A/N: There was one scene in the revival that sparked my interest, and made me think, huh, I can ship that. I don't know how Paris ended up where she is, and unlike some writers, I feel the need to justify things, so I took a stab at it. Feel free to dispute it. This takes place a few days after AYITL.

Defeating History

Paris showed her last appointment out the door and went back to her desk to pour over some paperwork. She was exhausted after staying up way too late watching election results the night before. She collected some paperwork to take home with her. The kids would be in bed before long anyway, so she could get in a few more hours of work while the house was quiet. On her drive, she passed a bar and glanced at the time. She needed a drink. It had been a long day after a horrifyingly disappointing night. It hadn't dissipated after a few hours sleep. If anything, a state of depression set in.

Paris parked and walked through the door of the establishment. But with one look at the bar, she stopped short at the blond sitting at one of the stools. It couldn't be.

He didn't have a blond hair out of place, in its familiar combed forward style. He had on dress pants and a button down shirt without a tie or jacket. God help her, he still looked good. It would make her feel a lot better if he'd at least not aged well.

Her heart pounded as panic seized her. She had to leave, she couldn't face him, not after her freak out at Chilton. What were the chances she'd run into him twice within a year when he'd been out of sight and out of mind for more than a decade? Before running away like she had at their alma mater, she took a deep breath. She had a life coach, hadn't she? What good was he if she couldn't face old demons head on? Calming down and lifting her chin defiantly, she marched up to Tristan Dugray and tapped him on the shoulder.

When he turned to face his intruder, he choked on his drink and coughed a little.

Scowling at him, she firmly said, "I am over you."

He stared for a moment, wide eyed, and then blinked. "Oh-kay," he said slowly.

"You have no hold over me, and I am completely unaffected by your presence. That brief episode at Chilton was a fluke, and even I'll admit it was bizarre." She continued, "I may have been young and stupid once, but I'm a grown woman now and you have no affect on me whatsoever." She raised her voice as she looked from side to side. "I want everyone in this bar to know that I have no feelings at all for Tristan Dugray."

His eyes narrowed in confusion. "Chilton? That was a long time ago."

"It was not, it was last spring. Or fall—or was it winter? No, that's definitely wrong," she said, frowning to herself. She shook it off. "I can't remember which season it was, they blur together." She waved a hand. "It doesn't matter. Don't get hung up on the details, they aren't important. You were there, you had a girl backed up against the wall, trapped there so you could flirt with her. Not surprising, it's what you do. I had a meltdown just at the sight of you."

Tristan look concerned. "You saw me at Chilton flirting with a girl within the past year?" he asked. "Is that school a portal to the past? It sounds like you saw me circa sophomore year. I'm 32, not 16." He said, "You saw someone else."

"No, it was you."

He lifted his hands, palms up. "Paris, it was not. I can tell you unequivocally, not only was I in Spain at the time, but I also never went back to Chilton," he said. "Not this year or any other after I was shipped off. Why would I?"

"They had alumni come back to speak to the students—a sorry bunch if you ask me. And I saw you with my own eyes," Paris insisted. "Rory saw you too."

"Rory?"

"Don't play dumb," she scolded. "Rory Gilmore. Who else?"

"Oh. Sorry, it's been a long time, and the Chilton crew aren't at the forefront of my mind." He said, "You both saw someone else. I never graduated from Chilton, so they don't invite me back. Which makes sense, when you think about it." He said, "I'm a little concerned about the guy you did see though. Was he was flirting with a student? You probably should have brought it to the headmaster's attention. Someone should have thrown that creeper out."

Deflated, Paris said, "It wasn't you?"

"Nope."

Her shoulders dropped an inch. "I freaked out over nothing?"

Tristan shook his head. "That's ridiculous, look at you," he said, doing so as he said it. She was in her normal work attire, skinny pants and a blazer. "Grown-ass Paris does not care about me."

"Mid-divorce Paris does," she deadpanned. "She also carries around an empty briefcase to impress high school kids."

"So chalk it all up to a personal crisis," he reasoned. "You weren't yourself."

"Sorry for the interruption, I should go."

Before she could turn away though, Tristan's hand was on her shoulder. "Didn't you come in here for a drink?" he asked. "Stay for a drink. I'm sure you'd like a distraction from reality about now."

"I should get home. I can still get some work done tonight."

"And what work is that?" he asked. Then he pointed a finger at her with narrowed eyes. "Doctor, right?"

He remembered? Her knees definitely didn't go weak.

She answered, "I impregnate women."

Tristan Dugray was still good looking. Abnormally good looking, and he wasn't an idiot, she'd seen enough of his schoolwork to know. He was the perfect male specimen. He had great genes. Women would take one look at him, with his academic aptitude, and want to bear his offspring. Why hadn't she thought of it before? She'd been clouded by her feelings when she saw him at Chilton—or whomever that was. But now that she was thinking clearly, it made perfect sense. He easily met the age requirement and was physically fit, she just needed to ask some simple medical questions.

He blinked. "Well you can't leave me hanging like that." His hand slid down her arm to pull her back over. "You can stay for one drink, you're a grown-ass woman."

She climbed onto the stool next to him. "This drinking, do you do it a lot?"

XXX

A few drinks later, "Doyle and I were good together, back in college." Paris said, "I tried to cut him loose when I was agonizing over where to go for grad school, but he insisted he'd go anywhere I went. Then after we got married he became a screenwriter. A successful one." She concluded, "Before I knew it, he was relocating to California and I didn't know who he was anymore."

Tristan nodded as he listened.

"I guess that makes me selfish, for not following him like he did for me."

Tristan shook his head. "Nah, you were just starting to get women pregnant. He could have worked on his screenplays from New York coffee shops." He laughed to himself. "He's one of those guys, isn't he?"

Paris grinned and exhaled a silent chuckle. "Yeah." Diplomatically, she said, "I got the house, so I won." He clinked his glass against hers as his congratulations. She took a deep gulp of her drink. "We share the kids."

"How many?"

"Two. A boy and a girl," she said. "Hey, how would you describe your general mental and physical health?"

"Uh, good."

"You haven't taken up any vices, have you? Smoking, drugs?"

His brows furrowed. "No."

"No to the smoking, or no to the drugs?"

"To both." He frowned, but shook it off and said, "You went to med school and law school and started your own business. Where did you possibly find the time to have kids?"

She waved her hand as she took a drink. "I just fit them in." She was about to ask if he'd ever been diagnosed with any diseases, but he asked one of his own.

"What happened to cancer research?"

"What do you mean? It's ongoing."

"Isn't that what you wanted to do?"

"Oh." That made her forget her questionnaire. "You remember that?"

"Yeah, it was after your aunt died. You always said you were going to cure cancer after that," he said. "I thought it was because of her."

Paris was quiet, remembering a much younger version of herself. "Things change," she said. "Harvard became Yale. Cancer research became surgery, but surgery turned out to not be for me."

"Why not? You have the personality for it."

"Tough bitch?" she asked rhetorically. "Two years into my residency Doyle and I decided it was a good time to start a family. Between pregnancy and the surgery rotation, I was exhausted. And for what?" She answered, "Colonoscopies and bypassses. Or worse, getting stuck draining butt puss, or holding fat flaps," she answered. "The boredom wasn't worth the exhaustion, so I did an endocrinology fellowship and got into reproduction."

"And the reproductive business?"

"Yup." He nodded and she asked, "What have you been up to?" Before he could answer, she said, "Wait, wait. Let me guess." She assessed him with her hard gaze. "You're a finance guy—maybe private equity or hedge funds. Ooh, or venture capital, that sounds about right. And you've got yourself a young hot trophy wife, still in her mid-20's. And you live in an oversized McMansion."

Tristan shook his head. "Wrong."

Skeptically, "Which part?"

"All the parts." He lifted his left hand for her to see the absence of a ring. "First."

She lifted a brow. "Divorced?"

"No. And I can't believe you think I'd ever live in a McMansion. Do you think I'm that tacky?" She lifted a shoulder half-heartedly as she took a drink. He said, "Well I'm not. I have inherent good taste, and aesthetic restraint. It's genetic."

Yes, yes, good genes, she wasn't arguing. "Fine. I made a few wrong guesses."

"You made three out of three wrong guesses," he said. "I don't work in finance, either. I'm finishing up my commission with the JAG Corps."

"Military lawyer?" When he nodded, she asked, "How'd you get into that?"

"Career day, senior year. Then I talked it over with my sister." He added, "She's in family law."

Paris nodded once. "I deal with that, with my breeders."

Tristan made a face. "You mean the surrogates?"

"Same difference," she said dismissively. "I guess military school really backfired on your parents, huh?"

"Not as much as you would think," he said. "I thought they would be really mad. But my brave break from conformity inspired them to leave the East Coast."

"Really?"

"Mm-hmm. They liberated themselves and moved out to California," he said. "They're gluten free now." He gestured for the bartender to bring them another round of drinks, to which Paris did not protest.

She asked, "If your commission is almost up, what are you going to do next?" She raised a brow, as though in a dare. "Work for the next administration?"

Tristan shook his head no. "I advised on a lot of legal matters, and I'm actually leaning towards . . ." He trailed off to look both ways. Then tilted his head in to whisper, "Environmental law."

Paris snorted. "You won't make any money."

"That's okay. My parents have to die some day, and they'll leave me something. I will, of course, take care of my sister and her kid." He mused, "There is a small chance my parents will leave everything to their dog. But I should get custody, so I think we'll still be okay."

"Speaking of your parents, do any hereditary diseases run in your family that you know of?"

He shook his head. "No."

"What about male pattern baldness?"

He splayed his hand toward his head. "What do you think?"

"Good, good," she said with a nod.

XXX

Tristan threw back a shot and he and Paris giggled a little. "Did you say back there that you were once young and stupid?"

She thought for a second, sifting through the conversation from an hour or two ago. They'd had more than the one drink. At one point he suggested she text her nanny. She nodded when she remembered. "Yes. I was. I was very young, and very stupid. Why else why I have been in love with you for so long?"

"You weren't in love with me."

"I was too," she insisted. She slurred, "Don't tell me my feelings."

"Paris Geller has never been stupid," Tristan said. "You are the smartest person I've ever known." He drunkenly reiterated, "I've never met anyone who was close to being as smart as you."

"That's not true. You met Rory Gilmore. She dethroned me as top of the class and was valedictorian."

He waved a hand. "So she was good at memorizing things out of books? You have the steely determination to know everything. It's different."

"No," Paris said again, shaking her head. "I didn't even get into Harvard. That was my sole focus in life, and I failed. I had sex, but I didn't get into Harvard. Didn't you see my meltdown on C-SPAN?"

"I must not have been watching that day." He asked himself, "Why do I miss all your meltdowns?"

"It was on national television, so everyone saw. The smartest people get into Harvard. Like Rory, she got in."

He shook his head. "Who needs Rory and Harvard Gilmore?"

"Harvard med school accepted me."

"Oh." He blinked. "Yay Harvard, then. You'll always be the smartest person I know, no matter which school took you."

He gave her the kind of look that made her believe he was being genuine. It made her insides gooey. Get a hold of yourself, Geller, she scolded herself. For a fleeting second, she imagined him in a uniform. Then she took a shot.

He asked, "Hey, what happened to Madeline and Louise?"

"I don't see them much, but they're still tight. I saw Louise a few years ago, but I haven't seen Madeline since spring break in Florida one year." She had to think for a second. "I was with Asher, so freshman year."

Tristan asked, "You didn't see them at the Chilton thing?"

"They weren't there."

"They weren't, but my doppelganger was? That doesn't sound right."

She shrugged. "I didn't organize it. Anyway, Louise came in wanting to have kids with her husband a few years ago. They needed some assistance to get things going, so I did what I do and she gave birth to healthy triplets."

Tristan made a pained face, as though three babies was unappealing to him.

"Some women need assistance to have a child," she said defensively. "There's no wrong way to make a family."

"I understand that, Sigourney."

He smirked as he said it, and she didn't hate it. She hated herself a little, for not hating it. Stop getting distracted! She blurted, "I want your sperm!"

Tristan's face slowly shifted to confusion. "You what?"

"I help people have kids, by a variety of means—IVF, artificial insemination, surrogacy, and in some cases, we use sperm that has been donated," she said. "Sometimes the men have the fertility problems, like if they're impotent or over 45, and there are single women who want kids, and lesbian couples. That's where you'd come in, as a male breeder."

"You want . . . I'm uncomfortable with that term."

"I'll pay you for the donations."

"It sounds like prostitution, but with a cup." Then, "Wait, donations, plural?"

"I'll have to run some tests on you, and I'll need your family's full medical history," she talked quickly, and as though she had not had a drop of alcohol. Determined, she ended with, "I can't let you go without a promise you'll give me your sperm. You're too perfect."

"Thank you?" He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Shouldn't I be sober for this kind of request? This seems a little unethical."

He was right. Paris slapped the countertop a few times. "Hey, barkeep, can we get some coffee down here?"

"This is a bar. We serve alcohol."

"Right. Okay, we'll have to go somewhere else. Let's go, get up." She climbed off the stool.

She reached for her pocketbook, but Tristan waved it away and pulled out her own wallet. "I'll get it." He asked, "When did you cut your hair short?"

She smoothed her locks behind her ear. "Oh, a few years ago."

"Looks good," he said.

Of course Tristan would notice. He noticed when she'd had an inch trim when they were 16. There weren't that many people in her life that noticed. She felt the old, dormant butterflies, but she willed them to go away. She was on a mission, and it was business only.

He continued, "You look like Tinkerbell." His eyes slid up and down her body in a way he never did when they were in school, making it a little harder to control the butterflies. "If Tinkerbell wore power suits."