Rory

Rory Gilmore was already regretting agreeing to drinks after work. The walk from the tube station to her dingy apartment was bad enough when it wasn't dark, but after the sun had set and the few working streetlights had come on, Rory preferred to already be back home with her door secured by several locks.

She wouldn't usually have accepted such an invitation but after her most recent bi-weekly call with her mom, she'd felt obligated to. Lorelai had been too concerned that she wasn't getting out enough, that she wasn't living the big city life the way she was supposed to, and 'do you even know anything about your colleagues other than their names and what beat they work on?'.

Finding out that Diana who worked on the aliens beat - three years and Rory still couldn't believe she worked somewhere with an aliens beat - had a tendency to drink several glasses of Jagermeister and then go home with the first person who showed interest wasn't exactly worth delaying her journey home.

It was times like this that she regretted turning down her grandparents' offer to buy her a place in a better neighbourhood. She hadn't denied their help before - they'd paid for Chilton, for Harvard, and even her apartment in Providence - but she'd agreed with her mom when she'd told her that she needed to stop relying on her grandparents one day, the same way she had.

But no, she'd decided it was time to become independent, stashed her trust fund money away 'for emergencies only' and rented an apartment she could comfortably afford with the salary the New York News Bulletin gave her.

And now, someone was following her home.

At least, she thought they were.

She glanced quickly over her shoulder at the man walking behind her. She couldn't see his face, his hood hiding it from view, but someone wearing the same red logo-emblazoned hoodie had been on the same train as her and she'd been certain he'd been watching her. She'd been uncomfortably aware of his gaze, her hands trying to keep her skirt as long as she could, and she'd hurried off the train, without looking back, the moment the doors opened onto her station.

Maybe she was just being paranoid. For all she knew, him getting off the train and walking the same streets as her was just a coincidence and, despite what the media liked to say, not everyone who wore a hoodie was a criminal.

Rory crossed the road. He followed.

Her heels clicked more frequently against the sidewalk when she sped up and held her handbag closer to her body. She only had a few more streets to go, and if she could keep enough distance between them, she'd be able to get into her apartment building and lock the door before he could follow her any further.

She should call someone.

The police? No, she knew how bad their response time was in this area. Her mom would just freak out. She could maybe ask Jess to rush over and accompany her the last couple of blocks, but there was no guarantee he'd answer her call or if he even had his phone on him - he always preferred to talk in person.

Rory turned the corner and ran, as fast as her shoes would allow. The sidewalk was a bit uneven, her heel catching on the edge of a raised paving slab, and she stumbled forward, knees crashing into the pavement. The man behind her called out, but she didn't respond. She stood straight back up, her knees throbbing, and kept moving towards her building.

One hand was rummaging through her bag for her keys. She wanted them in her hand, didn't want to waste a moment standing by the door, and she could hear Paris' voice in her head over and over again reminding her that keys could be weapons too if needed.

Except she couldn't find them anywhere.

Her bag was too big - why had she chosen soft tan leather over a bag with pockets and a designated, easy-to-access space for her keys -, too full of receipts and chocolate bar wrappers that she always intended to throw away but never had. Her laptop charger was a knotted mess at the bottom, joined by loose change and an empty thermos, as well as crumpled notes she'd made for both past and future articles.

If her keys were in her bag, she had no idea where they were.

Finally outside her apartment, she stood below the flickering porch light and peered down into her bag, frequently glancing up to check how far away the man was. He was getting closer, swaying slightly as he walked, and when he was only a few metres away, he spoke again, his words too slurred for her to understand.

"Sorry," she said quickly, her voice shaking. "My friend's expecting me."

He didn't listen. He just kept talking, lumbering nearer and nearer with each unintelligible word. Rory didn't know what to do - she needed her keys, but she didn't want to look away from him, not when he was getting so close.

She could smell the alcohol on him.

He staggered even closer. She held her bag to her chest, almost like a shield, her grip so tight that her knuckles turned white. "Don't come any closer," she warned, trying to figure out how much damage she could do by hitting him with her bag. Or maybe she could kick him - her heels were difficult to run in, but they were sharp.

If she got out of this, she'd take Paris' suggestion to take up Krav Maga much more seriously.

"I just want to keep you company," he slurred - or she thought he slurred, she still wasn't entirely sure what he was saying. "A pretty girl like you doesn't want to be alone."

"Yes, I do," she shouted, stepping back so that if she did need to kick out at him, she could use the wall as support. "Alone is good. I like being alone. Can you just… Stay back!"

Her words didn't even seem to register with him., but before he could shuffle any closer, she heard a zip and then someone landed in front of her, between her and the drunk man.

"The lady said 'stay back'," the figure declared.

Rory had no idea what was going on. He had abseiled down from the roof, the thick metal wire he'd descended on ending only inches above the ground, and not only was he acting as her human shield, he was wearing a cape.

The sight of him seemed enough to scare the other man away. He muttered something about having drunk too much and started back towards the tube station. As he walked away, Rory searched her bag for her keys, a sigh of relief escaping her when she found them buried beneath her laptop charger, hidden in a fold of the lining.

Keys in hand, Rory went to finally enter her building. She wanted to get off the street and away from whatever was going on, but the moment the Batman-wannabe turned around, Rory forgot everything she was doing and just stared.

The cape was one thing, but she hadn't expected the full look. He stood in front of her, his hands on his hips, his chest pushed out and his legs shoulder-width apart, wearing some sort of body armour that had hard plates integrated into a skin-tight black suit. If that plus the cape wasn't strange enough, he was wearing a mask.

It didn't cover much of his face, but it was enough. Rory doubted she'd be able to pick him out of a line-up if he wasn't wearing the costume. All she could tell was that he was tall, dark-haired and probably handsome, and clearly had no trouble wearing something that, if not for the armour-plating, he may as well not be wearing at all.

"You've read too many comic books," she said finally.

Her words seemed to surprise the Batman-wannabe. His chest deflated, his arms at his sides, and without the superhero pose, he looked even more ridiculous. "That's not how women usually thank me."

He had an Australian accent, and for some reason, that surprised Rory almost as much as his appearance had. She had expected a growl, like the one Christian Bale put on when he was in the batsuit, trying to sound badass while disguising his voice at the same time.

"How do they usually thank you?" He didn't answer, but Rory had a feeling that if he wasn't wearing his mask, he'd be wiggling his eyebrows. His smirk was definitely suggesting something. "Right, okay, well, a thank you is all you're getting from me."

He didn't go anywhere. She'd hoped he would walk away - or maybe even fly away - when he got his sincere thank you, but he was still waiting for something.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be off looking for other drunks to chase away?"

"I'm waiting to see if the fair lady would be willing to thank me with a kiss?"

Her jaw dropped, and she was about to start rambling on about how him choosing to help her didn't mean she owed him anything, especially a kiss, when his tone registered and she realised he was joking. Or, at least, half-joking. "Well, Captain Australia, you'll be waiting a long time."

"Well, it was worth a try." He shrugged. "Maybe next time."

"Don't hold your breath," she said. "Wait, you don't mean me, do you? Do you try this with all the girls you save?"

He laughed. "Love, I'm not that picky. I'll take a kiss from anyone who wants to give me one. Female or otherwise."

Rory raised an eyebrow. "And it works?"

"More than you'd think."

"Is that why you do this? To try and get someone to share a spiderman kiss with you?" Rory couldn't stop herself from asking. It was late, she was exhausted, and her knees were throbbing, but she was too curious to walk away without getting a few answers.

"It's not why, but it does make it more fun."

"So why?"

It took him a while to say anything, and Rory had the unsettling feeling that he was sizing her up. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was looking her up and down, his eyes slightly narrowed. She was going to just sigh and go inside, give up on getting anything from the man in the costume, when he smirked.

"In Omnia Paratus."

"What?" she asked. "Is that Latin? What does that mean?"

He repeated the phrase but hearing it a second time didn't make anything clearer. It still wasn't much of an explanation. "Well, as much fun as this is, and it is fun, I have other buildings to jump off."

"Oh, okay," she said, flustered by his sudden dismissal. "Well, thanks again. For appearing."

He nodded in acknowledgement, attaching the hanging wire to something on his belt. He tugged at the wire a few times, winked at her, and then he pressed something and he shot up into the air with a whoop, zipping quickly back up the wire.

For a guy who wasn't in a comic book or a Marvel movie, he was surprisingly well-equipped for vigilantism.

Rory watched him until he reached the top of the building and disappeared onto the roof. She watched the rooftops for a while, hoping to catch sight of him again, but she didn't spot any sign of movement.

Her whole evening had been ridiculous, she thought, as she climbed the narrow staircase to her apartment. The drunken man had been terrifying, but easily scared away, and after everything that had happened in the several minutes since she was dwelling less on the incident than she would have expected.

Wasn't it enough for her life to be a real-life comic book once? She'd managed to stop herself from being Connecticut's answer to Lois Lane, refusing to even consider printing the stories she'd witnessed. She'd wanted her name to be associated with more than just unbelievable tabloid articles about superheroes, to be a 'serious' reporter.

That had been before, when she thought Harvard and her experience at the ProJo would lead to something better.

After three years at The New York News Bulletin, she was pretty sure that she'd already lost any credibility she'd had.

A vigilante story could put her name back out there, if she did it properly. If she got pictures and found other witnesses and made it into something more than speculation.

It wasn't someone she knew, not this time. Instead, it was a mystery, it was something she could investigate and publish. If she did it right, it was something that could get her writing some attention, draw interest to her other, more respectable articles.

She had nothing to lose from looking into the man who'd saved her.

In Omnia Paratus. She'd start there.


Rory hadn't fallen asleep until sunrise and had slept right through her alarm. When she had finally woken up, she'd remained huddled in her blankets for several more minutes and wished she didn't have to go to work and write more articles that were unlikely to be read by anyone but her grandfather.

At least her office had flexible hours. She spent more than enough time at the office to justify arriving a few hours later than usual every once in awhile, which came in useful on the increasingly regular days where she didn't want to go into work at all.

It was one of those days. She was still exhausted, her knees were purple and sore - she was convinced they were slightly swollen - and the last thing she wanted to do was go to work. Not that that was a new feeling. If she didn't dread what her mom would say about the idea of dropping her hours down to part-time and subsidising the rest of her paycheck with her trust fund, she'd do just that.

But, for the first time in a long time, she had a story she actually wanted to write, and that was enough motivation to get her out of bed and ready for work.

The late start meant that Rory was one of the last to arrive at the office, so the office gossip was already in full-swing by the time she entered the room, large coffee in hand. Usually, Rory didn't pay attention to the chatter. Most days, she would arrive to an almost empty office, go straight to her desk and start working on her current assignments, her earphones in and playing instrumental music just loud enough to block out the sound of her colleagues chatting.

"Hey, Rory." It was hard to ignore the gossip when they spoke directly to her. Rory forced a smile onto her face and turned to see who spoke. It was Diana, looking surprisingly put together for someone who'd downed as many Jagermeisters as she had the night before. "This is a bit later than usual for you, isn't it? Did your night keep going after you left us at the bar?"

"No." Rory doubted any of her colleagues would have bothered to talk to her if she hadn't joined them the night before, and after the night she'd had, she was hoping Diana would be satisfied with small talk. "Just had a bad night's sleep. White wine makes me restless."

"Sorry to hear it," Diana said.

They didn't talk any further. Diana joined several of the others in conversation and Rory retreated to her desk, slipping her feet out of her high heels and stretching her legs out straight, knees protesting.

She stuck a post-it to the edge of her computer screen, the words In Omnia Paratus written on it. The bright pink paper stood out amongst the several picture frames she had dotted around her desk. One held a photo of her entire family at her Harvard graduation; Richard and Emily, Lorelai and Luke, and Christopher. Another, a framed collage of candids Lane had taken at Lorelai and Luke's wedding - of Rory and Jess sharing a dance, her face slightly pink because Jess was dancing too fast for her to keep up with, of Luke shaking his head as Lorelai served herself an enormous slice of wedding cake.

There weren't any pictures from New York.

"Cheery this morning, isn't she?" The man at the desk beside her, Victor, was watching Diana over the the top of his computer monitor. Rory shrugged. "Apparently, she's got a story idea that she's pretty certain will make the front page."

"Really?" Rory asked. "What is it? Has E.T come back for a quick visit?"

"Not E.T," he said, and then he nodded at his screen. Rory raised her eyebrows, but still rolled her chair nearer to him to see what he was looking at.

It was a picture, although Rory couldn't figure out what it was. The only light in the photo seemed to be from a street light, and the whole thing was blurred and dark. Maybe Victor was joking around, trying to get her to claim that she could see something story-worthy in the terrible picture, because as far as she could see, there was nothing special about the image at all.

"What?"

He tapped his finger against a dark silhouette in the top corner of the photo. "That." He zoomed in slightly, although it didn't make anything clearer. "This got posted on Facebook last night and it's been shared thousands of times since. Apparently, thousands of people think this is the first picture of New York's answer to Batman."

"This?" Rory narrowed her eyes, peering at the picture. She supposed people could see the shape as that of a man standing on the rooftop, could just about make out what could be a head and shoulders, but it was hardly a story. "And this is enough to get Diana above the fold?"

"You're giving this place too much credit," Victor said with a laugh. "If she enlarges the picture and adds a few quotes from people claiming to have run into this guy, you know Jonah will be all over it."

"She has quotes?"

"Yeah. According to several different people, this guy is either dark-haired or blond, tends to wear either a cape or a leather jacket and is sometimes Australian, but not all the time."

Rory gaped at him, unsure whether or not he was serious. The 'Australian' description was enough to convince her that Diana had happened upon a few credible sources, but the rest didn't exactly make the story sound real. "Wow, that really narrows things down."

"She's running with the idea that New York doesn't just have its own Batman, but its own Justice League watching the streets."

"Does she think superheroes are like buses?" Rory said incredulously. "Wait ages for one and then several come along at once?"

"I'm with you on this." Victor held his hands up as though preemptively surrendering to Rory's argument. "But we both know that this is something our esteemed editor is going to put front and centre, and if adding a few more potential vigilantes makes the story juicier, Diana will do just that. Do you know how long it's been since she last got on the front page?"

Rory shook her head. She usually didn't pay attention to Diana's articles. She'd long resigned herself to the fact she worked at a paper that would prefer to print science-fiction over fact, but that didn't mean she had to read it.

She didn't want Diana to do the story. Rory didn't want the vigilante story to be one or two attention-grabbing headlines on articles based purely on speculation, not when she knew the rumours were true. Not when she wanted to write it more than she'd wanted to write anything in years.

Jonah White seemed surprised when Rory was the first to speak up at the staff meeting that morning. She didn't blame him - it was unusual for her to do anything more than force a smile and nod - but she couldn't wait for Diana to get her chance to propose the article.

"I thought you only wrote about real news?" Diana asked bitterly, as soon as Rory had pitched the idea. "Why this?"

"Because I can make it more than just rumours about a bad photo," she said, directing her reply back to the editor instead of Diana. "Don't you think the other tabloids are going to be running exactly the same story? I want to do more than that. I want to know the truth, and if that truth is that New York has a few new crime-fighters roaming the streets at night, then I want to find out who they are and why they're doing it."

She watched Jonah anxiously as she waited for his response. It looked like he was mulling her proposal over, weighing up the pros and cons of it.

"You have until we print on Sunday," he said slowly, his heavy eyebrows furrowed. "If you don't have a story for that paper, then you don't have a story at all. It all goes to Diana."

"You want me to know who they are by Saturday? That's only four days."

"I don't need their names. I need more than - what did you call it? - a bad photo."

"I can do that."

"And just because you're writing this, it doesn't mean I don't want your regular articles too. You're the only one of us Bloomberg might actually give a statement too, should we need one."

Rory nodded, unable to stop the grin from spreading across her face. Diana looked utterly furious - Rory was never going to get invited out for drinks again - but Rory didn't care. The story was hers.

"Oh, and Gilmore?" Jonah called out as the meeting dispersed. "I want a better photo. You get something high def, you might get onto the front page."

She ignored the buzzing of her colleagues as they returned to their desks. Four days wasn't long, especially when all she had was three words and a blurry photograph, but she was sure she could manage.

If things got dire, she supposed she could always wander around her neighbourhood late at night and yell really loudly.

Google was her first port of call. One search and she had the translation of the three words written just beneath it.

Ready for anything.

She wasn't sure what to make of that. Was Captain Australia just giving her a really pretentious answer to her question, using Latin to make it sound more meaningful than it really was? She hoped not.

There had to be more to it. She needed there to be. It wasn't a satisfactory answer, it didn't even make sense as an answer if there wasn't some further hidden meaning in the words.

Pages and pages later, she'd just read multiple websites giving her the exact same translation and nothing else. She tried to google the phrase again, this time with the word 'motto' attached to the end of the search. That narrowed things down.

It was a link on the second page of results that caught her attention. It was a scanned image of an old article from the Yale Daily News, captioned with the sentence "In Omnia Paratus: An extreme stunt or an event held by the rumoured 'Life and Death Brigade'". The photograph accompanying the article was of several men, each one in a tuxedo, holding an umbrella and jumping off a bridge.

It wasn't much, but after spending another several minutes delving deeper and deeper into Google's responses, it was the only thing that had any promise. She couldn't believe she was really considering a college secret society as an actual starting point for her investigation, not when she didn't even have confirmation the society existed, but the more she read about it, the more plausible it seemed.

In a secret society of wealthy Yale students, surely some had moved to New York following their graduation? And if the club involved as many stunts as the article's speculated, she doubted all of its members would stop the extreme sports just because they weren't at university anymore. Maybe jumping off bridges turned into jumping off buildings, which somehow led to donning a cape and patrolling the streets.

It sounded ridiculous but it wasn't like she had anything else to go on - she highly doubted Diana would give her information about the sources she'd used.

Rory sighed, her head in her hands. Maybe she'd been too eager to write the story. Maybe quotes and a blurry picture would have been better than announcing she was going to prove the rumours true and try to expose the man behind the mask.

She needed another coffee.

Once she had a fresh shot of espresso in her hand, she called her grandfather.

"Rory?" he asked. "Is everything alright?"

"Everything's fine, Grandpa," she said. "I have five minutes free and I just thought I'd give you a call."

"You know you can always talk to me, Rory. I've actually wanted to speak to you for a few days now but I wasn't sure when I'd be able to contact you. You always tell us how busy you are whenever you make it to dinner."

"You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes. About your article on Putin's re-election."

"You read that?"

"I read all your articles, Rory." She smiled, partly because of the warmth his words brought to her and partly because she couldn't help but be amused by the idea of her grandfather reading a paper where the main headline was about the Kardashians. "Each one confirms my theory that you're better than that paper you insist on working at."

"Grandpa," she said, rolling her eyes. "We've had this conversation before."

"And we will keep having this conversation until you're working at a paper that deserves you."

"Well, hopefully, this might help that happen," she admitted. "This might sound like a weird question, but I actually called you to ask if you'd ever heard about The Life and Death Brigade. I think it's a secret society at Yale and-"

"The name's familiar."

"Is it real?"

"I believe it is," Richard said slowly. "I was never a part of it myself, but I knew of others who were. What does a Yale society have to do with you working at a different paper?"

"It's just a hunch so maybe nothing," she told him. "Anyway, I should get back to work. Thanks, Grandpa."

"Of course, Rory."

"I'll see you in a couple of weeks?"

"I'm looking forward to it."

She felt much more confident when she returned to her desk. The society was real, and although there was still a good chance it was all just a coincidence, at least she wasn't chasing something that didn't exist.

There didn't seem to be much more information for her to find, but once she found an old picture with the name Elias Huntzberger in the caption, she decided to leave Google behind. She knew that name - every respectable journalist did.

The man himself had died a couple of years earlier, but if he was in the society, there was a good chance his son and grandson had been too.

She'd met Mitchum Huntzberger before, at her grandfather's previous Christmas party, and after he'd laughed at the paper she worked at, he'd given her his business card and offered to put in a good word for her somewhere more reputable. But even if she did manage to get in contact with him, she doubted he'd be able to do anything more than confirm the group's existence. She hadn't been able to see all of the masked man's face when they spoke, but she doubted he was much older than thirty. He and Mitchum wouldn't have been in the society at the same time.

Logan Huntzberger would be her best option. He was the right age, and as far as she knew, he ran one of the Huntzberger-owned newspapers in New York.

She just needed to find a way to talk to him.


So, here it is. The first chapter of my vigilante!AU. I'm not sure how often updates are going to be, but I figured I'd get this chapter up before I went away for a few days. I've got quite a lot planned, so it might get long.

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter - I'm very excited to write Rory and Logan in this AU, so I really hope you are too.