One In The Same - Jess Mariano

Epilogue

Y/N Hayden, daughter of Christopher Hayden, has a very complicated family history. Like many a family, it all started with a man and a woman, but atypically, another was involved in it all. See, while Christopher had a very public, seemingly sweet relationship with one Lorelai Gilmore, there was someone on the side named Penelope Dalton. She attended school with both Lorelai and Chris, and knew of their relationship, but teenagers aren't typically the best at decision making sometimes.

The affair was kept hush, and it was never an official relationship, just hook ups and make outs in supply closets and behind the gymnasium etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was the result of two different nights, only a couple days apart that ended in both the young girls carrying Christopher's offspring.

Everything blew up in the respective families' faces. While the Gilmores offered Chris a future working with them, the Daltons were outraged by the scandal that would tarnish the family name. Chris didn't take the offer, after talking it through with his family and thinking of what he truly wanted in his own future, but he made an agreement with the Daltons to move in with them to care for the baby. It isn't clear whether the emotional connection he had for Lorelai pushed his decision to stay out of her life after he had ruined her future (in his eyes at least), or if there was a larger sum of hush money being offered by the Daltons that would allow him to travel far away from it all after the baby had been cared for after a couple of years, but he stayed with Penelope and her family nonetheless.

When the child was 6, Penelope and Christopher had moved into a townhouse in New York, and Penelope suddenly disappeared with no contact of when she would be back. It was pretty clear to Christopher that she wouldn't ever be back. They never grew to properly love each other, and Chris never grew out of being bad with his money. Y/N's mother got out of a spirally pit before there was no chance of return, leaving her unplanned child and the man who had ruined her future behind.

At age 11, Y/N was struggling severely with being bullied at school for her lack of nice clothes and having no way to go to birthday parties or sleepovers. Her dad was always drinking, and out of a job, so he couldn't take her anywhere or give her any cash for her to go herself. He didn't even consider how dangerous the city would be for a young girl like her.

15 years old and everything had fallen apart for Y/N. She started sneaking out and mixing in with the wrong crowd. Smoking cigarettes and stealing alcohol became a regular thing. A lot of the time she skipped school, despite being way too smart for the crappy little school she was enrolled in. Her dreams didn't reach high like many people, she didn't care about ivy league colleges or running a successful business. All Y/N wanted to do was make art, whether it be paintings, music or creative writing. She figured she didn't need to go through an academic route of life for any of that. She had her dad's old guitar, a notebook and some paint supplies that the school didn't seem to care enough to keep regular track of to notice it was gone.

Christopher had fallen even deeper into the hole he had made for himself, rarely bothering to clean the house and switching jobs regularly. It was a shock anyone would still hire him. Fights between him and his daughter were very common, and a particular big blow out resulted in him dumping all of her things out the window. She needed to get out of that house. With scraps of change found between couch cushions, Christopher shoved the girl on a bus headed for Stars Hollow, where he knew his ex-lover Lorelai lived with his other daughter. Leaving a small message on the answering phone, his slurred speech rung out
'I can't deal with her anymore, she sucks all the money out of me and causes too much trouble. You can have her. I don't care if she isn't your child. You and Rory seem to be doing completely fine without me, what's another kid, hey?'

When Y/N arrived in Stars Hollow, Lorelai had received the message already, and asked her good friend Luke to keep an eye out for her at the bus stop. The Inn was rammed the whole night and she couldn't find a second to rush out and get her. She felt completely conflicted. She didn't owe the young girl anything, she never asked about her, she wasn't her child after all, but Lorelai knew how scary it could be to have no one to care for you. Lorelai got out of the bad family dynamic she was in, and as much as she liked being free from Emily and Richard, she had people who took her in. That's how she fell in love with the Independence Inn, her current place of work. They cared for her and Rory, housing them in a little service shed on the green.