Standard disclaimers apply.  These characters aren't mine,
except for Dr. Frodel, I'm just messing with their lives a
bit.  Permission is granted to archive on fkfanfic.com, the
ftp site, and the cotk site.  This story is a quick sequel
to my previous story, In The Grand Scheme of Things, which
is available at my new homepage address:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/diharris/Homepage.htm

As with all of my short stories, this has not been beta read
except by me, so be warned :)

Comments, questions, feedback, and all that good stuff may
be sent to Diane Harris at [email protected]!

"You agree with me, I'm correct..." his voice oozed thickly
out of his mouth, deep and low in a rich murmur.  God, I
want to eat him...

Frodel stared blankly ahead.  "I agree with you.  LaCroix's
correct..." he stated mechanically.

"LaCroix!  You can't hypnotize the therapist!  That's no
fair!"

LaCroix let his eyes dart to the left to peer at his peeved
protégé.  Gah!  He was thinking in alliteration... must be
a side effect of this sappy session...  "Nicholas, you are
perfectly welcome to hypnotize him as well, I wasn't
singling you out..." he replied calmly, a slight sneer
spreading across his face.  Gah!  Stop it!

"He wasn't singling you out..." Frodel repeated, still
looking blankly at the wall.  LaCroix licked his lips.  Oh,
curses!  Why hadn't he eaten before he'd gotten stuck in
this ridiculous, yet slightly entertaining, meeting?

Nick sighed.  This was just not fair...  "Look, Frodel..."

Frodel just stared.

"Frodel?!"

Nick waved a hand in front of his expressionless face.  Yup.
He was out to lunch.

LaCroix snickered.  His experience with hypnotism was far
greater than Nicholas's feeble abilities.  But Nicholas...
well he was apparently smarter than he looked.

Nick grabbed a roll of papers off Frodel's desk and whacked
him one like it was a two-by-four.  Frodel blinked and shook
his head, visibly confused.  "As I was saying...  Uh...
What was I saying?" he asked.

"You were saying that I was correct in my assumptions?"
LaCroix prodded with his voice, staring deeply into the
man's eyes.

"No, no it wasn't that..." the man said absently.

LaCroix rolled his eyes.  So much for that form of
amusement.  His eyes wandered the room as Frodel stumbled
over the cobwebs that had suddenly developed in his mind.
Thump thump...  Thump thump...  DAMN, just keep your eyes
away from his neck, Lucien...

"Ah yes, you were explaining to me why you tried to kill
Nick's friend..." Frodel finally finished, as if his mind
were a record suddenly snapped back on track.

LaCroix glared.  He _still_ had to do that...  "Nicholas
owed me."

Frodel looked curious.  "For what?" he asked.

LaCroix felt a brief pang in his heart.  He would never be
over that.  Never.  "I fell in love with his sister," he
said suavely, his voice betraying none of the pain this
subject dredged up inside of him...

Dr. Frodel raised an eyebrow in disbelief.  "But isn't Nick
your son?"

LaCroix sighed.  He would make a point of killing Natalie as
soon as this was over.  "Yes..."  So?  Where was this going?

"But wouldn't that make Nick's sister your daughter?"
Frodel, sounding very confused, was back at his clipboard,
scribbling like a madman on a caffeine overdose.

"No..."  Thump thu STOP!

"Ah, it was by a different marriage then?" Dr. Frodel
stated, comprehension flooding his voice.

"You could say that..."  This was getting boring again...

"But still, doesn't it seem like you have an unhealthy
obsession, here?  Perhaps this love was an extension of your
feelings towards Nick..." Frodel suggested, stopping the
movements of his pen for a brief moment.

LaCroix looked at Frodel and then back at Nicholas, who was
sitting quietly in his chair, looking very eager to
participate.  "I sincerely doubt that..." LaCroix replied.

Frodel looked a little surprised.  "That's...  Um...  ok, go
on..."

"I fell deeply in love with his sister, Fleur.  She was
sick, dying.  I could have saved her but Nicholas wouldn't
have it.  In exchange for my lack of action, he said he
would allow me to kill the next... terminally ill person he
fell in love with," LaCroix explained as vaguely as
possible, but belatedly realized he'd created yet _another_
quirky psychosis for the good Dr. Frodel to investigate...

"Nick falls in love with dying people a lot..." Dr. Frodel
said with an understanding look.  It made LaCroix feel sick
to his stomach.

"Oh, always, despite my _constant_ warnings that it's a
sick, unhealthy thing to do..."  LaCroix said with a roll of
his eyes.  He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

"I object!" Nick cried, standing up from his chair and
practically flying at LaCroix.

"Relax Nick, nobody's on trial here.  Why don't you tell me
about this attraction you seem to suffer?" Frodel said
soothingly.

Nick sat down.  "I want to be like them...  I spend my time
around them all the time in an attempt to be like them...  I
can't help it if I occasionally fall for one..."

"You want to die?" Frodel asked with a raised eyebrow.

Nick looked back at the doctor.  "Well... uh... I suppose
you could put it like that..." he said with a quirk of his
head.  Their problems sounded so much weirder when he was
trying to explain it to an objective third party...

"Have you ever tried to commit suicide?"

Nick looked at the ground in response.  "Yes..." he said
hoarsely.

"Why didn't you succeed?"

"I don't have the strength to go through with it.  And
there's someone in my life right now..." Nick commented with
a small smile, obviously thinking of Natalie.

"The one that LaCroix wants to kill?" Frodel asked.

"Yeah her," Nick said nonchalantly.

LaCroix snorted softly, but Frodel only nodded.  "I see..."

"And why do you want to kill yourself?" Frodel asked Nick
softly.

"Because I hate what I am.  I hate being a va... virtually
indestructible guy."

"Uh huh.  Why?"

LaCroix finally couldn't take it anymore.  "Oh give me a
break, my son has a death wish.  It's not that hard to
comprehend..." he hissed, but at Nicholas's and Frodel's
harsh stares, he sat back down quickly.

"So let's recap.  Just to make sure I've got everything
straight.  LaCroix wants to kill your girlfriend because he
loved your terminally ill sister and you wouldn't let him
cure her and he vowed to kill the next dying person you fell
in love with, which, of course, is the said girlfriend.  You
fall in love with dying people a lot, which angers LaCroix
into becoming aggressive with you because he thinks it's
unhealthy for you, hence making you depressed a lot and
feeling the need to kill yourself and restarting the whole
vicious cycle again."  Frodel took a deep, labored breath,
trying to recover from that vicious attack of run-on
sentences...

LaCroix shrugged, trying desperately to ignore his growling
stomach.

Nick nodded.

Yeah, that was a good summary, but...

A long silence, the three simply stared.

"LaCroix?"

"Yes, Nicholas?"

"Eat him."

THE END

**This is the end of part (1/1).  Any and all comments may
be sent to [email protected]**

P.S.  The ending to this one was a promise I made to
someone who sent feedback on the prequel.  I agreed.
LaCroix needed a break :)