Chapter 1: Inherit the Immaculate

Luke Danes was just about closed up. He only had one last table of customers, but they were his favorite, so he didn't mind.

Mother-daughter pair Lorelai and Rory Gilmore had been friends of his for years. He kept them well-fed as Lorelai was not much of a cook. But he also let quiet, studious Rory stay in the diner sometimes to do her schoolwork. The 16-year-old was about to start a new school, and from the look in her doe eyes throughout the fall evening, she looked nervous.

Lorelai and Rory finished their burgers and coffee (Luke had tried to talk them out of the drink of death, but they had refused), and Luke walked them home from the Diner, same as he did almost every night. He carried a sleeping Rory.

Despite being barely September, there was already snow on the ground, and the night was bitterly cold. But that was the way of it here in Stars Hollow, Connecticut. Still, it made Luke cry when he and the Gilmore girls approached the potting shed out back of the Independence Inn that was the girls' home. It stood proud and silent on the crest of a small hill, but Luke had seen it up close. And to watch the girls go in there every night still hungry and still cold and still poor nearly made him cry. The place had had a dirt floor until recently, when Luke had possessed a spasm of hardwareness (that was Lorelai's phrase) and insisted on building them a proper floor. Now Luke tucked Rory into her mother's bed and was distressed to see that, even with a blanket, she shivered. She could not get warm. Luke quickly took the very clothes off his back - consisting of his signature flannel and a T-shirt - and threw them over her. He tried not to think about how Lorelai was seeing him bare-chested.

"You're not walking home like that, Tarzan," Lorelai teased, and Luke flushed at her he-man reference.

"Aw, geez. I'll be fine. Goodnight, ladies." And he jogged back into the snow and all the way to the Diner. He should have frozen, but he didn't and didn't mind. As long as Rory was warm.

Luke was awoken by a rapping at his door. He stumbled down from his apartment above the Diner to find Kirk looking all flustered. Luke could have killed him, but then again, he harbored such thoughts against Kirk at least three times during an average day.

"What, Kirk? What's going on?"

He could only stammer out a "Fire... come on!" With a shirt now on, Luke followed him at a run through the town. When they reached the back of the Inn, Luke's heart plummeted like a stone.

The potting shed was in flames. Luke instinctively ran for the structure, but firefighters held him back. "Lorelai! Rory!"

Thankfully, he saw Rory being attended to by neighbors, still swaddled in his flannel, but safe. Yet where was...?

A body was now being hauled out of the potting shed, not burned, and doctors immediately began CPR. Luke went over to comfort a whimpering Rory. At last, many hours later, he felt a doctor's hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Rory let out a scream of understanding and clutched to Luke as she sobbed. The Diner owner, meanwhile, had his own tears dripping down his cheeks.

Lorelai Gilmore, the light of the town, was dead. By smoke asphyxiation.

Luke took Rory back to the Diner and tucked her in his own bed. Early the next morning, he went downstairs to meet Taylor Dosse, as the Mayor of Stars Hollow held an emergency meeting.

"We have to decide what's to be done about Rory."

The opinions were surprisingly mixed.

"We should find her father. Track him down." Al of Al's Pancake World suggested

Luke had always thought of Christopher Hayden as more myth than man. The very little he had learned from Lorelai was that the man was a deadbeat and after fathering Rory had outlived any usefulness.

"But where is he?" asked Kirk.

"I heard he got a tattoo, moved to Australia and fathered two more illegitimate children there." Taylor informed the group.

Luke bristled at the implication that Rory was in any way illegitimate. "Where did you learn that?"

"The Internet," Taylor blinked honestly.

"Lorelai told me he's in California, last she heard." Luke shrugged.

"Very helpful!" Taylor brightened, writing that down. "Where in California?"

"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. I will not have Rory go to him. He's not right for her."

The other men actually did not refute this, instead merely staring at Luke sympathetically. "What did Lorelai tell you?"

"She told me enough. And I'm not about to uproot Rory from everything she's ever known..."

Upstairs, Rory Gilmore was awake. And alone for the first time in her life. She couldn't hear the voices of the men downstairs trying to decide her fate, consumed instead by her own thoughts.

Her beloved mother and best friend was dead... how could she go on living? Where was her mother now? Anguished in some netherworld over not being with her? Safe? Didn't matter. She was somewhere where Rory could not be. A forlorn lullaby now played in Rory's mind:

'Come out, moon. Come out, wishing star. Come out, come out... wherever you are. I'm out here in the dark, all alone and wide awake - Come and find me! I'm empty and I'm cold, and my heart's about to break - come and find me! I need you to come here and find me, cause without you, I'm totally lost. I've hung a wish on every star; it hasn't done much good so far. I can only dream of you... wherever you are. I'll hear you laugh, I'll see you smile, I'll be with you... just for awhile. But when the morning comes, and the sun begins to rise, I will lose you. Because it's just a dream; when I open up my eyes, I will lose you! I used to believe in forever. But forever's too good to be true. I don't know what else to do, except to try and dream of you. And I wonder if you're dreaming too... wherever you are.'

She couldn't live on like this. Rory refused to! Seeing a pair of scissors on the bedside table, Rory got an idea. Taking the one blade, she gulped before cutting an artery and letting the blood flow freely. It was warm and rusty and she soon felt light-headed. But the pain was only temporary. She staggered about, an almost dreamy smile on her face. Soon enough, she would be with her beloved mother again...

She bumped into something, and there was a crash as she collapsed to the floor. She scarcely heard the footsteps pounding up the stairs or the door open. "NO! Rory... RORY!" Luke's scream was primal as he gathered her in his arms. "What have you done, princess? Why?"

"Let me go now..." Rory murmured. "Let me be with her..."

"You're not going to die," Luke vowed as he scoooed her up. "Not on my watch."