Never Lost
There is not a single reincarnation, not a single life, where they do not meet at least once. There is no alternate world where they do not feel this connection. Richard and Kahlan across time and space – was it worth it?
1.
He barely has time to see her, across the crowded, smoky tavern. Trouble is standing if front of him, in the guise of a drunken man who doesn't like the look of this stranger. Richard's gun presses against his hip, but the knife is faster at this close a range - and he prefers a blade, anyway. He likes to feel what he's doing. Guns are not for people as passionate, as hands-on as Richard.
The woman is wearing a man's shirt, white, and man's trousers, like she's trying to hide her feminism, but she isn't. People around her are staring and whispering to each other, and she bears it like it's her right to be noticed. It should be arrogant, but it's not. Richard fully believes she has every right to the attention of everyone in the world.
He wants to go to her, introduce himself. He wants to hold her. He wants to let her name roll off his tongue - and he's sure, he knows it. It's there. He knows it as well as his own.
Her eyes meet his across the room, and fear flashes there. She looks suddenly, irrationally terrified. Of him. Of Richard. It tears him apart inside.
Then the drunk in front of him is demanding his attention again, and in his distraction the woman slips away. He will never see her again, not in this life: but until the day he dies, years and years later, he remembers her face in that smoky tavern.
Beautiful and terrified. She was someone he could have loved, Richard knows. She is the only one he can ever love.
27.
Kahlan catches the merest glimpse at first. In the street - she is looking down at the sidewalk, watching her feet, on her way to work, and he is going the other way. She looks up. Their eyes meet and both start to offer that half-smile strangers exchange when their eyes meet accidentally. Then she really sees him, and part of her thinks, oh, there you are. I've been looking for you.
Except it's not that quiet and simple. Her heart screams this, screams where have you been and why are we not one.
She opens her mouth to say something, anything, to ask if he heard that, felt that. Something. But he looks so scared. He looks like she just pulled on gun on him, or on the most important thing in his life. He turns and bolts.
Kahlan doesn't freeze even for a moment, and she can tell right away that he will leave her behind. She is not fast enough. She throws herself at his legs and catches an ankle, drags him down.
He is panting. So is she, but not from effort - she can taste his name, but it won't be spoken. Her mouth forms the word but she can not say it and she does not know it.
"What are you afraid of?" She asks, instead.
"I don't know." He says. "I just know that if I don't get away from you, everything will be ruined. All of this will be for nothing."
"All of our suffering." Kahlan says, dawn coming in her mind. She doesn't know why she says it - she is not suffering, as far as she can tell.
"I think I love you." He says.
"I think I love you too. Now run." She tells him.
He runs like he's used to doing whatever she says.
They will never meet again. Kahlan will never speak of this with anyone, not with the husband she's not sure she loves, not with the children gathered around her deathbed, not with anyone until the spirit comes to collect her soul and send it along again.
"Who is he?" She asks the spirit. It's decades later, but she has never for a second forgotten his face, his almost-name.
"The only man your soul will ever love." The spirit says, face blank and unfeeling. "You made a deal. To save the world."
"What was the deal? What were the terms?"
"It does not matter. You will not remember."
"I will, I swear I will. I know him. I will remember."
"You have said so before. Both of you. It is futile."
"I will have him again," Kahlan whispers. "If it takes a thousand tries, I will have him."
"A thousand and one." The spirit corrects her.
104.
In this life, in this time, they are not so far apart. They can see each other every day. Richard longs to go to her, hold her, tell her everything is going to be fine. But he must hold himself back; he is middle-aged, a schoolteacher, and she is his student, who has half the years he does.
It wouldn't matter, he feels that strongly, but something in him holds back and says, not yet, not yet. Here is the person he has been waiting for and he cannot have her. Not yet.
284.
"Kahlan Amnell." The name sounds like perfection to Richard, reading it in the corner of a pre-owned book. "Who are you?" He wonders aloud, but he feels like he already knows.
She's the most important thing he'll ever have, after all – but in this life they have never laid eyes on each other.
The book is about dragons and evil lords, and of course a hero on a quest. Kahlan has made notes in the margins, of the hero's occasional, deus ex machina stupidity, and the ridiculous love interest.
"Our story would be different." Richard whispers to the book's cover like it is the woman it used to belong to. "I would never let you go. I will never let you go."
He doesn't know why he says it, but it sounds right.
430.
Holding each other in this place, where time does not exist and nothing else matters. The world is happening around them, but for this one moment they can be together.
"I miss you." Kahlan murmurs into his shoulder.
"I wish there was another way." Richard whispers back, kissing her gently on the top of her head.
A force repels them apart, then, and both forget everything - who they are, who they were to each other. Neither knows why they have said the things they have.
Then the bomb goes off beside them, and this life ends.
557.
"Soon." Richard's spirit says, watching the love of his many lives shed a single tear for his body. She turns and addresses the police next to her, giving orders. Her lips form his name even as it is reported to her, because she already knows. She has always known.
558.
"What did we do?" Kahlan has to ask, the next time they meet. She is on her knees before Richard, so small in this life, still so young. She is old already. "What deal did we strike? What bargain did we make?"
Richard looks at her curiously, trusting even though he has never set eyes on her before. He knows she will never hurt him. "I don't know." He says, puzzled.
"Was it worth it?" Kahlan asks, pleading, desperate. "Was it worth this?"
"Always." Richard replies, without knowing why.
894.
"We saved lives." Richard tells her, holding her hand.
Kahlan smiles at him from her hospital bed, her deathbed. "I think we did."
"Do you still think the price is not too steep?" Richard asks.
"Richard." Kahlan's eyes burn with the tears her failing body cannot shed anymore. "I don't even know what the price was. I don't know."
"I think it was." Richard breaks eye contact for a moment to look out the window, at the setting sun. Then, suddenly, angry, "It has to be!"
Quietly, Kahlan dies in his arms.
"It's worth it." Richard murmurs into her hair, rocking her back and forth like she's still alive. "It's worth it. It's worth it..."
999.
"Not long now," They say at the same time, meeting in an elevator for a moment; the woman and the man exchange confused looks, asking each other and themselves why they spoke. What it meant.
"I feel like I know you." The man confesses.
"I think that's why I have to leave." The woman says, stepping backwards out of the elevator doors.
1000.
The spirit comes to collect Richard, as it always does. Sometimes it stops for conversation, but mostly it ushers him along into the next life.
This time it stops.
"A thousand times you have died." It says. "A thousand lives you have lived."
"Is it not enough?" Richard asks desperately. "I'm tired. I want..." He knows he wants something, someone, very badly. He doesn't know who, or what, or why.
"That is not the deal." The spirit tells him coolly. "There is no backing out."
"I don't think I can do this again." Richard says.
"You have said so before."
"I can't see her die again. Not again. I just want to be with her."
"You cannot. The deal was a thousand and one. The last is always the hardest."
1001.
The last is the hardest, because they grow up together. Kahlan is his next-door neighbor and he's sure she's the only woman he will ever want. They are inseparable.
Then something changes, and it seems that every time they meet something goes wrong. Someone gets hurt. Without meaning to, they stomp on each other's feelings until both are resentful, and bruised, and still in love.
And then there is the final straw, the final betrayal. Richard walks away, feels his heart ripping open and out, unaware that Kahlan's is doing the same behind him. In this life, as in all the others, they never love another. In this life, it is by choice. Hate clouds their minds and their hearts.
It's a seven car pileup; he's car number three, she's car number seven. She could have swerved and avoided the accident, but she'd been fed up with living anyway.
The spirit is there, watching, as they meet, truly, for the first time in a thousand and one lives. As they remember - first each other, and then their first lives, and then the deal they made to save the world.
"A thousand and one lives lived alone." Richard recounts. "Was it really worth it?"
"I have you now." Kahlan says instead of responding. "I'm never letting go."
"I watched you die." Richard says.
"I hunted your murderers." Kahlan says, and somehow then they are laughing.
"The price has been paid." The spirit interrupts.
"What happens now?" Richard asks.
"You have passed the test. You may choose."
Richard turns to Kahlan, smiling. "Life?" He suggests.
"Again?" She is smiling.
"Let's do it right this time."
Her eyes glitter with laughing tears. "A thousand and two is a good number," she decides.
1002.
Richard moves into a new town, excited instead of bitter as his parents thought he would be, when he's sixteen. His first day in the new highschool, he makes three friends, but only one is important enough to tell his family about.
"Her name is Kahlan Amnell." Richard says. He doesn't add that he's going to marry her, that they're going to be together for the rest of their lives and beyond. His parents wouldn't understand.
He doesn't stop talking about Kahlan for the next week, until his parents are actually getting worried about the level of infatuation.
They get married, on the day they're both eighteen, but it's only legally. When they can afford it, when their finances allow, they're going to have a huge wedding. Everyone will be there. And neither of their parents will be trying to talk them out of it, saying it's a big mistake.
Richard gets a job. Kahlan gets pregnant. Years pass - not easy, but never impossible, because they are together, and that's enough.
A white picket fence, three family dogs all in a row, four kids growing up and spreading their own wings, leaving the house. Richard and Kahlan have a lot of experience in living, and know how not to make mistakes.
Old, and in their bed together, Richard is holding Kahlan again at the end.
"We did it right," he says. "We finally got it right."
"I know." Kahlan replies. "I'll see you on the other side?"
"Soon." Richard says right away.
"Not too soon. I want you to help them get over me, first. Make sure they can deal. Make sure they know I'm happy. Then you can follow me."
"Do you think it was worth it? A thousand and two lives?"
"You will always be worth it." Kahlan stretches up, one last time, and kisses him. He holds her tight right up to the end, and then gets up, goes to tell their children, gathered in the sitting room, that she is now with them only in their hearts.
"Was it everything you wished?" The spirit asks her. This is the first time it's showed interest.
"And more." Kahlan says.