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seriousficTitle: 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: 2,450
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Triana, Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan, Berdine/Raina
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely and talented![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
susurrusnight
Previous: Part 7
Next: Part 9
Summary: Cara never expects anyone to care about her. It always comes as an unpleasant surprise.
Rahl retired from the celebration early. Jagang's entertainment was too louche for his tastes. And though Richard's efforts to save his adopted home had thus far been depressingly successful, they'd stumbled across a woman traveler in the woods. The war wizards had wanted to kill her outright, their eternal imprisonment having left little in the way of charm, but Rahl was merciful. Though she was homely, a little magic would make her a great comfort to him.
He entered a tent that had been struck with a thought from Jagang and went to the bundle on the cot. "Wake up, my dear. It's time to serve D'Hara."
He pulled the covers aside. Cara snarled at him. "Not tonight, Darken. You have a headache."
She moved so fast that the fact of her acting was all that he registered before the darkness was thrown over him like a heavy blanket.
***
Darken Rahl woke up to pain so intense it reminded him of his childhood in the Underworld. The Agiel could be bracing when not prepared for.
His eyes opened. He was still in his tent, but his arms and legs were bound. A Rada'Han did its best to choke off his air.
"Where is it?"
"My dear Cara, whatever could you mean?"
She pressed her Agiel to his cheek, locking his jaw together so he couldn't scream. "The Clear Eye's Flame. I've already searched the tent, and your person."
"While I was insensate? How cruel."
Again, the Agiel. "You would never destroy something that would give you power over Jagang. Where'd you hide it?
He smiled at her before the pain stopped. "You're not going to break me, Cara."
"I'm not trying to. I'm just going to kill you and let the Keeper toy with you until I give you the Breath of Life. See where that takes us."
Rahl stilled his twitch. "You won't kill me. You need me."
"The Fire, Darken."
"Because deep down, you want to be a true Mord'Sith again, serving a true Lord Rahl."
"Tell me where it is."
"Not this pale imitation of the woman I made, weakened and broken by a pretender to the throne and his Confessor slut."
Her Agiel hit his chest so hard it broke a rib. It stayed there, in the fracture, filling the pain with pain. "They made me whole." Her words were almost inaudible under the screaming magic.
The tent's flaps pulled away by themselves, like a scab being picked. Jagang prowled in. With a gesture, Cara was tossed aside. Jagang turned his back on her to face Rahl. "I hope you enjoyed your whore, Rahl, because while I appreciate the service rendered, I can't give you the chance to betray me in the future."
"You idiot, it's a trick! She perverted the ritual, she has the Fire right now!"
Their eyes went to Cara. She kicked down the tentpole. When the tent came down, she was already rolling out from under it. She came up running. Behind her, Jagang burned through the canvas. "Get her!"
She hadn't been that cliché when she'd been evil, had she?
She was running hard, making a beeline through the sleeping camp, jumping craters and shouldering through the waking men. As powerful as they were, no one could fight a battle while asleep. She was almost to the road, the ground already beginning to slope, when the earth exploded under her. Whatever spell had made those pits, it had just been used against her. She spun through the air for a jumbled moment, landed painfully. She rolled onto her back to see a war wizard strolling toward her, wide awake. Wonderful. She was going to die because of insomnia.
"Pretty, pretty, die pretty," he gibbered. But he hadn't moved a muscle before a dacra spun into his chest. Cara was a little surprised that the Dark Sister who pulled her to her feet was Dahlia and not a complete stranger.
"Are you coming, or having too much fun here?" Dahlia asked, jerking her head in the universal motion for 'let's go'.
The dacra was glowing in the war wizard as he groaned his death. Cara didn't think Dahlia would be getting it back. She ran, Dahlia following. Ahead was the road, where carts full of debris waited to be disposed of downhill. Cara jumped into an empty one, knocking it into motion. Dahlia jumped in beside her. Cara felt an annoying happiness.
The cart rolled down the mountainside. Cara heard chanting behind them, melding with the sound of a font of lava shooting from the volcano. It splashed down the mountainside, starting an instant forest fire. Which was a problem, since the forest covered all of the slope except for a winding road down. And the cart was picking up speed.
Cara made an aside to Dahlia: "I thought you served the Keeper."
"So I'll send these guys to the Underworld."
Behind them, the volcano roared, lava flowing after them almost as fast as the wall of volcanic ash. They were fast enough for the world to blur around the edges and the nice, straight road was about to say goodbye. Dahlia grabbed hold of the guide-handle. It was supposed to be used by someone walking in front of the cart, but it could be used from inside – theoretically.
Faster. The road turned to the right. Dahlia didn’t. A tree loomed up and Dahlia twisted, too hard, slamming the cart against another tree to the left. Luckily, it was only a side-swipe. The interior of the cart crackled inward..
The shockwave of ash surged behind them, growling like a pack of wolves. Cara saw it strip the bark right off a tree. “Go faster!”
“Are you sure? I was thinking of taking the scenic route.” Dahlia jerked the handle with preternatural calm. The cart lagged behind the steering like a slow-motion nightmare, careening off trees despite Dahlia’s best efforts. The sound of a tree trunk shattering was their only warning as a boulder hurled from the volcano thudded down ahead of them. Dahlia threw the cart into a skid to avoid it and they fishtailed wildly before she regained control, just in time for the wave of ash to overtake them.
It was like a blanket had been thrown over the world. They couldn't see a thing, had to hold their breaths to keep from choking, like the ash wanted to strangle them. The only sound was the muted roar of the volcano exploding.
A tree loomed out of the gray darkness. Dahlia pulled hard on the handle but the tires had no time to turn. The cart hit the tree head-on and they were thrown clear.
Cara hit the ground and rolled. Ground, sky, it all looked gray. Time blurred together, dream-like, and from nearby but far away she heard Dahlia grunting as she tumbled. Then the world abruptly straightened. Cara had rolled onto level ground.
“Cara!” Dahlia called.
“Over here!” She planted her good hand on the dirt and righted herself, closing her eyes against her dizziness. She was Mord'Sith. She would not succumb to something so… plain.
Dahlia lurched out of the ashes, which were thick as a fogbank. Her lips moved, but all Cara heard was the gathering roar of the volcano. She realized she wasn’t disoriented. The earth was just shaking itself apart.
Dahlia ran into Cara, grabbing hold of her leathers to stay upright. Dahlia was as out of it as Cara was. “Do you smell fresh air?” she shouted in her ear.
Cara took several deep sniffs. There was something sweet in the air. She immediately walked them toward it.
They stumbled out of the ashes like two drunks coming home, coughing and tearing up. Dahlia stopped, turned. By now the volcano was just a black leak on the horizon, far less prominent than the ash that was filling up the sky. She looked down at Cara. The Mord'Sith was sprawled across the ground, motionless except for the breath that lifted clouds of dirt off the ground.
Cara rolled herself onto her back. “I found a camping spot."
***
Dahlia tried to sleep. She wanted to sleep. As soon as she’d laid down, a week’s worth of complaints had sprung up from her body. She just needed to close her eyes and let her body replenish itself. But Cara wouldn’t let her.
The Mord'Sith stared into Dahlia like a cat watching a mouse, and refusing to watch. She simply watched, her eyes pregnant with some heady secret.
Dahlia had long since closed her eyes. "You want to ask me something,” she said, not opening them. “You want to know something about me.”
"I know all I need to know about you. I'm asking myself something."
"And what would that be?"
"Whether I feel the same way about you as you feel about me."
Dahlia's eyes opened. Barely. "Don't flatter yourself." But once she met Cara's eyes, she couldn't stop. There was a crack in that steely gaze. A little girl she had once known.
"Why'd you come back for me?" Cara asked.
"Because I want to have your love children."
The predator finally pounced. One of Cara's hands covered Dahlia's throat while the other bunched in her veil, exposing her surprise to Cara's full scrutiny. Dahlia was pulling out a dacra when Cara kissed her. There was a moment, with Dahlia's guard dropped and Cara softening, where one would be hard-pressed to see the years that had clad them both in red. If you were to tell an onlooker that they had grown up together, childhood sweethearts, nothing else would need to be said.
Then Dahlia pushed Cara back, drawing her blade, breathing hard.
"Yes," Cara said, lying down where she'd fallen, "that's what I thought."
***
As blasé as she acted, sleep was long in coming for Cara. It was scary, how you could feel about someone you hated.
She didn't want to fall into the trap she'd set with Kahlan, giving love like dropping stones into a well, piling up deep beneath the earth to never see the light of day. She didn't want to love at all. Darken Rahl was right about her. She wanted to be an Agiel, hard, blunt, only giving pain and never receiving it. She wanted to be Triana.
***
Richard and Triana rode into an apocalypse. The houses had been blown to rubble, just so the war wizards could watch them burn. The smoke still hung in the air like a bad dream. Richard and Triana rode through it, full gallop. They saw no one. A few turns and they were at the inn. It was still intact, but the windows had been blown out. Richard dismounted, drew his sword, crept to the door. He signaled for Triana to stand watch. Her nod was tight, but she obeyed.
Richard went through the door.
The graveyard had been dug up, its contents posed inside. Skeletons were playing cards, drinking ale, dancing. The magic of it stunk like rot. Richard proceeded carefully, ducking under bone-limbs. He reached the stairs and went up, keeping his feet on the sides of the boards so they didn't creak. Stepped onto the second floor. It was empty, untouched. Richard stepped lightly to the room they had taken, pushed inside. Just as they had left it, not one day ago. Some of Cara's arrows still laid on her bed, waiting to be sharpened. Richard's eyes stung.
He went to the desk Zedd had taken, opened the first drawer. A ham sandwich. He opened the second. A thick tome. He tied a bookstrap around it and some other papers, slung it over his back with his free hand. He was headed out the door when he heard the screaming outside.
He ran to the window. Triana was still outside, but she wasn't making the noise. It was a war wizard, the sound coming from a woman's face stretched across its chest.
Richard didn't think. He threw himself through the window and hit the sloped roof running, treading down to the gutter and leaping off it. The screaming woman trailed off into a quizzical 'huh?' as the war wizard turned to meet Richard, meet the sword that came down through its chest. Richard landed on his feet, the bookstrap a few feet away.
The war wizard shoved him onto his back, leaving the sword inside its chest. Triana attacked from behind, jamming her Agiels between its ribs in search of the wizard's heart, but it swatted her aside without a second thought. Stomped toward Richard, who kicked out and managed to smear some mud on the faces capping the wizard's knees.
The wizard lifted his boot and brought it down, narrowly missing Richard when he rolled to the side. He came up swinging, but his punch just succeeded in moving the war wizard's second face an inch to the left. The war wizard's hand lashed out and Richard felt only air around him, then the wall he was smashing through. Fortunately, the fire had already made it brittle and black.
He scrambled to his feet, but could already taste magic gathering in the air. The war wizard had its hand outstretched and pointed at him. Triana charged into it, not managing to upset its footing, but getting her arm wrapped firmly around its wrist. Richard felt a certain… tang. Magic being captured.
"Get clear, Lord Rahl," she said, calmly as you please, even as the magic rebelled inside her.
No. Not like Cara.
Richard ran forward, hurling himself against the war wizard, taking hold of the hilt still protruding from its breast, and feeding all his rage, all his sorrow, all his regret into it. The blade turned red. Richard pulled. It came free of the war wizard, bisecting the damned thing's torso in the process. It fell away. As if Triana had been caught in the same sword-stroke, she staggered. Richard caught her, felt blood cough from her mouth onto her cheek. He dragged her to where the bookstrap had fallen, let her carry it.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
He dragged her along, letting her drag the bookstrap. The horses weren't far. They hadn't spooked at the first sign of trouble.
"You should've left. I could've distracted it," Triana said, not doing anything about the blood dribbling over her chin.
Richard paused to wipe her mouth. "That will never happen."
"If it's about Cara, you shouldn't feel bad. Darken Rahl sent Mord'Sith to their deaths all the time. It was expected of us."
Lifting Triana up to her saddle came easy. She didn't even feel heavy. "I am not my brother."
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,450
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Triana, Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan, Berdine/Raina
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely and talented
susurrusnight Previous: Part 7
Next: Part 9
Summary: Cara never expects anyone to care about her. It always comes as an unpleasant surprise.
Rahl retired from the celebration early. Jagang's entertainment was too louche for his tastes. And though Richard's efforts to save his adopted home had thus far been depressingly successful, they'd stumbled across a woman traveler in the woods. The war wizards had wanted to kill her outright, their eternal imprisonment having left little in the way of charm, but Rahl was merciful. Though she was homely, a little magic would make her a great comfort to him.
He entered a tent that had been struck with a thought from Jagang and went to the bundle on the cot. "Wake up, my dear. It's time to serve D'Hara."
He pulled the covers aside. Cara snarled at him. "Not tonight, Darken. You have a headache."
She moved so fast that the fact of her acting was all that he registered before the darkness was thrown over him like a heavy blanket.
***
Darken Rahl woke up to pain so intense it reminded him of his childhood in the Underworld. The Agiel could be bracing when not prepared for.
His eyes opened. He was still in his tent, but his arms and legs were bound. A Rada'Han did its best to choke off his air.
"Where is it?"
"My dear Cara, whatever could you mean?"
She pressed her Agiel to his cheek, locking his jaw together so he couldn't scream. "The Clear Eye's Flame. I've already searched the tent, and your person."
"While I was insensate? How cruel."
Again, the Agiel. "You would never destroy something that would give you power over Jagang. Where'd you hide it?
He smiled at her before the pain stopped. "You're not going to break me, Cara."
"I'm not trying to. I'm just going to kill you and let the Keeper toy with you until I give you the Breath of Life. See where that takes us."
Rahl stilled his twitch. "You won't kill me. You need me."
"The Fire, Darken."
"Because deep down, you want to be a true Mord'Sith again, serving a true Lord Rahl."
"Tell me where it is."
"Not this pale imitation of the woman I made, weakened and broken by a pretender to the throne and his Confessor slut."
Her Agiel hit his chest so hard it broke a rib. It stayed there, in the fracture, filling the pain with pain. "They made me whole." Her words were almost inaudible under the screaming magic.
The tent's flaps pulled away by themselves, like a scab being picked. Jagang prowled in. With a gesture, Cara was tossed aside. Jagang turned his back on her to face Rahl. "I hope you enjoyed your whore, Rahl, because while I appreciate the service rendered, I can't give you the chance to betray me in the future."
"You idiot, it's a trick! She perverted the ritual, she has the Fire right now!"
Their eyes went to Cara. She kicked down the tentpole. When the tent came down, she was already rolling out from under it. She came up running. Behind her, Jagang burned through the canvas. "Get her!"
She hadn't been that cliché when she'd been evil, had she?
She was running hard, making a beeline through the sleeping camp, jumping craters and shouldering through the waking men. As powerful as they were, no one could fight a battle while asleep. She was almost to the road, the ground already beginning to slope, when the earth exploded under her. Whatever spell had made those pits, it had just been used against her. She spun through the air for a jumbled moment, landed painfully. She rolled onto her back to see a war wizard strolling toward her, wide awake. Wonderful. She was going to die because of insomnia.
"Pretty, pretty, die pretty," he gibbered. But he hadn't moved a muscle before a dacra spun into his chest. Cara was a little surprised that the Dark Sister who pulled her to her feet was Dahlia and not a complete stranger.
"Are you coming, or having too much fun here?" Dahlia asked, jerking her head in the universal motion for 'let's go'.
The dacra was glowing in the war wizard as he groaned his death. Cara didn't think Dahlia would be getting it back. She ran, Dahlia following. Ahead was the road, where carts full of debris waited to be disposed of downhill. Cara jumped into an empty one, knocking it into motion. Dahlia jumped in beside her. Cara felt an annoying happiness.
The cart rolled down the mountainside. Cara heard chanting behind them, melding with the sound of a font of lava shooting from the volcano. It splashed down the mountainside, starting an instant forest fire. Which was a problem, since the forest covered all of the slope except for a winding road down. And the cart was picking up speed.
Cara made an aside to Dahlia: "I thought you served the Keeper."
"So I'll send these guys to the Underworld."
Behind them, the volcano roared, lava flowing after them almost as fast as the wall of volcanic ash. They were fast enough for the world to blur around the edges and the nice, straight road was about to say goodbye. Dahlia grabbed hold of the guide-handle. It was supposed to be used by someone walking in front of the cart, but it could be used from inside – theoretically.
Faster. The road turned to the right. Dahlia didn’t. A tree loomed up and Dahlia twisted, too hard, slamming the cart against another tree to the left. Luckily, it was only a side-swipe. The interior of the cart crackled inward..
The shockwave of ash surged behind them, growling like a pack of wolves. Cara saw it strip the bark right off a tree. “Go faster!”
“Are you sure? I was thinking of taking the scenic route.” Dahlia jerked the handle with preternatural calm. The cart lagged behind the steering like a slow-motion nightmare, careening off trees despite Dahlia’s best efforts. The sound of a tree trunk shattering was their only warning as a boulder hurled from the volcano thudded down ahead of them. Dahlia threw the cart into a skid to avoid it and they fishtailed wildly before she regained control, just in time for the wave of ash to overtake them.
It was like a blanket had been thrown over the world. They couldn't see a thing, had to hold their breaths to keep from choking, like the ash wanted to strangle them. The only sound was the muted roar of the volcano exploding.
A tree loomed out of the gray darkness. Dahlia pulled hard on the handle but the tires had no time to turn. The cart hit the tree head-on and they were thrown clear.
Cara hit the ground and rolled. Ground, sky, it all looked gray. Time blurred together, dream-like, and from nearby but far away she heard Dahlia grunting as she tumbled. Then the world abruptly straightened. Cara had rolled onto level ground.
“Cara!” Dahlia called.
“Over here!” She planted her good hand on the dirt and righted herself, closing her eyes against her dizziness. She was Mord'Sith. She would not succumb to something so… plain.
Dahlia lurched out of the ashes, which were thick as a fogbank. Her lips moved, but all Cara heard was the gathering roar of the volcano. She realized she wasn’t disoriented. The earth was just shaking itself apart.
Dahlia ran into Cara, grabbing hold of her leathers to stay upright. Dahlia was as out of it as Cara was. “Do you smell fresh air?” she shouted in her ear.
Cara took several deep sniffs. There was something sweet in the air. She immediately walked them toward it.
They stumbled out of the ashes like two drunks coming home, coughing and tearing up. Dahlia stopped, turned. By now the volcano was just a black leak on the horizon, far less prominent than the ash that was filling up the sky. She looked down at Cara. The Mord'Sith was sprawled across the ground, motionless except for the breath that lifted clouds of dirt off the ground.
Cara rolled herself onto her back. “I found a camping spot."
***
Dahlia tried to sleep. She wanted to sleep. As soon as she’d laid down, a week’s worth of complaints had sprung up from her body. She just needed to close her eyes and let her body replenish itself. But Cara wouldn’t let her.
The Mord'Sith stared into Dahlia like a cat watching a mouse, and refusing to watch. She simply watched, her eyes pregnant with some heady secret.
Dahlia had long since closed her eyes. "You want to ask me something,” she said, not opening them. “You want to know something about me.”
"I know all I need to know about you. I'm asking myself something."
"And what would that be?"
"Whether I feel the same way about you as you feel about me."
Dahlia's eyes opened. Barely. "Don't flatter yourself." But once she met Cara's eyes, she couldn't stop. There was a crack in that steely gaze. A little girl she had once known.
"Why'd you come back for me?" Cara asked.
"Because I want to have your love children."
The predator finally pounced. One of Cara's hands covered Dahlia's throat while the other bunched in her veil, exposing her surprise to Cara's full scrutiny. Dahlia was pulling out a dacra when Cara kissed her. There was a moment, with Dahlia's guard dropped and Cara softening, where one would be hard-pressed to see the years that had clad them both in red. If you were to tell an onlooker that they had grown up together, childhood sweethearts, nothing else would need to be said.
Then Dahlia pushed Cara back, drawing her blade, breathing hard.
"Yes," Cara said, lying down where she'd fallen, "that's what I thought."
***
As blasé as she acted, sleep was long in coming for Cara. It was scary, how you could feel about someone you hated.
She didn't want to fall into the trap she'd set with Kahlan, giving love like dropping stones into a well, piling up deep beneath the earth to never see the light of day. She didn't want to love at all. Darken Rahl was right about her. She wanted to be an Agiel, hard, blunt, only giving pain and never receiving it. She wanted to be Triana.
***
Richard and Triana rode into an apocalypse. The houses had been blown to rubble, just so the war wizards could watch them burn. The smoke still hung in the air like a bad dream. Richard and Triana rode through it, full gallop. They saw no one. A few turns and they were at the inn. It was still intact, but the windows had been blown out. Richard dismounted, drew his sword, crept to the door. He signaled for Triana to stand watch. Her nod was tight, but she obeyed.
Richard went through the door.
The graveyard had been dug up, its contents posed inside. Skeletons were playing cards, drinking ale, dancing. The magic of it stunk like rot. Richard proceeded carefully, ducking under bone-limbs. He reached the stairs and went up, keeping his feet on the sides of the boards so they didn't creak. Stepped onto the second floor. It was empty, untouched. Richard stepped lightly to the room they had taken, pushed inside. Just as they had left it, not one day ago. Some of Cara's arrows still laid on her bed, waiting to be sharpened. Richard's eyes stung.
He went to the desk Zedd had taken, opened the first drawer. A ham sandwich. He opened the second. A thick tome. He tied a bookstrap around it and some other papers, slung it over his back with his free hand. He was headed out the door when he heard the screaming outside.
He ran to the window. Triana was still outside, but she wasn't making the noise. It was a war wizard, the sound coming from a woman's face stretched across its chest.
Richard didn't think. He threw himself through the window and hit the sloped roof running, treading down to the gutter and leaping off it. The screaming woman trailed off into a quizzical 'huh?' as the war wizard turned to meet Richard, meet the sword that came down through its chest. Richard landed on his feet, the bookstrap a few feet away.
The war wizard shoved him onto his back, leaving the sword inside its chest. Triana attacked from behind, jamming her Agiels between its ribs in search of the wizard's heart, but it swatted her aside without a second thought. Stomped toward Richard, who kicked out and managed to smear some mud on the faces capping the wizard's knees.
The wizard lifted his boot and brought it down, narrowly missing Richard when he rolled to the side. He came up swinging, but his punch just succeeded in moving the war wizard's second face an inch to the left. The war wizard's hand lashed out and Richard felt only air around him, then the wall he was smashing through. Fortunately, the fire had already made it brittle and black.
He scrambled to his feet, but could already taste magic gathering in the air. The war wizard had its hand outstretched and pointed at him. Triana charged into it, not managing to upset its footing, but getting her arm wrapped firmly around its wrist. Richard felt a certain… tang. Magic being captured.
"Get clear, Lord Rahl," she said, calmly as you please, even as the magic rebelled inside her.
No. Not like Cara.
Richard ran forward, hurling himself against the war wizard, taking hold of the hilt still protruding from its breast, and feeding all his rage, all his sorrow, all his regret into it. The blade turned red. Richard pulled. It came free of the war wizard, bisecting the damned thing's torso in the process. It fell away. As if Triana had been caught in the same sword-stroke, she staggered. Richard caught her, felt blood cough from her mouth onto her cheek. He dragged her to where the bookstrap had fallen, let her carry it.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
He dragged her along, letting her drag the bookstrap. The horses weren't far. They hadn't spooked at the first sign of trouble.
"You should've left. I could've distracted it," Triana said, not doing anything about the blood dribbling over her chin.
Richard paused to wipe her mouth. "That will never happen."
"If it's about Cara, you shouldn't feel bad. Darken Rahl sent Mord'Sith to their deaths all the time. It was expected of us."
Lifting Triana up to her saddle came easy. She didn't even feel heavy. "I am not my brother."
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-06 10:21 pm (UTC)(Also, is it possible something wonky happened with the uploading of this chapter? It begins mid-sentence and carries on for only a fraction of the word count you mention... What *can* be read is superb, but I'm fairly dying to know how Cara and Dahlia ended up in moment they did.)