Characters: (in order of appearance) Kahlan, Mother Confessor Serena, Darken, Cara, Denna, Jennsen, Shota, Richard, Zedd
Pairings: Cara/Kahlan, Darken/Kahlan (implied Darken/Denna, Darken/Cara and Richard/Kahlan, in a way)
Warnings: torture, character death, dub con (and cruelty to an innocent river ;D)
Summary: In an AU inspired by this amazing vid (/watch?v=oRbWKQrZeAM) only child!Kahlan is tired of waiting for the Seeker to rescue the Midlands. But when Darken Rahl takes her prisoner, she must decide whether he and his people are really as evil as she's always believed. Cara has never had cause to question her loyalty to the House of Rahl - until she meets the Confessor Kahlan Amnell. And Darken, victorious, has nothing to fear but the Seeker, and everyone knows he's dead.
Losing My Grip
Jennsen wasn't expecting company, so when the knock came on the door she was surprised.
She was more surprised when she opened it; the woman on the threshold didn't look that much older than she was, until Jennsen met her eyes, and shivered. Those eyes held the wisdom of age and terrible experience.
"Jennsen Rahl," the woman said gravely, "my name is Shota. I've come to find you because the Midlands—and the world—need your help. May I come in?"
Jennsen didn't know where to start, her objections were so numerous; nonetheless, she opened the door wider and gestured for her strange guest to enter.
The only thing she knew for sure was that she was going to regret this.
Cara seemed surprised when Kahlan explained what she wanted; Kahlan guessed she had expected a melodramatic scheme to overthrow Darken Rahl, the tyrant who had conquered Kahlan's homeland and taken her captive, but she couldn't help feeling that would be impractical.
First of all, by the time she could suborn enough people in the capitol of D'Hara to the cause of rebellion, Rahl might successfully convince her to abandon her principles (only Cara's timely words had prevented this from happening already).
And secondly…"I raised an army to defeat Rahl," Kahlan reminded Cara. "It didn't work. The Mother Confessor claimed only the Seeker can kill him, and anyway I think most of the people in the Midlands are tired of war."
Thirdly, of course, if Kahlan did have a plan to kill Darken Rahl, she would hardly confide it to Cara, who was a Mord'Sith; expecting Cara to betray her own honor by helping Kahlan bring harm to the Lord Rahl she was sworn to serve was as wrong as it would be for Kahlan to forget her own duty to her people, merely because Rahl offered her security and power as his Queen (to say nothing of the pleasure she guiltily found in his embraces).
Fourthly, and most secretly, Kahlan was fairly certain she was pregnant. Not that such a consideration would weigh with her in fulfilling her duty to the Midlands and killing Darken Rahl if she thought it would work, but she doubted she would survive long under those circumstances…and she had no desire to raise her daughter in a land still torn apart by war.
"So you want me to help you devise a new set of laws for the D'Haran Empire based on the Code of Aydindril and the precedents laid down by previous Rahls, and convince Lord Rahl to adopt it?" Cara asked, in a just-the-facts-ma'am tone.
"Why not?" Kahlan asked brightly. "Did you have something better to do?"
She took Cara's hands in hers as she spoke, not sure why she was so convinced that she'd found an ally.
A Mord'Sith was a Confessor's natural enemy—and yet Cara was the only person Kahlan could talk to in this Palace with any sort of honesty. Every remark she and Rahl made to one another was fraught with hidden meaning and obscure threat, even something as simple as a comment on the weather. And no one else would talk to Kahlan at all.
Cara's fingers twitched in Kahlan's, the leather of her gloves smooth against Kahlan's skin, but she didn't pull away.
"I'll help you with the parchmentwork," Cara said slowly, "if you let me help you with something else."
Kahlan's heart beat faster, because Cara was smiling at her in a way that made her feel weak and strong at the same time.
"What?" she asked, leaning forward just slightly. She saw Cara's eyes track the way this shifted her bodice downward, and felt a thrill of power.
Obviously, Darken Rahl was a bad influence on her.
"Lord Rahl is going to take some convincing," Cara said. She licked her lips, and Kahlan's answering smile was, she feared, anything but innocent. "I could teach you how to please him."
For a split second, Kahlan thought about taking this as an insult; but the invitation was too fascinating to turn down, no matter how much Rahl seemed to enjoy their trysts.
"As you wish," Kahlan said, and Cara grinned lasciviously.
Kahlan was nervous, and Cara remembered that Confessors had that problem with intimacy…she was lucky Kahlan's powers were bound with a Rada'Han, and yet she felt wistfully that seeing Kahlan at the height of that power, making her lose control, would be worth a little risk.
Cara licked her lips, a little nervous herself. Kahlan's courage, Kahlan's sheer goodness, were so unusual—this was unlike anything Cara had ever done before, because with Kahlan it meant something…something special.
"Rahl likes it when I bite his lip," Kahlan offered slyly, stepping closer to Cara.
Her hips swayed enticingly, and Cara let her hands rest on Kahlan's waist, and brushed her lips against Kahlan's.
True to her promise, Kahlan nibbled gently at Cara's bottom lip with her teeth.
Cara could no longer restrain herself; she deepened the kiss, pulling Kahlan closer so their bodies were pressed together, and burying one hand in Kahlan's glorious hair…this was even better than waking Kahlan with the Breath of Life had been—it made Cara feel powerful and almost awed, and more than ever convinced that breaking Kahlan would be a crime more heinous than most on her record.
"Mmm," Kahlan moaned, and then, "Ow!" in a completely different tone.
Cara stepped back, confused, and Kahlan gestured to the agiels sheathed at her hips. Rolling her eyes at her own folly, Cara set them down on a side table, and then Kahlan was kissing her again, and somehow they were falling together backward onto the bed…
Much later, Cara lay in Kahlan's arms while the Confessor pulled a lock of her blonde hair repetitively through her fingers. Cara's hair, unbraided, was ridiculously long and inconvenient, but Kahlan's fingers running through it felt too good for Cara to move.
Nonetheless…"Mord'Sith do not cuddle," Cara said firmly.
"Mm-hm," Kahlan agreed, sounding amused.
"I never did get around to much instruction," Cara mused after a moment. "You're obviously a natural."
At that, Kahlan did laugh. "Thank you," she said warmly. "Cara…thank you."
Her voice was different now, and Cara wanted to run from the sheer emotion in it.
"For what?" she asked instead.
"You give me hope," Kahlan explained. "I never thought I could survive this place—I'm still not sure—but if you help me, maybe I can wrest victory from defeat."
Cara was silent, thinking. She had her doubts about Kahlan's plan to convince Lord Rahl to adopt a proper legal system—although as long as hewere still above it, he might consent—and she wasn't sure what could possibly constitute a victory for Kahlan, after she'd fought Lord Rahl with all the strength the Midlands could muster and lost, but if anyone could turn ignominious captivity into a triumph of reason and peace for all, it was surely Kahlan.
How could Kahlan not want her freedom back? She was the most extraordinary person Cara had ever met. Unless this was some sort of deeper scheme, like the kind Lord Rahl was always concocting…thinking of Lord Rahl brought other things to the surface of Cara's mind; Kahlan was his betrothed.
"You're asking one slave to the House of Rahl to rescue another," she commented drily.
Kahlan's fingers ceased their gentle stroking through Cara's hair, and she pulled herself up onto one elbow, frowning. "Slave?" she asked.
Cara looked away. "I'm not ashamed of who I am."
"I," Kahlan said firmly, "am nota slave. I am a prisoner."
And Cara, by tradition, by duty, by everything, was surely one of her jailors.
All this was getting too complicated for her, Cara felt. And yet she could regret nothing that had led her to this point, lying cuddled in bed next to Kahlan Amnell, Confessor and Lord Rahl's worst enemy and affianced bride…
Although she did have cause later to regret that they had chosen Kahlan's rooms—Kahlan's guarded rooms—for their 'lesson.'
Jennsen didn't even see the Boundary Shota had described in such detail, but she noted the patrols of D'Haran soldiers, and where the tracks of their horses stopped.
She waited until they were far enough away that they probably wouldn't notice her, before clambering up a sand dune and setting out across the beach, past the soldiers' tracks, on and on…
She didn't turn around, and no one called out or started in pursuit.
It was eerily easy.
But if Shota was right, it was the last thing about Jennsen's mission that would be less than heartbreakingly difficult.
She was to find the First Wizard, Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander…her grandfather. The Seeker she sought, and whom only the First Wizard could name, was her brother. She had to bring them back through the Boundary somehow, so that the Seeker could fulfill his destiny and kill the tyrant Darken Rahl.
Darken Rahl, her mother had tearfully confessed, was Jennsen's half-brother. This made her even more reluctant than she already had been to plot his death—she had been raised to believe murder was wrong, and she couldn't imagine there was any reason so compelling as to justify it.
That had been before Shota told her, in exhaustive and terrifying detail, of the Brennidon Massacre (her mother had cried the hardest then); of a thousand lesser crimes, most of them murder; of the people driven starving and homeless from their villages; of Kahlan Amnell, the Confessor and the last hope of the Midlands (save the Seeker), and her valiant attempt to rid the world of 'the foulest tyrant ever to draw breath,' and her subsequent imprisonment (Jennsen had heard, of course, of the marriage that was to cement the peace, but she'd never thought about how horrible it must be for the Confessor to be so entrapped); of the Mord'Sith still sweeping the countryside looking for the other Confessors, and for Shota herself.
Jennsen could not refuse her help when so many were depending on her.
But she resolved not to tell the Seeker that he, too, was Darken Rahl's brother.
"Are you certain of this?" Lord Rahl's voice was deceptively calm, but Denna could see the tension in the set of his shoulders, even turned away from her as he was.
"I saw them together," Denna said, relishing the words, and their truth. She never would have thought of this herself, but if she had it would have made the perfect lie—anything to wean Lord Rahl from his obsession with the Confessor. "Cara has betrayed you."
Lord Rahl met her eyes then, and Denna saw amusement as well as anger in them. "An understandable temptation," he said. "But I don't like it when others touch what belongs to me."
Denna could not understand why he cared so much for the Confessor. She was nothing—an enemy who should have been dead, who would have been but for Lord Rahl's inexplicable order to have her revived. And now he was marrying her—why? Was she really so special?
"I will deal with Cara," Lord Rahl said dismissively.
Denna could not let this go so easily, however. She licked her lips nervously, but kept her hands clasped behind her back and her spine straight. "My Lord," she said, "there's more—they were plotting against you. They talked of obtaining victory from defeat…Cara means to help the Confessor destroy you."
Now he was truly angry, but Denna could only see it because she had spent what felt like a lifetime studying Lord Rahl. "How dareshe—!" he whispered, turning away.
Denna could not tell which betrayal stung him more, Cara's or the Confessor's. Had she been a different woman, had she not been a Mord'Sith, she would have reached out a hand to comfort him.
But all she could do was beg to be allowed to deal with her Lord's enemies as they deserved. "Let me punish her, my Lord," she said quietly. "Let me punish both of them."
"Both?" he asked, surprised. "Why?"
"They are traitors," Denna said, in some confusion.
"Cara is a traitor," Lord Rahl corrected her gently. "Kahlan is merely doing her duty."
Denna had known Lord Rahl had a weird fixation with the Confessor, but until now she would not have said it had driven him mad.
"My Lord?" she asked.
Lord Rahl watched her in amusement. "Kahlan has spent years opposing me," he pointed out. "It will take some time for her to reclassify D'Hara as her home, rather than an enemy empire. If she were not plotting against me, I would have to assume she didn't care at all."
Denna could only stare in bemusement and increasing indignation. Apparently, the Confessor could do no wrong in Lord Rahl's eyes. But he couldn't deny Cara's betrayal.
"I will send you both to the temple near Deerfork," Lord Rahl said abruptly. He was looking out of the window now, but Denna doubted he was seeing the prosaic courtyard below. "You know what must be done."
Denna saluted, one fist over her heart, and left to make her preparations. She and Cara were going to take a little journey.
"Why are you doing this?" Taralyn Zorander asked, as she stirred the evening stew.
Sitting at her plain wooden table was a woman who looked exactly like her daughter, but whose eyes gleamed with a nearly wicked sophistication, and who sat in a precisely controlled and ladylike attitude Jennsen had never learned. Technically, Jennsen was a princess, but she didn't have the posture for it.
The witchwoman shrugged elegantly. "I told you. This place is being watched. If Darken Rahl realizes Jennsen is gone, he may guess our plan. And I can't return to Agaden Reach while the Mord'Sith search for me. A simple glamour solves both problems."
"It's just—" Taralyn swallowed tears, "I can't bear the thought that she'll be taken from me, too. She's so young…"
"Zeddicus will protect her," Shota said coolly. "If you must worry, worry for Kahlan Amnell. Rahl will be furious when he discovers the Seeker lives, and she is wholly in his power."
Richard could not believe what he was hearing. "Father, you can't be serious!" he exclaimed, laughing despite his indignation. "You don't really believe I have some kind of destiny to kill someone named Darken Rahl, do you? Darken Rahl—what a name! This sounds like a fairy tale!"
"Son," George Cypher said heavily, "I'm afraid it's all too true. From the day Zedd gave you to your mother and me, we knew you were destined for great things."
"Great things?" Richard asked scathingly. "Killing someone? I don't think so."
He stormed out of the room, where his father and Zedd and the red-haired girl he'd never seen before but had introduced herself as his sister were all giving one another grave looks. No doubt they couldn't wait to begin discussing him in absentia…
His father and Zedd had both lied to him his entire life. Richard was furious, and deeply hurt. Apparently, he was adopted. Apparently, Zedd was his grandfather and the redhead was his sister. Apparently, Darken Rahl was 'a fiend in human flesh, the greatest tyrant the world has ever seen, evil blacker than the Keeper's heart.' Apparently, Richard was something called a 'Seeker.'
There was really only one conclusion—the people Richard loved most in the world had all lost their minds.
"Richard." It was the redhead—Jennsen. She'd followed him out here.
Richard didn't bother acknowledging her presence with more than a brief wave, before returning to his brooding. She knew nothing about him, after all. A total stranger. She could not be his sister.
"I know you think all this is nonsense," she said, "and I agree. If Darken Rahl is a fiend in human flesh, I'm the Queen of Tamarang. But that doesn't mean he isn't evil. For years, Kahlan Amnell—she's a Confessor, that's sort of like royalty's royalty in the Midlands—fought Rahl for her people's freedom. And when she lost, he imprisoned her in his Palace; he's going to force her to marry him."
Richard turned around, staring at Jennsen. "That's horrible!" For the first time, the thought that Darken Rahl might actually be a real villain and not something Zedd had made up occurred to Richard.
Further, the image of Kahlan Amnell, trapped and alone and facing a fate worse than death, inspired Richard with new determination. He had to rescue her, and if that meant being named the Seeker…
"Okay," he said slowly. "I'll do it."
"I don't see anything," Cara said, stepping forward. The outskirts of Deerfork were deserted. There was no rebel meeting.
Which was hardly surprising—no doubt there would be another rebel meeting eventually, but the Resistance had recently suffered a crushing defeat, and probably all those idiotic enough to organize a meeting when a group of Mord'Sith had just entered the neighborhood were already dead.
That should have been Cara's first warning that there was something wrong.
Her second was when someone knocked her to the ground and grabbed her braid.
She tried to twist upward, but Denna (of course, it would be Denna), had her knee on the center of Cara's back.
"Traitor," she said coolly, and drew a knife.
Cara was at a loss to know what she was supposed to have done—not that it mattered. Denna had been looking for an excuse to challenge her for years.
Still, it did hurt when Denna cut off Cara's braid. She missed the hair immediately—it hadn't even been trimmed in years, the weight of it was familiar and the corresponding status crucial—
Lord Rahl must believe she wasa traitor. Denna would never dare cut off her braid otherwise.
Cara's last thought, before Denna's agiel touched the back of her neck and she slumped, unconscious, was one of regret that she hadn't had time to say farewell to Kahlan.
"Will you accept the name of Seeker?"
"I will."
A ring of fire, a Sword raised in defiance, and hard eyes set in a youthful and familiar face. Darken might never have seen the brother whose death he had ordered upon his ascension to the throne of D'Hara, but the boy had their father's jaw.
Darken's scream was one of pure fury, tearing out of his throat before he was awake.
Then a moment of disorientation, because he hadn't meant to fall asleep in Kahlan's rooms, and she was sitting up beside him, hair falling in a dark cloud over her pale shoulders, frowning.
"What?" she demanded peevishly. "Not content with holding me prisoner, now you must disturb my rest?"
But Darken ignored her. He couldn't waste time on relief that she hadn't tried to kill him in his sleep, although that probably would have woken him—something much more important than his games with her or their approaching marriage was happening.
Guards rushed in, lamplight spilling like fire into the room—Kahlan drew the blankets more securely over her chest—"My Lord, what is it? Is everything—?"
Darken barely heard. He felt as though someone had just walked over his grave. In a way, it was true.
The prophecy—he'd thought he had averted it, years ago. He had achieved so much throughout his reign—and now this. Blank panic held him speechless for a moment.
At the guards' repeated pleas for orders, and threatening moves toward Kahlan as the only threat currently in the room, however, Darken made himself reply.
"The Seeker lives," he whispered.
Kahlan gasped—the Seeker couldn't be alive, it couldn't be true—could it? If it were, hope was not lost. It made her dizzy to think she might still escape Rahl, when she had given it up as impossible.
Everything she'd done, even reaching out to Cara, had been in an effort to make this life easier, to make her sacrifices not in vain. She was no longer sure what she would do with her freedom, if she obtained it…
"You must be thrilled," Rahl hissed at her. "Get out."
Kahlan held his eyes for a moment, just to show him she wasn't intimidated, and then pulled on a dressing gown and left without a second glance.
No doubt he would remember eventually that they'd been in herrooms, but in the meantime, perhaps she might find Cara.
Kahlan needed someone to talk to, because everything had changed.
She needed to talk to Cara.