SGRoA: Forever Knight, S03 E22: Last Knight

Guys. Guys. It's the last episode. I don't know if I'm emotionally stable enough for this, but I'm going to try. For you.

We start with a bathtub filling, and Lacroix telling us that life is a gift. Cut to a weird camera angle and Lacroix continuing to speak - he's never understood willfully giving life up, unless you have faith that there's something beyond this. But will it be heaven, or hell? Is your faith strong enough to push you to find out prematurely?

All of this is intercut with a woman writing a suicide note and then stepping, fully clothed, into the bathtub to cut her wrists. Lacroix tells us not to do it, not to trade our futures for "an empty box".

The victim was a psychiatrist - and Nat's friend. Nat's sitting at the crime scene, holding the note, while Nick and Tracy discuss how you never really know your friends. Tracy says she'll finish up at the scene so Nick can take Nat home.

"Do as I say, not as I do. Don't let yourself become empty." Nat's reading Nick the suicide note. It's the first time she's lost a friend to suicide, and the first time anyone's addressed the note to her. It has her doubting whether suicide is really that terrible, if it's the "sacrilege" she once thought it.

Nick tells her not to talk like that, and she points out that he's considered it. We get a flashback of Nat's, to an earlier episode in which one of Nick's friends kills herself. She yelled at Nick about suicide then, and this turn in her attitude makes him suggest that she not do the work on this case.

She assures him she'll be fine. She wants to do right by Laura, to make sure the case is handled correctly. The only thing that bothers her is that she thinks she understands Laura, and that scares her to death.

Reese asks Tracy how Nat's holding up, and Tracy says not well. But there's no indication that the death was anything but a suicide, so she'd like to go ahead and write it up and head home early. She might be getting the flu - but of course, we know that she still has mourning to do, and no one to tell.

Reese tells her that's fine, and then everyone's attention is drawn to a perp being walked through the precinct. He's struggling, saying they can't make him go back there, he won't go! They're holding the guy for pickup from a transfer, and everyone tells him to calm the fuck down, but it doesn't seem like he's listening.

Nat tells Nick how she and Laura would hang out, discussing their careers and professional gossip - but never their personal lives, because they were non-existent. Leaving Nat the note was Laura's way of telling her not to let life pass her by.

Nick tells Nat her life isn't empty, and she says no - not since they brought Nick in to her morgue. Another flashback to the first time they met, when Nick woke up on her table and changed her whole world. It's a goodbye clip show.

Nat asks Nick to make sure she doesn't end up like Laura. He says he won't. She says that it's simple, then: "You just have to love me as much as I love you." By which she means bring her across, of course, but Nick's grim face at the end of this scene isn't inspiring a lot of confidence in that outcome.

Lacroix is talking to us again, from that weird camera angle, about how love is suffering and anguish and pain. Which he would know, wouldn't he? Watching his children die. Watching his dame, his daughter, kill those she thought closest to him.

Nick refuses to bring Nat across. But she's not willing to go on like this, and they can be together. He says he won't damn her to this, and she says she has faith in him. He flashes back to the wife he failed to turn, so many years ago. So it's not so much that he won't damn Natalie, as that he fears he can't bring her over.

It's too much for her to ask of him. He can't put himself in that position again.

Up in the squad room, the transfer prisoner beats down his guards, grabs a gun, and takes a hostage. He runs through the station, dropping the hostage at one point, then cutting the power to aid his escape. Reese and Tracy are in pursuit.

Nick warns Nat about the loneliness of immortality, and she says that Laura's life was lonely. With Nick, there's a chance to build something else. Isn't it partly her choice, after all?

Nick's answer is cut off by his phone ringing. He has to attend to the hostage situation at the precinct. Nat says it's fine, they'll talk later, and Nick's off.

Transfer dude is in the locker room, begging someone to kill him so he doesn't have to go back. Tracy follows him in, and no one else is backing her up. Reese is trying to get the hostage negotiator in, when Nick shows up and says he knows the guy - Dawkins - and goes down to the locker room to talk at him.

Dawkins says he's only leaving in a body bag. Tracy's skulking in the shadows, probably looking to take a shot. Dawkins turns the gun on himself. Nick mojos him, and he starts to put the gun down.

He sees Tracy behind Nick.

He fires at Nick.

Nick ducks.

Tracy takes the bullet.

Nick's all vamped out as Tracy goes down. Her last words are, "You could have trusted me."

Lacroix asks us if we aren't sick of the guilt, of taking responsibility for everyone else's actions. It's so unnecessary - so mortal. It must stop. Everything that's happened tonight should have taught us that.

Nick of course takes the blame for Tracy - who isn't quite dead yet, though she has a nasty head wound and is unconscious in the hospital. Nick sits vigil. Reese comes in to tell him that the review board wants to speak to him, since he shot Dawkins like a bagrillion times. Reese says he knows what it's like to lose a partner - and reminds Nick that he knows, too.

Because Schanke.

Nick vamps out after Reese leaves. He's going to change Tracy?! What?!?!?!

Before he can do anything, Nat shows up. Oh, he's just going to turn her because if she dies it's his fault.

"Why is it so easy to consider bringing her across, and so hard to consider bringing me?" snaps Natalie, and who can fucking blame her? Seriously, Nick, you are just the fucking worst right now. You don't know what Tracy wants. You have no clue. But Nat has stated it straight out, and you're all, "But it's a curse! You'll be damned! I can't do it because I'm awful!"

This is Nick's whole personality in a nutshell, and he does what he always does: He runs away from Nat and goes to the Raven, where he finds an empty club with only Lacroix's bust on the bar.

Lacroix is leaving. He says it's time to move on, that they've come full circle in this life. Lacroix knows all about Tracy, and tells Nick that he's outstayed his welcome. The pain he's causing his friends isn't worth it to them anymore.

Nick says he has too many loose ends. He can't just walk away. Lacroix insists that it's time. He'll be at Nick's loft later, but then he's leaving - with or without Nick.

Then he's lecturing us again: Guilt is a poison. Staying past our time is death. If we truly love a mortal, we have to leave them. The camera angle changes, and we can see he's talking to Nick when he adds, "Isn't that something you taught me?"

Flashback to Fleur, to Nick convincing Lacroix not to turn her. Present-day Lacroix insists that "leaving is the purest form of love."

Nat packs up Laura's things at the lab. She's interrupted by a phone call.

Nick turns his police radio off and turns on the Nightcrawler - who is not, of course, the Nightcrawler. The new host says that the Nightcrawler said it was time to move on, and Nick flashes back to the episode where he was going to leave, and the one with human Janette explaining why she didn't tell him she was leaving.

Nick goes home. Nat's waiting for him. "Tracy Vetter passed away twenty minutes ago," she says as he comes in.

Schanke's dead. Cohen's dead. Screed is dead. Janette is dead. Vachon is dead. Tracy's dead.

Nick tells Nat that Lacroix thinks he's a fool for taking on all this guilt, but he says everyone's dead because of what he is. Nat insists that he's saved lives, too, that he's more than atoned for everything. He tells her he's leaving her, leaving because of her.

Nat says he can't go without her, and that there's one more thing they haven't tried. Janette became human again by making love with a mortal.

Nick won't take the chance. What if he takes too much blood? What if he kills her?

She changes the subject. Does Lacroix ever talk to Nick about faith? "In what?" In anything - himself, God, whatever. Flashback to Jeanne d'Arc, to her refusal of immortality, to Nick's refusal to believe in the Church. Nat says that she believes they go on. Nick isn't sure, though she tells him he is, that he does have faith. And if faith is a mortal folly, then he's the most mortal man she's ever known.

Natalie has faith that there is a future for them. Somewhere. She believes in Nick. She trusts Nick. They can make him mortal again.

He's afraid. She's not. Not of death, and not of an eternity "in darkness", as long as she can spend it with him. She trusts him. Can't he trust himself?

"I won't leave you," he says. "Whatever happens, we'll be together."

"Forever," says Nat.

He bites her.

He drinks too much.

Lacroix appears. "Well," he says as Nick lays Nat down, "all that remains is to turn out the lights and lock the doors. Unless you've decided to add her to our entourage...?"

It's plain on Nick's face that he intended no such thing. He's just realizing that he's killed Natalie. That her trust was misplaced - and that this is one death he actually is responsible for. "Oh, Nicholas," says Lacroix.

And all that lecturing from Lacroix suddenly makes sense. He's been talking to Nick this whole time. He points out that Nick could still bring her across, but it's completely up to him - Natalie cannot speak for herself, and Lacroix cannot make the decision for him.

When it's clear what Nick won't do - turn her - Lacroix tells him that time heals all wounds, and that they must move on. Nick is a vampire. He kills. It's time to come to terms with that.

Thinking that Nick has come to his senses after he kisses Nat goodbye, Lacroix offers to bury her - they have that much time. But Nick said he'd never leave her. He doesn't intend to break that promise.

Lacroix tells him not to be a fool. We get to hear the whole lecture from start to finish now, in context - suicide is foolish, faith is ridiculous, Nick can have no idea what's beyond the veil, and he shouldn't try to know. "And so," he finishes, "in your eyes, I am the devil."

"No," says Nick. "Not the devil, Lacroix. You are my closest friend."

He hands Lacroix a stake.

He bends over Nat's body.

"Damn you, Nicholas."