FK: "Informed Consent" (PG) by Brightknightie for PJ1228
Title: "Informed Consent"
Fandom: Forever Knight
Author: brightknightie (Amy R.)
Recipient: pj1228
Beta Readers: Batdina and Skieswideopen; Cheerleader: Hearts_blood
Prompt: Nick/Janette "no restraints"
Lyrics: "Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do your eyes grow dim / Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do you let me in?"
Classifications: PG, ~2.5K words
Characters: Nick, Janette, Natalie, Others
Summary: Between the scenes in "False Witness," Nick receives an enigmatic message from Janette.
“Sign here,” the express courier pointed. “And initial over here.”
Yawning, Nick tightened the belt around his paisley silk robe and complied. “How long did you lean on my buzzer before I woke up?”
“Twenty minutes. The shipper’s instructions said to try continuously for no less than half an hour.” The courier grinned. “Special delivery is our specialty! Now, one more signature here -- thank you, sir! Enjoy!”
As the door shut between them, Nick wondered whether he should have tipped the man, but his wallet sat across the room in the credenza drawer with his gun and badge, and he didn’t feel like rewarding the act of waking him up in the middle of the afternoon, anyway. He tore open the express company’s cardboard envelope; into his hands dropped a slender gift box, the shape for a bracelet or a pen set, wrapped in antiqued paper patterned with little black Eiffel Towers -- folded, not taped -- and tied with a black velvet ribbon. He didn’t need the waybill to tell him that it came from Janette.
Nick took the box to his table. Pushing aside the mess that had gathered while he had been brooding the past several nights, he set out Janette’s shipment, sat, and stared. He prodded his sleepy brain to turn over and rev up. He had last seen Janette almost a week before, on the night of the disastrous Kozak trial, when Nick had found his moral compass only on the tipping point of perjury. He had told the truth at last, but all of Metro PD felt betrayed, the press smelled blood, and Captain Stonetree had indomitably ‘suggested’ that Nick take some time off. Nick had gone to Janette, but not only had he not found the sympathy that he knew he did not deserve, she had finally asked him about Lacroix.
The black scorch across his steel door drew Nick’s gaze, like gravity. That mark was all that remained of the man -- creature -- vampire -- who had ended Nick’s life almost eight hundred years before, in a candle-lit chamber in Paris . . . as Janette had looked on, restrained, as always, by Lacroix’s dominion, her desires harnessed in the service of his.
Nick shook the box lightly next to his ear: no sound. He had wrestled with his rupture with his human colleagues, but had retreated from his rift with Janette, the one vampire whose regard still mattered to him. He had found himself as wary of pressing her after she knew what he had done as he had been of telling her in the first place. Before, he had rationalized that Janette must know, instinctively, must feel Lacroix’s absence as Nick did. Confronted, he had understood that he had just not wanted to talk about it. He still didn’t. That choice, however, had passed from him to Janette -- from culprit to judge. Could she feel obligated to take revenge for Lacroix’s death at Nick’s hands? She had always avenged what was hers. In this case, she could crush her foe merely by turning her back and walking away; now, especially, with his professional integrity scarred like his door, Nick could not bear to lose her.
Janette was the last of his family, the last to share his memories, the last capable of understanding and so absolving -- or condemning -- him. More, she was simply, intricately, eternally Janette. They had fallen in and out of love times beyond counting, if always within the confines of the long games Lacroix played, to which Janette had bowed in her survival strategy, and which Nick had confronted in his. She was, incarnate, those aspects of vampirism that Nick could not hate.
Retribution or reconciliation, she had made her decision and delivered her verdict. It sat before him on his table.
Unwrapping the box and lifting its lid, Nick found a large black feather, a small white feather, and a lock of brunette hair tied in a loose knot. No, ‘lock’ was the wrong word; it implied a tidy clipping. Inspecting, Nick found these hairs mismatched, the detritus of a brush or comb, used-up strands falling out to make way for new ones. Indisputably Janette’s: he could smell her in them yet. The feathers, similarly, were worn and old, not plucked loose, but molted free.
“A hunter who confuses good storytelling with good hawking brings home little game, Master Nicolas,” Castle Brabant’s head falconer said, steadily shearing smooth the wood of a new perch.
“But does it not explain the birds’ behavior?” The boy raised himself up on his toes. “The man at the fair said that the reason the big black birds languish quietly in their nests in midsummer is that their tribute is due to their master, the Devil. He demands his levy of their very bodies, and so they must tear out their own feathers to meet his dire tax! The rest of the year, they share his evil power, but at midsummer, he reminds them that they are his.”
“Ravens, rooks and crows may or may not serve the Evil One -- I cannot say -- but all birds molt, and all birds are tired and moody through the molt. You would stick close to your nest, too, lad, if you had to lose and regrow half your feathers. Change is no easy thing.”
Lacroix had indeed exacted perpetual tribute from all those to whom he gave what he considered the greatest gift: eternal night. Janette, he had used more ruthlessly, more intimately, than most; he had cared little for the lure, only the prey.
Nick snorted and pushed his chair back from the table. Feathers and hair in a box? Janette knew how to use a telephone! For that matter, she had been literate longer than Nick had. Was this enigmatic game of symbolism an homage to Lacroix, a warning that she had chosen revenge? Or was it an opportunity for Nick to prove himself worthy, an announcement that she had chosen to forgive? Nick found the remote control and cracked his blinds, just enough to hint at the early-summer afternoon’s golden glow. He paced beside his windows.
When the phone rang, Nick let the machine answer. “Knight. I’m either in bed or incommunicado. You know the drill.”
“How are you holding up, Nick?” Natalie’s voice floated over her favorite radio station in the background. “About ready to come back to work? I know you’re feeling rotten about Kozak going free, but letting him take you off the streets is just handing the bad guys another victory they don’t deserve -- as Schanke told me today, probably so I’d tell you, probably so he can get you back without either of you having to say you’re sorry. You know, if more people just said what they meant--” She paused.
Nick wondered whether she had bitten her tongue to stop the ‘I told you so’ he had earned from her. Everyone else, however -- Schanke in so many words, and much of the rest of the force by silence -- had encouraged him to let the ends justify the means and lie for the prosecution. When he had told the truth at the last, he had been doing the right thing, and he resented that no one would acknowledge it. Nick stopped pacing; his attention jumped to the realization that he wanted Janette, too, to allow that he had done the right thing, however belatedly -- in her case, freeing them both from Lacroix.
“Anyway, it’s been long enough,” Natalie concluded. “Remember to eat something when you get up, and call me, okay? ‘Bye.”
Nick went to his refrigerator and poked at the deli containers that Natalie had recommended -- to remove any excuses, she’d said. He had tried, but their contents just didn’t register as nourishment to him. He poked a finger in the egg salad and licked it. Grimacing, he resealed the container and took a bottle of cow blood from the back. Snagging a clean-enough glass from the accumulation by his sink, Nick returned to his table and Janette’s cipher.
He pored over the feathers through two glasses of slow sips. Nick felt safe presuming that the large, black, corvid quill came from a raven, and represented either Janette’s club, or Janette herself . . . if Janette’s own hair did not stand for her. The white columbidae feather made no such contextual connections, and it had been many lifetimes since Nick had hunted such game. Black and white, large and small, raven and pigeon . . . or dove.
“Noah opened the window of the ark, and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth,” Matthew read, the pages of his Bible lit by the fire that warmed the main room of the small farmhouse.
Nicholas sat at the other end of the fieldstone hearth, using the same firelight to repair a broken harness strip. Matthew’s narration enfolded Nicholas, his reading as open as his friendship. Nicholas could hardly remember the last time he had felt so content, which rang a warning bell; ever restrained by Lacroix’s pursuit, Nicholas knew he should move on soon. But he felt so accepted . . . he pushed away the thought of moving on.
“Also he sent forth a dove, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest, and she returned unto him into the ark.” Matthew chuckled. “Do you think that the raven ever got tired, Nicholas? Or did it so fervently need to stretch its wings after forty days cooped like my chickens?”
“I think that freedom can be intoxicating,” Nicholas smiled back.
Yes, a dove’s feather; that fit. But what was a dove -- peace, love, the Holy Spirit? No. Again, he was straying too far afield, mistaking the keys for the lock. Janette herself was the puzzle. Her hair: was it a who? Herself, surely, if so. But rings of hair had also been mementos of grief for time out of mind, exchanged between corpse and mourner. If her hairs paid a final levy to Lacroix, the token could reckon infinite arrears as easily as close all accounts. The raven feather: was it the where? Her club, if it was not herself . . . Nick caught himself circling. Perhaps one feather should stand for Nick, if the other did Janette; both birds had been freed, and had then faced their first choice -- what to do with their freedom. Black hair, black feather, white feather. Death, flee, return?
One thing he knew was when. Now. Janette, ever easily bored, knew about his involuntary nights off, and had engaged that extraordinary express courier. While time moved differently for her than it did for Nick’s mortal friends, and she could lose months when happily distracted, the summons to appear shortly after sunset had never been in question.
Nick measured the fingers of blood left in the bottle. He had not yet cracked her code. Perhaps, as a detective, he should be better at the task, but riddles defied investigative procedure. By nature, they required a leap of intuition, and he did not see which way to jump. Now that Janette knew Lacroix was dead, Nick doubted that she would put her loyalty to Lacroix before her love for Nick, but ‘an eye for an eye’ rested easy on Janette’s shoulders. As much in backsliding as prudence, Nick polished off the bottle of cow blood. Whether Janette had chosen revenge or reconciliation, he would prefer his strength loose, his hunger caged.
Showering, brushing, and finding the least worn jeans and dress shirt from the piles on his bedroom furniture took a less time than the setting sun at this time of year. From the Caddy’s driver’s seat, Nick picked his route carefully, watching the light retreat before the stretching shadows in the urban canyons between tall buildings. He thought as he drove, hoping that the simplest answer -- “here I am” -- would prove the right one. He had never pretended to be clever, just dogged and experienced. Usually, that was enough.
The Raven’s bouncer growled at Nick. Nick smiled back, as usual. Inside, the fresh young things with whom Janette amused herself were sober in their frills and frivolous in their essentials. A few danced actual steps to the cyclical techno blast, but most swayed with their feet planted. Catching the bartender’s attention, Nick received a nod toward the back room behind the red curtains.
Tonight, a decorative chain tied back one of the curtains. Approaching, Nick saw a widening slice of table, tablecloth, chairs, glasses, ashtrays: supplies for one of the private parties for which this room was meant in Janette’s business plans. Nick stopped on the threshold. From the head of the table, Janette met his eyes. In a blink, the threads that still connected them as children of Lacroix were vibrating in tune.
“To victory!” Geoffrey toasted, yet again.
There had been precious few victories under the blazing Levantine sun, Sir Nicolas de Brabant brooded, but it was an excuse none questioned to carouse in the capital, rather than trudging home to those who had doubtless forgotten them.
“You hang over our feast like an ill-favored gargoyle, Nicolas!” Geoffrey clapped him on the back. “Be of good cheer! We have reached Paris at last. What more is there to desire?”
Across the room, a dark woman, whom Nicolas had seen before, met his eyes. She touched a finger to her lips.
There had been four clues, Nick realized, not three. The final was the first. The what. Paris had been his and Janette’s beginning, but, though Nick had not yet known it, even then, Lacroix’s shadow had darkened their meeting and constrained their choice of each other. While Nick had watched Janette, Lacroix had been watching him. The paper was his pardon; the hair Lacroix; the feathers Nick and Janette. Who were they each, now, blinking as they stepped out of that shade?
Lightly, Nick echoed the shared memory: “How badly do you want me?”
“Less than my freedom.” Janette stood and extended a hand. She wore one of her usual, work-night, black evening gowns, but she had draped a filmy scarf over her hair and shoulders, hinting at the costume in which he had first seen her. “More than my revenge. And you?”
“Less than my soul.” Nick took her hand and stepped close. “Just how strong is your weakness?”
“My weakness for you?” Janette smiled, a tilt of her delicious lips that said she knew something he did not, and he would enjoy it. She raised their joined hands and kissed his fingers. “I have the strength of my weakness, the weakness of my strength. With all of Lacroix’s restraints shed, who are we, really?”
“Let’s find out together.”
- End -
Disclaimers. Parriot and Cohen created Forever Knight. Sony owns it. No infringement is intended. Everything, of course, is entirely fictional (that medieval legend exists; vampires don’t).
Canon and Citations. This story fits between the scenes of “False Witness,” repurposes dialogue from “Dance by the Light of the Moon,” and touches on assorted other episodes, including “Dark Knight, The Second Chapter,” “Dying to Know You” and “Be My Valentine.” Matthew’s reading is a slightly abridged version of the King James Bible text.
Inspiration and Beta-Reading. I wrote this piece for PJ in the 2012 Oldschoolfic “Springtime Serenade.” She requested Nick/Janette, Natalie and Lacroix, to the prompt “no restraints;” the bonus lyrics were, “Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do you let me in?” This story suffered through a computer crash on the weekend of the due date, but was granted two days’ extension to recover. My thanks to Batdina and Skieswideopen for fitting in necessary beta corrections on a circulation-cutting deadline! My thanks to Hearts_blood for reassurance! The story would be better if I’d had more time (and less stress) to spend with their reflections; perhaps I will work on it more before taking it elsewhere.
Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism is welcome. Please let me know what you think.
Fandom: Forever Knight
Author: brightknightie (Amy R.)
Recipient: pj1228
Beta Readers: Batdina and Skieswideopen; Cheerleader: Hearts_blood
Prompt: Nick/Janette "no restraints"
Lyrics: "Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do your eyes grow dim / Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do you let me in?"
Classifications: PG, ~2.5K words
Characters: Nick, Janette, Natalie, Others
Summary: Between the scenes in "False Witness," Nick receives an enigmatic message from Janette.
“Sign here,” the express courier pointed. “And initial over here.”
Yawning, Nick tightened the belt around his paisley silk robe and complied. “How long did you lean on my buzzer before I woke up?”
“Twenty minutes. The shipper’s instructions said to try continuously for no less than half an hour.” The courier grinned. “Special delivery is our specialty! Now, one more signature here -- thank you, sir! Enjoy!”
As the door shut between them, Nick wondered whether he should have tipped the man, but his wallet sat across the room in the credenza drawer with his gun and badge, and he didn’t feel like rewarding the act of waking him up in the middle of the afternoon, anyway. He tore open the express company’s cardboard envelope; into his hands dropped a slender gift box, the shape for a bracelet or a pen set, wrapped in antiqued paper patterned with little black Eiffel Towers -- folded, not taped -- and tied with a black velvet ribbon. He didn’t need the waybill to tell him that it came from Janette.
Nick took the box to his table. Pushing aside the mess that had gathered while he had been brooding the past several nights, he set out Janette’s shipment, sat, and stared. He prodded his sleepy brain to turn over and rev up. He had last seen Janette almost a week before, on the night of the disastrous Kozak trial, when Nick had found his moral compass only on the tipping point of perjury. He had told the truth at last, but all of Metro PD felt betrayed, the press smelled blood, and Captain Stonetree had indomitably ‘suggested’ that Nick take some time off. Nick had gone to Janette, but not only had he not found the sympathy that he knew he did not deserve, she had finally asked him about Lacroix.
The black scorch across his steel door drew Nick’s gaze, like gravity. That mark was all that remained of the man -- creature -- vampire -- who had ended Nick’s life almost eight hundred years before, in a candle-lit chamber in Paris . . . as Janette had looked on, restrained, as always, by Lacroix’s dominion, her desires harnessed in the service of his.
Nick shook the box lightly next to his ear: no sound. He had wrestled with his rupture with his human colleagues, but had retreated from his rift with Janette, the one vampire whose regard still mattered to him. He had found himself as wary of pressing her after she knew what he had done as he had been of telling her in the first place. Before, he had rationalized that Janette must know, instinctively, must feel Lacroix’s absence as Nick did. Confronted, he had understood that he had just not wanted to talk about it. He still didn’t. That choice, however, had passed from him to Janette -- from culprit to judge. Could she feel obligated to take revenge for Lacroix’s death at Nick’s hands? She had always avenged what was hers. In this case, she could crush her foe merely by turning her back and walking away; now, especially, with his professional integrity scarred like his door, Nick could not bear to lose her.
Janette was the last of his family, the last to share his memories, the last capable of understanding and so absolving -- or condemning -- him. More, she was simply, intricately, eternally Janette. They had fallen in and out of love times beyond counting, if always within the confines of the long games Lacroix played, to which Janette had bowed in her survival strategy, and which Nick had confronted in his. She was, incarnate, those aspects of vampirism that Nick could not hate.
Retribution or reconciliation, she had made her decision and delivered her verdict. It sat before him on his table.
Unwrapping the box and lifting its lid, Nick found a large black feather, a small white feather, and a lock of brunette hair tied in a loose knot. No, ‘lock’ was the wrong word; it implied a tidy clipping. Inspecting, Nick found these hairs mismatched, the detritus of a brush or comb, used-up strands falling out to make way for new ones. Indisputably Janette’s: he could smell her in them yet. The feathers, similarly, were worn and old, not plucked loose, but molted free.
“A hunter who confuses good storytelling with good hawking brings home little game, Master Nicolas,” Castle Brabant’s head falconer said, steadily shearing smooth the wood of a new perch.
“But does it not explain the birds’ behavior?” The boy raised himself up on his toes. “The man at the fair said that the reason the big black birds languish quietly in their nests in midsummer is that their tribute is due to their master, the Devil. He demands his levy of their very bodies, and so they must tear out their own feathers to meet his dire tax! The rest of the year, they share his evil power, but at midsummer, he reminds them that they are his.”
“Ravens, rooks and crows may or may not serve the Evil One -- I cannot say -- but all birds molt, and all birds are tired and moody through the molt. You would stick close to your nest, too, lad, if you had to lose and regrow half your feathers. Change is no easy thing.”
Lacroix had indeed exacted perpetual tribute from all those to whom he gave what he considered the greatest gift: eternal night. Janette, he had used more ruthlessly, more intimately, than most; he had cared little for the lure, only the prey.
Nick snorted and pushed his chair back from the table. Feathers and hair in a box? Janette knew how to use a telephone! For that matter, she had been literate longer than Nick had. Was this enigmatic game of symbolism an homage to Lacroix, a warning that she had chosen revenge? Or was it an opportunity for Nick to prove himself worthy, an announcement that she had chosen to forgive? Nick found the remote control and cracked his blinds, just enough to hint at the early-summer afternoon’s golden glow. He paced beside his windows.
When the phone rang, Nick let the machine answer. “Knight. I’m either in bed or incommunicado. You know the drill.”
“How are you holding up, Nick?” Natalie’s voice floated over her favorite radio station in the background. “About ready to come back to work? I know you’re feeling rotten about Kozak going free, but letting him take you off the streets is just handing the bad guys another victory they don’t deserve -- as Schanke told me today, probably so I’d tell you, probably so he can get you back without either of you having to say you’re sorry. You know, if more people just said what they meant--” She paused.
Nick wondered whether she had bitten her tongue to stop the ‘I told you so’ he had earned from her. Everyone else, however -- Schanke in so many words, and much of the rest of the force by silence -- had encouraged him to let the ends justify the means and lie for the prosecution. When he had told the truth at the last, he had been doing the right thing, and he resented that no one would acknowledge it. Nick stopped pacing; his attention jumped to the realization that he wanted Janette, too, to allow that he had done the right thing, however belatedly -- in her case, freeing them both from Lacroix.
“Anyway, it’s been long enough,” Natalie concluded. “Remember to eat something when you get up, and call me, okay? ‘Bye.”
Nick went to his refrigerator and poked at the deli containers that Natalie had recommended -- to remove any excuses, she’d said. He had tried, but their contents just didn’t register as nourishment to him. He poked a finger in the egg salad and licked it. Grimacing, he resealed the container and took a bottle of cow blood from the back. Snagging a clean-enough glass from the accumulation by his sink, Nick returned to his table and Janette’s cipher.
He pored over the feathers through two glasses of slow sips. Nick felt safe presuming that the large, black, corvid quill came from a raven, and represented either Janette’s club, or Janette herself . . . if Janette’s own hair did not stand for her. The white columbidae feather made no such contextual connections, and it had been many lifetimes since Nick had hunted such game. Black and white, large and small, raven and pigeon . . . or dove.
“Noah opened the window of the ark, and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth,” Matthew read, the pages of his Bible lit by the fire that warmed the main room of the small farmhouse.
Nicholas sat at the other end of the fieldstone hearth, using the same firelight to repair a broken harness strip. Matthew’s narration enfolded Nicholas, his reading as open as his friendship. Nicholas could hardly remember the last time he had felt so content, which rang a warning bell; ever restrained by Lacroix’s pursuit, Nicholas knew he should move on soon. But he felt so accepted . . . he pushed away the thought of moving on.
“Also he sent forth a dove, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest, and she returned unto him into the ark.” Matthew chuckled. “Do you think that the raven ever got tired, Nicholas? Or did it so fervently need to stretch its wings after forty days cooped like my chickens?”
“I think that freedom can be intoxicating,” Nicholas smiled back.
Yes, a dove’s feather; that fit. But what was a dove -- peace, love, the Holy Spirit? No. Again, he was straying too far afield, mistaking the keys for the lock. Janette herself was the puzzle. Her hair: was it a who? Herself, surely, if so. But rings of hair had also been mementos of grief for time out of mind, exchanged between corpse and mourner. If her hairs paid a final levy to Lacroix, the token could reckon infinite arrears as easily as close all accounts. The raven feather: was it the where? Her club, if it was not herself . . . Nick caught himself circling. Perhaps one feather should stand for Nick, if the other did Janette; both birds had been freed, and had then faced their first choice -- what to do with their freedom. Black hair, black feather, white feather. Death, flee, return?
One thing he knew was when. Now. Janette, ever easily bored, knew about his involuntary nights off, and had engaged that extraordinary express courier. While time moved differently for her than it did for Nick’s mortal friends, and she could lose months when happily distracted, the summons to appear shortly after sunset had never been in question.
Nick measured the fingers of blood left in the bottle. He had not yet cracked her code. Perhaps, as a detective, he should be better at the task, but riddles defied investigative procedure. By nature, they required a leap of intuition, and he did not see which way to jump. Now that Janette knew Lacroix was dead, Nick doubted that she would put her loyalty to Lacroix before her love for Nick, but ‘an eye for an eye’ rested easy on Janette’s shoulders. As much in backsliding as prudence, Nick polished off the bottle of cow blood. Whether Janette had chosen revenge or reconciliation, he would prefer his strength loose, his hunger caged.
Showering, brushing, and finding the least worn jeans and dress shirt from the piles on his bedroom furniture took a less time than the setting sun at this time of year. From the Caddy’s driver’s seat, Nick picked his route carefully, watching the light retreat before the stretching shadows in the urban canyons between tall buildings. He thought as he drove, hoping that the simplest answer -- “here I am” -- would prove the right one. He had never pretended to be clever, just dogged and experienced. Usually, that was enough.
The Raven’s bouncer growled at Nick. Nick smiled back, as usual. Inside, the fresh young things with whom Janette amused herself were sober in their frills and frivolous in their essentials. A few danced actual steps to the cyclical techno blast, but most swayed with their feet planted. Catching the bartender’s attention, Nick received a nod toward the back room behind the red curtains.
Tonight, a decorative chain tied back one of the curtains. Approaching, Nick saw a widening slice of table, tablecloth, chairs, glasses, ashtrays: supplies for one of the private parties for which this room was meant in Janette’s business plans. Nick stopped on the threshold. From the head of the table, Janette met his eyes. In a blink, the threads that still connected them as children of Lacroix were vibrating in tune.
“To victory!” Geoffrey toasted, yet again.
There had been precious few victories under the blazing Levantine sun, Sir Nicolas de Brabant brooded, but it was an excuse none questioned to carouse in the capital, rather than trudging home to those who had doubtless forgotten them.
“You hang over our feast like an ill-favored gargoyle, Nicolas!” Geoffrey clapped him on the back. “Be of good cheer! We have reached Paris at last. What more is there to desire?”
Across the room, a dark woman, whom Nicolas had seen before, met his eyes. She touched a finger to her lips.
There had been four clues, Nick realized, not three. The final was the first. The what. Paris had been his and Janette’s beginning, but, though Nick had not yet known it, even then, Lacroix’s shadow had darkened their meeting and constrained their choice of each other. While Nick had watched Janette, Lacroix had been watching him. The paper was his pardon; the hair Lacroix; the feathers Nick and Janette. Who were they each, now, blinking as they stepped out of that shade?
Lightly, Nick echoed the shared memory: “How badly do you want me?”
“Less than my freedom.” Janette stood and extended a hand. She wore one of her usual, work-night, black evening gowns, but she had draped a filmy scarf over her hair and shoulders, hinting at the costume in which he had first seen her. “More than my revenge. And you?”
“Less than my soul.” Nick took her hand and stepped close. “Just how strong is your weakness?”
“My weakness for you?” Janette smiled, a tilt of her delicious lips that said she knew something he did not, and he would enjoy it. She raised their joined hands and kissed his fingers. “I have the strength of my weakness, the weakness of my strength. With all of Lacroix’s restraints shed, who are we, really?”
“Let’s find out together.”
- End -
Disclaimers. Parriot and Cohen created Forever Knight. Sony owns it. No infringement is intended. Everything, of course, is entirely fictional (that medieval legend exists; vampires don’t).
Canon and Citations. This story fits between the scenes of “False Witness,” repurposes dialogue from “Dance by the Light of the Moon,” and touches on assorted other episodes, including “Dark Knight, The Second Chapter,” “Dying to Know You” and “Be My Valentine.” Matthew’s reading is a slightly abridged version of the King James Bible text.
Inspiration and Beta-Reading. I wrote this piece for PJ in the 2012 Oldschoolfic “Springtime Serenade.” She requested Nick/Janette, Natalie and Lacroix, to the prompt “no restraints;” the bonus lyrics were, “Do the walls come down when you think of me / Do you let me in?” This story suffered through a computer crash on the weekend of the due date, but was granted two days’ extension to recover. My thanks to Batdina and Skieswideopen for fitting in necessary beta corrections on a circulation-cutting deadline! My thanks to Hearts_blood for reassurance! The story would be better if I’d had more time (and less stress) to spend with their reflections; perhaps I will work on it more before taking it elsewhere.
Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism is welcome. Please let me know what you think.