LotS fic: Emotion is the glove into which pain slips its hand (2/3)

Title: Emotion is the glove into which pain slips its hand
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 3,441
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Kahlan, Richard/Kahlan
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely, talented duo of ivanolix and susurrusnight
Previous: Part 1
Next: Part 3
Summary: As Richard's condition worsens, Cara doesn't know if she wants the Lord Rahl healed… or Kahlan.

( She could hear the twangs of the caravan's archers responding and, more distant, the flare of wizard's fire. She also heard hoofbeats. Gauged ten riders, leading more on foot. It must've been a company of D'Haran troops gone rogue, preying on trade routes. Cara unslung her arm from her neck and wrapped the sling around her healing arm, then drew an Agiel in either hand. The perfect pain flowed up both arms and she was whole. )

FML

Okay, so I'm reading Boneman's Daughters, which I thought would be a touching look at the home life of a boss from the Mega Man games, but instead is about an intelligence officer who is captured in Iraq and faced with a Sadistic Choice, while his family has a boring subplot. Basically, he has to choose between killing his teenage daughter or killing an Iraqi teenager. What's his first response? Could you kill my estranged wife instead? Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, and since he's pretty much a deadbeat dad (loveless marriage + serving overseas all the time), his wife is cheating on him. Why would she ever want to do that?

His mind drifted back to the 18 years since his marriage to Celine. She'd waltzed into the computer department at Office Depot, one year out of high school, and accepted his help in choosing a new laptop for a job she was taking with an ad agency. The job turned out to be a telemarketing scam that she had quit two weeks later.

The spark ignited between them in Office Depot turned into a whirlwind romance and marriage four months later. Admittedly, the worst mistake he'd ever made.

Within weeks Ryan realized that he'd married an uncommonly needy woman who quickly turned her lack of fulfillment into the belief that having a baby would satisfy her. Unable to have a child due to a botched abortion when she was eighteen, she insisted they adopt. Ryan had agreed, perhaps one of the best choices he'd made in his eighteen years of marriage. [...]

Bethany he would never jeopardize for any reason. This he knew. This he refused to even consider, regardless of the reasoning behind it. [...]How could a father give up his daughter?

But Celine...

No. No, he could never live with himself. Then again, who said he had to live with himself? What if giving up Celine, assuming Kahlid would agree, actually saved Bethany as well as Ahmed?

But no. He couldn't.

Keep in mind, our hero is also established as a super-logical uber-analyst in contrast with Ms. Flighty T. Emotional. Hey kids, see how many times you can hear the author mutter "that bitch" while reading that.