Chapter Six
As Tru let Jack lead her from the park she made a conscious effort not to glance in the direction of the two women again. It wasn't that she or Jack needed to look at them to know what they were doing, Alan was in the unique position of being able to openly observe them without them noticing at all.
"They're still looking this way," Alan informed them as they continued walking.
"You must have raised their suspicions, Tru," Jack commented with a sly grin.
"Me?" Tru replied with a glare.
"Well I never had any problems avoiding unwanted attention before," Jack pointed out with mock reasonableness. "I guess we better do something to put them off the idea that we're spying on them."
"Just walking away should do that," Tru replied, quickening her pace slightly.
"Something more I think," Jack said softly into her ear as he casually swung an arm around her shoulder.
Tru frowned and tried to casually shake him off without drawing attention to them, but Jack's grip on her shoulder was stronger than it looked and she knew she could not free herself without making a scene. Gritting her teeth she quickened her pace again and as soon as she was sure they were out of sight she threw of Jack's arm and turned to glare at his smug expression.
"The sooner this rewind is over with, the better," she snapped before turning her attention to Alan who standing a short distance away from them, checking that the two women were not following them. He had a look of relief on his face as he joined Tru and Jack and confirmed that they had not moved from the bench in the park.
"So what are they planning to do to you?" Jack asked Alan as they continued down the street.
"Monique said she was going to sabotage the equipment in my home gym so that the weights come down on me." Alan didn't pale, although Tru suspected that if he had been alive he would have done. He did however reach up to his throat as though already feeling the weight crushing him.
"Monique's your wife?" Jack asked, to which Alan nodded response.
"But who else would use your personal gym?" Tru asked with a confused frown. "It's not like a public gym where anyone could be a victim."
"Normally no one," Alan replied. "But I have some friends coming round later today to test some of the equipment. I lost my job recently and need the money."
"But surely she'll know if someone else comes round to use the gym?" Tru asked.
"Not necessarily," said Alan with a shake of his head. "She doesn't know I lost my job and I'd been leaving for work after she did, just as I normally do. I leant my spare key to a couple of friends to go check the equipment out yesterday whilst I was 'out at work'. Monique works close to our place and I couldn't risk her seeing me still at home during the day. They were going to go back today to take a second look."
"Well I think I see where the problem is," Jack commented with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Care to elaborate?" Tru asked with a sigh of impatience.
"Of course," Jack smirked. "Not everyone can be as farsighted as me and you do have a tendency to only see the here and now, and not the consequences of your actions."
"Get to the point," Tru snapped, cutting off Jack from launching into yet another lecture about consequences.
"Well the first time around the saboteurs must have arrived home to find our friend here, dead already, their work done for them and saw no need to meddle with the gym. But today you found Alan's body and there won't be a trace of what happened. The earliest they will start getting worried is when he doesn't come home from work. By which time they will have sabotaged the equipment and in all likelihood killed someone else by mistake."
Tru thought back to what had happened in the house when she had found Alan's body. She tried to recall if the police had laid out chalk lines, whether had they left a message or note for the owner of the house to contact them. She couldn't remember. "Someone will tell them what's happened," she insisted.
"The gym's round the back," Alan said, his mind clearly having gone down the same track as Tru's. "They can go into the gym without even going through the main house itself. And considering what they're planning on doing, I can't see them sticking round for too long afterwards."
Tru nodded in agreement while Jack merely looked thoughtful again. She wondered what he was thinking and hoped he was being truthful about not wanting anyone else to die. Just because no one else had come into the morgue, it didn't mean that no one else had died. She would do her best to stop anyone else dying but what if Jack had other ideas in mind?
An hour later Tru had called Davis to fill him in on what was happening and now she and Jack were sat in Tru's car, parked around the back of Alan's house. Their personal ghost sat in the back seat leaning forward between the two of them.
"So how is it you can touch the car and seats and things when you don't have a body?" Tru asked.
Alan shrugged and sat back with a frown.
"That was rather tactless of you Tru," Jack commented with a half smile. "For someone who wants to be a doctor, you really should learn to work on your people skills."
"It's a perfectly natural question to want to know the answer to," Tru replied. "And under normal circumstances, there's nothing wrong with my 'people skills'".
"Normal?" Jack asked with a harsh laugh. "You'll never know normal, Tru. Normal is for other people, not us. From the first day you rewound normal was never an option. There's only one way you can ever get back to normality, and that's to stop running to the rescue of everyone that asks you for help. You want normal? That's the only way you're going to get it."
"Never going to happen," Tru replied with a glare.
"Then let me ask you this Tru," Jack started and turned to Tru with a serious expression on his face. "Just suppose you make it as a doctor. Just suppose you manage to pull it off and qualify and still help people on rewind days. Now just suppose that one day in your future as a doctor, on day one you perform lifesaving surgery on someone, you save that person's life. Then later on a body of another person asks you for help. Remember that you can't avoid the dead, not in a hospital. To save the answer the calling you would have to cancel the surgery you did on day one. What do you do? Who do you choose to save? You can't ask someone else to step in and do your job for you like you do now with Davis and Harrison. It's not their calling; it's your burden to carry. You'd have to choose one life over another and you don't have the right to do that. You don't have the right to decide who lives and who dies at all and that's why I'm here."
"If I'm not supposed to save people then why does the day rewind?" Tru pointed out.
"If you are supposed to save people, why does my day rewind too?" Jack countered.
"Sounds like a stalemate to me," Alan interrupted from behind them. "But can you argue this out later?"
Tru looked back at Alan and saw he was nodding in the direction of the extension that housed the gym. Monique was alone now and she cast her eyes about as though fearful of being watched. Tru consciously ducked down in her seat as Jack did the same.
"She's inside now," Alan said and they all stepped out of the car and walked over to the gym. Tru glanced at her watch and noted the time.
"Any ideas on what you're going to say?" Jack asked Tru with a smirk that caused her to wonder what he was going to say next. She held her tongue and waited until he had made the smart comment that she just knew was on the way. "You could try to be a little more tactful with our young widow."
Tru gritted her teeth, thankful she still had the patience to keep quiet but not knowing how much longer she could remain so.
"Anyone there?" Jack called out before Tru realised that he had walked into the gym without her. She drew in a sharp breath of dread as she wondered what he was going to do and say and wishing they had spent more time considering their actions and less time going over the same old arguments.
"What are you doing in here?" Monique asked with a start as she stood up from where she had been stooped, half hidden, behind one of the weights machines.
"Alan said I could stop by and check out the gym," Jack said with a friendly smile. "Hey, weren't you in the park this morning?"
"You're a friend of Alan's?" Monique asked as a guilty flush spread across her face and she casually moved the hand containing the screwdriver behind her back and out of sight.
"We used to work together," Jack said with a smile as he looked casually about the gym. "He said he was thinking of selling off some of this stuff and suggested I come by and take a look while he's out at work. It was you at the park this morning wasn't it? You were with…."
"Debbie," Alan supplied as Jack pretended to recall the name.
"…Debbie, right?" Jack snapped his fingers in triumph at 'remembering' the name.
"You know Debbie too?" Monique asked, looking more worried by the minute.
"Not really," Tru interrupted. "Jack's just here to check out the gym and see if there's anything he wants to buy from Alan. I'm here to make sure he doesn't spend too much money. You know what men are like?"
"Don't I just," Monique muttered. "Alan lost his job and still spends as much money as he ever did."
"You know I lost my job?" Alan asked, forgetting entirely that Monique could not see or hear him anymore.
"I wouldn't have even known he was out of work if it wasn't for Debbie telling me last week," Monique continued, clearly disappointed in the way she had found out.
"How did you find out about Debbie?" Jack asked bluntly.
"Very tactful," Tru muttered in a quiet voice that she knew he would hear but Monique across the room wouldn't.
"She's an old friend," Monique said as she sat down on one of the benches. "She got in touch to invite me to her wedding. Imagine my surprise when she shows me a photo of the future groom and it's my own husband."
"Wedding?" Alan asked in horror. "I swear…I never…wedding?"
Tru felt a degree of satisfaction at the shock in Alan's voice. He certainly had managed to make a fine mess for himself.
The sound of the phone ringing from inside the house drew the attention of everyone. Tru glanced at her watch with a smile; Davis was right on time.
"You want to get that?" Jack asked Monique before casting a wary glance at Tru. Monique stood up and went through the door that connected the gym to the house.
"What are you looking so pleased about?" Jack asked as Tru smiled secretively.
"So what do you want to test first?" Tru asked.
"Huh?" Jack replied in confusion.
"How about this one?" Tru suggested with a smile as she walked over to the weights where Monique had been standing when they entered the room. "You can test whether she did anything to it, just to be on the safe side."
Jack grinned back but would not be swayed further from the question he wanted answering. "Who's that on the phone?"
"What makes you think I know?" Tru asked with a smirk.
"Must be Davis," Jack considered. "Let me guess, he's calling from the hospital to tell her about the accident? But how did he know she would be here now?"
"I told him to try every ten minutes," Tru gloated slightly as she looked a little more closely and checked that there had been no damage done to trap anyone who might stop by after they had left.
"You could have told me what you had in mind," Jack said in a mock hurt tone.
"Maybe it's escaped your notice," Tru said with as much sarcasm as she could muster, "but I don't happen to trust you."
She turned at the sound of Monique returning to the gym.
"Are you alright?" she asked the visibly shaken woman.
"I need to get to the morgue," Monique replied. "Do you think you could come back another time?"
"The morgue?" Jack asked in feigned surprise.
"There's been an accident," Monique explained. "Alan died this morning from a fall down the stairs. I'd no idea."
"Do you need a ride?" Tru asked with concern. Monique nodded and they went outside to the car. It was only once they were outside in the open air that Tru realised that Alan was missing.
She looked about but there was no sign on him.
"Moved on," Jack whispered in her ear.
Tru nodded numbly as they headed to the morgue.
"So he just vanished?" Davis asked later that evening after Monique had gone on her way and Jack had likewise vanished quietly out of sight again.
"I didn't even see him go," Tru said with a tired frown. "He disappeared just like Jack said he would."
"Where do you think he went?"
"I don't know. We stopped his wife from accidentally killing anyone else but I don't know if it was enough to alter where he was going to move on to."
"Maybe Jack was lying about the reason Alan was still here," Davis suggested. "Maybe Alan was only here to help you save someone else because by finding his body you had altered things too much. Fate stepped in to make sure that things didn't go off course."
"But why did fate let me rewind at all when there was no way I could get there in time?"
"I don't know," Davis replied. "There's a lot about this that we don't know, all we can do is the right thing and learn what we can as we do."
"You're right," Tru said with a smile. "As always."
"So do you think Jack was telling the truth about all he knew about the ghost?"
"No," Tru replied instantly. "He knew more than he was letting on. There's someone out there who he's getting his information from and I'm going to find out who it is."
"It could be anyone."
"Well he let slip that it's a man," Tru said thoughtfully. "Maybe he'll slip up again in the future and give us something else to go on."
"Maybe," Davis conceded. "But he's good at hiding things. We didn't even know his agenda before until it was too late."
"But now we do and now we know what we're looking for."
"Just be careful," Davis warned. "You know how dangerous he is."
"I'm not going to lose to him again," Tru said with resolve.
"Don't tell me Jack won this one?" Harrison said from the doorway.
"Depends on your definition of lose," Tru replied with a shrug. "Alan vanished who knows where just like Jack said he would."
"So you just let Jack dictate how the day was going to go?" Harrison said as he sat down in one of the chairs.
"We worked together and no one else died," Tru replied.
"You don't know that anyone was going to die anyway," Harrison pointed out. "Jack put the suggestion in your head but it doesn't mean he was telling the truth. He was probably just screwing with your head."
"How do you know what Jack said?" Tru asked as she looked between Davis and her brother. "Have you been hanging out here with Davis all day?"
"So now I can't even hang out here in case I screw up your plans with Jack?" Harrison replied with a glare.
"That's not what I meant," Tru sighed. "I just thought you'd have had better things to do with your day."
"Like what?" Harrison grinned. "Get a job?"
Tru rolled her eyes, relieved to see the regular Harrison returning; she knew he could never stay angry with her for long.
"Actually Harrison has been busy researching on the Internet for you," Davis pointed out in a voice that sounded as surprised as Tru felt.
"Research?" Tru asked as she moved over to the computer Davis gestured towards. She checked the history folder and could not control her jaw dropping in shocked surprise at the number of pages her brother had apparently searched through.
"I figured since Jack let slip that there's someone else out there who knows about the rewinds there'd be no harm in trying to find them ourselves," Harrison pulled up a chair beside Tru and quickly showed her the most promising sites he had come across.
"But nothing definite," Tru finally concluded.
"No," Harrison admitted with a frown. Tru turned away from the screen to look at her brother and saw how disappointed he was in not being able to offer her the names and addresses of others like herself. He must have come straight to the morgue after leaving the park and spent the rest of the day trying to prove that he could be helpful to her.
"I'm sorry Harry," Tru said as she reached her arm round his shoulders and gave him a quick hug. "I shouldn't have said all that this morning, and you've done a great job here. If we keep at it we're sure to find someone sooner or later."
"So I'm not a complete screw up?" Harrison asked.
"No."
"And this has been really helpful?"
"Yes."
"I did a good job?"
"Yes, you did a great job," Tru assured him, slightly wary of the direction the conversation was going. Her fears were perfectly grounded at the next words from her grinning brother.
"So you wouldn't say no to a little financial assistance for your great researcher?"
"Yes," Tru grinned. "I would definitely say no to that. You already hit me for money once today and that's all you're getting."
"Damn," Harrison said with a grin. "It was with a try anyway."
Tru and Davis laughed and Tru turned back to the computer.
"I'm sure Alan's okay wherever he is," Davis said as he sat down beside her.
"I hope so," Tru replied. "I have to believe that or it'll drive me insane."
"I'm sure he's fine," Harrison assured her. "If him and me are so alike, he'll be landing on his feet wherever he is."
"Good point," Tru laughed. There was no way of knowing where Alan had gone and believing he was somewhere better was the only way she could cope. It was the only way she could deal with the loss of all the people who had left her during her life. All she could do is move on herself and make sure that she saved as many people as she could with the gift she had been given.
The End
A/N - Just a few things. First of all I hope you enjoyed the story.
Secondly I know that some people are already aware of the new alerts, but if you are not then check out the story alert which is ideal if you are only following certain stories of mine. Using story alert instead of author alert means you won't be bothered with updates of stories you are not interested in.
Next - my new revamped Tru Calling Fan Fiction site is now fully up and running and I hope you will check it out. The link is in my profile. All the current Tru Calling stories I have posted here are there plus a lot of extras, including the start of my first season two continuation story, character profiles and lots of descriptions of upcoming stories. I will also post occasional previews of scenes of upcoming stories that are not being posted yet due to continuity issues...think of them as tasters. There is also a cool shoutbox so you can tell me instantly what you think and, unlike the reviews here, I can reply the same way to keep you posted as to what is happening and what I am working on.
The site also has the stories set out clearly for reading order and which ones are part of which season (either the alternate second season or the continuation of the second season).
The alternate second season (of which the last story was Switched Again) will be continuing but not until after The Other Side is concluded. I intend to have only two stories running at once (one for each season) as soon as the rest are concluded.
Legacy - is on hold until I get the DVDs of the first series as I need to check some points. Unfortunately the UK release has been put off from 9 May to late June. Be patient - I am having to be and am someone who has still to see the season one finale so if I can be patient so can you. ;-) I may also be rewriting Legacy slightly to make it part of the season two continuation series.
I think that is everything. Be sure to read and review before you leave though.
