fksquee | Embodiment of Faith (2/3) (Reply)

Title: Embodiment of Faith

Author:

Scarlett Burns
Fandom: Forever Knight

Rating:

PG-13
Part: 2/3

Disclaimer:

Don't own it.

Summary: Father Rochefort makes a startling discovery that threatens his idea of faith. It isn't every day that your past comes back to haunt you, unless you happen to be Nick Knight.

Église Saint-Maurice

Chinon, France

April, 1430

He stood with his back to the cross, as he did each evening he waited for her. They did not meet often, and had seen each other only twice before, yet here he waited in the place she desired to meet.

Joan always requested to meet in the Church of St. Maurice, and for reasons even he did not want to fully understand, he always acquiesced.

The sun had set a few hours previously, and at this time the church was quiet and empty, save for one human heartbeat belonging to the woman standing before him.

A smile graced his lips and for once it was not tainted with sarcasm or iron or bitterness. This time he smiled with acceptance, for he needn’t ask Joan what path she’d chosen; it was clear to him from the moment he’d seen her enter the church.

For all his talk and cajoling to the contrary, a part of him would have been disappointed if her answer had been ‘Oui’.

She had not chosen his path. She’d not be tempted by Lucifer, and least of all he – Nicholas de Brabant – whom she saw as nothing more than a creature to be pitied.

Pitied.

Why should she think him such an unfortunate creature? He had what he desired; life without death and age, power, eternity.

However, it didn’t seem like much when he stood in her presence, though he’d never admit it.

He took a step closer to her stone-still form, and seeing she was about to protest, signaled for her to silence herself with a cold, solitary finger pressed against her lips.

Those fingers found their way to her cheek, and gently traced the outline of her jaw.

“Then God be with you in your quest, Courage.”

Joan, whose stern composure could leave much to doubt, gave him a look that could be nothing but disbelief. She regained her composure quickly, and then said both softly and confidently, “He shall be, as He shall be in yours.”

“As I compel Him to be,” Nick answered gently, and without his usual ire, before leaving Joan to her beloved church once and for all.

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“Your loss of Faith is not in God, but in yourself. That is not a sin,” Nick said, observing the miserable figure of Father Rochefort. If only he could tell him that his supposed ‘sin’ was nothing in comparison to his own.

“Does that not make me a coward? Faithless? Those are mortal sins,” Pierre said desperately, leaning forward as if pleading his point. “Where does that leave me in the eyes of God?”

Nick laughed unpleasantly. “You have nothing to worry about, Father. You’ve served Him all your life. A short crisis in faith is hardly enough to damn you, and I shouldn’t like to meet the God that would do so.”

“But isn’t that how the path to wickedness starts?” Pierre asked, with a tone that suggested Nick should know.

‘Just how much does he know?’ Nick wondered, not for the first time. “What makes you think that I know?” he asked with an edge to his tone that said he would not be put-off again.

It came through. Pierre grasped the book tightly as he looked down, almost as if it rooted him to reality. “You can’t deny that you don’t look a day older then when I last met you. I don’t pretend to know how, or why, but I believe that you are far older than a man can naturally live.”

Nick was silent, but he stepped out of the shadows and returned to his chair as the sun began to set.

“You can’t deny it… can you?”

“Perhaps I just have good genes,” Nick answered flippantly.

Pierre looked down at the book in his hands, and Nick truly noticed it for the first time. He’d been aware of Pierre carrying it of course, but hadn’t notice what it was, and it made his stomach feel heavy when he saw that it was an art history book from Belgium.

Opening the book, Pierre turned to the page that had the portrait, and then held it up for Nick to see. Even with a slight glare on the glossy page and the small size of the image it was clear to Nick that it was a portrait of him in all this knightly glory. It had been painted after his return from Jerusalem; his naivety gone, and nearly his life. He’d returned a knight of the Temple, a great honor and a far cry from his boyish days as an attaché for Lord De Lebarre. The homecoming had been a brief one, for on his next crusade he would not return alive – in the human sense at least.

Pierre’s soft, shaky voice pulled him out of his own head. “Is this you?”

Nick couldn’t quite tear himself away from the portrait to answer, and after a moment of bitter-sweet reminiscing he realized that he’d just given himself away.

With Nick’s silence, Pierre lowered the book, unsure of how to continue. Perhaps he expected denial, or outrage, or drama at the discovery and didn’t know what to do when he received none of the above.

Nick didn’t know what to do either. Sure, there had been people who knew what he was and kept his dark secret, but no one had discovered the man he’d been before he stepped into eternal darkness; no one had made the connection.

Truly, what were the odds of Father Rochefort finding this portrait? Despite his discomfort at the subject he shook his head, and with a small grin asked, “How did you find that?”

Pierre’s brow furrowed in frustration as he looked down at the book in his lap. Standing, he walked over to Nick and showed him the portrait up close, repeating his question more firmly. “Is this you?”

Self preservation seemed to prevent Nick from coming right out and confirming Pierre’s claim, no matter how obvious it was that the priest had already put everything together.

The house seemed impossibly silent as Pierre waited for his answer.

Nick took the book from Pierre’s hands and took a good long look. It was incredible; he’d had no idea the portrait had survived the ages... “How could this be me, and why would you think it is?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Pierre blurted immediately. “Believe me, I know. But… just too many things added up, and it all made a warped sort of sense. Please, I won’t ask how, and I’ll take your secret to the grave, if you’ll only admit that this portrait is of you. I have to know that I’m not completely insane!”

Nick stood, book still in hand, and walked over to the fireplace in the corner. The image of a man swinging from a rafter in a drafty barn made his decision much easier. “It’s funny; when this was painted I thought it would pass my image down through generations of my family, long after I was dead and gone. Now, I marvel that it has survived as long as I. Amazing.”

He paused in reflection, and then remembering a poem, recited it quietly from memory.

“And though he was valorous, he was prudent and as meek as a maid of his bearing. In all his life he never yet spoke discourteously but was truly a perfect gentle knight,” Nick quoted, turning to Pierre.

Pierre sat down heavily on the arm of the chair and asked for his own confirmation, “You’re Nicholas de Brabant?”

Nick closed the book, and tossed it onto the sofa. He seemed to pull himself up, holding his head high before answering, “At your service,” and finishing it off with a little bow.

Pierre wanted to ask so many questions – it was written all over his face – yet what he wanted to know the most he’d just promised not to ask. “What year were you born?”

“In the year of our Lord, eleven hundred and ninety-six,” Nick answered, with some amusement at his phrasing. If only LaCroix could hear him now!

Pierre inhaled sharply. “That makes you…”

“Eight hundred and twenty-six,” Nick answered after a moment of thought. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, I want you to answer mine. How did you figure it out? How could you believe that portrait to be me when all reason says otherwise? There had to have been something else.”

Pierre took a deep breath, still reeling from the reality of Nick’s admission. “There was, I…” He looked down, digging into his coat pocket and pulling out the printout of Nick’s letter to Joan of Arc. “…found this first,” he finished, handing it to Nick.

Nick looked over it with curiosity, then understanding. “Ah, so you researched Nicholas de Brabant and found out that it didn’t quite match the date that it should.”

“Yes, and then… well, this is incredibly stupid but the salutation had your name in it; or at least the one you went by when I met you,” Pierre amended.

Nick glanced at the letter again, and realizing it was true, couldn’t help but laugh. What were the chances of Pierre Rochefort – a priest he’d barely known decades ago – finding all this? The chances were as insane as the situation.

Still, it could be worse. The good Father could have found out how he’d survived this long… and he wasn’t quite sure he was ready for that confession.

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Lyon, France

March 10^th, 1430

Nicholas dipped the quill once more, signing his true name with a flourish.

He had been startled when Joan had called him by his birth name. Was he truly such a nightmarish legend in France that his name had been passed down from mother to daughter like some macabre bedtime story?

It made him stop – not for the first time – and wonder at how he’d come to be the creature he was now. Looking back at the letter, realization dawned that he’d tried ever so hard to assure her that he too had been a man of God once, a long, long time ago.

Why?

Doubt?

LaCroix said it made him weak, and even though he tried desperately to accept his life now, there was still a part of him that refused to do so.

But why? Did he not get everything he’d desired when he made his choice?

Choice.

Nicholas scoffed at the word. It had hardly been a choice; he’d been played for a fool, tricked and dazzled by pretty words uttered on even prettier lips.

Now, he wrote this letter to Joan offering her the choice… she wouldn’t accept. He was not dim-witted or naïve enough to think otherwise. Yet he still felt he needed to offer her this, because it was the only thing he could offer.

Cursing himself for a fool, he rolled and tied the message.

This would truly be her choice.

----------------------------------------------------

“What was she like?”

Nick shook himself out of his memory and looked at Father Rochefort. Pierre had a million questions in his brain, eager to be asked, and that fact was clear in his expression.

Closing his eyes, Nick allowed himself to drift back to his encounters with the legendary Joan of Arc. “She was beautiful, courageous, with a Faith in God so strong that it could not be dissuaded, even if it brought about her death. I’m not surprised that she’s remembered almost five hundred years later. She told me that she would live forever …and she was right.”

“Is that what you offered her? Immortality?”

Nick looked down, and picked up a remote from his coffee table. “It was such a tragedy. To die that way.” He clicked a button, and the fireplace roared to life. “It’s not a death I would wish on anyone.” He placed the remote on the mantle. “She was courageous to the end, God rest her soul, but her screams of agony will haunt me to my grave,” Nick said quietly, his eyes fixated on the fire.

“You were there?” Pierre asked, breathless. He could tell that Nick was no longer ‘with him’ but remembering a horror that happened in a time long gone. “I still can’t fathom it; the things you must have seen and done… to experience over eight-hundred years of change? I can’t comprehend what it must be like for you.”

‘Lonely,’ Nick thought as he pulled his eyes away from the fire and back to Pierre. Father Rochefort might be ready to confess, but he was not. “To answer your previous question, I think wickedness can start in many forms. There have been plenty of evil people who’ve had faith, misplaced as it may have been,” Nick said in an attempt to reassure the priest that he wasn’t on the road to damnation.

Pierre was silent for a long time, before finally adding, “What I told you… wasn’t all of it.”

By the expression on Father Rochefort’s face, Nick could tell that whatever he had to say would be difficult for him. “Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked, thinking he could certainly use a drink himself, even if it was of a slightly different variety.

“Yes, thank you.”

Nick walked into the kitchen and took two wine glasses out of the cupboard. He filled Pierre’s with some rather expensive red wine and his own with half wine, half blood.

Walking back into the living room, he saw Father Rochefort looking at a large canvas of his still propped up on the easel. The subject was one he hadn’t painted in a long time; his more recent work in the last few decades being abstracts. This was different; it was a landscape of the Brabant countryside in full daylight… only, he couldn’t get the sunlight right.

He could never get the sunlight right.

“Did you paint this?” Pierre asked, taking the glass of wine Nick offered.

“Yeah. Eight hundred years of practice and this is the best I can do. Guess talent really can’t be learned, huh?”

“It’s fantastic, Nick,” Pierre protested, looking back at the painting in confusion.

Nick shook his head. “It’s all wrong,” he muttered, before turning away from the painting and walking back to the sofa, taking a sip from his glass as he did so. “So, tell me what it was that you left out.”

“I confess that I lied to you.”

Nick smiled, then sat down on the couch and took another sip from his glass. “You didn’t come here to confess to me, then? Lying about wanting to confess… I think that is a new one, even for me… and that’s saying something.”

“I mean before today. When you asked if I knew who the killer was… I did know,” he admitted, having turned back to the painting, unable to look Nick in the eye. He was still ashamed of his decision to keep quiet… and thirty years of guilt hadn’t made the confession any easier.

There was a short pause as Nick thought back to the investigation. “Ah, but your Faith wouldn’t allow you to speak. How does that make you feel?”

“I’ve regretted the decision every day since,” he answered sincerely, noticing the odd portrayal of light in Nick’s painting for the first time. It was beautiful, stylized, yet almost sinister at the same time. He turned towards Nick, and for a split second thought he saw the same golden, stylized light reflected in Nick’s eyes... but it vanished so quickly that he wasn’t sure he’d even seen it at all.

Nick swirled his wineglass, watching the light from the lamp beside him hit the liquid.

“You don’t seem very surprised at my confession.”

“I’m not,” Nick answered matter-of-factly. “I thought you knew… why do you think I was so upset when we brought you in?”

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TBC in part 3....