Author's Note: Let me reassure everyone about how much I love, love, love Luke and Lorelai. I promise to always take good care of them. But with that being said, please remember that this story is beginning barely a month after Partings. Both of them are still very hurt, confused, and lost. Nothing's happened yet to break those weird pod-shells that had them trapped and acting like idiots during the end of season 6. Getting them back on track and dealing with some issues that the show swept under the rug is what this story's all about. The first couple of chapters are filled with a lot of sadness and anger, but slowly it all gets better. Trust me, OK? Paul Anka did not die in vain!

On Saturday Luke parked his truck on the street, behind the Prius and the Jeep pulled in the drive. He saw the girls sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the glider on the porch, their heads touching. He gave a half-hearted wave at them, which Rory returned. With a sigh he got out and went around to the truck bed.

Rory walked over to greet him but Lorelai stayed frozen at the bottom of the steps.

"Hey, Luke," Rory said, kindly but warily. "It's really nice of you to do this."

"Sure," he shrugged. He bit down on his desire to say something like, Well, after all, Paul Anka was family. He sighed again, and leaned over into the bed to pick up a wooden box.

"Oh! Oh, Luke!" Rory's eyes went wide in amazement, taking in the casket he'd fashioned. "Mom!" she called. "Mom, you've got to see this! Oh, Luke, it's perfect." Her whole face beamed at him in appreciation.

He ducked his head, never comfortable with praise. "It's not much," he muttered.

"Yes, it is," she insisted, tucking her hair behind her ear in a motion he'd seen from Lorelai thousands of times. She looked back over at her mother, who still hadn't budged from the steps, in irritation. "Mom!"

"It's OK," he maintained, really not wanting to request anything of Lorelai, and started to walk over to where she stood. Rory hurried to get ahead of him.

Luke sat the doggy-sized coffin on the sidewalk in front of her and managed to avoid looking directly at her, even when he straightened up.

"Look at this," Rory said in an awe-struck tone, bending to trace the chiseled letters in the lid. "Isn't this beautiful, Mom? Mom!"

Lorelai jumped as though she just then became aware of their presence in front of her. She gasped in shock, her hand fluttering up to her throat.

"Look what Luke made for Paul Anka," Rory said, sounding like a very patient kindergarten teacher with a dim pupil. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Lorelai broke completely out of her trance and dropped to her knees, running her hands over the smooth, dark wood, and letting her fingers trace the letters spelling out their pet's name just as Rory had.

"Beautiful," she agreed softly. Her hands were shaking, and she tucked them firmly under her arms once she stood back up.

"I'll go get the shovel," Luke said, turning to go back to his truck. "Do you know where you want the grave?"

Rory looked to Lorelai, but Lorelai stared at her feet. After a moment Rory gave up and turned towards Luke. "Mom said under the chuppah."

That stopped him in his tracks. "Are you sure?" he asked hesitantly, after a pause.

Again, Rory looked at her mother, her patience was wearing thin. Apparently, Lorelai was really not going to talk. "Yes, she's sure," Rory replied, with a bite in her words. "She says it already makes her sad to look at it, so this way all of the sadness will be in one spot."

Lorelai's head jerked up at that and she glared at Rory. Luke assumed that wasn't supposed to be a comment for his ears.

"Zombie Mom," he heard Rory mutter while on his way to the truck.

He paused to hear Lorelai's retort to that, but…there wasn't one. Silent Lorelai. He gripped the edge of the truck bed before grabbing his shovel. He knew everything had changed, but he wasn't expecting this. He took a deep breath and resolutely went over to the side yard to prepare the hole.

The hard-packed ground gave him some initial resistance, but soon the grave was hollowed out, the casket was laid to rest and Luke was replacing the sod over the top. As he was pushing the edges down with his foot, Rory cleared her throat.

"I have something I'd like to read."

Luke looked up and saw that she was clutching a children's book, 'Best-Loved Poems.'

"Rory, no!" Lorelai finally spoke. Forcefully.

"Well, did you prepare anything to say?" Rory asked her mother scornfully. When Lorelai shook her head, she turned to Luke. "Did you?"

"No," he admitted.

"Well, I did." She opened the book.

"Rory, don't! I'm begging you—Don't!"

Luke looked between them uncertainly. He'd always had complete faith in Rory's social graces."Lorelai, I think a poem might be nice -"

"Ha! Wrong! Not this poem!" For the first time, Lorelai looked and sounded like herself. "Do you remember the first time you saw 'Old Yeller' and you thought your lungs would come right out of your chest because of how hard you were sobbing? Well, this poem makes 'Old Yeller' look like a comedy."

"I don't care!" Rory was undeterred. "It's a fitting tribute to him. I came prepared, and I'm going to read it!"

Lorelai opened her mouth, but soon closed it again. "Fine," she said, resigned, and folded her arms again, the blank look settling back over her face.

"All right then." Mollified, Rory began to read. "Old dog lay in the summer sun, much too lazy to rise and run…"

Luke tried to listen respectfully, but that soon turned to disbelief as the sadness of the words sunk in. He glanced at Lorelai's immobile face and decided that her idea of zoning out was possibly the right one. He let his mind drift.

It immediately drifted to the night Paul Anka died. He hadn't really let himself think about what had happened between them yet; not that night, nor the one a month earlier when they'd ended. Truthfully, he hadn't let himself think about anything at all since her one sentence: I slept with Christopher. He'd had years of practice in not thinking about Lorelai Gilmore. It was surprisingly easy to go back to that state of mind. He knew he was hurt, and angry, and damaged in a way that might be beyond repair. Shutting down everything except the basic functions he needed to get through the day seemed to be a logical escape from the devastation inside him. Refusing to think about Lorelai and the heartbreak she'd caused was his method of letting some healing begin.

He stole a glance at Lorelai, at her pale, blank face and glazed-over eyes. He knew she was hurting too, from the devastation she'd brought down on them. He never thought he'd see her so silent. So still.

"It's all my fault, Luke! I'm sorry, so, so sorry!"

He heard her voice in his head from the night Paul Anka died. He winced, remembering how hysterical, how fragile she had seemed. And his solution to her meltdown? Sex. He'd never felt more ashamed of himself. All he'd wanted to do was comfort her and share some of the pain. He truly hadn't meant for it to end with them in bed.

Oh, who was he kidding? Maybe that wasn't his intention, but he certainly knew the intense physical pull that existed, always, between them. There was a reason he'd barely touched her during the first eight years he knew her.

But the night Paul Anka died he'd let himself touch her. He'd held her close; kissed her. He'd taken her to bed. They'd made love—there was no use calling it anything else. For just a few hours he'd allowed himself the ultimate luxury of pretending there was no one but the two of them in the universe. There was no Christopher, no April, no postponed wedding, nobody walking away.

"I've waited, Luke, I've stayed away and let you run this thing, but no more! I love you, Luke, I love you! Don't you love me?"

A shudder swept over him as he once again heard her words from the night of the ultimatum. Oh, God, that night. He pictured her again as she stood in the street that night, begging him to marry her. Pleading with him to say he loved her. Another night when she was absolutely hysterical, ready to tip over into madness.

Was she still that hysterical when she knocked on Christopher's door? Did he look out at the woman he still had feelings for and see her standing there heartbroken, ready to shatter into pieces? Did he pull her to him, trying to comfort her? Did he stroke her hair, and wipe her wet face, and murmur words of love to soothe her? Did he take her to bed to try and show her how much he still cared?

As Luke saw the parallels between those two nights his body reacted violently and for a moment he thought he was going to have to drop to his knees beside the bushes and be sick. His head was burning hot, not just from the relentless June sun, and his lungs hurt when he tried to draw a deep breath.

He was no better than Christopher. The revelation was overwhelming to him. After all of the years he'd spent mocking the guy, looking down at him and despising the sniveling little weasel while he felt oh-so-superior, and here his own actions were nearly identical. Face it, he'd bailed on Lorelai and left her floundering in their relationship on her own, leaving her hanging as he focused on something he thought was more important. And instead of giving her the emotional support she needed the night Paul Anka died, he'd…

A movement off to his side jerked him away from his self-recrimination. Rory had dropped the book and had her head buried in Lorelai's shoulder, her tears coming fast. Lorelai held Rory close and patted her back comfortingly, while her own face still showed a complete lack of emotion.

As though she could feel his gaze, Rory pulled away from Lorelai's shoulder and turned to glare at him.

"You! Get over here!" she sniffled at him petulantly.

"Wh…What?" he stammered.

Rory pulled further away from her mother, put her hands on her hips and let the emotions of the day cut through any social awkwardness she might have otherwise suffered.

"I understand that things are bad with you two," she started. "Believe me, I understand. But you promised me! Both of you promised me, repeatedly, that no matter what happened with the two of you as a couple, it would not in any way affect us. You said that the thing we always had, with the three of us being kind of our own little family, you said that wouldn't change. And this is one of the times when I need my family, so damn it, Luke, get over here!"

Her eyes snapped at him the way Lorelai's had, once upon a time, and he automatically responded, walking over and putting his arms around them both.

Lorelai jerked and her breath hissed out of her like she'd leaned on a hot stove when his hand touched her shoulder. Luke dropped his hand instantly, his guilt burning through him as well.

Rory was immediately contrite. "Oh, Mom, I didn't mean…"

A slamming door drew their attention away from their blundering little drama. Babette and Morey were walking towards them, Babette carrying a huge red geranium in a terra cotta pot.

"Sorry, dollfaces, about intruding, but we wanted to offer our condolences. We'll never forget how much it helped to have everyone around to lean on when Cinnamon passed. You mind if we join ya?" Babette ventured to ask in her husky voice, for once sounding subdued.

Rory quickly looked from Luke to her mom, then broke away to stand by their neighbors. "Of course, stay," she invited them, attempting to smile.

At nearly the same time, Michel appeared around the side of the house. The normally frosty Frenchman walked directly up to Lorelai, placing his hands on her shoulders and giving her a quick kiss on each cheek.

"Oh…my," Lorelai said weakly.

"You should have told me," he admonished her gently. "No one should suffer a loss like this alone. I am here to help." He turned to embrace an aghast Rory, who managed to give Luke a panicked eye roll first.

Car doors slammed, and Sookie came bearing a cooler and a hamper, leading more Dragonfly staff with tables and food. Within minutes, half of the town was in the backyard.

Lorelai turned on her automatic hostess mode, the way she coped daily at the inn, and went about greeting people and finding extension cords and ice. Twenty minutes passed in a blur of hugs and sympathy, finding a bandage for Kirk's scraped elbow, and fending off Sookie's well-meaning attempts to feed her.

When she could she stopped to draw a breath, and she could tell, just by the way the air felt, that Luke was gone. The thought that there would never again be any reason for him to come to the house hit her with such force that her knees began to wobble beneath her.

"Oh, you poor thing," Miss Patty crooned, putting out her arm to support Lorelai as much as she could, but she didn't have enough strength to stop Lorelai from meeting the ground.

Rory heard the commotion and turned in time to see her mom crumple. She was there beside her in seconds.

"He's gone," Lorelai sobbed to her daughter, unable to keep the tears at bay. In the back of her mind she hated herself for being this weak; for having devolved into this woman who couldn't even stand on her own two feet, but for today, that's exactly who she was. "He's really gone."

Rory nodded, biting back her own tears while she held her mother fiercely. She was the only person there who knew Lorelai didn't mean Paul Anka.