Disclaimer: If Tru Calling were mine, it'd still be on the air and Tru and Jack would be together. Sigh.
A/N: Emerging from my fic-writing hibernation for a second to post this quick angst-ish one shot I wrote after walking my dog on a wet, cold evening a few nights ago. Inspiration came from the October weather around me.
Takes place waaaay in the future.
XXX
She thinks about him the most during the fall.
Actually, she thinks about him every day no matter the season, but during the fall her thoughts stay on him practically every moment, distracting her so much that sometimes one of her two receptionists has to call out her name three or four times to bring her out of her reverie.
It's the gloomy days that she spends her time dwelling on him, not the bright, shining ones. Days when the red and yellow and orange leaves are on the ground and the wind is so cold it cuts through layers of clothes protecting her skin. The sun isn't out, the sky isn't cloudless, and the leaves don't crackle (it's too damp and squishy for that). It's the days that are the epitome of a miserable fall day, but secretly, those are her favorite.
And so it's on these days that she finds herself outside amidst the spluttering rain that isn't hard enough to send people inside for shelter, but isn't light enough that children are playing outside. She usually brings the dog with her for comfort, and the big golden retriever reminds her of times when he'd be out there with them, making a sarcastic comment about the horrible weather and wondering why she dragged him out on such a chilly and wet evening as they strolled along the suburban streets.
Sometimes she thinks she can hear him talking to her, whispering, but whenever she turns around, he's never there. The sad thing is, sometimes (a lot of the time), she expects him to be standing behind her with his trademark smirk on his aging face, joking that he's getting too old to keep up with her face pace and their athletic dog's matching stride.
If it's one of these dark days and she's too tired from work to go for a long walk, then she sits on the farmer's porch that wraps around their white house (he'd always found that the fact that they ended up living in a white house in the suburbs with a wrap-around porch and a tire swing hanging from the tree in the front yard was far too clichéd for the lives they had led; getting the golden retriever had just solidified the whole idea). The dog sits guard at her feet, and the two watch the rain drizzle in front of them. She rocks back and forth slowly, and sometimes (a lot of the time) she turns her head to the matching rocking chair beside her own and expects him to be sitting there, staring at her while his eyes twinkle with a secret he'd never reveal to her, even after over twenty years of marriage.
These fall days deemed as 'bad days' remind her of when he proposed to her back when they were still young and really beginning to enjoy life following their loss of the calling. She'd finished her evening shift at the morgue and he'd showed up for a visit; it had been a crisp afternoon, and now it was a drizzly night, and he'd suggested that they walk back to her apartment they now both lived in instead of catching a cab. Neither had had an umbrella, and so by the time they reached the awning that sheltered the door to the apartment building, they were soaking wet. He'd asked her right there under the awning as water seeped into their clothes and it poured around them, the wind blowing leaves in tiny whirlwinds.
The weather and setting had fit their relationship perfectly: random, stormy, and surprising.
She'd said yes.
If it starts raining on fall days during her lunch break, she steps outside, tightly hugging her jacket to herself, taking in her surroundings as the rain obscures her view. Sometimes (a lot of the time) she expects to turn towards the tiny parking lot and see him leaning against his car with a bag of food in his hand, waiting for her to notice him, and once she does, he'd start walking to her and complain about the weather.
Their son Christopher was born on a gloomy fall day. There had even been some lightning, but nothing too bad, and by the time the labor was over and the baby was getting cleaned up, there were only sporadic showers outside. They'd stared at their family's newest addition, and then he'd glanced out the window and made a snarky comment about big things happening to them on days that most other people hated.
They'd told their son about their past on an overcast October afternoon; about the calling and the burden they had carried, about her playing Life and him playing Death, about their rivalry, about her father and the losses and the lives that had kept living thanks to her, warning him that in the future he may end up with the same powers. The subject had scarcely been brought up since, and both were glad to find Christopher not showing symptoms of having either part of the calling.
Christopher calls on days like these from his own home in a completely different state to check on her. She appreciates her son's thoughtfulness, especially considering he has his own work and life to worry about and he doesn't have to be taking up his time checking weather reports for her part of the country. Sometimes (a lot of the time) when she's on the phone with Chris, she expects her husband to saunter up behind her and grab the telephone out of her hands, and then proceed to ask their son about the weather he's having there, because it's miserable here and he'd much rather be going one-on-one in basketball in dry weather with his only child.
Sometimes (a lot of the time) she hates days in the fall with clear, blue skies and a crisp bite to the air that smells like the beginning of hibernation. Especially when it's like that on one specific day in late October, when her world stops turning for twenty-four hours and she sits for God knows how long staring at a picture of him that she keeps on her desk at her office, or one of the many placed about their home. That day it should be dark outside, cloudy, with leaves dancing across the lawn and the chance of rain so high that you can practically smell it.
He died on a day like one of those, the complete opposite of the stormy days she preferred. The sun had been shining and they'd been in the back yard with Christopher, laughing and raking leaves together, having a memorable family moment. Then, suddenly, he was on the ground with his hand at his heart and she'd been beside him, tears streaming down her face as the sun became too bright and the clear air suffocating and the neighborhood too loud as Chris called an ambulance. She was a doctor, damnit, and she hadn't been able to do anything.
They'd said the heart attack was something unavoidable, that it had been building up for a while, but that didn't ease the pain she felt when they came out of his room at the hospital and told her he didn't have much longer.
Ironic that the man who played Death for over six years passed away from something as common as a heart attack.
She'd been with him when he'd finally let go, and for at least an hour she had sat, praying, hoping with everything inside of her that somehow after twenty years she could get the calling back for just one moment and that he'd turn his head and ask her for help and they could prevent all of this, some way.
But his head never turned, his eyes never opened, and his hand in hers became colder by the second until Christopher pried her away.
He never understood her love of miserable fall days that were wet and cold.
She loved them so much because they reminded her of him. He was as dark as the clouds and as stormy as the rain and as intense as the cold air and as mysterious as the silence that descended on those days. But he was also the shelter from the weather; he was sitting on the wrap-around porch of their white house with a blanket and a cup of coffee, and he was walking the dog in the drizzle with a tiny umbrella for one with both of them under it, his arm around her shoulders.
So that's why sometimes (a lot of the time) she spends her rainy fall days just thinking about him.
XXX
End.