. It was rhetorical…even if it wasn't a question.

It took awhile for Jess to work out the lump in his throat, see clearly, and get his mind around the situation again. "I understand now. But, I still don't understand. You were that scared. When did that change?"

"When you explained what happened…back when I was five…the reason for it."

"And you were able to put that all together in five minutes?" How could that be? It took at least twice that long to talk it out just now!

"I didn't hand the paddle to you," Oliver said quietly, with a hint of a smile.

"So, that wasn't an apology?" Jess reasoned.

"It was both."

Jess took a deep breath and strolled slowly across the room and back rubbing his eyes and his temples, trying to mitigate a headache that had been steadily building throughout the conversation. Did I say we'd handle this tonight? I meant tomorrow. Next week. Maybe next year. Intermission please? No? I should know by now, dads don't get intermissions unless they send kids to their rooms, and they need reasons for that. 'I'm too angry to deal with you right now' is a valid reason. 'My head's about to fall off' somehow doesn't make the cut.

"So," he said at last, after about three turns about the room, "have you come to a decision?" Come on, kid, you're mature enough to have figured all this out. You can do this yourself. Please tell me that you can manage this on your own. Please.

"I'm sorry, Dad."

Did he say he was scared all these years because he thought paddling him would make me cry? 'Cause right now, I think I just might. Dear god, please let him be saying something else because if he means what I think he does, at this point, I don't know if I can hold the tears back.

"I'm not ready to be an adult yet."

Jess closed his eyes painfully. At the same moment, a groaning roar of frustration erupted from behind the closed door.