LOTS – CARA/KAHLAN

Past is Prologue

Tempest

Title: Past is Prologue

Author: Tempest

Fandom: Legend of the Seeker

Pairing: Cara/Kahlan, Cara/Dahlia mentioned

Word Count: 2,647

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I don’t own them, but if I did, this is how it would go down.

Summary: READ THIS FIRST! Okay, I hope that got your attention. This story takes place after Eternity, but it assumes that Cara’s crazy bruises and cuts from her retraining didn’t magically go away within a day. She still looks just as jacked as she did when Darken Rahl was torturing her in the episode.

Author’s Note: I want to clarify that have never read the Sword of Truth series. I am a strictly LOTS show fan and so I consider the show cannon, since that’s all I know. Also, I tried to look up the name of the Mord’Sith temple and I couldn’t find it so I went of what I remember Cara calling it, but, my memory is not a steel trap, so, if any body knows it, feel free to let me know and I’ll happily edit it. Last, a moment from my previous story is mentioned. Previous stories can be found here: http://tempest819.livejournal.com/5901.html – Confession, and here: http://tempest819.livejournal.com/9332.html – The Last Goodbye.

Comments always welcome!

Past is Prologue

Tempest

The sounds of celebrations could be heard by Cara as she readied her horse for travel. She expected that the sounds would continue for days on end. The Keeper had been defeated and the Seeker was once again the hero of the Midlands. The final days of the battle had been hard fought. After Cara had been re–trained with the use of the magically fortified agiel, she became a pawn for Darken Rahl and his plot. Zedd theorized that if he could undo the magic that had been intoned into the agiel, it might release Cara from its effect. That theory turned out to be valid and after he annulled the magic Cara became ‘un–broken.’ She joined her team and together they recovered the Stone of Tears and stopped the Keeper’s ascension. Now Cara was trying to make her way out of town as quickly as possible. She wasn’t in the mood for celebrations. Her actions stilled at the sound of footstep approaching her from behind.

“You were going to leave without saying goodbye?”

Cara closed her eyes at the sound of Kahlan’s voice. Apparently her efforts to leave discreetly had been thwarted. She took a deep breath and turned on her heals to face Mother Confessor. Kahlan was dressed in the white garbs that she usually reserved for her ‘official’ engagements. Cara thought it ironic that both Mord’Sith and Confessors wore white as a symbol of their status. Yet, if one thought about it, it made sense. A Mord’Sith only wore white after she had broken someone. It signified that she no longer needed to shed the blood of her victim in order to control them. One would be hard pressed to tell the difference between someone who had been broken and someone who had been confessed. While the method was different the end result was the same.

Kahlan waited for Cara to respond. At the celebration hall Richard had told her that Cara had left a note saying she would be leaving the village and was uncertain of her return. Before Richard could finish his sentence, Kahlan sprinted out of the hall and toward the stables to catch the blonde warrior before she could steal away. When she entered the stable she approached slowly and watched Cara from a distance as she caught her breath. She could clearly see Cara’s face from the light that filtered through the barn shutters. She could see the swollen bruises and deep cuts and could only imagine what other vestiges of her torture from Darken Rahl were hidden underneath her leather. Zedd had told her that he heard her cries of pain from his cell. He said that in all his years he had never heard a sound as terrifying as Cara’s screams.

Kahlan stepped closer once Cara turned to face her and made eye contact. When the blonde didn’t respond to her question, she persisted. “Were you?”

Cara debated whether she should just jump on her horse and leave. Everything was so tangled and a part of her just wanted to cut through the knots and binds and escape from the hold they had on her. That’s what she wanted to do, but, looking into Kahlan’s eyes, seeing the concern and hurt in them, she knew escape was not an option.

Cara replied. “Yes.”

Kahlan shook her head. Why was everything with Cara a game of ‘one step forward two steps back?’ “Where are you going?”

“What does it matter?” Cara curtly replied and turned her head, breaking eye contact.

Kahlan stepped forward and reached out with her hand to turn Cara’s face to back toward her own. Once she could look into her eyes, she replied, “It matters to me.”

Cara felt a well of emotion stir within her chest and it traveled up her throat, constricting her airway. Tears welled up in her eyes and she grinded her teeth in defiance. This is what she had wanted to avoid. Once Kahlan knew where she was going she wouldn’t be able to sneak away. Kahlan wouldn’t let it be that simple. No, there would have to be more talking about emotions and feelings with nothing really being achieved at the end of it. It was inevitable.

Cara took a breath and cleared her throat. “I’m going to the temple at Jandrolin.”

Kahlan drew her head back in confusion. Jandrolin was where they rescued Cara. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s irrelevant.” Cara replied. She saw confusion in Kahlan’s eyes first and then fear. Cara could see that her lack of explanation had the Mother Confessor coming to her own conclusions about her reasons for returning to her Mord’Sith sisters and those reasons didn’t paint her in a good light. Cara decided to provide Kahlan with an the reason before the other woman reached for her short swords.

“I’m going to get Dahlia’s body and bury her at Stowcroft.”

A silence fell over the two women with the mention of that name. They hadn’t spoken of it, there hadn’t been time. Kahlan, Richard and Zedd had stormed the temple to rescue Cara. When Kahlan first saw Cara, she was paralyzed for a brief moment at the sight of her brutalized face and soulless look in her eyes. Cara fought by the side of the other Mord’Sith, until Zedd was able to do a spell to reverse the magic imposed on Cara by the agiel. Once free from the spell, Cara fell to the floor unconscious.

Kahlan and Richard did their best to disarm the rest of Mord’Sith, but when Kahlan caught sight of Dahlia, a rage erupted within her and she ran straight toward her. All Kahlan could think about was Dahlia’s betrayal and what it had cost Cara. Kahlan attacked Dahlia with all her might in an almost blind fury. When she bested the other woman of her agiel, she immediately reached out for her throat and before she could process her actions, she had confessed her and Dahlia’s screams filled the chamber. Once it was done, the screams abruptly stopped and Dahlia fell dead to the ground, leaving the chamber eerily silent until it was pierced by the sound of Cara calling out Dahlia’s name. The cry drew Kahlan out of her post–confession stupor and she fell to her knees as she processed her actions. The moment was cut short as Richard and Zedd ushered them out of the chamber and the temple. After that, there wasn’t a moment of respite. They immediately formulated a plan to retrieve the stone of tears and close the rift. In all that time neither Cara nor Kahlan spoke about what had happened at the temple. Now the blonde was proposing a mission that would most likely be her death.

Kahlan replied, “You can’t go to the temple. They’ll kill you.”

Cara smirked. “No they won’t. The Mord’Sith are merciless and cruel, but they understand honor. They won’t stand in my way. Not for this.”

Kahlan shook her head. She didn’t understand. She thought maybe Cara was using the retrieval of Dahlia’s body as a pretense to take her vengeance out on the sisters who had taken part in her ‘re–training’, but, from Cara’s response, she could see that she had no such intentions. She intended to bury Dahlia. “We’ve fought Mord’Sith before. You’ve never –“

“They were Mord’Sith, but they weren’t her.” Cara reached to retrieve her saddle bag and turned her back to Kahlan as she secured the bag to the saddle. She needed to leave.

Kahlan reached out and grabbed Cara’s shoulder to halt her actions. She wasn’t going to let her get away easy. “Why her?”

Cara felt her body tense at her touch, but she didn’t turn to face the Confessor. She replied, “Before she was a Mord’Sith, she was a daughter, a sister and a friend. She deserves to be remembered that way.”

“Cara…” Kahlan paused as she let meaning of those words settle within her. Cara was in mourning, she was grieving over Dahlia, over the woman who deceived her and tortured her. She moved closer to the woman and took hold of her by both of her arms. She ran her hands up and down in a comforting motion. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know what she meant to you.”

Cara shrugged off Kahlan’s touch and fiddled with a buckle on the saddle bag. “An apology is not necessary. You’re a Confessor. It’s what you do.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

Kahlan, no longer willing to look at the back of Cara’s head, turned her around so they were face to face. “Don’t speak to me as if that’s all I am to you. I didn’t know she meant so much to you.

Kahlan paused and placed her right hand over heart. “I swear if I knew–”

Cara cut her off before she could continue. “My history with Dahlia doesn’t change anything. Our mission was to defeat the Keeper and we did.”

Kahlan cupped Cara’s face with her hands and shook it in defiance. “Damn it, Cara, talk to me, not at me!”

Cara immediately knocked the hands away and walked past Kahlan so that her back was turned to her again. “What do you want to hear, Kahlan?”

Kahlan pleaded in a pained, childlike voice, “I want to understand.”

The sound of Kahlan’s voice pierced through Cara’s flesh and bone and entered her heart. She replied, “What is there to understand? Dahlia was a murderer; she tortured countless victims and served Darken Rahl without question. There’s nothing I can say about her that will erase any of those truths.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Cara immediately turned at that claim and closed the distance between them. “Aren’t you? If I told you a girl I knew since childhood had been killed would you be struggling to understand why she meant something to me? What if I told you that when she was a little girl she used to chase butterflies in the spring and dance in the rain during summer storms? Does that make it easier for you to make sense of it?”

“Is that true?” Kahlan questioned.

Cara huffed at her reply. “You could never understand, Kahlan and be thankful that you don’t”

Kahlan reached her arm out to her side to stop Cara as the blonde tried to storm past her to mount her horse. Her arm caught the other woman at her waist and she replied. “You once said to me that we were two sides of the same coin. I didn’t agree then, but, you were right, we are. I understand you more than you realize.”

“Pity is not the same as understanding.” Cara countered.

Kahlan, without releasing her hold on Cara’s waist, turned to her right so that they were face to face. “It’s not pity. I understand your fears and your strengths, your doubts and your convictions. I understand your pain and…” She paused. “…I understand your rage.”

“No, you don’t.”

Kahlan’s throat tightened as she started her own confession. “I wanted to kill her. More than that, I wanted her to suffer. When I saw what she did to you, Cara… when I was fighting her, all I could see was your face, your eyes…” She reached up with her right hand and swept away the blonde locks to tuck them behind Cara’s ear. She gently traced the cuts and bruises on Cara’s brow and down to her cheekbone. “Did you know that your eyes are what I think of first when I think of you? They’re so honest and full of life; I don’t need to be a Confessor to read them. Even when you try to hide your pain, I can see into them.” Kahlan paused when she saw see tears forming in Cara’s eyes and how the other woman was fighting hard to hold them back. “When I was fighting her all I could see were your eyes and how the life I used to see in them was gone. I let my anger dictate my actions and I’m so, so sorry.”

Cara closed her eyes as she felt tears fall down her cheeks and replied, “I know that Dahlia deserved her death, just as much as I did when I was on trial at Stowcroft and, yet, here I stand. Maybe I should see a difference between her and me, but I don’t.”

Kahlan wiped the tears from Cara’s cheeks. She was beginning to understand a bit more now. Cara wasn’t just mourning over Dahlia’s death, but, in a way, she mourned for a part of herself that had been kept alive in Dahlia and died with her too; a part of her innocence, as well as her corruption. She tried to imagine what it must feel like to have someone in your life that knew you better than anyone else in both years and understanding, and then imagined having to look at that person as an enemy.

”You loved her, didn’t you?”

Cara looked away at that question. She covered Kahlan’s hands that were holding her face and pulled them away. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone.”

“Cara…”

Cara, avoiding eye contact, replied. “I know I’m capable of love now, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. I understand loyalty, respect and honor. I understand their worth and their necessity in order for this world to exist with some semblance of order. And I understand that love is somehow all of those things and none of them all at once. I understand that, but I still…” Cara paused as she felt her emotions overwhelm her. She dug right foot into the ground frustration and clenched her fists. “Everything is different now.”

Kahlan felt tears form in her own eyes and nodded her head in agreement. “Yes. It is.”

Cara looked back at the brunette. She could see in Kahlan’s eyes that her simple response was packed with meaning. “Why didn't you confess me at Stowcroft?”

“You know why.”

Cara nodded her head and then felt her chin quiver ever so slightly. The tears began to fall freely and her voice cracked when she replied. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe some things that are broken can't be made whole again.”

“Cara…no…” Kahlan whispered. She reached up to cup Cara’s face again. This time Cara didn’t break eye contact and Kahlan looked into those pools of regret and pain without hesitation. Cara’s soul was laid bare before her and Kahlan realized that she was seeing Cara for the first time. She felt her body move on instinct and she leaned in to gently press her lips to Cara’s. She put all her empathy and emotion into that kiss as she hoped it let Cara know all that felt, but, had failed to say with words. The blonde allowed herself a moment of vulnerability and accepted the kindness offered in that kiss for all it was. When it was done she rested her forehead against Kahlan’s before pulling away. She whispered, “thank you,” into the brunette’s ear, mounted her horse and left without looking back.

Kahlan stayed in the stable for a while as she wasn’t ready to return to the celebration. Eventually the sight of Richard leaning against the barn entrance signaled to her that her extended absence had been noticed. Once they made eye contact, they walked toward one another. Richard could see in her eyes that she had been crying.

He questioned, “She left?”

Kahlan nodded. “She’ll be back.”

“Did she say that?”

“No.”

Richard paused for a moment and reached out to lightly caress Kahlan’s cheek. “She might not come back this time Kahlan.”

“She will.”

“How do you know?”

Kahlan smiled, reached up to cover Richard’s hand that was cupping her cheek and then pulled it away, before she replied. “Because I know her.”

~FINIS~