LOTS Fic: Aydindril Burning 7/? (Cara/Kahlan)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Forget about our mothers and our friends, We're fated to pretend
“I’m not entirely sure you understand the gravity of your situation, so I’ll try explaining it to you again. This time slower. I’m worried that maybe you don’t understand English.” The dark haloed face swam in and out of Kahlan’s vision. The length of her trip and the full-body beating that occurred as soon as she arrived at what she assumed was her final destination, made it tough to really focus. She was tied to a chair in the middle of a dark concrete room. Only a bare bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling illuminated the space. Really, it was all too cliché for Kahlan’s taste - as if she were watching a bad movie. Even the accents were a little ridiculous. The woman interrogating her had the same foreign lilt to her voice as Cara did, but her English was not as crisp.
Her dark hair was pulled back into a long braid that she twisted in her hands every time she appeared to become frustrated with Kahlan’s lack of responsiveness - which was often. She was also wearing a uniform that Kahlan recognized as similar to the one that Cara had been wearing in her photo with Richard. The tailoring and insignia reminded her a little of a Nazi stormtrooper.
“You are going to do what I say. And tell me what I want to hear.” The woman paused menacingly as she leaned over Kahlan. “Or I am going to make you beg for a death that I will never grant. I will pluck out each eyeball. Cut off each finger, each toe. Then I will begin skinning you, starting with your pretty long legs.”
Kahlan blanched and tried to avoid developing a mental picture to match the words. She licked her cracked lips. Forming words hurt, mentally and physically, but maybe the woman would believe her this time.
“I don’t know anything. I don’t know about Cypher or Operation Seeker. Cara didn’t tell me anything. I thought she was just a friend of my husband’s, and I thought my husband was just a regular soldier. You people are the first I’ve heard differently.”
Wrong answer. The dark haired woman’s fist connected with the side of Kahlans’s face before she could recognize that it was moving. The blow knocked her sideways and bound she had no way of catching herself. Instinctively she tucked her chin which probably saved herself from a nasty headwound as the chair tipped over onto the floor.
“I am going to start really hurting you!” Boots clicked against the pavement as her tormentor circled around toward her back. Her muscles tightened up, anticipating more pain.
Outside of her range of vision, the door opened. She could hear a new set of footsteps and the door closed brusquely. “That won’t be necessary, Trianna. I think I can handle things from here.” The newcomer sounded jarringly American.
Kahlan and her chair were righted. There was a blonde, hair scrapped back into a tight bun, wearing a sharply tailored black suit standing next to the soldier now. Trianna hesitated and opened her mouth like she was about to argue.
“Yes, yes, Trianna. I’m aware. You’re still terribly hurt about Cara’s betrayal. Oh, boohoo for you.” The blonde pointed at the door. “I don’t care about your feelings. You should be ashamed that you are letting them show. You will not compromise my operation just to make a punching bag out of your old flame’s new fuck.” Angry red rose in Trianna’s cheeks at the words but before she could try to protest again, the blonde roared: “GET OUT!”
Irrational relief flooded Kahlan with Trianna’s exit, and in one of those cognitive quirks that marks human psychology, the blonde came to embody that relief in that moment.
“Really, I don’t know anything,” Kahlan offered, trying to sound helpful and sincere.
“Trianna is a petty little fool,” the blonde wave her hand dismissively as she knelt, so that her face was level with Kahlan’s. “She wants to hit you. Because Cara used to fuck her, and then she threw her away like trash.”
The language and the rather unflattering portrayal of her recent lover’s behavior made Kahlan visibly flinch. All she had ever known Cara as was as a strong, silent but strangely comforting presence in her life - and as a passionate lover. Certainly, she had realized that Cara was running from the bad things she had done, but everyone could change.
“But, you see, it isn’t about what you know. You’re a country bumpkin, I understand that. You have a pretty face so people with important secrets like to kiss it. As a source of information, though, you’re really not useful.” If Kahlan weren’t tied up, she would have hit the other woman for that remark. Instead she had to resort to making a rather angry face. “No, you’re important because important people want you. They want you desperately. And they’ll do stupid things to get you back.”
The blonde abruptly stood. Their conversation must be at an end. “I’ll have Raina move you to a cell so you can sleep for now. It will take at least two days for Cypher and Cara to arrive. I promise, we’ll keep you in style.”
“As long as your style is silent. I’m fucking tired of listening to you people jabber,” Kahlan finally snapped. She really missed how quiet Cara could be. Her only response was the blonde’s crisp laughter over her shoulder as she exited. If these people were going to be her company for the next couple of days, she would have to find a way to escape before Cara and Richard could rescue her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Sick for days, so many ways, I’m aching now, I’m aching now
“Richard, I had sex with your wife.”
“Since we’re going to be risking our lives together again, and since you saved me that one time, I think you deserve to know that I made love to your wife, Richard.”
“Dick, I had your wife on your kitchen table.”
“I fucked Kahlan, Richard. And I’d really like to do it again. I’m not really into guys, but if I’d make you feel better, I’d let you watch.”
Cara scrubbed her hands across her face. Tension was building up in the muscles of her neck and across her shoulders, knots of pain that she couldn’t shake out. Emotions were tricky things. For someone like Cara, who spent a lot of time avoiding hers, reading the subtle clues about other people’s emotional states was nearly impossible. Frequently she was forced to rush in, and clean up the damage afterward. Tact was for people that didn’t have reoccurring nightmares about seeing their own intestines.
“And I think she liked it. I mean, I didn’t take her by force or anything. But, I’m awfully sorry.” How did you sound sorry when you weren’t really? Oh, she was sorry that Richard’s wife was so damn irresistible, but she wasn’t sorry that she had failed to resist. No matter how much it hurt Richard, Cara couldn’t regret any of the time she had spent with Kahlan. She couldn’t regret knowing what Kahlan’s sweat tasted like, or the way her arousal smelled, or the way her pupils dilated and turned her eyes dark as she climaxed.
“Maybe you should find yourself another wife, and I’ll keep this one.”
She shook her head. None of it would do. There just weren’t the right words to tell him. Everything sounded horrible, shockingly painfully horrible. Wasn’t there a way to be casual when discussing adultery? She shook her head at her reflection in her sunglasses which she held in her lap to allow herself to practice a contrite expression, and then slipped them back on to shield her eyes. The cargo bay of the jet was huge and full of the sound of engines. Richard was up front with the pilot as they made their final approach into Hartland Forward Operating Base.
The entire plane ride she had sat, her back against one giant crate of munitions, and tried to figure out what exactly was going on. Oh, she definitely knew that the Mord-Sith had come to take their due, and decided to kidnap Kahlan along with it - but rather what was going on inside of her. Kahlan was a fantastic lay, and you could just tell from looking at her that she could get even freakier, but through their short, largely quiet cohabitation, she had come to mean something to Cara.
And that meant there would have to be a reckoning.
If any of them came out of this alive.
*
“Fuck,” Cara braced her arm against the crate beside her to keep from bouncing her skull against it as they taxied into Hartland. Before she could recover her rattled brain, Richard was standing over her, offering his hand to help her up. She took it, grunting something that might have been thanks. He slapped her soundly on the back.
“You’re looking a little pale, Cara, the ride not agree with you?” He was so damn friendly, and his smile was killing her.
She bit her lower lip to keep one of her rehearsed phrases from busting loose. Overall, it created a rather constipated look that Richard chose to interpret as illness from the flight. “I’ll find you some Pepto soon as we get out of this junker.”
The searing noon-day sun hit Cara full in her face. After the weather in Montana, she wasn’t really prepared for the blast of dry heat. Kahlan had gotten so far under her skin that her homeland felt foreign. She was in more trouble than she had realized.
They jogged off the shimmering blacktop and ducked into a low slung building. Rattling over-worked air conditioners heated the small, gray interior. Cara recognized the prefabricated design as the one’s that the American military used all over the desert. The middle of the room to which Richard led her was dominated by a long conference table, with a single man at the head - the head of Operation Seeker. Cara didn’t care much for the aging Colonel whom she considered more of a political animal than a soldier. Not that she hadn’t done her fair share of maneuvering, in and out of bed, to arrive at the exalted heights from which she fell - still she remembered what her primary focus in life was - being a warrior.
“Mason,” the Colonel stood up and offered her a thin hand which she shook firmly. “Nice to see you again.”
She nodded in reply.
Richard and the Colonel were positively verbose as they went over the endless maps and aerial photographs of Codename Temple where Cara was certain they had taken Kahlan. She zoned out. Their plan didn’t mean anything to her. She was going to do this her way, which is how she should have handled it in the first place. There wasn’t a corner, secret entrance or hole in that fortress that she didn’t personally know. The boys were planning to blow shit up, rush in wearing camo with a special ops force. Kahlan would be dead before they breached an exterior wall.
After three or four hours of that absolute crap, Cara yawned exaggeratedly drawing their attention back to her. “Just leave it to me. You guys keep your Green Berets.” She stood up. “Now, where’s the bed in this place. I need a nap before I go rescue your wife.”
*
Cara adjusted the Agiel at her hip and focused on her breathing. There were far too many guns strapped to her. She had to hold Kahlan’s face in her mind’s eye to stave off a panic attack as she checked the clip on her rifle and slung it over her shoulder. She filed that fact away for later when she could mull it over more fully. Now it was time to get shit done.
“Locked and loaded?” Cara could never understand why Richard felt the urge to ramble at times like this. “She’s going to be alright, right? Sure she will. Maybe I should take her on vacation after this - somewhere warm so she’ll have an excuse to wear a bikini.” The last thing Cara needed right then was to think about Kahlan in a swimsuit frolicking with Richard on a Caribbean beach.
He continued to chatter. Cara tuned him out. She wished desperately that the Jeep had a radio to drown him out with. On and on he went about Kahlan’s many virtues. They were still ten miles out when Cara hit the brakes throwing Richard into the dash. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear about your matrimonial angel. If you keep talking, I’m going to drive right into the front of Temple and beg them to shoot me in the head.”
Richard gave her a strange look, Cara figured it must mean that she hurt his feelings, but she wasn’t going to apologize. They rode in silence, punctuated by the growling of the tires as they spun through the soft sandy spots.
She parked the Jeep in the ravine that Richard had picked from his topographic maps. They covered the vehicle with a desert camo tarp and backtracked along their wheel ruts, brushing them smooth for about a quarter of a mile.
Richard finally broke the silence as they lay at the crest of a dune, studying their approach through field glasses. “Is something wrong?” He asked, glancing over at Cara to gauge her reaction to the question before turning back to his glasses.
“No, nothing. Obviously.” Cara could sneer with her voice better than anyone else. She had practically invented it. “I didn’t just spend a month in the middle of goddamn nowhere playing house with your mouthy fucking wife only to get attacked by Denna of all worthless excuses for a Mord-Sith and now you’ve drug me into the damn sand again. And I promised myself I’d never come back here. So, I’m peachy. Actually, I almost feel like breaking into a song and dance number I’m feeling so fine.”
That had to be the most she had ever said to Richard at one time. He looked pleased.
“Cara, you know I love you for taking care of her for me, and coming to help me.” He reached over to punch her lightly in the shoulder. “You’re my best friend.”
Too much emotion. Cara was not programmed or equipped to handle it. Guilt filled her mouth with a sour taste of bile
.