Work Text:
It’s a hard world. Richard the Seeker is here with them, pulled from a waking nightmare.
Leo Dane’s body burns on its pyre.
That night, Cara claims a triple watch. The wizard offered no quarrel, but—of course—Richard did. Fought slumber as valiantly and stubbornly as he should be fighting the Keeper. But in spite of every bleary-eyed and heroic attempt, the exhaustion of perdition’s magic won. Now he’s sleeping like an infant, curled in on himself and breathing as deeply as a man saved from drowning.
Kahlan, though—Cara doesn’t try to argue with Kahlan. Not anymore. To do so feels like a risk—of words, of intent. A risk of not meaning what she says or of meaning what she says too much. It’s the halt of a cliff-edge, and what she doesn’t say can’t drag her down.
Silence, though, is its own form of concession. Kahlan will take the last watch. Cara feigns detached nonchalance while she boils from the inside out.
Along the slow march to dawntime, the night-fire fades into a pile of seething embers. Cara stares, hollow to the burn. Lets the glow sear her vision and then blinks up towards the star-swirled sky, concentrating on the coruscating afterimage it leaves. Tries not to think about the day’s loss.
Fails, weak.
Because huddled there in the dark there is the one she chose to shield (a flash of cold, unwelcome fear—her own hand thrown out and Nicci’s dacra stilled in midair—the brutal sound of blood rushing in her ears)—
—and there is also the one she did not (Leo, thrown towards and twisted, set alight for Kahlan in a way Cara shouldn’t recognize)—
At that moment, she shouted his name. Through shock, through the wrong kind of desperation—through a sick wash of relief. She’ll never utter that aloud.
(There won’t be a reason to. None of them will ever ask.)
Because Cara meant what she had said over his body moments before Kahlan let the torch fall. I do care about you.
But she is learning that care is a complicated thing, one with knotted twists and sharp teeth.
Leo was a good man, a brave man. Not so aggravating to earn himself a punch to the throat. Witty enough to make her laugh, however foolish. Keen enough to pay attention. A decent enough fuck to distract her from what she really craves.
Maybe, if he had lived—maybe he would have stayed with them. Maybe there would’ve been more flowers, more inane jokes, more sheltering from the rain. Something to bury herself in until she stops dreaming of Kahlan’s touch in the night. Something to reach for instead, to have when she can’t have what she wants.
Something that could somehow—through every bit of thorn and defiance—want her.
Smoke and bone shards and ashes. A good man is dead, taken by the wind. Just another reason for them (for Kahlan) to want to help, to crowd too close and try to peer under her armor. To realize that they don’t like what they see there. The world is hard and care is relative. Grief and guilt are unfamiliar shadows and Cara is watching them from across a chasm, confusing one form for the other, clueless and eclipsed, finding nothing casted back.
A good man is dead. And Cara is just glad that Kahlan was the one who lit the pyre, not the one who burned.
Jaw clenched, Cara prods at the fire-death. The brief stir of hungry, gasping light spills over Kahlan: awake, approaching. Her eyes flare crystal blue in the low glow—those eyes that were made to pry into the truth of all things, trained steadily on Cara.
Kahlan’s gaze makes her want to hide. Kahlan’s gaze makes her want to be devoured.
“It’s not your watch yet,” Cara points out when Kahlan sits beside her, close but not close enough. Her voice comes out on a snapping edge, sharp but thick, husked over.
Go back to Richard, she doesn’t say. It drags her down nonetheless.
Kahlan doesn’t take the hint, willfully or otherwise. “It’s alright. I’m awake now.”
“Don’t tell me to get some rest.”
Kahlan smiles at her, all soft shadows. Cara finds her heart in her throat.
“I know better than that,” Kahlan says. Her smile changes into something else, then—not in shape, but in weight. “I just—I don’t think I should leave you alone right now.”
Cara doesn’t try to argue with Kahlan. Not anymore.
The space between their silent-sitting bodies is alight. Burning, burning on towards rupture, consumptive in its upswept gentleness.
Kahlan breathes. Cara sears.
The world becomes harder still.