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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: 2,934
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 14
Summary: Cara's always been ready to die for what she believes. She just doesn't know what she believes anymore.
"What a weapon." Jagang slid the Sword of Truth through the air. "Fit to unite a kingdom." He slashed at a barrel and watched it fall to pieces. "To depose a tyrant." He turned and traced the point over Richard's face. "To reduce a family to a man, to a monster."
Richard was calm. Jagang wasn't focused on Kahlan, after all, and Cara was still out there. Kahlan safe and Cara out to save them. What was there to worry about? "I haven't reduced any families lately, Jagang. How about you?"
Jagang smiled. "Yes. But that will soon change." He threw the sword aside. The sound of it clattering echoed through the basement. Jagang could've interrogated Richard anywhere, but he seemed most comfortable underground, in the dark. "Do you know how chainfire works?"
Richard tested his bonds for the thousandth time. As much as everyone had cautioned him about his rage, he would give it free rein if he had just one shot at Jagang. "Zedd taught me. It's fire that burns history."
"Very good, Seeker. Instead of ending a life, it erases it, removing that link from the chain of time. And not just people. If I burnt an apple tree with that spell, then no one would ever have eaten its apples. If I dried a lake, then no fish would ever spawn in its depths."
"I just said Zedd taught me."
"Zedd's only a Wizard of the First Order. I outrank him. And Seeker... you're thinking too small." Jagang gave the Sword of Truth a kick and it spun, the blade making a horrendous sound, scraping against the stone floor. "Imagine if one were to burn away the Sword of Truth. No Seekers. No quests. No helpful Mother Confessors, or Wizards, or families emptying of blood because something went wrong in the grand plan."
"Impossible. The Sword of Truth has powerful magic woven into every particle of it. You'd only destroy yourself."
"Then we'll have to burn every particle at once. Imagine it." Jagang's voice swelled. A long-held dream finally spilling out of him." My entire army taking your birthright from you. A thousand spells cast against the Wizards' crowning glory..."
Richard's face reflected Jagang's vision, but instead of being inspired, his voice dropped to horror. "You wouldn't just singe history. You'd pull it apart."
"I'd have my family back. And with no Seeker to stop me, I'd bring peace to this world." He touched Richard's face, not throttling him, but with a kind of empathy. "Imagine your life without Darken Rahl."
"It's not worth gambling the world. Nothing is."
"It's easy to say that, with your woman's voice still fresh in your ears. Forget the color of her eyes and the feel of her hair, we'll see if you feel the same. In fact..." He picked up the Sword of Truth. "I think I'll run this through the Mother Confessor before we cast the spell. And then you can tell me if we should leave the world as it is."
***
Cara didn't know what she was going to do as she ran back to town square. It was something she hated about Richard and Kahlan when they'd played heroes. But she had to admit, it did feel good.
The war wizards were still rounding up the townspeople--what was left of them--when Cara returned. She took her sword out from its concealment against her leg and unwrapped its telltale hardness from the bundle of cloth she'd swathed it in and fitted it to her hand. A war wizard waited around the corner of the house she was shaded by, worrying at the wound of a dead man, its fingers poking inside and dragging out red. She thought of Kahlan. Her breath came steady as she stepped out and swung and the blade cleaved the man's head from his shoulders. And he stood and turned to her and on the ground, his head smiled.
Cara took the dagger from her belt. Plan B.
"No!" someone shouted. Cara recognized the voice but didn't let her mind put a name to it. She was swinging when Dahlia (that was the name, that was who tried to stop her) pushed her aside and drove her dacra into the war wizard. Without his han, his body gratefully made its transition to dust.
Cara was too stricken to speak. Without her rage to protect her, the sight of Dahlia struck her dumb.
"It's not a weapon," Dahlia said. "It's a test. You turn it on yourself."
There was a commotion from the square. Jagang was coming out of a cellar. He dragged Richard with him, threw the Seeker down to the ground in chains.
"Say what you mean and say it fast," Cara ordered.
"The Wizards knew the power of the Clear Eye's Fire was unlike any other. Its magic is such that once made, it cannot be unmade. So they limited its application as much as possible."
Jagang was barking orders in High D'Haran. The translation of his words tugged at Cara's mind.
"What limitations?"
"They knew that there would always be those who fell to darkness, and some of them would always find their way back to the light. They thought someone who'd fallen to the darkness would better be able to resist its temptation."
Cara remembered the passage Berdine had found. Cleansed of black until it shines of white/Made whole from what was always divided. "That's why Rahl wanted me. Why he wasted Nicci on my life. Because I was the only one with enough darkness in me to use it."
The war wizards were moving to obey Jagang's orders. One of them disappeared into a house.
There were tears in Dahlia's eyes. Why were there tears in her eyes? "But it wasn't enough. After Amfortas used it, he thought that no one could wield such power without being corrupted. So he put another spell on it." Her voice cracked. "Whoever uses it, forfeits their own life."
For a moment, Cara was cast back to the Underworld. She remembered the panic she'd concealed, a childish fear, but growing for every second she had spent without her leathers, her Agiels, without even the body she had trained to perfection. "So if I sacrifice myself, then I can stop Jagang. That's what it will take."
The war wizard reappeared, dragging Kahlan behind him. Cara turned and couldn't look away. For a moment, Dahlia, the Clear Eye's Flame, her own life, all forgotten. She wanted to go to them and rip off the hand that had touched Kahlan.
"That's why we have to find someone else," Dahlia was saying. "We can go to a monastery, there'll be someone who murdered or stole or littered or something--"
The war wizard was bringing Kahlan to Jagang. The emperor had the Sword of Truth in his hands.
"How does it work?" Cara asked.
Dahlia was silent. Cara looked to her and their eyes met. Cara had dreamed of Kahlan looking at her like that. There was such devotion there, a look that wasn't blind to what she'd done, but made it seem insignificant. Then Dahlia's eyes grayed with sorrow. She smiled in the same instant.
"Like this."
She took hold of the dagger and pulled it into her own breast.
Cleansed of black until it shines of white
Made whole from what was always divided
Full of pain until set free
No hate, no fear, no hunger, no want
The blind will see by the Clear Eye's Fire
Cara gasped. Her control was gone as if it'd never been there, and every emotion she'd ever shoved down, ignored, denied, they'd massed into an army and occupied her. Razed her.
"If it's not too presumptuous of me, I don't think you're the only one who's redeemed herself." And Dahlia let gravity take her to the ground.
Away from them, the war wizards were disappearing into green flame, Jagang's scream an omnipresent sound. Cara couldn't hear it. Just Dahlia's breathing, coming slower and slower.
"It's better this way," Dahlia was saying when Cara could hear her again.
"I'm not better!" Cara's feelings were rebelling, taking over her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, not just for Dahlia—for Leo, for her father, for everyone she'd ever lost and everyone she'd never taken in. "You make me strong."
"And weak."
"I could live with that kind of weakness."
Dahlia smiled with thin lips. "I might as well leave now. I can't do better than that."
Her eyes shut.
Cara didn't hesitate. She gave Dahlia the Breath of Life, but this time it didn't warm the target's cheeks or color her lips. Cara did it again, this time close enough to smell Dahlia's mix of rain and lightning. Dahlia wouldn't wake. Again Cara tried, though now her overtaxed Breath burned from her lungs. Dahlia's eyes would not open.
Finally, Cara wiped the tears from her eyes. She picked Dahlia up and held her to the light. Spoke quietly, but firmly. "I never asked why. And I never asked anything for myself. I don't know which of you have her… but give her back. Or I'll come looking for her."
She gave Dahlia the Breath of Life, one last time.
Dahlia didn't stir.
Cara pulled her knees up to her chest. She settled in to wait. When Richard and Kahlan noticed her, however long that took, they would want to comfort her, provoke words of woe from her mouth for them to soothe. She'd have to be ready to dismiss them. Her weakness wasn't safe with either.
"Are those tears for me, Mistress Cara?"
"Mord'Sith do not cry," Cara countered instinctively, before she even realized who it was that had spoken.
Dahlia wiped a dripping tear from Cara's jaw. "Then I guess you're not a very good Mord'Sith."
If it were Kahlan, Cara would've let the Mother Confessor hug her, kiss her, voice any amount of affection. But it was Dahlia, and they were almost of a mind when it came to love. Cara looked Dahlia in the eye and let her battered, eternal mask fall away for a moment to the wide, relieved smile beneath.
"I was with the Spirits," Dahlia said. "I saw everyone. My parents… everyone."
Cara thought of seeing her father again. "I'm sorry to take you away from that."
"I can die anytime. I'd rather be with you."
***
The rest was Richard. He stewarded Hartland through its grieving, softening it with the work of rebuilding. And eventually people started again to laugh and cheer, until they were celebrating their victory. Cara helped as she could, and for the most part she was not even recognized. At night she slept with Dahlia as Mord'Sith did, upside-down to each other, ready to cover the other's back if they were woken in the night.
For over a year, Cara had had the quest as a reason to press onward, to complain at every delay, to avoid familiarity and entanglement. Without an excuse to be on the move, she found there was no great terror in staying put, no infirmity in putting down roots.
One morning, she came back from hunting to find Kahlan waiting for her instead of Dahlia. She knew what it was about. Talk between them had been politely strained of late, and if Kahlan had sought her out, it could only mean one thing.
Cara set about gutting her prey for the icebox. "You and Richard are to be wed. You'll have the ceremony in Aydindril. Then you'll help him take the D'Haran throne, and peace will spread across the land."
Kahlan was damnably calm. "If you know what I'm going to say, then I'm sure I know what your answer is."
"I'd like to visit my sister. I'd like to see you and Richard. But for now…" Cara felt the urge to take it all back, to swear eternal loyalty to Richard, to Kahlan. It was easy to resist. "They don't fear me here. They see me as you see me."
Kahlan smiled, ruefully, then not. "As a woman, not as a Mord'Sith. It's something I would want for you."
Cara looked away. "Take care of Richard. He'll need it."
The conversation was over, but Kahlan lingered. "Cara, what is it you would want from me, if I could give it to you?"
"I'd want you to teach me how to have… this." Cara gestured as ephemerally as her upbringing would allow. "But I'm figuring it out on my own."
Kahlan got closer to Cara, and when the Mord'Sith didn't shy away, she placed a kiss on Cara's forehead. Kahlan was just at the right height to do so. "There will always be a place for you in my heart."
"And for you in mine. But there will be others as well."
"Fill your heart with as many as you can," Kahlan avowed. "That's all I have left to teach you."
***
She never saw the Mord'Sith. It wasn't that she avoided them, but they were always with Richard and Richard was always with Kahlan and those circumstances were not conductive to encounters. She was not compelled to work around them, either. Being with the Mord'Sith, even without her leathers and with her Agiels in a box under the bed she tried never to open, made her feel like her old self.
Still, before Richard left, she made a point of seeking them out. Being in the midst of their leather-clad perfection and screaming Agiels made her swell with pride in her sisters, arrogance in herself.
Triana was the only one to speak. The first thing she said was "You're out of uniform. Why?"
Cara's pants and vest were still leather, but besides that, they bore little resemblance to what the Mord'Sith were. "Easier to take off," she answered at length.
"I came to say goodbye."
"Farewells are meant to alleviate pains of separation," Triana replied. "But I won't miss you at all."
"I know you won't. Watch over the Lord Rahl… and Kahlan."
She left, and the feeling of power and conceit departed, never to return.
***
They left in a blaze of pageantry. Cara attended and let herself be fussed over by Richard and Kahlan and Zedd. They even got the traces of fondness they had come to expect from her.
Finally, when nothing was left to be said, she let herself be hugged by Richard and Kahlan, one after the other, and gave Zedd a hard glare when he tried to do the same.
For the next few weeks, Cara went to sleep only to dream of Kahlan. First, nightmares of Kahlan in danger. Easy to dismiss. Kahlan could handle herself. Then dreams of Kahlan with Richard, marrying him, loving him, carrying his child. After waking from those dreams, Cara couldn't get back to sleep, no matter how Dahlia soothed her.
A week later she was in the woods, fortifying a local bridge someone had done a piss-poor job of building, when she saw one of the village girls, a little blonde thing of ten years, bounding out of the forest. "Sonja, wait up!" Dahlia called, skirt gathered in her hands to follow closely. Though the hem was no lower than the robes of the Sisters of the Dark, she was still having trouble accustoming to it.
"What are you doing out here?" Cara asked, surprised to find her voice not a growl.
"Sonja wanted to give you something," Dahlia said. "Go on, Sonja."
Sonja's gift was red fabric, knitted together in the bulbous form of an Agiel. A leather thong strung through it turned it into a necklace.
"Thank you," Cara said when the girl wouldn't go away.
"Put it on," Dahlia suggested.
So Cara did. Leather at her throat. She could live with it.
Sonja looked at her for a moment, then ran off like she was late for something important. "Okay, bye."
"What was that about?" Cara demanded of Dahlia.
"I told everyone it was your birthday. You seemed like you could use a pick-me-up."
Cara started at Dahlia. She was a beautiful woman. Her expression was neutral, but the mask had changed from the Sister of the Dark Cara had once known. There was a disdain gone from her eyes. She'd held herself above the world and now she'd fallen into it… her clothes comfortably loose, hair askew, smile ready. Cara knew how it felt. Terrifying, then exhilarating.
"Is this truly what you want, to eke out an existence in this little corner of the world, rusting like a blade in a sheath?"
"What I want is to never again forget the sound of your voice."
When presented with emotions, Cara had disdained them. Misunderstood them. Now, she felt something in her that played in tune with the look in Dahlia's eyes, that flowed up to pass between them. She closed her eyes and it didn't stop. "Foolish girl. Do you know what it is Mord'Sith call love?"
She stepped closer to Dahlia and the woman didn't flinch.
"I'd be your whore… as long as I'm yours."
"I'd want that from any other woman. Submission. Pain. But not from you. All I want is for you to keep looking at me like that. You make me stronger."
"And weaker."
Cara didn't care about strength. She kissed Dahlia, took her, had her more utterly than she could any slave, and was in turn broken more than a thousand years of torture could accomplish. She was Dahlia's. Dahlia was hers.
And it was enough. It was more than enough.
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,934
Characters/Pairings: Cara/Triana, Cara/Dahlia, Richard/Kahlan, Berdine/Raina
Author’s notes: Betaed by the lovely and talented
susurrusnight Previous: Part 14
Summary: Cara's always been ready to die for what she believes. She just doesn't know what she believes anymore.
"What a weapon." Jagang slid the Sword of Truth through the air. "Fit to unite a kingdom." He slashed at a barrel and watched it fall to pieces. "To depose a tyrant." He turned and traced the point over Richard's face. "To reduce a family to a man, to a monster."
Richard was calm. Jagang wasn't focused on Kahlan, after all, and Cara was still out there. Kahlan safe and Cara out to save them. What was there to worry about? "I haven't reduced any families lately, Jagang. How about you?"
Jagang smiled. "Yes. But that will soon change." He threw the sword aside. The sound of it clattering echoed through the basement. Jagang could've interrogated Richard anywhere, but he seemed most comfortable underground, in the dark. "Do you know how chainfire works?"
Richard tested his bonds for the thousandth time. As much as everyone had cautioned him about his rage, he would give it free rein if he had just one shot at Jagang. "Zedd taught me. It's fire that burns history."
"Very good, Seeker. Instead of ending a life, it erases it, removing that link from the chain of time. And not just people. If I burnt an apple tree with that spell, then no one would ever have eaten its apples. If I dried a lake, then no fish would ever spawn in its depths."
"I just said Zedd taught me."
"Zedd's only a Wizard of the First Order. I outrank him. And Seeker... you're thinking too small." Jagang gave the Sword of Truth a kick and it spun, the blade making a horrendous sound, scraping against the stone floor. "Imagine if one were to burn away the Sword of Truth. No Seekers. No quests. No helpful Mother Confessors, or Wizards, or families emptying of blood because something went wrong in the grand plan."
"Impossible. The Sword of Truth has powerful magic woven into every particle of it. You'd only destroy yourself."
"Then we'll have to burn every particle at once. Imagine it." Jagang's voice swelled. A long-held dream finally spilling out of him." My entire army taking your birthright from you. A thousand spells cast against the Wizards' crowning glory..."
Richard's face reflected Jagang's vision, but instead of being inspired, his voice dropped to horror. "You wouldn't just singe history. You'd pull it apart."
"I'd have my family back. And with no Seeker to stop me, I'd bring peace to this world." He touched Richard's face, not throttling him, but with a kind of empathy. "Imagine your life without Darken Rahl."
"It's not worth gambling the world. Nothing is."
"It's easy to say that, with your woman's voice still fresh in your ears. Forget the color of her eyes and the feel of her hair, we'll see if you feel the same. In fact..." He picked up the Sword of Truth. "I think I'll run this through the Mother Confessor before we cast the spell. And then you can tell me if we should leave the world as it is."
***
Cara didn't know what she was going to do as she ran back to town square. It was something she hated about Richard and Kahlan when they'd played heroes. But she had to admit, it did feel good.
The war wizards were still rounding up the townspeople--what was left of them--when Cara returned. She took her sword out from its concealment against her leg and unwrapped its telltale hardness from the bundle of cloth she'd swathed it in and fitted it to her hand. A war wizard waited around the corner of the house she was shaded by, worrying at the wound of a dead man, its fingers poking inside and dragging out red. She thought of Kahlan. Her breath came steady as she stepped out and swung and the blade cleaved the man's head from his shoulders. And he stood and turned to her and on the ground, his head smiled.
Cara took the dagger from her belt. Plan B.
"No!" someone shouted. Cara recognized the voice but didn't let her mind put a name to it. She was swinging when Dahlia (that was the name, that was who tried to stop her) pushed her aside and drove her dacra into the war wizard. Without his han, his body gratefully made its transition to dust.
Cara was too stricken to speak. Without her rage to protect her, the sight of Dahlia struck her dumb.
"It's not a weapon," Dahlia said. "It's a test. You turn it on yourself."
There was a commotion from the square. Jagang was coming out of a cellar. He dragged Richard with him, threw the Seeker down to the ground in chains.
"Say what you mean and say it fast," Cara ordered.
"The Wizards knew the power of the Clear Eye's Fire was unlike any other. Its magic is such that once made, it cannot be unmade. So they limited its application as much as possible."
Jagang was barking orders in High D'Haran. The translation of his words tugged at Cara's mind.
"What limitations?"
"They knew that there would always be those who fell to darkness, and some of them would always find their way back to the light. They thought someone who'd fallen to the darkness would better be able to resist its temptation."
Cara remembered the passage Berdine had found. Cleansed of black until it shines of white/Made whole from what was always divided. "That's why Rahl wanted me. Why he wasted Nicci on my life. Because I was the only one with enough darkness in me to use it."
The war wizards were moving to obey Jagang's orders. One of them disappeared into a house.
There were tears in Dahlia's eyes. Why were there tears in her eyes? "But it wasn't enough. After Amfortas used it, he thought that no one could wield such power without being corrupted. So he put another spell on it." Her voice cracked. "Whoever uses it, forfeits their own life."
For a moment, Cara was cast back to the Underworld. She remembered the panic she'd concealed, a childish fear, but growing for every second she had spent without her leathers, her Agiels, without even the body she had trained to perfection. "So if I sacrifice myself, then I can stop Jagang. That's what it will take."
The war wizard reappeared, dragging Kahlan behind him. Cara turned and couldn't look away. For a moment, Dahlia, the Clear Eye's Flame, her own life, all forgotten. She wanted to go to them and rip off the hand that had touched Kahlan.
"That's why we have to find someone else," Dahlia was saying. "We can go to a monastery, there'll be someone who murdered or stole or littered or something--"
The war wizard was bringing Kahlan to Jagang. The emperor had the Sword of Truth in his hands.
"How does it work?" Cara asked.
Dahlia was silent. Cara looked to her and their eyes met. Cara had dreamed of Kahlan looking at her like that. There was such devotion there, a look that wasn't blind to what she'd done, but made it seem insignificant. Then Dahlia's eyes grayed with sorrow. She smiled in the same instant.
"Like this."
She took hold of the dagger and pulled it into her own breast.
Cleansed of black until it shines of white
Made whole from what was always divided
Full of pain until set free
No hate, no fear, no hunger, no want
The blind will see by the Clear Eye's Fire
Cara gasped. Her control was gone as if it'd never been there, and every emotion she'd ever shoved down, ignored, denied, they'd massed into an army and occupied her. Razed her.
"If it's not too presumptuous of me, I don't think you're the only one who's redeemed herself." And Dahlia let gravity take her to the ground.
Away from them, the war wizards were disappearing into green flame, Jagang's scream an omnipresent sound. Cara couldn't hear it. Just Dahlia's breathing, coming slower and slower.
"It's better this way," Dahlia was saying when Cara could hear her again.
"I'm not better!" Cara's feelings were rebelling, taking over her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, not just for Dahlia—for Leo, for her father, for everyone she'd ever lost and everyone she'd never taken in. "You make me strong."
"And weak."
"I could live with that kind of weakness."
Dahlia smiled with thin lips. "I might as well leave now. I can't do better than that."
Her eyes shut.
Cara didn't hesitate. She gave Dahlia the Breath of Life, but this time it didn't warm the target's cheeks or color her lips. Cara did it again, this time close enough to smell Dahlia's mix of rain and lightning. Dahlia wouldn't wake. Again Cara tried, though now her overtaxed Breath burned from her lungs. Dahlia's eyes would not open.
Finally, Cara wiped the tears from her eyes. She picked Dahlia up and held her to the light. Spoke quietly, but firmly. "I never asked why. And I never asked anything for myself. I don't know which of you have her… but give her back. Or I'll come looking for her."
She gave Dahlia the Breath of Life, one last time.
Dahlia didn't stir.
Cara pulled her knees up to her chest. She settled in to wait. When Richard and Kahlan noticed her, however long that took, they would want to comfort her, provoke words of woe from her mouth for them to soothe. She'd have to be ready to dismiss them. Her weakness wasn't safe with either.
"Are those tears for me, Mistress Cara?"
"Mord'Sith do not cry," Cara countered instinctively, before she even realized who it was that had spoken.
Dahlia wiped a dripping tear from Cara's jaw. "Then I guess you're not a very good Mord'Sith."
If it were Kahlan, Cara would've let the Mother Confessor hug her, kiss her, voice any amount of affection. But it was Dahlia, and they were almost of a mind when it came to love. Cara looked Dahlia in the eye and let her battered, eternal mask fall away for a moment to the wide, relieved smile beneath.
"I was with the Spirits," Dahlia said. "I saw everyone. My parents… everyone."
Cara thought of seeing her father again. "I'm sorry to take you away from that."
"I can die anytime. I'd rather be with you."
***
The rest was Richard. He stewarded Hartland through its grieving, softening it with the work of rebuilding. And eventually people started again to laugh and cheer, until they were celebrating their victory. Cara helped as she could, and for the most part she was not even recognized. At night she slept with Dahlia as Mord'Sith did, upside-down to each other, ready to cover the other's back if they were woken in the night.
For over a year, Cara had had the quest as a reason to press onward, to complain at every delay, to avoid familiarity and entanglement. Without an excuse to be on the move, she found there was no great terror in staying put, no infirmity in putting down roots.
One morning, she came back from hunting to find Kahlan waiting for her instead of Dahlia. She knew what it was about. Talk between them had been politely strained of late, and if Kahlan had sought her out, it could only mean one thing.
Cara set about gutting her prey for the icebox. "You and Richard are to be wed. You'll have the ceremony in Aydindril. Then you'll help him take the D'Haran throne, and peace will spread across the land."
Kahlan was damnably calm. "If you know what I'm going to say, then I'm sure I know what your answer is."
"I'd like to visit my sister. I'd like to see you and Richard. But for now…" Cara felt the urge to take it all back, to swear eternal loyalty to Richard, to Kahlan. It was easy to resist. "They don't fear me here. They see me as you see me."
Kahlan smiled, ruefully, then not. "As a woman, not as a Mord'Sith. It's something I would want for you."
Cara looked away. "Take care of Richard. He'll need it."
The conversation was over, but Kahlan lingered. "Cara, what is it you would want from me, if I could give it to you?"
"I'd want you to teach me how to have… this." Cara gestured as ephemerally as her upbringing would allow. "But I'm figuring it out on my own."
Kahlan got closer to Cara, and when the Mord'Sith didn't shy away, she placed a kiss on Cara's forehead. Kahlan was just at the right height to do so. "There will always be a place for you in my heart."
"And for you in mine. But there will be others as well."
"Fill your heart with as many as you can," Kahlan avowed. "That's all I have left to teach you."
***
She never saw the Mord'Sith. It wasn't that she avoided them, but they were always with Richard and Richard was always with Kahlan and those circumstances were not conductive to encounters. She was not compelled to work around them, either. Being with the Mord'Sith, even without her leathers and with her Agiels in a box under the bed she tried never to open, made her feel like her old self.
Still, before Richard left, she made a point of seeking them out. Being in the midst of their leather-clad perfection and screaming Agiels made her swell with pride in her sisters, arrogance in herself.
Triana was the only one to speak. The first thing she said was "You're out of uniform. Why?"
Cara's pants and vest were still leather, but besides that, they bore little resemblance to what the Mord'Sith were. "Easier to take off," she answered at length.
"I came to say goodbye."
"Farewells are meant to alleviate pains of separation," Triana replied. "But I won't miss you at all."
"I know you won't. Watch over the Lord Rahl… and Kahlan."
She left, and the feeling of power and conceit departed, never to return.
***
They left in a blaze of pageantry. Cara attended and let herself be fussed over by Richard and Kahlan and Zedd. They even got the traces of fondness they had come to expect from her.
Finally, when nothing was left to be said, she let herself be hugged by Richard and Kahlan, one after the other, and gave Zedd a hard glare when he tried to do the same.
For the next few weeks, Cara went to sleep only to dream of Kahlan. First, nightmares of Kahlan in danger. Easy to dismiss. Kahlan could handle herself. Then dreams of Kahlan with Richard, marrying him, loving him, carrying his child. After waking from those dreams, Cara couldn't get back to sleep, no matter how Dahlia soothed her.
A week later she was in the woods, fortifying a local bridge someone had done a piss-poor job of building, when she saw one of the village girls, a little blonde thing of ten years, bounding out of the forest. "Sonja, wait up!" Dahlia called, skirt gathered in her hands to follow closely. Though the hem was no lower than the robes of the Sisters of the Dark, she was still having trouble accustoming to it.
"What are you doing out here?" Cara asked, surprised to find her voice not a growl.
"Sonja wanted to give you something," Dahlia said. "Go on, Sonja."
Sonja's gift was red fabric, knitted together in the bulbous form of an Agiel. A leather thong strung through it turned it into a necklace.
"Thank you," Cara said when the girl wouldn't go away.
"Put it on," Dahlia suggested.
So Cara did. Leather at her throat. She could live with it.
Sonja looked at her for a moment, then ran off like she was late for something important. "Okay, bye."
"What was that about?" Cara demanded of Dahlia.
"I told everyone it was your birthday. You seemed like you could use a pick-me-up."
Cara started at Dahlia. She was a beautiful woman. Her expression was neutral, but the mask had changed from the Sister of the Dark Cara had once known. There was a disdain gone from her eyes. She'd held herself above the world and now she'd fallen into it… her clothes comfortably loose, hair askew, smile ready. Cara knew how it felt. Terrifying, then exhilarating.
"Is this truly what you want, to eke out an existence in this little corner of the world, rusting like a blade in a sheath?"
"What I want is to never again forget the sound of your voice."
When presented with emotions, Cara had disdained them. Misunderstood them. Now, she felt something in her that played in tune with the look in Dahlia's eyes, that flowed up to pass between them. She closed her eyes and it didn't stop. "Foolish girl. Do you know what it is Mord'Sith call love?"
She stepped closer to Dahlia and the woman didn't flinch.
"I'd be your whore… as long as I'm yours."
"I'd want that from any other woman. Submission. Pain. But not from you. All I want is for you to keep looking at me like that. You make me stronger."
"And weaker."
Cara didn't care about strength. She kissed Dahlia, took her, had her more utterly than she could any slave, and was in turn broken more than a thousand years of torture could accomplish. She was Dahlia's. Dahlia was hers.
And it was enough. It was more than enough.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-04 04:53 pm (UTC)I wonder if that's how people feel when they read my fic and then listen to Josh Ritter.
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Date: 2011-08-05 07:04 pm (UTC)Hey, that´s an immense compliment, as I´m certainly totally mistrusting that beautiful girl, normally. :D
A very intense story, some really moving emotions and, last but not least!!, an adorable writing!
Thanks for sharing!
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Date: 2011-08-05 11:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-07 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-19 10:58 am (UTC)But what I love most, I think, is that your Cara is a much more complex, multifaceted hero than she got to be on the show. You show her struggle to understand her growth and changes caused by circumstances and the people around her, and the process of trying to reconcile all those different parts of herself. All the while continuing to fiercely protect her loved ones, being funny and clever and totally badass.
Thanks for sharing these fics!