Gilmore Girls

Wu Feng Qi Lang

A/N: As the summary says, the title means 'creating waves without wind.' It's Chinese.

Summary: Rory doesn't want to do this anymore. (Creating Waves Without Wind.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls nor am I affiliated with it in anyway. I also don't own the song 'Hunter.' That would be the awesome Dido. I have also taken the title from 'Falling Leaves' by Adeline Yen Mah.

Chapter One: Audrey

If you were a king up there on your throne

Would you be wise enough to let me go

For this queen you think you own

Wants to be a hunter again

Wants to the see world alone again

To take a chance of life again

So let me go

Let me leave

'Hunter' by Dido.

The sun shone in the windows. It was a cliché, she knew, but something about it felt different. She moved to roll out of bed, away from her husband, but sometime during the night, she had twisted and writhed and the sheets were now tangled around her, separating her from her sheet less, uncovered husband as if they were both the separate entities they had been when they entered into the marriage and not the one being they had presumably become. They were kept apart by a fine white line, a mist almost, but there was no denying it. There was no more sleeping so close they almost melded into each other. No, there were two separate people on two separate sides of the bed. The sheets only amplified that.

And made her smile.

-

She walked with a spring in her step as she traipsed around the master bedroom of their palatial apartment, flinging clothes and shoes around superfluously. Logan exits the bathroom, wrapped in a white towel, beads of moisture clinging and slipping down his muscular frame. He still has a beautiful body though the once tan expanse is mottled with faint, white squiggly lines. Scars for which his perfect body was opened, scars which he bled to get, so much blood that he felt faint. The scars, in his wonder days, were seen as a triumph. No pain, no gain but in the future, where they now live and breathe and bump along, they seem frivolous and stupid. What was once beautiful is now not. What was once perfect is now not.

Their life was perfect but then something happened.

"You look happy today," Logan said, as he walked over to his bureau and pulled out a pair of boxers. He let the towel drop and pulled the black satin over his legs.

"I am happy," she answered. She glanced over at him, standing so vulnerably in his half-naked state, and she is momentarily blind-sided by a pang. She is going to crush him and she can't wait to do it.

"That's good," he replied. He moved towards the closet they barely share (he owns too many clothes and she owns too many pairs of shoes so consequently, their belongings are flung into linen closets and spare room closets and tucked into bookshelves) and pulls out a light-blue (or is it white? She can't tell in the blinding light) shirt which he quickly buttons over his chest. "You haven't been happy lately."

"I haven't been me for a long time," she answered. She picked up her favoured shade of lipstick. 'Tea Rose,' the bottom proclaimed. 'Number 141' previously thought by the general public to have been discontinued but nothing was discontinued when you were a Hayden, a Gilmore and a Huntzberger.

"I'd noticed. Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, pulling on his long black pants.

"I don't think I do," she replied. She painted on her lips and when satisfied with the colour, smacked them together. She pulled the pony-tail out of her hair and ran a brush through the lengthened locks.

"You're hair has never been so long," Logan noted. He walked up behind her and bent to give her a perfunctory kiss. She tilted her cheek to him and he willingly, lovingly obliged. (Too bad he doesn't realise there's anything wrong. Too bad he just can see. Too bad she can't say he just didn't listen and he never does because the truth is, she never told and he always did).

"You like it long?" she asked. It can't hurt to have a semblance of normality to start the day.

"I like it any which way," he fobbed her off. She looked up to glare at him and he smiled playfully. "I love it long."

"I might cut it off then," she answered and when she saw the look on her face she realised there was a fair bit more malice and truth than she had intended.

"What are you going to do today?" he asked, cleverly ignoring her. (Or pushing it aside so he doesn't have to deal with it anymore. She can't tell and he certainly isn't telling her).

"I have a DAR meeting with Grandma then I thought I'd meet Honor for lunch," she shrugged. She reached into a small, black, faux alligator skin jewelry box and pulled out a pair of small diamond studs from Tiffany's. She effortlessly slid the poles into her ears and fastened them tightly. She managed to keep the boredom out of her voice but Logan frowned anyway.

"Do you ever think about going back to work?" he asked. She flinched and then froze in an attempt to cover up her flinch. (Did she ever? It was all she ever thought about. That was part of what she was going to tell him tonight. But he wasn't supposed to think this. this wasn't her plan. He was supposed to see her exactly as his family saw her. A trophy wife because as much as she hated admitting it to herself, when she married him, it was what she wanted to be. Someone who went to Yale to pass the time between school and marriage. Just another Emily, another Shira, another Penilynn Lott.).

"Sometimes, I guess," she said with a nonchalant shrug. She looked at her Cartier watch and frowned. "You're going to be late, sweetie. You should go."

"I'll see you tonight," he whispered. He bent down and went to kiss her on the lips but she pulled away.

"The lipstick," she reminded him.

"It's going to get left on the side of a coffee mug ten seconds after you get to the DAR anyway," he reminded her but she is adamant so he kissed her on the cheek instead. "I love you."

(When was the last time he said it? He can't remember and she can't remember but he does and he's said it now).

She stood when he left and checked out her reflection in the mirror. She's a modern day Audrey Hepburn, a replica of a time not forgot. Beautiful and resplendent in her little black dress, her black sling-back heels and splash of rouge. She sighed and closed her eyes tightly, pushing her eyeballs into the back of her head.

She's not happy and she's bored. She longed to be back in the jeans and denim skirts of youth, to be in t-shirts and ponytails and flats. She looked over her from once again and her breath caught when she saw her wedding rings, nestled into the soft flesh of her finger.

Part of her even wanted to go back to the time that land has now forgot. The time where there was no Logan, no husband and wife. To a time when there was freedom and singularity and stringless fun (because girls just want to have fun, stringless fun).

But part of her knows, even after tonight, there will be no going back to that single state. And the rest of her knows that she loves him too much and she is too far gone. She will not survive and her body knows it but her head and her heart don't and it is they, the life-giving parts of her body, which need to be convinced.

Why change a good thing? Why fix it if it ain't broke? (And in the words of 'Beauty and the Beast's' Cogsworth 'Why fix it is in ain't baroque?). If the shoe still fits and the nail can still be hammered and the world still turns around, why bother?

Because Rory Hayden (he asked her to take her name but it was all she had left of her parents and she just couldn't do it) didn't want to be that modern day Audrey anymore, or that modern day Donna Reed. She just wanted to be Rory. Gilmore, Hayden, Huntzberger, Fairchild or Smith. It didn't matter. Just as long as she could be Rory, getting her hands dirty and playing in the (or ink as the case would be) working and making a living and distinguishing herself. Lorelai would not have been 'so proud' if she knew what Rory had become (the girl she hated, the girl she refused to be).

They could go back. They could be one and they could be two.

And she would tell him that. Tonight.

(Would he even care? Would he cry? would he applaud? Would he laugh at the ludicrousness of it all?)

Only time would tell.