Pondering our '21 FKFicFest prompts #3: "moment of truth"

Our third elected fkficfest prompt for this year is: "a moment of truth." I've been thinking:

Literally, "a moment of truth" could be a brief time of honesty, fact, or realization, whether beyond what's common, or as breaking from a context of falsehood, deception, or reticence. For example, in "A Fate Worse Than Death," when Janette tells Nick facts that she's kept from him for eight centuries, that might be this kind of moment of truth. (I quibble with that episode's supposition that Janette's background would be so unknown to Nick, and much more so that he wouldn't have noticed that he didn't know... but that's a different post.) Similarly, any time that Nick divulged something about his condition or past to Natalie, that confiding could be this kind of moment of truth. Or when Lacroix tells Nick the circumstances under which Janette gave him the Raven, having held back those facts for months. Or when he admits Divia. This kind of moment of truth can happen over and over.

Metaphorically, "a moment of truth" is a turning point, a defining choice, the proverbial fork in the road that makes all the difference and reveals character, stripping away masks and accretions. Nick rescuing Alyce instead of the jade cup in "Dark Knight" is this kind of moment of truth, establishing him as a hero in that time and place. Equally, Nick's choice to become a vampire in the first place is perhaps this kind of moment of truth, a pivotal, defining, revealing decision. And then Nick's choice, after murdering Sylvaine, to stop killing altogether. Usually, this type of moment of truth is depicted with complete consciousness by the character; it wouldn't be a moment of truth if it slipped by unnoticed, if it wasn't weighted on both sides. Could such a moment of truth be an accident? Maybe! But it's usually a choice; the "truth" is in what is revealed of the character. This kind of moment of truth happens to a character only once, in most stories, or twice (to choose wrong, learn lessons, and then re-choose right), though perhaps once an episode in a serial.

Both kinds of moments of truth appear throughout "Feeding the Beast." Facts, lies, self-revelation, hard choices.

I think that Natalie's choice to ask Nick to bring her brother across in "I Will Repay" is not such a moment of truth. I think that the choice was much too easy, too immediately flowing out of her character and the situation at that time, to qualify as a moment of truth. Nick's choice to comply with her request, on the other hand, might be such a moment. If he had refused, he would have been a different character -- maybe better, maybe worse, but surely a different man than we know.

What do you think about our FK characters and this prompt?