Content warning for violence toward a child. If that's something you don't want to read about, then I would skip from "Maybe if you didn't talk about. . ." to "She closed the door"

I used a line of dialogue from "Dear Emily and Richard" right at the beginning.

October 1985

"Lorelai, Juliet, we are leaving, please acknowledge that!" Her mother's shrill voice rang through the house.

Showtime, Juliet thought as she abandoned her homework for the second time that night, Lorelai's folded note burning a hole in her pocket. She walked downstairs, giving her parents what she hoped was an innocent smile.

"There you are, Juliet! Emily, look, here's Juliet," Richard said, exasperated.

"I see that," Emily said dryly. "Where's your sister?"

"Oh, Rory was colicky, so Lor took her for a walk to calm her down," she said easily, praying she didn't sound too rehearsed.

"Without you?" Emily raised a skeptical eyebrow.

"She asked, but I had too much homework."

"Hm," her mother seemed to accept her answer. "We'll be back at about 11, so don't wait up."

Like I ever have. But she nodded anyway, not wanting to have a fight before the big one she knew was coming.

Suddenly, Emily leaned in and hugged her. Juliet immediately tensed but didn't pull away, avoiding another fight that would come from pulling away from her mother's touch.

In the year since Rory's birth, both the Gilmores, but Emily especially, began treating her with considerably more affection. Make no mistake, she still earned her mother's displeasure often. She still wasn't as dazzling as Lorelai had been at parties, she still struggled in her English class. She was the boring oak desk in her father's study, not the captivating porcelain vase that adorned the coffee table in the living room. But her parents acknowledged that having a dull daughter was a blessing as well as the curse they already knew it was. If Juliet hardly had any friends, she couldn't sneak out to go to parties. If no boys showed an interest in her, she couldn't come home pregnant.

So the vocal criticism from her mother was now interspersed with praise for her biology grades, or random bursts of affection like tonight. Juliet almost longed for the days of being a constant disappointment to them. At least she'd known what to expect, instead of being constantly unsure which set of parents she was going to get every time they walked into a room.

She awkwardly patted her mother's back.

"Have fun," she said to both of them, smiling stiffly when her father patted her shoulder.

"Oh, that's a delightful joke, Juliet. 'Fun', indeed. This will be like pulling teeth without anesthesia," Richard chuckled.

"Richard!"

"And, yet, I'm going anyway, my dear," he said as he closed the front door behind him, rolling his eyes at Juliet with a smile, like they were on the same team.

We all know whose team I'm really on, she thought, unfolding Lorelai's letter to their parents and placing it in the same spot where Lorelai had left the letter telling them they were going to the hospital a year ago.

She was pretending to be asleep when they found the note. She had tried going to sleep, but the pit in her stomach had refused to let her, preparing her body for confrontation.

Fight or flight mode, she remembered reading in her biology textbook.

It was ironic ( Wow, I guess I did learn something in English! ) that Juliet, who always chose flight, was inserting herself into a fight, so that Lorelai, who always chose fight, could flee.

Angry, stilettoed footsteps up the stairs. Emily.

"Juliet Leigh Gilmore!"

She jumped out of bed, finger-combing her hair as though that might make her mother less angry. Her bedroom door slammed open. Emily looked murderous, and Juliet was shocked to see tear tracks on her cheeks.

"Yeah?" she said, trying for the sassy nonchalance Lorelai always spoke to their parents with, but sounding meek and mousy instead.

"This," her mother held up the familiar piece of Hello Kitty stationary, "was not here when we left. I would've noticed it. Lorelai wasn't here either. Did she come back from her 'walk' and pen this note, then leave without your knowledge?"

Juliet remained very still but gave the tiniest shake of her head. Even that motion seemed to make Emily Gilmore grow three heads taller.

"So you lied to us. You conspired with your sister to tear this family apart, because she was so unhappy, with every luxury given to her and that baby? We didn't even force her to marry Christopher!" Emily laughed bitterly. "But oh, no, my daughters get no greater pleasure than from pretending I'm some controlling monster, keeping the two of you locked in a tower! Don't just stand there all demurely, Juliet, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Juliet opened and shut her mouth, sensing that nothing she said would smooth this over. Even an apology would make things worse, Emily would see it for the lie that it was.

"Tell me where she is, at the very least, so we can bring her home before anyone wonders where she is."

"I don't know where she went, Mom."

Her mother pointed her finger at her face. "I have had enough of the lying, don't lie!"

"I'm telling the truth!" she insisted, close to tears. "She didn't tell me where she went!"

"So you wouldn't have to lie to us, right? Because even from afar, Lorelai needs to protect you from your evil, controlling parents, right?" Emily mocked. "Perhaps I should've given her your name, she's dramatic enough to poison and stab herself like Shakespeare's Juliet."

"Maybe if you didn't talk about her like that, she would've stayed," Juliet said under her breath.

"What was that, Juliet?"

"I said that maybe if you didn't talk about her like that, she would've stayed!"

Emily reached out and slapped her across the face, the sound echoing through the bedroom. Juliet clutched her stinging cheek, looking at her mother in shock. Emily and Richard Gilmore were often cutting and hurtful with their words, but they'd never put their hands on either of their daughters like this.

Her mother lowered her hand, no sign of remorse on her face. "I will not be spoken to that way, Juliet Leigh. Not by your sister, and not by you. The Gilmores are a unit, not you and Lorelai versus your father and I."

Your father and me, she heard Lorelai's voice say smugly in her head.

"Go to bed. We'll discuss this further in the morning."

Juliet nodded, still holding her cheek.

"And put your hand down, for God's sake, people are going to think you're being abused."

She dropped her hand, and Emily left the room, satisfied. Richard was waiting outside of Juliet's bedroom, and he gave her a look of disapproval as he draped an arm around his wife's shoulders. Juliet wondered how much he'd heard.

She closed the door, squeezing her eyes shut. She waited for tears to come, now that it wouldn't be embarrassing to cry, but none did. Her face was numb, and her entire body felt tingly as she sat down on her bed, staring at the wall.

She startled when the phone rang a while later. A glance at her clock told her it was past midnight.

"Hello?"

"Jules, hey!" Just hearing Lorelai's voice was enough to open the floodgates, and tears began to slide down her cheeks.

"Lor," she choked on a sob, clutching the phone with both hands as though it could bring her sister closer to her.

"Jules, what's wrong?" She could hear Lorelai beginning to panic over the phone. Juliet worked to slow her breathing, not wanting to worry her sister over something she couldn't control.

"I just miss you," she said, only half lying. She did miss Lorelai, she missed her company and her laughter and the millions of inside jokes they had together. But she more than missed her. If the Gilmore mansion was a choppy, raging sea, Lorelai was the life preserver she had been clinging to for the last fourteen years, and without her, she was treading water all alone.

"Aw, I miss you too. Like a weird amount, considering it's been less than a day."

"Feels like longer."

"Yeah," Lorelai agreed, sighing. "I would've called earlier, but I wanted to make sure the elder Gilmores were asleep. How did that go, by the way? Were they really mad? I mean, obviously they were mad at me, but were they mad at you too?"

Juliet paused, not knowing how to answer Lorelai in a way that wasn't going to make her feel absolutely awful.

"Jules?" Lorelai laughed nervously. "You're scaring me a little, just tell me what happened."

Juliet took a deep, shaky breath.

"Mom slapped me," she confessed in a whisper, playing with the phone cord.

"No," Lorelai breathed, her voice dripping with contempt and guilt, "Jules, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, sorry."

"It's okay, Lor. It wasn't your fault."

"No, it's not okay! If I hadn't –"

"But you had to. It's not just me you have to worry about anymore."

"No, it's not," said Lorelai softly. They were both silent for a minute. "Oh. I got a job!"

Juliet felt herself smile. "Really? That's great, what is it?"

"A maid at an Inn. Hopefully, I picked something up from all the maids we went through growing up!"

"Yeah, hopefully!" Juliet laughed. "When can I come visit?"

She heard Lorelai suck in a breath. The line was silent for a few moments.

"Maybe on my birthday?"

Her eyes widened, and she felt the beginnings of tears again. "Lorelai, that's not for six months! You want to go six months before we see each other again?"

"I don't want that, Jules. But what if Mom and Dad find out where I am? Aren't they allowed to bring me back to Hartford if I'm still a minor?"

"You're right," she agreed with a sigh, hating her parents both for driving Lorelai away and for creating an environment where Juliet needed her sister's protection so badly. "I could keep it a secret, though. Or we could meet up somewhere else? Between here and wherever you are. Are you still in Connecticut? Can you tell me that?"

"I'm still in Connecticut," Lorelai confirmed in a whisper. The line was silent again. "I'll think about it, okay? I want to see you, you know I want to see you. I just don't know if I can risk it."

"I know."

"I'll call you every day though, either way. You can call me too, I'll give you the number." Juliet wrote down the number Lorelai gave her on a piece of paper, hiding it under her mattress. "This probably is the best time for me to talk, does it work okay for you?"

Juliet fought to keep her voice even. Was Lorelai already speaking to her more formally, or was that just her imagination? "Yeah, it works. That way Mom and Dad don't know."

"Okay. I love you, you know that, right?"

"I love you too."

Juliet heard Rory crying, muffled slightly over the phone. She heard her sister sigh. "I have to go. I'll call you tomorrow night, yeah? I'll come up with a plan for when we can see each other by then."

"That sounds good. I love you," she said again.

"I love you too, Jules. Take care of yourself, okay? And call me if you need anything, please."

"I will," she said, sniffling.

"Bye, Jules."

"Bye, Lor."

She kept the phone to her ear for a while after she heard the click. Finally, she placed the phone back in its cradle and pulled her comforter up to her chin. She cried herself to sleep, knowing that she still had four years left in the Gilmore mansion, and Lorelai could no longer protect her the way she always had.

End of Book 1

Notes:

So that's the prologue, besties! It might be a little while before I start posting chapters set during season 1, I want to find 29 year old Juliet's voice versus what she was like at 13/14. As always, thank you for reading, and let me know your thoughts and predictions for what might happen next, I love reading what people think of the stuff I write!