Zedd, as expected, is overwhelmed to see them. He flutters around them like one of his hens, sleeves flapping and face stricken. Kahlan can't blame him for that. Richard has been silent since they left the Mord-Sith Temple; not a word has escaped him, not a sound passing his lips, but he doesn't need to say anything. The marks on his body say it all. There are shadows underneath his eyes that speak of his pain and exhaustion, and the look in their brown depths begs her to keep her silence, too.
This, at least, she can do for him. She owes him more, much more than this, and the guilt of it consumes her. If she had not left, if she had not abandoned him, leaving him to complete his quest on his own - a Seeker without his Confessor by his side - none of this would have happened.
Zedd would disagree, she knows, and that thought keeps her as silent as the look in Richard's eye. She doesn't want Zedd's pity or his sympathy. She doesn't want anything but Richard, whole and hale and hearty. She wants his smile and his laugh, the way he ducks his head when he looks at her, inviting her to share in his amusement. But more than anything else she wants his touch, Spirits help her, even now. Even knowing what it has cost him, and what it could cost him in future.
She wants her guilt. It is the only thing stopping her from reaching out and touching him, from letting her fingers brush the hair from his brow and stroke gently over the cuts and bruises that litter his torso, each a reminder of Denna's less than gentle touch. But she cannot touch, for to touch him is to lose him. To touch him is to be lost, too.
Zedd fusses and clucks over him instead, fingers gentle on Richard's skin, on Richard's bruises. Each touch is designed to ease a little of the pain that still runs through Richard's tense frame; Zedd can work magic, even without his wizard's touch, and Richard relaxes, inch by inch, his body slumping with exhaustion as the pain eases from his face. Each soft sigh Richard lets out, each muscle that slowly unclenches, eases Kahlan's heart inch by aching inch, too.
But Zedd cannot heal the scars that Kahlan has left, the ones that curl underneath Richard's skin and slice straight into his heart. The scars that Kahlan has left cut deeper than any Denna could inflict, and Richard will bear them until the day he dies.