The characters of LaCroix and Nicholas are not mine.  I only borrow
them from their creators and owners for a short while.

This is post-Last Knight.  Just post.  If you haven't seen that
episode, you should stop reading now.  Permission is given to archive
this as you may see fit.

It's not happy, know that in advance.

***
This is dedicated to Dylan MacKay Roberts, 1991-1996.  I miss you so
much, baby brother. 
***

	LaCroix stood on the sandy shore, staring at the moonlight reflecting
off the ripples.  He had buried them.  Both.  Together.  There was
nothing left to torture Nicholas with anymore; he could at least put
their bodies together.

	He had never wanted his son to be unhappy.  Like most parents, he was
so sure of what his child needed, so sure of what was right.  And he
had been wrong.  Nicholas had needed his support, his love, not
coercion and abuse.

	But he could no longer produce those tender emotions.  After two
thousand years, he had truly seen too much.  He had performed
atrocities as a mortal that he could never forget.  As a vampire, he
had killed thousands without a second thought.  Yet every day, he read
of some new horror visited upon the earth by humanity.  Some new form
of death, more terrible than the last.  Forms of death that even he,
so learned in its guises, could never have imagined.

	What was this life if not one long suffering?  Now he had killed his
child.  His favorite.  The only one he had tried to coax back into his
arms.  If it had been anyone but Nicholas, they would have been dead
at his hands hundreds of years sooner.  He had killed Divia-done it
twice-but she had deserved it.  She had been evil; Nicholas had loved
his life.  Nicholas strove to do good, despite the machinations of a
controlling father.

	Years ago, he had killed a woman, a mother.  She had, at the last,
been grateful for the end to her pain.  He still remembered her
thoughts:

	"How do you rationalize the death of a child?  What is there that
says 'it's OK' when you stare down into the waxy face in the coffin? 
It doesn't even seem real at that point; he looks like a porcelain
doll.  The real pain comes when you go home and see the toys that were
never cleaned up.  When you have to walk into his bedroom and begin to
empty the drawers.

	"It's standing on the beach, staring out to sea.  Wishing that you
were as blank as the ocean.  With it, any disturbance is eliminated in
seconds, a few waves' time.  You begin to walk out, the water slowly
climbing your legs.  Too slowly.  The water goes out shallow for a
mile at low tide.  

	"But that's OK.  You don't want death.  You want oblivion.  You want
to stop thinking.  To stop asking: did it hurt?  Was he in pain?  Was
there anything that I could have done?  To stop thinking up bargains
for a god you don't even believe in.  Take me.  I promise to be good. 
I promise to love him even more.  I promise never to doubt again.  But
the deed's already done.  He lies cold in the earth and you're still
trying to deny the inevitable.

	"The funeral went by in a blur.  I remember not being able to
breathe.  Roaring in my ears.  I couldn't hear people; they sounded as
if they were so far away.  This isn't happening, I thought.  This
isn't real.  It can't be.  I can't even see the coffin.  My eyes don't
seem to work.  All I can see is my hand shredding a tissue.

	"There is no resolution.  No point when it becomes all right.  There
is a hole that can never be filled.  An immense space that you didn't
even realize he filled until he was gone."

	Nicholas had been the world.

	LaCroix turned his back on the water.  It was time to move on.