"Valley of Death" by Maria W., 2000
- Very Short Story (17KB)
- PG-13 (mild sexual references, vampire behavior)
- Indeterminate setting resembles third-season
Summary:
Nick chooses to exist completely as a vampire, and a nightmarish experience drives Natalie to the same conclusion.
Recommendation:
"Valley of Death" approaches bleak, unsettling themes with robust imagination. Allowing Nick an accommodation with his darkest desires, the story places Nick and Natalie's relationship on a mind-bending pivot from which the grim abandonment of all hope for the next life provides expansive gratification in this one. This interpretation plunges Natalie into a vivid landscape in which her choices both symbolize and trigger her final fate. In the depths of her horror, her response to one who begs for her help foreshadows and contextualizes the choice all vampires share.
Characters:
Nick, Natalie
"To a New Day" by Sandra G., 1995
- Short Story (24KB)
- PG
- Diverges after "Be My Valentine"
Summary:
Nick briefly embraces his vampirism, but then a discovery returns him to his quest and drives Lacroix to attempt Natalie's murder.
Recommendation:
"To a New Day" answers Susan Garrett's "From Dark to Dawn" challenge with a total revolution in the characters' lives. Climbing beyond canon to a decisive ending, the tale ably distills second season's most popular, broad, emotional themes into a few tight, well-stacked confrontations. "To a New Day" toys with off-screen scenarios without distorting or undermining the canonical resonance of its characters. Structure, events and inviolable personality traits converge to defeat Lacroix and unite Nick with Natalie, bookending "Dark Knight" in an affirming manner completely unlike third-season's later defeatism.
Characters:
Nick, Lacroix, Natalie
"More Fiercely Bright" by Jill K., 1996
- Short Story (79KB)
- PG (criminal violence)
- Set after "Sons of Belial," before "The Human Factor"
Summary:
Nick and Natalie provide protective custody for an uncooperative teenaged murder witness.
Recommendation:
Spare and direct, "More Fiercely Bright" strides through the center of third season, poking into the hidden hearts of familiar characters, yet withdrawing cleanly each time, as if striving to retain canonicity in a world anxiously awaiting next week's episode. This mid-season tension crackles through a firmly-human cop plot, which nevertheless attracts Lacroix and the vampiric thematic questions he carries. The story's efficient, allusive approach reaches its pinnacle in its vivid Natalie, whose truncated, wrenching references to her own life precisely and intriguingly mirror the vacancies of the series.
Characters:
Nick, Tracy, Natalie, Reese, Lacroix, Other
"The Shadow Lengthens" by Cindy I., 1999
- Vignette (7KB)
- PG
- Set during the present of "Only the Lonely"
Summary:
A mentally unstable watcher stalks a woman affiliated with a police investigation.
Recommendation:
The third sentence of "The Shadow Lengthens" declares Natalie Lambert to most fans. The narrative, however, refuses to commit to that identification — or any other — until its final paragraph. This omission eerily contextualizes often-celebrated motives, as the stalker's insanity initially invokes common characterizations of Nick and even Lacroix. Adroitly caulking the infamous improbability of "Only the Lonely," this creepy vignette neutralizes the crime's randomness in a manner that implicitly questions whether such reactions to OtL truly target improbability in fiction or randomness in reality.
Characters:
Roger Jamison, Natalie, Nick, Schanke
"Serpent's Tooth" by Thomas, 1994
- Short Story (35KB)
- PG-13 (off-stage criminal violence; vampire behavior)
- Set during second season, with flashbacks following "Love You to Death" in 1890
Summary:
Interviewing a witness reminds Nick of a pivotal moment in his relationship with Lacroix.
Recommendation:
Deftly infused with the symbolism of several of second-season's most memorable episodes, "Serpent's Tooth" brilliantly addresses Nick's tangled relationship with Lacroix by locating both freedom and slavery in a single act. This insightful canonical innovation proposes a unique explanation for the difference between Nick and Lacroix's contemporary and antique interactions. Careful parallelism with the modern criminal condemns Lacroix at his worst, but the clear, tight narration also provides a startling glimpse of Lacroix at his best, without surrendering its rich sense of the necessity and nobility of Nick's struggle.
Characters:
Nick, Schanke, Natalie, Lacroix, Others
More by this Author (Unavailable)
"Remnants of a Life" by Nancy K., 2000
- Nominated, 2000 FK Fanfiction Awards, General Short Story (17KB)
- G
- Set almost six months after "Black Buddha"
Summary:
Natalie stumbles across something that belonged to Schanke, uncovering Nick's still-fresh grief and guilt over his partner's death.
Recommendation:
A great profundity of Forever Knight lies in Nick's longing for the ordinary. Frequently epitomized by Schanke, ordinary life, downs as well as ups, draws Nick with a power to which all his extraordinary experiences cannot compare, a construction exalting reality in the heart of the fantasy. "Remnants of a Life" conveys this with the vigor of a first-season tag scene. A catharsis to Schanke's loss ranging from anger to sorrow to humor, the vignette insightfully employs relentlessly mundane items and purely human emotions to render its tribute to Schanke's pivotal thematic role as well as his well-loved character.
Characters:
Natalie, Nick
"The Rekindling" by Erika W., 1997
- Short Story (63KB)
- PG
- Set after "Last Knight"
Summary:
Vachon revives during "Last Knight" and intervenes in the apparent fates of Tracy, Natalie and Nick.
Recommendation:
With irreverent humor and frequent recourse to canon, "The Rekindling" slips in where the camera turns its back, vivaciously collecting and reconstituting structural components abandoned or shattered as the series closed. This story energetically enmeshes Vachon in the responsibilities he always fled, appealing not only to ironic amusement but to a thoughtful revelation of the contradiction between Vachon's tangible actions and abstract self-image. Similar reversals provide a freshly-insightful core to superficially-familiar LK scenarios for all featured characters. (Sequel: "Fires Kindled.")
Characters:
Vachon, The Inca, Tracy, Nick, Natalie, Lacroix, Janette
"My Soul To Take" by Dianne LaMerc, 1995
- Short Story (91KB)
- PG
- Diverges after "Killer Instinct," before "Be My Valentine"
Summary:
An old friend of Natalie moves to Toronto, revealing an ancient enmity between vampires and witches.
Recommendation:
A fast-moving homicide investigation provides the lattice over which "My Soul To Take" vines its themes of free will, intrinsic identity and the temptations and constraints of power. Introducing witches creates an original perspective on vampirism undistorted by vampiric self-interest or normal-human skepticism, a perspective that both illuminates Nick's quest and invokes the contortion of inherited prejudice. Exciting throughout, "My Soul To Take" artfully paces its character development and emotional tension to its plot action until all coincide in the striking climax. (Sequels: "Benighted Walks" and "A Little Knowledge.")
Characters:
Natalie, Nick, Schanke, Cohen, Janette, Lacroix, Others
"Something the Boy Said" by Leslie GS, 1996
- Song-Challenge Story (22KB)
- PG-13 (strong vampire violence)
- Set in the late thirteenth-century, between the flashbacks of "Fallen Idol" and those of "For I Have Sinned"
Summary:
A group of medieval pilgrims detours to its doom.
Recommendation:
"Something the Boy Said" crystallizes Forever Knight's ever-shifting comparison of humans and vampires, freezing its ultimate demonstration in a vista both intelligent and chilling. From richly evocative details to the grimly inevitable consequences of straying from the true path, this story astutely employs its non-canonical characters to heighten suspense and convey the bleak, telling details that constitute its subtle thematic commentary. Vivid throughout, "Something the Boy Said" features a compellingly self-aware Lacroix, who implicitly classifies himself as he casually throws his pet traitor Judas's portion.
Characters:
Others, Lacroix, Nick
"Justice, Being Blind" by Susan G., 1994
(This author died in 2010.)
- Novella (226KB)
- PG (violence)
- Set circa first season; flashback circa 1400-1600
Summary:
The blinding of a young artist reminds Nick of his own loss of the light.
Recommendation:
Archetypal Forever Knight themes intricately unite the cop plot, flashbacks and personal dilemma of this satisfying, episode-like tale. Presenting the human world in which Nick now walks with compelling vitality, the events of "Justice, Being Blind" — both past and present — taunt him with the hope of just a little bit of sun, just a touch of light, only to wrench it away. The story clarifies Nick's quest for him and for the audience in the resonantly-hopeful fashion characteristic of the best of first season, exposing both the temptation and futility of half measures on this road from fate to choice, subjugation to freedom, darkness to light.
Characters:
Nick, Schanke, Other, Janette, Lacroix, Natalie
"But I Might..." by Kathy W., 1998
- Nominated, 1999 FK Fanfiction Award, 1999 Short Story (25KB)
- G
- Set shortly after "Last Knight"
Summary:
In the hospital after "Last Knight," Natalie reflects on what brought her to this pass.
Recommendation:
Largely an interior monologue, "But I Might..." enumerates the significant but often-minimized emotional difficulties of third season, placing Natalie in a coma both literal and metaphorical. The story muses on her recent dependent behavior, retracing her steps from a dynamic, multi-faceted life to one revolving solely around Nick. Allowing Natalie to recover consciousness as she recovers her sense of self, "But I Might..." revitalizes the character for a tangible future with its own lessons to teach, rather than just another ending to lessons already taught. (Companion piece: "Puzzles.")
Characters:
Natalie, Reese, Nick, Other
"Revenge" by Elisabeth H., 1995
- Center-Stage Challenge Story (14KB)
- PG
- Set before "Dark Knight" in 1460, 1884 and 1979
Summary:
Miklos becomes a vampire in order to exact revenge on his family's murderer.
Recommendation:
Elicited by the fkfic-l Center-Stage Challenge, which requested scenarios spotlighting the more obscure canonical characters, "Revenge" sketches origins and motivations for Miklos, the second-season Raven bartender. Relocating conventional vampire lore within the fictional history, this lean tale efficiently spins the scant fibers of canonical fact regarding Miklos into a thematic parallel with Janette, enmeshing the character within the structures of Forever Knight in a manner particularly appropriate to his genesis with "A Fate Worse Than Death."
Characters:
Miklos, Other
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Naturally, these fanworks are entirely fictional (there's no such thing as a vampire). Forever Knight was created by Parriot & Cohen and belongs to Sony. Feedback and suggestions are welcome; please let me know what you think. Thank you very much for reading!
