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Please? With a sparkling cherry on top?
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Don't sue, I'll cry. ;p
Rating: PG (one curse word)
Improv: #31 - - lonely, shimmer, guide, cerulean, malaise
Summary: The ending of Dean and Rory.
Pairing: Rory and Dean
Spoilers: 'Chicken or Beef'
Distribution: Mkay. Just let me know.
Warning: Big-time angst. Can't help it; it's what I do.
Author's Note: Title is a tribute to the mating of two doves, the
romantic idea of everlasting things.
Dedication:
For the character of Dean. He's never been loved the way he deserves.
- - -
- -
"Life is about change. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's beautiful; but
most of the time it's both." -- Lana, 'Smallville'
Last night is hazy, the memories that should be fresh in your mind gone blurry
and stale from the liquor you swigged, coaxing you into a drunken oblivion from
which you have now returned. Today is clear, your head aching but your mind
seeing so much, seeing everything. More than anything, you'd like to go back to
yesterday. If only you could.
Luke looks at you strangely, and though he's a strange person, still it's
unsettling. He knows something that you cannot now remember. His coffee
concoction warms your tongue, and he sort of rushes you out of his apartment.
That's no matter. You're in a hurry, anyway. You're late, and tired, and have a
stomach churning, malaise in your thoughts and your bones. Pain eating you,
swallowing you, tearing your insides to pieces over what you'd rather not pull
to the forefront. You tell yourself it's the leftovers of the drinking last
night. This you'll try to believe, wanting to shove down the longing for Rory's
face, for one more kiss, one last tender touch.
But one more is often too much to ask, and wanting it is a waste of time and
murder on the soul.
Such wantings and wishes bring nothing but woebegone thoughts that you don't
have the capacity to store today.
The morning of Stars Hollow is busy around you, Luke's diner fading further and
further behind your retreating steps. Taylor stands out on the sidewalk in front
of his ice cream store, arguing with a boy much younger than you.
"I don't care if you dropped the spoon, you cannot have another one. If I give
you another spoon, then the balance of spoons and bowls is disrupted, and I'll
have to get rid of a bowl, because I cannot buy only one spoon, and to waste a
bowl is a waste of money, and a waste of a perfectly good bowl, too. Plastic
isn't as cheap as they say, you know, not when you want the profit I'm aiming
for."
Momentarily, you feel sorry for the kid receiving the lecture, but you move on.
His suffering doesn't match up to your own.
The sun shines in your eyes, spreading its shimmering rays that glare into your
vision throughout a blue, blue sky. Blue skies signify good days. And that makes
sense. Today is supposed to be one of the best days of your life. Faint traces
of vomit stain the taste of your tongue, spoiling the moment of clarity, as if
to be a reminder that today won't be as good as it should be. And that's all
your fault, isn't it? You, with your questions that are too big and too drastic
to be asking when you're eighteen years old.
Will you marry me? God. Tying yourself up in your own chains. Drastic,
crippling, and permanent.
The center of town is dressed for the occasion, the tablecloths for the
reception as white as the bride's long dress. Matching, as if to guide those who
don't know much to the church for the wedding borne of hasty teenage boy
excitement, lacing up so many ties of regret.
You've seen Lindsey's dress already. She was too excited not to model it for
you. And she was lovely in her sunlit bedroom, spinning around to send her veil
flying and to show you the back view. It's a gaudy dress, you have to admit,
weighed down by one too many ribbons and sequins, so like a teenage girl. Rory
would never wear such a dress, you knew, but you pictured her in it just the
same. And swallowed over a bitter lump in your throat as you stared at the girl
that was to replace Rory, to take the spot Rory gave up.
You despise the name, Jess, of the boy who wooed her away. What kind of name is
that for a boy, anyway? Jess, like the hiss from a snake, the badass with a
shared fascination of writing notes in the margins of books you don't care to
read. Especially now.
People say that you never know what you have until it's gone. But you knew. Oh,
how you knew. She was a gem, the diamond worth hanging onto, the puzzle piece
that would grow to fit neatly into the jagged edges of yours. If only she had
stayed to give that a chance.
Life's too full of changing to ever hope to remain the same. You know this. But
you also know so much else, like if you could find someone who became the other
half of you, change wouldn't be so scary. Because they would catch you. You'd
fall and fail, but you'd have your rock, your love, there to pick you up instead
of letting you die. While others would barely cast you a glance in your misery,
that great love of yours would look inside of you and see.
You want this. You want this as bad as every other person in this world, and
recognize that so few of us even come close. Someone you're so in love with that
the two of you can speak through kisses, and whisper things to each other that
no one else would understand.
...Someone who will dress up, in full formal wear, and walk with you on a stage,
presenting you to a rich society he is no part of. Even though he finds the
idea, the costume, and pretty much everything else about such a social affair
atrocious.
You do things, for her, things you don't even believe in because you care for
her feelings above your own.
Your heart beats, one, two, three, in sync with memories, memories of her. From
the first time you saw her, stumbling and dropping things in the school hallway,
telling you that just when you've met her, she's going away.
Feelings are a thing often kept inside, fueled by fear or a want for privacy, or
pain that shouldn't be acknowledged. Feelings manifest themselves in you, and
you feel them like small pricks on your arm now, needles nudging at your skin to
make you realize that you cannot run from these feelings, and yet you know that
you will. You'll try to ignore the sensations you need to stifle before they
explode, taking you down with them in flames.
Maybe it would have been easier if she hadn't been in town, if she hadn't run
into you yesterday, tying your tongue up in knots that are still not unraveled.
It was like you had died after she had gone, and only by seeing her again did
you realize that she is what brings you to life.
That's when you knew. Rather, when your heart recognized what you'd buried, but
had known all along. The questions, the unsure quality of your insides, all was
stopped, because all was clear. You were getting married, and not to the love of
your life. Your first love that would be your last.
Even when you wish otherwise, minutes tick by just the same. And though you want
(need) the day to stop where it is and never go further, sooner than you can
breathe, it's time. Time to get married.
So reckless, so thoughtless of you, getting married at eighteen. Barely out of
high school, barely having discovered what love is, and now you're pledging a
vow in its essence.
The church is still, the old organ creaking out ageless notes to fill the
background with sound and rattle your nerves. You stand, still as death, dying,
indeed. You want to move, but it wouldn't be right, and your feet aren't working
now, anyway. They've gone numb, and it's almost as if they aren't even there.
They aren't, but Lindsey is. The congregation stands, their excited voices
blending into a buzz. Cameras flash and click as this girl that you watch walks
down the aisle, so narrow, with her dad at her side. Her hair flows beneath her
veil, shining with its health. She takes such good care of her hair.
(Rory cut her hair.) Suddenly it's all you can think of. Suddenly it's
all that matters.
It looks good, that style, framing Rory's face. Makes her very pretty. But it's
Rory, and thus that goes without saying.
You recognize those four pounding notes resonating from the organ repeatedly,
slow and familiar... but not slow enough. Please, you beg, draw them out
further. Make them last, make them last. Delay what will happen, because I
cannot.
You want to run, flee, escape. You want to be anywhere but here.
So many of your thoughts are of Rory, of little insignificant things about her
that you were given the privilege of knowing, because you know her. As her face
ingrains itself, tattooing onto your brain, you pray for the sky to fall down on
you, because you know that one day she'll touch it, and it's only a matter of
her finding her feet and learning to fly.
But you're stuck here; it is here where you'll always be. Who could have thought
that such a small, charming town could hide such a dream that is ugly now and
should never have been allowed to set fire.
Heart murmurs within you are heard now, freed from their guarded traps from the
aftereffects rising up in your body, reeking of bubbly, bitter alcohol that
violates minds and bodies and wants to come back up as the chanting repetition
of music comes to an end.
Nausea overtakes you and you sway on your feet; so many things sink in. Here you
are, standing at the head of the aisle, watching, waiting, waiting...
You take your bride's hand, the gesture empty because you're not done waiting
yet. Because she's not the one you were waiting for.
That one, the one that got away, her body is absent from the church pews only
half-full. She's moved on and is a million miles away, a different person now.
She is no longer standing at your side and you are alone without her. Alone.
Does she remember? Does she remember any of it? Does she want to? Should she?
All you know is that you do, you remember every little piece and detail. And you
can't stop.
The universe, it screams, because it wants to know. Closure is a foreign thing
in that there was none. The door wasn't shut; she just jumped through another
one. There was only a blow-up on a small town dance stage, a why when you
shared the big news.
And all she could say was, "Jess does not treat me like dirt!" With all that you
had told her... that was all she had to say.
Big news, yes. Oh, so very big.
Big as her inquisitive cerulean eyes that aren't here to look on at you standing
in this place where you've been grounded like a rock beneath a fast-moving
stream. Instead those eyes of hers see nothing. An invitation thrown in your
face, your need dismissed by a busy schedule or a need to keep moving on from
something she doesn't see all the potential in what she had. What the both of
you had together.
Why isn't she here to save you when you cannot save yourself?
The door of the church is supposed to open and slam, Rory rushing in, winded and
tortured and confused as much as you are. It's supposed to slam so loud it
echoes from the ceiling to the walls to the floor and back again, startling all
with its abruptness. Please, let the door slam. It should slam, damnit. You
mumble a plead under your breath, your lips moving just a little. Please,
please... make things right again because nothing makes sense anymore.
You hear your voice break the silence of the building, your tone blank, though
you try to bring forth the emotion required. "I, Dean, solemnly swear..." But
you're not looking into Lindsey's eyes, and instead you focus in on a small mark
on the wall behind her. You care for this girl, truly, you do. But not above all
others. Not above Rory. Not even close.
The ceremony, it's nearing the end now...
Till death to us part.
The key turns in the lock and now it's being thrown away. Married; joined, by
law, two as one. Your loyalty is sealed to the girl you scarcely know before
your eyes. And you've never felt so lonely.
She's so happy now, as you should be, Lindsey letting forth a slight excited
giggle that serves as a reminder of her age as your lips pull away from hers,
from your first kiss as man and wife.
Man. Are you a man? Her man. By law. The envelope has been sealed.
And you think to yourself, she doesn't deserve this. She's radiant, and glowing,
so young and so happy... She deserves someone who treasures her as she treasures
you.
She finds the eyes of her mother as the two of you walk back down the aisle
together, arm-in-arm. And you remember Lorelai. Notice that she, also, isn't
here.
That's no surprise. She and Rory are attached at the hip. But that's what you
liked about her, admired about her, envied about her. How watching the two
partners in crime makes you want to warn the world, "Look out, here they come.
Run! They zoom with a thousand quips and the roadrunner's speed." God help the
deaf and mute who cannot keep up with their babbles of wit and good humor,
inside jokes thrown into the mix, stirred together with a tank full of coffee,
but only the good kind. Suit to taste, of course. The very best.
Of course.
The mischief twins that stoke anyone's craving when they leave the room, and
even more so when they leave your life.
You'll never be able to think of innumerable things, intricacies that you are so
honored to know. Like the song and dance of oompa loompas again, not without a
sour stomach that can't handle such off-beat memories of Rory, of them both.
The reception has started. You're blinking your eyes, wondering how you got
here, seated at this table, staring at the white tablecloth that greeted you
this morning. Before. You want the white to blur out the world, and take
you with it. Relieve you from everything you've officially taken on. You're
seated at the head table, subject to the eyes of so many people you know,
rejoicing for you because they don't know that your insides haven't melted into
a warm puddle of goo, but rather have frozen over, in painful falling chunks
like out of an ice cube tray.
"Want me to fill up your ice cube trays?" you asked once, in the Gilmore
kitchen, your face staring into the freezer. "They're empty."
"No, don't bother," Lorelai said. "It's been so long since we've used them - -
actually we've never used them, except for the first time we put them in there
and the first time we took them out - - do you know how hard it is to get the
damn things out of their squares? They fit in there, squished in so tight as if
they were glued, held in by like evil cubbies, built by angry kindergartners
with divorced parents and anger issues just to pass anger issues on to other
people."
"Well why don't you run a little warm water over them? It helps them to soften
up enough to pull them out." Lorelai looked at you strangely, then, searching
for your second head. "My mom told me," you clarified.
"Did you know that, Rory?" she asked with fake awe.
"Writing it down as we speak."
"Taking notes. You're so good at that. It's freakish, but fabulous, considering
I never write anything down, except on sticky notes, but I never remember where
I stick them because they'll stick anywhere."
Rory looked at you and grinned. "Yay for notes. I'm resourceful."
That's true. She is.
"Yeah, they're helpful..." you said, though you hated taking them in school, and
referencing them to cram for tests. You never did like tests. Education doesn't
come so easily to most as it does to Rory Gilmore. It's such a big part of her
charm. Keeps things from getting boring or lacking stimulation of any kind.
Always. No moment spent with her is stale.
When you asked why the trays were never filled again, Lorelai took a deep breath
to prepare for her speech, something you meant to recommend she do more often.
"Okay, well, to get ice cubes from the tray you have to fill the tray and that
means walking all the way over to the sink, way over there, and then coming back
to the freezer and placing them in there. And then that leads to waiting until
it's ice, and when you want an ice cube, you want an ice cube, and I don't
really do things except when I'm in the mood for them right away - - "
"Same here," Rory added.
"You are so my offspring." Charmed by her quick response to match all the others
in her life, Lorelai looked at you to see that you were amused and charmed as
well.
"But," you continued, "if you fill the ice trays in advance, right after the
last time you empty them, then while you don't need any - - "
"Well when do you really need ice cubes?" Lorelai cut in.
"Except at a birthday party," said Rory, and you smiled secretly, then,
remembering the short rendezvous with Rory at her birthday party to give her the
bracelet she wore every day for so long. You wonder, now, where she puts it. If
she's taken it with her to Yale.
"Oh, right, but luckily Luke will come to your rescue - - "
"Thank God," Rory added dramatically, just to be ridiculous. You always loved
that about her, her timing to throw in humor that was always within her to be
shared.
"Yes," Lorelai went on, "Except that he might run into the mother, judgmental
and jumping to conclusions because she can't stand not to seize a moment to ruin
- - "
"Ouch," Rory said in agreement.
"Okay, so if you want ice cubes, if you put them in after the last time
you take them out, then you'll have more when you want them."
"That requires more of the going to and fro between where I'm standing and the
freezer. You do realize that."
I do now.
Small ice cubes, the crushed kind, swarm about in your tall plastic cup,
drowning in the liquid you haven't tasted. Now you don't want to. And then again
you do.
The meal is served, and it's being called lunch, as it is under the warmth of
the sun in a sky headed towards afternoon.
Chicken. Lindsey is having chicken. Not a beef girl. Why couldn't she be a beef
girl? Why couldn't she be so many things?
It isn't fair, the way you're comparing her to Rory, and you realize that with
all your heart. It just isn't. A first love next to what symbolizes moving on.
Who looks at the blackness surrounding a star?
You're having chicken as well, the smell of it disgusting your unsettled
stomach. You're sure you'll throw it up within an hour. Another highlight of the
day. The two of you are so alike, so much so that sometimes it makes everything
so plain, stripping away vibrant color and making things black and white. You'll
share cake later, buried in so much icing, a dentist's nightmare. Cake should be
enjoyed, savored, certainly not dreaded. Another aspect of the day, another
thing that should be right and good turned upside down. Like your stomach; like
your heart.
Upside down, all the things that should have been. Things that will never be.
Because you loved her, but it wasn't enough. She isn't here, she isn't here.
She didn't come, and that's all you know.
- -
It's so sad, what you didn't see. What happened when you were gone.
Late in the afternoon, long after you reigned in all your "just married" glory
before the eyes of so many people who know nothing of what this day means to
you, Rory came to the church. She did come, but she waited until it was too
late. Purposefully waiting until you were gone.
People were working outside with the baking sun on their backs, cleaning up
after all the guests had gone. Picking up torn and fallen streamers from the
ground, ripping down sagging multi-colored ones, stuffing them into trash bags
as if they signified nothing. Ridding the outside of the town of the litter of
plastic - - cups, silverware, plates. A slight breeze sent hair flying but a
little, and scattered some leftovers of the party with the wind to clutter up
the street that was deserted and silent. The town was quiet, very few people
walking among the shops, eating at the diner, appearing a ghost town on this
lazy summer weekend.
Luke eyed the empty church from the front windows of his diner, pausing every
now and then, thinking of what you slurred out the night before. Thinking of how
he told Rory to stay away. Unsure if he saved her or betrayed you.
She had watched, from afar, mixed emotions inside, her face not knowing what to
show, if anything at all. Didn't matter; no one saw. And that was how she wanted
it. Her private moment to think and mourn and... remember. She needed to obey
the feeling that she was alone inside. She didn't want everyone else's happiness
to clutter up her mind space, trapping her in to create a sort of
claustrophobia.
Solemn and silent, holding her head under water in that she was drowning.
Small and meek, she crept into the church, intimidating and eerie in its
silence. The heavy door shut behind her, sealing her inside. The air was cooler
in the building, and she got a chill that raced down her spine like ice.
(Ice.)
She took small steps forward along the aisle, passing so many pews on her way to
the front. The scent of flowers from the large amount of them decorating the
front of the church wafted to her, the sensation sweet to battle with the
emptiness, the still cold dead inside, running through her veins. Blankness
overtook her as she took a seat slowly in the very front pew, on the right, so
very close to the aisle, as if making sure to have easy access to bolt if she
needed to. And in fact she had to force herself not to. The ceremony of earlier
still ghosted the building; she could feel it in the air around her. Air that
she breathed into her lungs that a part of her wanted to cough back out.
Tall rafters rose high above, just beneath the ceiling. A church so tall in a
town of so few. Making special occasions all the more gargantuan, making them
seem larger than life. And isn't a wedding as large as it gets?
You know the answer to that now, though she does not.
She was determined to be happy that her first love was happy... even if your
happiness was because of someone else. She wasn't. going. to. cry. She wasn't.
And then she did.
She's sorry. She's sorry. She didn't mean for things to turn out this way. In
that sense, she shares your mind and your spirit and your heart. And in that
way, you two are one.
She wasn't as strong to stay still and stable as you, perhaps because she could
leave, while you could not. The private moments in the church, masked in the
silence, painful in the very air of the place were something she just couldn't
bear.
And when she couldn't stop crying, the flood of salt and water soaking skin time
and again, she had to leave. She had to run. Somewhere far away from this pew,
in this church, this building which now housed a memory that scalded her soul.
The empty, hollow sound of her footsteps trailed in her wake, the staccato
pitter-patter of her feet kind enough to disrupt the endless quiet. She kept
track of the steps as frantically she sped up trying to make them stop while
craving them just the same. One, two, three... nine... twenty-two... hours,
days, years of pain rushing through her. Because she didn't reach out and pull
her destiny back. She let you go, and as she reached the doors of the church and
burst through them, she looked around and continued to flee, because right now
there was no better place to be than away.
Your thoughts exactly.
- -
end
