Gah, at some point in the distant future, I will have time for fandom again. I miss it (and you guys) like crazy, I'll have you know. But between the rigorous academic schedule, the partying like it's 1599, and the nonstop reading of the news, I don't know. Geeky fun seems decadent. Which is maybe why I should be doing more of it.

Today is callmesandy's birthday, though, so there is fic! As a present! For her! I hope you enjoy, sweetie, and I hope you're having a wonderful day.

Title: The Power of Myth
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Pairings: Rory/Paris, Luke/Lorelai, Rory/Logan
Rating: PG-13 (for overall tone/language/situations, more than for sexuality per se)
Word Count: 2,500-ish
Spoilers/Continuity: Future AU with spoilers through the end of S5.
Warnings: Overt liberal politics. RPS gently implied.
Summary: Dateline: Washington, DC, January 2012. 50 awesomely improbable moments in the future of Paris Geller.
Disclaimers: Gilmore Girls is the intellectual property of Warner Brothers, Hofflund/Polone, and Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions. This original work of fan fiction is Copyright 2005 Mosca and is protected in the USA by the fair use provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976 because I do not intend to sell it at any price. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed. It's a good life – you don't need mythology.
Notes: Thanks to distraction77 for the quick, dirty beta.

*


There is a different President today than there was yesterday. That alone makes it a good day to be Paris Geller. When interviewed, she will say that she didn't have much to do with it, because she was busy exhorting people to educate themselves about local candidates and campaigns. The truth is, nobody knows who Paris is unless they already know how they're voting. The people who recognize her are CNN junkies and freepers, Michael Moore parrotheads and New Yorker subscribers. Paris is famous among her kind of people and only her kind of people, and she likes it that way. Loves it, in fact: she's a woman who loves her job.

She got into it by accident. She was applying to medical school, her senior year at Yale, having a premature quarterlife freakout about bodily fluids and another four years of schooling. Rory turned to her from the features desk and told her to breathe. To put the applications away till she was calm again. Paris has not looked at a medical school application since then. She got a crappy staff writer job at the online division of a fourth-tier free newsweekly in New York, started writing a blog because everyone else on staff had one. Ran into Chuck Schumer in a deli in Hell's Kitchen, bought him a pastrami sandwich and got a brief, life-changing encounter in return. "What Are We So Afraid Of?" she wrote, figuring ten people would read it, maybe twenty.

Her publisher encouraged her to make that the title of her now-bestselling book-length rant on liberal guilt and liberal fear. She bought her condo with the residuals, but by then, she was already earning a comfortable living from her Salon column and her appearances on cable news shows. Doyle left her because she spent too much time on the computer and too little time in bed, and because he despised blog culture too much to respect her success. She started dating women when Michelle Malkin accused her of being a lesbian. Now, she'll take home men, women, whomever is sufficiently in awe of her. But she has never loved anyone as much as she loves her job.

She came to the Inaugural Ball to work. No date, borrowed dress, tiny mp3 recorder at her hip because a notepad is too cumbersome. Salon wants a few thousand words of general impressions. She'll save the funny stuff for her blog: a review of the canapés and the amusing things that junior campaign staffers say after too much free champagne. Paris stands near a pillar with her own champagne flute in hand, trying to look approachable despite not wanting to be approached.

"It feels good to be on the winning side for once, doesn't it?" some guy shouts, and it takes Paris a moment to realize he's talking to her.

"It's not about winning," Paris says. "It's about convincing other people to not be stupid."

"Whatever," the guy says, making Paris hate him permanently. "Look at this. Isn't it cool? Here we are and we can say – we can say we were here."

"Some of us will even get paid to," Paris says.

"I saw you on Tucker Carlson last week," the guy says. "You looked great."

"Yeah," she says. "That's why I do this. Because I look good."

"Oh, don't kid yourself, sweetheart," the guy says, shaking his sloshy glass of champagne at her. "They put you on TV because they need a hot chick to spew the party line. Nobody's listening to what comes out of your mouth, because they're all looking at your breasts." He somehow manages to turn "breasts" into a four-syllable word.

Dealing with the ignorant is, surprisingly enough, one of the most entertaining parts of Paris's job. "You know, I toiled in print for four years before anyone knew what I looked like," she says. "Twelve if you count my high school paper and the Yale Daily News." She digs her phone out of her tiny handbag and takes a snapshot. "Read my blog tomorrow and marvel at the power of the written word."

"Hey, he gets to be in the blog and I don't? No fair!" A woman says, coming up behind Paris. Relieved at the opportunity to ditch the Idiot Manchild, whose lip is twitching as he struggles to come up with the ass-saving soundbite that will guarantee his blogospheric immortality, Paris wheels around to face the newcomer. She is a fairy princess, all decked out for the ball: powder blue evening gown with black embroidered flowers, blue silk morning glories in her hair, wrist-length couture lace gloves that match her purse. She has not changed since high school, and this is somewhat alarming.

"I thought the Huntzbergers prohibited you from being seen at liberal gatherings after that time Logan stood up on a table at a Greenpeace gala and gave that speech about how tasty polar bear feet are," Paris says.

"I am no longer held responsible for Logan's actions," Rory says. She wiggles her fingers in front of Paris as if to show off a diamond, but what she is displaying is the lack thereof. "My divorce is turning out happier than my marriage. But, you know, happy is good, right? I should delight in my own misfortune."

"Whatever works," Paris says.

Rory shifts her weight. "So you're... you're here as press?"

"A little bit guest, a little bit press," Paris says. "I'm a pressed."

"I'm impressed," Rory says.

"So, if you're sans Huntzberger, how'd you score a ticket?" Paris says.

"Justin Timberlake."

"You're shitting me."

"He did all that stuff for Rock the Vote this year, so he came in for some spot interviews for a show I produced on politically active celebrities," Rory said. "It was right after he broke up with Katie Holmes. He found out from the PAs that I've always dreamed of going to a Presidential Inauguration."

"You're dating Justin Timberlake?" Paris says. "You produce shows?"

"The Huntzbergers got me a job at VH1," Rory says.

"Some divorce settlement."

"No, they just give people jobs to get us out of their hair," Rory says. "It's their way."

"Theirs is a good way," Paris says.

"I didn't expect to be using my Yale education to write segments of The 50 Greatest TV Dads," Rory says.

It takes very little time for Paris to discern that this is the perfect job for Rory. She was never much of a journalist, but she's one hell of a features writer. If you can't change the world – and who can? – you might as well have a hand in generating the definitive list of Totally Emo Moments. "So you love it?" Paris says.

"It's all right for now," Rory says.

"So you love it," Paris says.

Rory smiles. Paris has never been above insisting that people own up to emotions that they don't really feel, but she'd rather be right. She'd rather that Rory love something, because when Rory has run out of passion, she is empty and dry. Intellectual tumbleweed. Not pretty.

Paris would rather Rory be beautiful. She used to be above recognizing the importance of the aesthetic, but she's gotten comfortable with her inner lesbian. Way comfortable. Blogging about her disastrous three-month fling with a local burlesque star, stage name Scandaleeza, comfortable.

"I always thought I wanted to do what you're doing," Rory says. "Uncovering corruption, reporting bravely from the front lines."

"It's mostly spin and narcissism," Paris says. "And not falling over in your high heels."

"Speaking of which," Rory says. "You couldn't get it together to wear something strapless?"

"I wouldn't want to upstage Hillary," Paris says.

"She is the most powerful woman in the world now."

"She could have us executed on a whim," Paris says.

"Not a trace of us left, except for the ads on Craigslist, asking for information regarding our whereabouts," Rory says.

"She'd have them all deleted," Paris says. "Her power extends even that far. The blogging community cowers in fear."

"I read yours, you know," Rory says.

"You and everyone else in the room," Paris says.

"I read it before they did," Rory says. "Back when it was mostly complaining about your roommate and marveling at what a person can get delivered at 3 AM in New York City."

Paris misses the days when she could write about things like that. She had to delete all the old posts when a group of hostile readers started harassing her former landlady.

"I read it because I like your writing," Rory says. "You do good work. You always have. You're better at it than I'd be."

Paris bites her lip. She's never bothered to learn how to take a compliment: a real compliment, not one intended to flatter her into doing something for the other person.

"Seriously. For a living, I make lists of who's the best at everything. One of the few certainties of life is that my bosses will never let me make a show about Totally Awesome Pundits, but if they did, well, you wouldn't be number one, we'd have to save that for Jon Stewart or somebody. But you'd be on the show."

"You think?" Paris says.

"I'm the producer," Rory says. "These decisions are mine alone."

"Think you can get me on Best Week Ever?" Paris says.

"Are you kidding? You've been on their list for a year."

"You should have called," Paris says. "I mean, you should have called my agent." But that's not what she means. She means that she spends her whole public life exhorting people to make phone calls, send e-mails, take up megaphones. To be citizens in the Constitutional sense: to express their anger and their anxiety. She is good at being loud about those feelings, because they don't belong to her alone. It's easier for Paris to speak for the greater good than it is for her to speak for her own heart. Rory should have called, it's true, but she wasn't the only one with that capability.

And now there have been years between them, moves and weddings and birth announcements that came as a reminder of how long they'd gone without seeing each other. That had been their latest correspondence, before tonight. Paris e-mailed about the baby's name, which at least wasn't Lorelai: "Charlotte, like the spider?"

"No," Rory wrote back, "like Brontë." Chastened, Paris sent a gift.

"So the baby's with your mom?" Paris says.

"For the week," Rory says. "She's really into the whole grandma thing. Both of them, actually. Luke, too. There's a whole cult of grandparenthood."

"Well, they say it takes a village," Paris says.

"A catchphrase that Stars Hollow takes literally," Rory says. "Taylor has a five-year plan to save my daughter's soul from the corrupting influences of the Upper West Side."

Paris lives in one of the new million-dollar condos in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She and Rory are separated by two transfers on the subway. No matter how hard they try to disappear from each other's lives, they are still practically neighbors. That has to signify something. "I didn't know you lived so close," Paris says. "We should be, like, getting coffee once a week."

"We should." Rory looks over her shoulder, suddenly stricken. She grasps Paris's hand. "I'm sorry," she says, like the clock is striking midnight and her glass slipper is coming loose.

"Wait," Paris says. "If I lose you to this party, I'll never find you again."

"Oh, you will too," Rory says. "You'll follow me all over the Eastern Seaboard, whether you mean to or not." She looks out at the crowd, then back at Paris. "God, sometimes I really am my mom. Except, I mean, she took twenty years and I've only taken ten, so maybe I'm doing a little bit better." She squeezes Paris's hand tighter and steps forward, like she is trying to lure Paris into a minuet.

The last time they kissed was also at a party. Spring Break 2004: things had just started getting scary then. That time, Paris started it, because she'd needed the attention. That time, Rory ran away. Now, Paris has so much attention that she looks for hiding places at the Inaugural Ball. Now, Rory is starting it, and Paris has enough sense to stay put as Rory's lips, sticky with gloss, caress hers.

There are flashbulbs. Paris keeps her eyes closed, so she can pretend they're something else. Really bright stars, because she's in her party dress and this is her damn fairy tale.

"Want to go somewhere and watch The Power of Myth?" Rory says.

"What about Justin?" Paris says. She hopes that the answer is something that will allow her to spend the rest of her life with the one other person in the world who would rather watch Joseph Campbell videos than party with the new President.

There are phrases like "the rest of my life" in her internal monologue now, and she wonders where they've been all this time. But she doesn't, because she knows they've been with Rory. All this time, and she knows that she could not have heard them before tonight. She's had to grow into this moment. It's easy to see friendship but difficult to see love; Paris has been waiting for the right angle from which to gaze, the right platform from which to voice it. It is the night after Inauguration, the night after the day when things start over. The personal is the political – isn't that how she got where she is?

"I'm sure he's hooked up with his closeted senator boyfriend by now," Rory says.

"Power of Myth it is, then," Paris says. She kisses Rory again. The photographers have lost interest, and this time, it feels like they're alone.

"I'm nothing like my mom," Rory says.

"What?"

"She was in love with Luke for years, and she knew, and she didn't do anything. She waited for him to come around and didn't say a word. I – I swear, if I'd realized, I would have – I wouldn't have held it in. I wouldn't have kept you waiting."

"I honestly don't care," Paris says. Rory's lip trembles. Paris scrambles to fix it: "I mean, I care that you, um, feel whatever, but – but it doesn't matter if you just realized or if you've been carrying a torch since the tenth grade. We've just got to keep... moving forward. Or something equivalent but less trite."

"I – " Rory slips her hand into Paris's. The lace of her glove is rough, but it lets the warmth through. "I, whatever. You."

"So," Paris says. "Joseph Campbell and room service at the Watergate?"

Applause seems to rise from the floor, flowing from the doors to the back of the room. They face the stage, hand in hand. Paris wonders if she is the only one who momentarily believed that the applause was for them. Maybe on a cosmic level, it was.

"Nah," Rory says. "Let's stay for the speeches."