A/N: GET READY FOR IT!!! Next chapter is where Rory finally enters into the equation. I gave this chapter as a double update because I know I've been evil with the updating thing. Besides... it was already have written and I was feeling lazy. I hope that you like it, I know that it's a filler. Don't hate me, don't kill me... besides, how, then, would I continue to write? SEE, SEE!!!! Stealthy! BWAHAHA.

My Latest Mistake

Chapter Six

Undone

Rated T

"I don't want them to see the chair," Jess stated as they entered into Stars Hollow. The, formerly empty, diner was now absolutely packed with people waiting to get in, probably to oogle the only member of Stars Hollow to merit an ambulance in years.

"Do you want me to carry you in?" Luke scoffed, but then looked at Jess, who looked dead serious.

"I could pretend to be unconscious," Jess suggested weakly, looking at the eyes of the people waiting there. It was almost two in the morning, but people had brought tents. Talk about determined. Jess sighed and placed his head in his hands.

"It won't be that bad," Luke attempted to console him. "I can keep the diner closed for a few days, until the elevator is installed… and we can open after that. You can keep helping me, pouring coffee."

"I'm in a wheelchair, Luke! I can't pour coffee in a fucking wheelchair!" Jess shouted, and it attracted a few stares towards the car. "Just, get me out of here. I don't give a fuck what you do, just… get me away from them."

"Okay," Luke nodded solemnly, not knowing how to console the boy.

As Luke stepped out of the truck, a circle of people surrounded him, waiting for some sort of news. He ignored them all and walked to Jess's side. The door was opened and Jess nodded unhappily. He staggered from the truck and leaned heavily on his uncle's shoulder, unable to move his legs at all. Luke helped him by carrying him into the diner in a way that might have looked like walking in the dark. When they got inside, Jess stumbled onto a chair and pondered throwing a salt shaker across the room.

"That wasn't that bad," Luke muttered, looking out the window carefully to make sure that none of them were poking at the tarp-covered wheelchair in the back.

"You know… four years ago, when I first came here… I thought that this place was hell. I literally couldn't figure out a way that it could be worse," Jess stated, looking absently out the window. "I think I just found it."

"Come on… at least they think it's only temporary," Luke attempted again.

"They think, but they think they can cure cancer too. Yet billions of people die from cancer every day," Jess sighed, leaning back on his chair a little bit and glaring down at his legs miserably. "I want to go upstairs."

"Okay," Luke nodded and lifted Jess into his arms. Jess looked away, unable to look at someone while they were literally carrying him like a baby.

"Thanks," Jess muttered as he was placed on the bed that he'd spent the last week festering on. "You don't need to close the diner… just bring the wheelchair and a typewriter."

"A typewriter?" Luke repeated, looking at all the pages on the ground. "You finished one of them?"

"Yeah," Jess nodded. "That's when this happened."

"Oh…" Luke trailed off, nodding and backed away uncomfortably. "Goodnight?"

"Goodnight," Jess confirmed with a slight incline of his head.

-gGg-

The morning arose, but Jess hadn't slept. Luke had gotten his wheelchair from the car when it seemed like most people were sleeping. No one had bothered to ask what the large, tarp covered object was anyway… in fact, no one was saying anything. They were just staring, waiting, watching. It was starting to creep him out.

After the wheelchair had been brought up, he'd spent the rest of the night typing until his fingers were sore. Luke had gotten so frustrated with the noise that he'd left… somewhere. Jess wanted to apologize, but he was too frustrated. His situation was a mixture of bad and worse. Not only was his body shaking and his mind cracking, but now he had to do it all with the inability to walk. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. The delicate, thanks to hours of typing, pads scraped along his stubble and he cringed.

Sighing, he looked at the bed and then looked at the door. Luke hadn't been back for hours, he was probably still sleeping… he probably would be for hours. Jess rolled himself over to the bed and looked between himself and it with more frustration. Undoing the straps would be easy, it would be the whole 'don't fall out of the chair as you're going onto the bed' thing that would screw him over. Taking a deep breath, he lifted himself and used his arms to throw himself onto the bed.

The landing was rough, but at least he'd made it. Pulling himself with his arms, he fought back tears and lifted his legs onto the bed, glaring at them angrily. Parts of him wished that they would just be gone… no longer some dead weight that he'd have to carry around, but that was just the bitterness talking. Luke was going to be making him two million appointments that day with different doctors to try to get the nerves repaired, but there wasn't much hope left in him. He just wanted to disappear, but he knew that it wouldn't be happening. He couldn't drive, he couldn't walk… he was stuck.

-gGg-

Luke stepped quietly into the apartment above the diner. Jess was already asleep, the wheelchair sitting beside the bed at an awkward angle. Obviously Jess had crawled there himself. A part of Luke felt sorry that he wasn't there to help, but another knew that Jess had to be independent as well. Sighing, he closed the apartment's door softly and meandered over to the type writer. What had seemed like thousands of papers lying around was being condensed into a type-written manuscript. Already over half the pages had been typed down. Luke had helped in the gathering the previous day.

Lorelai had called… they had talked some more. It was official. They were over, the wedding was called off. She didn't want to deal with Jess, and he couldn't leave the kid. Taking off his baseball cap, he threw it absently across the room and sat on his own bed. He'd tried to sleep at a motel, and it had worked for a few hours, but he'd needed to get home to check on Jess. Running a hand through his hair, he lay back and stared up at the ceiling, wondering how the hell things were going to run now.

-gGg-

Jess stared at the working men. Luke had called them last week and they were now finishing the installation of an elevator, so-to-speak, for him to get up the stairs. It was perfectly functional for him to use on his own, which he was grateful for. All it needed was a bit of careful maneuvering. He was going to see the chiropractor in two days and the doctors had already been contacted. Specialist upon specialist and consultant upon consultant; they had over twenty appointments for next week. Luke had shut the diner down especially for him, not wanting the stress of it lying over their heads.

"The bathroom's done?" Jess heard Luke rant, and he watched with a growing self-hatred as his uncle paced in the bedroom. Rolling himself out of the apartment's landing, he went back into the room and in front of his typewriter, where he concentrated on anything but Luke's pacing… on Luke walking… on Luke going up and down the stairs, on Luke's ability to move without a wheelchair.

"Can you stop pacing?" Jess snapped, glaring at Luke, who froze.

"Sorry…" Luke sighed and sat down on his bed, where he began to fidget.

"Why don't you go follow him around… downstairs?" Jess muttered, still being distracted by Luke's movements.

"Yeah, good idea!" Luke agreed and rushed out of the apartment, past the working guys, and down into the diner. The windows had been covered with paper so no one could see inside. The door was claiming that it was being shut down for renovations… which, technically, it was.

Jess started typing the last few pages up. There were maybe ten more to go. Only ten more pages before the last thing he'd been doing before he'd lost his legs was finished. In a way, the story was a form of venting. It was his curse and his blessing. Sighing, he typed the last word and ripped the paper out from the machine. A neat stack of the pages lay on the table beside him, and he added the last one with a sense of freedom.

"Luke?" he shouted down the stairs, rolling onto the landing again.

"What?" Luke growled in return and walked to the bottom of the stairs, staring up at him.

"It's done," Jess stated with a small smile.

"Really?" Luke asked in disbelief and raced up the stairs, past the disgruntled workers.

"Do you think that we could… I don't know, mail it off or something?" Jess inquired insecurely.

"Don't you want to go over it or something? I mean… you typed it all pretty quickly, Jess… that's a lot of typing," Luke looked a bit nervous.

"Yeah, but it's only seventy pages. I just… want it to be gone," Jess sighed, looking at the ground.

"Sure, we can mail it," Luke nodded, wanting to get Jess's mind off his legs. "Did you have anywhere in mind?"

"I heard about this little place in Philadelphia last week. I got the address from Andrew," Jess rolled over to the night table beside his bed and pulled out the address.

"Great, then I'll go down to Doose's and get a box for it," Luke suggested with a tight smile, which Jess attempted to return. They stared awkwardly for a moment before Luke turned and ran out of the room. Jess ran a hand through his hair and rolled back over to the table. It was amazing that over five hundred pages were able to be condensed into seventy with the aid of a type writer. He smirked a little bit and shuffled through the pages again. He rolled them over in his hands and placed them back on the table.

-gGg-

"Jess!" Luke shouted, running up the stairs with a large package in his hand. It had been almost three weeks since they'd gotten back from the hospital. Almost three weeks that the diner had been closed and they'd been going to endless specialists and doctors, all of them trying to figure out a 'cure', but Jess was still in the chair and no results had come as of yet. The only good news was the package… and even that had the possibility of being terrible.

"What?" Jess growled in return from his lair above the diner.

"It's here!" Luke exclaimed and rushed up the stairs to the apartment. The elevator was installed, the ramp was installed, and the entire house was now wheelchair-accessible. It had been expensive, and was continuing to be expensive, but Luke didn't mind. So long as Jess was comfortable and they were both living easy enough, it was all for the greater good. Unfortunately, he was going to have to open the diner soon. They were running out of money.

"What?" Jess rolled into the landing to greet him. Luke beamed and tossed the book into Jess's lap, grabbing the handles of the wheelchair and rolling him back into the apartment.

"Open it," Luke suggested, rolling Jess over to one of the beds and sitting down on it so that he could see over the boy's shoulder as it was opened.

Jess didn't say anything, didn't ask for encouragement or give himself time to doubt. Luke admired that and waited just as impatiently for the last piece of packaging to be ripped off. Inside was the hardcover copy of Jess's book… The Subsect stood with all its glory.

"Wow," Luke muttered, gazing down at it.

"They printed it fast," was all Jess said as he turned the book over in his hands. There were two more beneath it.

"How many did they print?" Luke inquired.

"I don't know… I guess a few. They told me that they'd send me three," Jess muttered absently and opened one of them.

"I'm proud of you," Luke informed him with a small smile.

"Thanks," Jess smiled in return, and then the smile turned into a frown.

"What?" Luke deadpanned, not liking the look.

"Nothing," Jess shrugged and turned away. "You need to open the diner."

"Yeah, I do," Luke agreed, looking down at his hands.

"I can pour coffee," Jess suggested with a shrug.

"The tables aren't far enough apart," Luke sighed.

"It's so much fun to be useless," Jess mused bitterly and rolled away. Luke would have followed… would have said something helpful, witty, bright, but there was nothing. It was difficult enough that Jess battled with his withdrawals, but having to deal with the withdrawals with a wheelchair above that was making it hell.

"I want to see her, Luke," Jess finally said.

"Who?" Luke questioned, but then it occurred to him as Jess was rolling around.

"Rory… I want to see Rory," Jess stated evenly, but Luke could see the edges of his nephew's carefully made up composure crumbling a little bit.

"Is that a good idea?" Luke coughed, not wanting Jess to jump off the deep end again.

"I don't care, I need to see her," Jess continued, rolling towards him so that they were almost eye-to-eye.

"Okay, okay… how about I take you into Hartford next week? I'll go… do something, and you can call me when you want to be picked up?" Luke grumbled, recognizing his nephew's 'determined look' when it was right in front of his face.

Jess nodded, but didn't say anything else. He rolled towards the stairs and then stopped. "I want to go outside… I want to go out," Jess admitted shakily.

"Then go," Luke shrugged. "Everything's there for you. The world's out there and it's no different than it was a month ago."

"A month ago it was a lot less scary," Jess admitted and rolled the rest of the way to the elevator. The locks clicked into place and Luke watched as the boy was lifted down the stairs. Luke followed slowly as Jess continued to hesitate on the entire way to the door. With the exception of their appointments, which Jess never went outside in his wheelchair for, he hadn't been outside. Luke had attempted to suggest it a few times, but they had all been brushed off rudely with different excuses. Now, apparently, they were finally going to take this step.

"Be careful," Luke mumbled as Jess opened the door and rolled into the sunlight.

-gGg-

The world was still there, like Luke said. The stairs that had previously been in front of Luke's had been paved over and extended into the sidewalk a bit more to create a ramp. The ramp was for him, so he would be able to leave and return at will. Jess blinked back any emotions and stared out at the city. Most of the people who were long-part of the town stopped their movements when they saw him.

Jess ignored them and rolled down the ramp. He rolled onto the streets and pushed himself away from the town, towards the school… towards the only place in Stars Hollow that held any meaning to him. A small crowd followed him, gossiping as they went.

As the bridge finally came into view, he stopped and smiled at it. The smile wasn't bitter… it wasn't overly emotional, it was just there. This was the pace that he'd stolen Rory away from Dean. This was the place that Luke had shoved him into the lake. This was his refuge, his home away from home. It was one of the last places he'd gone while he could still walk. With that sobering thought, he rolled the final way onto its planks and into the middle.

Appropriate, then, that it was the first place he go outside in his wheelchair. The smile turned a little bit bitter as the chair invaded into his thoughts, but he ignored them and watched the sun. Absently, he snatched a book out of a small pouch on the side of the chair and started reading. It was The Subsect, the first time that he was reading it since he'd gotten a copy. Today was a day of firsts, but tomorrow… tomorrow would be a day to remember.