Title: No Fate But What We Make (4 of 15)
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Characters/Pairing: Cara, Kahlan (pre-Cara/Kahlan)
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter Length: 5949
Chapter Summary: The crap hasn't hit the fan yet, so all they have are their own problems.
(Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3)
Chapter 4
Cara could point out the spot when Kahlan stopped being a mystery to her—it was the moment when she was bent over, Cara holding her hair back, as she lost her breakfast all over the path. It was a laughably perfect scenario for her life now, all discomfort and awkwardness and yet truth.
“Creator help me,” Kahlan murmured, as Cara handed her a rag to wipe her mouth.
“No, only time,” Cara corrected with dry experience. She glanced at Kahlan’s belly. “How long?”
“A month now,” Kahlan answered. When Cara made a small noise and frowned, it made her ask, “Why? How much more of this—?”
Cara shook her head. “No, you’ll be fine, Kahlan. I just...never mind, let’s move.”
Kahlan’s hand strayed to hers, tugging her back for a second. “What is it?”
She was trying not to think of it—she was trying not to face it. For the past few days she’d almost succeeded in forgetting. There was not a bone left in her body that was as easy with people as her child-self had been, yet traveling with Kahlan and getting to know her had been almost an easy distraction. But now, Cara looked up at Kahlan as she took a slightly-shaky breath. “It’s difficult, that’s all.”
With a nod, though, Kahlan said, “This child is all I have left of the old world, but yours are all you left behind.”
“Why must you say things like that?” Cara snapped bitterly, adjusting her leather and turning to walk away. Pride was such an idiotic thing to hold onto, but she had found some comfort in being “the Seeker” to Kahlan, and not a vulnerable mother to draw pity and make Cara feel helpless.
“Because you don’t, and the truth is important, Cara,” Kahlan said, again reaching out to grab Cara’s hand. “You are the Seeker of Truth, you have to be honest.”
Cara didn’t look back, but nor did she wrench her hand from Kahlan’s. Finally, spinning slowly around, she said flatly, “Honesty hurts.”
Kahlan didn’t have to say anything then, not with the way that Cara saw herself reflected back in those blue eyes. Reality was cruel again. Her exhale came out hitched as pictures she’d denied herself came before her eyes, unwanted but inevitable. Sam tickling Sophia under the covers, Sophia sitting on his head to make him stop, both of them giggling and squealing before she’d called them out of bed and given playful swats to get them dressing faster. “I don’t belong here,” she said, voice wavering even as she tried to drown it with force. “It doesn’t matter how much I learn, I belong back home, with them.”
“And I should be back in Aydindril, in bed on a morning when I feel like this.”
Cara looked up and grimaced. She and Kahlan were just two humans standing on a dusty road, sword and daggers not shined, clothes not perfectly pressed, moving ever further towards an epic war of spirits. “Is there no way to kill the Keeper of the Underworld for forcing us into this?”
She was only half surprised when Kahlan squeezed her hand, even as she shook her head sadly. “When this is all done, I expect you to bring your children to Aydindril and see my daughter born.”
Cara stared up at her. When it was all done. Somehow, when she hoped for a quick ending herself, it seemed more realistic. The hope in Kahlan’s eyes, though, made Cara feel like breaking down and giving up. She couldn’t—it wasn’t her way—but the feeling wore on her.
“I’d really rather just go on, right now,” she said with a glance up at Kahlan, hoping the honesty practice was over.
Again, Kahlan squeezed her hand. It made up for everything she said, Cara was realizing. She wondered what it did for Kahlan, that she repeated the action so often. Cara no longer caught her weeping, or even looking sadly at the Sword or off into the distance, and it seemed like every word of Kahlan’s was designed to focus attention—hers and Cara’s alike—on everything but herself. Perhaps even that almost over-wrought hope that she expressed. And yet it was still genuine; that much, Cara could tell. The thought crossed her mind that a Confessor’s life must be perverse indeed if she sought friendship only when the world was about to be destroyed.
*
Rumors began circling the Midlands of Darken Rahl and the way he was letting his strength brew and condense, forming an army that was too far off to see and too close to not fear. By now, too, the rumors about Cara had circled around and back again, and bore whispered hints of her deadly magic above and beyond the Sword. Cara’s hands clenched whenever she heard, but she and Kahlan alike had much more to be concerned with than irritating falsehoods.
Darken Rahl wasn’t going after them, yet, because they weren’t affecting his power structure. They weren’t affecting any power structure at all. In a world where war seemed likely, Kahlan and Cara were slipping towards a magic that would only make sure the world lasted long enough to have a war. As the rumors swelled, they stopped addressing them and began trying to avoid them. Kahlan tied up her hair and wore a green hood when they stopped in towns now, pushing Cara forward to order a room with a frown. She was starting to intimidate tavern-keepers, Kahlan noticed, and it wasn’t just because she mastered a mother’s interrogatory stare.
“What do they think of us?” Cara grumbled later, settling her pack down on one side of the large rickety bed.
“That we are clearly not the Seeker and the Mother Confessor,” Kahlan answered, pulling the pin from her hair and teasing the up-do loose with a sigh. Then, retroactively hearing a certain tone in Cara’s voice, she turned. “She doesn’t think I’m your courtesan, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Cara’s lips curled as she took off her cloak and the Sword, leaning back on the bed. “Given that I have no one who would care, that was hardly a concern. Less so, given my clearly incompatible mood.”
Kahlan blinked, and almost smiled. Cara brooded like no one Kahlan had ever met, that was for sure, but though she was most certainly aware of that, Kahlan doubted that she knew how bluntly open her thoughts were when she wasn’t self-flagellating over them. Of course, Kahlan could have guessed with other means, but it was more refreshing that Cara didn’t even try to hide. Yet Kahlan wasn’t sure why she spoke next, “Having played a courtesan before, I doubt they would look at your face long enough to read a mood.”
Cara stared at her, cocking her head as if trying to understand the words. “You’re not the Mother Confessor I heard stories about,” she finally declared, eyebrows raised as she leaned down to unlace her boots.
Looking away to stare at the opposite wall, Kahlan knew herself to be an even more different woman now. Her heart beat faintly, and each crack in it was tied to a thousand memories she didn’t want to touch, but they were healing and only hurt when she thought of them. It was not the way true love worked, and when she looked back on the recent past, she sighed and thought that maybe she was right when she’d first told Richard that he believed in a fantasy. That realization should have had her in deep grief, but instead it felt empty, and there was too much else in her life to hold her attention.
“Kahlan?”
She glanced back. Cara’s hair now fell around her shoulders in soft gold curls, framing a worried frown.
“Don’t pay me mind, Cara,” Kahlan said, drawing her legs up onto the bed and leaning back into the headboard. She rested her hands in her lap, once again finding her emotional state too simple. “I have my troubles, and you do not need them.”
Cara didn’t shift or drop her gaze, and her fingers twitched, something that in Cara could mean so many things.
“I’m fine,” Kahlan said. Whatever Cara didn’t ask out loud, that answer usually covered the options.
“That’s a lie,” Cara retorted, squaring her shoulders and her jaw towards Kahlan.
Kahlan pursed her lips, but had only one response. “Yes. But it is for your good.”
“Just because you can read me doesn’t mean you can judge me,” Cara said. “I’m not here so you can simply tell me what to do, show me where to go. I’m—” She bit back, twisting her head slowly away, as if to hide her eyes.
They both sat facing the far wall instead of each other, but Kahlan shifted a little closer to Cara. For the sake of them both, as well as their mission, she felt like she had to keep them together—not just companions, but a team. Some days it seemed inevitable, but sometimes Kahlan worried that she needed to grasp onto it lest Cara just float away. Now she was sitting almost close enough to feel Cara’s warmth, and appreciated that the other woman’s body was relaxed. “I know,” she said, answering the objection. “But I just...”
“Stop worrying,” Cara ordered her, sounding like an irritated mother. “I’m not as easily broken as you think.”
Making a small hum, Kahlan did smile at that. It would be so easy for them both to be broken, pitiful, torn by the ravages of love so that they wept every night. Instead, they pretended nothing bothered them, and instead berated the other for denial.
“I was looking at a map,” Cara said suddenly. “We’ll have to leave the horses behind soon.”
Kahlan hummed her answer.
“You don’t want to be overexerting yourself then.” Cara nodded towards Kahlan’s abdomen. “Believe me.”
“Oh,” Kahlan said. Her hand went as always to cradle the life that she could still not feel within her other than by magic. “But—” She looked to Cara, and frowned at the scheming look in the woman’s eyes, the wheels turning visibly in her head. “Cara, you are not considering telling me to stay behind then.”
“No,” Cara answered, “I’m considering what means I would have to use to force you to do so. It will not be a joke, Kahlan, your condition.”
Kahlan shook her head. “I’m not using you mindlessly as a tool—I couldn’t bear it if you had to go on your own. Maybe you would succeed, but there’s no need to do so alone when you have a friend.”
“A friend with child.” Cara’s chuckle was more like a snort.
Kahlan pursed her lips to hold back a small smile. “Cara...”
The woman glanced at her, eyes clear. “You would not survive if you lost that child, Kahlan. And I’m not—ready for that.” She withdrew her gaze, letting the unspoken words remain in implication.
Swallowing, Kahlan answered, “Then you know exactly why I won’t ever make you go on your own either.” Gently, she reached over and touched Cara’s hand, not as a Confessor to a Seeker, but as Kahlan to Cara.
Silently and without looking again at Kahlan, Cara gave her fingers a sharp squeeze.
So Kahlan was not surprised to stir awake in the middle of the night and find that Cara had moved to sleeping behind her, arm snugly wrapped around Kahlan’s middle, both protective and clinging. Closing her eyes, Kahlan could have pictured what she most desired and accepted Cara’s presence as a substitute, but she didn’t know anymore what that was. All her planning had been torn away, and what she had, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with.
When Cara murmured her name in the night, Kahlan realized also that the closeness was not just a mothering instinct. Somehow, quietly, Cara had lain her worry for her children to the side so that she could find a devotion to Kahlan. And with that realization, Kahlan also knew that the peace she felt with that devotion was more than just feeling safe with a true Seeker.
*
A scream tore through the night, and Cara cursed herself for taking two seconds of stunned panic to remember to roll over and reach for the Sword. She didn’t realize that she’d been sleeping wrapped loosely around Kahlan until she felt cold, hopping out of bed and feeling a draft around her. She shivered for more than one reason.
Kahlan had her daggers glittering in hand already, eyes sharp. “That scream came from just outside.”
“Not Darken Rahl?” Cara slid the Sword of Truth from its sheath, feeling the comfortable power pulse through her.
The Mother Confessor shook her head. “He wouldn’t have his soldiers tip their hand like this, at night, if their goal was to get us and the Sword.”
A bloodcurdling scream sounded closer, cut off suddenly at the end. Cara gripped the swordhilt and went for the door, barely reaching it before Kahlan. Slipping silently down the stairs, Cara’s heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, but at least it wasn’t terrified.
“Take the left,” whispered Kahlan when they got to the door of the inn.
Blade held high, Cara held herself at the door. She could hear nothing outside, and the filtered moonlight through the cloud-cover made the low-lying fog look ominous. The town looked like death, and Cara didn’t know why she shivered at that word so much.
Then, just as Kahlan was turning, there was a scream and a kick and the inn door crashed inwards. Two persons in the dark, limbs flailing and teeth gnashing, attacked at too close a range for Cara to finish hers off in one strike. She stumbled backwards, feeling the rush of a blade nicking past her throat, then jammed the hilt of the sword into the wildman’s face, knocking him off balance enough to slice him in two.
The other one fell to the floor first, choking from Kahlan’s slash to the throat. Cara still wasn’t used to the way corpses looked at her as they died, making it so she had to watch the spirit fade away. She could never regret self-defense, but it hadn’t been a chore once to become a mother and value life above death, and each face of death still made her flinch. Only afterwards, but it was a flinch nonetheless.
Kahlan was kneeling to look at the corpse in the faint moonlight that spilled in from the door. “Zedd said there would be banelings,” she murmured.
“Banelings?” Cara asked.
“The Keeper can send souls back to their dead bodies, and as long as they keep killing for him, they’ll stay alive.” Kahlan stood up and walked across the inn. “We need to burn the bodies.”
Another scream came from the outside, though, and someone rang the town alarm.
Kahlan choked in horror. “There’s only two of us. The banelings are killing the rest of the town to make sure they keep their lives!” She drew the knife she’d sheathed.
“No, Kahlan!” Cara protested, stepping across and grabbing her shoulder. Despite the situation, and the weight of weariness behind her eyes, she knew one thing for sure: “We can’t stay.”
“These people can’t fight for themselves,” Kahlan answered, staring incredulously at her.
“Do you stop on a journey to save the world to focus on just one town?” Cara demanded.
Kahlan tensed, but didn’t pull away even as she said, “Yes. It is the job of the Seeker, of the Mother Confessor, to protect the Midlands.”
“By finding the Stone, you told me,” Cara said sharply, shaking her shoulder. “Kahlan, if the Keeper is intelligent, he will send all that he has against us. The longer we stay, the more likely we are to die, or at the least confirm our position for their trackers. We need to run—run fast.”
Screams began to fill the town outside.
Kahlan sucked in a breath, eyes darting side to side as she thought.
“We can’t stay and die, Kahlan,” Cara said. She was only fighting to save the whole world; she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing a few people over everyone else. Including her own children, and Kahlan’s unborn child, if they fell. It was the right kind of selfishness, she told herself.
“Then quick, we need to get our things and the horses,” Kahlan finally said in a wrenching tone.
A wailing cry rose and died just outside the door, and then they were moving fast, a little scared and—as Cara ran out the back and saw a woman lying in a pool of blood—a little horrified at what had to be done. Cara told herself again that this was about more than individuals, but her fingernails dug into her palm with the force of her clenched hand.
Climbing into the saddle, galloping into the night, Cara wondered if the dead woman had been a mother. And for not the first nor the last time, she hated that she was supposed to deal out justice, and she hated that Shota had ever seen anything in her.
*
Kahlan refused to stay at the next town, sending Cara in secretly for provisions, and making a camp with her outside the city borders. Banelings attacked them more than once, and eventually the scent of dead burning flesh stopped making her stomach churn. She looked out at the horizon and wondered if it would be worth it in the end. Whether it was or not, all she wanted to do now was throw herself in between the people and this new danger.
Cara would stand by her, sometimes not saying anything, sometimes telling her quietly that they had to go. Kahlan didn’t know how to appreciate that kind of support, the way Cara was always just there even if she dared not come closer—except at night, when for the first time in weeks Kahlan thought of Richard again, and thought of the town left ravaged by banelings with only a few survivors, who would have given anything for the Mother Confessor or the Seeker’s counsel. Knowing that without Cara, she wouldn’t have heard the argument for the greater good, Kahlan rolled over on her blanket and leaned up against her companion. With a sleepy murmur, Cara settled closer, hand stroking Kahlan’s hair before falling around her waist.
The last time it had happened, Cara had stopped Kahlan’s explanation in the morning with a shrug of ‘It was a cold night’, but this morning she just nodded to Kahlan as they rolled up the blankets. Refusing to define the closeness that had grown between them made Kahlan’s heart flutter, unsure and feeling that there was a danger of misunderstanding, and yet liking how simple it was to just live at each other’s sides.
“Sometimes I hope I’ll wake up and this is all a dream,” Cara said one morning as they ate leftover rabbit from the night before. “But I’m not sure what I would be waking up to anymore. I wonder if your old wizard was right, that I was always supposed to do something.”
Kahlan smiled sadly to herself, and nodded. It might as well be precedent for this. Maybe the only explanation needed for how they worked so quickly together.
Cara had a guilty look on her face, though.
“This isn’t a disaster,” Kahlan assured her. “You’re needed. You don’t need to feel guilty for that.”
“I don’t,” Cara muttered.
Kahlan almost advised her that she should also not feel guilty about not missing her loved ones every moment of the day—but she held back. She liked Cara too much to give that kind of piercing advice. Instead, she rubbed Cara’s shoulder, and that night she curled up next to her before they went to sleep, and let themselves both find comfort in the proximity.
But after the third town they saw plagued by banelings, and moved on from for the sake of the greater good, Cara always left Kahlan’s side before she woke. Kahlan would jerk awake, alone and slightly chilled, and see Cara away on her own. Sword in hand, she did the same ten forms that Kahlan had taught her, over and over with more force and speed each time. Her style was blunt, focused, no sweeping curve, and with a strangling grip on the hilt.
It could be improved, but this time as Kahlan watched, she didn’t think of that. Over two months since their journey began, and Kahlan had had to loosen the laces of her dress and corset on both top and bottom. The changes in her body, the uncomfortable rushes of hormones as well as the growing contours, made her somehow more aware of Cara. The woman had given birth to two children, but her body was hard. Each time she spun with the sword, the leather flaps of her travel coat clung to her strong legs. Each breath she inhaled and exhaled pressed the fitted torso of the garment against her breasts and narrow waist. Whenever they’d bathed at the same time, Kahlan had noticed multiple small scars on Cara’s body, and that with the sharply-defined muscles beneath each curve told of a history that encompassed far more than a schoolteacher. And this journey was turning her into a warrior.
Yet when Kahlan rose and retrieved her daggers to join Cara and give her an opponent to work with, she saw the same dark emotions swirling in Cara’s eyes as they sparred. There was no self-assurance of skill and authority. Instead, the same doubt, the same outward-facing worry, the same adamant need to get it right. And the same frustration when she slipped and Kahlan took the opening to bring a dagger to her neck. Cara paused a second to close her eyes and grit her teeth in frustration, then slipped the weapon aside before Kahlan could notice, hooking her foot behind Kahlan’s and lowering her to the ground with a quick but gentle throw.
Kahlan made an oof sound, but Cara had been cautious as always, and she offered an arm to pull Kahlan back up to her feet. “You’re doing better,” Kahlan told her, even though unable to keep a protective hand from cradling her stomach.
“Than what, an infant?” Lips in a tight line, Cara threw her head sharply to the side to knock the loose hair from her face.
Kahlan didn’t know why hearing that tone pained her. Reaching out, she ran her hand down Cara’s forearm, wrapping her hand around Cara’s as it held the sword. “Cara.” Conflicted green eyes rose to meet Kahlan’s, and suddenly Kahlan wished they’d shared more words that she could draw on, so she could know if she could embrace Cara and—well, it did not matter, Kahlan though that there were probably only three living people who Cara would accept that level of comfort from, all of them with the last name of Mason. So instead, Kahlan hid the wish, smiled and squeezed Cara’s hand. “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
Cara’s gaze narrowed a moment, even though her hand relaxed beneath Kahlan’s. “Does it matter how I talk, as long as I get it done?” she challenged.
“If I was simply your mentor, no, it probably wouldn’t,” Kahlan said quickly.
For a second, Cara’s eyes seemed caught by Kahlan’s, and something made Kahlan want to hood her own as if it would hurt to reveal too much. She didn’t understand it, nor the heavy feeling in her belly. But Cara broke away first, sliding her hair behind one ear with a ducking of her chin.
Kahlan swallowed and told herself that she’d focused too much on the mission, and perhaps forgot to deal with all of the loss she’d suffered. Grief had never felt quite as unsure as this, though. She managed a light smile and just said, “Everything is worse on an empty stomach.”
“I don’t need breakfast to judge my own skills,” Cara argued under her breath as they walked back.
Following her instincts without quite meaning to, Kahlan reached out and put her arm around Cara’s waist. For a second the touch conveyed exactly everything that Kahlan couldn’t name. Then, though Cara hadn’t flinched, she pulled back and thought about a meal and the day ahead and the fact that she shouldn’t ever forget what was at stake.
*
The compass pointed to a path that wound thinly up the cliff, just enough so that their horses couldn’t ride side by side. There was no breeze, though, and so Cara kept talking. Her heart always nagged at her to keep its true secrets hidden, to not bother the Mother Confessor just because they’d been stuck together for this long and she seemed to like her. But silence wasn’t good for either of them, and so she talked semi-meaningful talk.
“What are we going to do with the Stone once we get it?” Cara had queried.
Kahlan paused on the path. “Are there any markings on the compass, other than the runes that explain its purpose?”
Cara tipped her head and tossed the device to Kahlan. “Have a look.” She glanced down at the river valley to her right and grimaced, guiding her horse as close to the hill on the other side of the path as possible.
After a moment Kahlan sighed. “I don’t know,” her answer came back, and Cara saw her start riding forward again, absently slipping the compass into her saddlebag.
But Cara knew that tone, and pressed on as they rode forward. “Let’s just say it’s obvious once we have it, what do we do after that? Sealing the rift won’t solve all the problems of D’Hara and the Midlands. It won’t stop Darken Rahl.”
“I know that,” Kahlan answered darkly, pulling up her horse and making Cara do the same.
“What is it?” Cara asked, hopping off and casting a brief glance down the cliff side, and the river far enough below it, before moving nearer to the hill for safety.
“A stranglevine blocks the path,” Kahlan said with a frown. “I will need the Sword to cut through it.”
Cara slipped the weapon from its sheath and walked up to where Kahlan stood by her horse to hand it to her. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the dull-olive colored vine as it shimmied back and forth ominously. The spiky leaves didn’t look inviting, nor did the buds on the ends of some of the thinner ropy strands. It reminded Cara of snakevine, and, heart-twistingly as always, of her children—of Sam’s injury when he was three years old, and how sick she’d felt until he was well. Her husband had destroyed that vine before she got to it, much to her frustration, but she’d burnt its corpse with dark revenge.
Kahlan swung the sword down, and it sliced smoothly through the first tangle of the vine. The plant recoiled, but the Sword came back for another quick bite. Cara could have sworn that the vine hissed, and a piece of it went flying. It landed on the back of Kahlan’s horse, and the animal bucked and whinnied as the plant dug in with its death throes.
“Hey, hey,” Cara said, stepping in with a worried brow. But when she touched the horse’s flank, he snapped in terror, and suddenly she lost all breath in her air as she caught a sharp hoof to the chest. Her feet stumbled backwards over the uneven edge of the path and then everything slowed down for an awful second as, air gone from her lungs, the solid ground vanished beneath her feet as she was kicked off the path.
She was falling, falling, the midday sun shining in her eyes as the air and cliffside rushing past her, and she still couldn’t draw a breath as she heard Kahlan’s panicked cry of her name. But only a second more, and Cara hit the river below. Her head snapped under the waves and she lost consciousness.
Time didn’t pass in the darkness, and when Cara woke again, she was not in the Underworld but achingly in reality. She coughed, water in her throat and chest hurting, and realized that she was lying mostly on her stomach, her legs still in the river but the rest of her flopped on the riverbank. Clumsily, just tossed aside by the current that roared behind her. Cara coughed again, most of the pain feeling like bruising. She felt something warm and sticky on her temple and gingerly brought one arm up to her face. Blood—of course it was blood—but thankfully not too much.
She didn’t bother to move, despite the sun shining down the river valley and straight into her eyes, even though she lay flat on the ground. It had been at least six hours since she’d fallen, she guessed from the height of the sun. With that, her heart sunk, and she closed her eyes and let the rays beat against her lids. She’d failed. She’d failed Kahlan, she’d failed the world. A horse had kicked her off a cliff, and that was that.
It surprised her to find herself even alive. From that fall, she should have had much worse than aches and bruises, not to mention how she should have drowned. She hadn’t, but there wasn’t much pleasure in that. Kahlan had in all likelihood ridden back down the cliff, looked for her body just in case—but Cara could see from the landscape that she was lying many miles down the river. Kahlan, in the most bitter irony, wouldn’t have needed to look more than that. She had the compass, she had the Sword of Truth. Most of all, she had a time-sensitive mission.
Cara lay soaked and battered on a riverbank, and realized that there was not one person alive who had reason to assume she was not dead. And even if she managed to last the night without being attacked by wild creatures or plants, even if she managed to avoid banelings, she would have to survive a trip across the Midlands without a weapon just to make it back home. So she might as well be dead.
Closing her eyes, she clenched her hand in a fist and struck the mud beneath her. She’d never said goodbye to her children—she’d just left. Her throat tangled up with emotion as she missed them. And she missed Kahlan. Now that she didn’t have her at her side, everything seemed ten times as heavy, and she knew it wasn’t just the head wound. But she likely deserved this for failing them all.
Then suddenly she heard the sound of hoofbeats, and before she could get up, she heard footsteps and a voice that made her heart leap from its sunken place in her chest—”Cara? Cara!”
The pain didn’t seem like anything for that brief moment as Cara had to catch her breath. Kahlan was at her side in a second, rolling her face-upwards with trembling fingers. “Cara?” she asked, voice wavering, hands gently cradling Cara’s shoulders.
All Cara could do was cough again, a little water still rattling in her throat, and she grimaced as her chest hurt. The thought of moving didn’t cross her mind when she looked up into that exquisite face, strength and delicacy in a hypnotic combination.
“Thank the spirits you’re alive,” Kahlan whispered. She found Cara’s cold wet hand and gripped it tightly, leaning down to press her forehead against Cara’s.
The sharpness in Cara’s eyes faded at the now-familiar touch, and a rush of relief swept through her. Maybe she didn’t deserve it, but the concern in Kahlan’s voice and the tight grip on her hand were indescribably just what could push all her guilt and worries aside. Too grateful, she focused on breathing and the warmth of Kahlan’s skin on hers.
Then Kahlan drew back with a quick intake of breath, murmuring, “You’re freezing, and hurt.”
“I’m fine,” Cara said automatically, voice a little raspy. In an attempt to lessen the discomfort, she tried to push up.
Kahlan’s arms were around her then, helping her stand. “I thought you must be dead,” she said, her hand at Cara’s head to push the wet hair aside, and then bit her lip at what she saw.
Cara winced as Kahlan’s fingers brushed against the wound on her temple, but meeting Kahlan’s eyes, even knowing just how glad she was to see her, there was a piece missing. The concern in Kahlan’s eyes made her say before she could think better, “Why didn’t you leave?”
Kahlan paused, one hand around Cara’s waist in case she fell, the other brushing fingertips through Cara’s hair as if to make sure she was really there. Her eyes darkened. “What?”
Cara swallowed, grimacing and glancing down for a second. “If I had died you might never have found me, and it would have been a waste of time. A new Seeker had to be named—there was no time.”
“Cara...” Kahlan said quickly, and Cara looked back up in time to see Kahlan swallow down something. Just for a second, though, and then Kahlan held onto her. “I would never just be able to move on like that,” the Mother Confessor said with a shaky voice as she embraced her closely.
Even though she had enough strength to stand on her own, Cara felt the need to cling to Kahlan for a second as her eyes blurred with stinging tears again. Her breathing hurt, not just with the pain of the kick, but with the final crumbling of the shell that she’d placed around herself. She relied on Kahlan—and could admit in a cracked whisper, now, “I’m glad.”
Kahlan squeezed her back for a few seconds more. “I should have said it, then. I thought you knew.” She pulled back a little, a teardrop shining on her cheek but a smile gracing her face. Glancing down at Cara’s river-shaken form, she said, “I need to get you to a fire and some dry clothes.”
“What?” Cara asked, still not quite sure, still a bit lost in emotion. “What didn’t you say?”
Kahlan glanced back up, but though soft her admission felt more solid than the ground they stood on. “That I care for you.”
Cara’s heart flipped over in her chest, and she didn’t know what to say. It was Kahlan—and she was talking to Cara. Guilt tried to surge back up as she held onto Kahlan, but as they made it to the horses, she realized that despite guilt she knew exactly what she wanted to say. Eyes slightly to the side, she said, “I care about you too.”
Kahlan breathed out as she helped Cara up into the saddle, but Cara thought she caught a smile still on the other woman’s face as they rode back together. Later as she’d gingerly dismounted with a slight dizziness, Kahlan helped her patch her wounds the same way she’d done after the battle with the banelings the week before. Yet even though their eyes didn’t meet, Cara felt a new peace in her touch that she hadn’t realized was missing, and a craving for more of it that made her heart ache. It felt right that Kahlan was the one to sleep wrapped around Cara that night.
Chapter 5
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Characters/Pairing: Cara, Kahlan (pre-Cara/Kahlan)
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter Length: 5949
Chapter Summary: The crap hasn't hit the fan yet, so all they have are their own problems.
(Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3)
Chapter 4
Cara could point out the spot when Kahlan stopped being a mystery to her—it was the moment when she was bent over, Cara holding her hair back, as she lost her breakfast all over the path. It was a laughably perfect scenario for her life now, all discomfort and awkwardness and yet truth.
“Creator help me,” Kahlan murmured, as Cara handed her a rag to wipe her mouth.
“No, only time,” Cara corrected with dry experience. She glanced at Kahlan’s belly. “How long?”
“A month now,” Kahlan answered. When Cara made a small noise and frowned, it made her ask, “Why? How much more of this—?”
Cara shook her head. “No, you’ll be fine, Kahlan. I just...never mind, let’s move.”
Kahlan’s hand strayed to hers, tugging her back for a second. “What is it?”
She was trying not to think of it—she was trying not to face it. For the past few days she’d almost succeeded in forgetting. There was not a bone left in her body that was as easy with people as her child-self had been, yet traveling with Kahlan and getting to know her had been almost an easy distraction. But now, Cara looked up at Kahlan as she took a slightly-shaky breath. “It’s difficult, that’s all.”
With a nod, though, Kahlan said, “This child is all I have left of the old world, but yours are all you left behind.”
“Why must you say things like that?” Cara snapped bitterly, adjusting her leather and turning to walk away. Pride was such an idiotic thing to hold onto, but she had found some comfort in being “the Seeker” to Kahlan, and not a vulnerable mother to draw pity and make Cara feel helpless.
“Because you don’t, and the truth is important, Cara,” Kahlan said, again reaching out to grab Cara’s hand. “You are the Seeker of Truth, you have to be honest.”
Cara didn’t look back, but nor did she wrench her hand from Kahlan’s. Finally, spinning slowly around, she said flatly, “Honesty hurts.”
Kahlan didn’t have to say anything then, not with the way that Cara saw herself reflected back in those blue eyes. Reality was cruel again. Her exhale came out hitched as pictures she’d denied herself came before her eyes, unwanted but inevitable. Sam tickling Sophia under the covers, Sophia sitting on his head to make him stop, both of them giggling and squealing before she’d called them out of bed and given playful swats to get them dressing faster. “I don’t belong here,” she said, voice wavering even as she tried to drown it with force. “It doesn’t matter how much I learn, I belong back home, with them.”
“And I should be back in Aydindril, in bed on a morning when I feel like this.”
Cara looked up and grimaced. She and Kahlan were just two humans standing on a dusty road, sword and daggers not shined, clothes not perfectly pressed, moving ever further towards an epic war of spirits. “Is there no way to kill the Keeper of the Underworld for forcing us into this?”
She was only half surprised when Kahlan squeezed her hand, even as she shook her head sadly. “When this is all done, I expect you to bring your children to Aydindril and see my daughter born.”
Cara stared up at her. When it was all done. Somehow, when she hoped for a quick ending herself, it seemed more realistic. The hope in Kahlan’s eyes, though, made Cara feel like breaking down and giving up. She couldn’t—it wasn’t her way—but the feeling wore on her.
“I’d really rather just go on, right now,” she said with a glance up at Kahlan, hoping the honesty practice was over.
Again, Kahlan squeezed her hand. It made up for everything she said, Cara was realizing. She wondered what it did for Kahlan, that she repeated the action so often. Cara no longer caught her weeping, or even looking sadly at the Sword or off into the distance, and it seemed like every word of Kahlan’s was designed to focus attention—hers and Cara’s alike—on everything but herself. Perhaps even that almost over-wrought hope that she expressed. And yet it was still genuine; that much, Cara could tell. The thought crossed her mind that a Confessor’s life must be perverse indeed if she sought friendship only when the world was about to be destroyed.
*
Rumors began circling the Midlands of Darken Rahl and the way he was letting his strength brew and condense, forming an army that was too far off to see and too close to not fear. By now, too, the rumors about Cara had circled around and back again, and bore whispered hints of her deadly magic above and beyond the Sword. Cara’s hands clenched whenever she heard, but she and Kahlan alike had much more to be concerned with than irritating falsehoods.
Darken Rahl wasn’t going after them, yet, because they weren’t affecting his power structure. They weren’t affecting any power structure at all. In a world where war seemed likely, Kahlan and Cara were slipping towards a magic that would only make sure the world lasted long enough to have a war. As the rumors swelled, they stopped addressing them and began trying to avoid them. Kahlan tied up her hair and wore a green hood when they stopped in towns now, pushing Cara forward to order a room with a frown. She was starting to intimidate tavern-keepers, Kahlan noticed, and it wasn’t just because she mastered a mother’s interrogatory stare.
“What do they think of us?” Cara grumbled later, settling her pack down on one side of the large rickety bed.
“That we are clearly not the Seeker and the Mother Confessor,” Kahlan answered, pulling the pin from her hair and teasing the up-do loose with a sigh. Then, retroactively hearing a certain tone in Cara’s voice, she turned. “She doesn’t think I’m your courtesan, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Cara’s lips curled as she took off her cloak and the Sword, leaning back on the bed. “Given that I have no one who would care, that was hardly a concern. Less so, given my clearly incompatible mood.”
Kahlan blinked, and almost smiled. Cara brooded like no one Kahlan had ever met, that was for sure, but though she was most certainly aware of that, Kahlan doubted that she knew how bluntly open her thoughts were when she wasn’t self-flagellating over them. Of course, Kahlan could have guessed with other means, but it was more refreshing that Cara didn’t even try to hide. Yet Kahlan wasn’t sure why she spoke next, “Having played a courtesan before, I doubt they would look at your face long enough to read a mood.”
Cara stared at her, cocking her head as if trying to understand the words. “You’re not the Mother Confessor I heard stories about,” she finally declared, eyebrows raised as she leaned down to unlace her boots.
Looking away to stare at the opposite wall, Kahlan knew herself to be an even more different woman now. Her heart beat faintly, and each crack in it was tied to a thousand memories she didn’t want to touch, but they were healing and only hurt when she thought of them. It was not the way true love worked, and when she looked back on the recent past, she sighed and thought that maybe she was right when she’d first told Richard that he believed in a fantasy. That realization should have had her in deep grief, but instead it felt empty, and there was too much else in her life to hold her attention.
“Kahlan?”
She glanced back. Cara’s hair now fell around her shoulders in soft gold curls, framing a worried frown.
“Don’t pay me mind, Cara,” Kahlan said, drawing her legs up onto the bed and leaning back into the headboard. She rested her hands in her lap, once again finding her emotional state too simple. “I have my troubles, and you do not need them.”
Cara didn’t shift or drop her gaze, and her fingers twitched, something that in Cara could mean so many things.
“I’m fine,” Kahlan said. Whatever Cara didn’t ask out loud, that answer usually covered the options.
“That’s a lie,” Cara retorted, squaring her shoulders and her jaw towards Kahlan.
Kahlan pursed her lips, but had only one response. “Yes. But it is for your good.”
“Just because you can read me doesn’t mean you can judge me,” Cara said. “I’m not here so you can simply tell me what to do, show me where to go. I’m—” She bit back, twisting her head slowly away, as if to hide her eyes.
They both sat facing the far wall instead of each other, but Kahlan shifted a little closer to Cara. For the sake of them both, as well as their mission, she felt like she had to keep them together—not just companions, but a team. Some days it seemed inevitable, but sometimes Kahlan worried that she needed to grasp onto it lest Cara just float away. Now she was sitting almost close enough to feel Cara’s warmth, and appreciated that the other woman’s body was relaxed. “I know,” she said, answering the objection. “But I just...”
“Stop worrying,” Cara ordered her, sounding like an irritated mother. “I’m not as easily broken as you think.”
Making a small hum, Kahlan did smile at that. It would be so easy for them both to be broken, pitiful, torn by the ravages of love so that they wept every night. Instead, they pretended nothing bothered them, and instead berated the other for denial.
“I was looking at a map,” Cara said suddenly. “We’ll have to leave the horses behind soon.”
Kahlan hummed her answer.
“You don’t want to be overexerting yourself then.” Cara nodded towards Kahlan’s abdomen. “Believe me.”
“Oh,” Kahlan said. Her hand went as always to cradle the life that she could still not feel within her other than by magic. “But—” She looked to Cara, and frowned at the scheming look in the woman’s eyes, the wheels turning visibly in her head. “Cara, you are not considering telling me to stay behind then.”
“No,” Cara answered, “I’m considering what means I would have to use to force you to do so. It will not be a joke, Kahlan, your condition.”
Kahlan shook her head. “I’m not using you mindlessly as a tool—I couldn’t bear it if you had to go on your own. Maybe you would succeed, but there’s no need to do so alone when you have a friend.”
“A friend with child.” Cara’s chuckle was more like a snort.
Kahlan pursed her lips to hold back a small smile. “Cara...”
The woman glanced at her, eyes clear. “You would not survive if you lost that child, Kahlan. And I’m not—ready for that.” She withdrew her gaze, letting the unspoken words remain in implication.
Swallowing, Kahlan answered, “Then you know exactly why I won’t ever make you go on your own either.” Gently, she reached over and touched Cara’s hand, not as a Confessor to a Seeker, but as Kahlan to Cara.
Silently and without looking again at Kahlan, Cara gave her fingers a sharp squeeze.
So Kahlan was not surprised to stir awake in the middle of the night and find that Cara had moved to sleeping behind her, arm snugly wrapped around Kahlan’s middle, both protective and clinging. Closing her eyes, Kahlan could have pictured what she most desired and accepted Cara’s presence as a substitute, but she didn’t know anymore what that was. All her planning had been torn away, and what she had, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with.
When Cara murmured her name in the night, Kahlan realized also that the closeness was not just a mothering instinct. Somehow, quietly, Cara had lain her worry for her children to the side so that she could find a devotion to Kahlan. And with that realization, Kahlan also knew that the peace she felt with that devotion was more than just feeling safe with a true Seeker.
*
A scream tore through the night, and Cara cursed herself for taking two seconds of stunned panic to remember to roll over and reach for the Sword. She didn’t realize that she’d been sleeping wrapped loosely around Kahlan until she felt cold, hopping out of bed and feeling a draft around her. She shivered for more than one reason.
Kahlan had her daggers glittering in hand already, eyes sharp. “That scream came from just outside.”
“Not Darken Rahl?” Cara slid the Sword of Truth from its sheath, feeling the comfortable power pulse through her.
The Mother Confessor shook her head. “He wouldn’t have his soldiers tip their hand like this, at night, if their goal was to get us and the Sword.”
A bloodcurdling scream sounded closer, cut off suddenly at the end. Cara gripped the swordhilt and went for the door, barely reaching it before Kahlan. Slipping silently down the stairs, Cara’s heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, but at least it wasn’t terrified.
“Take the left,” whispered Kahlan when they got to the door of the inn.
Blade held high, Cara held herself at the door. She could hear nothing outside, and the filtered moonlight through the cloud-cover made the low-lying fog look ominous. The town looked like death, and Cara didn’t know why she shivered at that word so much.
Then, just as Kahlan was turning, there was a scream and a kick and the inn door crashed inwards. Two persons in the dark, limbs flailing and teeth gnashing, attacked at too close a range for Cara to finish hers off in one strike. She stumbled backwards, feeling the rush of a blade nicking past her throat, then jammed the hilt of the sword into the wildman’s face, knocking him off balance enough to slice him in two.
The other one fell to the floor first, choking from Kahlan’s slash to the throat. Cara still wasn’t used to the way corpses looked at her as they died, making it so she had to watch the spirit fade away. She could never regret self-defense, but it hadn’t been a chore once to become a mother and value life above death, and each face of death still made her flinch. Only afterwards, but it was a flinch nonetheless.
Kahlan was kneeling to look at the corpse in the faint moonlight that spilled in from the door. “Zedd said there would be banelings,” she murmured.
“Banelings?” Cara asked.
“The Keeper can send souls back to their dead bodies, and as long as they keep killing for him, they’ll stay alive.” Kahlan stood up and walked across the inn. “We need to burn the bodies.”
Another scream came from the outside, though, and someone rang the town alarm.
Kahlan choked in horror. “There’s only two of us. The banelings are killing the rest of the town to make sure they keep their lives!” She drew the knife she’d sheathed.
“No, Kahlan!” Cara protested, stepping across and grabbing her shoulder. Despite the situation, and the weight of weariness behind her eyes, she knew one thing for sure: “We can’t stay.”
“These people can’t fight for themselves,” Kahlan answered, staring incredulously at her.
“Do you stop on a journey to save the world to focus on just one town?” Cara demanded.
Kahlan tensed, but didn’t pull away even as she said, “Yes. It is the job of the Seeker, of the Mother Confessor, to protect the Midlands.”
“By finding the Stone, you told me,” Cara said sharply, shaking her shoulder. “Kahlan, if the Keeper is intelligent, he will send all that he has against us. The longer we stay, the more likely we are to die, or at the least confirm our position for their trackers. We need to run—run fast.”
Screams began to fill the town outside.
Kahlan sucked in a breath, eyes darting side to side as she thought.
“We can’t stay and die, Kahlan,” Cara said. She was only fighting to save the whole world; she couldn’t bear the thought of choosing a few people over everyone else. Including her own children, and Kahlan’s unborn child, if they fell. It was the right kind of selfishness, she told herself.
“Then quick, we need to get our things and the horses,” Kahlan finally said in a wrenching tone.
A wailing cry rose and died just outside the door, and then they were moving fast, a little scared and—as Cara ran out the back and saw a woman lying in a pool of blood—a little horrified at what had to be done. Cara told herself again that this was about more than individuals, but her fingernails dug into her palm with the force of her clenched hand.
Climbing into the saddle, galloping into the night, Cara wondered if the dead woman had been a mother. And for not the first nor the last time, she hated that she was supposed to deal out justice, and she hated that Shota had ever seen anything in her.
*
Kahlan refused to stay at the next town, sending Cara in secretly for provisions, and making a camp with her outside the city borders. Banelings attacked them more than once, and eventually the scent of dead burning flesh stopped making her stomach churn. She looked out at the horizon and wondered if it would be worth it in the end. Whether it was or not, all she wanted to do now was throw herself in between the people and this new danger.
Cara would stand by her, sometimes not saying anything, sometimes telling her quietly that they had to go. Kahlan didn’t know how to appreciate that kind of support, the way Cara was always just there even if she dared not come closer—except at night, when for the first time in weeks Kahlan thought of Richard again, and thought of the town left ravaged by banelings with only a few survivors, who would have given anything for the Mother Confessor or the Seeker’s counsel. Knowing that without Cara, she wouldn’t have heard the argument for the greater good, Kahlan rolled over on her blanket and leaned up against her companion. With a sleepy murmur, Cara settled closer, hand stroking Kahlan’s hair before falling around her waist.
The last time it had happened, Cara had stopped Kahlan’s explanation in the morning with a shrug of ‘It was a cold night’, but this morning she just nodded to Kahlan as they rolled up the blankets. Refusing to define the closeness that had grown between them made Kahlan’s heart flutter, unsure and feeling that there was a danger of misunderstanding, and yet liking how simple it was to just live at each other’s sides.
“Sometimes I hope I’ll wake up and this is all a dream,” Cara said one morning as they ate leftover rabbit from the night before. “But I’m not sure what I would be waking up to anymore. I wonder if your old wizard was right, that I was always supposed to do something.”
Kahlan smiled sadly to herself, and nodded. It might as well be precedent for this. Maybe the only explanation needed for how they worked so quickly together.
Cara had a guilty look on her face, though.
“This isn’t a disaster,” Kahlan assured her. “You’re needed. You don’t need to feel guilty for that.”
“I don’t,” Cara muttered.
Kahlan almost advised her that she should also not feel guilty about not missing her loved ones every moment of the day—but she held back. She liked Cara too much to give that kind of piercing advice. Instead, she rubbed Cara’s shoulder, and that night she curled up next to her before they went to sleep, and let themselves both find comfort in the proximity.
But after the third town they saw plagued by banelings, and moved on from for the sake of the greater good, Cara always left Kahlan’s side before she woke. Kahlan would jerk awake, alone and slightly chilled, and see Cara away on her own. Sword in hand, she did the same ten forms that Kahlan had taught her, over and over with more force and speed each time. Her style was blunt, focused, no sweeping curve, and with a strangling grip on the hilt.
It could be improved, but this time as Kahlan watched, she didn’t think of that. Over two months since their journey began, and Kahlan had had to loosen the laces of her dress and corset on both top and bottom. The changes in her body, the uncomfortable rushes of hormones as well as the growing contours, made her somehow more aware of Cara. The woman had given birth to two children, but her body was hard. Each time she spun with the sword, the leather flaps of her travel coat clung to her strong legs. Each breath she inhaled and exhaled pressed the fitted torso of the garment against her breasts and narrow waist. Whenever they’d bathed at the same time, Kahlan had noticed multiple small scars on Cara’s body, and that with the sharply-defined muscles beneath each curve told of a history that encompassed far more than a schoolteacher. And this journey was turning her into a warrior.
Yet when Kahlan rose and retrieved her daggers to join Cara and give her an opponent to work with, she saw the same dark emotions swirling in Cara’s eyes as they sparred. There was no self-assurance of skill and authority. Instead, the same doubt, the same outward-facing worry, the same adamant need to get it right. And the same frustration when she slipped and Kahlan took the opening to bring a dagger to her neck. Cara paused a second to close her eyes and grit her teeth in frustration, then slipped the weapon aside before Kahlan could notice, hooking her foot behind Kahlan’s and lowering her to the ground with a quick but gentle throw.
Kahlan made an oof sound, but Cara had been cautious as always, and she offered an arm to pull Kahlan back up to her feet. “You’re doing better,” Kahlan told her, even though unable to keep a protective hand from cradling her stomach.
“Than what, an infant?” Lips in a tight line, Cara threw her head sharply to the side to knock the loose hair from her face.
Kahlan didn’t know why hearing that tone pained her. Reaching out, she ran her hand down Cara’s forearm, wrapping her hand around Cara’s as it held the sword. “Cara.” Conflicted green eyes rose to meet Kahlan’s, and suddenly Kahlan wished they’d shared more words that she could draw on, so she could know if she could embrace Cara and—well, it did not matter, Kahlan though that there were probably only three living people who Cara would accept that level of comfort from, all of them with the last name of Mason. So instead, Kahlan hid the wish, smiled and squeezed Cara’s hand. “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
Cara’s gaze narrowed a moment, even though her hand relaxed beneath Kahlan’s. “Does it matter how I talk, as long as I get it done?” she challenged.
“If I was simply your mentor, no, it probably wouldn’t,” Kahlan said quickly.
For a second, Cara’s eyes seemed caught by Kahlan’s, and something made Kahlan want to hood her own as if it would hurt to reveal too much. She didn’t understand it, nor the heavy feeling in her belly. But Cara broke away first, sliding her hair behind one ear with a ducking of her chin.
Kahlan swallowed and told herself that she’d focused too much on the mission, and perhaps forgot to deal with all of the loss she’d suffered. Grief had never felt quite as unsure as this, though. She managed a light smile and just said, “Everything is worse on an empty stomach.”
“I don’t need breakfast to judge my own skills,” Cara argued under her breath as they walked back.
Following her instincts without quite meaning to, Kahlan reached out and put her arm around Cara’s waist. For a second the touch conveyed exactly everything that Kahlan couldn’t name. Then, though Cara hadn’t flinched, she pulled back and thought about a meal and the day ahead and the fact that she shouldn’t ever forget what was at stake.
*
The compass pointed to a path that wound thinly up the cliff, just enough so that their horses couldn’t ride side by side. There was no breeze, though, and so Cara kept talking. Her heart always nagged at her to keep its true secrets hidden, to not bother the Mother Confessor just because they’d been stuck together for this long and she seemed to like her. But silence wasn’t good for either of them, and so she talked semi-meaningful talk.
“What are we going to do with the Stone once we get it?” Cara had queried.
Kahlan paused on the path. “Are there any markings on the compass, other than the runes that explain its purpose?”
Cara tipped her head and tossed the device to Kahlan. “Have a look.” She glanced down at the river valley to her right and grimaced, guiding her horse as close to the hill on the other side of the path as possible.
After a moment Kahlan sighed. “I don’t know,” her answer came back, and Cara saw her start riding forward again, absently slipping the compass into her saddlebag.
But Cara knew that tone, and pressed on as they rode forward. “Let’s just say it’s obvious once we have it, what do we do after that? Sealing the rift won’t solve all the problems of D’Hara and the Midlands. It won’t stop Darken Rahl.”
“I know that,” Kahlan answered darkly, pulling up her horse and making Cara do the same.
“What is it?” Cara asked, hopping off and casting a brief glance down the cliff side, and the river far enough below it, before moving nearer to the hill for safety.
“A stranglevine blocks the path,” Kahlan said with a frown. “I will need the Sword to cut through it.”
Cara slipped the weapon from its sheath and walked up to where Kahlan stood by her horse to hand it to her. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the dull-olive colored vine as it shimmied back and forth ominously. The spiky leaves didn’t look inviting, nor did the buds on the ends of some of the thinner ropy strands. It reminded Cara of snakevine, and, heart-twistingly as always, of her children—of Sam’s injury when he was three years old, and how sick she’d felt until he was well. Her husband had destroyed that vine before she got to it, much to her frustration, but she’d burnt its corpse with dark revenge.
Kahlan swung the sword down, and it sliced smoothly through the first tangle of the vine. The plant recoiled, but the Sword came back for another quick bite. Cara could have sworn that the vine hissed, and a piece of it went flying. It landed on the back of Kahlan’s horse, and the animal bucked and whinnied as the plant dug in with its death throes.
“Hey, hey,” Cara said, stepping in with a worried brow. But when she touched the horse’s flank, he snapped in terror, and suddenly she lost all breath in her air as she caught a sharp hoof to the chest. Her feet stumbled backwards over the uneven edge of the path and then everything slowed down for an awful second as, air gone from her lungs, the solid ground vanished beneath her feet as she was kicked off the path.
She was falling, falling, the midday sun shining in her eyes as the air and cliffside rushing past her, and she still couldn’t draw a breath as she heard Kahlan’s panicked cry of her name. But only a second more, and Cara hit the river below. Her head snapped under the waves and she lost consciousness.
Time didn’t pass in the darkness, and when Cara woke again, she was not in the Underworld but achingly in reality. She coughed, water in her throat and chest hurting, and realized that she was lying mostly on her stomach, her legs still in the river but the rest of her flopped on the riverbank. Clumsily, just tossed aside by the current that roared behind her. Cara coughed again, most of the pain feeling like bruising. She felt something warm and sticky on her temple and gingerly brought one arm up to her face. Blood—of course it was blood—but thankfully not too much.
She didn’t bother to move, despite the sun shining down the river valley and straight into her eyes, even though she lay flat on the ground. It had been at least six hours since she’d fallen, she guessed from the height of the sun. With that, her heart sunk, and she closed her eyes and let the rays beat against her lids. She’d failed. She’d failed Kahlan, she’d failed the world. A horse had kicked her off a cliff, and that was that.
It surprised her to find herself even alive. From that fall, she should have had much worse than aches and bruises, not to mention how she should have drowned. She hadn’t, but there wasn’t much pleasure in that. Kahlan had in all likelihood ridden back down the cliff, looked for her body just in case—but Cara could see from the landscape that she was lying many miles down the river. Kahlan, in the most bitter irony, wouldn’t have needed to look more than that. She had the compass, she had the Sword of Truth. Most of all, she had a time-sensitive mission.
Cara lay soaked and battered on a riverbank, and realized that there was not one person alive who had reason to assume she was not dead. And even if she managed to last the night without being attacked by wild creatures or plants, even if she managed to avoid banelings, she would have to survive a trip across the Midlands without a weapon just to make it back home. So she might as well be dead.
Closing her eyes, she clenched her hand in a fist and struck the mud beneath her. She’d never said goodbye to her children—she’d just left. Her throat tangled up with emotion as she missed them. And she missed Kahlan. Now that she didn’t have her at her side, everything seemed ten times as heavy, and she knew it wasn’t just the head wound. But she likely deserved this for failing them all.
Then suddenly she heard the sound of hoofbeats, and before she could get up, she heard footsteps and a voice that made her heart leap from its sunken place in her chest—”Cara? Cara!”
The pain didn’t seem like anything for that brief moment as Cara had to catch her breath. Kahlan was at her side in a second, rolling her face-upwards with trembling fingers. “Cara?” she asked, voice wavering, hands gently cradling Cara’s shoulders.
All Cara could do was cough again, a little water still rattling in her throat, and she grimaced as her chest hurt. The thought of moving didn’t cross her mind when she looked up into that exquisite face, strength and delicacy in a hypnotic combination.
“Thank the spirits you’re alive,” Kahlan whispered. She found Cara’s cold wet hand and gripped it tightly, leaning down to press her forehead against Cara’s.
The sharpness in Cara’s eyes faded at the now-familiar touch, and a rush of relief swept through her. Maybe she didn’t deserve it, but the concern in Kahlan’s voice and the tight grip on her hand were indescribably just what could push all her guilt and worries aside. Too grateful, she focused on breathing and the warmth of Kahlan’s skin on hers.
Then Kahlan drew back with a quick intake of breath, murmuring, “You’re freezing, and hurt.”
“I’m fine,” Cara said automatically, voice a little raspy. In an attempt to lessen the discomfort, she tried to push up.
Kahlan’s arms were around her then, helping her stand. “I thought you must be dead,” she said, her hand at Cara’s head to push the wet hair aside, and then bit her lip at what she saw.
Cara winced as Kahlan’s fingers brushed against the wound on her temple, but meeting Kahlan’s eyes, even knowing just how glad she was to see her, there was a piece missing. The concern in Kahlan’s eyes made her say before she could think better, “Why didn’t you leave?”
Kahlan paused, one hand around Cara’s waist in case she fell, the other brushing fingertips through Cara’s hair as if to make sure she was really there. Her eyes darkened. “What?”
Cara swallowed, grimacing and glancing down for a second. “If I had died you might never have found me, and it would have been a waste of time. A new Seeker had to be named—there was no time.”
“Cara...” Kahlan said quickly, and Cara looked back up in time to see Kahlan swallow down something. Just for a second, though, and then Kahlan held onto her. “I would never just be able to move on like that,” the Mother Confessor said with a shaky voice as she embraced her closely.
Even though she had enough strength to stand on her own, Cara felt the need to cling to Kahlan for a second as her eyes blurred with stinging tears again. Her breathing hurt, not just with the pain of the kick, but with the final crumbling of the shell that she’d placed around herself. She relied on Kahlan—and could admit in a cracked whisper, now, “I’m glad.”
Kahlan squeezed her back for a few seconds more. “I should have said it, then. I thought you knew.” She pulled back a little, a teardrop shining on her cheek but a smile gracing her face. Glancing down at Cara’s river-shaken form, she said, “I need to get you to a fire and some dry clothes.”
“What?” Cara asked, still not quite sure, still a bit lost in emotion. “What didn’t you say?”
Kahlan glanced back up, but though soft her admission felt more solid than the ground they stood on. “That I care for you.”
Cara’s heart flipped over in her chest, and she didn’t know what to say. It was Kahlan—and she was talking to Cara. Guilt tried to surge back up as she held onto Kahlan, but as they made it to the horses, she realized that despite guilt she knew exactly what she wanted to say. Eyes slightly to the side, she said, “I care about you too.”
Kahlan breathed out as she helped Cara up into the saddle, but Cara thought she caught a smile still on the other woman’s face as they rode back together. Later as she’d gingerly dismounted with a slight dizziness, Kahlan helped her patch her wounds the same way she’d done after the battle with the banelings the week before. Yet even though their eyes didn’t meet, Cara felt a new peace in her touch that she hadn’t realized was missing, and a craving for more of it that made her heart ache. It felt right that Kahlan was the one to sleep wrapped around Cara that night.
Chapter 5
37 comments | Leave a comment
Phew, okay, the heartbeat is back to normal. Yay for spooning and Cara getting to be the big spoon and the little spoon -swoon-. Plants... plants die with fire... that plant needs to die. Painfully. But at least Cara got to experience what free-falling feels like! Such a rush. Gah! Must... discover... about... scars... -rocks back and forth-