I love good guys

I began the first draft of this story from Nick's perspective, and then started over again from Natalie's to find it worked better, though entirely differently.  The coda from Lacroix's perspective wasn't on my outline; it just appeared, as Lacroixian things sometimes do.

If this weren't a retrospective, I wouldn't have identified the voices like that, because my hope was for the reader to speculate, for the first few paragraphs, that it is Janette.  But of course the character list below shows that Janette isn't here.  I'm wary of detailed headers for that very reason (spoilers) and I'm glad fkfic-l still does not require them.  That preference seems to be my old-fashioned oddity, though, doubtless because there is ever so much more fanfiction than there used to be -- which is a good thing; don't get me wrong! -- and people in more active fandoms need more ways of sorting through it all.

	•	Title:	"Last Minutes"
	•	Length:	~3,100 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L October 24, 2007
	•	Rating:	PG (m/f)
	•	Summary:	At a wedding reception, Natalie ensures Nick's secret is kept.
	•	Setting:	c.2011
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Lacroix, Urs, Serena, Lily Toeffler, Catherine Barrington, Others
	•	Quotation:	"If most vampires persist in thinking of psychokinetic hypnotism as a magic spell, it's no wonder they don't use it to its full potential."

Someday, I may write a sequel to this novella, and it may be called "Under a Long Shadow."  Someday.  If I figure out the theme.  I know what happens next, you see, but I'm not sure it matters, because "In the Light of Day" fulfills its whole original purpose.  To write, I must have purpose.

"In the Light of Day" is a parallel-reality tale.  The break with canon comes after "Fever," and the story then progresses through "Dead of Night," "The Games Vampires Play" and "The Human Factor," reworking each episode given Nick's new mortality, until things are so different that the parallel snaps, and the alternate reality floats free.

One tidbit of which I'm fond here is Natalie's on-the-fly psychoanalysis of Lacroix, in which she concludes that no one will ever love another person as much as he has, over eight centuries, convinced himself he loved Fleur.  I also like the garden I built for Feliks Twist (but I really owe him a nice story of his own for his fate here).  And the flashbacks!  I did more research for them than any before or since (so far).  For this story, I became queen of a certain slice of Trivial Pursuit questions.  :-)

	•	Title:	"In the Light of Day"
	•	Length:	~53,000 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in October 2003
	•	Rating:	PG-13 (m/f)
	•	Summary:	Nick regains his humanity, but he's not the only one.  And no one is prepared for all the consequences.
	•	Setting:	After "Fever," with flashbacks 1226-1228
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Nick, Norma, Stonetree, Urs, Tracy, Reese, Vachon, Feliks Twist, Lacroix, Myra Schanke, Janette, Others
	•	Quotation:	"Nick strolled back to his loft in the crisp morning light, feeling everything was right with his world. Granted, his arm was in a sling, his shoulder throbbed like thunder, he remained on enforced medical leave, his partner might never again pass a police physical, and the Enforcers could well be coming to get him and the woman he loved..."

Next in this rolling retrospective is "A Matter of Time."  The twist of this story depends on its readers knowing both "Last Knight" and "A More Permanent Hell" fairly well.  That did not seem like much to ask six years ago, but I wonder whether now such canon knowledge would indeed be too much to ask.  Time passes; things change.  What is the custom for assuming canon familiarity in other long-sleeping fandoms?

I'm happy to get to say that this is the fifth most popular story I've ever posted.  My thanks to those who have let me know they've read it!

	•	Title:	"A Matter of Time"
	•	Length:	~3,450 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L June 24, 2002
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	A much-changed Natalie confronts Nick with a stunning request only he can fulfill.
	•	Characters:	Nick, Natalie
	•	Quotation:	"Fully awake, he could feel the splice in the metaphysical rope of his artificial life, the place where his being twisted inextricably with hers.  Family.  The monster who had done this to her was close kin."

When I posted "Puzzles," someone enthusiastically requested a sequel.  I've never forgotten the kind request, but I was never able to decide just what happens next.

In retrospect, this was the first of my "Natalie's Life Goes On" genre.  Like "Send My Love," "Better Late" and "Last Minutes," "Puzzles" picks up years past "Last Knight" without being a post-LK story, and sketches a life for Natalie that does not stop with canon.  Curiously, they all share that prelude-like construction.  I don't mean to leave things hanging!  But I speculate that it's defying the finality of LK.  "Forever means forever," and all.  Without end.

	•	Title:	"Puzzles"
	•	Length:	~1,550 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L July 20, 2002
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	In an alternate future, Natalie's past never really lets her go.
	•	Setting:	c.2017 New York
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Others
	•	Quotation:	"And if he had died -- in a freak accident, or at the hands of what she now thought of as the dark underworld he had first escaped and then battled -- she would never know."

hearts_blood

• "Revenge" (1 Part) by Ell H.
• "Car-Sin-Ogenic" (1 Part) by Walt D.
• "Victorian Christmas with Lacroix" (1 Part) by Laurie of the Isles
• "Catch-22" (1 Part) by abby82
• "A Christmas Eve Conversation" (1 Part) by Walt D.
• "Singing Up the Sun" (3 Parts) by Nancy K.
• "To Light the Darkness" (WIP 6+) by Kristen F.