Disclaimer: Tru Calling isn't mine; the pieces of script you recognize are from the episode as transcribed on twiztv .com.

Summary: The words were out before she could stop them. Tag for 'Last Good Day'

Author's Notes: First ever Tru Calling fanfiction, not sure where this came from but I've long since stopped trying to figure out where my ideas come from. I've never worked with these characters before, and I've a feeling they're not going to be cooperative…

"I wish it were you," she says with so much venom it frightens even her, shocks her to the core that she, Tru Davies could muster that much anger, that much hatred and channel them into something so violent and aim them at another human being.

That she could wish him dead, her stomach is churning as she blinks, seeing Megan fall again in her head, her scream echoing in the night air before cutting short as she hit the ground with barely a sound. The gravity of Tru's statement starts to wash over her, the details of it, she finds her mind filled with grotesquely detailed images of Jack being the one at the foot of the Edison Tower, crumpled on the concrete, limbs twisted all at awkward angles, his bones snapped like twigs and blood pooling around his body, seeping into the cracks in the sidewalk. She feels sick.

He's not so quick with his reply, no sarcastic quip, lecture about fate, no flippant remark or off-hand comment; nothing. He steps back, almost staggering as he does so and she notices how pale he's gone, how he's grappling at regaining some sense of control over his reaction, his blue eyes are wide and his breathing is erratic. He looks devastated. She swallows, waiting, she's not sure what for but suddenly it's just her and Jack, the noise of the onlookers a buzz in her peripheral vision, but Jack, the man who dubbed himself fate is shaking, trembling as his back hits the wall.

Then as abruptly as his walls had come tumbling down they resurrect, his muscles are tensing as if that's all he can do to stop himself shaking, devastation becoming disgust. She feels like she should say something, amend her statement but she'd meant it. A gut reaction that she had spent no time thinking about, saying the first thing that came to mind and she had, only now, she wasn't so sure.

"That makes two of us," and he meets her gaze, just for a second, blue on brown, two sets of eyes, each filled with dozens of unsaid words and unspoken accusations.

She's not sure which scares her more, the fact she'd told him she wanted him dead, or that he had agreed with her because that look, the way he was staring at her, giving her a split second to see everything about himself he had guarded from her was breathtaking, he meant it too. He was serious. How can anyone make comments like that? How can anyone want to die when they have everything to live for?

For a moment she thinks he might slide to the floor, but he pushes himself off the wall, holds his head high and walks away, his stride purposeful and measured; too measured. He's missing his casual swagger, the way he saunters so effortlessly from room to room, never looks desperate, never panics, unlike her, who spends most of her time running, seizing every available opportunity to save people, keep them alive. Jack is fate, Jack takes lives, but even when she's winning, all stakes on her, he just flashes a crooked smile and watches, calmly waiting. As if he knows something she doesn't. As if there's more to their calling than saving lives or 'maintaining the cosmic balance'. There shouldn't be. But Jack acts like there is.

He disappears around the corner and she's still trying to think of what to say, how to react. She sets her jaw because what he had just done was wrong. He'd spent the day with Megan, become her confidante so smoothly it in many ways Tru finds herself envying him for it; it never works that easily for her, people always assume her to be insane or a stalker or a multitude of other things that means she can't stick around as closely as she needs to, to ensure that they stay alive. Yet he had still let her go, let her plummet to her death, screaming for his help, Tru could hear Megan's tear-filled pleas even as she ran up the tower, racing up the stairs with her heart hammering in her ears.

"Jack! Please, help me!"

Tru swallows; the cries will fill her dreams for days, haunting her even as there was nothing she could do. Megan hadn't asked for her help, she'd asked for Jack's. The irony of that does not go unmissed and she refuses to accept the fact that Megan had asked Jack to help her die, to make her death look like an accident so that her sister could get the hundred-thousand dollar insurance claim. Megan had asked for help, surely that meant she had wanted to live and her screams – "Jack!" – her screams… she had wanted to live. Even for a little while longer, she hadn't wanted to die and Jack had let her, made her.

He had quite literally held the decision in his hands, all it would have taken is one swift heave for him to pull her back over the railing. He could have done it. Tru knows he could have. Jack has more than enough upper body strength, but he hadn't, he'd let her go, his fingers uncurling from around hers, watching as she fell… her horrified scream reverberating off the surrounding buildings.

Tru looks around, no one is paying any attention to her and no one is glancing behind them, looking for Jack. There are people leaning on the railing, staring below, their chatter nonsensical and hysterical, there are others from below, she doesn't need to look to see that the crowd around Megan's body has grown, a huge circle of morbid intrigue but no one will venture forward until the police arrive and they will soon enough. The sirens are distant but audible.

Her body is still humming with exertion, the adrenalin still pumping through her system, her heart isn't racing anymore but her mind is. Running over a thousand different things she could have done to save her, to stop Megan dying. Each idea is more preposterous than the last; each one would never have worked. But there has to have been something, if only she had run that little bit faster, gotten to her first. If only she'd beaten Jack.

She will always play this game; she knows that, always be forced to consider each rewind a victory or a loss. People became pawns, their lives scoring points she and Jack would use against each other. It shouldn't be like that but it is and there's little she can do to change it; another ironic twist.

The sirens are getting closer, burning through the night air that's fast becoming chilled; her breath is starting to turn to fog when she exhales. Someone jogs her as they move by the railing, she stumbles forward but the person doesn't apologize and she's too absorbed in her thoughts to say anything or even look at them reproachfully.

She's leaving before she even thinks about where she's going.

The park is devoid of light. The whole city is dark, it's a quarter past midnight, of course it's dark but the park especially… the grass looks like a mass of black oil spread thick and wide, the trees quiver in the breeze, the rustle of the leaves providing a haunting background noise to the stream of thoughts running through his head. There are a couple of college kids in the far corner, giggling as they hold hands in the moonlight without a care in the world, naïve to the death that has occurred just over an hour ago. Naïve to the fact that the man who let it happen is sat on the bench not forty feet away.

He was fate. He made things right, stopped the balance being tipped. He, Jack Harper, made things right. This didn't feel right.

He was supposed to stop Tru from saving people who shouldn't be saved. He was her counterpart, her opposite; corpses asked her for help and as she raced to save them, he did the same but on a bigger scale. He didn't save the victim, but the rest of the world from facing the consequences if someone who was supposed to die lived. He wasn't supposed to be asked for help, he wasn't the one who was supposed to hear the plea of the dead "Jack… help me!" no. It was wrong; the universe had gotten it all wrong. He wasn't supposed… but he was. He had been supposed to help her stage her death, make the supposed suicide look like an accident so her sister would get the insurance pay out and he had… hadn't he?

He had spent the day with her. Figuring that, that way he could find out some more about why she had asked for help and he was a man of opportunity, he'd met her by coincidence at the plaza, listening to some woman play the guitar and sing a tune he barely remembers now. He hadn't searched for her; he hadn't raced Tru to finding her.

Whilst he knew his duty, he had enjoyed spending the day with Megan, she was pretty, smart, and trusting, too much so but trusting all the same. Something had coiled in his stomach as he and Megan had gone into the house, her sister shrieking in delight as she explained Tru and the cheque and the bogus 'Relive Your Day Foundation'. It wasn't anger, or regret, or for-God's-sake-Tru-stay-out-of-this. In fact he wasn't sure what it was but it had been there, goose-bumps prickling on his skin and his head spinning as he stepped onto the porch to give the two women their privacy. He would have liked to think his reasons for not disappearing at that point were strictly work based but they weren't, and he knew it. Maybe this was fate's way of telling him something, of showing him what it was like to be in the position Tru was… but Tru had behaved just as always, forever the heroine, she hadn't changed her tactics so why should he have? On second thought, that whole theory was insane.

"Jack," Tru's voice is sharp in the night, her voice laced with surprise and something akin to anger; he doesn't want to have this discussion with her right now, not when he's still trying to process it himself.

"Tru," he drawls boyishly, pasting on a crooked smile and glancing back over his shoulder, it's fake and he knows she knows but he wants to try and get things back to normal, the past twenty-four hours have been exhausting, his perceptions thrown into turmoil, she'd seen him falter, seen the look on his face as he'd let Megan go, she shouldn't have and he hopes she doesn't bring it up; "fancy seeing you here," he turns back around; he doesn't need to be looking at her to know she's glaring, lips pursed and eyes narrow, sometimes he thinks she looks almost cute when she does that but he always quashes the thought because he's fate and she's not, she messes with things she shouldn't and he just tries to keep the world on track.

"She asked you for help," her voice is accusing and she thinks it breaks mid-sentence.

"To die Tru," he replies, the college teens have moved away and suddenly he and the feisty brunette are the only ones in the park, maybe he should go home, or head to a bar.

His voice falters just for a moment but she picks up on it, honing in on the mistake. His hesitation to reply, the faint tang of remorse in his voice and she's fitting the pieces together; he can practically hear the cogs turning her head and he wishes she'd shut up because she doesn't understand and at the moment he's beginning to think she never will because he sure as hell doesn't.

Just when he's getting used to it, thinks he's finally grasped the concept, something changes, he gets thrown a curve ball and he stumbles, left to think on his feet and make it up as he goes along because for all 'he's been through it all' Richard can be an evasive bastard and failing that he's just plain forceful, there's no room for questions, Jack just does what he says, follows the man blindly, accepting whatever rules he proposes because he's not strong enough to say no. Richard killed his own wife yet Jack still follows him.

"You could have saved her!" Tru won't let it rest as she stalks around the bench, "you caught her! Why did you catch her if you were just gonna let her go?"

The question has been playing on her mind for over an hour and it won't go away. Jack had caught her, had held onto Megan for a moment like there was nothing else in the world worth touching but then he'd let her go. Then he'd killed her. Jack said he wasn't a killer but what he had just done was murder. He had been able to save her, he could have pulled her up, even held on for a second longer so someone else could have but no, he'd relinquished his hold, let her fall, screaming to her death even as she begged for his help.

But then he'd staggered back, Tru doesn't remember a time when she's seen someone look as distressed and self-loathing as Jack had then. His tone had been far from his usual confident smirk, it had been genuine, no facades, no pretend.

"I wish it were you,"

And she feels guilty all over again even though she tries to tell herself she shouldn't. That she had every right to hate him like that, to despise him so entirely that… but she's not so sure she does anymore, or even did at all. She's beginning to see things about Jack that she didn't before, whether because she never looked or because he's finally giving her something to work with she doesn't know, she doesn't want to know. She wants it to be simple again. She wants it to be just Tru versus Jack. Good versus Evil. Light versus Dark. She doesn't like this grey area, this twilight they've been thrown into.

Jack sighs, it would not have been perceptible had his breath not clouded into a mist that floated from his lips; he shudders but doesn't say anything. Her questions burning in his head, scalding him as he contemplates his reasoning; he'd caught her because it had been reflexive. He couldn't just watch her fall and do nothing he… the conversation he and Megan had, had as they walked up the steps to Edison Tower had been fresh in his thoughts, bright and perhaps offering him a choice he had not considered before.

"I'll tell you a secret. I… I hate my job," he's not sure why he tells her that.

Offering up something so private he hasn't even thought about it himself. He doesn't dwell on it, he can't change the fact he has this… gift. There's nothing he can do, there's no back out clause so all he can do is try to maintain the balance as Tru screws around with it, trying to make sure that everyone stayed alive and happy and all the dozens of reasons she gives. It's a nice sentiment, he gives her that.

"Then why not quit?" Megan's reply is beautifully innocent, as if this epiphany she had, had - courtesy of one Tru Davies – had clouded over all the bad things in the world. Her eyes are bright and hope-filled in the glittering lights of the plaza, the breeze tickling her long blonde hair as she walked.

He keeps talking even though he knows he shouldn't, he's not sure why he started in the first place. He could have said anything, talked about her list, her future plans, her sister but no, he'd kept going down a track he should never have stepped onto in the first place; "I'm not sure I'm strong enough,"

The words ring crisp and true in the night air, and for a moment he thinks that his heavy tone will stop her from replying, placing more doubt in his mind that this is the right thing to do because there are so many reasons why it's not. He is not death, despite what Tru thinks, or Davis and Harrison. He is fate. He does not decide who lives and who dies, he is not God and neither is Tru, that's the point; he knows he can't make those choices but Tru… Tru seems to think she's above that, that she can fix everything. If people wanted to die then he'd let them, try and keep Tru out of the way so they could fulfil their wishes but when someone actively says that they do not want to die… like Megan, who is he to say they have too?

"Oh, so you take some time off and figure it out. It's not the end of the world,"

In that moment he makes a choice. He will not kill her. She doesn't want to die, she doesn't deserve to die. She'll die anyway, the leukaemia will kill her. Despite what Richard seems to think, how can few more months harm anyone?

"I hope not," he answers and he really, really does.

When he doesn't reply a spiral of anger circles in her gut; how dare he ignore her? He'd killed Megan so that he 'didn't have to face the consequences' of her living yet he wasn't prepared to face the consequences of her dying. Then she sees it; the translucent glimmer in the light as the tears make their way down his cheeks, his shoulder's shudder imperceptibly and she's all at a loss as to what to do. He'd killed Luc and Megan and dozens of other people, she should hate him, she shouldn't be feeling this concern for him. She takes the seat next to him, folding her hands together in her lap so she doesn't give in to the overwhelming urge to touch; "Jack?"

He straightens; scrubs a hand down his face and the tears are swept away. He inhales sharply, breath almost-but-not-quite hitching in his throat; "she was supposed to die Tru," he says.

And they're back to that again. This time the urge to make contact with Jack takes form in the desire to punch him than to comfort. Megan wanted to live.

"You could have helped her,"

"I did," he replies instantly, almost before Tru has even finished her sentence; they could have this argument until the end of time.

She glares at him and he forces himself to stare back, patiently waiting for her next response, because there will be one. There always is.

"You didn't want her to die," she says softly after a moment and the tenderness in her voice surprises him.

"No,"

He's not sure if that means no, he didn't want her to die, or no, he did.

"She was gonna kill herself. All she wanted from me was to help her make it look like an accident,"

"Congratulations," Richard answers almost bemusedly "easy day,"

Christ how could Richard say that?

"She changed her mind," the unspoken words at the end are so loud in his head, Jack wonders if Richard will hear them anyway, the 'so have I' that's tickling his tongue, wanting to get out but it can't because he mustn't; he must not change his mind, he is not God and he has to remember that.

"That's not an option,"

Of course it's an option! She'd changed her mind, she wanted to live. She no longer had a desire to die, and he wasn't going to force her too. He didn't have the right to do that, same as Tru didn't have the right to save the people who did not want to be saved.

"I'm not gonna kill her," he almost exclaims because he is not a killer, he's just Jack, he is fate, not death and he will not push Megan over a ledge just because she'd jumped yesterday.

"I'm afraid that's not an option either. You know the rules,"

"Yeah," he answers and the sarcasm is an undertone to his reply, part of him hopes that Richard notices his disciple's defiance "a body asks Tru for help and I make sure they stay dead. But I'm not the one who changed the rules this time! So as far as I'm concerned, its dealer's choice,"

Megan had made her choice but he had taken that away from her because he'd been too weak to tell Richard no, to brace himself for whatever consequences that would be wrought if he let Megan live. Right up until the end he had been willing to defy his mentor, to let the girl live, he wasn't going to sway her choice, he would be impassive, neutral and it had been easy, for a while. Until she had invited him up to Edison tower.

Then he had been faced with the flashes of memory, of being on the phone with Carrie, hearing a scream and rushing to the plaza, seeing Megan's broken body crumpled on the floor like a doll, all broken bones and bright red blood, then her plea, her soft blue eyes fixing on him "Jack… help me," before the rewind began and everything he had believed and trusted for so long had been thrown up in arms.

He'd played by his own rules and he hates them. He knows it was the right thing to do but he also knows it wasn't; an impossible situation. He wasn't strong enough to 'take the day off'; to pretend that he was just the average man. He was Jack and Jack was fate, people's lives hung in the balance and if they were supposed to die then they should, no one has the right to change that and he will remain firm in that belief. But to every rule there is the exception, and if he'd had the spine to say no, then maybe Megan could have been it.

But Megan wasn't special; she was just a pretty girl who had been dealt a harsh hand, another face in the crowd, voice on a street corner. There was nothing definitive about her that made her stand out from the millions of other people on the planet.

"Hey, Megan… your list. You should keep it now," he holds the piece of paper out to her, once more amazed that she had entrusted him with it but unwilling to analyse it too much, he is not Tru, he should not care if she died but that had gone wrong the second he had listened to her talk of the painter's tragic life as they stood in the museum, watched her cry in empathy and felt a stab of remorse in his chest as she swiped the tears away.

His grip was looser than he had thought because the wind grasps a hold, sending it fluttering over the safety barrier of the observation deck and tucking it neatly onto the ledge below. He glances at the clock; 10.55, he isn't going to do what Richard wants. He isn't going to let her die but for once he can't consider himself the advocator of fate, now he begins to wonder if he's just a pawn in a madman's game because its five to eleven at night, and Megan's making for the same ledge she fell from yesterday.

"Megan, I'm sorry," but his tone is strange even to him because he can't figure out what to do, should he let her fall like yesterday? Like he's supposed to or should he stop her and do precisely what he belittles Tru for on a frequent basis?

The blonde laughs good naturedly "I got it,"

"No… no, wait a second," let him think, how is he supposed to let her die? All the signs are saying he should, the time, the place, the complete coincidence of the list fluttering over the edge… she doesn't need it, she has to remember what's on it… she could write a new one or… or… or he could get it for her… but he doesn't move, paralysed by contemplation and the frigid night air that freezes him in place, forcing him to face the fact that even fate has a fate and this time, neither he nor Tru is going to win.

"Hey," she placates "it's my list," she moves over to the barrier, leaning over the rail, long fingers reaching for the list.

"Megan, wait… Megan! Megan!" he cries out, the world going in slow motion as she slips forwards over the barrier, screaming in terror as she flips over the ledge and tries to grab the railings.

It's a freak accident, she shouldn't have slipped, and the piece of paper had been well within reaching distance. What was the universe trying to tell him? He did his job; he kept the 'grand plan' in motion. Tru was the one that messed with it so why screw with him? Why make the body ask him for help?

He lunges without thinking, grabbing her hand as hard as he can, squaring his feet so she doesn't pull him over too.

"Ja-" she's cut off as she slips a little but he strengthens his grasp "Jack!"

"I got you!" he cries out in reply, and he does, he could heave her over the bars to safety and that would be it, game over, point to Tru, but then what would happen? There would be another day, another freak happening, and she would die anyway, you can't cheat death, death is inevitable "I got you…" he doesn't want her to die but what choice does he have? Everything's saying she should and who is he to change that?

"Help me! Jack!" she screams "Jack! Help me! Jack!"

Her vocabulary limited to three words. She's asking for his help all over again and he'd be willing before, when she'd been asking for his help to die but now she was asking to live and that went against everything he had been taught. Everything he knew should happen. He should never have caught her but it hadn't been intentional, it had been instinctive and he's really beginning to hate his instincts.

He can see past Megan onto the street below, there's a crowd forming, one figure takes off at running, dashing for the entrance, it's a long way down and the people below are like insects but he knows who it is that's coming. He knows Tru's on her way, he could hold on until Tru gets there, let Tru pulled Megan up, that way he's not really saving anyone, he's just the intermediate, he's not messing with destiny then. Is he so scared of what Richard will do, of what the consequences will be that he can't pull one woman to safety? One woman already fated to die?

He sees it again, Megan's body lying dead on the ground, a crowd of horrified people behind him as he scrutinizes the corpse in front of him "Jack… help me,"

"Pull me up, please… Jack… please…"

She needs to stop asking for help. If she'd stop this would be so much easier because he's not strong enough. He can't face the consequences, he can't let her live today if that's not how it's supposed to be. He'd played along, let Megan make her own decisions and whilst her outlook on her future had changed the situation had not. Circumstances change but destiny doesn't. He is fate; he must see it that way. Megan has to die and he hates how he doesn't have the mental strength to pull, just once, to heave the petrified woman to safety because he could. She weighs next to nothing. But the consequences… the consequences are what matters. Tru saves lives. He saves the world.

"I can't," he says, his chest is tight, and it's not just the metal railing pressing into his stomach, he can barely feel that, what he can feel is the warmth of Megan's arm through her sleeve as he keeps her hanging there, he can't keep hold for much longer, Tru will be here soon but he can't let Tru save her; fate always gets it's way and fate wants Megan.

She gasps in fright, tears streaming down her cheeks, she's pleading with her eyes, blue orbs begging him to save her but he can't. He mustn't.

"I can't, I'm not strong enough,"

Tru studies him carefully. She can't figure it out. Nothing about Jack really makes sense, not to her. He had let Megan die. He said he was fate, that he kept things on track but Megan had not wanted to die, not anymore, she had wanted to live. He said she couldn't decide who lives and who dies but that was precisely what he had just done. He had made that choice; he had defied all his own rules because he had taken Megan's away.

Jack was a former EMT, how could he go from saving people one day, to killing them the next? How could the transformation be so seamless? There were so many questions but not enough answers and she could ask all she wanted but she knew he would never give her the responses she wanted.

"Why did you let her go?" she demands because she has to know, there has to be reason; she can't get his face out of her head, his conflicting expression of resignation, regret and disgust, how pale he had gone, how completely self-hating he had sounded as he had agreed with her accusation that now, in the aftermath, sounds so cruel it makes her feel ill.

"Because I had too," he replies tonelessly "she was destined to die Tru,"

"You say you're fate," she answers acerbically "you say that you don't kill people, you just keep the 'cosmic balance' yet you let Megan go. She wanted to live Jack. She was begging you to help her,"

Jack blinks once, hard.

"Jack," she's not sure what she's hoping to achieve by saying his name, whether she's prompting him to reply, scolding him for his ignorance or inquiring as to his well being; it could be any one she supposes, or a combination of all three.

He glances at her, flashing a lopsided smile at the brunette as he replies just as ambiguously "Tru,"

Neither of them says anything for several long moments, then, Jack heaves himself to his feet "see you around," he smirks before sauntering off, not giving Tru a chance to say anything as he leaves her sitting alone on the park bench.

He does not want to think about it anymore. Megan is dead, her destiny fulfilled, he didn't screw with the balance of things, didn't mess with the universal equilibrium; he has nothing to regret. Death had made its mark and death had staked its claim. He has no desire to think it over, to ponder over the ifs and maybes. Tru messes with things she shouldn't yet she is able to remain blissfully ignorant of the havoc it will ultimately cause, he cannot. He mustn't because someone has to make it right, someone has to make sure that life does not always succeed. One day, Tru will save the wrong person and everything will shift, and that… that cannot, must not happen.

Tru watches him walk away, disappearing into the shadows as he heads back on to the main street. It angers her that he can be so flippant, so cocky in his demeanour, because tonight she had glimpsed more than she should have, seen him raging with disgust over his own actions, crying on a park bench and she wishes she hadn't because that makes Jack human and if she can't see him as entirely evil then she's not sure what to think. Her words ring loud in her had, "I wish it were you," and a big part of her feels guilty, because he had been supposed to argue not agree, never, ever was he supposed to agree.

"That makes two of us,"

If he felt like that then why do it? Why let her go? Jack's strong, Tru is perfectly well aware of that fact, all he had to do was pull, throw his own weight backwards and Megan would have been safe; perfectly simple. But he hadn't. He'd let go. He says neither of them have the right to decide who lives and who dies but he'd made that decision right then, standing on the observation deck of the Edison Tower, leaning over the safety barrier, one hand latched firmly onto the quivering hands of the petrified woman as she pleaded, sobbing, for him to help her. She had trusted him and Tru could understand why; for without the knowledge of his calling, Jack was an easy man to trust, calm, gentle in his questioning. Megan had barely known him and that's why she had confided in him; it was sickeningly ironic that her anchor to life had been death himself.

Tru sighs; her breath unfurling in a cloudy mist into the night. It's quiet, the only sounds that of a city slowly going to sleep before it awakens again in a few hours, rushing forth into a new day, oblivious to what had taken place the night before. She's not sure how long she sits there, but by the time she moves, her limbs feel numb and her fingers are stiff as she rises from the bench, walking up the grassy embankment and heading for her car.

Author's Notes: This didn't turn out as I wanted at all, for starters it was supposed to follow Tru but instead it seems I followed Jack, ending up ultimately plot less…oh well :P review if you liked it, don't if you didn't (no flames please) – remember this is my first TC fiction so be nice!! :)