A Series of Different Events

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One Sunday evening in October, Rory and Logan were walking through town, eating ice cream.

"Whoever decided to mix ice cream with coffee, is a genius" Rory said

Logan just smiled at her. It was nice to see her acting more like herself again. He put his arm around her and pulled her closer. "I love you, you know that?"

"I love you too" Rory said and put her head down on Logan's shoulder.

At one point Rory just stopped walking. Logan took a few more steps before realizing that she wasn't with him. He turned around to face her. "What's wrong?"

"Can we go the other way?" Rory asked

Logan looked around for a second before realizing why Rory didn't want to walk that way. They'd just passed Rich Man's Shoe which meant that they were in the area where she got attacked. She didn't want to walk past it. "Yeah" He nodded.

They turned around and walked home the longer way.

Rory was doing a lot better. Physically, she was mostly healed. She could walk a lot better, even if she still had to wear the brace, and she only had a few more days left with the cast on her arm. Other than that she was healed. Mentally, she was doing ok. She mostly shoved everything into a little box and refused to think about it except when she had to...except when she was sleeping, then it became a problem. It had gotten to the point where despite being in therapy 4 times a week, she was still having nightmares every night.

On Monday morning Rory was sitting in her therapist's office. Almost 20 minutes had gone by and neither of them had said anything. Carol, the therapist, liked to wait for her patients to speak first, but that day it was apparent that Rory wasn't going to.

"How did you sleep?" Carol asked

"I didn't" Rory said

"When was the last time you slept a whole night?" She asked

"When I first got out of the hospital. I was on a lot of meds and it kinda just knocked me out"

"I'd like to revisit the idea of medication" Carol said. She'd brought it up before but Rory said no. "The lack of sleep is going to start taking a toll on you. I'd like to give you something. 2 things actually. One pill to help you sleep. And one for anxiety, to hopefully keep you from having nightmares"

"Fine" Rory said.

"Can I ask you to do something for me?" Carol asked

"Sure" Rory said

"I want you to tell me what happened to you"

"You know what happened to me" Rory said

"I want you to say it. Out loud"

"Why?" Rory asked

"Because I think on some level, you're ignoring what happened to you, and you can't move past it until you acknowledge what you went through"

——

That weekend Rory went to Stars Hollow. It was the first time she'd been there since the attack. She also got the cast taken off her arm just that past Thursday.

"Hey! You're here!" Lorelai said when she saw Rory walk into the dragonfly. "And you got your cast off!"

"I did" Rory smiled

"Let me see your arm" Lorelai said. She grabbed Rory's arm. "It's perfect. Like nothing happened"

"I'm sorry, do you not see the 8 inch scar from where they cut my arm open to stitch metal pins in my bones?" Rory asked sarcastically