seriousfic

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.

Cara's arm was feeling better. Kahlan rubbed it a few times, tenderly, before bandaging it up again.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," Cara said.

Kahlan looked at her. "It's still weak. I want you to be careful with it. We'll exercise it some tonight, okay?"

Sometimes, Cara had the hateful feeling that Kahlan spoke to her the same way she would to a small child. "Fine."

When they got under way, Cara went up to one of the horsemen hired to guard the caravan and told him she wanted his horse. He quickly gave it up. She used both hands to hold the reins, and her injured arm ached, but it felt much better than lying in a wagon all day.

Richard didn't make an appearance.

***

"Men coming up the road, on foot!" Cara called back. She was in front with three other riders, half a mile from the first wagon. For the last week, all the scouts had managed to scout was a flooded bridge. This was new.

The twenty wagons all readied themselves for battle, either by gathering up the people stretching their legs outside and getting under cover, or by picking up the weapons brandished on the outside of the carriages. Even without the Banelings, the Midlands were a dangerous place.

Cara got off her horse and drew an Agiel in her good hand. One of the riders said "Ma'am?", but she ignored him. It wasn't as if she could control a horse and swing an Agiel in her current condition. Besides, for all their fearsome magic, Agiels weren't exactly a cavalry weapon. Cara would've given a night with Triana for one of the Mord'Sith's collapsible poleaxes in her saddle just then.

A moment later, Cara raised her hand to signal no threat, although Kahlan had to explain this to the civilians. It was just a band of Flagellants, only five-strong. They'd popped up more and more since the Boxes of Orden were destroyed, penitents who believed that the Creator had torn the Veil herself because she was displeased with mankind. Cara had always thought that if the Creator were angry, she'd be a bit more efficient with her wrath, but then, she guessed she wasn't the religious type. Either the Creator would accept her into her bosom or not, it didn't change the fact that she had to do what was necessary.

Upon seeing the pilgrims, the Flagellants reacted as well. They stopped in the middle of the road and lit a thurible, letting the foul-smelling smoke irritate the wounds they made flogging themselves. Cara sneered as they whipped their backs with knotted cords, trying to work up enough blood to taint the white veils that covered their bodies. Amateurs. More than that, every time Richard saw them, he got all quiet and broody for the rest of the day. As if he hadn't suffered enough to find the Stone of Tears.

They spoke in unison, punctuating each verse with a whip across their back. "Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours."

"Catchy," Cara replied, patting her Agiel against her free hand. "Now get out of the road. 'Master Rahl' would like to pass." Mindful of Kahlan's constant attempts to smother the people with goodwill, she added "Please."

"The pretender is here?" one of the Flagellants asked. It was a woman, her breasts unattractively scourged. "Then you must be his Mord'Sith slut, Cara."

"Yes, I am his Mord'Sith slut," Cara replied. "Get off the road."

"Repent!" an older male Flagellant cried, the cue for Cara to roll her eyes. "The breaking of the world is nigh! The tearing of the Veil was merely the first portent! But Darken Rahl has returned to spare us from the wrath of the Dream Walker! All you need do is ask to return to his loving embrace and he will protect you!"

There was a limit. It was at the end of Cara's Agiel, pressed into the man's gut. For a Flagellant, he had little tolerance for true pain. "Darken Rahl is going back to the Underworld, very soon. Would you like to wait for him?"

"Cara? What's going on?" Kahlan asked, walking up. She was holding her hands stiffly, and Cara recognized she had her daggers reversed so they were hidden by her forearms.

Cara turned to face her, ignoring the Flagellants. "Just some of Darken Rahl's followers, who've managed to avoid taking the hint. Can I kill them?"

"For what? They haven't done anything."

"General principle?" One of the Flagellants to her back pulled a knife from his boot and tried to rush her. Cara broke his jaw without looking back.

Kahlan looked out at the Flagellants and smiled benevolently. "I'm sure if you'd be kind enough to practice your religion on the side of the road, I can persuade Cara to not kill you all."

***

The caravan passed by, ignoring the sullen stares of the Flagellants as they tortured themselves. One of them flicked the blood off his scourge and onto a wagon. It was Richard's.

***

It was funny how one mundane encounter could convince people that the next would be equally harmless. Everyone was laughing and kidding each other about their suspicion, to Cara's irritation. She was also irritated that she'd tried to talk to Kahlan about the Flagellants and Kahlan had just hurried back to Zedd's wagon, and Richard. Then she wondered if Richard was on his deathbed and Kahlan was trying to spend as much time with him as possible. If the Flagellants had cost them time that they could've spent getting the Lord Rahl to safety. The next Flagellants she saw, she was killing on sight. Kahlan would just have to live with it.

The attack came at dusk, magic hour. The fading sky lit up with an arrow as it came down, skewering one of the scouts. Pointlessly, it was a flaming arrow; the fire spread up his tunic as he crumpled to the ground, dead. One thing Cara would say for Darken Rahl, at least with him there'd been some professionalism to the raiders and bandits.

At least it was combat. Cara was off her horse, using it as cover until the bandits got closer. Her bow-arm wasn't strong enough to pull and she wasn't carrying her quiver. She should've found a crossbow. Stupid, weak, soft girl. She'd have to wait for the bandits to bring themselves to her Agiel…

Another arrow hit, this time the horse. The arrowhead sunk deep into its neck, and one look confirmed it was a mortal wound. Good tactic – maim the horses so they would wreck havoc within the enemy ranks in their death throes. Cara would have to take note of it. She put the horse out of its misery with one application of her Agiel to its heart, then slunk down behind its corpse.

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.

She was in fine form that day, outstanding form. As the first hooves hit the road, Cara put a leg on her fallen mount and lunged off it, driving the horseman from his saddle with her forearm. The Agiel in her other hand made sure he stayed down.

Behind him were four swordsman. Only the first bothered to attack her. She stoved his head in and was already onto another as he fell, jamming her Agiels up under his armpits so the magic could course into his heart. Three bodies now surrounded her, and she stayed within the triangle they formed as the last two attackers in her proximity eyed her warily. They saw she was dangerous, but also that she was walking wounded. So she struck first, bending the bearded one over with a kick and then stabbing her Agiel into the back of his neck.

The last one attacked her with a shortsword and she blocked, but it was a feint. His fist swung at her injured arm and Cara braced herself for pain, but it never came. Kahlan was there, her scent filling Cara's nostrils. She had caught the bandit's arm, and now broke it. As he fell to his knees, Cara put her Agiel to his temple until his bloodshot eyes rolled back in his skull.

Cara nodded her thanks to Kahlan and the Confessor smiled back. Then she was hurrying off to save some children from a quad of tattooed slavers and all Cara could smell was the burning pitch of the arrows.

She killed twelve more that night. It didn't satisfy her.

***

It was like something was burrowing under her skin. Like an emotion, only deeper. She remembered watching the glow of night wisps being born, how cool and comforting it had been to share that feeling with Kahlan. Now she saw Kahlan bringing a platter of food to Richard's wagon and something dug out her heart.

"Nans!" she called, only looking at the girl after Kahlan had disappeared into the wagon. "I'm cold. Why don't you get me some more firewood?"

"Sure!" Nans looked out at the woods. The canopy was heavy and the moon was slim. "But… it's dark."

Cara stood. She smiled ferally. "I'll protect you."

***

When the fires were out of sight, Nans took Cara's hand. When they kept going, Nans pressed herself to Cara's side. Cara bore it with amusement. They kept walking, until the camp was a distant memory.

"I don't think I can see well enough to gather firewood," Nans said. They were in a copse so thick that the tree trunks were like a colonnade, and the starlight that made it through the leaves only hinted at their bodies. Nans could still see Cara's teeth as the Mord'Sith pressed up against her, pinning her to mossy bark with a cold leather hip.

"The dark is more interesting," Cara drawled, with the voice Nans had dreamed of.

Nans nearly hyperventilated as Cara untied her dress, starting with the drawstring at the neck and then brusquely working it down her torso and off her hips. Another perfectly vicious shove and Nans felt bark digging into her back. She heard her dress flutter as Cara tossed it aside.

"Cara, it'll get all dirty," she protested.

Cara worked her hip just so, and somehow she was in-between Nans' legs and it was making fire travel up her spine. "We'll tell them we were attacked by wolves," Cara said, doing it again and again. "Savage, ravenous… hungry for our flesh…"

Nans was bucking, trembling, trying desperately to meet every snap of Cara's thigh because she knew it would be so good. Her eyes were fluttering, because it felt so good she had to close them, but she wanted to memorize every curve of Cara's rapacious expression too. "Cara…"

Cara kissed her. It made the inside of Nans' mouth feel like an erogenous zone, like Cara was touching a pleasure point that only she could find. "Call me mistress," she said, suddenly in Nans' ear, taking advantage of how Nans had to shut her eyes to process what Cara was doing between her legs. Then she licked Nans' lips from corner to corner, her dark eyes meeting Nans' wide ones all the while.

"Mistress, may I touch you?"

"How?" Cara's hand crushed down on Nans' breast, filling it with sweet agony. The heat only stoked the fire in Nans' core. "Like this?"

"Yes!"

Another staccato rhythm from Cara's hips, driving Nans wild. Then she stepped back and the cold drew goose pimples from Nans' flesh. "Take off everything."

Nans unwrapped her brassiere as quickly as her clumsy hands could manage, then stopped out of her bloomers. She stood up straight, thrusting her chest out, like she'd always been taught boys liked. Cara liked it too. She ran a hand from Nans' face down to her chest, the leather making her nipples harden like a molten sword struck by water.

"Are you a virgin?"

Nans bit her lip. "Yes." She reached out and boldly touched Cara's breast, feeling the nipple through the leather and tweaking it. She thought she saw a smile on Cara's face. "But I'm not very good at it."

Cara put a hand on Nans' chest, between her breasts, and almost gently pressed her back against a tree trunk. Then she pressed harder, making the bark dig into Nans' back. "I know your type. You go your whole life, trying to do as you're told, trying to make yourself feel something with boys who are about as attractive to you as dogs. You want to tell them how to please you, but you don't have the words and they don't have the ears. Then, as luck would have it, someone like me comes along… and you finally know what you want. You want me to fuck you. Isn't that right?"

"Yes!" Down there, Nans was so hot and slick that it was cruel of Cara not to be inside her, a finger, a tongue, one of those devices she had only read about. But she was a Mord'Sith, and their cruelty was feared throughout the land. Feared and desired.

Cara's thumb was just touching Nans' areola, and Nans was so sensitive that when Cara rubbed, Nans felt a stitch at the end of the glove scraping her. If Cara would leave her and let her touch herself like she had so many nights before, it would still be the greatest pleasure she'd ever known.

Cara's fist was in her hair, pulling it so hard Nans didn't know how it didn't come out, making her bend her neck. "Because you're a little whore, aren't you?" Cara's breath was coming hot and fast on her exposed neck, and Nans was whimpering for more. "That's what you want. You want to be my slut. You don't want a husband or kids or a happy little home. You want this."

Nans cried out as Cara's teeth came down on her throat. She jerked and danced at the end of Cara's will, and involuntarily her arms grabbed as much leather as she could touch and held Cara close. "I want it, I want it bad, oh please mistress…"

Cara let cool blood spill from the bite and spun Nans around, then jammed her against the tree. Nans felt the sharp bark embrace her, her breasts, her knees, her cheek. Growling, Cara forced her legs wider apart. Nans was still talking, still telling Cara she wanted this, she needed this, and Cara almost cared.

"Whore," Cara said as she forced two fingers inside Nans, and felt more than heard the scream that reverberated from her body. She thrust half a dozen times before she curled her fingers and Nans screamed again. It sounded a little like "more". Cara took her hand away and grabbed Nans' hair with it, marking it with blood and juices, and then flung her to the ground, where Cara could pin her down and give her what she wanted. What she deserved.

"You're not a virgin anymore," Cara purred in her ear, gentle now. There was no more need for roughness, now that they understood each other. "You're mine."

It took some firm guidance, and more than a little negative reinforcement, but Nans proved a very good pupil.

***

"Cara?" Kahlan stepped between the trees, the starlight glinting off her drawn daggers. She'd heard screaming, then moans. And Cara had been gone a long time. She feared the worst.

Then a cloud passed from in front of the moon and she saw everything in its silvery light, like statues that had frozen over. Her mind took it in in brushstrokes, like a painting being made before her.

Cara's magnificently nude form was sprawled in the roots of an tree, gripping Nans' long dark hair in an outstretched hand like a puppeteer held strings. Sweat glinted on her whipcord-taut body, but at the same time she appeared completely in her element, at peace, almost in meditation. Her golden hair was tangled with leaves and twigs, plastered to her forehead with sweat. A lock hung down her face, nearly touching her parted lips, Cara's panting breath battering the blonde wisp to and fro.

Beneath her, astride her, Nans supplicated herself. She knelt so that Kahlan could see the flatness of her backside. Even in the darkness, it glowed with red soreness. What hair wasn't in Cara's hand was scattered across Cara's lap like a napkin, while Nans' head trembled furiously between bronze thighs, like she was a glutton for the taste of Cara. The Mord'Sith herself moaned and purred and keened her approval, and signaled her disapproval with an almost tender brush of her Agiel down Nans' writhing back. Kahlan could already make out a collection of welts.

"Kahlan," Cara breathed, her eyes still closed as if she were an opera lover immersed in music. "You shouldn't be out so late. There are beasts roaming the woods."

"Mother Confessor," Nans said, jerking up and trying to figure out the best way to prostrate herself.

Cara touched an Agiel to her dangling breast. "I didn't tell you to stop."

"Mistress!" Nans gibbered as she returned to kissing every inch of Cara's folds.

Kahlan had her hands on her hips. Shock had given way to exasperation. "I was worried about you."

Cara drifted back, smiling lazily as Nans found a sweet spot. "As you can see, I'm fine."

Kahlan refused to be intimidated by Cara's sexuality or game-playing. It wasn't like Cara was 'the sinister Mord'Sith' anymore. She was Cara Mason, trusted friend and ally. And it wasn't like Kahlan was a virgin now.

"Could you finish this up and come back? I can't get to sleep worried about you."

Cara opened her eyes to slits. Kahlan, her white dress seeming to glow in the night, had crossed her arms under her breasts. It made them that much more prominent, and she eyed every pore as Nans licked away. "Didn't anyone ever tell you? You can't rush art."

Kahlan met Cara's eyes; even in the dim light she could see those eyes, darker than the forest around them. They stared at each other, the sound dying down until Nans might not have even existed. And for a moment, it was just like old times, the days when Cara expected to find a dagger in her back or Kahlan an Agiel at her throat. But neither of them had ever backed down from each other, and Kahlan watched like a benevolent deity as Cara shuddered, teeth squeezing together in a snarl, eyes closing in ecstasy, one hand petting Nans' hair favorably as she came. Her expression relaxed as the orgasm cut through the tangle of the sex; it looked to Kahlan as if she might shed a tear. Then Cara stood up, leaving Nans to collapse lovingly at her feet.

She stood across from Kahlan, hands on her bare hips. "Care to help me dress, Confessor?"

"I think I've helped you enough for one night," and though she wouldn't show it, Cara tensed at those words. Had her excitement at being able to watch the Confessor as she was devoured been that obvious? "If you need an audience that badly, we should charge admission. Raise some money for the poor."

Relieved, Cara walked closer. She wanted to see if Kahlan would break; look down to see how wet she was. "Nans," she said, giving the girl the toe of her foot to rouse her. "Dress me." Cara never stopped looking at Kahlan.

The Mother Confessor merely reached out and brushed some of the detritus from Cara's hair. It was a sisterly gesture, and it hurt like the flames of the Underworld. "You're incorrigible," Kahlan said fondly, running her hand down Cara's cheek.

Cara said nothing.

Kahlan turned to go and Cara watched the sway of her hip as she did, eyes hungrily detailing the curve of her ass. When Nans put Cara's boots in front of her, Cara put a foot on her shoulder and pushed her to the ground.

"I didn't say we were finished."