LOTS - CARA/KAHLAN

Don’t Let Me Get Me

merrykk

Title: Don’t Let Me Get Me

Fandom: Legend of the Seeker

Pairing: Cara/Kahlan

Rating: PG–13

Length: ~3900

Spoilers: any time post–”Bound”

Summary: When magic leaves Cara without the use of her hands, it’s not the sort of reliance on Kahlan that she had planned.

Notes: For this_years_girl, who prompted Cara–centric H/C fic. Thanks for your generous donation! (I never thought I’d use the Healing Sex trope, but I guess in my defense, it is at least somewhat medically sound.)

Don’t Let Me Get Me

merrykk

“Kahlan!” With a warning cry, Cara’s hands shot up to shield the sudden burst of magic from Nicci, caught off guard at anyone attacking a Mord’Sith magically. But her breath seemed crushed from her lungs at the power as a burning sensation filled her palms. Pain rushed, more than she’d prepared for, and for a moment she doubted whether she could push the spell back. Nicci’s eyes widened, and then with a flash she had spelled herself away.

Cara didn’t intend to crumple to a heap, but her legs were suddenly jelly and her hands full of the impure pain of wounds that was somehow worse than even the strongest agiel strike. The world spun overhead as she collapsed, clear sunny sky above, before Kahlan and Richard rushed to her side.

“Cara?” Richard’s face was a little blurry, and Cara just stared as she tried to absorb the pain.

“Richard, look at her hands,” Kahlan’s serious tone broke in.

“I’m fine,” Cara tried to answer through gritted teeth, moving her elbows to sit up, annoyed at herself for falling in the first place. But then her hands brushed against the grass and she strangled back an involuntary scream. She recognized the feel of Kahlan’s hand on her back then, and rolled her eyes back in her head as she closed them. White–hot pain—she’d forgotten how it felt.

“Zedd?” Richard asked.

Cara didn’t notice when the wizard came over, eyes still closed, but she heard his “This is a magical injury. It must heal on its own.”

“I will be fine,” Cara protested, even as it came out whispery. Then she opened her eyes and stared at the burnt wrecks that were her hands—red as blood, blistered, almost visibly throbbing with the pain. Against her will, her stomach turned. “It’s nothing.”

“Cara,” Richard admonished, eyes wide.

“We should rest for a couple days at least,” Kahlan said as she put her arm around Cara’s waist.

Using Kahlan’s arm as leverage to help her up, Cara protested. “No. I am not incapable of walking. As long as the Seeker focuses on our quest, I should not be called on to do more than that.” She rose to her feet, barely a wobble in her stance. Already she was pushing the pain to the back of her mind where all weakness had to go.

Kahlan’s eyes met Richard’s, and then they both looked to Cara. She saw the beginnings of stubbornness and grimaced. “I will not stay put and be babied, as if this was incapacitating,” she growled. The world seemed to draw in on her until all she could see was them.

After pressing her lips together for a moment, Kahlan said, “I can take care of what is necessary, Richard.”

Richard gave Cara a look that said that he didn’t want to take a couple days’ rest with a stir–crazy Mord’Sith, and Cara almost gave him a snide compliment on his wits. But with all her focus on holding back the pain, her mind didn’t have much else to offer. She stood rigid, Kahlan’s hand still on her back.

“Then we will carry on,” Zedd broke in, saying the words that Richard was hesitant to voice.

Richard nodded, and turned to begin walking again with Zedd at his side.

“You know you can’t use your hands at all,” Kahlan pointed out under her breath.

Cara eyed her. “I’m no idiot.”

But the way Kahlan looked at her, full of gravity, made her bite down hard on her jaw. The next few days would be worse than the Underworld.

* * * * *

It was simple enough to continue walking without the use of hands, despite the random jabs of pain that shot free of her mental blocks at times and made her stumble. Cara couldn’t begrudge Kahlan always being there to see it—except that she could. This weakness was sad, pathetic, pointless. If there was a way to disembowel a person more than once, Cara would have wished it on Nicci for giving her this.

But then they stopped for the night, and Cara’s stomach rumbled forebodingly. Kahlan pulled her aside by the arm. “Cara, all this will be easier if you are out of your leathers.”

The unspoken hint of what awkward struggles were to come made Cara itch with frustration, but she nodded shortly.

“I’ll wait until there’s supper, and then we can take our leave of them for a short while,” Kahlan continued.

There was not enough distance in the world, however, to make Cara feel comfortable when Kahlan spooned stew into her mouth as she sat on a stump. She ate because it would be foolish not to, but every bite was humiliating. Her wounded hands threaten to clench. Kahlan did not meet her eyes, though, which was a small comfort.

Then Kahlan pulled her white dress from her pack, the free form supposedly something that would help Cara help herself, and she slowly began removing Cara’s leathers. It didn’t hurt as Kahlan’s soft touch made her second skin slip free, but her fingertips trailed down Cara’s arm like fleeting raindrops before a storm, and with her eyes closed Cara thought of more than necessity. It had been too long since anyone’s fingers but her own had been lacing and unlacing her. A sudden pang for her Sisters made Cara hate herself for the stupid weakness. She did clench her hands, then, to let the overwhelming pain drive everything else away. If a tiny whimper escaped involuntarily, thankfully Kahlan did not remark on it.

Cara opened her eyes again when Kahlan had finished stripping the leather, face full of concern and care, and started slipping Cara into the loose white dress. It fit better than Cara would have expected, and the mental image had her pointing out, “People will assume that I am the Confessor.”

“We will have an advantage, then,” Kahlan answered with ease, lacing up the center ties.

With each touch, Cara wanted to turn around to bat her hands away and finish it on her own. Kahlan’s power might be contained in her hands, but now that she no longer had them, Cara missed the power of her own touch. To brush her skin against Kahlan’s with the pretense of pushing her away, to grip tightly to her agiels to let the pain soothe away desires that couldn’t be matched, to be ready at any moment to save Kahlan’s life or enhance it—hands were useful. Cara refused to meet Kahlan’s eyes in case the Confessor realized how much she thought of it.

She saw Kahlan’s eyes trail up her figure, though, and saw a hidden smile at the corner of her mouth.

“This is not amusing,” Cara bit out.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Kahlan answered softly. “Come, I’ll set up our sleeping areas at the site.”

The skirt tails tangling about Cara’s knees only reminded her of her sister and of the Margrave, therefore nothing good. She felt stripped while fully clothed, and only Kahlan’s hand at the small of her back reminded her that it was not the first time with these people. Richard gave her only one soft look in the evening, Zedd none, and Cara kept her jaw tight until it hurt more than her hands. It was tolerable that way.

To her infinite relief, they all lay down to rest as usual.

But the night fell down hard, and the moment Cara let her mind free, agony swept through her body. She hissed in breath after breath in the dark, drawing the pain back and deep again, only to lose grip the moment she relaxed her body. Her eyes stung, and she almost demanded that Zedd cut off her hands and attempt to replace them with whole ones, disregarding her magic–deflection.

The burning in her hands didn’t abate. Soon Cara was staring up at the moon while her body was stiff with concentration, as she willed each throb in her hands to die. She counted meaningless numbers, took in breaths that were supposed to be easy, and tried not to think about the fact that she was thirsty and could do nothing about it.

With a twisted breath, she shuffled on the blanket, eyes heavy with unsolved weariness as she tried to keep her hands from touching anything. Behind her, there was another noise.

“Do you need something?” Kahlan asked under her breath.

“Perhaps for you to sleep?” Cara answered, hoping her sarcasm conveyed someone disturbed on the edge of sleep.

“While you toss and turn?”

Cara hated the way that Kahlan’s words could always affect her so strongly, leaving her in a boiling chaos of emotions that she couldn’t name. She stuck to irritation. “There is nothing you can do.”

Kahlan moved closer until Cara could feel Kahlan’s breasts touching her back. “You can’t lie to a Confessor,” she said under her breath.

It would have been so easy to point out the lie in that as well, but Cara just couldn’t. Her mind flashed with rhythmic pain. “I might be thirsty,” she muttered.

She should have known that giving Kahlan an inch was the same as giving her a mile. Before two minutes had passed, Kahlan had helped Cara to drink and was spooned at her back, stroking her arm softly. The touch was distracting enough that Cara couldn’t bring herself to protest.

“I’m sorry you are like this because of me,” Kahlan murmured.

“I did not do it—” Cara stopped short, not knowing how she wanted to finish the sentence. Nicci had been going for Kahlan, of course, but everyone did, and Cara didn’t have the words to explain that Kahlan could not change that no matter how much she paid attention. Instead, Cara focused on the pressure of skin against skin, painless and yet electrifying. Kahlan’s fingers were long and slender, and Cara could always tell them apart from any others. Especially like this.

Eyes closed, the pain hid. Just for a few moments, so Cara could fall asleep calm in Kahlan’s arms. It would have made her stomach churn with weakness had she realized it.

* * * * *

Cara woke first in the morning and sat up, rocking back and forth as she returned her mind to holding in the pain. She was tired, more tired than she should be, and her hands looked better than they felt. Each breath felt forced, almost painful, as Cara cradled her hands in her lap.

Yet, when Kahlan awoke, she found the strength to appear unaffected. That strength was almost as refreshing to her mind as sleep and healing, something that perhaps Kahlan would never understand. Kahlan helped her cleanse herself and fed her breakfast, and Cara detached herself from it. Once they started on the quest again, walking through forests, she dared pay attention to the world.

Even then, her hands distracted her. She had suffered pain before, seemingly unending pain, but there had been a way to focus it away. And it had been distinct, sharp. This lingering laboring pain, swelling instead of striking, overwhelmed her usual tactics. Her mind was heavy with the loss of sleep, and she kept her focus on putting one foot after the other, looking at the ground before her instead of seeing if her friends might be taking notice.

Throb. Throb. The pain wouldn’t lessen, hammering away inside her head. Cara couldn’t detect a way around it.

“Richard, we need a moment,” Kahlan’s voice suddenly rang out.

Cara glanced up, registering the forest and the other people again. “I’m fine,” she said quickly, reading Richard’s question and Kahlan’s clouded look alike.

“Cara…” Kahlan said under her breath. She nodded to Richard and Zedd and pulled Cara away, walking with her further into the woods.

The change made Cara’s concentration weaken, the pain stealing all thoughts from her, and had her jaw not been tight she might have cried out. Kahlan walked far before she turned and halted.

“Cara, the purpose of pain is to tell us to stop,” Kahlan said, meeting Cara’s eyes sharply. “I know that isn’t how you usually think of it, but I can’t let your pride get in the way until it makes you helpless.”

Cara cocked her head, holding her hands deathly still to keep from drawing them into tight fists of frustration. “Helpless?”

Kahlan sighed. “This will aid no one.”

Cara couldn’t pull her eyes away, seeing a fierce concern in Kahlan’s that refused any thoughts, leaving Cara in the grips of nothing but pain and the feelings that went with it. “Kahlan—” she started. Kahlan’s hand on her arm loosened, stroking down to cup her elbow. Distracted for a moment, Cara was lost.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded, voice unsteady. “My body, my control, is gone, and I am left with only this.” She shook her inflamed hands. Her heart started beating faster, the pain almost lessening the more she put into her words, and she had to hiss in her breaths. “Do you want me to cry on your shoulder? Beg for my mother, never mind that she is dead? Fall apart into a weeping mess like all little girls you have known who accidentally touched a hot stove?”

Kahlan said nothing, just dropped her eyes and rubbed at Cara’s elbow.

Cara choked on her own breath, and the pain she’d been about to put into angry words got caught in her eyes, until she had to blink away painful unwanted tears. “I do not need to acknowledge the extent of the pain for it to go away when it is healed,” she snapped, as steady as she could manage.

“You don’t need flint to start a fire, either, but it is a waste of time and peace of mind to do otherwise,” Kahlan said with a sudden straight look.

Cara felt herself straining with the effort simply to stand there, not trembling, looking back at Kahlan. Her body was screaming, and each breath of air felt like suffocation. “What then?”

Kahlan’s eyes melted, her body slipping into Cara’s space. “I can’t stop your pain,” she whispered, emotion like a flood in her voice. “And I can’t help you divide yourself from it. But Cara—” her hand flitted across Cara’s waist, and with only the thin white fabric between, Cara could instantly feel the warmth. “I can help you drown it.”

If Cara stared any longer into those eyes, she might see the words that were still unspoken. The feeling was enough, and even though she could not pull Kahlan close, she leaned in with sudden desperate lips and kissed Kahlan. Hands gingerly out of the way, she put all the aching pain in her body into that kiss, drinking Kahlan and forgetting to breathe. Her mind locked onto that one thought, that one desire to drown.

Kahlan’s arms, curving about Cara’s waist and holding her up; Kahlan’s lips, softly pressing as they let Cara’s take; Kahlan’s skin, achingly beyond Cara’s reach. She gasped against Kahlan’s mouth, eyes tightly shut, trying to taste all of her as if her lips had to serve for fingers as well as hands. She sunk, slowly, Kahlan pulling her to the forest floor, cradled in a grasp that set Cara on fire more than the pain.

Pleasure was always more than pain, because it twisted pain to its own purpose. Cara groaned at the fire, at the ache, and she wanted to groan again. Losing herself in overwhelming feeling, the pain became Kahlan’s touch and was reshaped into something that Cara needed for survival’s sake.

Kahlan’s hands cupped at her breasts, kneading softly as Cara could barely breathe as she kissed Kahlan so hard that her lips might bruise. The drumming beat of her heart, of the agony in her hands, of the burning in her core, became the life–beat of the universe. Intoxicating, Cara could sense nothing else, nor imagine anything more—more—more everything.

She should not have cried out in between frantic kisses to Kahlan’s neck, when the Mother Confessor’s hand strayed between her legs. The tears in her eyes should not have felt raw and perfect as Kahlan pushed her to the limit, letting her dissolve into a pool of pain–become–pleasure. She should not have gasped in release, for a moment not even feeling her damaged hands as she arched into Kahlan’s fingers.

And most of all, she should not have shaken in Kahlan’s arms as the pain seemed less, clinging even without hands, breasts heaving with each choking breath against the Confessor’s dress she wore. It was weakness, pure and simple and inferior. But Cara knew nothing else in that moment.

Kahlan pressed gentle kisses against Cara’s brow as she cradled her, and the pleasure dissipated like smoke on the wind, but as if it dragged some pain away with it. Cara felt weary and worn, and her stomach was starting to twist with the realization of everything again. The entrapment in her own body most of all. She didn’t move, though.

“I can go on,” she said, not bothering to adjust the husk in her voice, torn apart by a force too strong to understand.

Cara found her mind again as Kahlan helped her to her feet, but no thoughts broke through as they returned to the group. Kahlan didn’t let her arm drop from Cara’s waist as they walked, and Cara held onto that touch as if it was the point of an agiel. She made it through the day, and had no time to notice any pain before she was asleep with Kahlan at her back.

* * * * *

The next day brought another rising tide of pain on Cara, even as her hands seemed to heal. Length was worse than intensity. She began to see the marks that magic had left as if they were chains, and by midday she was ranting through clenched teeth.

And as soon as they stopped for a short rest, Kahlan all but dragged her into the woods. This time, Cara was lost in anger at herself and hatred for still being this weak when Kahlan laid her on the forest floor, hands safely over her head, and kissed her with slow purpose that made Cara forget everything.

She still refused to ask for anything, and when Kahlan gave her a dark glance for it in the evening, Cara found the stubbornness to send one right back.

* * * * *

Cara had not accepted the pain when it started to go away. She looked down at her hands, and the smooth palms looked as if they had never been injured. The pain had descended into a jabbing of a thousand knives, right at the back of Cara’s eyes but no further. She bit her tongue until it bled, and refused to stop for anything. When she walked so fast that she tripped and nearly put out her hands to stop her, Kahlan snapped at her with an irritation that Cara was quick to match.

But Cara walked off on her own, arms crossed so that her hands lay gently against her own elbows, until she realized she had nothing to do. She paced a small glade until Kahlan came and rubbed at her shoulders until she gave in.

“If I am ever attacked again, kill me at once,” Cara ordered Kahlan under her breath as they returned to the others.

“Of course,” she said.

Cara didn’t believe her for a second. She was sure that Kahlan never meant her to.

* * * * *

She did not feel shame for the swelling in her heart when she stared at her hands, slowly curled her fingers inwards, and felt only a simple pain. Even the dampness of her eyes was called–for. Grimacing the entire way, she ate dinner on her own, and ate more than she was hungry for. She’d put too much of herself into her self–sufficiency, perhaps, but she wasn’t ready to let it go.

Richard and Zedd, who’d cautiously stayed many paces away from Cara throughout the ordeal, did not catch Cara’s notice with their relief so much as Kahlan did with her bright smile. Despite the frustration with the Mord’Sith, though never more than Cara felt with herself and the world, her face was alight simply to see Cara herself again. Yet Cara wasn’t ready to call it weakness, even when Kahlan’s light made Cara’s answering smirk almost a smile.

That night, as their camp settled down, she gathered her things and disappeared some ways off on her own. With fingers that still pained her, but in a way she could harness, she dealt with each lace of the white dress. Its soft fabric fell quietly to the forest floor, where Cara gathered it up and folded it. The crinkle of Mord’Sith leather as she slipped it back on was all she needed to feel as if she’d never left it behind.

Losing track of everything but her own identity, which was foolishly bound in these leathers as if with a spell, Cara focused on the now–grounding pain in her fingers as she finished lacing.

“Here,” came Kahlan’s voice suddenly behind her. Cara drew up immediately, noting Kahlan’s figure in the soft shadows. She held the agiels in her arms.

“I know it’s probably too painful to touch them yet, but you should have them at your side,” Kahlan offered, gesturing to the holders on Cara’s leathers.

For a moment, all Cara could consider was what pain must be going through Kahlan at the touch of the weapons, having never been trained with them. The wave of pride and appreciation struck her too fully for words, and her only answer was a slight nod, eyes dropped for a second.

Kahlan fitted closer to Cara’s body than need called for when she placed the agiels at Cara’s side, the hum of them an old friend. Cara remained steady, as if she still could not use her hands.

The Confessor looked up at last with a bare smile. “These past few days something felt different to me, Cara. I didn’t realize how much I counted on your strength.”

Cara felt herself blink, staring a second too long. It was nothing she hadn’t said to herself, but coming from Kahlan’s mouth, the words seemed too shallow. That in and of itself would have worried a true Mord’Sith, that any of the weaker emotions could be too shallow. But Cara ignored it for now, and in the dark, memories of vulnerability still fresh, she followed the soft tug of what might have been her heart.

She pressed her lips together for a second before reaching out and finding Kahlan’s hands. Swallowing the threat of emotion, Cara raised the soft white hands. “There is sufficient power in these,” she said quietly. “For the both of us, so it seems.”

Kahlan’s eyes met hers, as if expecting that such words would have remained unspoken for a while yet, and Cara no longer had to restrain her instinct. Herself once again, no bitter frustration boiling in her blood, she moved towards Kahlan and let their hips brush together. Lifting the Mother Confessor’s hands, Cara pressed a soft kiss to the palm of each one. It was the only thanks she knew how to give.

Kahlan’s exhale was shaky in surprise, but Cara’s breath hitched just a moment at the way that Kahlan kept her hands in Cara’s while pressing closer, only tangling their fingers while their bodies drew together.

Cara embraced the slight remaining pain as she gripped Kahlan’s hands tightly. She would protect Kahlan. Kahlan would help her. That was more love than any words could be, and their clasped hands more representative than any traditional display. And that love could not be weak, for their hands were strong. For now, Cara accepted it.

~ ~ ~