Disclaimer: I am a long-time (12 year) fan of Legend of the Seeker and a somewhat ex-fan of the SoT book series. To not make this fanfiction just a recounting of Season 2, I am "re-writing" the season in the way I think I would have liked it to go. Do with that information what you will, I am not attempting to make this canonical, rather I am taking the characters as written and putting them into new scenarios which I hope you will enjoy if you are a fan of the show that has long craved new content, as I have.
Fate married Prophecy long ago,
and their children became Life, Hatred, Love, and Balance. Life and Love came together and created humans, which Hatred tricked and took under his wing. Love, Life, and Hatred are always at war. Balance is small but mighty, over and over seeking the help of mortals to aid them. But all the children are afraid of Fate and Prophecy, because they are what began time itself. Prophecy shows us many ways, and Fate drives the world in such a direction. However, even as powerful as they may be, Fate and Prophecy cannot end a story nor can they change it. Prophecy draws the fault lines, and Fate tries to follow them the best she can. To not believe in such forces is to be a blaspheme, and to risk angering the balance of the magical world.
Cara Mason was never meant to be in the Seeker's story, but after being thrown back in time and being persuaded to defeat Darken Rahl, Fate had decided to bind them together. It was a plan Fate had concocted for quite some time, having looked down at Prophecy's manic maps and watching the ebbs and flows of the great Richard Cypher's life. He was meant to have been destroyed many times, yet there he was still. So Fate sought amusement in this partnership, this pairing of mismatched souls, and let them float down the river. She wanted to see what would happen next, knowing what promise was on the horizon for the Seeker, who was both of the Rahl and Zorander bloodline.
All Cara could smell was mud while her face was shoved into the ground. The sawing of the knife on her hair was unpleasant but easily tolerable to a Mord-Sith such as herself. It was demeaning to be sure, and Cara had always had a firm sense of pride, but being in the service of Darken Rahl for so long made her calloused to such showings of strength. Cara was strong and loyal yet disposable to Darken Rahl, and he always made sure she was well aware of it. She didn't pay much attention to Triana's boasting over her prone form, the selfish bitch she was. Triana and her other now traitorous sisters honestly weren't worth her time. Although that was a lie, it was a lie that Cara would ardently convince herself of. It was difficult to revoke your love for those you were supported by your whole life. This was the second time Cara would lose whom she thought was family.
Everything Cara had known had fallen apart when she killed Darken Rahl and allied herself, secretly of course, with the Seeker. Of what she could remember from her childhood, Cara was in love with the Lord Rahl. All D'Harans were, of course, but the Mord-Sith had the delectable pleasure of being loved most by the Lord Rahl. They were his right hand warriors after all, even more useful than the clumsy Dragon Core. But when Cara had seen the true nature of Darken Rahl, how he had desecrated the title of Lord Rahl by destroying D'Hara and the rest of the territories, her heart changed. She knew that under people's true selves there were awful little worms, and this had reminded her hardened heart of that. Cara realized that not even the Lord Rahl truly cared about her. She was alone now, and she knew she needed to behave as such.
She would become a predator, at least that's what she told herself. Cara would only look after herself now, there was no need to act like a Mord-Sith anymore. The murder of Darken Rahl would bring about a new age for the world and a dark age for D'Hara. Her agiels still hummed, which meant there was a Rahl still out there, but who knows how long it would take to find them? Cara couldn't wait that long. Perhaps she could become a bounty hunter, or a mercenary. She had no skills apart from torturing, the opportunity to do anything else had never presented itself to her, really.
"Lord Rahl? You've come up in the world, haven't you?" Cara had cleverly said. The sinister energy of her words were titrated by the blood filling in the valleys between her teeth. She could not believe that this foolhardy, goody-goody man could be of the Rahl bloodline. For one, he had the mindset of a young school-boy. For another, she couldn't imagine a Lord Rahl that was not an egomaniac. The prideful Mord-Sith was embarrassed to be lying in the dirt again, at the feet of the Seeker, a wizard of the First Order, and the Mother Confessor.
Cara would be lying if she said she wasn't absolutely terrified of the last party member. Confessors and Mord-Sith seemed to have been molded by Fate to be foils of each other. On one end, Confessors were truth abiding, moral upholding, and most importantly, pillars of the community. On the other end, Mord-Sith were blindly loyal torturers, inhuman, and hated in even their homeland. In addition, a Confessor just barely letting go of the tight coil she kept her powers in could kill a Mord-Sith, one who could endure all the pain in the world with a self-satisfied grin. But the Confessor could never know that, not if Cara wanted to hold onto the sliver of her pride she had left.
But they took her along, including the Mother Confessor. When her hand had closed around Cara's neck in the pass to the Drowning Cave, the Mord-Sith surely thought it would be her end. Fate would have decided to leave her body to go out with the flood tides, another unnamed Mord-Sith, a defective product of a more sinister era of history. Cara could see the disgust in the Mother Confessor's icy blue eyes and knew that with a small slip of her powers, she would endure the most painful death. But wasn't that what she deserved, after all? Cara couldn't make that decision, because the Mother Confessor's hand loosened and let her go.
Cara was surprised when the Seeker took her along, citing that he trusted her. Even among the Mord-Sith, whom she had spent most of her life with, she was rarely trusted. Although the Mord-Sith were strong and skilled, they were simply more bodies to Darken Rahl, especially when they failed him. Individualism was not something Cara was used to, being picked out of the crowd for her merits was even more unfamiliar. But Cara went along with it, what else did she have going on? Travelling with Richard Rahl, who was also the Seeker of Truth, would surely grant her safe passage.
It is here that Fate drops us, under the guidance of Prophecy. If the winds had blown any other way, Cara would be serving Darken Rahl at the People's Palace still. Rahl would have done as Prophecy predicted in the dark future she visited, and the world would have silently fell to the unfettered malice of a male Confessor. But they blew here, and Cara still couldn't tell if she was thankful for it or fearful because of it.
"Cara, we need more kindling for the fire," Kahlan said evenly, not bothering to look in the Mord-Sith's direction. It was only a week after the events in Stowcroft, of Cara's confession to the genocide of all but one Confessor, and there was still a raw part of Kahlan's heart that had not yet calloused. Seeing this as a demand rather than a request, Cara simply stood up, stretched her arms for a moment, and then tread into the thicker part of the forest to search for kindling. Not even wood, just little, teeny branches that she would have to bend down and pluck from the forest floor. Part of Cara knew that Kahlan only "trusted" her with the most menial tasks as a way of keeping her on a short leash.
Cara was content so long as the Confessor did not try to harm her. Richard had been the balance between them initially, convincing Kahlan that Cara was useful to them. But something else had happened when Kahlan's hand closed around Cara's neck for the second time. Fate had looked at Prophecy and moved their pieces to the same path. With Kahlan's mercy, Cara had become just a little different.
Reliving her childhood trauma was not the best way to go about healing, but it was more progress than she had ever made. Mord-Sith knew how to become hard and tough, but it was difficult to fit in compassion within all that pain. In all the years since childhood, Cara had never forgiven her father for what he did, and it stayed in her heart like a stone. But looking into Kahlan's eyes, seeing that same hardness, and begging to be killed shifted the winds. Kahlan could tell something had changed, and knew better than to turn her cheek to Fate.
But that still did not forgive what Cara had done. No small spark of humanity could bring Denee, her nephew, and the other Confessors back to life. Kahlan, like Cara, was utterly alone now. But that was no reason to let the world go to waste under the Keeper's thumb. Kahlan knew that in order for Richard to fulfil his destiny and destroy the Keeper, seal the rifts to the Underworld, and to restore balance to the world, she would have to tolerate the Mord-Sith.
As Cara came back with two bursting handfuls of kindling, Kahlan was almost caught thanking her. Instead she wordlessly took the bundles of twigs from the Mord-Sith and took them to the fire. In that instant, however, Kahlan felt something she hadn't the other two times her hands had touched the Mord-Sith. There was a hard force that suddenly pushed against the tight loaded spring that was the source of her power. It felt like she had been thrown against a thick tree trunk. It didn't seem to be initiated by Cara, because she wasn't even looking at Kahlan. It was only a split second and then it was gone but it had Kahlan reeling for a few moments after.
"Not up to your standards, Mother Confessor?" Cara asked with a quizzical expression. She had watched the Mother Confessor take the bundle of kindling and then freeze. It was then that Kahlan looked directly at Cara, their eyes locked, and then she shook her head.
"No, it's fine Cara. Thank you."
And that was the first kind thing Kahlan had ever said to her.