| Reconcilable Differences | |
|---|---|
| Author | Brightknightie |
| Date | 3 June 2025 (redated) |
| Where posted | AO3 |
| Rating/Warning | PG13 |
| Genres | drama |
| Format | short story |
| Archive Location | |
Story Recap[]
When Nick is gravely injured in the line of duty, he and Natalie disagree about how far to go to save his life.
Notes[]
Written for FK Fic Fest 2025 (released 3 June) to the prompt "I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear". Length: 5272 words. Beta'd by Batdina.
The story is set in 1993.
Author's Notes[]
"I decided to poke at the knotty trope of Natalie treating a badly injured Nick by giving him the human blood that she otherwise insists is the barrier to all his hopes (e.g. “Dark Knight, The Second Chapter,” “Night in Question”). One inspiration was Proverbs 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” that is, you can trust a true friend telling hard truths."
Quotes[]
He’d been on his best streak yet, consistently substituting high doses of Natalie’s perfluorocarbon emulsions — “protein shakes,” when anyone at the precinct asked — for the bovine blood he’d otherwise restricted himself to, plus a vile new vitamin tablet she’d contrived, and together they really had tamped down his vampirism. At long last, recovering his mortality had seemed right around the corner. Sunlight. Freedom. Human love. After all the boundless betrayals, of him and by him, he could almost touch the edges of his lost honor, faith, and trust.
That success had felt like all things good until about a minute ago.
Comments[]
- "Set between Seasons 1 and 2? That would make this an AU, I guess—and a very intriguing one. Nick covers up bullet wounds so easily in the show; but, if Natalie should find a cure (or at least a treatment), then a scenario like this is all too probable. Let's face it: Nick is habituated to vampirism and its benefits. Of course, there's the flip side. He's all too well aware of the flip side: the blood and the killing. But he expects to heal almost instantaneously. All his reactions in a dangerous situation are predicated on that assumption." — excerpted from comment by greerwatson on AO3
- "Yep, to be overly precise, this story is set shortly after season one (aired May 1992 - March 1993) and well before season two (aired September 1994 - July 1995)." — excerpted from reply by Brightknightie on AO3
- "Harrowing! I worry for Nick when his quest for mortality becomes a death wish. There's more to humanity than that. It made me think of how he was in "Near Death." I have sympathy for him, but I also kind of want to shake him! I definitely felt for Nat trying to reason with him, wanting him to live another day." — excerpted from comment by Switchbladeeyes on AO3
- "His perspective is informed so differently than Natalie's, from his so-different experiences over so long. I didn't want to say that either character was wholly right or wrong, which did make it hard to extract them from the impossible situation I'd put them in." — excerpted from reply by Brightknightie on AO3
- "What a very interesting conundrum you've created here: Nick is so close to achieving his much-desired mortality, and yet it seems that it may be ripped from him just as he is on that threshold. And we have Natalie who is torn as well: she has always preached that it is the blood which has kept him from coming back across, yet she is now advocating that he take blood in order to save him." — excerpted from comment by Calliope24 on AO3
- "The setting between season 1 and 2 is a perfect choice for the development of this attempt at a cure. Janette's comment in "Killer Instinct" that she could hardly sense him when she visits him in the prison cell nicely aligns with Nick's state in distancing himself from the vampire in this story. / Nick's resignation to prefer dying over a blood transfusion resonates with his statement in "Fever" ("Maybe that's the only kind of mortality I'm allowed")." — excerpted from comment by PJ1228 on AO3
- " I feel that Nick never wants to die, but rather that he wants humanity even more than he wants to live. He wants both humanity and life, but when he thinks that perhaps he can have humanity at the cost of his life, the scales begin to tip for him, and he is not dismayed the way other characters would be... thus leading to incidents like "Near Death," "Fever," and this story. He is no longer as afraid of death as he was when he met Joan so long ago." — excerpted from reply by Brightknightie on AO3
- "In this story I saw a theme I’d toyed with in the past: would Nick prefer permanent death, even as a vampire, to the cost of continuing life as a vampire? The show is a bit ambiguous about this, as is Nick, I believe. Yes, he wants to live, but at what cost? But then we have him begging LaCroix to kill him, while still very much a vampire, in LK. It’s an interesting conundrum to explore, and I saw indications of that here, done in your own deeply moving prose." — excerpted from comment by dlyt on AO3