Disclaimer: I do not own The Last of the Mohicans, or any of the poems or song lyrics I use as headers and footers in these chapters. I make no profit from the use of any of these in word or idea, this story is a work of fiction and is purely for fun.

Chapter 1

"History is like gravity

It holds you down away from me

You and me we've both got sins

And I don't care about where you've been

Don't be sad and don't explain

This is where we start again

Come to me, my sweetest friend

Can you feel my heart again

I'll take you back where you belong

And this will be our favorite song

Come to me with secrets bare

I'll love you more so don't be scared

And when we're old and near the end

We'll go home and start again."

-John Rzeznik & Gregg Wattenberg-

August 12, 1757

The nightmare was over, but in some respect there would be no waking up from it. Cora Munro sat silently in the cool water of a stream pool at the foot of a small rock waterfall deep in the forest, bathing away days of dirt, grime and blood from her skin and hair. Everything felt raw right now, as if every nerve ending were sticking out of her skin while the world was trying to wrap itself around her. The numbness had slowly started to wear off once they had run fast and long enough to finally stop to eat and rest, Nathaniel and Chingachgook satisfied that they were far enough to be out of danger. Now that she was still she could think, but the cruelty of it was that she did not want to. Thinking meant the memory of Nathaniel telling her that her father was dead. Thinking meant remembering that Duncan had sacrificed his own life to make sure that she and Alice would get out alive. Thinking meant recalling the image of Alice's body plummeting off the side of the mountain after Nathaniel's brother Uncas. Her chest constricted painfully and she struggled to breathe. She plunged her head underwater, lingering a moment under the surface where her overwhelmed senses were blessedly muted, then came up with a sob, her tears mingling with the water dripping down her face.

She could not fathom how to approach these losses, or if she even had room for them all right now. Her father's death grieved her deeply, but in a dull aching way. He had always been a soldier, and she had prepared herself for his death during any one of his military campaigns. Duncan she felt much the same way about, with a pang of horrible regret that he had done what he did; but his sacrifice had also left Nathaniel alive to try and help rescue Alice from the Huron. But Alice….Oh God, Alice's death flayed her to the bone with a grief she could not even begin to process. Her beautiful baby sister, her constant companion, gone in a split second of complete despair. There was no understanding why. Why had she given up just as Nathaniel and his father would have rescued her? Perhaps she had not seen. Perhaps her already stunned and battered heart had simply broken beyond repair when Magua had killed Uncas. Alice had been quiet and secretive, but Cora knew that she had fallen for him. She had seen the way they looked at each other, and knowing what had transpired between herself and Nathaniel, there was no mistaking it, especially when Uncas had struck off on his own to rescue her with no thought for his own safety. She loved him for it; for knowing what her precious sister was worth, and for giving his own life to try to preserve hers. Her heart broke for the lonely sadness in Chingachgook's eyes, and for the sadness that silently radiated from Nathaniel, for they had both lost their only beloved sibling.

Cora climbed out of the pool and dried herself as best she could with her ruined petticoat. She donned only her shift and skirt over her stockings, leaving the damp petticoat off to dry before she put it back on, and tied her stays over the shift, thankful for the front ties that made it easy to put on. She had cut the sleeves of her shift off at the elbow, as the left one was shredded and streaked with Nathaniel's blood. She surveyed her attire with the thought that if her clothes were filthy and ruined, at least she felt clean under them. When she was done, she walked over to where Nathaniel sat resting against a tree with his long rifle next to him, facing away from the stream to give her privacy. He had been unwilling to leave her there alone, and she had not really wanted him too far away herself. He stood when he heard her approaching and reached out to her, his hand slipping around the back of her neck, looking with concern at the rope burns that showed more around her throat and wrists now that she was clean. He pulled her to him and wrapped his other arm around her. She sighed and relaxed into him for a time, just absorbing his strength.

"Why don't you get cleaned up now, and then I can tend to those wounds," she said, still resting against him.

He kissed the top of her head and let go of her. "All right. Will you wait here?"

"I will." She nodded and brushed a kiss over the corner of his lips.

He picked up the rifle and headed down to the stream, and Cora sat where he had waited for her.

Nathaniel undressed by the stream and plunged into the shallow pool, coming up by the fall of water and letting it run over his face and hair to wash away the blood, sweat and dirt. It felt good to him; he could only imagine how much better Cora must feel, at least physically. He felt his heart constrict at the thought of her grief. He had heard her crying quietly as she bathed, and he knew things were catching up to her as they were to him. Uncas had been a warrior, and had died fighting. It was to be expected of a warrior, but it was also his brother whom he loved fiercely and had spent nearly every day of his life with. Nathaniel felt a yawning emptiness at the loss of him, and there was no way to fill it. He had felt something similar when Wah-ta-wah had died, Uncas' mother and the only mother Nathaniel had ever known, but he had been just a boy then. As a man now, there was an acute awareness of the loss and the gaping maw that accompanied it. His father now knew this twice over, and Cora had lost her father, her friend, and her sister in the space of a day. There was little to do to quell the pain of such things when it came; it simply had to be felt, no matter how uninvited it was. They would walk this path together now.

A short while later, he dressed and quietly summoned her, and she went to the bank of the stream where he waited. He had washed his bloodstained buckskin shirt as best he could and it lay on the ground beside where he sat, leaving him in just his breechclout and buckskin leggings. His long dark hair hung loose over his shoulders, curling from being wet. Cora knelt beside Nathaniel and opened the small bag of medical supplies she had hurriedly packed and taken with her when they had left William Henry after the surrender. Thankfully it had not been discovered by their Huron captors, being hidden deep in her skirt pocket. She moved behind him and gently placed her hands on his head, tilting it forward. She parted his hair with her fingers at the back on the right side, where a Huron warrior had struck him with a war club when he'd entered their camp to try to rescue her, Alice and Duncan. Now that he had washed away all the dried blood, she could assess the damage. It had been a hard hit, and her stomach had knotted with fear when she'd seen him go down, but as was his stubborn nature, he'd gotten right back up again, bleeding down his back and determined in his mission. She could see now that the wound itself was not too large and was already beginning to close, but the area around it was swollen and purple with bruising. She gently palpated to assess for any detectable fracture, and he grunted in discomfort.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I'm just making sure he didn't break your skull. The wound is not large and doesn't need to be sutured, but I'd like to clean it a little better with some grain alcohol to make sure it doesn't fester. It will not feel pleasant, so I apologize in advance."

"It's all right, do what must be done."

Cora took a clean cloth and a small bottle from the leather bag and began to carefully irrigate the wound, dabbing the excess liquid with the cloth. At the first contact, he flinched and hissed audibly at the sting. When she was finished, she let his hair fall back. "You'll need to keep it clean while it heals. I can help." She moved around in front of him with the medical bag. "Now let me see that cut on your chest." She motioned toward his left pectoral under one of the bird tattoos, where another Huron had slashed him with a knife before the blow to the head. He sat up straight and she knelt in front of him to examine the wound. "This one is deep. It's been less than a full day, so it can still be sutured once it's cleaned."

He nodded in silent assent. She irrigated it as she had done the other wound, and this time being prepared, he was still. She then threaded the suture needle with gut after wiping it down with the alcohol-soaked cloth, and began to work methodically at sewing him up. He winced at the first pull of the needle as she approximated the edges of the wound with her other hand and stabilized the surrounding flesh. It was not comfortable by any means, but he distracted himself by watching her nimble fingers as she stitched a perfect, even row, her brow furrowed with concentration and her eyes glowing deep amber in the sunlight filtering through the trees. Her dark hair caught the light, shot through with streaks of russet in its waves as it dried from her bath. Recalling the memory of her in the surgery at the fort, and now tending to him, he liked watching her work. She had a confident air and seemed more comfortable than he'd ever seen her, and a loving warmth suffused him as he appreciated how beautiful she was to him and how grateful he was that she was safe with him now.

Cora tied off the last stitch and cut the suture tail, placing the needle back into the kit. After dabbing away the small amount of blood from the stitching, she cut a length of bandage and folded a pad to place over the sutures, then wrapped the remaining length around his chest and shoulder to hold it in place. Touching him so, she was acutely aware of his heat so close to her, and the expanse of exposed flesh without his shirt. He was long and lean, hard planes of muscle rippling beneath his tanned skin, and combined with his rugged features, his mesmerizing eyes, and his general demeanor, she found him quite breathtaking as a whole. She placed the palm of her hand over his heart beside the sutured and dressed cut, feeling his pulse there and looking at the vivid reminder that he had walked into that camp and recklessly tried to give his life for hers. He had not deserted them; he had found her as he had promised he would in the cave under Glens Falls. Had Duncan not purposely mistranslated in order to give himself up instead, Nathaniel would have been burned in her place, and he had offered himself to that horrifying fate without a second thought. Did he love her so much that he would die for her? Her heart wrenched. Duncan had done the same, realizing that the best chance for her and Alice was to leave Nathaniel alive. She was bereaved for that, and grateful to him, not just for his terrible sacrifice, but also selfishly because she so loved this man upon whose heart her hand rested, and she did not think she could have borne to lose both him and Alice. He was her world now. Everything had changed, her old life was gone, and she would begin again with him. He had asked her to stay with him and be his wife, and she had said yes. She raised her head at last, finding him gazing at her intently, his eyes a pale blue-green in the light. He was looking at her the way he had in the surgery that night at the fort, as if she were the only thing in the entire world. A flush crept up her cheeks as her pulse began to thrum. They had not been alone together since he'd been in the stockade at the fort, and she had not felt this particular sensation coursing through her since the night before that, when he had kissed her up on the bastion. It felt like a lifetime ago. Feeling suddenly impetuous, she tilted her head slightly, her eyes remaining locked with his.

"What are you looking at, sir?" She whispered.

A flash rippled across his eyes like a stone thrown into still water.

"I'm looking at you, miss." He said softly, his heart slamming into his chest, feeling her hand tremble there, watching her cheeks flush pink and her breathing grow quick and shallow. The air fairly crackled between them.

With a sudden explosion of movement they crashed together, their mouths melding in a desperate, merciless, life-affirming kiss, tongues tangling wildly. His hands dug into her hair, holding her in place as her arms came around him and held on for dear life, her fingers flexing against his strong shoulders. She moaned softly, holding him close as she came forward on her knees and sank onto him, straddling his lap, their bodies pressed together intimately. He wrapped one arm diagonally across her back, and the other hand pushed beneath the hem of her skirt, caressing up her leg, fingers wrapping around top while his thumb stroked the soft, sensitive skin on her bare inner thigh below the hem of her shift. Heat flooding through her, she broke away with a gasp, sliding her hands down his smooth, muscular back, up his chest and into his hair, pushing it off his neck. Cradling his head, she nuzzled the underside of his jaw with her lips, kissing and nipping her way down, and flicked her tongue over the hollow of his throat.

Nathaniel groaned and buried his face against her hair, at war with the feral beast inside him that wanted to lay her down right here and now and claim her. MINE! It roared. He had fought hell and fury for her, and he had won. She was his and he was hopelessly hers. His hand left her thigh and moved up to her bodice, his fingers tugging at the ties that held the front closed. Her lips sought his and he met them ferociously. She opened to him, meeting each thrust of his tongue, both of them pouring their chaotic emotions into the kiss. He released the last tie and her stays fell open, leaving nothing between them but the thin linen of her shift. His hand splayed on her ribs, feeling the warmth of her, and then slid up to cup the soft swell of her breast. Cora gasped at the contact, breaking the kiss but staying close to him, her eyes blazing and fixed on his, her cheeks flushed with desire as her hands twined in his hair and cupped his jaw. His thumb stroked across her hardened nipple through the thin fabric, and she felt an intense bolt of longing strike her to the very core, its aching fire pooling at the juncture of her thighs. She wanted him there. Arching into his palm, she rocked her hips over his, a low cry coming from her lips at the feel of him hard and pressed against her as he flexed in return. He made a sound deep in his throat and took her mouth again, half wanting to let the roaring beast sweep all reason aside, and half trying to remind himself that she was not yet his wife before lust won out. They were too close to a point of no return, too close to giving in to this welcome distraction from the events of the last several days, and despite what his baser desires tried to dictate, he did not want the first time he made love to her to be here, hurried and desperate. He wanted to take his time with her somewhere soft and worship her, drawing his name from her lips as many times as he could. His hand on her breast shifted upward and pressed flat over her wildly beating heart as he held her tight with his other arm and leaned his forehead to hers, their breath mingling.

"I love you," he whispered.

Cora's breath caught, and a single tear coursed down her cheek. He kissed it away, and a sob tore from her throat as the floodgate opened and all the fear and horror and grief came spilling from her eyes. Nathaniel pulled her to him and held her tight on his lap as she curled into him and buried her face against his shoulder, sobs racking her body, keening sounds breaking from her as she mourned for everything that had been lost. Her father. Her friend. Her sister. Her entire existence to this point. Everything had been torn apart and burned to the ground, and she had been left standing in the ashes to try and put a life back together, and she didn't know how yet. Knowing there was nothing else he could do, he just held her in his arms and rocked her and let her cry, murmuring to her gently as his heart broke for her and broke for his own loss, and he cried his own tears with her.

After a time she grew quiet again, her sobs growing further apart and finally ending in a sigh. She raised her head slowly and looked at him, her eyes red and her cheeks wet with tears. He raised a hand to wipe them away, and she turned her face against his palm.

"I'm sorry," she said with a sniffle.

"No. Don't you be sorry," he said gruffly. "You've every right to your sadness."

Her eyes grew soft and she touched his cheek, her thumb stroking away the wet track of a tear. "I love you so much, Nathaniel. I scarcely know how to feel about anything right now, but that is the one thing I do know. Everything else….it just feels like it has all been blown to bits lying all around me, and I haven't the faintest idea how to start picking it all up to put it back in order again. I don't really think that I can, and in some ways I don't want to, but it doesn't make the future less daunting to face. I don't know what I would do if….if I had lost you as well," she said, her voice cracking and her eyes filling with tears again.

Nathaniel kissed her lightly. "Hush now, aholkwësit. I'm not going anywhere. I'd give anything to make this better. But I will see you through this however I can. We will see each other through. I promise you that."

They got to their feet slowly and Cora wrapped her arms around him. "What does that mean, that word you called me?" She vaguely remembered him calling her that the night he had first kissed her as well.

"Ah. It means 'beloved one'."

"I see." She sighed, her arms tightening around him, and kissed his shoulder. "I never want to let go of you again," she whispered.

"You don't have to. This is where we will start again. So long as you meant it when you said you would marry me?" His eyes reflected uncertainty in their green depths. She could always decide to go back to her cousin in Boston, or back to England. It would be easier for her to rebuild a life that way than hacking it out on the frontier with him where everything was foreign to her. She had little enough choice in any of the recent events, and he wanted her to come to him freely of her own accord.

"I did. I will. I want you. I would rather be with you, here, than anywhere else. Whatever kind of life we will have, no matter how hard it might be sometimes. Having everything in the world would be nothing to me if you were not there."

He blew out a sigh and kissed her hard. "Good, because I want you too, whatever it may take, for as long as you'll stay with me. Now we ought to get back to my father, the sun'll be going down soon enough and we need to rest a while so we can continue on." He threw his shirt and her petticoat over his shoulder and picked up his rifle while she refastened her bodice. He took her hand, and together they headed back toward their stopping place where Chingachgook waited for them.

"Give me everything mangled and bruised,

And I will make a light of it to make you weep,

And we will have rain,

And begin again."

-From 'Leavings' by Deena Metzger-

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading this story! I hope to have subsequent chapters posted soon. Please bear with me, as I have several irons in the fire in real life. When I first published "Setting the World on Fire", my intent was to next write what happens to Nathaniel/Hawkeye and Cora (and Chingachgook to some degree) after where the 1992 film left off. I love these characters. Cora is precocious, independent, rebellious, and far beyond her time, and Hawkeye with his gorgeous Pennsylvania long rifle and his smart mouth had my heart from the tender age of 13 when I saw this film in theater (I like him in the books as well). They are such a wonderful match.

If you've read the script, you know that Nathaniel actually asked Cora to be his wife at the end, which was cut from the film. I wanted to run with the idea of them staying together, but there is also the issue to consider that Cora has suffered tremendous trauma and loss, not just of her entire remaining immediate family, but also of her life as she knew it before. While she as a character was always intrigued by life on the frontier and she obviously loves Nathaniel, it goes without saying that she will have some complicated emotions surrounding her circumstances, and Nathaniel and his father are also grieving the loss of Uncas. I've been through a traumatic loss and a long grief/life rebuilding process in my private life, so I'm hoping to pay appropriate homage to the reality of the situation in the context of this story. While this is primarily a romantic story (and there is some good romance!), I feel that it is important to write about how they see each other through, move forward, and cope after so much loss, especially Cora since everything she has ever known will be changing.

I have done something very different from the norm in this fandom, in following the movie script and leaving Uncas and Alice deceased. I know that this is not a popular thing to do because they are generally the favorite couple, but despite this, I have been extremely pleased to see the story is very well-received anyway. I implore you not to stop reading because of it, because I promise it doesn't stay sad. Things get really interesting later with regard to Uncas and Alice, and I hope you'll keep going past the first couple of chapters to see what happens. I am the uncommon person who loves Nathaniel and Cora. There are so few stories that focus on them, and none that are longer than a one-shot that I could find. I really wanted to give them a story that lets people get to know who they are and how they develop both as characters and as a couple making a new life together, and how Chingachgook fits into all that with them. This is a story about the journey of grief, of courage, hope, and deep sacrificial love, and how families are much more than just the people we are related to by blood. I truly hope you will stick with it and enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Many Thanks to MohawkWoman for being my sounding board for some of these basic story ideas.