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seriousficAll good things come to those who wait. And also this fic!
Title: We're a long way from home and home is a long way from us
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,969
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Triana, Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan, Berdine/Raina
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely, talented duo of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivanolix and susurrusnight
Previous: Part 5
Next: Part 7
Summary: Cara doesn't know what to make of Dahlia. But she's glad she doesn't have to kill her.
There were four horses and ten empty reins, dangling broken from the trees they'd been tied to.
"What happened to the horses?" Richard demanded. Even as he said it, he was loading Kahlan onto his horse.
Triana took it in stride. "They must have spooked. Probably weren't used to magic."
"Alright. Triana, form a defensive perimeter or find someplace to hide. We'll round up the horses and come back—"
"Lord Rahl, there is no time. We can't hide from them. We can't hold them off." She snapped to the Mord'Sith. "Berdine, Raina, Rikka, Hally, double up on the horses. The rest of you, take as many with you as you can."
Richard grabbed her arm. "I didn't give that order!"
"You will. It's the only way."
"Leave me!" Berdine interrupted. "I'm wounded."
Raina was supporting Berdine. She put a hand over her mouth. "A flesh wound, nothing more."
"Raina's my strongest fighter. Without Berdine, she has nothing to fight for." Triana gestured for them to mount Cara's horse.
Richard grabbed her again, roughly forcing her to look at him. "We're not leaving anyone behind."
A woman's scream ripped through the forest. Jagang was working his way through the Sisters of the Dark.
"Lord Rahl, if I must, I will kill you, carry you from here, and revive you with the Breath of Life."
"We can't leave!" Richard insisted, each word forced out.
Triana grabbed him by his vest. When she spoke, her voice was low and dangerous and Cara. "Haven't you gotten enough Mord'Sith killed today?"
Richard's head sagged to the side. Lost.
"Richard," Kahlan called. He looked up from trying to come up with a plan that would save everyone. "We live for you. Sometimes we die for you. It's horrible, but there are more horrible things."
A D'Haran soldier was hurled into a tree, wrapping around it like a length of rope.
Richard mounted up behind Kahlan. They rode. A minute later they heard a string of explosions, one after the other. Richard winced each time, like he was being struck. He wheeled to a stop miles away, looking back at the rising smoke. Kahlan squeezed his hand, as if it were something that had happened to him, not something he'd done. Hania. Solvig. Another Mord'Sith whose name he'd never even learned. His fault.
"Lord Rahl, we must go!" Triana called, not slowing down.
Richard whipped his horse until he was riding alongside her. "You and your sisters are going to die in bed! Get used to the idea!"
***
Cara walked in silence, one hand comfortably hitched to her holstered Agiel, Dahlia trailing behind her. She found the quiet—scanning the shadows for war wizards, trying to read Dahlia’s feelings from the fall of her boots—disconcerting like nothing else. It felt… taboo to be looking at Dahlia and not be planning her demise. She didn’t feel Dahlia's eyes on her, so maybe Dahlia felt the same way.
"Try to keep up," Cara said, feeling some drag on Dahlia's leash.
"I am trying!" Dahlia shot back.
"Then start succeeding."
"Maybe you would like to carry the elk then." Dahlia dropped it on the ground. Blood squirted from where Cara's arrow had hit. "I don't see why you even had to kill an elk, much less make me drag it around."
"Because we'll need food, and all of the animals are running that way." Cara pointed. "We're going this way." She pointed in the opposite direction. "So either we take the elk with us or we eat blackberries."
"And you hate the taste of blackberries."
Cara made a sour face. "Not everything changes. Now pick the elk up and let's go. Unless you'd like me to carry it myself… rendering you useless…"
Dahlia always had been a fast learner. "I'll carry it."
"Good." Cara waited for Dahlia to settle the weight on her shoulders, then started marching again, leaving little room for slash in Dahlia's leash.
"And why are we headed towards whatever it is that's depopulated the forest?"
Cara turned and pulled hard on the leash, jerking Dahlia up so they were face to face. "I'm curious."
***
They had already gone over the plan by the time they got into Hartland. The Mord'Sith reared their horses and Rikka rode right into the church to ring the bell, but Richard only stopped when he reached the healer's lawn. He carried Kahlan into the hut, while Berdine and Zedd leaned against each other. A moment later, the healer emerged from one end of the hut to call for her apprentices, while Richard strode out the other end. He pulled himself up on the town crier's podium, sagged for a moment before gathering himself. "Everyone! Everyone, I need you to listen for a moment."
They were stopping, but not fast enough for Raina's liking. Unsettled by Berdine's injury, she called out "Bow down to the Lord Rahl! Show proper respect!"
Richard sagged even more. "Cara, it's okay… Raina. Listen, everyone! An army is riding for us, they possess powerful magic. We need to leave immediately for the mountains. There, we can take shelter in Castle Invictus. Grab what food and clothes you can, a mount if you've got it, we leave in fifteen minutes."
They stared at him, dumbstruck. Raina looked like she could start throwing people to Invictus. One of the elders cleared his throat. "Begging your pardon, Master Cypher, but you leave for years and now you come back, affiliating with loose women and a dirty old man, and tell us you've killed a tyrant but not really and now we have to leave our homes—"
"It's Master Rahl," Richard interrupted. He pointed at a cart of cabbages and it was consumed by wizard's fire. "You can leave because you're afraid of them or afraid of me. I really don't care."
***
The poor left first. It was the rich who took the longest, trying to take everything with them. The Mord'Sith disabused them of that. The wounded came last. Kahlan, Berdine, and Zedd, bandaged hastily, loaded into a stout wagon with a little boy who'd lost his sight and an old man with the smoke sickness. Triana took the reins.
"Protect them with your life, above even mine," Richard said.
"Cara told us those were our standing orders." Even through Triana's stillness, Richard could feel her sorrow. He'd comfort her later.
He took the feed-bag from his horse and rode to the front of the line. It was going to be a long journey.
***
Cara liked walking with Dahlia. She was still in competition with Dahlia--who could set the fastest pace, who couldn't keep up--but it wasn’t as stressful somehow. In her head, a voice that sounded very much like Darken Rahl was demanding to know what she was going to do with Dahlia, but she put that off with the same virulent need that had once driven her toward Kahlan. She couldn’t work with Dahlia and plot her death, even if she was doing just that. And Dahlia wasn’t the worst enemy she’d ever faced. She had a sort of dignity, a hardness Cara found appealing. If she had to lose, it would be almost alright if it were to her.
Of course, it wouldn’t be just to her, it’d be to Darken Rahl and the Keeper and all the others that her teeth clenched just to think about. So she wouldn’t lose.
Cara stopped. The leash had grown taut, even with the additional slack she'd let out. Had she gotten that far ahead of Dahlia? She listened, but couldn’t hear her moving through the brush, and finally turned around.
As she walked back to Dahlia, Cara kept one hand carefully still by her Agiel. She needn’t have bothered. Dahlia was lying down, braced against the elk's corpse. She was pulling her robes this way and that, looking down it at her skin.
"I don't recall ordering you to rest,” Cara said, not getting any response. She moved closer, eyeing the way Dahlia pulled her clothing open. “Are you hurt?”
“You tell me.” Dahlia let her robes fall back over her. “They’re called breasts, by the way.” She slumped back against the elk. "In the water, that beast stuck me with something. It's enchanted."
"Show me."
Dahlia looked doubtfully at Cara, who held up her end of the leash in response. Dahlia turned onto her side, pulling up her upper robes to reveal a festering wound in her back.
Cara looked away. “That doesn’t look good.”
“It doesn’t feel good either!” Dahlia snapped. Then, shaking her head at her own lack of discipline, she pulled out her dacra.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m getting it out.”
Dahlia was moving the blade in when she felt Cara's hand on her wrist. Cara pushed it away. “I’ll do it.”
Dahlia blinked. “Between stabbing myself until the pain stops and letting you help me, I’ll take the stabbing.”
"It wasn't a request. And if I wanted to kill you, I'd do it.”
Dahlia crossed her arms, but kept her back to Cara. Cara knelt down beside her, taking the leash off and setting it aside so it wouldn't get in the way. The wound was in Dahlia's lower back, just to one side of her spine. A clear, viscous fluid tinted orange was seeping out. Cara smelled it, then wiped it away with her sleeve.
“The spell is producing a toxin in your body. Painful?”
“Yes!” Dahlia said harshly, then amended it to a softer “It is.”
Cara pulled out her Agiel. "Whatever magic it is, it's not as strong as an Agiel. I'll drive it out, sterilize the wound. It'll hurt."
Dahlia laughed. "What do you care?"
Cara pressed her Agiel just to the side of the wound. Dahlia groaned, one arm flying out to grab a tree for support. Cara pressed on the Agiel harder. Dahlia doubled over and they heard something churning inside her. Something glimmered wetly in the darkness of Dahlia’s wound.
“This will hurt more," Cara said, apologetic.
“Just get it over with.”
Cara jammed her Agiel into the other side of the wound. Dahlia hissed, clasping both hands to a thick branch. It cracked immediately.
A slug-like parasite, all jaws and feelers, emerged from Dahlia's wound. Cara immediately caught it in her gloved hand and pulled it away, snapping the tendrils still connecting it to Dahlia’s body. As soon as the last one went, the parasite turned into a curved metal spike, only a dab of blood revealing what it had once been.
Dahlia laid down on the elk, eyes closed. She didn't move as Cara took gauze and tape from her belt, bandaged the wound, then carefully drew her robes over it. By the time she was done, Dahlia had caught her breath.
“Here,” Cara said, holding the spike out to her. “Souvenir.”
Dahlia took it, turning it over analytically in her hands. “How do you destroy it?”
“Break it.”
Dahlia set it down on a rock. Then she stomped on it so hard that the rock cracked underneath it.
Cara stood up. "You've very good with pain," she said, then pivoted on her heel. There was a mountain close enough to loom over them, and smoke was issuing from its peak. "There's our destination."
"You want to head toward a volcano?"
"It's not a volcano. The smoke's the wrong color. It's a mining operation. Jagang is digging for something. I'm not going to let him have it."
Dahlia picked up the elk. It was still a way's travel. "I'm ready to go."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Cara asked, throwing Dahlia's end of the leash to her.
Dahlia never looked away from Cara as she attached it to her Rada'han.
Title: We're a long way from home and home is a long way from us
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,969
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Triana, Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan, Berdine/Raina
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely, talented duo of
ivanolix and susurrusnight Previous: Part 5
Next: Part 7
Summary: Cara doesn't know what to make of Dahlia. But she's glad she doesn't have to kill her.
There were four horses and ten empty reins, dangling broken from the trees they'd been tied to.
"What happened to the horses?" Richard demanded. Even as he said it, he was loading Kahlan onto his horse.
Triana took it in stride. "They must have spooked. Probably weren't used to magic."
"Alright. Triana, form a defensive perimeter or find someplace to hide. We'll round up the horses and come back—"
"Lord Rahl, there is no time. We can't hide from them. We can't hold them off." She snapped to the Mord'Sith. "Berdine, Raina, Rikka, Hally, double up on the horses. The rest of you, take as many with you as you can."
Richard grabbed her arm. "I didn't give that order!"
"You will. It's the only way."
"Leave me!" Berdine interrupted. "I'm wounded."
Raina was supporting Berdine. She put a hand over her mouth. "A flesh wound, nothing more."
"Raina's my strongest fighter. Without Berdine, she has nothing to fight for." Triana gestured for them to mount Cara's horse.
Richard grabbed her again, roughly forcing her to look at him. "We're not leaving anyone behind."
A woman's scream ripped through the forest. Jagang was working his way through the Sisters of the Dark.
"Lord Rahl, if I must, I will kill you, carry you from here, and revive you with the Breath of Life."
"We can't leave!" Richard insisted, each word forced out.
Triana grabbed him by his vest. When she spoke, her voice was low and dangerous and Cara. "Haven't you gotten enough Mord'Sith killed today?"
Richard's head sagged to the side. Lost.
"Richard," Kahlan called. He looked up from trying to come up with a plan that would save everyone. "We live for you. Sometimes we die for you. It's horrible, but there are more horrible things."
A D'Haran soldier was hurled into a tree, wrapping around it like a length of rope.
Richard mounted up behind Kahlan. They rode. A minute later they heard a string of explosions, one after the other. Richard winced each time, like he was being struck. He wheeled to a stop miles away, looking back at the rising smoke. Kahlan squeezed his hand, as if it were something that had happened to him, not something he'd done. Hania. Solvig. Another Mord'Sith whose name he'd never even learned. His fault.
"Lord Rahl, we must go!" Triana called, not slowing down.
Richard whipped his horse until he was riding alongside her. "You and your sisters are going to die in bed! Get used to the idea!"
***
Cara walked in silence, one hand comfortably hitched to her holstered Agiel, Dahlia trailing behind her. She found the quiet—scanning the shadows for war wizards, trying to read Dahlia’s feelings from the fall of her boots—disconcerting like nothing else. It felt… taboo to be looking at Dahlia and not be planning her demise. She didn’t feel Dahlia's eyes on her, so maybe Dahlia felt the same way.
"Try to keep up," Cara said, feeling some drag on Dahlia's leash.
"I am trying!" Dahlia shot back.
"Then start succeeding."
"Maybe you would like to carry the elk then." Dahlia dropped it on the ground. Blood squirted from where Cara's arrow had hit. "I don't see why you even had to kill an elk, much less make me drag it around."
"Because we'll need food, and all of the animals are running that way." Cara pointed. "We're going this way." She pointed in the opposite direction. "So either we take the elk with us or we eat blackberries."
"And you hate the taste of blackberries."
Cara made a sour face. "Not everything changes. Now pick the elk up and let's go. Unless you'd like me to carry it myself… rendering you useless…"
Dahlia always had been a fast learner. "I'll carry it."
"Good." Cara waited for Dahlia to settle the weight on her shoulders, then started marching again, leaving little room for slash in Dahlia's leash.
"And why are we headed towards whatever it is that's depopulated the forest?"
Cara turned and pulled hard on the leash, jerking Dahlia up so they were face to face. "I'm curious."
***
They had already gone over the plan by the time they got into Hartland. The Mord'Sith reared their horses and Rikka rode right into the church to ring the bell, but Richard only stopped when he reached the healer's lawn. He carried Kahlan into the hut, while Berdine and Zedd leaned against each other. A moment later, the healer emerged from one end of the hut to call for her apprentices, while Richard strode out the other end. He pulled himself up on the town crier's podium, sagged for a moment before gathering himself. "Everyone! Everyone, I need you to listen for a moment."
They were stopping, but not fast enough for Raina's liking. Unsettled by Berdine's injury, she called out "Bow down to the Lord Rahl! Show proper respect!"
Richard sagged even more. "Cara, it's okay… Raina. Listen, everyone! An army is riding for us, they possess powerful magic. We need to leave immediately for the mountains. There, we can take shelter in Castle Invictus. Grab what food and clothes you can, a mount if you've got it, we leave in fifteen minutes."
They stared at him, dumbstruck. Raina looked like she could start throwing people to Invictus. One of the elders cleared his throat. "Begging your pardon, Master Cypher, but you leave for years and now you come back, affiliating with loose women and a dirty old man, and tell us you've killed a tyrant but not really and now we have to leave our homes—"
"It's Master Rahl," Richard interrupted. He pointed at a cart of cabbages and it was consumed by wizard's fire. "You can leave because you're afraid of them or afraid of me. I really don't care."
***
The poor left first. It was the rich who took the longest, trying to take everything with them. The Mord'Sith disabused them of that. The wounded came last. Kahlan, Berdine, and Zedd, bandaged hastily, loaded into a stout wagon with a little boy who'd lost his sight and an old man with the smoke sickness. Triana took the reins.
"Protect them with your life, above even mine," Richard said.
"Cara told us those were our standing orders." Even through Triana's stillness, Richard could feel her sorrow. He'd comfort her later.
He took the feed-bag from his horse and rode to the front of the line. It was going to be a long journey.
***
Cara liked walking with Dahlia. She was still in competition with Dahlia--who could set the fastest pace, who couldn't keep up--but it wasn’t as stressful somehow. In her head, a voice that sounded very much like Darken Rahl was demanding to know what she was going to do with Dahlia, but she put that off with the same virulent need that had once driven her toward Kahlan. She couldn’t work with Dahlia and plot her death, even if she was doing just that. And Dahlia wasn’t the worst enemy she’d ever faced. She had a sort of dignity, a hardness Cara found appealing. If she had to lose, it would be almost alright if it were to her.
Of course, it wouldn’t be just to her, it’d be to Darken Rahl and the Keeper and all the others that her teeth clenched just to think about. So she wouldn’t lose.
Cara stopped. The leash had grown taut, even with the additional slack she'd let out. Had she gotten that far ahead of Dahlia? She listened, but couldn’t hear her moving through the brush, and finally turned around.
As she walked back to Dahlia, Cara kept one hand carefully still by her Agiel. She needn’t have bothered. Dahlia was lying down, braced against the elk's corpse. She was pulling her robes this way and that, looking down it at her skin.
"I don't recall ordering you to rest,” Cara said, not getting any response. She moved closer, eyeing the way Dahlia pulled her clothing open. “Are you hurt?”
“You tell me.” Dahlia let her robes fall back over her. “They’re called breasts, by the way.” She slumped back against the elk. "In the water, that beast stuck me with something. It's enchanted."
"Show me."
Dahlia looked doubtfully at Cara, who held up her end of the leash in response. Dahlia turned onto her side, pulling up her upper robes to reveal a festering wound in her back.
Cara looked away. “That doesn’t look good.”
“It doesn’t feel good either!” Dahlia snapped. Then, shaking her head at her own lack of discipline, she pulled out her dacra.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m getting it out.”
Dahlia was moving the blade in when she felt Cara's hand on her wrist. Cara pushed it away. “I’ll do it.”
Dahlia blinked. “Between stabbing myself until the pain stops and letting you help me, I’ll take the stabbing.”
"It wasn't a request. And if I wanted to kill you, I'd do it.”
Dahlia crossed her arms, but kept her back to Cara. Cara knelt down beside her, taking the leash off and setting it aside so it wouldn't get in the way. The wound was in Dahlia's lower back, just to one side of her spine. A clear, viscous fluid tinted orange was seeping out. Cara smelled it, then wiped it away with her sleeve.
“The spell is producing a toxin in your body. Painful?”
“Yes!” Dahlia said harshly, then amended it to a softer “It is.”
Cara pulled out her Agiel. "Whatever magic it is, it's not as strong as an Agiel. I'll drive it out, sterilize the wound. It'll hurt."
Dahlia laughed. "What do you care?"
Cara pressed her Agiel just to the side of the wound. Dahlia groaned, one arm flying out to grab a tree for support. Cara pressed on the Agiel harder. Dahlia doubled over and they heard something churning inside her. Something glimmered wetly in the darkness of Dahlia’s wound.
“This will hurt more," Cara said, apologetic.
“Just get it over with.”
Cara jammed her Agiel into the other side of the wound. Dahlia hissed, clasping both hands to a thick branch. It cracked immediately.
A slug-like parasite, all jaws and feelers, emerged from Dahlia's wound. Cara immediately caught it in her gloved hand and pulled it away, snapping the tendrils still connecting it to Dahlia’s body. As soon as the last one went, the parasite turned into a curved metal spike, only a dab of blood revealing what it had once been.
Dahlia laid down on the elk, eyes closed. She didn't move as Cara took gauze and tape from her belt, bandaged the wound, then carefully drew her robes over it. By the time she was done, Dahlia had caught her breath.
“Here,” Cara said, holding the spike out to her. “Souvenir.”
Dahlia took it, turning it over analytically in her hands. “How do you destroy it?”
“Break it.”
Dahlia set it down on a rock. Then she stomped on it so hard that the rock cracked underneath it.
Cara stood up. "You've very good with pain," she said, then pivoted on her heel. There was a mountain close enough to loom over them, and smoke was issuing from its peak. "There's our destination."
"You want to head toward a volcano?"
"It's not a volcano. The smoke's the wrong color. It's a mining operation. Jagang is digging for something. I'm not going to let him have it."
Dahlia picked up the elk. It was still a way's travel. "I'm ready to go."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Cara asked, throwing Dahlia's end of the leash to her.
Dahlia never looked away from Cara as she attached it to her Rada'han.
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Date: 2011-04-14 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
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