Table of Contents

unbound001 - Different Enough

LOTS - CARA/DAHLIA

Different Enough

unbound001

Title: Different Enough

Author: unbound001

Pairing: Cara/Dahlia

Rating: NC–17

Words: ˜5,500

Warnings: Mord–Siths and feelings mingling and ermmm, sickeningly heartfelt f/f secks; that is all.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Legend of the Seeker or the Sword of Truth, or the characters, or settings, or the plot, or even the likeness of anything associated with the Legend of the Seeker or the Sword of Truth. In short, I own nothing, I just like having fun with them…

Summary/AN: My second fic ever; construction criticism is appreciated. Based on this prompt - http://community.livejournal.com/lots_meme/1074.html?thread=3634#t3634 (Dahlia joins the awesome4some and Cara teaches her that she’s learned sex can be gentle) at the lots_meme, only, it kinda spiraled into something completely different because I accidentally spilled some plot (and by that I clearly mean a lot of useless words) into my porn; sorry! Also, un–beta’d, all mistakes are my own… There; that’s what I own, my mistakes!

Different Enough

unbound001

“You know, Dahlia,” Cara’s voice slices through the serene forest silence, the gentle wisp of breath stroking the flames of the fire before her like a caress.

Dahlia tears her gaze away from the tree branch she’s using to idly provoke the muddy ground, and scrutinizes Cara with what Cara can only describe as well learned passivity. It’s almost alarming to see Dahlia so devoid of emotion like this when all Cara remembers is that little girl, turned woman, with skylit eyes and a smile so bright and spontaneous that even in womanhood she often had to veil upturned lips in her gloved palm, or on some occasions, in the crook of Cara’s neck, lest she find herself—or her and Cara, as was often the case—on the receiving end of a particularly vicious Agiel.

Part of Cara wants to ask what happened to that girl, but a superior, and prevailing part of her—the part of her that is only almost alarmed by this apathetic Dahlia— already knows the answer; Dahlia has progressed. She’s become everything Cara has ever wanted her to be, and now Cara only wishes she could just be what she was; that she could just let Cara be strong enough for the both of them like she used to.

Swallowing hard against the sudden tightness in her throat, Cara lets her gloved fingertips glide against the smooth leather sheathing Dahlia’s shoulder. She holds fast, commanding attention.

There are eyes on her, and not just Dahlia’s; she knows this. She knows, without even looking, that Richard is in the corner by that large, gruesome tree, his eyes affixed to the ground, trying not to listen but unable to help himself, because as much as he doesn’t want to pry, he wants to understand. And she knows that Kahlan is lingering by him, eyes burning into her—imploring her to heed her unspoken warning— as they have been ever since she, Zedd and Dahlia caught back up to them after a full night away under the deceptive ruse—Dahlia’s deceptive ruse—of trying to rescue Cara’s abducted son. And then there’s Zedd, who hasn’t really looked at her (with anything but pity) since Dahlia had broken down and revealed her original plan to lead them right to Darken Rahl for Cara to be re–broken, and Cara had decided, against Zedd’s judgment, to take Dahlia back with them to continue their mission. She knows all of this, but she lets it all melt into the background of her mind until there’s just the soft cackling of the fire, and her, and Dahlia and the familiar feeling of gloved leather on leather.

“It wasn’t in jest, when I said we could use a fighter like you,” she speaks plainly, but firmly, with as much conviction as she can muster, because it’s not just the truth, but the thousand truths she wouldn’t allow herself to tell Dahlia before. She won’t say them, but they’re here, out in the open in a way they’ve never been before. She thinks that probably makes her weak, but oddly enough, she doesn’t feel weak. There’s a sense of strength in doing this,—in being able to release these things she couldn’t release before—, a sense of strength not entirely unlike the strength she felt the first time she was able to hold her Agiel, firmly, without even the tiniest hint of a whimper. “I want you here, Dahlia,”

The words stray into the calm forest, reaching Cara’s ears at the same time they reach Dahlia’s.

Dahlia lets her gaze drift away from her and it stings in a way that Cara will never admit aloud. She’s not even sure if it’s because she’s really trying here and being rebuffed so indifferently or if it’s because it’s Dahlia—Cara still remembers what her hands feel like, shaking, clutched so tightly that they could have easily have broken, but neither of them would have felt it under the continuous burning lash of Agiel after Agiel; she has felt those very hands go limp with death and even let herself indulge in a lazy smile when those very hands sprung back to life under her fingertips, twitching with resilience that Cara knew was just for her; she has heard her laughter, and her screams and cries and whimpers of both pleasure and pain (gifts a Mord–Sith do not present to just anyone)— and has showered her with similar gifts in kind, although to a lesser degree—and after all they’ve been through, how could Dahlia, of all people, not trust her fully?

“I couldn’t hurt you when I had to,” Her words are sharper than before; prideful—because, even with the amount of blows from Agiels and fists she has taken for vehemently refusing to lay finger or Agiel on even a wayward Dahlia, she doesn’t regret any of it— yet earnest—because her reason for not wanting to hurt Dahlia is her own, but reason is reason. “I’m not going to now,”

Dahlia cracks under the admission. It’s a very subtle change, a delicate crease forming at the edges of her lips in either frown or smile—Cara can’t quite tell which, but it’s something.

“Your companions are a different story,” Dahlia says softly and Cara can tell by the way she says it, she means Kahlan, and only Kahlan. She had already seen the resolve flit across Dahlia’s features earlier; she can name the very moment when Dahlia decided that Zedd wouldn’t be a problem, and she can pinpoint the hard–edged glint that flashed in her eyes when she decided that she could take Richard if she had to. These were all resolutions that Cara had come to on her own once, and she would find the irony amusing if it weren’t for the circumstances.

“They know you’re a valuable fighter,” Cara answers. “They take my word for it,” And despite all the shifty behavior—Kahlan pleading with her eyes, and Zedd refusing to look her in the eye and even Richard eavesdropping—, Cara knows that the only reason they are allowing this to go on is because they trust her, and by extension, although it is a big, dangerous leap, they trust her trust in Dahlia.

That seems to fray Dahlia further because she actually turns to look at Cara, and there’s emotion there. Her eyes are brimming with sadness and tears she’d never cry; and maybe Cara is really worse at this than she thought, because this hadn’t been the emotion she was anticipating.

Her gloved hands impulsively find Dahlia’s cheeks, too ready to act as nets to tears that won’t fall.

“I could have easily betrayed you,” Dahlia speaks softly, the words tumbling into the sheathed palms cupping her face. Her forced calmness dissipates in waves until her voice is unraveling just as much as she is. “Cara, I wanted to. I wanted to so badly,”

“But you didn’t,” Cara reminds her—she couldn’t. It’s still so fresh in her mind, Dahlia’s break–down, how her fake nonchalance had worn and torn until her eyes had squeezed shut, her face morphing into such horror that for a moment, Cara had thought she had been physically struck. And then she had revealed everything— about the child, about the planned ambush, the planned re–breaking— and implored Cara and Zedd to return to their mission, and she’d risk returning to Darken Rahl, empty–handed despite the consequences. And Cara couldn’t let her do that, just as much as Dahlia couldn’t really go through with betraying her like that.

“I didn’t,” Dahlia affirms. “But I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. When Lord Rahl—”

“I can protect you from Darken Rahl,” Cara interjects. “I have before,”

“When you were in his favour, perhaps,”

That wounds Cara more than she’ll ever let on.

“I don’t need his favour to protect you,” She argues with complete certainty masking her upset pride. “All I need is you, here, fighting with us. Can you do that, Dahlia?”

The question rises in the air between them, lingering amongst all the dormant things that were always left unsaid and the things she did say that she wishes she could take back. She really hopes that this question doesn’t become one of the latter.

There’s a (terrifying) moment of silence in which Dahlia’s hands find Cara’s wrists, and Cara can’t really tell if she’s trying to push her away or keep her close, but Cara won’t let go, not until Dahlia answers her question; not until she answers all the unspoken questions wrapped securely in her one simple question.

Dahlia sighs into the embrace, her whole body shaking with the weight of the tremulous exhalation—with the weight of the decision Cara knows is to come.

“For you,” Dahlia finally speaks, her voice trembling with effort. “Yes,”

Cara almost heaves a breath of relief. It may not be a proclaimed devotion to Richard as the true Lord Rahl or even the renouncement of Darken Rahl as her Lord Rahl, but it’s all Cara needs to hear; it’s years of unspoken trust, and friendship, and more than friendship; it’s a promise Dahlia can keep.

It’s enough to make Cara want to sweep the woman off her feet and kiss her hotly until there’s not even a tiny doubt in her mind that she has made the right decision.

She would do it too if she weren’t so mindful of the many sets of eyes affixed to her. She’s not modest, not even the slightest, but she doesn’t want Richard, Kahlan and Zedd to believe that she’s thinking with anything but her head here. So, instead of her original plan, she pulls Dahlia abruptly to her feet.

“We’re going for a walk,” she offers to her company, and by company she clearly means Kahlan, because Zedd lost interest when it was obvious that his years and years of wisdom wouldn’t change Cara’s mind, and Richard is staring even more intently at the ground, like he hadn’t been listening to her whole conversation, but Kahlan’s eyes are still pleading with her (and really, she wonders when she started being able to interpret the Mother Confessor by just her eyes), daring her to see past the familiarity and the history, and as much as Cara trusts Kahlan’s instincts (she’s grown to trust them almost as much as she trusts her own), she has this one covered. This is something not even Kahlan could understand.

Tugging Dahlia away from the stretch of land they’ve made camp at, she follows her mental map to a clearing she remembers passing before they decided to stop for the night.

Dahlia is oddly quiet but familiarly compliant as she treks behind Cara, no doubt surveying the area for danger, as Cara had done when they passed here the first time, and will do again, once she reaches the perfect spot she remembers seeing in passing.

It’s not until Cara stops, having found the area with the stream of flowing water and sturdy ground—even sturdier than where they’ve set up camp—, that she realizes that Dahlia is gazing at her intently.

“What?” she asks, feeling a strange urge to shy away from the gaze, though she doesn’t; she’s never shied away from a stare in her life, and she won’t start now.

“It’s…nothing. It’s just,” Dahlia fumbles over her words, shaking her head softly as if speaking her thoughts aloud requires some immense effort. “You’re different,” she settles for.

“Not very,” Cara argues, though mostly for argument’s sake, which just makes Dahlia smile until the corner of her lips and eyes crinkle under the pressure of it.

“Not very,” she affirms, quite obviously just to humor Cara. “But enough,”

Cara’s not even sure what she means by that. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, she doesn’t know, but she’s overwhelmed with the urge to prove that it is good; that being ‘different enough’ means being everything that she couldn’t be for Dahlia before, that maybe if they are ‘different enough’ together, then maybe they can pick up where they left off without Dahlia leaving her, and without Cara pretending that it didn’t hurt more than anything to watch her go.

That’s why when she leans in to kiss her, it’s not like the hundreds of times they’ve done this before. It’s not like the first time—brimming with faked self–confidence—, or like the many times after that—usually forceful, sometimes indolently self–indulgent—, or even like a couple of nights ago, wistful and frantic, in the forest with Zedd sleeping mere inches away. It’s not even like she’s trying to prove something.

It’s just soft and chaste and everything they never were plus everything they were doomed never to be.

Cara lets herself be drawn into the kiss in a way she hasn’t before. She doesn’t push, or pull, or take, or even coax from Dahlia. She doesn’t hold back in order to keep some semblance of dominance, like she usually would. She just gives, and takes what Dahlia gives, and when Dahlia pushes into the realm of what they’re used to—of giving herself completely to Cara for Cara to take, and take, and take—Cara ignores the urge to take more forcefully than she has to, because she doesn’t have to; this being ‘different enough’ has taught her that, and she needs Dahlia to know that she knows that now.

The lips beneath hers are smooth and full and when Dahlia parts her lips to her, Cara doesn’t seize, she explores. She explores the familiar depths with patience, mapping the crevices she had forgotten and the ones she had never bothered to pay attention to. She had almost forgotten what a person can taste like not tinged with that metallic flavour of unnecessarily roughness, but it’s a taste she doesn’t plan of forgetting soon.

It occurs to her suddenly that her hands are probably more idle than they should be, resting high on Dahlia’s waist, above the handles of her Agiels, keeping her close, but not quite forcing her to stay. She’s so used to having to strive off Dahlia’s caresses, until she’s ready to be touched, that now, with free reign to touch and be touched, she’s not quite sure where to start.

She thinks of Richard and Kahlan and how they would do this; but that thought proves more disturbing than anything else. Besides, she figures they’d treat each other like glass, anyway—with Richard afraid to break Kahlan with his strength and Kahlan afraid to break Richard with her magic—and Dahlia is far from glass; She’s Mord–Sith and even if she has retained much more of herself from her breaking than most do, she’d still object, strongly at that, to being treated like something that could be broken so easily.

So Cara is gentle, but not gentle, and if the way Dahlia’s lips quirk beneath the continuous rain of kisses is any indication, then she’s more amused by the sentiment than put off by it.

Undressing Dahlia is easy—Cara can do that blind, in the dark, even with her hands tied; undressing Dahlia slowly takes more self restraint than Cara will ever admit.

She removes Agiels first; Dahlia’s and then her own. Usually, she’d let them stay for a while, let the sudden painful shock of brushing up too close to them remind them both of who they are and who they’re expected to be; but tonight is not usually; tonight is brand new.

The gloves are next—Cara’s not Dahlia’s—and with that, Cara allows herself a moment of stalling. She lets her ungloved hands take in everything from the shape of Dahlia’s hips cased in rich red leather—it’s always been different, smoother, somehow when it’s not her own, or being felt from the inside out— to the very few soft tresses of hair not bound by a single tightly coiled braid.

The stays and buckles of Dahlia’s leather fall away quickly beneath the insistent press of fingertips until Cara has her stripped bare under the gleaming moonlight and her watchful gaze.

Dahlia doesn’t object to, or shy away from the appraisal. Insecure is not a word associated with the Mord–Sith, so Dahlia remains still—confident—as Cara takes in flushed skin and kiss swollen lips until she can’t help but touch.

Dahlia shivers against the first touch—the delicate drumming of fingernails down her side— and Cara soothes away the resulting goose bumps with her palms, running them along Dahlia’s arms, and hips, and thighs like her radiating heat can sheath her in a way her clothes can’t right now.

They’re pressed close together, almost melded, but rather than let the proximity bother her, Cara uses it. She uses it to ghost her lips across the angry red welt at the nape of Dahlia’s neck where her neck guard usually clasps; she uses it to breathe in the smoky scent of fire ash and pasture that still clings to Dahlia’s skin from their trek here; she uses it to draw fingertips and knuckles up the blueprint of Dahlia’s back, tracing each complicated protrusion like a purposeful pattern; she uses it to feel each knot of the tight braid keeping Dahlia’s hair from cascading around strong, rounded shoulders.

“Can I?” The question catches Cara as much off guard as it does Dahlia, because the words tumble from her lips and into the open air before she can catch them. She’s never asked before, never felt the need to, but this time feels irrationally permanent, like she’ll be taking something from Dahlia that she can never get back.

Dahlia’s affirmation is immediate, trusting and sincere and that’s all Cara needs to hear before she weaves her fingers through Dahlia’s braid, unthreading strand after strand until it collapses in waves down her back.

Cara tangles her fingers thorough the newly released tresses, easing out tangles from root to tips whilst her lips and tongue find and soothe across the dips and rises of Dahlia’s throat. She feels more than hears Dahlia’s soft exhalations of breath and murmured encouragements and wants nothing more than for them to reverberate into the stillness of the night.

Cara’s so busy lavishing the sensitive skin beneath her lips with attention that she doesn’t even realize that Dahlia’s hands are tugging at her belt buckle until she flicks her tongue across a particularly responsive stretch of flesh and Dahlia reacts with a whimper, her hands momentarily fumbling with the offending item.

Cara assists in ridding herself of the item, and is as pliable as needed in the removal of the rest of her leathers until she is as nude as Dahlia, and Dahlia is drawing her in again, the adjusted sensation of skin on skin making her dizzy with want.

Cara doesn’t even think about it when she tugs Dahlia down so they’ve got the floor as support, but when Dahlia ends up half on top of her, she doesn’t work to correct it. Instead, she arches into soft muscles, fitting herself against concaves of curves so her every breath ends up filled with Dahlia.

It’s not even really that much different than they’re accustomed to. They fit together as they always have; two broken pieces striving for a completion that is as good as any.

Dahlia still knows Cara’s body better than anybody. Cara’s more exposed under Dahlia’s gaze than she is in her nudity. Dahlia knows everything, the hows, the wheres, the whys, the whens. She’s seen the wounds and the bruises, knows the bones that have been broken, knows the ones that were healed with magic and the ones that were healed with time. Cara wonders if that’s what she sees when she looks at her, ghosts of old wounds and bruises, but she couldn’t possibly, because Dahlia looks at her like she always has, even when she was broken beyond repair. She touches her like she always has, with delicate sweeping kisses, and strong, assured hands. She treats her like she always has, like she means something to her and that thought makes Cara’s chest seize, because this isn’t all that different for Dahlia. Dahlia may have been chipped, but Cara was always the one who was broken.

There’s that overwhelming urge again, the one to not quite prove something. Proving something would cause pride (and no little amount of smugness), but Cara doesn’t so much feel pride right now as she does repentance, and sincerity. There are too many wrongs to right, but if she were to right any of them, this—Dahlia—would be it.

Her throat fills with words that are heavier than stones, but she doesn’t say them, she lets her lips unleash them on skin. She breathes a thousand ‘I’m sorry’s into Dahlia’s lungs and feels the expansion of chest beneath her palms as Dahlia receives them and accepts them and releases her own ragged apologies—for leaving, for not coming back, for not being there for her—into the air where they cling, and prod and chip away at Cara’s pretense and her denial until she acknowledges that these were actually things that not just angered her, but hurt her, and Dahlia’s not all that sorry for leaving—Cara kind of pushed her to that—, or for not coming back—she really had no reason to—, or even for not being there for her—Cara would have pushed her away even if she were—, but she’s sorry for hurting her and Cara’s even sorrier for giving her no option but to.

She brushes her lips against Dahlia’s jaw and paints hundreds of ‘never leave me again’s into her skin. She drags her lips and fingertips across flushed cheeks and down the valley between rounded breasts, leaving kisses and caresses and easily promised, ‘I’ll never give you reason to leave again’s, and even more ‘I’ll give you so many reasons to stay’s.

Dahlia curves into her, gasping her approval into the shell of Cara’s ear and right down to her core.

There’s sentiment here, yes, but there’s also a very naked Dahlia atop her, and Dahlia’s body has never failed to incite something within Cara.

The tightness in her throat and chest may not be something Cara is used to, but the tugging ache in the pits of her stomach is something she knows well.

Her fingers sweep across heated flesh, carrying with them a different kind of promise.

Dahlia muffles a groan against the curve of Cara’s neck when Cara touches her tongue to the underside of a breast, tracing veins and ligaments and tendons beneath skin until her breath streams warm across a puckered nipple and it hardens even more against the caress. Cara wraps her lips around the taunt flesh and tugs, engulfing excitable skin with slick heat, melting her prior promises into permanence, into commitments burned into skin.

Her hands land heavy on Dahlia’s hips, thumbs stroking the muscles surfacing on smoothed abdomen until Cara is sure she’s reacquainted with every dip, scar and freckle this particular stretch of skin has to offer.

They are tangled so thoroughly in each other that Cara can almost feel the friction of bone when Dahlia exhales, and when their inner thighs brush, Cara’s moan is as long and wanton as Dahlia’s.

Cara can feel the slick warmth of Dahlia’s arousal slip against her thigh, and arches to meet it. Her body trembles when she meets a solid thigh, or maybe she’s not trembling at all, maybe it’s Dahlia’s body trembling against her, she can’t quite tell, but there’s a tremor, one that rocks against her centre and reverberates through her core.

Her eyes slip closed at the sensation but Dahlia’s lips are at her ear pulling at the knots of her composure with subdued moans and warm breath until Cara feels like she is unfolding.

The ground beneath her back itches. Leafs and twigs that she hadn’t bothered to displace rustle and break beneath their combined weight and the friction of them collectively moving towards something, but Cara can’t bring herself to care.

There’s no real rhythm or rhyme to their shared action but there is a clear destination. Every point of contact between them—Dahlia’s hands grasping Cara’s waist, Cara’s palm on the hollow arc of Dahlia’s back, Dahlia’s lips grazing Cara’s neck —is aflame, but surprisingly enough, nothing about it feels turbulent or rushed.

They move easily with each other, fitted like they belong, and when Dahlia finally shudders against her, Cara anticipates the wild arch of hips and captures the voiceless moan with her lips, swallowing Dahlia’s pleasure down to her lungs until she’s convulsing right along with her.

Her limbs feel heavy like bricks, but Cara can’t seem to quell the roaming of her fingertips as they take in sweat dampened skin, and the electric aftershocks of climax. She draws lazy circles across Dahlia’s back, succumbing to her own body’s tremors when tresses of hair wisp across her knuckles.

Dahlia’s kisses are both lethargic and energizing, and Cara can’t decide if she wants to just sink into the sensation of soft lips, and skin, and sleep or commence round two. Then again, the decision isn’t all that difficult.

Dahlia grunts in halfhearted protest when Cara, with all the swiftness of years of training, flips them over and drapes herself over her like the tightest fitting blanket.

It’s unexpectedly easy not to regress to their usual, even in this assumed position of power. Dahlia’s body is glistening in afterglow, melted like snow, and Cara doesn’t want to take and much as she just wants to touch.

There are words here too, poetic ones about the sharp contrast of skin and earth, about the way Dahlia’s hair fans out around her shoulders and sides, about the darkened blue of her half–lidded eyes—beautiful lingers at the top of the list—but Cara can’t bring herself to say these words anymore than she could bring herself to say the last ones. So she sears them into skin. She kisses them into every bit of exposed skin she can reach, and then locks them in—seals their fate—with the placid swipe of her tongue until she’s sure there are unreadable messages all over Dahlia.

She leaves her last message in a sweeping kiss against the warm, soft flesh of Dahlia’s centre and Dahlia writhes like she hears it loud and clear and to her very core.

It’s stupid, really, the message; but it’s something between the two of them, and only them, something that Cara will never admit aloud, and probably never admit again, so she makes it count now, drawing her tongue over delicate, swollen flesh until Cara can practically see the words branded into flesh: ‘You are my flower.’

It’s the earliest memory Cara has of Dahlia, even before they were broken, even before they were taken. She remembers bits and pieces of her childhood—before she was taken, anything after she was taken was hardly childhood. She has fragmented memories of a simple life, her parents—her dad’s eyes—and her sister—she had the brightest laugh—, and this one moment with Dahlia in a classroom where they talked about flowers, because Dahlia’s mother named her after and flower, and even the Cara who liked pretty dresses, and petting animals, couldn’t imagine why. She had never, ever been fond of flowers; sure, they were pretty, but they also made her eyes itch and her nose run, and she hated that, so when Dahlia had interrupted her little speech on why flowers weren’t the best thing in the world to tell her, in a whisper, like the most sacred of secrets, that she could be the one flower that wouldn’t make Cara sick, Cara hadn’t even answered. That, of course, hadn’t stopped Dahlia from making good on her promise. Even when they were being broken, even after they had been broken, Dahlia had been that bright, blossoming fixation in Cara’s life; she had always been Cara’s flower, the one that didn’t make her the slightest bit sick, and Cara is acknowledging that now.

She acknowledging it, and expressing gratitude for it, and even apologizing for not realizing it sooner all at once, letting her tongue, and the sentiment and the words sink into hot, pliant flesh.

Dahlia accepts them all with a shuddering convulsion, her lips parted halfway through a cry of Cara’s name, and her hips arched, drawing Cara impossibly close. Cara allows herself to be drawn in and released until Dahlia’s hips return to the ground, and her convulsions slow to a stop.

Then they’re kissing again, sparing long moments of sated nipping and lavish dances for not–really dominance.

Cara is content, more content than she’s been in a while, so when she feels the press of a palm against her abdomen, she intercepts the hand and brings it to her lips, laying kisses on knuckles in a way that should really make her want to puke.

Dahlia grins wildly at the gesture, her lips upturning in a way that makes her look so young and pretty, like the little girl with promises she couldn’t help by keep. Cara presses her lips to the corner of Dahlia’s and as much as she hates to break the moment and the almost too peaceful atmosphere; she knows she has to. She knows that this particular serene can’t last forever.

“We should get back,” she murmurs, humming the words against Dahlia’s cheek.

Dahlia sighs wistfully, but acquiesces, nodding her acceptance of the matter.

The stream of water is cold as ice, but the chill is combated by the warmth of Dahlia’s fingers as she slides the water gently down Cara’s back, washing away all signs of the forest until Cara is clean and her leathers are put back on, clasped securely by Dahlia’s sure hands.

Cara returns the favour easily, buckling and chaining familiar compartments of leather and sliding on gloves and neck guard until Dahlia is dressed and looking almost completely Mord–Sith, except her hair.

Cara runs her still ungloved fingers through loose tresses, combing through unkempt tangles, and letting them fall down Dahlia’s back, letting them frame her face in a way that’s almost too pretty to be Mord–Sith.

She goes to braid it, despite her hesitance, but a gloved hand stops her, holding steady to her wrist.

“It can stay,” Dahlia says softly, her lips quirking just a bit in a way that Cara knows means that Dahlia’s not one hundred percent at peace with the idea.

“I can braid it,” Cara replies in a way that clearly means ‘are you sure?’ and even more deeply means, ‘you don’t have to do this for me.’

Dahlia shrugs, twisting her hair around her fingers and knotting it, so it hangs low on her back, but doesn’t graze the curve where back gives way to ass.

“It can stay,” she says repeats, and Cara touches her cheek at the gesture, before pulling away to put her gloves back on, and begin leading the way to where they’ve set up camp.

Cara’s not surprised to see Richard, Kahlan and Zedd in almost the exact same places they had left them in. She knows from experience that sometimes when they’ve got nothing to do but wait, doing nothing is almost as good as finding something to do, still, she’s not delusional enough to think that absolutely nothing had gone on in their absence. She imagines Kahlan had made a grand speech about going to find them, and Richard had talked her out of it, and Zedd has fallen asleep, and woken up, and complained about his hungry stomach.

Zedd looks almost shocked that they’ve returned, like he hadn’t expected them too, and Richard looks fascinated by Dahlia’s hair, like he’s yet to—and Cara rolls her eyes at this—see a Mord–Sith without her signature braid. Then there’s Kahlan, always the perceptive one, taking in the flush of Cara’s cheeks and the subtle upwards quirk of her lips and casting her with a look that’s part ‘why didn’t you tell me?’ and even more ‘we’re going to talk about this whether you like it or not’ and Cara rolls her eyes at her, even though Kahlan eventually always gets her way, which means sometime soon, she’s going to pull her aside and talk about Cara having feelings and such, and how it’s ok to express those feelings, and then she’ll throw out the love word and Cara will deny it with her every being but Kahlan will smile at her anyway, like she’s done something brilliant and for once, maybe she has.

The End.