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Absinthe	By : prairiecrow Category: G through L > Knight Rider Views: 1145 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Knight Rider or any of its characters, and I certainly don't make any money from it.

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He sat in bed, reading Don Quixote by the warm golden glow of an expensive bedside lamp — or perhaps not. The page in front of him hadn't been turned in nearly ten minutes, although he was gazing directly at it through his small pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses. He blinked at the lines of tiny text, tried to pick up the thread of the narrative, and failed yet again.
Not once in his life had he become addicted to anything. Oh, certainly he'd been tremendously fond of specific items, and he'd loved various people in the course of sixty-two years, but this deep burn of inexplicable obsession, of preoccupation to the point where he found himself drifting during moments of otherwise steady concentration…
The exquisite clarity in a glass of green liqueur. The keen intelligence in a pair of green eyes. One a distilled poison, the other an essence of something inhuman, both of them beckoning him nearer with a quality of surreal fascination.
Both of them a profoundly bad idea, from any rational perspective. Both of them tempting him to madness.
At least absinthe would not protest — sharply and aggrievedly — if he took the glass in hand and brought it to his lips. The thought of KITT's potential revulsion went a long way towards bringing his wandering mind back to Earth with a soberingthump.
He sighed, and slipped off his glasses before closing the leather bound book and setting them both away from him on the bedside table. If six decades of life had taught him anything, it was that nobody had ever died from wanting too much, although they might desperately wish that they could. The world was full of beautiful things he couldn't have. What difference would two more make?
******************************
He came to the robotics lab late one morning after extricating himself from a long distance call with an old military contact, and KITT looked up from his computer screen as he entered, his wan face warming with a wide smile. "Devon! I was beginning to think you'd forgotten!"
"Never," he smiled in return, gently apologetic, thinking how tired KITT looked and how he just wanted to enfold him in a luxurious blanket and tuck him into bed and hold him quiet until he fell asleep. The dear boy was working far too hard! Didn't Bonnie and Michael see that? Clearly he needed somebody to take him in hand and —
He wondered precisely when he'd gone mad, but the question had been posed so often that it was now barely more than a background murmur beneath the pleasure he felt as KITT rose to meet him, that radiant smile still shining in his eyes.
******************************
Another sleepless night.
He rested his forehead against a window cold with the breath of the night, and wished that he could summon the Green Fairy across a restless ocean and a vast continent to bring him a few hours of clarity and peace.
He'd been wishing for too many impossible things of late, but it was evidently pointless to tell himself to stop.
******************************
KITT shook his head, reaching for another tartlet. "But it makes absolutely no sense! Why would Quixote believe for a single solitary second that a simple farm girl was a noble lady, when every detail of the text offers ample evidence to the contrary?"
"I think that's rather the point," Devon noted, helping himself to another lump of sugar for his tea. "Quixote is a man who has come to the conclusion that fantasy, if it's good enough, is a damned sight better than reality could ever be, and he sets out to make reality conform to his ideals of chivalry and love. Some people would call that noble —"
"Not to mention desperately misguided!" He levelled a stern gaze at his lunch companion, lifting a forefinger warningly. "As the text goes on to demonstrate in no uncertain terms. Things seldom turn out well for the knight errant in question, do they? He doesn't even achieve union with his beloved 'Dulcinea', for all his fine words and lofty ambitions."
"Perhaps that is precisely not the point, KITT." He took a sip of his tea, savouring the infusion, then set the cup aside on its saucer to continue his thrust: "It could be argued that Cervantes is suggesting that love, chivalry, and idealism are all worthwhile in and of themselves, regardless of their impact upon or relevance to the so-called 'real' world. Quixote, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, has made up a play world that beats the real world all hollow. Reality may leave him bloodied, but it certainly never leaves him bowed."
"All of which could have been avoided if he'd read fewer books," KITT riposted dryly. He finished off his tartlet in two neat bites and chased it with a dainty sip of coffee. "I suppose Don Quixote is worthwhile as an exercise in intertextuality, but I'm afraid I'll never be able to appreciate it as a work with any emotional relevance whatsoever."
"Perhaps you're simply not mad enough yet," Devon suggested with a teasing twinkle.
"In which case, may I be spared the blessings of enlightenment," KITT concluded with a sardonic tilt of one eyebrow and the tiniest wrinkle of his nose. "Would you care for the last lemon slice?"
He did, and found it both bitter and sweet.
******************************
Time was one constant on which he could rely, although even that could be expanded or contracted by the lunar pull of subconscious emotion.
Three years, two months, and sixteen days. He'd been present for KITT's entire life; he'd watched an already remarkable mind steadily expand in ever-increasing layers of complexity, exceeding all predictions concerning its potential. He'd seen intelligence become understanding and raw data transformed into wisdom. His hands had been among those guiding it most consistently on its ever-upward course.
For forty of those days that uncanny mind had been manifest in a pale slender body with dark hair and piercing eyes, as graceful as a deer, and he'd found himself hopelessly in love, like a man lost in a dark wood where no clear track existed to guide him in the right direction — only a single star, if he dared to trust the terrain that lay beneath its eldrich light.
During that same forty day period, so swift yet so agonizingly slow, he'd discovered that telling yourself you're going mad does nothing whatsoever to arrest the process.
He gazed at a stranger's vulpine face and could not help moving just a little closer to the contour of its cheekbones and the sly curve of its lips. He knew the spirit that dwelled within its mask. He had known it all its life. He simply hadn't seen its full aspect until this eternal moment.
Perhaps sanity was overrated, after all.
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Forty-one days after KITT had been found in DeVries' body, a search team spearheaded by Michael Knight finally succeeded in tracking down the Knight Industries Two Thousand robotic automobile in a dense patch of scrub under a bridge in San Diego. It was muddy and rain-spattered but intact, and unresponsive when approached and engaged, although its door locks mindlessly opened to Michael's touch.
Devon accompanied Bonnie and KITT south in the Foundation's mobile unit to retrieve it. When KITT saw his original body for the first time in almost six weeks, with Michael behind the wheel driving it, his breath caught audibly in his throat and his head came up warily, a tremor of reaction coursing through his neck and down his spine. His distress was so palpable that Devon, standing on his left, found himself taking a half-step and reaching out instinctively to put his arm around KITT's stiffened shoulders, gently drawing him against his side.
For a heartbeat KITT hesitated; then he yielded with a sigh, leaning in and raising his left arm hesitantly to Devon's waist, turning his cheek against the shoulder of Devon's suit jacket while his sidelong gaze remained fixed on the car. On his right side, Bonnie stepped in close as well and silently reached down to take his hand, twining her fingers tightly with his own.
They stood together in silence while Michael piloted the car up into the mobile unit. When he'd parked the vehicle in its usual spot and gotten out, KITT raised his head from Devon's shoulder and cast a wide-eyed glance up at him, full of questioning pain, before looking to his driver almost desperately.
Michael understood, and shook his head. "It's not you, buddy. Not anymore."
KITT's gaze returned to the car, to its dead dark scanner port. He licked his lips. "It looks… smaller than I remembered it, somehow."
For reasons he couldn't name, those words sent a chill down Devon's spine as well.
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That night he dreamed about drinking a potion distilled from the essence of emeralds and riding to the wars infused with superhuman strength and celerity, slaying a thousand nameless and faceless soldiers on his path to glory. He woke with the name "Dulcinea!" on his lips and sank back into sleep's embrace again almost immediately, losing himself in dreams where the enemy was on the other end of his sword and outside his skin.
For a brief shining span of hours, everything was simple again.
But when he awoke, he knew that everything that mattered belonged to the unspoken darkness within his own heart.
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Absinthe