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chapter twenty-four: the rock bears the weather

a/n:

tw(s): angst, character death (rip to my man hans)

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"I... have no idea what I'm doing."

It feels like something that she shouldn't say out loud; like she's rolling over and exposing the softness of her belly to the world, like corporate executives are apex predators and they'll gut her at the first sign of weakness.

But, it's also, unfortunately, true.

Lorelei Myrtle, newly sixteen and incumbent CEO, has, despite all of her training, no idea what she's doing.

A week after the execution of Elijah's will, and only a day after touching down in the United States for the first time in nearly a month, Rory stands in the CEO's office of Myrtle Enterprise's main headquarters and, with her cousins and Gerri Murdoch as witness, admits defeat. She, arms crossed over her chest, watches the staff retreat into the maze of cubicles with the last box of her father's stuff with her arms crossed over her chest and the soft flesh of her cheek trapped between her teeth. Once they're gone, she looks at the floor.

Nausea rolls over her in waves. The room has windows and panes of glass where it should have walls, and she just knows that, if she were to look up, she'd see that everyone inside and outside the room was judging her—— waiting for her to screw this up like hyenas wait for the lions to make the kill.

Gerri is already looking at her when she finally manages to tear her gaze off the floor. The room spins and swirls around the older woman's head, but Rory finds an anchor in her eyes.

"You don't have to know what you're doing yet."

Rory feels her face morph into something of disbelief.

Her family finked to the press before their people could even think of a way to phrase it. Billionaire CEO throws company away and leaves it to Teenager, said the headline that greeted her that morning before Krystal switched the channel. A team of security personnel had to sneak her into the building—— past press and protestors alike—— with a coat over her head.

Rory needs to know what to do and she needs to know now.

Gerri pushes her glasses up her nose. "We have a plan for you." She elaborates. "An outline of how the next ten years of your life will go. If you stick to that, CEO will be a breeze."

Rory pauses and tries to swallow past the lump in her throat as the cage closes in around her.

"You'll go to Harvard for Business. Even if you don't get in—— which I'm sure you will—— we have a friend in the admissions office ready to change minds. After that, a few years working under the people at our Canadian headquarters, then under me. Some intermittent management training, some intermittent PR training... These people complaining? They won't know what hit them."

The room starts swimming again. There is no comfort in Gerri's gaze anymore, and Rory thinks that she might need to sit down.

(What of Oxford? What of studying history like she's always wanted?)

In just a week, the staff (her staff?) sat down and planned out how the rest of her life was going to pan out—— and, somehow, it's worse than all the fever dreams her father ever had.

It's cheating her way into a college she wants nothing to do with and spending the next six years swallowing complaints about workplace harassment from a stool at a bar. It's plausible.

(It's her being everything that Charlie and the rest of them accused her of being.)

She can picture it now. A forty-year-old version of herself sitting behind the glass walls of this office and watching all of the people outside squirm in their seats with a cruel smile. CEO Rory is trapped in a loveless marriage with a white-collar man—— a Harvard classmate? Some East Coast born man with a decent pedigree and a subscription to his daddy's country club—— and their kids call their nannies mom accidentally. She drinks at her desk at home, clinging to the memory of that one summer in ninety-four when, for just once, people had loved her (before the universe cruelly ripped it away from her.)

Rory shudders at the thought and wipes at the sweat that gathers at her hairline.

She's been sweating more.

A side effect of not sleeping, surely.

(Or, maybe, the cruel cruel universe finally took pity and gave her an incurable disease, or something.)

Her eyes drift over to the window that looks over the city. This office is at the top of a skyscraper.

Briefly, she tries to calculate the likelihood of making it to the window and out of it before anyone can stop her.

"I was shocked when they told me you'd stood up to your father." Gerri says, unyielding in the face of her stunned silence. "But, I have to say, I'm proud of you."

Rory doesn't know how to respond. She doesn't want to be CEO. She doesn't want anyone to be proud of her for this.

"How far do you think the stock will fall now that people know my grandfather is insane enough to put a minor in charge?"

Chuck, who had been not-so-silently eating trail mix and spinning around on the swivel chair, finally spoke up. "It wouldn't be falling at all if you had just put one of us in the chair."

Rory turns to look at him, more exhausted by him than she is angry.

"You can barely run your mother's boutique when she's not there." She says. "The only person who'd let you run an entire, international company is you."

Chuck narrows his eyes at her.

"The stock hasn't fallen yet. Don't worry about it." Gerri deadpans, ignoring Chuck's words entirely.

Rory wishes she had the words to explain why she's tired of being told not to worry about things. She cannot be the one to throw away two generations worth of progress. She just can't.

Perhaps it's a test from beyond the grave. Maybe his ghost is in the room with her, waiting to see if she messes up or if she thrives. Are you your father's daughter? Or are you everything I tried to make you?

She closes her eyes for a moment and tries to think of the next steps of her life as moves on a chess board. Her pawn crumbles beneath her fingertips, though, and the spaces go on forever in every other direction but forward; infinite possibilities for how things could have gone, so many things that she could do with her life, and she's stuck going down the path that leads directly to a checkmate.

She loses no matter what.

When she opens them again, everyone in the room is staring at her once more.

"You'll be alright, Lo." Greg tries to console her. "Bruce Wayne managed just fine."

Rory blinks.

"Yeah, sure, Greg. Let me just tell the whole free world that I've got this because a vigilante orphan in tights did it in a comic book. That'll go well."

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By the time Rory gets home from the city, it's dark, and she, exhausted, drags her feet, shoes scuffing on the stones that lead up to the front of her house.

Even though Joe, as he has been ever since she became the ultimate black sheep of the family, is following just a few paces behind her, Rory notes that the house is eerily quiet when she enters it. He bids her goodnight with a hand on her shoulder, either pleased with the smile that she flashes him (even if it doesn't quite reach her eyes) or just too tired to keep arguing with her about it, and retreats up the stairs, but she doesn't follow him. Instead, she stands in the foyer and just takes time to breathe, to try to forcefully settle into the life everyone else wants her to live, before her stomach growls and she begrudgingly heads for the kitchen. There is, unsurprisingly, no one in there, but a note taped to the oven stops her from going into the fridge.

Left some lasagna in the oven for you. I hope it's still warm! — Krystal

Against her wishes, Rory finds herself smiling, albeit slightly, and rubbing the heart her stepmother scrawled next to her name with her thumb.

She pulls the half-warmed plate of food from the oven and grabs a fork, and, instead of eating alone in a dark kitchen, follows the only sound she hears to the den.

Krystal, donning a robe with fluffy sleeves and wearing her hair up, is sitting on the couch. Something is playing on the television—— some soap opera—— but her stepmother isn't watching it. Her attention is, on the other hand, consumed both by a glass of red wine and the stacks of papers that are spread across her lap and the cushion next to her. Rory, in the doorway with her plate, allows her brows to pinch to the center of her forehead.

"Hey."

Krystal doesn't startle. She just hums around a mouthful of wine and glances over her shoulder. "Hi. How was your day?"

"It was awful." Rory answers honestly, taking a seat on the other end of the couch, allowing the papers to create some distance between them. Despite how badly she wants it, she doesn't look at what's written, busying herself with eating for probably the first time all day. "I have a ten-year plan to follow. It's pompous, and rigorous, and I am not excited for it."

Krystal sighs. "I'm sorry." She puts her glass down on the table in front of them and gives Rory her full attention. "I can't help but feel as though I'm feeding you to the wolves."

Rory presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth so she doesn't remind Krystal that she's not her parent.

It's not like she wants to be mean to Krystal. It's just that, after her mother said what she said to her, she has been keeping the woman, who she normally keeps at arm's length, even further away from her.

(Though, maybe, if this is how she reacts to it, there was some truth to what Janice said.)

"It's okay." Rory says. "You're not feeding me to anyone. You just inherited the position of let the businessmen tear Rory to shreds for our benefit."

Krystal isn't amused by her joke. Rory pointedly ignores the way the older woman's gaze bores into the side of her head.

"I wish more people would realize that you're just a little girl."

Rory swallows.

She has nothing to say to that.

"Have you, uh, heard anything about Dad?"

After being "thoroughly humiliated" by his daughter in front of his whole family (and then the free world), Oliver Myrtle pulled off the world's greatest disappearing act since Harry Houdini contracted appendicitis. No one—— not the family, not the firm, and certainly not Rory—— has heard from him since, and the press have pounced on it, publishing pictures of any old white men with canes that look even remotely suspicious and pissing their pants over whether or not it's actually him. So far, he's been "spotted" in Greece, Switzerland, and the Maldives.

Their internal investigations have, however, been coming up short.

"Oh, that's actually what this is all about," Krystal takes her change of subject without complaint, looking at the papers in her lap, "your Father is divorcing me."

Rory pauses mid-chew and, finally, turns to look at Krystal with wide eyes.

"What?"

"He's unable to really settle with me over anything, but my lawyer's sure we can squeeze some alimony out of him... I think the only thing I'll be getting out of this, though, is full custody of you and Ellie."

Rory blinks.

!?!?!?!?!?!?

Krystal must not see her brain short-circuiting in real time, though, because she smiles ruefully and just continues.

"We don't have to talk about it until you're ready, okay?" Her face is as gentle as her voice.

Still, though, Rory puts her food aside. Whatever further comforts her stepmother offers fall on deaf ears as she sits there, staring listlessly into space.

A small part of her wonders if she deserves this. She did, after all, play dirty first. But the bigger part, the wounded dog that's tired of licking its own wounds, wonders why. Why did he put all of this effort into making a point of raising her after her mother handed her over just to leave her, too? What was the point of any of it?

She doesn't miss him. There was a brief second, when Krystal broke the news, that Rory felt some relief. Like the hand holding her beneath the waves finally pulled away. But that relief, that breath of fresh air, was short lived.

What is she going to do now?

How does life go on for a person that's so horrible, so unloveable, that her own parents couldn't care enough to stay?

(And what about Krystal? How is someone who wasn't even in high school when she was born supposed to do this?)

"I wish life would just..." Rory's sentence tapers off as she struggles to find a word. "Stop. For a second. I wish I could just take a second to think."

Krystal sucks her teeth, sympathetic.

"I know."

They're silent for a long while before Krystal tries again.

There, in the dark, with the TV still providing background noise, they talk. Krystal mentions therapy—— individual therapy for Rory, and family therapy for the both of them—— and, maybe, moving into an apartment for the time being, letting the house fall into the care of the people who work there until Rory grows old enough to take it. Rory timidly agrees to think about her suggestions and, awkwardly fiddling with her silverware, suggests biweekly family visits at whatever school she gets dumped into and a few holidays without any extended family intruding. No real plans are made, but Rory enjoys the openness, the uncertainty, of it. Here, with Krystal, there is no cage around her.

Rory briefly considers that, maybe, she could enjoy a life with Krystal as a mother.

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The following morning, just as the sun has come up over the horizon, Rory, ignoring the blinking red light on her full voicemail, takes Chester out and sits on the porch while he does his business.

He, quite old and equally as tired, doesn't go far, though. Coming back as soon as he finishes, he sits beside her, laying his head on her lap and lazily wagging his tail when she scratches the back of his head.

She sighs. "I understand how you feel, big guy."

And she does.

What is a dog that's been bred and trained for service without its owner?

What is a girl that is the same?

But she doesn't get to linger with those thoughts for very long. Joe appears behind her and clears his throat, and the expression on his face when she turns to look at him makes her shoulders fall with the assumption that something awful is about to happen.

"What's wrong?"

"There's a man here to see you."

"Is it my father?"

"No." Joe shakes his head. "It's Gordon Bombay. He says he needs to speak to you, and that it's urgent."

Rory's heart sinks to her stomach. (Can she not just have five minutes to herself?)

"Should I let him in, or should I send him packing?"

"Just... let him in." Her mouth moves on its own, betraying her brain as it struggles to keep up.

Krystal is awake, too, when Rory begrudgingly follows Joe back inside. She's sitting at the counter in their kitchen and flipping through a newspaper as their cook makes breakfast, Ellie, half-asleep, perched upon her hip, and briefly glances up as she hears the floorboards settle underneath Rory's feet.

"Good morning." She looks up again as Rory sighs for what feels like the fifteenth time that week and takes one good look at her step-daughter's face before she frowns. "What has you all upset?"

"I, uh, can't go a day without being harassed."

Before Krystal can ask her to elaborate, a third person is joining them in the kitchen.

"Presenting Mister Gordon Bombay... and his young friend."

Joe's sentence makes Rory's eyebrows pull to the center of her forehead. Young friend? Surely he doesn't mean...

Heat creeps up the back of her neck at the very thought of having to deal with Charlie again so early (and, truthfully, the idea of Charlie just... forgiving Bombay so easily makes her sicker than anything else that's happened.)

With no urgency at all, she turns to face him, preemptively flinching like she's about to stare into the sun——

"Jesse?"

"Hey, cake eater."

Her high blood pressure bottoms out at such a high speed that she wobbles on unsure feet.

When was the last time she saw Jesse? Where had he been all this time? What did he have to say about the way that all of their mutual friends threw her to the curb?

Rory doesn't get to ask any of those questions (not that she's sure her body would cooperate, anyway) because Jesse crosses the room in a few big strides and hugs her. She stands there for a moment, trapped so tightly within his arms that her lungs don't have enough space to inhale fully, before she remembers that she can hug back.

"What... are you doing here?"

He's changed a lot since Los Angeles. He's taller. Lankier. His clothes are the same, though, and so is his cologne.

"I'm here to see to, dummy."

Rory thinks that she could cry right there.

"I, uh, thought it would be best if I brought you someone you might actually want to see."

Bombay's input ruins the moment and wrenches the two of them apart. Rory stares at him with so much contempt that he shrivels, slightly, and struggles to maintain eye contact.

"Jesse, was it?" Krystal places a hand on Jesse's shoulder. "I'll show you to the bathroom."

Jesse opens his mouth but cuts himself off and follows the woman out of the room with one last wayward glance at both parties.

As they just look at one another in the silence that follows, Rory wonders whether or not she hates him.

"It's good to know you're alive." Her words are dry and venomous. His shoulders fall.

"Rory..."

"Y'know," She sniffs and rubs her nose, "I'm a little bit busy, you know, being your boss' boss' boss' boss' boss and everything."

"I do. I do know that."

"So then why'd you come here? Why'd you bring him here?"

"Because I have to talk to you."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Rory, I know that you're upset——"

Tears prick her eyes. "Do you? Do you, actually? Because, last I heard, you were pretty much unreachable ever since you got that new job."

"I know you enough to know that."

Rory scoffs and looks at the floor. "I called you. You didn't pick up."

Bombay frowns and looks at her like she kicked him.

"I haven't been in Minnesota for... months. Did no one give you my new number?"

She balls her fists up in her pockets, ignoring how much it still hurts to do so after her fight with Tara. Bombay's looking at her like he's Mr. Sincerity, eyes soft and lips turned down into a sympathetic frown—— a small part of her wants to believe that he does know that he's screwed up, but the bigger part, the wounded and untrusting part, doesn't know what to believe anymore.

He takes a few steps forward until he's standing right in front of her, and then says, even as her face crumbles, "I'm sorry."

"Oh, screw you."

He doesn't even wince this time. "I'm very sorry, Rory."

"You promised." She clears her throat because it gets tight around the lump that forms, squeezing her voice until it's high-pitched and crackly. "You promised that I could always call you—— that 'every duck, new or old, is free to fly home when they need to feel safe.' Well, I flew home, man, and I was not safe."

Bombay's face pinches with confusion.

"Yeah. That's right. If you'd have been thoughtful enough to give me the right damn phone number you'd know that me and Adam made varsity—— and that we lost all of our friends over it. Charlie—— he's so screwed up over you leaving that all he does is walk around being angry all the time, and he's treating people like shit because of it."

"I never intended to——"

"Intention doesn't absolve the action!" Her voice breaks again and a tear slips free. "Charlie and the Ducks needed you—— I needed you— and you fell off the face of the Earth! I— I— I hate you."

Rory knows that she sounds like a child. She does.

Petulantly, and with very little strength, she beats her fists down on his chest, anyway—— and he lets her.

"I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."

She keeps telling herself it because if she doesn't then she'll probably fold under the weight of her own adoration. It's still there, buried underneath everything, and it fights to crawl its way to the top.

"I know."

That's all it takes for her to stop hitting him, and he wraps his arms around her when she slumps against him.

"You have every right to feel that way, kid." Gordon murmurs, smoothing a hand over her hair. "I shouldn't have left the way that I did. I shouldn't have allowed it to get that way. I'm sorry."

There it is, that strange feeling that she gets when she hugs Bombay.

It's so different from the way that any other adult in her life has ever hugged her. He hugs her with weight—— like he's not afraid that something is going to happen, like he cares and doesn't think she's breakable—— and meaning behind it. She feels uncomfortable, but not in a bad way.

After a beat, when she's calmed down from crying with rage and is just sniffling with a dry face, she opens her mouth again.

"Why are you here?"

"Hm?"

"You said you had to talk to me..."

Bombay sighs so heavily that she, with her head tucked into his chest, can hear his lungs hiss on the exhale.

"Hans, my mentor, has died."

Rory pulls back from him and stares up at him with wide, bloodshot eyes.

"Oh. I'm sorry. If you'd have led with that——"

She told a grieving man that she hated him. That's great.

"Don't be. I think it's best that you got that off your chest, especially with what I'm about to ask next..."

Stepping away from him, she looks up at him with furrowed brows and wipes her face with the backs of her hands. It takes a moment to dawn on her.

"Oh."

"With your... guardians'... permission, I'd like to take you back to Minnesota. I know, after all that's happened, that you don't owe the Ducks anything, but——"

"I'll go."

There her body goes again, speaking without her permission.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I don't owe it to them, but I owe it to Jan, don't I?"

She also needs to give back her jersey and clean out her dorm room (and, though this makes her so nervous she wants to throw up, talk to Rick), anyway. But she won't tell him that.

"I'm a billionaire now." She adds on with a shrug, voice still thick from the crying. "Figure that I can do what I want, right?"

"Uh, right. I'd still like to talk to your father. Is he here?"

"No."

"Oh. When's he going to get back?"

Rory snorts. "For as long as I've been alive, I haven't known the answer to that question."

Bombay looks perturbed. She cocks her head to the side but moves on.

"You can talk to Krystal. My step-mother. My father has relinquished his parental rights to her."

He wets his lips, then, and clenches his jaw at the thought.

"Krystal!" She calls over her shoulder. "You can come back!"

"Okay!"

Krystal and Jesse shuffle back into the room very quickly, leaving Rory to believe that they never strayed very far in the first place.

"I, uh, I have to go back to Minnesota one last time..."

Krystal, understandably, looks hesitant. She pins Rory beneath her gaze, searching for any kind of hint that Rory is being forced into this or doing something that she doesn't want to do, before she sighs.

"Okay. You can go."

Rory nods and then turns back to Bombay. "I'll go pack."

"Want a hand?"

Jesse's face is uncharacteristically somber. It makes Rory uncomfortable.

"Sure."

The two of them head upstairs and the adults are left to stare at one another.

"Hi," Bombay says a little awkwardly and offers a hand, "I'm Gordon Bombay, I don't know that we've ever——"

"I know who you are."

Krystal ignores the attempt at a handshake and goes straight for his tie, pretending to fix it as he swallowed thickly.

"You broke her heart the first time you left." She says in a low tone, face flat and eyes narrowed. "If you do it again, you'll be wishing I just killed you."

Bombay nods and loosens it as she walks away.

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"Can I get you anything?"

Bombay nearly jumps out of his skin, looking at the nice air hostess as she leans down over him.

"No, no. I'm fine."

She nods, walking away, and he shakes his head to get rid of the fuzzy, ginger-ale type feeling in his brain.

How long had he been staring into space?

Rory sits on the other side of the plane from him, legs tucked to her chest and head against Jesse's shoulder. They're talking quietly to one another. His best guess is that it's about the last few months, judging by the sadness in her eyes and the way he can, occasionally, hear Jesse curse before he remembers to be quiet again, but Bombay can't hear them enough to be sure.

The weight of his disappearance sits on his shoulders. They ache with the strain of it.

He can't believe that kids—— his kids—— fell apart so quickly without him.

He thought that he'd prepared them for this, that he'd given them the tools and the team mindset to go the distance in life.

He never thought that Charlie would be the one to bring everything down.

Often, sitting in his new home and working his brand new job, Bombay would wonder what life could have been if he was just... better. A house, a marriage with Casey, a stepson in Charlie. He would fantasize about it to the point where it consumed his every thought. He spent hours of every day just living in that daydream, replaying every single scenario in his head until it started to drastically affect his mental health.

Maybe he and Casey could've had kids of their own. Rory has a sister that's a lot younger than her, doesn't she?

While he's not too sure that he'd be a good father, he knows that Casey is a good mother, and he knows that he could've been happy.

The girl shifts in her seat, mumbling something, and scratches at her face with her bruised hand. He's drawn from the melancholy of his thoughts and the sight makes his stomach roll.

His mouth is dry. He wants booze.

He doesn't ask for any.

When they get off the plane, Jesse leaves to go back to the hotel that his parents are staying in. Rory takes a phone number from him and then gets into the passenger seat of his car, and she's quiet, staring out the window, the entire drive back to his home.

Her silence doesn't end as she departs to put her stuff in his spare bedroom, and he worries that she's so mad at him that she's giving him the silent treatment, or something. But then she comes back down the stairs and stretches as she stands in the doorway to his kitchen, a strange look on her face as her eyes dance around the space.

"Last year, Charlie and I agreed that your place was a real bachelor pad..." She leans against the frame. "Somehow, you've made it worse."

Bombay stands up from his position bent down in front of the empty fridge and snorts softly. "I've had girlfriends."

"I know. Charlie's mom and Ms. MacKay..." Her eyes finally land on him. "Doesn't make your house any less sad."

"Okay, Miss Sensitivity, that's enough. The only food in the fridge is a jug of cream and something green in a mason jar, so I say we go out to eat tonight and go grocery shopping tomorrow."

Rory bites her lip and Bombay thinks it might be because she wants to laugh at him.

"What place is open?"

"There's a diner in town."

(She ignores the way her stomach lurches at the idea of it.) "Alright."

She's a lot more open this time, singing along to some obnoxious pop song on the radio. Gordon thinks it might be to piss him off, and he's right because she doesn't even really like the song, but he'll take it because it's better than her silence.

They secure a booth toward the back of the dining car.

He breaks the silence between them after a waitress places two cokes in front of them.

"Did you drop out of school?"

Rory's playing with the paper of her straw, folding it into something.

"Yeah."

"Your parents just... let you?"

"They don't have any right to tell me not to do anything anymore..."

Gordon nods and awkwardly taps his fingers on the surface of the table. "What's the plan now?"

"I don't know." Rory shrugs. "I'm going to finish high school, then go to Harvard, then train for a few years before I become CEO."

"And the money?"

"I'll donate large portions of it, probably."

Bombay nods and chews on the inside of his cheek. "Alright... But didn't you want to pursue history? What about that?"

"Jesus, is this an interrogation?" She breathes a nervous laugh. "Look, you called me useless once—— I have money now, so now I can afford to be useless."

Bombay sighs shortly through his nose. "You aren't useless, Rory."

A nervous smile warbles across her face.

"It was a joke. You can laugh."

It's hypocritical of him to call her out on her self-deprecation, but he does nonetheless.

Rory sits across from him silently—— feeling gross inside because of what she just said and the mere thought of his disappointment—— and continues to play with the paper from her straw. Their food comes a minute later and distracts them from the conversation.

When he playfully flicks a french fry at her, she knows he isn't really mad.

(The next day, she wakes up and makes a list before they go to the store. Only about halfway into the trip, when she's got a box of pop tarts in her hands and she's asking him if she can get them, does she understand the domesticity of it. The thought fills her with a hollow ache.

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a/n:

word count -- 5226

someone take rory on vacation, baby deserves it

we're in the endgame now my loves!

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and they motivate me to continue! thank you