Previously: They all watched the news in near silence, Celine staying near Jude as the newscaster spoke her last words. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited for the impact. The room rocked slightly as the meteor hit. This time when Celine opened her eyes, she was still in the bunker with Jude by her side.

A Flaw in the Plan

Chapter 16

After the meteor hit and the news broadcast was abruptly cut off, there was a moment of silence in the bunker as everyone tried to make sense of what had just happened. Out of the corner of her eyes, Celine could see Mrs Sutton quietly whisper to her doctor before loudly clearing her throat.

"I suspect you all will want some time alone to let the news sink in." She declared. "Rooms are upstairs, you will probably have to share as there is so many of you." She rolled her eyes and marched from the room to somewhere more private, dragging the doctor along with her, no doubt to continue whatever schemes she had planned. Considering the emphasis put on the number of survivors within the bunker, Celine wondered whether or not Mrs Sutton would allow all of them to remain.

"We should talk." Jude said to her, jerking his head in the general direction of the room they had acquired before everyone else arrived. Steeling her resolve, she nodded and followed him, casting one glance behind her to see everyone else still trying to cope with the news. Once in the room, she felt an overwhelming need to hold Jude and reassure herself that she had succeeded, but she restrained herself and instead moved to sit down.

"I have some things I need to tell you." She said. "And it's not going to be easy to hear."

"I had not expected you to be the one keeping secrets." He said looking at her warily, but followed her lead and sat down as well.

"I know, and I'm very sorry but I didn't have much choice." She hesitated. "If I had told you the truth from the beginning you would have thought me insane." Jude's frown indicated that this was not the direction he had thought the conversation was going to lead, and before he could say anything else she quickly interrupted him. "It would probably be easier if you allowed me to explain everything without interruption and then remember that all the hospitals for the mentally ill have been destroyed."

Her half-hearted attempt at a joke did not appear to be too well received, if anything he looked more concerned now than before. She tried not to let it worry her too much, she had committed to tell the truth and face the consequences, whatever they may be. "Are you familiar with the film 'Groundhog Day'?" She had seen it when she was a child, one of the older nuns had taken pity on her on her birthday and taken her to the cinema. She had spent a solid month trying to find the simplest way to explain to Jude what had happened, and her memory of the film had provided a natural solution.

"Bill Murray re-lives the same day over and over again." He replied, succinctly summarising the plot.

"Exactly, but in this situation it was me re-living the same month twice." She carefully gaged his reaction to the reveal, but his face was totally impassive and revealed nothing. Taking a deep breath she decided to elaborate on her explanation.

"The first two or three weeks were very similar to this past month. I applied and accepted the job as your assistant, we went on the false messiah cases. But in the last week or so," she paused again, unsure of how she should phrase the event that had triggered her having to relive the month, "something went wrong and you were not able to make it to this bunker. I managed to get to the bunker, but when the meteor hit I woke up in the convent again as though none of it had happened."

"What went wrong?" He asked. She ignored his question.

"I realised that I had somehow been returned to the past when I went to the job interview again." She gave a short bitter laugh. "I thought I had managed to dream the whole month, and maybe I did. Maybe it was all some sort of vision, or something like that. Either way, I guessed that I was supposed to make sure that you reached the bunker as well. I only changed small things in the first few weeks." She thought for a moment of a few examples she could give him. "I fabricated some documents so that you would realise that Frankie was your granddaughter in Poland, I made it so that we went to Barcelona instead of Naples this time."

"We went to Naples originally?" Celine nodded.

"The Naples case was just a woman stealing food for the poor, nothing miraculous. I thought it would be nice to go somewhere different, if there had been a case in Florence we probably would have gone there instead."

"Florence?" She gave a small, sad smile.

"I've always wanted to go. When we were going to leave the Vatican originally, you suggested that we go there. That was before we knew that Saviour had actually failed." She had to bite hard on her lip to keep control of her expression and not allow herself any tears for that first failed month.

"So we were still together last time? That wasn't a change that happened?" He asked.

"Yes, the timing was a little different but we were still together." She paused. "I was pregnant the last time as well, but I only found out about an hour before arriving at the bunker." Having satisfied his question, she continued. "The biggest change I made was to make sure we didn't go back to the Vatican after Malta, I knew that if we went back there was a chance that you wouldn't get to the bunker. After that, I made sure that we stayed near Slough. You know the rest."

Finished with her story, Celine leaned back and waited for Jude to process all the information she had just given him. There was a silence for a while as he thought it all through.

"You're right, I wouldn't have believed you if you had told me the first day." He said eventually.

"Do you believe me now?" She felt a sickly pang of anxiousness as she wondered whether or not his admission meant he thought her story was completely made up.

"I lean more towards believing you than not believing you. There were times when it did seem you anticipated things before they occurred, I did not think much of it at the time but now it makes a certain degree of sense. You saw through Christof's act very quickly." She nodded.

"It took me a while originally." She admitted. "It was only when he took the credit for saving that man in Rome that I realised the truth about him."

"I think I understand most of it." He said. "But you still haven't explained why I didn't make it to the bunker the first time. That seems like a very important point." He tried to catch her eye but she was avoiding looking at him. She steeled herself to finish the story.

"After Malta, we went back to the Vatican. While there, I realised that I wanted us to be together properly, and not to sneak around as we had been doing." Looking up briefly, she saw that he was listening intently. "You were distracted, you had some big meeting with Christof and some of the bishops; you didn't want to rush a decision. I was upset, probably unreasonably so now that I think about it, so I decided to leave and returned to my convent. I think something happened during your meeting, because after it you came to my convent to tell me that you wanted to leave as well. I wasn't there, so the nun you told had to pass the information to me after you had gone back to the Vatican to pack your things and wait for me." She abruptly stopped. Jude moved closer to her and took her hand gently.

"What happened next?"

"When I arrived back at the Vatican I found-" the final few words were too difficult to say, she suddenly tasted blood as she realised that she had bit her own lip deeply to try to maintain her composure. She tried again. "When I got there… you were dead."

He recoiled visibly at the revelation. Celine closed her eyes tightly, trying to block out the memory of what she had seen in that room, but her shut eyes only made the images more vivid so she quickly opened them again. Before her, Jude appeared to have somewhat recovered from the shock of the awful news and was prepared to hear more.

"How?" He asked simply.

"I think you were murdered, and I think Christof was responsible. Something must have happened during that meeting, I don't think he would do something like that of his own initiative."

"How do you know? He isn't stupid enough to have made it obvious." He was frowning and visibly angry about what had happened.

"It looked like suicide." She said eventually, after some more encouragement from Jude. Her next few sentences came out in an almost panicked rush. "But suicide didn't make any sense. We had plans, we were going to go to Florence. We were going to be happy." She stopped before she upset herself further, and accepted the proffered tissue in order to wipe the tears she had tried so hard to stop.

"You were right to be suspicious, I swore that I would not try to end my own life again after the first time."

"They tried to convince me that you felt guilty about our relationship, I thought it was my fault." She realised that she was shaking, Jude gently gathered her close to him.

"You said it yourself, you did not change that much from the first month to the second. I have not felt suicidal for a very long time, and the thought had not crossed my mind at all the past few weeks. One thing that I know I would never do would be subject you to the same feeling I experienced when I found my father dead. From what you've told me, I was waiting for you at the Vatican to return. I would not have killed myself, knowing that you would be the first to find me."

"I'm sorry I've lied." She said, her voice slightly muffled by the fact she had buried her face into his shoulder.

"Forget that. The past is in the past, there is little point in dwelling on it. I'm glad you told me the truth, but what we need to do now is worry about the future."

Jude was right. She had managed to fix the problems of the past, and now she had the future to look forward to. The next few years would no doubt be challenging to say the least, particularly if they had to deal with Mrs Sutton and her obvious love for manipulation. Celine knew that she would do anything to make sure Jude and their child was safe, and he would likely do the same for her. This time she would make sure everything worked out.

END

AN: That's the story finished, I will not be writing a sequel. I hope everyone who read this enjoyed it, and thank you to everyone who supported this fic.