LOTS - CARA/KAHLAN

When the Lights Go Out You’ll Understand

merrykk

Title: When the Lights Go Out You’ll Understand

Fandom: Legend of the Seeker

Pairing: Cara/Kahlan (slight Cara/Dahlia)

Rating: R (intense torture)

Length: ~6400

Spoilers: post–“Eternity”

Summary: Breaking only works when you know what you want. Kahlan does; Cara should. A rebroken!Cara fix–it AU.

Notes:: This is a remix of my own fic, To Turn ( http://community.livejournal.com/lots_femslash/166665.html ), which you don’t need to read to understand this. It’s also for legendland’s Big Bang Alt, theme “dark”. That, and the rating and summary, is your warning…

When the Lights Go Out You’ll Understand

merrykk

Cara’s smile as she explained brushed the curve of her full lips, saturated with intent. Dahlia couldn’t stop the slight flutter of her heart, and bowed her head to hide the weakness. She should have thought of the plan before—no cold death by agiel for the Mother Confessor, but instead the long slow downfall of breaking. Lord Rahl had merely sent them to kill the Seeker, but Cara deserved this revenge on the woman who had so long teased her with survival. Or was it servitude?

They didn’t attack on sight, the Seeker and the Confessor. Pathetically, they waited to see what Cara would do. But this was not the time to play with expectations, and Cara dove in, fearless in her strikes towards the man who could likely defeat her if he’d had a stronger mind.

Dahlia took on Kahlan Amnell, watching her hands with a perverse delight in the danger they posed. She didn’t fear them. And when Richard hesitated, and Cara pressed her agiel against his heart until death struck, Kahlan cried out and looked aside. Dahlia slammed the agiel into her head, knocking her to the ground before she could go into the Con Dar. She was an undoubtedly lovely woman, and would make a lovely pet to mark Cara’s return to her family. Dahlia bound her neck with the radahan to hold in the Confessor, but her hands were then bound with chains to remind her that she was just another human to serve the Mord’Sith.

“What are you doing?” Dahlia asked, as she yanked the unconscious Kahlan up and saw Cara kneeling at Richard’s side.

“We may need him for leverage later,” Cara said, as she breathed into Richard’s mouth.

“But our orders,” Dahlia protested with a frown.

“We will bring him back to Rahl to make the case that perhaps he is more useful under Darken Rahl’s control.” When Richard gasped for living breath, Cara backhanded him sharply.

Bringing the two greatest enemies of the Lord Rahl, Cara and Dahlia set out to return to the temple. Dahlia watched Cara march, head high and proud, a smirk on her lips more than enough to intimidate even an army. And once the Mother Confessor was broken to her will, she would be renowned in legend itself.

Yet they reached the temple with only one prisoner in hand.

Darken Rahl smiled slowly as Cara lied for them both, hiding the frustration in her eyes as she told him that the Seeker was dead. But when he purred at Kahlan, Cara broke in with a sharp, “Surely she will be more useful once I have broken her.”

Darken Rahl nodded. Dahlia smirked, and met Cara’s eyes, forgetting their failure as she anticipated the victory to come. “Take her to the chamber,” Cara murmured to Dahlia. “And then join me in the bath.”

“Of course, mistress,” Dahlia answered. She smiled to herself as she dragged Kahlan off to strip and bind her. This was how things were supposed to be.

* * * * *

With her eyes closed, Kahlan could imagine a perfect green world. Softly rolling hills, a neatly tended cottage. Her children running circles around their father while Cara chopped wood for her fire, only pretending to begrudge the menial task. Kahlan could just about smell the fresh apple pie she was putting on the windowsill as she smiled over her family.

A stinging crack flashed across her hips, and Kahlan bit back a cry. She opened her eyes to see Cara stalk by her, whip in hand, gazing on the thin red mark she had just left on Kahlan’s skin. Hanging naked in chains in a Mord’Sith dungeon, Kahlan felt her body tighten as Cara circled her, predator to prey, master to slave. She shuddered, remembering holding the woman’s hand in something closer than friendship. Memory brought to mind Cara’s soft touch, protective and caring. The cool woman before her, bound up to her neck in the armor of a Mord’Sith, made Kahlan want to weep for the lost Cara.

“Mother Confessor,” Cara drawled, stepping in to scrape the whip handle across the radahan around Kahlan’s neck. Her eyes brimmed with a dangerous imitation of amusement. “You have no idea how many days I longed to have you like this.”

Kahlan held herself as tight as she could with her feet far above the floor, and looked straight into Cara’s eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“You never could read a Mord’Sith,” Cara said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders as she took a step back, letting the strands of the whip sweep out behind her. “Never did you once imagine the disgust—” Cara let the whip snap back, swipe down Kahlan’s chest in a burning cut “—of trying to fit in with your little morality games, day after day, feeling myself growing—” Another strike, and Kahlan felt the sting as if it was cutting straight to her bones “—weaker and worthless. You were always my enemy, and yet you never did think that maybe I hadn’t fully convinced myself otherwise.”

Looking into Cara’s eyes, Kahlan’s heart ached for more than just the death of Richard. Darken Rahl had taken Cara and poisoned her, twisted all her growth and thrust it back under the foreign armor she now wore. The muscle twitch in her face was from anger, perhaps, but Kahlan wanted to believe that it was also a sense that this wasn’t right. “Cara, Confessors aren’t the only ones who can read truth. I didn’t need my powers to see who you were.”

The whip snapped out, and Kahlan choked on the pain as it cut into her belly. With angrier strides, Cara walked around, letting a harder strike fall on Kahlan’s back. “See who I was? You knew that from the moment we met, but you didn’t have the stomach to keep believing it. You listened to Richard, and you let him make you weaker by seeing what you wanted to believe. That nothing in the world is more powerful than love.” The word came out as if spat, and the whip sliced into Kahlan’s back again.

“Cara,” Kahlan whispered, remembering the woman whose face of joy had never been seen so clearly as on the day when a night wisp had given birth.

Two strikes hit her side, and Kahlan jerked. “You have so much to learn, Confessor,” Cara said in a steely low voice. She stepped closer, eyes sharp on Kahlan’s and yet wild. “And the first lesson…” Her eyes trailed possessively down Kahlan’s bare figure, now marked with red lines, “…is that I am your mistress, not your equal.”

Kahlan didn’t shiver when she met those eyes, with the pain of her heart breaking more than a thousand whip strikes. Surely Darken Rahl could not be so cruel as to erase everything that Cara was, the beauty and the potential. Surely the world would not end like this for them.

Cara hissed, and slammed the heel of her hand into Kahlan’s nose, knocking her head back. “Keep your eyes where they belong, my pet,” she said with an attempt at mocking playfulness, ramming the back end of her whip into Kahlan’s belly. “At my feet.”

Kahlan coughed, gulping in a breath as she felt blood start to trickle from her nose. The burning rage in Cara’s eyes was all that she could see. She lifted her chin and stared at her. “You’re not the same person, Cara. You’re better. Even Darken Rahl can’t remove that; if you truly believed any of this you would have no cause for anger.”

Cara stepped in swiftly, drawing her agiel and driving it into Kahlan’s belly. Kahlan screamed without thought, arms flexing at the chains that held her hanging. The world was full of fire and pain for an agonizing minute before Cara pulled back. There was anger still in her eyes.

“I will destroy this arrogance of yours yet,” Cara said in a low tone before she turned to go away.

Kahlan gasped for breath as the pain dissipated and her body sagged. She closed her eyes, found them stinging, and let the past die in her heart. In a world about to crumble into the darkness that was Darken Rahl’s rule over the living, there was no place for grief. Richard was gone. Cara was not gone yet. With the will left in her, Kahlan chose one hope.

* * * * *

“A whip,” Dahlia commented, returning from Kahlan’s cell to stand by Cara in the morning. “You’re taking it slow?”

Cara looked up, feeling the burn of the agiel like an itch in her palms. “By your standards. She needed a day to imagine what this will be like. Left alone, she might imagine the worst, and she might imagine correctly. But with such a shallow taste as that…”

Dahlia smirked and drew closer. Cara reached out, tugged her in, taking her lips for a slow kiss as the sense of power started to swell in her. “I’ve not lost my touch,” she told the Mord’Sith, after a bite to her lip that made Dahlia hiss. “She will be left raw by tonight.”

“And will she break easily?” Dahlia asked, slightly breathless.

Cara let her go and turned away. Her lips tightened, and she gripped the hilt of her agiel. It was nearly impossible to stop thinking of Kahlan, and the way she’d stolen into Cara’s life and tried to take it over. Cara would cleanse her own mind of the Confessor by taking back that control, wrapping Kahlan up in it until she was just a mindless devotee. It was everything that they both deserved. “It matters little to me how long it takes. So long as it takes.”

Dahlia made a small noise of affirmation.

Cara turned, gave a Mord’Sith smile to the woman who’d saved her from her weakness. “It has been too long since I let pain lead the way.”

But as she walked towards the dungeon, feeling her blood start pumping at a stronger rate, she knew just how much it had been a lie. Dahlia didn’t need to know that Cara had felt pain that wasn’t physical. No one need ever know—Cara would burn it out of herself and into Kahlan, killing two beasts with one arrow, and making herself a pure Mord’Sith once again.

* * * * *

Cara was methodical. She never hit the same place twice. She never paused for more than a significant amount of time. She never spoke more than a few words at once, never held off from pain for more than the briefest of moments. Kahlan could feel the bruises starting to appear on her cheek and breasts, where the hardest strikes had fallen. The agony of the agiel coursed through them at Cara’s touch, and Kahlan couldn’t hold back her screams until her voice died. Her world was now pain and Cara, and tears stung at her eyes as she hung listlessly.

“I’m surprised, Kahlan,” Cara announced, with a scraping slide of the agiel down Kahlan’s thigh, making her leg twitch. She slammed it back into Kahlan’s stomach for a finishing touch. “No pleading, no defiance.” Her eyes turned to Kahlan’s, masked with apparent amusement, sounding like she wanted to believe it. “It’s as if you want this to happen.”

Holding the gaze with firm purpose, Cara dragged her agiel up Kahlan’s body, carefully avoiding her heart but marking every other spot of Kahlan’s body. The pain wracked Kahlan so that she couldn’t scream and so she whimpered. Her body spasmed with the torture, and in desperation her mind wished for it to stop.

“Giving up easily,” Cara mocked, pressing the agiel against Kahlan’s neck to keep her from breathing. Kahlan choked, unable to draw her sight away from Cara’s hard green eyes, as the world closed in and she saw sparks. Just before blackout, Cara whipped the agiel back to let Kahlan gasp. “I like it,” Cara murmured, before slapping Kahlan’s head aside with the back of the agiel. There would be another bruise on Kahlan’s temple in a few hours. “Your weakness only proves my point, and only brings my pleasure closer.”

Kahlan couldn’t stop a shiver from running through her as Cara traced lines across her stomach, barely touching the agiel to flesh, teasing with the pain. Her throat ached with every drawn breath, and yet it was looking at Cara that hurt the most. Seeing the eyes that had once looked on her with friendship—and even love maybe—buried behind artificial masks that were constructed to look so real. Cara looked like she wanted Kahlan in anguish like she’d wanted nothing else before; Kahlan hoped Cara wanted her pain like she had once wanted confession.

“Look at you,” Cara pointed out with a near–feral expression, bringing the agiel close so that it hummed beneath Kahlan’s chin. Kahlan could almost hear the begging behind the confident words; she wanted to hear it, as Cara said, “You so dearly want to be my pet.”

Kahlan swallowed the words that threatened painful escape. The tears clouding her eyes were more than enough, and Cara would do everything in her power to oppose Kahlan’s will if only she knew. The mask had to break on its own. Cara was like Richard more than Denna, no matter what she said about her role, and so Kahlan longed to see that love again. She had to believe it was coming with every desperate attempt Cara made to break her.

“You want to be broken,” Cara said softly, her face just an inch away from Kahlan’s. Kahlan closed her eyes and prayed to the Creator that her hope was not blind. “What do you say?” And with Cara’s slow question, the tip of her agiel pressed against the underside of Kahlan’s chin.

“Do it again,” Kahlan said, raspy and fierce. The surprised burn in Cara’s eyes was just what she was hoping for, and when the pain shot through her, it almost felt less because she had asked for it. With each throb, she wanted Cara to feel it like she did. A tear escaped her eyes anyway and a whimper tangled in the back of her throat. But Cara was still not cold, and so Kahlan still hoped.

* * * * *

The Confessor’s freckled pale skin was mostly masked by the welts and bruises along her form. She hung unconscious, dark hair falling to cover her breasts, but Cara saw the wounds on her body as an inescapable manifestation of pain. Pain. It ate through her heart, scorched down to her hand, shot through the agiel to come out in Kahlan’s screams. It was almost enough.

Cara paced, eager to get going, refusing to address the impatience born of something dangerously close to desperation. It had been over a week, and Kahlan would not break. Every time she asked for more, every time she looked to Cara with acceptance of this fate, it was a cruel mockery of breaking. Cara struck back with a rage she couldn’t label, and when the day was done and Kahlan was dropped in a naked heap on the floor for the necessary recovery, Cara still burned. Dahlia was always there, dark glee in her eyes to receive Cara’s domination. Pleasure, even rough pleasure, though, didn’t make up for the fact that Kahlan was mocking her.

Cara hadn’t slept in two days. Every time she tried to put her mind at rest with plans of how to unravel the Confessor, take her apart so she could re–make her into something small and pliable, the tension swelled in her body until she couldn’t take it. Refusing to wake Dahlia, Cara had thought of pain instead. She thought of weaving her tension into the strength of her muscles, striking out to give it back to Kahlan wrapped in torment. The woman still invaded her mind, even when she tried to rest.

Finally, unable to bear it, she’d risen from her bed with gritted teeth. Slipping into her leather, striding with seething silence to the cell, yanking the chains that held Kahlan’s battered wrists until once again she hung before Cara. She’d barely opened her eyes before Cara fulfilled her promise, making Kahlan’s breaths nothing more than sobs as the pain was shared between them both. Even Cara’s throat hitched at the power, at the danger of it, and when Kahlan finally fell unconscious she’d stepped back and felt the need to catch her breath.

It shouldn’t be like this. Kahlan should be broken while Cara stood cold and strong and commanding. She was Mistress Cara, right hand of Darken Rahl, proud and powerful. Her sisters feared her. Dahlia worshiped her. Standing before this woman, this mortal enemy, should not make her tremble with anger and a need to give pain, as if she couldn’t control her own impulses.

Kahlan finally stirred, a moan escaping her lips as she awkwardly lifted her chin from where it had sunk on her chest. Inhaling sharply, Cara stepped forward, ignoring the tension still in her limbs. “Why do you fight?” she asked harshly under her breath, yanking Kahlan’s hair back to leave her neck and chest vulnerable again. “Why don’t you beg for mercy, for escape, for help from the spirits?”

“I don’t want to leave,” Kahlan murmured through cracked lips. “Not yet.”

Cara stared at her, not knowing how to deal with the gnawing doubt that made her insides twist and cramp. And then she snapped, finally. She went for the only thing that she understood: anger, control. “Not even that wish will be granted,” she hissed, and pressed the agiel against Kahlan’s heart.

With a keening cry, Kahlan’s body tensed once and then fell, her body–weight rattling the chains. No more breath, no more heartbeat.

It shouldn’t have been Cara who had to hastily catch a breath. She hated how little patience she had, how quickly she felt the need to rush in, bring her lips to Kahlan’s and breathe life back into her. Kahlan choked as she was alive again, and Cara thrust all the wrong emotions back behind her walls.

“Cara,” Kahlan murmured.

“Mistress,” Cara corrected, the agiel pressed against Kahlan’s belly again. The woman barely flinched, barely had the strength to moan, and her gaze slowly rose to Cara’s. Bleary, and yet there was still strength there. Still hope. Cara didn’t understand why it felt like her heart rising more than her ire when she stepped in. “This is futile, you know it.”

“Then do it again,” Kahlan whispered, still holding her eyes.

Biting back a strangled cry of frustration, Cara did. She didn’t care that Kahlan had pushed her to it, she just punished her again and again. Every strike of the agiel carried more than pain, and Kahlan took each one, groaning and crying out but never begging for it to stop. Cara’s breathing grew ragged with each strike, and catharsis took too long. Kahlan wanted it, but for all the wrong reasons, and Cara needed to fix it but didn’t know how.

She lost control and stopped Kahlan’s heart again. And yet looking at that lifeless face gave her nothing. No more control, no more understanding, no more assurance that she could take this exactly where she wanted it to go. Cara wouldn’t give up—but she was realizing that maybe that wasn’t enough.

Breathing life back into Kahlan, she used the agiel until Kahlan’s body went limp with unconsciousness. Then, sweat–stained and frustrated, Cara lowered Kahlan’s body to the floor and left her there. The warmth of the cleansing bath wasn’t enough to soothe her even when Dahlia joined in, her willing body pressing up against Cara until Cara took it and nearly drowned them both with the reckless pleasure. Cara’s smile to her, and to Lord Rahl when he asked her progress, was emptier than it had ever been.

What had they done to her, the Confessor in her hands and the Seeker who’d escaped them? What kind of mess had they left in her? It was with these thoughts that Cara slept at last, exhausted.

It was the bitter aftertaste of not having an answer that drove her back to Kahlan’s cell again. Kahlan needed to break.

* * * * *

Kahlan felt her mind start to slip. Bodily endurance wasn’t forever, and what was enough rest for survival wasn’t enough for recovery. Dread struck her heart when Cara returned again, and Kahlan could taste in the air that death was now just another tool in this breaking. If anything was breaking without fail, it was Kahlan’s heart. She still needed this to be worth something.

“This defiance only makes it sweeter,” Cara insisted, a forced purr in her tone as she struck Kahlan yet again.

But Kahlan had to fight to see another meaning than the intended one. She had to fight to think at all, to look past the pain of the moment. Failure pulled at her achingly weary mind, and made tears fall painfully from her eyes as another strike made her moan. She wasn’t doing this to fight for herself, she tried to tell herself again. This was for Cara, desperate to break Kahlan and with no reason to be so, unless—unless—Kahlan’s heart was breaking, and she was forgetting why she was caring.

“Kahlan, break for me,” Cara ordered, a sharp whisper as she pressed the agiel between Kahlan’s legs.

Kahlan sobbed at the throbbing, but she could still murmur, “More.” They both needed this.

“Why?” Cara demanded, as Kahlan’s body jerked under her touch until finally she pulled the agiel away. “Why?”

Kahlan heard the slight break in the question that betrayed it as more than just the planned question of a torturer leading to a foreseen conclusion. And on lifting her eyes to Cara’s, seeing conflict and frustration fighting in those green pools, Kahlan finally found the focus she’d been denying even herself. “Cara, I love you,” she whispered.

The Mord’Sith stood stunned.

Gasping for breath as her heart broke free of the boundaries she’d set, Kahlan said it again, not breaking her gaze. “I love you.”

“Then your mind is gone,” Cara said, staring, fingers twitching around the agiel as if she wanted to use it again.

But for the first time in weeks, Kahlan felt like she had found her sanity. This was the piece she’d forgotten to put in place when this had all started—that she was not fighting, not pushing, just for a friend. “You can’t break and steal what is already yours,” Kahlan choked out, feeling her tears burn down her face. “You want my devotion—you already had it, Cara. I love you. And just as I forgave everything because of your remorse before, I am forgiving this now because I know you will feel it again, and this is not you.” Her breath caught on the lump in her throat, and she could scarcely feel for the tears. But her ragged body seemed almost nothing compared to the throbbing of her heart and the longing for Cara to return to her. Everything would be worth it, if she would just turn. Love could heal everything if Cara would just—

Her cries were half laughs as Cara struck her again, as the agony poured into her body, and with her eyes half shut she knew she couldn’t last long. But the love she’d set loose ran free in her, and she clung to it as all she had left. “I love you, Cara,” she managed, even with the agiel at her neck.

In the moment that her eyes cleared before she could no longer catch breath, she saw angry tears in Cara’s eyes and her heart twisted. Then once again, the world went black.

* * * * *

She hadn’t killed her. The agiel screamed quietly in her hand as Kahlan hung limply from her chains, but Cara hadn’t ended her life. Not this time. And her Mord’Sith heart, that was supposed to be hard as stone, swelled painfully in her chest with a thousand different emotions. They were supposed to be weak, so why did Cara feel overwhelmed?

Trembling, she stretched out her hand to Kahlan’s neck, making sure there was still a pulse. Even when she felt the secure lifebeat, Cara couldn’t stop moving closer, and as if not of her own volition she smoothed the hair out of Kahlan’s hanging face. Even with lip split and bruises marking each defined feature, Cara could still see the face of the Mother Confessor there. The face of her enemy, an enemy that loved her without breaking.

Cara remembered the pity she’d seen in that face as Kahlan refused to confess her in Stowcroft. She remembered the look of grudging respect as they rescued Richard together. She remembered the trust in Kahlan’s eyes as they’d gone to battle against the D’Harans side by side, and won. The stories they’d felt obliged to tell about childhoods and parents and doubts and feelings—the memories hadn’t gone away when her loyalties returned to their rightful Lord Rahl. Her hand still on Kahlan’s face, Cara remembered vouching for her to Denna, risking confession to bring her errant halves back together, wearing frills and spouting poetry to release her from prison, feeling terror when Nicci’s spell appeared fatal, and almost stabbing her own heart out to give Kahlan a few more minutes of air.

She swallowed hard, the desperation for Kahlan to break never stronger, and yet instead of striking her away she brought up her other hand and held Kahlan’s face. Kahlan already loved her. And remembering how they’d fought together, slept close together, held hands and shared glances and done everything to keep each other safe, Cara’s exhale became almost a sob. Anger flooded through her, and self–hatred for this pull away from her master. She would do anything for Darken Rahl, everything, and she had intended to rip this woman to shreds if it would free her mind of all that was not him. But she couldn’t. The anger couldn’t pierce through enough, and the feared and hated memories remained intact.

Not knowing why, Cara turned to the wheel and lowered Kahlan to the floor, releasing her chains. The woman collapsed, still senseless, and Cara knelt at her side. The agiels still wailed at her waist, ready to continue this breaking. Kahlan was so close. It could be over so soon, and Cara would stand tall and proud without any doubts again. Yet instead of striking Kahlan’s heart with the agiel once again, Cara’s hand returned to stroke her face. With a hissing intake of breath, she yanked back the hand as soon as she realized—but it was too late. She’d worn out her anger and frustration, and all that was left was what she’d refused to acknowledge.

Kahlan loved her. And in return, Cara…

Breath coming haltingly, hands quivering, Cara gathered Kahlan’s unmoving and battered body into her arms and rested Kahlan’s head on her knees. Self–hatred came again, not for her emotions, but for the actions she’d taken to spite them. Even with her gloves on, she could feel the pain like knives as she traced welts and bruises that she’d placed on Kahlan’s body. It started in her heart and spread to all of her, not a physical pain but something a thousand times worse, and softly she cried out.

Kneeling on the floor with the Mother Confessor cradled in her arms, in the silence, Cara curled in on herself and choked on her own damaged soul. Love was not weak—and when Kahlan loved Cara, forgave her, it was the worst kind of blasphemy. Eyes tightly shut, Cara thought about putting the agiel to her own heart at that moment. But it was cowardly. She needed to give Kahlan that chance to put things aright, and end an existence that had caused nothing but damage and pain.

“Kahlan,” she whispered, feeling unwanted tears on her cheeks as she reached for the key of the radahan. Kahlan didn’t stir, and with hands that weren’t steady, Cara released the device from her neck and let it fall clanging to the stone floor of the dungeon. “Kahlan, you must wake,” she said. The only thing that mattered was that Kahlan was still warm in her arms and unbroken. “Please, Kahlan.” I love you. Worthless as she was, Cara didn’t say the words out loud. But holding Kahlan, she realized all she’d done and why. The black magic was broken, and she could see the puppet strings that had forced her to choose to hurt Kahlan instead of kiss her hurts away. The forced loyalty had warred with the depth of Cara’s affection, and yet in the end she had done unforgivable deeds. She needed Kahlan to end her life and let her die agonizingly in the purity of confession. It was the only thing left that could make any difference.

“Kahlan,” Cara whispered again, eyes closed as she held Kahlan in her arms. Finally she felt the limpness go away as waking returned to Kahlan. The flinch in her, and then the shiver of her body, made Cara nauseated for what she’d done to cause it. But Kahlan was alive and awake. “I’m sorry,” Cara whispered, looking into Kahlan’s now half–open eyes. “I never wanted to be this. Confess me—stop me.”

“Cara,” she whispered back, raising a shaky hand to Cara’s face with impossible relief in her eyes.

Cara whimpered at Kahlan’s touch, wanting to pull away and yet unable to. “Just confess me,” she barely managed to say, eyes shutting.

“For what?” Kahlan’s hand didn’t move from Cara’s face and Cara shuddered at the feel, knowing that Kahlan should never have to touch something so foul as her. Kahlan’s voice shook, mirroring the beating her body had taken. “For breaking free? Hating the prison you were forced into?”

“I wasn’t forced,” Cara protested, shaking her head—yet she still cradled Kahlan in her arms.

“Magic always forces, Cara,” Kahlan said, with a force of will in that unsteady tone that Cara wouldn’t have thought she had the strength for. She pulled Cara’s head towards her until their eyes met. “And even if you’d had a choice, I forgive you.”

Cara felt her eyes fill with tears, and she desperately wanted to pull away so that she didn’t have to see the truth in Kahlan’s.

“I forgive you,” Kahlan said, voice cracked and yet so simple, “for not being invincible.” And as Cara shook her head in bitter protest, Kahlan didn’t stop speaking. “I forgive you for everything that you would never do, and that only Darken Rahl would, and Cara—I love you for being strong enough to break through his purpose to find yourself.”

“I hurt you,” Cara grated out, finally pulling her gaze away. “I beat you. I killed you.”

“I don’t believe it was you,” Kahlan whispered. She pulled herself up from Cara’s lap and sat shakily before the kneeling Mord’Sith, somehow more whole even in a tortured body. “Magic can take control of anyone, twist their will. You’ve seen it. And you’ve seen how love can break through that.”

Cara flinched, made to turn away. If Kahlan wouldn’t end this, she’d have to end it herself.

“Cara, you loved me,” Kahlan said, and gripped Cara’s hand with barely any strength—just all she had. “You love me.”

“I’m not worthy to love anyone,” Cara said without looking back.

“Your love saved my life, and you dare call it unworthy?” Kahlan choked, trembling with outrage.

“Kahlan—”

“If you love me,” Kahlan said, reaching for Cara and pulling her back, “you will forgive yourself.” Cara saw the scabs on her wrists from where the chains had chafed, and shut her eyes, stomach reeling. “Please—Cara, please. I can’t lose you, not after all this. The thought of seeing you, the real you, was all I could hold onto. Please. You don’t need this guilt.”

Eyes still downcast, Cara hesitated. She tentatively reached for Kahlan’s hand, and didn’t feel a flinch. “It was my mind,” she whispered brokenly. “My hands, my agiel.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re feeling,” Kahlan said, barely audible. “Magic is more cruel than those who wield it ever truly understand. But it’s not real. Its effects are not true Cara. Not for me, not for you. You are free now.”

No memory could be more strong in that instant but the one of standing at the block, looking up into Kahlan’s eyes and seeing understanding and pity there. Cara had not understood it then, and even now she didn’t think she deserved it. But for Kahlan—for her she swallowed the guilt, and wrapped Kahlan in her arms with all the broken love she had to offer. When Kahlan melted into that hold, not just from exhaustion but from her own free will, Cara thought that love was the most dangerous form of insanity in the world. “I love you,” she murmured pathetically against Kahlan, as she tried to hold her without making the pain worse.

Kahlan laughed through her tears into Cara’s shoulder, even as she winced from the pain on a hundred wounds. “And I you. I always will.”

Cara held on, not because she deserved it, but because it was the only thing that made sense. She’d been ready to give her life to appease Kahlan’s justice, but now she knew it was her duty to live. Cara’s heart was Kahlan’s just as assuredly as if Kahlan had been doing the breaking.

* * * * *

Kahlan couldn’t deny her fragility. Consequences came with the victory of love, and not just for her body. Sharp worry drove Cara to leave Kahlan’s side, returning only hours later with Darken Rahl’s blood on her hands, and a message that the other Mord’Sith had been driven from the temple. All except Dahlia, who would not, and who Cara had been forced to knock out and send away by hand.

Cara stood before Kahlan, entire form trembling slightly, unable to bring her eyes up to Kahlan’s face. Even though her own body screamed for stillness and sleep, Kahlan took a step forward. “Stop it,” she ordered, feeling tears in her eyes again.

With a swallow, Cara gave in, and without hesitation helped Kahlan to the bath. She hissed as the water touched her limbs, even whimpered. But there was peace as well, and Cara cleansed her with gentle hands, then washed and combed her hair. Feeling a rush again, at the end Kahlan turned and clasped her hands, whispering with all her strength, “I forgive you—never forget that.”

“How can I, when it is all your fevered mind can think of?” Cara murmured, helping Kahlan into a soft robe, the first clothes she’d felt in weeks.

It was not meant to be humorous, but a flat smile crossed Kahlan’s lips anyway, and she leaned against Cara and felt her strength. They had won. She could survive anything knowing that.

Cara helped her to fresh water, to good food, and then to bed. Kahlan slept like she had never slept before, too tired even to dream. She woke to aching pain in her entire body, but when she found Cara sitting by her, Kahlan reached to grip her hand tightly. Somehow, the pain seemed a little less.

Another day of sleep and food, and life seemed even more bearable. Cara finally spoke again, sitting by Kahlan on the supportive bed and looking deep into her eyes. “Richard is not dead. We brought him back to life, but he escaped us. He did not know we had taken you, though, so he is out there somewhere and believes you dead.”

Kahlan’s heart skipped a beat and she gasped. The hopes she hadn’t dared to own were answered. “Oh Cara…”

Cara nodded shortly, looking down at where she clasped Kahlan’s hand loosely in her own. “Once I find him and you are reunited, you will be free to go on your lives’ journeys without me.” She nodded again.

But Kahlan squeezed her hand, her heart throbbing. “Cara, no.”

“I’ve been destroyed, Kahlan,” Cara admitted, voice shaky even as she still didn’t look up. “I don’t trust—” She shook her head instead of finishing.

Kahlan gripped her hand tightly, pulling it to her heart. “You can’t destroy my love with your fears, Cara. I’m not ready to say it’s over. I want to be here, with you, always.” Even during the darkest of past days, Kahlan had never felt alone with Cara—the thought of being without her now was an unbearable hollowness.

“You can have all that with Richard,” Cara said with an uncomfortable shift of her shoulders.

“I want you first,” Kahlan said softly, firmly. She waited for Cara’s eyes to flit upwards in surprise before letting her mouth slowly curve into as close to a smile as she could manage. “And yes, I want Richard too. But I didn’t fight and wait for you to come back just to let you go before I can have you in my arms.”

“You—you can’t truly love me, that is just delusion,” Cara murmured, but without pulling her eyes away from Kahlan’s. “And after this—”

Shaking, Kahlan leaned in and kissed Cara before she could say another word. She wasn’t fully healed, and so it was soft, only the barest of touches. Cara froze, then softened, and Kahlan held the kiss for as long as she could. “You did not do this to me,” Kahlan said as she pulled back, stroking Cara’s hand. “I’m definitely not letting you go until you realize that.”

Cara stared at her, but some of the doubt faded as Kahlan’s determination and love did not.

“We’ve survived so much, you and I,” Kahlan whispered, bringing up her other hand to caress Cara’s cheek. There was no true escape from the darkness of the world. She’d missed this, more than she ever imagined. “Don’t let a dead man’s deeds cloud our lives forever.”

And to her relief, Cara pressed her lips to Kahlan’s for a brief kiss. “I will try,” she said in the softest of voices, as if any more and she’d break down again.

They sat with hands clasped and foreheads pressed together as the sunlight faded. Kahlan breathed, and with each breath it seemed like the pain grew less. With each breath, the peace she felt emanating from Cara’s touch seemed to grow. They were strong, and they had love, and they had time, and that would be enough to make them whole and happy again. Kahlan didn’t just trust—she knew.

~ ~ ~