*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* This author has a new email address as of October 1998 Please contact Marcia at this address Thank You *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Date Sun, 19 May 1996 221441 -0400 From Marcia Tucker Subject "Past Night" / SPOILERS for LK "Past Night" A Forever Knight Story Copyright 1996 By Marcia Tucker Note This is NOT what I'd call a preferred scenario, just a scenario. He sat down without a word of greeting on the sofa, an arm's length from the other. On the coffee table was a second glass; he poured from the open bottle beside it, then lifted it to his lips and drank. The other, still and solemn, was nevertheless feeling great inner turmoil at this long-awaited meeting. But he would not express the fullness of his heart, not to this one, not now. After a very long while he spoke first. "Nicholas. I knew you would come eventually." No response. Another sip from the glass. "How long did it take?" Nick took a third swallow and set the glass back on the table. His handsome face was solemn also, but no deep well of feeling was hidden behind it. Emotion was held in abeyance. "Three months. Then two more to find you. As you knew I would." "Yes - you have questions." LaCroix looked over finally. "Three months, you say?" The other nodded. "I was aware for most of it. Strange - to float on the edge of death for so long but be unable to cross over." He still hadn't looked at LaCroix yet. In fact his eyes seemed to see something else far away. "I kept thinking that I should die, and wondering why I didn't. It's odd, now, that I should have thought that. I didn't *want* to die - and I did." He sighed. "You're going to tell me my age had something to do with it." "Of course I am. Evidently, Nicholas, you are just old enough to be difficult to kill by conventional means - like staking." Nick drew his breath in sharply. "You knew this would happen." "Yes." He turned his head and met the gaze of his master finally. "Why did you let me think I would die, then, LaCroix? You knew I wanted to!" A tremor to his voice betrayed a return of anguish. LaCroix looked upon the face of his son, knowing his pain intimately. "Nicholas, you made that decision under extreme duress. You had just killed the very mortal you loved and then asked me to kill you. Despite all your protestations of faith, you did not take into account that you may be damned for just those very actions. Did you really think I would let you go to that?" He'd spoken softly, but the sting of his words were a blow to his son. Nick gasped. "But to make me go on without... without... " He couldn't say it. The events of that fateful day haunted him still and he expected they always would. But LaCroix was right. He would have gone straight to hell. He was directly responsible for Natalie's death and had, in a sense, committed suicide. "It had to be. You must know that. Nicholas, your very quest for your mortality has never been about dying. It has been about life. Even I must honor that." Nick closed his eyes against the pain. "Yes, I know. You're right, of course." He opened his eyes and looked back down to the glass on the table. LaCroix caught the look. "It's, ah, human blood of course." "Yes. It's all right." He sighed. "Thank you for taking care of my personal matters in Toronto, LaCroix." A nod. "You're welcome. There were a few members of the Community who owed me favors who assisted." Nick wanted to ask about Natalie's remains, but couldn't yet. And he wanted to ask why LaCroix had abandoned him, alone in the loft, languishing, but he already knew that answer. He'd needed the solitude and the pain to think and to mourn. He'd never known such pain, the horrible agony from the wood piercing his heart, lessened only when it fell out of its own accord a week into his personal, private hell. Then the long, terrible regeneration had set in, and he unable to move or summon help, if help was to be had. Without the infusion of blood, the process was unforgivably slow. "Well, now I might begin to know, LaCroix, what you felt in losing Fleur... and Divia. This has been a time when death surrounded us, and we unfortunately must live on to endure beyond it." Nick sighed and took up the glass again, and drained it. Refilled it and sat back with the full glass of blood in his hand. "What do we do now?" Nick was still suffering from a severe state of denial, divorced largely from his emotions out of a sheer, unconscious survival mechanism. Only LaCroix would be allowed a marginal access to his heart, and that limited even more than before that awful night. Otherwise - Nick wanted no love, no mortals in his life. Not now. Perhaps not ever. LaCroix considered his son with warm regard. "We live, Nicholas. We go on." He gestured around the high-ceiling of the living room of his new home in Bexley, a town of old stone mansions and quiet grandeur within the capital city of Ohio. "We start anew. I have done that already, and so shall you. Here in Columbus, I have acquired a theater near the university and am beginning to write for it. A new endeavor for me, suggested to me, I might add, by my friends on the Internet. The company does some rather unconventional pieces, but they are, in their own words, stunned with the possibilities I present." "You always were quite the patron of the arts," Nick murmured. "Sounds like a good challenge. Are there more of us here?" "A few, not as many as in Toronto. Which is probably why you found me so quickly. Fewer mental influences here to muddy the connection between us - our link. Have you given any thought to your own future, Nicholas?" The future. He was haunted by the past, still struggling with his present, and LaCroix was talking about his future. "Not really. I shall not return to Toronto, of course. I was hoping..." LaCroix waited while Nick fell into a reverie. He was relieved that his son apparently accepted his new reality, though he still had much to recover from. In truth, the ancient vampire had not wanted to cause Nick the suffering that he'd had to endure after... after the accident... But he could not let him die. Not like that. Not now, either, as they had so recently come closer than they'd been for centuries. Divia, LaCroix's intensely evil daughter and master, before she was destroyed, had had the right of it to declare Nicholas as his son, his "favorite". To kill Nicholas as she nearly had would have caused LaCroix the greatest pain of his long life, a pain from which he might never have recovered. And the renewed tenderness between them had subsequently been a balm to his loss. In loving his son, he'd felt almost human. He couldn't bear to let Divia, evil twisted little Divia who was burning for all eternity in hell, to let her win. She'd wanted to leave him utterly alone. Letting Nick die would have let Divia win. "Yes?" he queried, returning from his own reverie. "You were hoping?" Nick regarded his master with something approaching warmth. At last. "I was hoping that maybe I could live with you. For a while, at least." LaCroix had been hoping. He sighed with relief. "Of course you shall, Nicholas. That would please me greatly." "Good." Nick seemed relieved as well. "I think I will need to simply be for a while. Perhaps set up a studio, paint. I don't know if I can return to law enforcement yet, though I probably will. And I still want..." Another sigh. "Yes?" Nick actually managed a smile. "I'd like to find her. If she could ever forgive me, I would like someday to have her back in my life - in some way. I miss her." LaCroix frowned in momentary puzzlement, then understood. "Janette." Nick nodded. "She is part of this family, too, though mine now and no longer of you. But her relation to us is through history. We - all three of us - have been hurt so deeply by loss. I'd like to think we need each other. I know I need you." It was a collective "you" that Nick meant, needing his family, but LaCroix felt it as drops of forgiveness on parched lips. He reached out to touch his son lightly on the shoulder. "And I you, Nicholas. And I you." The night was past and reaching into day, but the two vampires sat in quiet companionship for quite some time, letting the presence of the other work healing wonders in the silence. ~~~~~ When does THIS happen in the movie??