The Subtle Forms of Control
By April French

"What is freedom? The freedom to choose? Is it the ability to make choices, unopposed by anyone else? A Cadillac or a Buick... a red shirt or a green one? Control of your own destiny," the Nightcrawler laughed, mouthing the words with an awful, simpering sneer. "It's all about control."

Detective Tracy Vetter reached out and snapped off the radio. "Why do you listen to this guy night after night?"

Her partner shrugged. "Helps pass the time." But Nick wasn't interested in pursuing their usual line of banter regarding his queer taste in late-night radio hosts. His mind was elsewhere, Tracy decided, frowning.

"Nick, are you okay?"

"Huh?" His cobalt-blue eyes flickered over to her and then back to the road. "Yeah, of course I am. Why?"

"I don't know. You seem... preoccupied."

Nick Knight kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead of him, but to Tracy, it did not look like he was actually seeing it. "Yeah, Trace. I'm fine." But as he said this, he was driving past the city morgue where his best friend worked.

He always stops at the morgue to see Natalie. Every night. Whether we have business with her or not. Fine? Fine, my ass. "Nick--"

"Listen, our shift's almost over. Lemme drop you off at you apartment?"

Clearly, whatever was bothering him--and Tracy was certain there was something--he did not want to talk about it. Oh, for God's sake. Nick took personal privacy to an almost Olympic level. I'm his partner. I have to trust this man with my life. Don't I deserve his trust?

"That's great, thanks." She pulled her coat more tightly around her body. "Nick, I know you love this old boat of a car. But honestly. Could you please get the heater fixed?"

He frowned at the slight to his beloved '62 Cadillac, then gave her a small smile. "I'll think about it," he promised.

"Before next winter?"

"We'll see." He lapsed into a moody silence, so common for him these past few weeks and yet so unlike his normal periods of distraction and reflection that Tracy was desperate to get him to start talking again.

"So, um, what're you doing this weekend?"

Nick lifted his shoulders a fraction. "Nothing interesting. You?"

"I think I'm going north with my father."

Nick murmured something noncommittal.

Tracy tried once or twice more to get her partner to talk, to lift him out of his dark mood, but nothing worked. Nick was determined to be depressed.

He dropped her off outside her apartment building, as he'd done many times before. But this time, his customary 'I'll see you on Monday' was noticeably absent. She watched Nick drive off in his big green car, chewing her lip fretfully. Then she shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat and went inside, seeking shelter from the bitter cold Toronto night.

"Nick? Nick, it's Natalie. Will you call me, please?" A sighing sound, then "Bye." There was a short beep. Nick ignored his answering machine, and his friend's call.

He felt... drained. Bleak, defeated... Nick sighed, and threw his overcoat towards the armchair. It missed the chair completely and crumpled to the floor in a heap. He ignored it, unwound his woolen scarf from his neck and dropped it onto the immaculate kitchen table, along with his black leather gloves. There was a dull ache in the roots of his canines. He was hungry. Nick didn't really feel like eating, but he decided to anyway.

His feet dragging, he walked to the gleaming refrigerator, its surface noticeably devoid of magnets or shopping lists, reached inside and pulled out a green bottle. He swallowed a small amount of the thick red liquid inside without tasting it. He wandered around his loft for a time, aimlessly... examining his unfinished paintings, letting his sensitive fingers trail over the smooth carved wood of the dragon on the mantelpiece, over the cracked and grayed wood of the box that held his old cross, vividly experiencing the memories that went with each touch.

Nick grimaced at the blood in his mouth and set the bottle down on the coffee table without finishing it. He thought briefly of dumping the contents down the drain, or even of throwing the green glass vessel across the room to shatter against the radiator. He'd done that before; the smash had always been most satisfactory. But all he really wanted right now was sleep.

Nick went to bed without closing the steel window shades.

He managed a restless sleep for most of the day, and then called in sick that night, hanging up as Tracy was demanding an answer.

Tracy scowled at the dial tone coming out of the receiver in her hand. "He's not coming in tonight," she said to Natalie. The coroner's pretty face was concerned. "I'm worried about him, Natalie. He hasn't been... he's just... Dammit! I don't know what the problem is!"

"I know, Trace. He's not an easy man to know well." Not even for someone who knows him as well as I do, she added to herself.

"But there's something wrong with him," Tracy persisted. "You agree with me on that?"

Natalie answered with a firm nod and an equally firm "Definitely." Perhaps her response was a little too vigorous; Tracy raised a blond eyebrow and allowed herself a moment to re-examine (for the three-hundred-and-forty-second time) the rampant office rumors about the nature of the relationship between Det. Nick Knight and Chief Coroner Dr. Natalie Lambert.

"Has he said anything to you?"

"No, nothing out of the ordinary. Not that he ever tells me what's wrong with him," Natalie added. "He is an intensely private man. He never opened up much to his last partner, and he considered Schanke a very good friend. I've known him since he came to Toronto, and even I don't know that much about his past, let alone his present state of mind. He hasn't said anything to make me nervous, he hasn't done anything... It's more like what he hasn't done." She didn't elaborate, and Tracy didn't press her for details, but Natalie was thinking of the many movie dates that Nick had broken at the last minute, his lack of enthusiasm for their scientific experiment, his return to drinking human blood...

"So... what do we do?" Tracy's anxiety was plain on her face. "All right, maybe I should just stay out of Nick's affairs. Maybe it's none of my business. But I consider Nick to be my friend--he's the only one in this precinct who's ever given me half a chance as my own person and not as 'Commissioner Vetter's daughter.' And," she added, a little ashamed of her own pragmatism, "if I have to put my life in Nick's hands every night, I want to be sure he's capable of looking after it. But he won't tell me a thing! You're sure he hasn't said anything to you?"

"Nothing to worry me."

Tracy's frown deepened. "You're the closest thing to a family Nick has in this city. If you don't know what's the matter with him... who else can we go to?"

Natalie looked down, fiddling with a pencil in the cup on Nick's desk. There was one other person in Toronto that she could go to, she knew, to discuss the nameless fears she was having about Nick. It would mean her death, certainly. But what choice do I have?

The nightclub known as the Raven was a dark and forbidding place, even in the sickly light of the rising winter sun. Natalie clutched her purse and gulped. She did not want to go inside. She locked her car and walked right up to the back door, and pounded on it.

"Hey! Hello? LaCroix? LaCroix, I know you're in there! LaCroix, I need to talk to you about Ni--"

The door opened a fraction, and a stark white hand shot out and grabbed her by the collar, jerking her into the darkness as the heavy door slammed shut. The owner of the hand hissed in pain; as her eyes adjusted to the dark, Natalie could see tendrils of smoke rising from the fingers and knuckles, and a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

"Well?"

Natalie found she had lost the ability to speak. The ancient vampire snarled. "Doctor, I was under the impression that you were a plain-speaking and intelligent woman. Do not disabuse me of that opinion, or it will go very badly for you."

Swallowing, Natalie found her voice. "I need to talk to you about Nick." LaCroix was silent. Then,

"Well?" he said again, impatiently. "I should not have to remind you that I am a nocturnal man, Dr. Lambert, and ought to be sleeping right now. Not contemplating a before-bed snack."

Natalie narrowed her eyes. LaCroix's acid tone lent straightness to her spine; no one spoke to her like that, not even two-thousand-year-old vampires with bad tempers. "Do you want me to take a look at your hand?"

A dark eyebrow went up. "No, Doctor, that will not be necessary." With his uninjured hand, LaCroix gestured to the door that led into the empty club.

She sat down at the bar; he took up a place behind it, leaned his elbows on the polished metal so that his face was barely six inches away from hers, and said for the third time, "Well?"

"Something is the matter with Nick. I've noticed it, his partner's noticed it--but he won't tell either of us what the problem is."

"A tight-lipped boy, is my Nicholas."

"Which is why I'm here." Natalie met his eye squarely. "You know him better than anyone." A momentary gleam flickered over the ancient's pallid face, something very like triumph.

"You honor me to acknowledge it." His ice-blue eyes were bland, almost kind. Nonetheless, Natalie shivered. "But what do you expect of me? Nicholas is prone to bouts of depression. Surely, in six years of knowing him, you have seen him like this before."

"And that strikes you as normal?"

"For Nicholas, yes."

Natalie shook her head slowly, disgusted. "Is it any wonder Nick wants to get away from you?" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how foolish she had been, but LaCroix did not seem insulted. Rather, he seemed amused.

"Is it?" he mused. "And such a wonder... but what makes you say such a thing?"

Taking her foot in her hand, as her father used to say, Natalie spoke her mind. "You claim to care for Nick as a son. That's why you won't let him go, why you stop him every time he tries to regain his mortality. Am I right?"

"In part."

"Only part?"

"Yes. The rest, a mortal such as yourself could not begin to understand. But continue, please."

Natalie licked her dry lips. "You want so badly to control Nick that you won't take notice of him when he falls into this deep of a depression, even when his sanity is in jeopardy."

In response, LaCroix laughed softly; his cold breath hit Natalie's cheek as bitingly as the wind outside. "Nicholas's sanity," he murmured quietly, "is almost always in jeopardy. Certainly, it is always in question. But control?" The volume of his husky voice increased with his question. "My, my, Doctor, you say that as if it were a bad thing. All relationships are based on control. It is a battle of wills, a game, if you like. I control Nicholas so that I can look out for him, so that he will not self-destruct, for the sheer love of controlling."

"Kind of a one-sided game. Especially since Nick's doesn't seem to know the rules, or even that he's playing."

"Oh, he knows," LaCroix corrected. "He knows. That's why he fights back." Reached up above his head, the owner of the Raven took down two crystal glasses, setting one in front of Natalie. Then he reached down, reemerging with two wine bottles. From one, he filled Natalie's glass; from the other, conspicuously unlabeled bottle, he filled his own. "So Nicholas has done something to excite your concern. I must say, it warms my cold, dead heart to know that you... care... so very much for my son." He paused expectantly. Natalie felt herself flush, and struggled not to squirm. LaCroix chuckled softly. "Indeed. And now, tell me plainly," all levity and threat gone from his voice, "what is it about Nicholas that has so aroused your concern?"

"He's just not acting like himself. He's distant, morose, uncommunicative--"

"That sounds rather like Nicholas to me."

"He hasn't painted or played his piano in weeks." Now, Natalie was both pleased and alarmed to see, an expression of worry began to form on the ancient one's face. "He's been spending a lot of time at Schanke's grave. And he's broken every movie--" She hesitated briefly over the word. "--date that we've made."

"To the detriment of your social life, I'm sure." But his tone of voice made it clear that his heart was not in the joke. "Tell me... Has he said anything to you?"

"Said anything... strange?"

"Of a particularly suicidal nature."

Natalie blinked, stunned. Suicide...? "Nothing specific, no. He hasn't even said anything remotely suspicious; it's just what he's done. How he's been acting." LaCroix's expression was grave. "You think that's significant."

"If Nicholas truly wanted to end his life, he wouldn't tell us about it. No, he would withdraw from society, both mortal and vampire, losing interest in all his former pleasures..."

"Don't you think you're assuming a lot?"

"Am I?"

"Nick's depressed, certainly. But suicidal..."

"Doctor." LaCroix lifted an imperious eyebrow. "You cannot tell me the possibility has never crossed your mind."

"Not... not recently. A few years ago, maybe, but now... I don't know."

Slowly, with great care and deliberation, LaCroix drummed his fingers on the bar. "As you yourself said, Doctor, you do not know Nicholas as well as I do. No one can. I know him to be as manipulative and conniving an individual as myself--it was one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place.

"I suggested suicide because it would not be the first time he has threatened to take his own life. Suicide, or the threat of suicide, is a desperate grab for control. It is the most manipulative thing someone can do." He offered her a slight smile. "Do you understand?"

Natalie didn't want to, but... "You're saying he's... what, faking his depression? To get attention?"

"No, I have no doubt that his state of mind is quite real." LaCroix touched his temple. "No doubt at all. But as I said, Nicholas is often like that. It has become his norm. He is becoming suicidal. Again," he added with a sigh. "And the result this time will be the same as all the other times." He closed his eyes, then slowly opened them, looked at Natalie, and shrugged. "He wants to be stopped."

LaCroix stood up. "You may stay here today, if you wish. None of the... tenants... will bother you. You have my word." Natalie didn't move. "Doctor, whatever you may think of me, I am a man of my word. And whatever I may think of you, let me set your mind at ease: It's nothing personal. You could be any other woman on the planet; you could be every woman on the planet. I would still be trying to keep you away from Nicholas."

"You'd still be trying to kill me."

The vampire's pale face split in a delighted smile. "Indeed," he chuckled. "But not today." He tossed back his wine, swallowing slowly, savoring the age and flavor of the blood. "Tonight, I will speak with Nicholas, and all your worries will go up in smoke."

Natalie didn't sleep much that day, but LaCroix kept his word: she wasn't bothered. Still, come nightfall, she got out of that club as fast as she could.

She went to the morgue. There was no message waiting for her, not from Nick, or Tracy, or even LaCroix. Her hand hovered over the phone, wondering if she should try calling Nick again. But she decided against it. Still apprehensive, she set about her work.

About an hour before sunrise, she became aware of someone looming over her dissecting table. Her heart immediately skipped several beats. There were only two people who could sneak up on her like that... "Dr. Lambert."

Dammit. "LaCroix." Natalie looked up. The ancient vampire was wrapped in a long black coat that, coupled with his pale complexion, made him look rather like one of her corpses, just come into the morgue in a black bodybag. "Did you see Nick?"

"Yes."

"And...?"

"And I am rapidly becoming concerned." Reaching out, LaCroix took the scalpel from her hand, and minutely examined the triangular blade with the ridges of his index finger. Then he shook his head sharply. "I tried, Doctor. I tried every trick that I know of--everything that has worked on Nicholas in the past--and..." He lifted his arms and then let them fall limply. "Nothing. Now he's stretched out beneath the skylight, waiting for sunrise."

"Oh, God..."

"He's simply given up."

Natalie was enraged by his unruffled tone. "And that's just fine and dandy with you?!"

LaCroix regarded her coldly. "He doesn't care. He believes that there is nothing anyone can do to convince him to take interest in his life, and that gives him the power. There is nothing in this world that is more powerful than not caring. What more can I be expected to do?"

"If you loved Nick as much as you think you do, you would do everything possible to save him from--"

"From himself?" LaCroix sneered. "Mortals do have a fundamental inability to apply common sense to their dogmas and beliefs, but I expected more from you. Listen to me, Natalie: Whoever loves least holds the power. So. Where am I in this equation? Where are you?" He marked her silence well. "I am not the great blind fool that Nicholas sometimes takes me for. I know what he feels for you, and what you feel for him. We both care for him. But right now, he cares for no one except himself. Every other time that he has threatened to take his own life, he wanted to be saved. This time, he has completely given up. And against that, I am powerless." He shut his mouth abruptly and turned away.

"Powerless. You've known Nick for eight hundred years, have kept an iron-fisted grip on his life for the same amount of time, invading his life and his privacy--"

"There is a very good reason why I never give Nicholas any privacy." He pointed at her with the scalpel. "And if you knew what was good for him, neither would you."

"You are a crazy, evil, hard-nosed bastard and I don't know how Nick put up with you for so long..." Natalie trailed off, certain that she had about six seconds of life left.

"Oh, by all means, continue. It makes no difference to me; I've heard it all before, my dear. Mainly from Nicholas. So I'm evil, am I? Insane? Where do you draw the line, Dr. Lambert? Right, wrong, good, evil, sane, insane, normal, abnormal..." LaCroix spread his hands. "Can you see where one ends and the next begins? And what gives you the privilege to do so? Are you the keeper of some universal standard of right?"

Natalie sighed in annoyance. "Of course not--"

"Then stop judging!" he hissed. "I do what I think is right for Nicholas. Clearly, we have a difference of opinions in that regard."

"Clearly."

"He isn't responding to me," LaCroix continued. "I have done all I can for him, to no avail, and I am exhausted from trying. I have lived ten thousand lifetimes, and died as many deaths to save Nicholas. Could you do as much?"

Natalie lifted her chin. "Yes," she said, resolute and firm.

"Prove it," LaCroix retorted, "and I'll relinquish my claim on Nicholas."

"Ex... excuse me?"

"Nicholas may have lived eight centuries, but in many ways he is still a child. He needs to be taken care of."

"You mean he needs to be controlled."

"Well, we won't quibble over semantics. Prove to me that my presence in his life is redundant, that you can give him that care, and I'll leave. But I warn you, Doctor: it will take a great deal before I am satisfied."

He tossed the scalpel down on the tray. Instinctively, Natalie looked toward the sound. When she looked up, LaCroix had gone.

Natalie grabbed her coat and car keys.

When Natalie entered the loft, Nick was exactly where LaCroix had left him: stretched out on the floor under the skylight in his black silk pajamas, his hands folded limply over his stomach. In that position, it would be at least noon before Nick was in any real danger from that particular window, but all the other windows in the loft were unshuttered as well, and the sunlight would be more than able to reach Nick's vulnerable body. So before she did anything else, Natalie walked over to the coffee table--stepping over Nick in the process--picked up the remote control and pressed the button to close all the steel blinds, including the ones covering the skylight.

"What are you doing, Nat?"

"It's ten minutes to sunrise, Nick. I'm keeping you from being fried." Nick didn't answer. She sat down next to him. "Or should I just open the blinds up again and leave?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"I don't want to die."

"Well, you sure gave LaCroix that impression."

"I didn't mean to. I wanted him to stop me."

"He said he tried."

"He tried talking to me. That's what he's always done before. And it's always worked before. But I realized--it's just words. It's all just words. I didn't want him to convince me not to kill myself... I wanted him to stop me from killing myself. And he didn't." Nick took a deep breath.

Natalie touched his shoulder. "You gave him quite a run for his money."

"That was the whole point, Nat. To see how badly he wanted to keep me."

"And what about me, eh? And Tracy? Where did we fit into this equation?"

Nick couldn't answer that one. "He left, Nat. I've never seen him just... give up like that. Not where I was concerned. It scared me."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think you scared him pretty badly, too. You certainly scared me."

At that, Nick rolled over onto his stomach and looked up at her. "I did?" Natalie nodded. "I'm so sorry, Natalie," he said sincerely, his beautiful deep eyes showing all the feeling that he could never vocalize. "I didn't think... I just didn't think."

Natalie stared at him for a minute, then leaned down and placed a light kiss on Nick's forehead, a friendly caress such as he often gave her. "I know," she told him. "You never do. Must be part of your charm." Nick had the grace to look wounded. "How long have you been lying on the floor?"

"Since LaCroix left."

"Mmmhmm. And how long has it been since you showered?"

"Umm..."

"That's what I thought. And you're supposed to have a more sensitive nose than me? Ugh. Anyone with half a sense of smell would have an upset stomach hanging around you." Natalie stood and offered Nick her hand, which he took, and let her help him to his feet. "Go get in the shower," she ordered.

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly. "Will you be here when I get out?"

"Yes, Nick. I won't leave you."

~Finis--November 30th, 2003~