Society

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Manic Mondays

Paris Gellar was a force to be reckoned with.

It was obvious to anyone at Chilton that if there was one person you really didn't want to piss off, she was that person. She was nine the first time she made a teacher cry and by thirteen, had been responsible for a certain guidance counselors' resigning. Rumor was, she was holed up in some mental health facility.

Paris took no prisoners. She protected those nearest and dearest, and didn't take any bullshit. She had absolutely no problem telling people what they didn't want to hear. It was this factor of her personality that led to Rory to be spending Monday afternoon in this room facing some lady, who kept looking at her, waiting for her to talk.

Yes, she was now seeing a psychiatrist.

After Paris walked in on her sobbing in Tristan's arms, she kicked Tristan out of her room and she, Rosemary, and Stephanie scoured her entire room for sharp objects. They had gotten everything. The shard of glass in the bathroom, the razor blade taped to the back of her lamp, and the Swiss Army knife hidden under her mattress were now gone. Then, Paris did the worst thing ever: she told the grandmothers. Which led to her sitting in front of a lady, who was no doubt making hundreds of dollars an hour, who was waiting for Rory to tell her deepest darkest secrets.

Paris and Rory weren't really talking right now.

"So, Lorelai, why do you think you're here," asked Dr. Shrink (the name Rory decided to call her).

"Rory," she corrected.

"I'm sorry?" Dr. Shrink inquired.

"My mother's name in Lorelai, I go by Rory."

Dr. Shrink wrote something down on her note pad and waited for Rory to answer her first question.

"My friend Paris told my grandmothers that I sometimes cut myself, they freaked, and it was either come here or tell my parents," Rory answered.

Dr. Shrink wrote some other things down before continuing, "Are you close with your grandparents?"

"I guess."

"Closer to them then you are to your parents?"

"Yes," Rory confirmed.

"Do your parents know where you are right now?"

Rory shrugged, "They don't really ask about my day-to-day activities."

Dr. Shrink made another note and asked, "Are you upset with your friend for telling your grandmothers your secret?"

"No,"

A lie. Dr. Shrink didn't look convinced.

"Yes, I guess, but I get why she did," Rory continued.

"Why did she?"

Rory looked at her feet and quietly said, "Because she doesn't want me to keep hurting myself."

"When did you start hurting yourself?" Dr. Shrink asked.

"About six years ago, but Paris didn't find out about it until last week."

"When was the last time you hurt yourself?"

"About three months ago," she answered.

"Was Paris the only one you told?' Dr. Shrink.

Rory shook her head. "A few of my friends found out at the same time. They found me when I was about to . . . do it. The only one who knew, he . . . he made me open the door and I was holding the glass and . . . They figured it out."

"And this happened a week ago?" Dr. Shrink asked while skimming her notes.

Rory nodded her head.

"So, Rory, what made you want to cut after three months of controlling it?"

"It's a long story," Rory tried to stall.

"Bore me," replied Dr. Shrink.

Rory decided she didn't feel like talking anymore. She and Dr. Shrink spent the last fifteen minutes of their time together in silence, Rory repeating the words Manic Monday in her head over and over again.

Tristan made his way to his last class of the day.

Mondays suck. Plus, people kept staring at him. Not that he could blame them, he and his ex-girlfriend/fiancé didn't sort of have a somewhat epic showdown the Friday before. Okay, maybe epic was pushing it, but it was big.

So he got to spend the whole pretending he didn't notice them staring. Pretending he didn't spend the weekend hoping that said ex-girlfriend/fiancé would call him back after being thrown out of her room by her overbearing best friend. Pretending that it didn't bother him the she didn't call. Pretending that he didn't desperately want to know why she wasn't in her last class and why she wasn't heading to her current class. No, he didn't keep tabs on her and which routes she took to her classes. He was just . . . observant. Not observant enough, though, that it took him a few minutes to notice that one of his best friends had been walking with him to his next class.

"Hey man, how are you and-." Finn started to ask when Tristan finally noticed him.

Tristan cut Finn off, "I don't know."

"You still haven't talked to her?" asked Finn in disbelief.

Tristan shot him a dirty look. "No."

They got to their class and took their seats in the back of the room.

"So does that mean that you don't know where she is right now?" asked Finn.

"Yes," Tristan answered slowly. "Are you telling me that you do?"

Finn looked like he had said too much. As if Paris had threatened a very important part of his body if he said anything about Rory's current 'situation' to the wrong person. How was he supposed to know that Tristan was this wrong person? We're they on the way to working this out?

"Finn," Tristan started, "where is-."

Finn was saved by the bell, literally.

Celia Dugray was a good mother.

She was present for every first: first step, first word, first day of school. She knew her son's friends, their parents, and their phone numbers. Her son had a curfew (on weeknights, anyway), an allowance, and chores. Okay, so his curfew was three in the morning on weeknights, his monthly allowance was more than some people made in a year, and his 'chore' was school. Still, she was involved. She went to PTA meetings, she took her son to the park when he was a toddler, and she made it a point to be home by 11 pm every night.

Basically, she was everything Lorelai Victoria Hayden was not.

Not that Celia Dugray wasn't a pillar of Hartford society, quite the contrary. She was in the DAR, worked for a few charities, and hosted dinner parties like all the rest. However, she didn't ignore her child, like most of the rest.

When Rory and Tristan first started dating, Celia had been a little worried. After all, this was the girl whose conception had caused waves of gossip for months. Whose disappearance had been the stuff of legends for almost ten years before showing up at Chilton for the sixth grade. What if she was as . . . colorful as her parents' action's made others presume her to be?

Of course, the worry was dismissed that first time Tristan brought her over for dinner. Rory was beautiful, smart, and her son adored her. Celia could tell by the way the two kept looking at each other that the feeling was mutual. They soon became the 'It couple' of Hartford, appearing in the society/gossip rags whenever they showed up at a benefit together. They always appeared happy, which was why Celia was confused by the exchange between the two she had witnessed about a week after her son's eighteenth birthday.

(flashback)

Celia was late for a DAR meeting one Monday afternoon when she heard the doorbell ring. The maid was out on errands, so she answered the door herself. To she surprise, it was Rory, and she was carrying a box.

"Hello Mrs. Dugray," Rory greeted her solemnly.

"Rory, for the last time, call me Celia. Come in, dear."

Rory tried to smile at her kindness and entered the Dugray mansion for, what she thought, would be the last time. Celia closed the door behind her and led her to the living room , it was rude to greet people in the foyer after all.

"Tristan's not-,"

"I know," Rory said suddenly. "He's working with his Dad. That's actually why I'm here," she finished while handing Celia the box. "This is some of his stuff that he's left at my house over the last year."

Celia took the box, despite her confusion. Hadn't Rory seen Tristan at school today? What was going on? After voicing her concern, Rory's face dropped.

Her voice shook as she began to answer, "Oh, he hasn't told you? I'm sorry, I thought you-." Rory was cut off by the door opening and slamming shut, followed by the voice of the one person she had hoped to avoid.

"Mom, is Rory here?" Tristan asked hopefully, while sprinting to the living room. He had seen her car in the driveway and had jumped out of his father's car before it was even in park, leaving his very confused father outside. John Dugray had been worried about his son, who had been sulky and quiet this past week. He thought that taking him golfing for his birthday instead of his usually working at the firm might give him an insight to his son's suffering.

Celia noticed Rory's stricken fact when Tristan entered the room; she also noticed the hopeful look on her son's. The two just stared at each other while John rushed into the house after his son. They were all silent for a moment, before Celia sensed the room was a little crowded.

"John, while don't you and I go and . . ." Celia's voice trailed off as she dragged her husband out of the room.

Tristan kept his eyes on Rory, who kept her eyes on the floor. "What are you doing here?" he asked gently. Then he saw the box on the table, and what was in it, and his expression changed from hopeful, to disappointed, to angry.

"I didn't think you were going to be here," she said softly.

"Oh, so you came over to drop off my stuff on the one day you knew I wouldn't be here?" Tristan asked, his voice rising with each word.

Rory nodded. Both of the teenagers were unaware that his parents in the kitchen could hear them.

"I don't know what to do anymore, Rory. You won't answer my calls, you won't talk to me, you ignore me school. I'm running out of ideas here," he continued frantically.

"Maybe you should just take the hint," she said softly.

"Take the hint," he repeated. "I love you, I want to be with you, this is . . . this is stupid. I made a mistake, a horrible, horrible mistake, but we can get past it!"

Celia and John listened to the argument taking place in the living room, wondering just what their son had done.

Rory remained silent, like she was afraid of what she would say if she dared utter a word. Tristan, however, continued to pour his heart out.

"I know what I did was wrong. Wrong doesn't even begin to describe what I did it was horrible. I betrayed you and your trust but I never stopped loving you! Please, we can work this out!"

Rory, tears streaming down her face, just shook her head. "I can't," she whispered.

"You can't? You can't? After a year, and the only thing you can't come up with is 'you can't!'?" Tristan exclaimed.

Rory didn't know what to do, so she did what she was good at: she ran. At the sound of her car driving away, Tristan collapsed on the couch. Seconds later, he was joined by his parents. Both of them wanted to know one thing: What the hell did he do?

Emily Gilmore and Francine Hayden looked woefully out of place in the waiting room of Rory's therapist's office. Both clad in Channel suits, they both looked uncharacteristically nervous. When Rory exited the doctor's office, both jumped up from the couch, desperate to get out of there as soon as possible.

Emily and Francine had been shell-shocked when the Gellar girl interrupted their weekly tea and told then what was going on with their granddaughter. It bothered them that neither of then noticed that she had been cutting herself for years and they hadn't noticed. It made Emily feel even more like a bad parent, what after her first daughter becoming pregnant at sixteen, running away, and then ignoring her own daughter. Now her granddaughter was . . . she didn't want to think about it. The three women were silent as they got into the car, the chauffer closing the door behind them.

They made idle chitchat on the way home. Rory was grateful for her grandmothers' ability to be nonchalant and know when she didn't want to talk about things. They dropped her off at her house first, Emily telling her she looked forward to dinner on Wednesday. She went to her room only to find the source of her problems waiting for her, sitting on her bed.

"What are you doing here?' she asked, more surprised then angry.

"Finn told me where you were," he replied, standing up but not taking a step toward her. "I just . . . I wanted to make sure you were okay."

It was noticeably difficult for him to be in this room. Too many memories lived here. After their second kiss, it was in this room that they had decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend. It had been this room that she told him she loved him. It was in this room that they first made love.

Tristan knew how big of a deal her going to therapy was. It had been a sore issue between them and the cause of one of their first big fights as a couple. However, he foolishly began to believe that he could help her, cure her, make her happy enough that she wouldn't even think about hurting herself. For a while, it seemed like he could. He would find excuses to run his hands up her arms and thought she didn't realize that his motive of this gesture was to check for scars. However, after his birthday, she would barely look at him, let alone let him touch her.

"Yeah . . . my grandmothers made me," she whispered.

For the first time in months, she looked him straight in the eye and didn't flinch, yell, or cry. It made Tristan miss her even more. He remembered when they would spend hours looking into each other's eyes, and he hadn't known how much he would miss it until he didn't have it (her) anymore.

"Do you want to-." Tristan started.

"I don't want to-." Rory began at the same time.

If it was anyone else, a nervous laugh would have followed this exchange, but this was them. He knew what she was going to say, I don't want to talk about it. For some reason, his sort of pissed him off. He knew he had no right to be. Rory was a seriously guarded person, and he knew that; her knew her. He was the one who had ruined their relationship, he was the one who didn't trust her, and he was the one who was unfaithful. These were facts that were constantly thrown in his face for his entire adult life.

She didn't know why she wasn't kicking him out of her room. Maybe she was tired of pretending not to feel anything. Perhaps she was sick of ignoring him. It could be that she had finally accepted that it was in Tristan's arms, in this room, that she had finally felt at peace for the first time in months. She wasn't trying to shut him out, honest. She was just sick of talking, and she didn't want her first non-yelling conversation with Tristan to be about her screwed up life.

He didn't see it that way.

"You don't want to talk about it," he scoffed. "Of course you don't. You never want to talk about anything! But this isn't about just you anymore!" he exclaimed, and not calmly. "I've said this too many times for me to count this week, but I'll say it again. I know I'm an asshole. I know what I did was horrible, if I could take back what I did, what I said, then I would."

"I know-," she tried to but in, but Tristan just kept on going.

"But we're getting married! We're going to be spending the rest of our lives together! You can't stay mad at me forever! You need to grow up and stop shutting me out so that we can work this out together. You can't kiss me and run away, or let Paris run me out of your room after we make a little but of headway and then not call me for a week," Tristan admonished.

Last week, she would have replied that he was the one who had to grow up. That she had every right to shut him out and that he was right, he was an asshole. She would have thrown ever little thing he did to her in his face and storm off. However, she knew he was right, and as much as the pissed her off, it made her feel a little better about what she did next.

"We can't keep living like this," he continued, not noticing that Rory was taking steps to lessen the distance between the two of them. Soon, she was right next to him by her bed. "The only way we can survive this is-."

Rory cut him off by softly pressing her lips to his, and then pulling back almost immediately. Needless to say, it worked. He looked at her like she was crazy, but leaned back in for a deeper, more meaningful kiss. He knew better than to try to take it further, and pulled back a few seconds later.

She could tell that he was worried that she would leave or make him get out. Instead, she simply asked, "Do you want to go to Finn's graduation party with me?"

He smiled and thought, Maybe Mondays aren't that bad.

Hope you liked this chapter!

Tristan and Rory are finally making progress. Next chapter I want to include Tristan's father and Lorelai's POV. Maybe even Christopher's.

Please review!