Title: Eternal Flame

Author: Poodle

poodle75567@yahoo.com

Fandom: Forever Knight

Rating: PG

Pairing: LaCroix, Janette

Summary: Things change. Postscript to Last Knight.

Disclaimer: Never owned them. Never will.


Eternal Flame
by Poodle

"*Something's happened!*"

Shadows draped the silent form standing alone behind the Raven's bar. LaCroix didn't look up at the sound of Janette's voice, but continued to gaze at the amber liquid swirling in the glass balanced between his forefinger and his thumb.

"This thing I feel, tell me that it isn't so!" Janette descended the steps, swept the chains aside and raced to the bar. The chain's echo haunted her wake, fading into the dusty darkness, but the figure did not respond nor turn in her direction. "Talk to me. Something's happened, I feel it."

LaCroix drew the air deeply into his lungs and slowly released it. An imposing silhouette, shadows and light traced his noble profile as he raised the glass to his lips and drank without turning his eyes in her direction. "I was unaware of your presence in Toronto. I didn't sense your arrival."

"I never dreamed I'd hear you say such a thing." The woman caught her breath and silence rose to claim the moment. The raven-haired beauty clad in jeans and a formfitting tee reached across the bar and rested her hand on LaCroix's arm. A frown marred her porcelain brow. "Something's wrong, don't you feel it?"

"The winds of change, *ma chère,* nothing more."

Her eyes swept the room and noted its destitution, the lightened patches where portraits once hung, a discarded match book among a scattering of raven-embossed coasters, the glaring lack of patrons. She turned and searched his face. "You've closed the bar?"

"Time to move on."

"But what about--"

"Things change."

A chill swept through her and she grabbed his arm with growing dread. "Where is he?"

"When our time comes, it comes; it is fallacy to question it."

"*Where the hell is he?*"

LaCroix tipped the glass to his lips a final time, rested it on the bar and laid his hand on Janette's. "He, too, has moved on."

"None of this makes sense. The two of you argued, didn't you?"

"The time for dispute has ended; all has been said."

"Tell me!" Fear quickened the eternal silence of her heart and it trembled in her chest. "You fought, didn't you? He's hurt. This has been building for years. You tried to force him to leave the city, to abandon this ridiculous guise and he refused. You *beat* him, didn't you? Forced him into submission. He's in pain, that's what I sensed, isn't it?" The words rambled from her lips in desperation. "Where have you imprisoned him?"

"Your accusations are unfounded, I assure you." The master vampire sighed and looked away. "I've incarcerated no one."

"Tell me, *please.* I'll help you remove him from the city by any means you demand. No one can calm him as I can, you know this. He'll listen to me. I'm begging you, LaCroix, allow me to comfort him." She clutched his arm; her nails raked into the dark fabric of his sleeve. "You knew that when the time came to force him to leave this life behind it wouldn't be easy. It's worse this time; he's come to believe in this persona he's created. I know that you're angry--"

"The time for anger has passed, as well." His words rose with chilling calm above her tirade. "This night has laid all things to rest, scattered as ash on the wind."

The protestations died in her throat and she searched his face with fearful eyes, his commanding brow, the classic lines of ageless refinement carved into an alabaster face, the expressionless depths of his eyes. "Something's wrong here...terribly wrong."

"Closing time has long since past; it's best you leave." He swept his hand in a sardonic wave to indicate the bar's obvious permanent closure. "It remains, only, for the new proprietors to hang their shingle. The Velvet Underground, something or another."

Her petite nose wrinkled with distaste. "Mortals?"

He nodded, then cast a casual glance toward the ceiling and commented as an afterthought, "I believe that I shall take several of these chandeliers when I leave."

Her gaze passed over the bulbs' glow, and she breathed, "Careful...they burn."

He chuckled lightly and turned away.

"You're dismissing me." Janette raised her chin.

He lifted her hand and lightly touched it to his lips with poised gallantry. "Until our eternal paths in due-time cross, *au revoir.*"

She caught her breath, felt the tingle of her skin beneath his touch and met his eyes, fell into their ice-blue depths. "Nicola--?"

"Has embraced his own destiny. He asks only that we respect it."

A chilling certainty gripped her as she fought the dawning truth. "He needs us, you've said it a thousand times."

"Nicholas needs no one; he is *nullius filius.*"

"How can you say such a thing?" she gasped. "He's *your* son!"

LaCroix slowly shook his head and stared into the shadows of the bar. A suffusion of light played over the solemn features of his face and caught the silver highlights of his hair. "It is time to move on."

"*He's our son, LaCroix.*" The words tore from a confession harbored in her soul for almost eight hundred years.

"Ours?" Suspicion darkened his expression and he grabbed her arm. "Such a ruse is beneath you, Janette. You're wasting your time if you think to sway me with such sentiments; he isn't here. You're free to search every nook and cranny, if you wish, my trunk included, but you won't find him."

"I know." Her whisper cut the room as the truth of his words settled into her heart, the truth she'd held at bay since an agonizing pain seared her chest an hour before, leaving her gasping for breath. With surprising calm, she circled the bar and stood before him; her chin tilted up to meet his gaze in an act of uncharacteristic supplication. "Fate finds us alone, as it was in the beginning."

"Seduction? I must confess, surprise has stolen my penchant for soliloquy." Amusement danced in his eyes. "You would further the lunacy of this charade by offering yourself to me?" He grabbed her hips and roughly pulled her close; his fingers bit into her immortal flesh as he pushed the tee up and exposed her pale, slender waist to the stroke of his hands. "Shall I take you, here, against the bar?"

"I offer nothing that wasn't yours from the beginning, when together we chose to enrich the gift of our existence by bestowing it upon another." She pressed her hands to his chest and sought the silence of his heart. "To light a third eternal flame."

"You would assume dual culpability with regard to his immortal conception?" He chuckled and it echoed into the empty corners of the room to be swallowed by the dim. "The corrupt issue born of our unholy copulation?"

"The child born of our *love.*"

The laughter died on his lips and he stalled in surprise. His eyes passed over her face and he gasped when he sensed the ancient memories lingering beneath the years reflected in her gaze, the invitation of her touch when she pressed her palm to the medallion shimmering against the darkly-clad expanse of his chest. His breath caught in his throat and he covered her delicate hand with his own. "The legacy of our eternal waltz beneath the stars; I'm forced to question, had you known the bitter harvest sown by our embrace, how brief that candle's flame, would you have made the choice?"

"He's gone...isn't he?"

"*Sic itur ad astra.*" His eloquent tone filled the room, then unexpectedly LaCroix's voice faltered...

His broad shoulders trembled and he turned away.

"`Thus one goes to the stars,'" she translated softly. Centuries melted beneath the pain that smoldered in her heart when she reached up and enfolded him in her arms. "Yes, I would have made the choice."

He submitted to her embrace without constraint, his cheek pressed to her breast and breathed, "Born of our love."

Her soul would seal the secret of his crimson-rain that moistened her flesh...



The End