TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter fifty-four; the present

YOU NEEDED A KINDNESS I COULDN'T GIVE YOU

two-thousand-and-four

ON FEBRUARY 3rd 2004 at 01:24, Rosaline Willow Danes is born.

Jess Mariano sits outside the hospital room, listening to her screams through the door. He's been sitting here for hours after driving Shelley and Luke to the hospital, woken up by his uncle's frantic knocking against his car window. Luke had shoved the keys to the truck into his hands and told them to get a move on, but Jess' eyes had still been blurry from sleep as he swerved onto the highway and almost crashed right into the car next to him. His heart is still racing. Was it from the crash or from listening to Shelley cry through the door?

An hour after they'd arrived, the St James' had burst onto the scene. Marlon and Pamela, Sookie without her husband or baby he doesn't know the name of. He'd scratched the back of his neck as he'd shaken their hands, trying not to run out of there. All he's wanted to do is run. Run and not look back.

He has a baby cousin.

He rubs sweaty palms across his knees. Autumn snores beside him, curled up on the uncomfortable hospital seating, his jacket strewn across her body to keep her warm, head on Rory's lap on her other side. Rory has been reading, using one hand to keep her book open while the other lazily plays with a few of Autumn's caramel curls. She mumbled out a hello when she and her mom arrived, sitting next to her – well, whatever Autumn is to her, neither of them can quite figure it out – and it was the only thing they said to each other. Now, as they hear the cries from the closed-off room, their eyes meet across their friend's sleeping body and soften for a moment.

He has a baby cousin.

Behind them sits Olive, Jeff, Sookie and Lorelai. Sookie has been breathing into a paper bag to calm herself down while the two other women share their own labor stories. Jeff keeps periodically leaving for a smoke and then rushing back to make sure he hasn't missed anything, and when they assure him all is the same, he sinks into the seat beside his wife and doesn't say anything else. Pamela and Marlon, sitting nearer the door, take turns pacing, then sitting, then talking. Their baby girl is having a baby.

He has a baby cousin.

He drops his head so his forehead touches his knees. He'd called his mom but she hadn't picked up, so he left her a voicemail letting her know Shelley was going into labor. She still isn't here. He's not sure she will turn up. He's not sure how many more people he can deal with.

He has a baby cousin.

There's a baby in the family. A tiny little thing to look after. He'll never be able to do it. He has never been soft in his life, loving. Everything he touches he destroys. Everything he lets get too close he destroys. Rory, who he can barely look in the eye, who he left behind without even saying goodbye to because he couldn't see the look on her face when he ruined her world. Moon, who he walked away from in the rain, ignoring her curses, unable to take his mind off of blue eyes he left behind in Stars Hollow enough to love her back. And, before them, before all of that, his mother. The body he ruined, that stretched and she could never put back and she blamed him for, time and time again, ruining his body with black eyes and not enough food. The mind he ruined, the alcohol she consumed so she wouldn't have to listen to him, rolling her eyes as he asked for more books, more music, throwing coins at him just to get him to go away.