Next up in the retrospective is "Kindred Spirits," which falls into the "post tag scene" genre as a direct response to that twitching toe at the end of "Hearts of Darkness."  It received a nomination in the 2001 FK Fanfiction Awards, and I'm grateful to those who put it forward!  To this day, I believe it ranks among my best fanfiction stories.  I'm really rather proud of it; I hope that's not misplaced.

At the time, a few thoughtful readers explicitly praised the choice to not stray from canon into a Nick/Urs romance.  They were certainly correct, and a romance had not even occurred to me at the time!  But rereading the story today, I must admit that I wondered whether a sequel taking such a non-canonical turn might pre-empt "Ashes to Ashes" and "Last Knight" in a worthwhile way, for a happier, healthier ending all around.  Something to think about...

	•	Title:	"Kindred Spirits"
	•	Length:	~13,500 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in January 2001
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Jacqueline turns to Urs and Nick for help.
	•	Setting:	After "Hearts of Darkness"
	•	Characters:	Nick, Urs, Ellen/Monika/Jacqueline, Erica, Sofia, Natalie, Lacroix, Enforcers
	•	Quotation:	"Either one would help me, I guess.  Lucien for a price.  Javier, because he always does, eventually.  And there are others.  But unlike them, you'll help her, just because she needs help."

And now this retrospective comes to my first story solely from Natalie's point of view.  "Time Out for the Living" was a nominee in the 2000 FK Fanfiction Awards, an honor that still surprises and delights me.

	•	Title:	"Time Out for the Living"
	•	Length:	~6,700 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in March 2000
	•	Rating:	PG
	•	Summary:	Unsettling phone calls, uncanny dreams and an unexpected day off push Natalie to examine her life outside the lab.
	•	Setting:	Between first season and second
	•	Characters:	Natalie, Richard, Grace, Sidney, Sara, Amy
	•	Quotation:	"Since Richie died, she had kept herself busy, and busier, until all the times in which these thoughts might have caught up with her had been squeezed out and away."

Here is another of my tiny handful of stories that have not yet appeared on FKFic-L because they belonged to zines.  This one appeared in the charity fanzine Tojours Lacroix, edited and published by Lisa P., conceived by Celeste and Laurie.  I wrote "Whence the Truce" in the summer of 1998, and it's my only fanfiction so far to spawn a sequel ("That Ain't Love").

Re-reading this, I realize that I've set more stories immediately following "Stranger Than Fiction" than at any other canonical moment (besides overriding "Last Knight," of course).  I also see what a Light Cousin I was back then.  And I'm delighted to rediscover my Ghost!Fleur character here; by coincidence, I have a new Ghost!Fleur story underway now.

	•	Title:	"Whence the Truce"
	•	Length:	~6,450 words
	•	Date:	Published in the charity fanzine Tojours Lacroix (1999)
	•	Rating:	G
	•	Summary:	Lacroix pieces together what happened after Nick staked him.
	•	Setting:	After "Stranger Than Fiction," with flashback to after "Dark Knight, the Second Chapter"
	•	Characters:	Lacroix, Janette, Fleur
	•	Quotation:	"Logic could not cut through the shrine he had made of his own wretched loneliness."

This was my first lengthy fanfiction.  I'm still pleased with it.  It shows traits of its age (among other things, I appear to have owned stock in semi-colons), but it musters an actual mystery, and builds a future and a past for the characters.  When writing it, I didn't make an outline, and I'm not sure I even knew how it would end when I began -- imperatives when writing today -- but it came like an onrushing wave, covering all the ground, and then there it was.

Tracy's guy, Paul, is my best original character yet.  Her coworkers and the people from whom she gets clues aren't just stick figures, either.  I seem to have felt much more free to invent guest stars in those days, for some reason.  You can't let them overshadow the canonical characters, of course, but the presence of guest stars is certainly canonical; rereading this story has made me wonder where that's gone for me.

	•	Title:	"Corners of the Mind"
	•	Length:	~32,200 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in June 1997
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Resurging memories plunge Tracy into the unsolved mysteries of Natalie's murder and Nick and Vachon's disappearances.
	•	Setting:	Three years after "Last Knight"
	•	Characters:	Tracy, Reese, Lacroix, Janette, Vachon, Screed, Bourbon, Jenny Schanke, Others
	•	Quotation:	"She told him everything she had learned about that wrinkle in their reality -- everything, except that her own blood spoke of apricots and calla lilies. For now, she kept that to herself."

Where did I get the idea that Janette is particularly good with numbers?  In "Can't Run, Can't Hide," where she does her own business taxes by hand and implies she checks her accountant's work?  I don't remember, but it's one of the character tidbits in "And So It Goes," which I wrote for a very good friend, to whom at the time I still felt obliged to provide ample evidence that I no longer believed Janette had died in "The Human Factor" (I was such an irritating newbie; you have no idea).  Thus this story, my first contribution to the Song Challenge, the longest-running fiction challenge in FK, originally issued by Susan G.

	•	Title:	"And So It Goes"
	•	Length:	~6,300 words
	•	Date:	Posted to FKFic-L in February 1997
	•	Rating:	PG-13
	•	Summary:	Janette sees Nick for the first time since he brought her back across in "The Human Factor."
	•	Setting:	In Paris after "Last Knight"
	•	Characters:	Janette, Nick
	•	Quotation:	"He looked haggard, thin, and he had a beard again -- shaving was always the first thing he neglected when he decided that ignoring his body would help save his soul."