"The Subtle Forms of Control" by April F., 2003
- Short Story (27KB)
- PG-13 (suicidal behavior)
- Set in third-season, after "Sons of Belial"
Summary:
Natalie and Lacroix cope with Nick's passive/aggressive self-destructiveness.
Recommendation:
"The Subtle Forms of Control" initially pits Natalie against Lacroix with his favorite weapon — words — but then lets her wield her own — action. They skirmish in conversation, even as together they seek means to save Nick from himself, and their different understandings of Nick's motivations hint at their contrasting approaches. Lacroix's rhetoric scores all the points, but only Natalie's direct intervention ultimately succeeds. While canon preponderantly ascribes suicidal tendencies more to Natalie (cf. AMPH, LK) than Nick (cf. LA, LK), this story nails third-season susceptibilities in a challenging analysis of Nick's habits, suspended emphatically on the very edge of destruction.
Characters:
Lacroix, Tracy, Nick, Natalie
"Why Should I Cry for You?" by Lizbetann, 1997
- Vignette (14KB)
- PG
- Set alternating between the aftermaths of "Dark Knight" and "Last Knight"
Summary:
In 1992, Nick survives Lacroix's death. In 1996, Lacroix survives Nick's.
Recommendation:
The "bookending" effect of the killings in Forever Knight's premiere and finale rarely goes unnoticed. Less typically, "Why Should I Cry for You?" lifts up the spiral of endurance from one episode to the other. It is not only that Nick stakes Lacroix, and Lacroix stakes Nick, but that each persists in the other, ineradicable, as long as either exists. This song-challenge story stacks its parallel miseries on mirrored layers of Sting's questioning lyrics, building an unusual momentum across the series to escape the black hole of "Last Knight"'s conclusiveness without even tweaking canon.
Characters:
Natalie, Nick, Lacroix, Other
"Red Dreams" by Elisabeth H., 1995
- Vignette (6KB)
- PG-13 (vampire behavior, criminal violence)
- Setting indeterminate, possibly 1989
Summary:
Feliks exercises a unique accommodation between his hungers and modern constraints.
Recommendation:
Contemporary civilization endlessly frustrates traditional vampiric indulgence, as Vachon observes in "Trophy Girl," and as Janette often reminds Nick. In "Red Dreams," Feliks Twist, perhaps the most eccentric vampire in Forever Knight, revels in an unorthodox solution, fulfilling his hunt in his victim's nightmares, where he may satisfy his wildest cravings without stirring inconvenient human justice. Creepy, despicable, and fascinating, the compromise "Red Dreams" delicately depicts pillories the characters who do not make such concessions, comparing their barren, nostalgic rigidity to Feliks's rewarding, inventive activity.
Characters:
Feliks Twist, Other
"Somehow..." by Dorothy E., 1997
- Novel (319KB)
- PG-13 (vampire behavior, criminal violence)
- Set in second season
Summary:
Sudden closeness with Natalie during a disaster dangerously rouses the vampire in Nick.
Recommendation:
Seemingly poised for conventional hurt/comfort gratification, "Somehow..." eschews that quick release, plunging instead into extended canonical consideration. This Nick and Natalie, granted a mysterious interlude of intimacy, emerge into a pounding exploration of the blood-compulsion scenario raised in "Crazy Love." Unabashedly romantic, emphasizing the solace of acceptance as well as the intensity of infatuation, "Somehow..." nevertheless declines simple answers, insisting on not only the complications of Lacroix's "Be My Valentine" revenge and a criminal mystery, but the competing claims of all the characters. (Prequel: "Somewhere...")
Characters:
Lacroix, Nick, Natalie, Schanke, Cohen, Stonetree, Janette, Grace, Other
"Most Trunk Space in 30 Years" by James K.W., 1995
- Vignette (10KB)
- PG
- Diverges before "Black Buddha"
Summary:
Another vampire in need of shelter from the sun shares the Caddy's trunk.
Recommendation:
It's fun. It's cute. It bubbles with chipper turns of phrase and agreeable opportunities to call Nick a brick. Diverting our hero's stubborn, self-absorbed thickheadedness into comedy, this slender slip of a sitcom script rests gently in Forever Knight's tragic drama universe without spindling canon. (When first posted to fkfic-l in 1995, "Most Trunk Space in 30 Years" appeared under a content warning. Then, I would have believed it needed one. Today, I know better.)
Characters:
Nick, Natalie, Other
"To Love That Well" by Eve D., 2002
- Short Story (23KB)
- PG
- Set between the scenes in "A More Permanent Hell"
Summary:
Natalie copes with her feelings immediately following Nick's news of the asteroid hoax.
Recommendation:
This first-person Natalie narration conveys a convincing and revealing range of reactions on the heels of "A More Permanent Hell"'s climax, jagged peaks and valleys leveling as the character gradually calms down, sobers up, and looks to a future changed by her choices during the crisis. "To Love That Well" electrifies the lines connecting AMPH to "The Human Factor" and "Last Knight," without sacrificing its recognizably second-season accent.
Characters:
Nick, Natalie, Sidney
"Checking In, Checking Out" by Nancy K., 2002
- Crossover Vignette (15KB)
- G
- Set six years after "Last Knight" (in a meta way)
Summary:
Schanke welcomes someone new to the residence of those who die in television series.
Recommendation:
Equipping the characters with awareness of their fictional status, "Checking In, Checking Out" frees a rivulet of genial parody bubbling with the hardy complaints of sweeps season. Ever since their assorted deaths, this story comfortably assures us, the cast of Forever Knight has inhabited a luxury resort hotel, socializing with other discarded characters from ill-treated series, and beating network executives at softball. Schanke's amusing orientation tour shares pleasant visions of this fictional afterlife, with its eternal possibilities of resurrection — and not just in fanfiction.
Characters:
Schanke, Vachon, Screed, Urs, Tracy, Nick, Natalie, Others
"Grace" by Maureen W., 1996
- Short Story (31KB)
- PG (criminal violence)
- Set after "Dark Knight" and before "Black Buddha"
Summary:
Schanke tries to help a homeless teenager.
Recommendation:
"Grace" gives articulate voice to the most silenced of all Forever Knight roles: the doomed guest star. Relating a case entirely from the victim's side, the story fields an exceptional take on the faces Schanke and Nick present to those utterly outside their ongoing personal concerns, even while aligning its themes — trust, identity, humanity, freedom — with those concerns, illuminating character development beyond this story's tight scope. Self-contained and Schanke-centered, "Grace" boasts a timelessness reminiscent of a genuine episode's well-wrought cop plot, flipped through a perspective mirror.
Characters:
Schanke, Nick, Natalie, Others
"Come Down in Time" by Jill K., 1995
- Song-Challenge Vignette (6KB)
- G
- Set between seasons two and three
Summary:
Nick plans an evening out for Janette.
Recommendation:
When third season begins, Nick discovers Janette left "at least a month" before. Second season ends with Nick in Janette's arms, and Nick's visits to her club escalate from first season through second, yet third season stretches its dismal, helpless alienation backward through the summer, to the very edge of better days. Written before third season, "Come Down in Time" instead presents Janette's departure with crisp, second-season sensibility, within the established precedent of the characters' connection. More satisfying than "Black Buddha" or "The Human Factor" on this score, the vignette allows Nick insight while maintaining Janette's mystery.
Characters:
Nick, Janette
"Christmastime in the City" by April F., 2003
- Short Story (56KB)
- PG
- Diverges after "Strings," before "The Human Factor"
Summary:
Nick abandons his quest for humanity and embraces a romance with Natalie.
Recommendation:
Endowed with the customary sentimental conclusion, "Christmastime in the City" nonetheless makes serious use of the season, marshalling the holiday's proverbial loneliness and bustle to expose rich themes of isolation and belonging. Festivities exhibit Nick's self-segregation alongside others' attempts to include him. Adroitly, the story plants a destructive boom-bust cycle of companionship and solitude under Nick's decision to dismiss mortality and win back his absent vampiric "family," even as Natalie offers him her love and the Schankes their affection — unconditionally.
Characters:
Nick, Natalie, Grace, Tracy, Vachon, Myra, Jenny
"One Man's Freedom" by Catherine B., 1996
- Vignette (9KB)
- PG
- Set in an alternate future, diverges after second season
Summary:
Lacroix visits Nick's grave.
Recommendation:
An inspired, independent twist on the presumed mechanics of vampirism invigorates this vignette's use of an otherwise common scenario — Lacroix surviving Nick — and underlines the blood linkage through a bold, thought-provoking reversal. Written before "Last Knight" aired, "One Man's Freedom" achieves some of the same structural fulfillment as the series finale, similarly completing a spiral circle from Nick killing Lacroix in "Dark Knight." However, the vignette moves more audaciously than the episode, as its Lacroix murders Nick for inflicting humanity on him, as once he inflicted vampirism on Nick.
Characters:
Lacroix, Janette
"Paternal Order" by Susan G., 1996
(This author died in 2010.)
- Short Story (20KB)
- G
- Set after "Black Buddha, Part 2," before "Last Knight"
Summary:
Captain Reese helps his staff process the stress of a harsh case.
Recommendation:
Third-season Forever Knight is a grim, difficult period. "Paternal Order" gracefully turns over that bleak stone to reveal the patterns of coping and places of release that enable the characters to persevere. The narration avails itself of an effective moment in Captain Reese's tenure — familiar enough with his subordinates to feel for them as individuals, stranger enough to question how to read and reach them. Perceptively balanced over third-season's treacherous tensions, this story nevertheless hints at the quiet heroism of merely making the best available choices as one muddles through.
Characters:
Reese, Tracy, Natalie, Nick
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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!
