LOTS - CARA/KAHLAN

walking with a ghost

court_ship

Title: walking with a ghost

Fandom: Legend of the Seeker

Pairing: Cara/Kahlan Amnell (if you squint)

Rating: PG for mild language

Warnings/Spoilers: No warnings; no spoilers

Word Count: ~1900

Notes: More of a Cara character study than anything; I’m trying to improve my personal characterization of her. Title from the Tegan & Sara song Walking With A Ghost.

Summary: Cara is losing her lack of humanity. She desperately wants it back.

Additionally, I am looking for two things: one, a beta (betas?) who has a lot of ideas/prompts and a great deal of patience. Two, friends! Feel free to friend me, strike up a conversation, whatever. I’m lonely. :)

walking with a ghost

court_ship

Kahlan and Richard are in love. Cara does not understand.

She watches them often, makes a game of it to see how long she can stare without one of them turning to stare back.

She observes how they will go out of their way to make sure their hands brush over the simple task of making supper. They sit unnaturally, uncomfortably close at night and speak in hushed tones when normal ones would easily suffice. They carve a world out for themselves and Cara and Zedd are excluded, left to fend for themselves by way of conversation and company.

Cara spends more and more time with the horses, brushing their coats while tossing glances over their withers. They shine like coins (except Kahlan’s horse, who has never looked more ethereal) and finally protest with twitches of their tails until Cara is forced from their company, too.

If the pots are all washed and her leather is oiled to the point of excess, Cara has no choice but to abandon her game and take restless walks until the birds begin to herald the dawn.

* * * * *

In the temple, the Mord’Sith did not acknowledge love. There was passion, yes, and devotion- devotion that knew no boundaries, devotion that Cara is sure could strangle this love that Kahlan and Richard share.

Sometimes during the dead of night Cara is frantic to reconcile that devotion, the very same that led her sisters to leave her for the wheeling crows. She cannot sleep on those nights either, eyes open and unfocused as she tries to remember a creed that meant her abandonment was necessary and fair.

* * * * *

There was also lust amongst Cara’s people, the kind that burned deep and bright until it was extinguished by a submissive girl held tightly by her hair. Cara knows that Kahlan and Richard possess the capability to lust. She has seen it in their eyes. Still, neither of them move to take such a burden from one another. There is Magic preventing full consummation, but Cara knows for a fact that there are many acts to be experimented with and teased into fulfilling roles. She has to clamp her teeth around her own tongue sometimes to prevent herself from asking if they would like advice or if they would prefer to shift from leg to leg forever. It would not be appropriate to degrade Lord Rahl, nor would the Confessor let her go without a lecture on love and feelings and compassion for living things.

Living things like Richard, like filthy peasants, like people who are not devotedly lustful Mord’Sith with watching eyes and indents of teeth in their wicked tongues.

* * * * *

Love. The word makes her chest tighten, makes it painful to breathe. Cara hates the feeling to the point of being livid and pushes too hard on the brush, her horse bobbing its head back to try and nip her. She murmurs soothingly in noises that are not words and heaves a breath.

* * * * *

There is a small village that they stop at once, alive only because it is built alongside a trade route. There are merchants there with gaily coloured stalls and the group takes time they do not have to wander through. Children run up and touch Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd as quickly as they can, tiny fingers grazing hands and cloaks and the edges of a white dress. They shriek and pull back in mock fear, little faces beaming at heroes that their mothers have gossiped about. Richard obliges some boys by holding weapons carefully out of harm’s way for them to admire and Kahlan kneels to talk to whatever urchins approach her. Zedd is gruff but smiles, enjoying the scene.

No children come to Cara; instead they part like river water around a fallen tree lodged between boulders. She tries a smile at one little girl, just to see what happens, and she is rewarded by a whine of fright.

She doesn’t mind, it serves the brat right. If Cara were with her sisters, she would take the child to begin training and relish the process. Or perhaps she would overlook such a child, for weakness could never create a true Mord’Sith. The soft of heart did not last long, were prone to decaying from the inside out. A gentle girl could never-

Cara steals an apple while no one is looking and bites into sweetness to erase the sour on her tongue.

* * * * *

The weather grows colder and for once the four stumble into an inn instead of past one. The boisterous laughing in the dining hall stops at once and although it is a familiar experience for Cara, the other members of the group seem a little unnerved.

“We need a room,” Richard says finally, stepping forward. The serving master identifies him after a moment and claps him heartily on the back.

“Welcome, Seeker. I will prepare your rooms and meals immediately.”

The hospitality is extended to Cara and she lets her pack fall beside Kahlan’s in the room they are to share. She knows the Confessor is displeased at being separated from Richard- or perhaps it is because she is forced to sleep beside Cara. Her dark curling hair falls into her eyes as she readies a bowl with water to wash her face with and changes into her sleeping linen in jerking, insecure movements. Without a word, Cara leaves her to her loneliness and selects the first willing man she can find with a face she will not mind while in the throes of ecstasy.

Cara is enthusiastic while fucking in a way that betrays too many thoughts. She tries too hard to enjoy herself to the fullest and leaves, uncaring as to whether or not her companion has done the same.

She does not return to her own room until it is nearly time to wake once more. Slipping into the comfortable bed with all of the silence granted to her by years of training, Cara swallows her shock when Kahlan rolls over to face her with open eyes.

“Where have you been?”

“Unlike some, Confessor, I do not allow doors to keep me from my pleasure.” Cara is fully aware of the stains of purple that show well above her collar, visible in the light of the dying embers in the grate.

Kahlan watches her for another moment, eyes bitter and glinting, before she rolls over and feigns sleep.

* * * * *

The more they travel, the wearier Cara gets. It is a natural progression, to become easily tired with prolonged effort, but Cara has never felt such exhaustion in her bones. She longs for a hot bath (the ones she receives do not scald her skin raw). She longs for a good meal (her stomach spurns the fowl and rabbits it receives). She longs for a fuck (and then another, and then another, until there is some satiation to this ache in her body).

She grows sloppy in battle, careless, and it isn’t until a dagger is lodged in the thick muscle of her thigh that she even notices she’s fighting. Kahlan is at her side in a instant, a whirl of white as she dispatches the soldier, and then she’s shaking Cara by the shoulders as they stand in a ring of men with agiel burns discolouring their corpses.

Cara can’t hear her, stares blankly at Kahlan’s lips moving. A sudden pain in her leg sends all of the noise around her crashing into her ears.

* * * * *

Richard approaches her, then Zedd. They look at her with mouths set in grim lines, wordlessly questioning. She questions back.

What is wrong with me?

* * * * *

One night the two men disappear on yet another deviation, taking their horses and setting off hard into a cold rainstorm. Cara and Kahlan find shelter in a thicket, tying boughs together and shivering as drops of icy water leak through.

There had been an inn a few miles back. Kahlan eyed it nervously and pressed her horse on with unrelenting heels. Cara had no desire for company that night, but followed the Mother Confessor without complaint. If it was free lodging the woman sought, it was free lodging the other would receive.

* * * * *

The fire will not light and after a few attempts Kahlan grows angry and throws down her materials with more force than is necessary.

“I suppose you won’t help.”

Cara looks away, the heat of undue embarrassment pushing its way into her stomach. She feels a little sick as the last remaining part of her Mord’Sith way flickers and dies on her very lips.

“I am sorry.”

Kahlan does not look surprised at this utterance. Instead, she looks sad. Her eyes drop back to the rashly abandoned tools before darting over to the pile of blankets the men left with them. Cara watches as Kahlan builds a careful bed on the damp ground, piling more blankets beneath than on top. Cara knows it is not a bed meant for warmth; it is a bed meant for sharing.

“Come here.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Kahlan insists in a tone that has gone soft, a method she uses on frightened people still holding weapons and ready to strike at anything that moves. “Come here. We’ll keep warm until the rain stops. We won’t do Richard any good if we freeze to death.”

The trap is obvious- Cara is bound to stay alive and serve Lord Rahl- and she lets the order fall on listening ears. Unwilling to let herself crawl the few feet, she stands and walks over to where Kahlan is kneeling. The Confessor runs a trembling fingertip (though from cold or caution, Cara knows not which) down the line of lacing along the outside of Cara’s knee.

“Take this off. It’ll prevent us both from warming up.”

“No,” Cara says, and lets Kahlan undress her like a sister.

* * * * *

It feels like hours before they both stop shivering, cool clammy skin against its twin more chilling than helpful. They are careful not to touch with their hands, back to back in their underclothes. Cara, relieved by the eventual heat that builds up underneath the furs and between their flesh, tries to remember the feeling of sleeping next her sisters. She cannot.

“Confessor.”

Kahlan looks over to find Cara peering at her, neck craned. As she shifts fully onto her side, Cara does the same and they regard each other.

“Mord’Sith.”

The title is light, friendly-mocking, and something in Cara snaps. Her breathing quickens until she’s panicking, heaving, no tears and all gasping as she clenches at the soft fabric of Kahlan’s shift. Kahlan offers no sympathy and no words, a deceivingly strong hand gripping Cara’s upper arm until it hurts.

“Better?”

Cara cannot nod, not yet, but turns into the palm that flattens itself against her cheek like it has been doing so every day of her life. A mild warmth radiates from it and one thumb slides along the dry skin underneath her eye. Kahlan smiles a little.

“I am glad you are with us.”

The words are the last Cara hears as she falls into a deep slumber and the first she remembers when she wakes the next afternoon, limbs loose with rest, stomach growling in anticipation of the food she can smell Kahlan preparing, and the anxiety finally, finally shaken from her mind.

She tries a smile at Kahlan, just to see what happens, and she is gifted with the same.

~ ~ ~