Gilmore Girls
Wu Feng Qi Lang
A/N: Wow. It has been over two years since I updated this. This has just been a CRAZY RIDICULOUSLY busy year. I would not be surprised if nobody read this but I did say I would finish it and I always keep my word. So here it is the final chapter. It might seem like I didn't really finish all the stories (mostly just the Lorelai/Rory one) but I was never going to make them all better again. I didn't think that was realistic. What I wanted to do was get them back to a point where they were happy to be in each other's lives. So, without further ado, here is the end! Enjoy.
Summary: Rory doesn't want to do this anymore. (Waves Without Wind.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls nor am I affiliated with it in anyway. I have taken the title from 'Falling Leaves' by Adeline Yen Mah.
Chapter Fifteen: The Apple of His Eye
She was born on a Sunday afternoon in April. She was a tiny thing with a slightly cone-shaped head and some light downy hair. Her mother had been in labour for two hours, pushing, groaning and threatening to pull her out by her hair (if she had any) if she didn't hurry up and be born. But then, there she was. And although the pain wasn't immediately forgotten, one look at her face, one moment of hearing her cry, showed that it was at least worth it.
Marnie Rochelle Huntzberger. The light of their life and the apple of her father's eye.
Lorelai was at Rory's bedside within an hour, beaming and cooing at the small bundle.
"Chris, how much does she look like Rory when she was first born?" she asked. She held her arms out gratefully when Rory offered her Marnie to hold. "Oh, she is so tiny. Kind of makes me want another."
"Lorelai, let's let our baby turn one before we start thinking about the next one," Christopher replied, with a panicked look on his face. He came to stand next to Rory's bed and kissed her on the cheek. "You did good, Ror."
"Isn't she the greatest?" Logan beamed. He hadn't stopped smiling since the squirming bundle was placed in his wife's arms. "I can't believe that we made that."
"You never get over that feeling," Lorelai murmured. She looked over at Rory and winked. "Never."
Life with an infant was challenging, Rory soon realised. It wasn't that hard to find thirty minutes to have a nap… if she didn't mind leaving the washing unwashed or having a shower herself. And it wasn't that hard to feed a child… unless she had somewhere she was supposed to be twenty minutes ago and Marnie just would not feed. And it wasn't that hard to change a babies nappy… until the baby wet herself just as Rory was about to do the new nappy up. And it wasn't that hard to have five minutes alone with Logan… as long as the five minutes were at 1.55am just before Marnie's 2am feed.
But the frenzied first month of having a newborn settled quickly into a schedule that she, Logan and Marnie could cope with. Gina and Fay came to visit when they could and cooed over Marnie allowing Rory time to down some coffee (decaf, cause caffeine isn't good for the baby), shower and do a load of washing. Her parents would have been over more if they didn't have children of their own. Still, she saw them more than she had before and it was good. She had already realised that things would never be quite the same again but she liked where they were.
(And while having a child of her own didn't help her to understand why they had done what they had done, it filled her with enough love to begin to accept it and forgive them).
"Hey, Logan?" Rory said. She was sitting in the rocking chair with Marnie patting her back and looking out the window.
"Yeah, Ace?" he replied as he turned around to face her.
"I think I'm ready to go home now," she said. She looked up from the window and twisted her head to look at him. He walked back over to her and knelt down next to her.
"Really?" he asked.
"Really. I want to raise our daughter back in Hartford with her cousins and with Paris's kids. I want her to have the life that I never had. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret anything about my childhood. How could I? I just don't want her to want for anything. I want her to go to Chilton and Yale, if she wants too. I want her to know Luke and Kirk and Miss Patty and Babette. I love Paris. You know that. But I just want to raise her back home," she explained.
"I can't say I'm disappointed," Logan replied but she can hear the uncertainty in his voice and see it on his face. "What about your parents? What about your sisters?"
"I know," she murmured after a silent moment. "Things are good with Mum at the moment but I honestly don't think that going back to the US is going to change that. I'm going to miss her and Dad and the girls but they can come and visit in their holidays and we can come back for Christmas or whatever. We don't have to go. It's just something I've been thinking about."
(He hears the resignation in her voice and that's when he realises how much she wants to go home. So they will. Anything for her).
"Mum?" Rory said. Although better than previous years, the long-distance still makes the line crackly.
"Hey, kiddo," her mother replied, grateful to hear Rory say 'mum' so easily.
"Merry Christmas!" Rory said, smiling into the phone.
"Merry Christmas, hon," Lorelai answered.
"Hey, guess what? Marnie said her first word today," Rory beamed. "She said 'da.' Well she said it about five thousand times and she must love the attention we give her when she says it because she won't stop. She thinks she is so clever."
"She is clever," Lorelai cooed. "That is so exciting."
"I can't believe you aren't here. I thought you were planning on coming over here for Christmas. What happened?"
"Sherry was here to see Gigi so we couldn't really leave," Lorelai answered. "We might try come in a few months."
"Well, we would love to have you. Did you get your parcel from Grandma?" Rory asked, changing the subject. (Her mother was never coming back to the States. She knew that now).
"Yeah, I loved it. It must have cost a fortune in postage though. I'd forgotten how heavy it was," Lorelai replied. She rolled her eyes to herself. As if her mother cared a whit about the price of postage. "I'll call her to say thanks later."
"I thought you'd like it. You're probably more excited than the girls," Rory mused. "Did you tell them it used to be your dollhouse?"
"Yeah. Gigi thought it was the coolest thing ever and Lexie being a twenty-two month old just wanted to stick the furniture in her mouth. I thought you might have wanted to keep it for Marnie though."
"Oh, Grandma got her one of her own. She's not even interested in putting the furniture in her mouth yet. Speaking of the girls, is Gigi up yet? I'd love to say Merry Christmas," Rory asked. She could hear Logan and his family talking in the room next door. Marnie was more than likely the centre of attention as Honor's two month old son, Harvey, was asleep in the guest room.
"She's with Sherry today but we'll call you when she gets back. I'll get Chris for you. Have a Happy New Year, Rory," her mother answered. Her voice was strained but Rory ignored it. If Lorelai wanted to hold back, that was her issue.
"Mum, I love you," Rory said before she had time to stop herself. She listened to the slight pause on the other end and heard a small sigh.
"I love you too, Rory. I always have," her mother answered. She smiled to herself, aware that Rory couldn't see. "Here's Dad."
There was some muffled sound and then her father came on the line.
"Hey, Ror," he said and she could tell that he had a huge grin on his face.
"Hey, Dad. Merry Christmas!"
"Right back at you. Hey, guess what Lexie did today."
"Guess what Marnie did today?" she retorted. "Said her first word."
"That is a fantastic Christmas present. What did she say? Did she recite a Keats poem? A Pat Benatar song? If she's your kid, she's probably pretty well advanced," her father joked. "She'll be starting at Chilton Prep in no time."
"Nope. Just said plain old 'da-da.' Logan is over the moon but when I tell him she's probably not going to get into a good school with that kind of language, he probably won't be quite so thrilled. So tell me about what Lexie did. And tell me what you got for Christmas…"
(And there it is. Always easier to forgive the father than the mother).
The sun shone in the windows. She moved to roll out of bed, away from her husband but he reached over and pulled her back. She giggled and struggled but not very hard. There was no more sleeping on separate sides of the bed. They were back to sleeping so close that they almost melded into each other.
A few quiet noises and 'da-da-da-da-da-DA-DA-DA' came from the baby monitor. Logan laughed at his impatient daughter and reluctantly loosened his grip on his wife.
"She is definitely my child," he murmured.
"Impatient and entitled? Yep, she is definitely a Huntzberger," Rory replied. "I'll go get her."
"No, let me. She is calling out for me you know," he teased. It was a joke he never got sick of.
"You think that just because she said 'da-da' first that she loves you the best. I don't think so," Rory retorted. She stood up and stretched as Logan left the room. She went into the bathroom and washed her face and when she came back into the room, there he was holding their little girl.
She couldn't imagine wanting to wake up to anything else in the whole world. And it made her smile.
(What was once was not perfect is perfect again).