Jump then Fall

chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore girls or any of the original characters.

Thanks special thanks to the talented ladies working on this story with me. Wiccangrrl13 AshleyRountree. This story would not possible with out you. mention a userention a user

Rory stands in the doorway, a warm wind whipping against her face.  The ground far below her looks like pieces of a puzzle which tends to happen when your 12,500 feet above the solid earth.  The instructor double-checks her helmet and gopro.  He adjusts their chute and attaches himself to her in preparation of their first tandem jump.

"You ready?" He yells above the sound of the air rushing past.The brunette takes a deep breath and gives the man thumbs up.

"Ok then let's get closer to the door." As he inches them closer to the opening he notices the tattoo on the back of her neck.  Until this moment the student had always had her hair down.

"What's it mean?" He shouts.

"What?!" She yells back struggling to hear him.

"Your ink! What's it's mean?

"Smiling she yells back, "In Omnia Paratus; Ready for Anything. Let's go!

Together the instructor and his student hurl themselves out of the plane and into a free fall.

She screams for a few moments but then suddenly she's not screaming anymore.  She’s caught up in the stillness of the speed and the beauty of the Australian blue sky around her and the lush green ground of the rural area coming up beneath her.  It's amazing and literally breathtaking and it feels like hours and yet only seconds have passed when the instructor tells her to pull her ripcord.

Suddenly they are whipped back up as the parachute catches the air around it. She's floating now and somehow she knows exactly what's she's going write when she hits the ground.

She's been working for Traveler a travel magazine from Condé Nast for the last 5 years.  It started as a small piece she'd written about a zip line her mom had talked her into riding on a trip to Las Vegas. They loved her take on it as someone who wasn't normally an adrenaline junkie.

In fact they loved it so much that he offered her a job. They would send he all over the world to try all these different things. Bungee jumping, or haunted houses, sky diving. Things she use to hate and to be honest most of the time she still does but over the last five years she's learned to find the beauty in her fear.

After graduation and everything with Logan she spent a year on the presidential campaign. It was fun and hard work and she learned so much about herself and as much as she had hated to admit it Mitchum Huntzberger hadn't been entirely wrong in his review of her abilities.  Sure she could write, she knew how to wield her pen like a weapon and craft the world around her with words to the convey the exact feeling she intended.  However laying side by side in a foxhole with bombs going off all around her, or running into deserted buildings to avoid gunfire was definitely not something she was capable of.  The reality of being a foreign correspondent was not the romanticized image she’d had in her head. She had learned that that kind of journalism was not in her wheelhouse and that was ok.

So when she came back home after her year on the road her mom insisted they take a mother/daughter only vacation and from that sprung the Conde Nast article.  She had been so happy to be keeping busy back then. It was easier to work then deal with the fact that she'd said no to Logan’s proposal and lost him and her heart.

So when Traveler called with the job offer she had two options and this time she knew what she had to do.  Jump.  The last time she remembered feeling truly alive was at the Life and Death Brigade event when Logan goaded her into jumping and pulled her into his world and friends, family and adventure.