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Nikki. Nicolas. Nick.
The names echo in Lucien's head, make him feel the burn all over again.
Janette is gone. Lost to him. Precious as she was, his dark companion and eager accomplice for so long, he accepts the loss equitably. She has long since proven herself to be a true woman, walking the path that suits her whims. But then daughters are far more expendable in Lucien's mind, used to secure alliances or favors.
As she had secured Nicolas for Lucien.
Her darling Nikki continues to run from what he is, from embracing all he could be. Perhaps Lucien would have let go of Nick as easily as he had Janette if it were not for the fact that dear Nicholas is such a contradiction in three dimensional color. Nick, who so desperately wants to be human by all his protests, and yet still the foolish little Crusader draws against his powers nightly to pursue 'justice' for the mortals.
Maybe it is why Lucien still enjoys baiting him. Maybe it is the contradiction more than the thrust of patriarchal love.
Lucien smiles, twirls his goblet to mix the blood and wine more consistently, and knows that Nicolas is his, as a son should always be.
`~`~`~`~`
"Good evening, my listeners," comes lightly from the radio. "It is time for the NightCrawler to entertain, perchance to teach yet again, this dark, endless night."
Nick wonders, even as he reaches for the volume, just why he torments himself by listening to the prattle of the one who cursed him this way. LaCroix would say it was the last vestige of filial devotion, but Nick shies from the thought. A father doesn't drive a son toward murder, deliberately. Nor does he take every chance of happiness away. And yet LaCroix is guilty of both those charges and more, blind to his own inhumanity in his quest to be a father.
"...a tale of chosen loyalties and the loyalties due by birth."
//Great...another sermon of parental bonds.// Even knowing that is what will be the topic, Nick drives on, and never changes the channel.
`~`~`~`~`
By the time Tracy finishes the rather terse reading of the rights, Nick is distracted again. He hates just how uncanny the broadcasts of the NightCrawler and his life seems to marry up. Tonight, the partners had finally solved a string of murders, one where partners of a large law firm had been kidnapped and then brutally killed elsewhere, all over the loss of a case involving parental rights.
Nick wishes he knew just how LaCroix did it, deep in the recesses of his mind.
Then again, if he knew, he might have to admit it had something to do with ties that bind.
And that is something Nick cannot bring himself to accept.
`~`~`~`~`
"Fellow travelers of the night, I ask of you, what could be more important than to meet the debts of your soul in the form of family loyalty?" Lucien pauses, then smiles to himself before using his customary sign off. He sets his board to inactive and rises, knowing who awaits him once he passes beyond the privacy of this tool of his, a nightly ploy to make sure Nicolas knows he is not leaving.
He will never leave his son, the one legacy of his that is worth keeping.
"Family loyalty." Nick's tones are scoffing, but his voice is seasoned now by the recent attacks on them both. Lucien knows, as he always does, that Nick is searching for some way to see around the contradiction of Lucien's own history.
"I was loyal to her, in my own way, Nicolas." The elder invites Nick to sit near, to share a drink with him in the empty haven. "Where would the loyalty have been to let her run around the world, mad as she was?"
"She was your daughter."
"And my maker. As my daughter, her life was mine to do with as I wished." The old paterfamilias is always just under the skin with Lucien. It is who he is, and if Nicolas could just accept it as the right way, they would be whole again.
"As your maker, shouldn't you have followed her wishes?" Nick argues, curious if he'll get a dismissal or a skewed logic answer.
Lucien ponders that thought one more time. His betrayal of Divia is too fresh in his mind, given the recent events. He slowly looks at his companion, a faint trace of emotion other than predatory interest there in his blue eyes.
"She should never have been allowed to usurp the way of things. In becoming the maker, she set the course of madness."
"As your child, you could not have that," Nick notes.
"I would never suffer a child of mine to be nothing but instinct and mindless action," Lucien tells him.
The words send a chill through Nick. //Is my only cure to be as she became? Mad? So that even he will give up on me?// He looks at LaCroix, and feels the truth in that assessment.
`~`~`~`~`
"What of love? Where does this foolish emotion take us?"
Lucien says the words, feels the bitter grief welling up again. It was the only thing he could do, to be true to himself, to Nicolas. Nicolas did not belong to the madness of love lost.
"The love of a friend, a paramour, or a sibling can move us to acts that lie barely within the scope of our ability to reach."
Lucien swirls the goblet again, remembering a time when the lees would have lain in the bottom of the cup, ready to be tossed as an after dinner diversion. He focuses on that, rather than the images of Nicolas, distraught over the foolish human love he had taken. As his chest begins to ache again, he focuses on the microphone.
"The love for a child will push you beyond that parameter, tear asunder each barrier that holds us as civilized beings. For a child, a parent will stop at nothing."
Lucien drains the goblet, sets it down, and looks to a place only he can see now. All gone, all his beloved children.
Nicolas, his eternal son, gone.
"Good night, Toronto. This is the NightCrawler, signing off this last time."
When he leaves, he does not look back.
There is nothing left but the grieving now.