For Her Favor Part 13
For Her Favor, Pt. 13
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Cara/Dahlia, Denna/Snake, Denna/Leo. With Lorel and Kahlan.
Warnings: Extreme non-con, torture, Agiel violence, hurt/comfort, bdsm, gore, angst, Mord’Sith temper, domestic violence, evil!cara, language,
Author’s Note: AU. Snake trained Denna to be Mord'Sith.
Summary: Mistress Cara wants to own a Confessor. Dahlia wants to give her one.
Disclaimer: I only own my sickness. Not for profit, only for demented fun. Legend of the Seeker characters and depictions belong to Terry Goodkind, Disney and ABC Studios.
For Gizmo :D
A paled orange shadow of a fading daylight spread neatly across the sweat, blood, grime, skin and hair that had come to rest and settle on a training room floor. The two broken bodies that had once possessed these things and more laid off in one corner, piled on top of one another.
They were long past any salvation, their burdens decidedly over and their cries, however unique from one another had they been in life, were now forgotten and each of their purposes disregarded.
One had resisted worse than the other, the one that resembled Dahlia in the lips and shared the characteristic sadder edges of her eyes, but nonetheless, the same fate was handed to them with equal intent and finality.
Denna looked at the sponge in disgust and the bucket of water with even more disdain and repulsion. She had not scrubbed a floor in many years, though she had enjoyed watching the act itself, carried out by her numerous slaves and pets on steady hands and knees for their Mistress. Cleanliness was vital to Mord'Sith, and she was unsure how to begin.
She was beginning to realize that she needed to prove herself in another way, one that would involve yet more sacrifice, more blood, and greater risk. A Mord'Sith would understand that the means always justified the end. She couldn't lose that. Not now. Not ever.
She smoothed down the wrinkles at the front of her dress and jabbed the bucket lightly with the tips of her healing toes. The jolt of pain traveled up her leg but she moaned when it was lost somewhere at her empty stomach, unable to successfully reach her heart.
The sound of Lorel humming, carrying a measure of radiance and glee, spun Denna around and she sucked her teeth, raising one careful eyebrow, taking in her options with the refined scope of coarse malice and amused intrigue that usually influenced all of her actions and desires. She hurried to the door and into the shaded, bland and now darkening corridor.
"You. Come here."
Still accustomed to her former Mistress' commanding tone, Lorel stopped immediately, her voice caved into something dry and abandoned. "Yes, Mistr-," she caught herself before she turned around and artfully regrouped. "What is it, Denna?"
"I have something to show you," Denna said, flashing her sweetest smile, curling one finger and beckoning her.
Lorel looked around nervously, took a tentative step forward but paused. Denna's eyes looked thoughtless. "I can't."
"It concerns our Mistress Nathair. You wish to please her, do you not?"
Lorel burst forward, a lamb that had strayed from the pack, and shuddering as Denna slammed the door shut behind them. Escape, it seemed, meant little to Lorel. She didn't think in those terms.
"Kneel," Denna ordered, her eyes motioning the action in the empty space below her. The floor was littered with the mess the other Mistress' had so easily made.
"No," Lorel said, recoiling viciously at the very idea of it. It wasn't the scores of blood. It wasn't the pieces of flesh or all the liquids a body created while in the throws of certain death, it was the sole fact that she only dropped her eyes, knees, guard and heart for those above her, and never for a slave. That's what Denna was now.
Lorel had spent her entire life in the service of Lord Rahl and his Mord'Sith, and never once had a common hand touched her, and she had long vowed to herself that it never would.
Denna seized the back of Lorel's hair, instinctually inclined to enforce her command, but she stopped sharply, realizing something that nearly knocked her to her own knees. "You've gained weight," Denna sneered, ripping back her hand and circling Lorel, physically and mentally.
Lorel quickly folded both arms over her lower stomach and looked down with a quickness that she regretted halfway through. Denna halted immediately, following Lorel's own point of interest and with two of her fingers, she crept them along Lorel's forearm like an insect looking for the best way to feed but unable to find a suitable place to begin.
"Who did this to you?" Denna asked softly, forcing Lorel's arms from their protective shield and taking one of her of hands and kissing it's smooth top, licking a knuckle.
"I've been overindulging, Denna."
Denna smirked, "That's a clever word for what you've been doing."
Sheltered water stood still, but pliant, in Lorel's quaint expression as fear began it's tendency to flood and carry over into her movements as she nuzzled up to Denna's neck, drawing their bodies together like tools that could fix something broken. Lorel would bend the rules just this once, for Denna.
Suddenly uninterested, Denna turned her cheek and crossed her arms, and Lorel was left with little alternative other than to stand there silently, many degrees colder, bowing her head in familiar service.
"What do you ask of me?" Lorel whispered, as a worm edging itself into something soft and perishable.
"Kneel."
"Please, Denna...Mistress is waiting for me..."
With a clenched mouth and impatient hands, Denna wound her grip into Lorel's perfectly shined, combed and parted hair and allowed herself to enjoy the whimper that Lorel made as she was bended to her knees, and held there, her face too close to the bucket not to worry about Denna's potential plans for it.
"Lorel," Denna smiled, "I know we have had our share of…disagreements."
Lorel scoffed and it rippled the cold water. Denna rounded a softer fist into Lorel's face, silencing any breath.
The bodies seemed to need an audience. "Do you see them?" Denna asked, patting Lorel's head, crossing her arms as she made another circle.
Lorel nodded, her stomach reeling. Her happiness and faith hung somewhere partially in sight and she could almost see them as a rainbow, about to depart from the brightening sky and instead of seeing the disappearance, Denna made Lorel face the bodies again.
"They were simple...born from whores, raised in dirt, brought here to service a greater purpose...they were needed," Denna blinked over at them, "and they failed."
Lorel began to pull at the hem of her dress, pulling it up, ready to take it off, graciously prepared to give Denna whatever she required, requested or demanded. But Denna's stern smirk, her tone, and the firmness of her stance, stopped Lorel's hands, and almost her heart.
"The best things in life often come in threes. First there was Lord Rahl, Mistress Nathair, and me. Then... there was Mistress Cara, Mistress Dahlia and me. And now...it will be Mistress Nathair, me, and our child."
"What?!" Lorel cried, gasping on a strangled pool of tears and denial. Losing all sense of poise and concern, she grasped at Denna's ankle, "Please, Mistress! This child, Mistress Denna, please don't..." She couldn't even contemplate ending that sentence with any form of the word murder.
Denna snickered though her nose and exhaled. "You will go with my wizard through Balter Mountains, find Cara and Dahlia and warn them of the danger that approaches them. Understood?"
Lorel whimpered with one gargled question. "If I don't?"
"I will smother that thing the second you deliver her and other child you may dream of."
The horror rattled even through her eyelids. "But they are dead! Cara is dead, Dahlia is dead."
"They are alive," she promised, clenching one fist, contemplating a strike. "I know, you groveling whore. They are my Sisters..." Denna continued, icing over, "if their bodies grew cold, something inside me would've broken." She made one more angular circle. "But...I can easily break something inside you, now can't I?"
With shaky hands, Lorel steadied herself to keep upright. The decision was one that was stormed over them with a threatening silence, one that Denna had limited patience for as she crouched down next to Lorel, arrogantly tickling where her flesh was so delicately protruding. "I could end this life before it's even begun," Denna reminded her, invoking a sense of gratitude and adoration from Lorel's sobs and despair.
Denna had learned from her own Mistress. To own a slave like Lorel, to crumble them, strip them of their pride and induce their absolute dependency was easy as Mord'Sith. But for Lorel to see her as a Mistress again, to gaze up at her as if she were in full leather and wielding her Agiel with that damaging glow of fortitude, was one of the most intense rushes of her life, not solely because she missed it but because, above all else, it gave her hope.
"Yes...of course I will, Mistress..." Lorel wailed, gagging, throwing her arms around Denna, "I'll go. I'll do this for you."
"I know you will," Denna soothed her, moving the strap of Lorel's dress and kissing her pale shoulder. "Soon you will be free, save your tears. The world out there needs them more."
Lorel sniffled roughly, melting into Denna's graceful palms as they cleared away the liquid and doubt from her cheeks. The kiss Denna so briefly offered was meant to be a one of hurried comfort and reassurance but the relief was overpowering, and the reality had yet to close in on either of them. Denna stood up, keeping her hand firm on Lorel's trembling skull.
"First," Denna explained, "you are going to clean this floor and I will tend to Mistress Nathair."
***
Dahlia hesitated, pursing her lips for just a moment before she unlocked the cuffs, releasing Cara, and briskly deciding against her initial decision to let her crash and caught her unevenly, lowering them both to the floor.
The floor offered many things: coldness, firmness, steadiness, rest. But it could not offer anything that Cara wanted.
"Just because I love you, doesn't mean I need you," Cara snapped, wincing at Dahlia's tentative touch against her forehead but not deliberately struggling against it.
Although it ached to see herself in Cara's both battered and twisted expressions of doubt and uncertainty, Dahlia considered throwing her down, stomping on her, breaking each bone until Cara realized how wrong she had been, until the skies parted and turned back into day and Dahlia could see the sun again, and Cara would be young again.
"I know it hurts, Cara," Dahlia said, letting Cara squirm until the last of Dahlia's grip was relinquished and Cara was on the floor, on her back, as she liked. It was a small comfort, and a precise one.
Cara let her head rest firmly on the ground, closing her eyes as she felt Dahlia rising above her, towering to her feet. Words lacked all sense of existence. She hated Dahlia for this, loathed her from an angle that she had never quite expected, and realized that expectation could be just as much a gift as it was often a curse.
"Don't you wish to face me?" Dahlia asked, a sincere question posed respectfully.
Cara wished many things. She wished the throbbing in her head could subside long enough for any coherence, for the tears to retract backwards on the path which they had so rigorously spilled, for the floor not to feel more wonderful and embracing than Dahlia's arms had been and, above all, for the wisdom that could've prevented grossly miscalculating Dahlia's abilities and talents and perspective of love.
"Why are you doing this?" Cara asked. The voice was shaky, weak, more of a whimper than a line of thoughtful words. It hit Dahlia's ears like a blast of hot air and sizzled into her, twisting into her veins and softening her movements. Her eyes were still more black than blue, more hungry than bitter or rejecting.
"There is a time for everything. There is a time for consequence, for remembering things that once mattered to you. Honor, strength...and me. "
Cara gulped, Dahlia's still body in the darkened bed widened around her tears. "I know pain."
"Tell me you regret all you've done."
Cara blinked, and when her vision was renewed, she felt as honest and as pure as she had known in many years. "I regret nothing." Dahlia looked away, far past Cara's infuriating mouth as her voice continued. "While you wait for your apology, ask all the stars in the D'Haran sky not to shine."
"Even if it means me taking your life?"
"Especially if it means that."
Dahlia considered it. "You should've stayed at the Temple." The sweetness drained from her vocal chords. "You should've taken care of Kahlan. She would've fulfilled you had you given her a chance."
Cara huffed, turning away as far as her neck would endure. "We are Mord'Sith, Dahlia. We aren't like Kahlan. We aren't slaves."
"That is what we are. Nothing more. That's why our love depends on us. I wouldn't let it down, Cara, and neither can you."
Cara grumbled awkwardly, trying to pull herself up, but faltering horribly at the wrists and tumbling back down onto her cheek.
"All you're thinking about is punishment...to tie me up for saying a such a thing, aren't you?" Dahlia asked roughly, circling as she would any victim, any prisoner.
Cara snickered, her lips grazing the top of Dahlia's boot, more regal and intentionally than not. Dahlia crossed her arms with a dull grunt of frustration, preparing her Agiel for another round of what Cara so certainly deserved. She began to lower it, aiming for the soft bridge of Cara's nose. It only stopped within an inch.
She wasn't thinking about punishment, she was thinking about the way she felt safest when Dahlia's head was sleeping on her chest, when the noises of the Temple, even at their loudest, could be so easily ignored when the rhythm of Dahlia's breathing and heartbeats were so strong and so beautiful. Some things always seemed more eternal than they actually were.
"You dare compare yourself to a common pet?" Cara asked, finally looking up into the face she had loved all her life, on her own terms, by her own standards and with her entire heart.
The statement took something hard that was traveling and buoyant within Dahlia and slowly illuminated it.
"I haven't changed at all," Cara said, the honesty rippling the silence, "you only see me from a different point of view now. That's your problem." Cara shook a troubled tear that clung to the green of her sincerity and let her voice fall as low as the thought made her feel. "I love you just the same."
"Your cruelty has hardened any love within you...it's-"
"When I was twelve years old," she interrupted, "I overheard two guards making plans to have you that night..." Cara wiped her mouth, focused. "One of them said you had a beautiful face. I went to Denna and we snuck up behind each of them, slicing their throats with knives so dull they couldn't cut a piece of bread. The one I got...the one who wanted your face...his head rolled off. Lord Rahl's voice was approaching, Snake was calling on us and the blood of these men followed us down the hallway... but...we never looked back. If there had been ten guards, there would have been ten bodies. I would do whatever it takes to keep you in this world, Dahlia. I would even let you do all of this. Can you understand that?"
Dahlia kneeled down, puzzled by the blatant admission, numbed to her toes by it. She ran three fingers through Cara's dirtied heap of short hair. She believed her.
"If you love Denna," Cara said, pushing the rest of the painful sound through her injured and rotting lips, "go to her. Now."
Dahlia fluttered, unable to process the suggestion, unable to see anything but a fog that had filled within the most gentle corners of her vision.
"But," Cara added, connecting with the paleness of Dahlia's torment, "kill me first and run as fast as you can."
***
Mistress Nathair stood with her arms crossed in the harsh yellow light of the earliest morning hour. Sweat glistened her brow, and her mouth watered, spilling the sweeter parts of what she imagined she was tasting onto her lips. The day promised many things and held many pleasures, but keeping Denna on her back was the most pressing venture of them all.
The disappearances of Lorel and the wizard was little mystery to Snake. She liked to think she had even predicted this in full. She took an unimaginable dose of solace in knowing how well she had trained her Mord'Sith, and that, even when they fell, they could always find footing even when there was no bottom in sight.
Denna laid unevenly, her shoulder blades crashing back and forth hard into the floor as the slave, relying on only nods of approval from his towering Mistress, sped up or down according to her pointed desires. Denna was fighting him, more guttural with every thrust into her, and no matter how firmly he grabbed her sides, pressed at her hips or pulled her hair, she resisted as if escape was all there was for her. They both avoided one another's eyes.
"Leo..." Snake nodded, "don't you ever let a bitch squirm around on you." She indignantly shuffled her boot and only felt some level of satisfaction after it had kicked Denna's cheek for the third time.
Leo flipped Denna over, taking his Mistress' advice as fact, crushing Denna's bruising face into the floor and rocking her back into him with a newfound sense of confidence and strength. His goal hadn't been to hurt Denna, only to focus on his task, and if she suffered in the process, then it was just as well. He was ripping into her, his muscles unnecessarily flexed boyishly and convulsed with every exerted slam and grunt.
"Now doesn't that feel better than Dahlia?" Snake offered. "When you're a mother, you'll understand the finer points of consequence."
Denna bit her tongue with more reverence than she usually did, relishing the sensation of restraint as her body was pierced again by Leo, deeper and deeper as Snake's eyes grew impatient and expectant.
Leo took one look at his Mistress' narrowed eyelids and repositioned Denna against himself, twisting her with no regard for the ground, gripping her lower back with a agile pinch and renewed his resolve and his need. Denna exhaled, involuntarily whining as he pounded, and finally, with one frantic burst, he came into her and gasped a frenzied sigh of relief as she took it awkwardly and seamlessly, looking only at her own hands.
Leo softly ran his sturdy fingers along Denna's curves, inexplicably craving an intimacy that he was unsure of, and sorely embarrassed by. He laid her back down, careful not to drop her down on her belly, and looked to Snake for the delicate approval to pull out.
"Stay for just a moment longer," Snake smirked, kneeling down. "It should please me to remember the day that my child was conceived."
Leo's touch was gentle as it stroked though the cold, moistened mop that had become Denna's hair, attempting plainly to comfort her, and himself. She shook his hand away and wiped her face, the mucus from her nose and the thought from her mind. She told herself there would be no child today nor ever, and that it was merely a show, a demonstration of power and threat, and that her body would be smart enough to handle this swiftly and destroy the possibility.
Snake crouched down as low as she could go until she was eye to eye with Denna, and let her lips slide sensually over Denna's wet forehead, a gesture Cara had long mimicked on Dahlia, before she was ready to connect their mouths, reminding Denna how she kept her word, and with her tongue, owned every piece of Denna's dignity and regret, not shocked in the very least how anxiously Denna kissed her back.
If Denna could respect and love anything, Snake always realized, it was when a Mistress knew true punishment.
When she was satisfied, and not a second before, Snake knocked Leo off her pet with one single blow to the head and he toppled soundlessly backwards. Snake paid no mind to where he landed and instead focused on pulling Denna up into her lofty arms and hushing her.
"You will love my child," Snake said, smoothing out the frizz that had formed on the top of Denna's hairline and tapping on the purpled spot below Denna's eye. "Your love for it will even rival your love for me."
"I don't love you as much as you think," Denna spit, melting shyly against Snake's breast. It sounded like a lie, and it felt like a lie too.
Snake smiled, sucking mindfully on Denna's ear, caressing her palm into Denna's stomach. "Love needs no thought."
Denna blinked viciously, processing the concept with a steady hand of confusion, acceptance and contempt. She hated Snake for this threat of forced motherhood, hated the idea of any child, and hated herself for allowing Snake to have just cause to carry out such a possible punishment. The uncertainty of conception was the most torturous aspect of her sentence, and Snake surely knew that. Denna kept that knowledge close, and made her fold her into Snake's arms a little tighter because, had her Mistress truly wished it, a wizard could have been persuaded at any time to ensure the arrival of a new life on Snake's terms alone.
"Would you rather rest against me tonight..." Snake asked, then glaring dismissively at Leo, "or him?"
She was tormented by the reality of her own preference. "With you, Mistress."
Though she was no stranger to it, the pain of vocalizing the truth was even worse than how it felt. Snake was the worst kind of Mistress, for even in Denna's lowest moments of desperation and shame, there always seemed to be a level even below that, one that was ripe with all her shortcomings and all her childish sentiments. Her Mistress knew how to make her yearn for her mother like no one else that had ever lived.
"When you were a child," Snake said, soothing her down, stroking her back with most delicate of touch, "there was such little fear in your eyes. I miss that."
Denna considered the image, a speck of pride in knowing that her Mistress longed for something she once had. Then she darkened her vision, weakened it, hoping to escape the joy of the memory. "I don't want to be a mother."
"Comparative to how I didn't want your disobedience," Snake scoffed, and added as a snide afterthought, "I feel nothing like Dahlia."
"I thought all Mistresses knew a compliment when they heard one."
"Dahlia is the worst kind of lover," Snake replied, "she thinks about herself far too little."
A few silent moments fell upon them. Snake wondered about her child, it's quickening possibility. "Do you feel anything?" she asked, the curiosity blossoming the longer Denna laid upon her.
"No, Mistress," Denna replied honestly. She looked at a speck of blood on her forearm. "Other than I'd rather be anything than a mother."
"Quiet now, Denna," Snake replied, her voice gentle, primed with patience. "You can give birth a hundred times and still never be that."
Somehow, that was comfort. "Thank you," Denna murmured, only a glint of sarcasm, focusing more on the sensation of Snake's fingers along her backbone, how it scratched, tried to demean and cherish in the same unfettered instant.
Denna cleared her throat, hoping any more words would fade out before they grew. She wanted to tell Snake how she loathed her, resented being anything but Mord'Sith, despised children almost as much she despised this comfort for all it was, and for what it could never be. She hadn't dreamed in many nights.
"Do you still miss your Sisters?" Snake asked, a faint hum of a maternal exhale curled along with a lock of Denna's hair into Snake's hardened pinky.
Denna closed her eyes, a sleepiness washed into her spent skin. "All things end, Mistress. Even love." She clung to this thought, and no amount of longing for it to be any other way would change that truth.
"It's such a tragedy, isn't it, my sweet girl?"
"Only for those who are left behind."
***
Kahlan brought a bowl of soup to where Cara laid, alive but motionless, and watched as Dahlia continued to make steady, loud rounds about her. Her Agiel was reholstered, her nose reddened, her arms crossed like they could not be positioned in any other manner. She didn't look up, acknowledging Kahlan would've meant she had to take one eye off Cara, and Dahlia was supremely focused: she didn't even notice that the fire was about to be lost to the scratching darkness that had begun it's reign of empowerment.
"Where do you want this, Mistress?" Kahlan asked, dizzied by the sight of Mistress Cara, unsure if the food was meant for Cara or Dahlia, or if it was to be shared.
"Sit up, Cara," Dahlia said, itching her own forehead in frustration, "look what Kahlan has brought you."
Cara's eyes strained and squinted to see the offering. Food usually meant nothing to her, Dahlia knew this, but even a body as strong as Cara's needed it to keep itself sustained. Cara had to know this too. She was human. She was a woman. Dahlia needed to be reminded of this too. She needed to see Cara eat.
Dahlia took the bowl with one hand and with the other, stroked Kahlan's cheek with an affectionate pinch and nudged her away, directing her towards the room, far away from them. These times were not meant for her.
Only when the last of Kahlan's shadow whipped across the floor did Cara finally will herself to sit up, involuntarily shaking as she shifted all her weight onto one calloused forearm at first, realizing she'd need to devise a better plan. She realized, to do this, she needed Dahlia. To do anything in life properly, she needed her. For a potent moment, Dahlia saw this in the failing weakness of Cara's upward glance, in the subtle way her fingernails could not find anywhere to claw, and how each breath she expelled, seemed to wander in a hopeless drift.
Dahlia edged herself down onto her own knees and took Cara into her chest, putting the bowl at Cara's lips, gently tilting the bowl up and hoping it would empty fast.
They each anticipated a struggle, one of different sorts to define the strength of the other, but Cara calmly drank, and Dahlia finally discarded the bowl to the side and kissed softly at Cara's swelled temple, hoping each word could enter Cara's ear with all the loyalty, reverence and truth the closer her mouth lingered there.
"Cara..." Dahlia said, "if I loved Denna, you would be ten years in the Underworld now, your body rotting in the sea, my memories of you nothing more than a flash of a blonde child's smile."
Cara coughed, humbled by the intensity of her own inescapable tears, her own relief and her own blinding doubt. She wanted to believe Dahlia, to know her as seamlessly as she always felt she had...but sometimes, it occurred to her, that maybe to know Dahlia, was to know she couldn't know everything about her.
Cara only knew that, in the bitter darkness of this moment, that, even though her body was cracked, she loved Dahlia as solid as ever and that she was loved in return and that, no matter the odds, this was one thing that could not be broken, sold, or murdered. There was no cost involved. There was no profit to be had.
"Our love is like nature," Dahlia said, looking over the twists of knotted hair, "beautiful, mostly, but unable to ever recognize good or evil, only balance and imbalance. I need to restore balance, Cara. And I need to restore it now...whatever the price."
Dahlia's mind went somewhere high above them as she continued wearily, "I can't watch the life drain from your eyes," she whispered, "I can't bury you. But you...maybe should bury me."
Cara relaxed back into Dahlia's embrace, let the softness envelop her in a manner that she had not anticipated, allowing her body to know, despite all it's leaked blood and injuries, it was protected, and there was still life within her, even if was underneath all these things... and that could it be healed.
The thought of digging a wretched hole into the earth under the moonlight, throwing in Dahlia's limp body, hearing it's thud, and staring down at her blue lips before covering her with dirt, and knowing she would stay there forever, sickened her, killed something unspeakably fragile within her...and she knew, for the very first time, that redemption was something that she could believe in, on the one condition that she would be able to experience it with Dahlia, that she could make Dahlia proud again, whole again.
Cara breathed in, the scent of Dahlia's promises were better than the air itself, and it was the leather against Cara's bare skin that poured something hot and clear into her awkwardly beating heart. It was the knowledge that Dahlia had always been Mord'Sith that physically winded Cara, that Dahlia had learned from lessons that even Snake could never attempt because some of the bravest and cruelest lessons were taught and mastered out of love, and nothing else, and nothing less.
Dahlia laid them down together, thoughts of childhood filled each of them, they could almost hear Snake's breathing above them. "Dahlia," Cara started gently, "we never broke each other. You were never one that needed something to fix anyway. But...you bring out what I lack, nurture what I would destroy..."
"Cara...tell me that the worst is over, that you love me..."
"I wanted us to belong...Mord'Sith or not, the truth is rarely simple and almost never pure. But this is...the day I bury you is the day I would finally be broken."
***
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Cara/Dahlia, Denna/Snake, Denna/Leo. With Lorel and Kahlan.
Warnings: Extreme non-con, torture, Agiel violence, hurt/comfort, bdsm, gore, angst, Mord’Sith temper, domestic violence, evil!cara, language,
Author’s Note: AU. Snake trained Denna to be Mord'Sith.
Summary: Mistress Cara wants to own a Confessor. Dahlia wants to give her one.
Disclaimer: I only own my sickness. Not for profit, only for demented fun. Legend of the Seeker characters and depictions belong to Terry Goodkind, Disney and ABC Studios.
For Gizmo :D
A paled orange shadow of a fading daylight spread neatly across the sweat, blood, grime, skin and hair that had come to rest and settle on a training room floor. The two broken bodies that had once possessed these things and more laid off in one corner, piled on top of one another.
They were long past any salvation, their burdens decidedly over and their cries, however unique from one another had they been in life, were now forgotten and each of their purposes disregarded.
One had resisted worse than the other, the one that resembled Dahlia in the lips and shared the characteristic sadder edges of her eyes, but nonetheless, the same fate was handed to them with equal intent and finality.
Denna looked at the sponge in disgust and the bucket of water with even more disdain and repulsion. She had not scrubbed a floor in many years, though she had enjoyed watching the act itself, carried out by her numerous slaves and pets on steady hands and knees for their Mistress. Cleanliness was vital to Mord'Sith, and she was unsure how to begin.
She was beginning to realize that she needed to prove herself in another way, one that would involve yet more sacrifice, more blood, and greater risk. A Mord'Sith would understand that the means always justified the end. She couldn't lose that. Not now. Not ever.
She smoothed down the wrinkles at the front of her dress and jabbed the bucket lightly with the tips of her healing toes. The jolt of pain traveled up her leg but she moaned when it was lost somewhere at her empty stomach, unable to successfully reach her heart.
The sound of Lorel humming, carrying a measure of radiance and glee, spun Denna around and she sucked her teeth, raising one careful eyebrow, taking in her options with the refined scope of coarse malice and amused intrigue that usually influenced all of her actions and desires. She hurried to the door and into the shaded, bland and now darkening corridor.
"You. Come here."
Still accustomed to her former Mistress' commanding tone, Lorel stopped immediately, her voice caved into something dry and abandoned. "Yes, Mistr-," she caught herself before she turned around and artfully regrouped. "What is it, Denna?"
"I have something to show you," Denna said, flashing her sweetest smile, curling one finger and beckoning her.
Lorel looked around nervously, took a tentative step forward but paused. Denna's eyes looked thoughtless. "I can't."
"It concerns our Mistress Nathair. You wish to please her, do you not?"
Lorel burst forward, a lamb that had strayed from the pack, and shuddering as Denna slammed the door shut behind them. Escape, it seemed, meant little to Lorel. She didn't think in those terms.
"Kneel," Denna ordered, her eyes motioning the action in the empty space below her. The floor was littered with the mess the other Mistress' had so easily made.
"No," Lorel said, recoiling viciously at the very idea of it. It wasn't the scores of blood. It wasn't the pieces of flesh or all the liquids a body created while in the throws of certain death, it was the sole fact that she only dropped her eyes, knees, guard and heart for those above her, and never for a slave. That's what Denna was now.
Lorel had spent her entire life in the service of Lord Rahl and his Mord'Sith, and never once had a common hand touched her, and she had long vowed to herself that it never would.
Denna seized the back of Lorel's hair, instinctually inclined to enforce her command, but she stopped sharply, realizing something that nearly knocked her to her own knees. "You've gained weight," Denna sneered, ripping back her hand and circling Lorel, physically and mentally.
Lorel quickly folded both arms over her lower stomach and looked down with a quickness that she regretted halfway through. Denna halted immediately, following Lorel's own point of interest and with two of her fingers, she crept them along Lorel's forearm like an insect looking for the best way to feed but unable to find a suitable place to begin.
"Who did this to you?" Denna asked softly, forcing Lorel's arms from their protective shield and taking one of her of hands and kissing it's smooth top, licking a knuckle.
"I've been overindulging, Denna."
Denna smirked, "That's a clever word for what you've been doing."
Sheltered water stood still, but pliant, in Lorel's quaint expression as fear began it's tendency to flood and carry over into her movements as she nuzzled up to Denna's neck, drawing their bodies together like tools that could fix something broken. Lorel would bend the rules just this once, for Denna.
Suddenly uninterested, Denna turned her cheek and crossed her arms, and Lorel was left with little alternative other than to stand there silently, many degrees colder, bowing her head in familiar service.
"What do you ask of me?" Lorel whispered, as a worm edging itself into something soft and perishable.
"Kneel."
"Please, Denna...Mistress is waiting for me..."
With a clenched mouth and impatient hands, Denna wound her grip into Lorel's perfectly shined, combed and parted hair and allowed herself to enjoy the whimper that Lorel made as she was bended to her knees, and held there, her face too close to the bucket not to worry about Denna's potential plans for it.
"Lorel," Denna smiled, "I know we have had our share of…disagreements."
Lorel scoffed and it rippled the cold water. Denna rounded a softer fist into Lorel's face, silencing any breath.
The bodies seemed to need an audience. "Do you see them?" Denna asked, patting Lorel's head, crossing her arms as she made another circle.
Lorel nodded, her stomach reeling. Her happiness and faith hung somewhere partially in sight and she could almost see them as a rainbow, about to depart from the brightening sky and instead of seeing the disappearance, Denna made Lorel face the bodies again.
"They were simple...born from whores, raised in dirt, brought here to service a greater purpose...they were needed," Denna blinked over at them, "and they failed."
Lorel began to pull at the hem of her dress, pulling it up, ready to take it off, graciously prepared to give Denna whatever she required, requested or demanded. But Denna's stern smirk, her tone, and the firmness of her stance, stopped Lorel's hands, and almost her heart.
"The best things in life often come in threes. First there was Lord Rahl, Mistress Nathair, and me. Then... there was Mistress Cara, Mistress Dahlia and me. And now...it will be Mistress Nathair, me, and our child."
"What?!" Lorel cried, gasping on a strangled pool of tears and denial. Losing all sense of poise and concern, she grasped at Denna's ankle, "Please, Mistress! This child, Mistress Denna, please don't..." She couldn't even contemplate ending that sentence with any form of the word murder.
Denna snickered though her nose and exhaled. "You will go with my wizard through Balter Mountains, find Cara and Dahlia and warn them of the danger that approaches them. Understood?"
Lorel whimpered with one gargled question. "If I don't?"
"I will smother that thing the second you deliver her and other child you may dream of."
The horror rattled even through her eyelids. "But they are dead! Cara is dead, Dahlia is dead."
"They are alive," she promised, clenching one fist, contemplating a strike. "I know, you groveling whore. They are my Sisters..." Denna continued, icing over, "if their bodies grew cold, something inside me would've broken." She made one more angular circle. "But...I can easily break something inside you, now can't I?"
With shaky hands, Lorel steadied herself to keep upright. The decision was one that was stormed over them with a threatening silence, one that Denna had limited patience for as she crouched down next to Lorel, arrogantly tickling where her flesh was so delicately protruding. "I could end this life before it's even begun," Denna reminded her, invoking a sense of gratitude and adoration from Lorel's sobs and despair.
Denna had learned from her own Mistress. To own a slave like Lorel, to crumble them, strip them of their pride and induce their absolute dependency was easy as Mord'Sith. But for Lorel to see her as a Mistress again, to gaze up at her as if she were in full leather and wielding her Agiel with that damaging glow of fortitude, was one of the most intense rushes of her life, not solely because she missed it but because, above all else, it gave her hope.
"Yes...of course I will, Mistress..." Lorel wailed, gagging, throwing her arms around Denna, "I'll go. I'll do this for you."
"I know you will," Denna soothed her, moving the strap of Lorel's dress and kissing her pale shoulder. "Soon you will be free, save your tears. The world out there needs them more."
Lorel sniffled roughly, melting into Denna's graceful palms as they cleared away the liquid and doubt from her cheeks. The kiss Denna so briefly offered was meant to be a one of hurried comfort and reassurance but the relief was overpowering, and the reality had yet to close in on either of them. Denna stood up, keeping her hand firm on Lorel's trembling skull.
"First," Denna explained, "you are going to clean this floor and I will tend to Mistress Nathair."
***
Dahlia hesitated, pursing her lips for just a moment before she unlocked the cuffs, releasing Cara, and briskly deciding against her initial decision to let her crash and caught her unevenly, lowering them both to the floor.
The floor offered many things: coldness, firmness, steadiness, rest. But it could not offer anything that Cara wanted.
"Just because I love you, doesn't mean I need you," Cara snapped, wincing at Dahlia's tentative touch against her forehead but not deliberately struggling against it.
Although it ached to see herself in Cara's both battered and twisted expressions of doubt and uncertainty, Dahlia considered throwing her down, stomping on her, breaking each bone until Cara realized how wrong she had been, until the skies parted and turned back into day and Dahlia could see the sun again, and Cara would be young again.
"I know it hurts, Cara," Dahlia said, letting Cara squirm until the last of Dahlia's grip was relinquished and Cara was on the floor, on her back, as she liked. It was a small comfort, and a precise one.
Cara let her head rest firmly on the ground, closing her eyes as she felt Dahlia rising above her, towering to her feet. Words lacked all sense of existence. She hated Dahlia for this, loathed her from an angle that she had never quite expected, and realized that expectation could be just as much a gift as it was often a curse.
"Don't you wish to face me?" Dahlia asked, a sincere question posed respectfully.
Cara wished many things. She wished the throbbing in her head could subside long enough for any coherence, for the tears to retract backwards on the path which they had so rigorously spilled, for the floor not to feel more wonderful and embracing than Dahlia's arms had been and, above all, for the wisdom that could've prevented grossly miscalculating Dahlia's abilities and talents and perspective of love.
"Why are you doing this?" Cara asked. The voice was shaky, weak, more of a whimper than a line of thoughtful words. It hit Dahlia's ears like a blast of hot air and sizzled into her, twisting into her veins and softening her movements. Her eyes were still more black than blue, more hungry than bitter or rejecting.
"There is a time for everything. There is a time for consequence, for remembering things that once mattered to you. Honor, strength...and me. "
Cara gulped, Dahlia's still body in the darkened bed widened around her tears. "I know pain."
"Tell me you regret all you've done."
Cara blinked, and when her vision was renewed, she felt as honest and as pure as she had known in many years. "I regret nothing." Dahlia looked away, far past Cara's infuriating mouth as her voice continued. "While you wait for your apology, ask all the stars in the D'Haran sky not to shine."
"Even if it means me taking your life?"
"Especially if it means that."
Dahlia considered it. "You should've stayed at the Temple." The sweetness drained from her vocal chords. "You should've taken care of Kahlan. She would've fulfilled you had you given her a chance."
Cara huffed, turning away as far as her neck would endure. "We are Mord'Sith, Dahlia. We aren't like Kahlan. We aren't slaves."
"That is what we are. Nothing more. That's why our love depends on us. I wouldn't let it down, Cara, and neither can you."
Cara grumbled awkwardly, trying to pull herself up, but faltering horribly at the wrists and tumbling back down onto her cheek.
"All you're thinking about is punishment...to tie me up for saying a such a thing, aren't you?" Dahlia asked roughly, circling as she would any victim, any prisoner.
Cara snickered, her lips grazing the top of Dahlia's boot, more regal and intentionally than not. Dahlia crossed her arms with a dull grunt of frustration, preparing her Agiel for another round of what Cara so certainly deserved. She began to lower it, aiming for the soft bridge of Cara's nose. It only stopped within an inch.
She wasn't thinking about punishment, she was thinking about the way she felt safest when Dahlia's head was sleeping on her chest, when the noises of the Temple, even at their loudest, could be so easily ignored when the rhythm of Dahlia's breathing and heartbeats were so strong and so beautiful. Some things always seemed more eternal than they actually were.
"You dare compare yourself to a common pet?" Cara asked, finally looking up into the face she had loved all her life, on her own terms, by her own standards and with her entire heart.
The statement took something hard that was traveling and buoyant within Dahlia and slowly illuminated it.
"I haven't changed at all," Cara said, the honesty rippling the silence, "you only see me from a different point of view now. That's your problem." Cara shook a troubled tear that clung to the green of her sincerity and let her voice fall as low as the thought made her feel. "I love you just the same."
"Your cruelty has hardened any love within you...it's-"
"When I was twelve years old," she interrupted, "I overheard two guards making plans to have you that night..." Cara wiped her mouth, focused. "One of them said you had a beautiful face. I went to Denna and we snuck up behind each of them, slicing their throats with knives so dull they couldn't cut a piece of bread. The one I got...the one who wanted your face...his head rolled off. Lord Rahl's voice was approaching, Snake was calling on us and the blood of these men followed us down the hallway... but...we never looked back. If there had been ten guards, there would have been ten bodies. I would do whatever it takes to keep you in this world, Dahlia. I would even let you do all of this. Can you understand that?"
Dahlia kneeled down, puzzled by the blatant admission, numbed to her toes by it. She ran three fingers through Cara's dirtied heap of short hair. She believed her.
"If you love Denna," Cara said, pushing the rest of the painful sound through her injured and rotting lips, "go to her. Now."
Dahlia fluttered, unable to process the suggestion, unable to see anything but a fog that had filled within the most gentle corners of her vision.
"But," Cara added, connecting with the paleness of Dahlia's torment, "kill me first and run as fast as you can."
***
Mistress Nathair stood with her arms crossed in the harsh yellow light of the earliest morning hour. Sweat glistened her brow, and her mouth watered, spilling the sweeter parts of what she imagined she was tasting onto her lips. The day promised many things and held many pleasures, but keeping Denna on her back was the most pressing venture of them all.
The disappearances of Lorel and the wizard was little mystery to Snake. She liked to think she had even predicted this in full. She took an unimaginable dose of solace in knowing how well she had trained her Mord'Sith, and that, even when they fell, they could always find footing even when there was no bottom in sight.
Denna laid unevenly, her shoulder blades crashing back and forth hard into the floor as the slave, relying on only nods of approval from his towering Mistress, sped up or down according to her pointed desires. Denna was fighting him, more guttural with every thrust into her, and no matter how firmly he grabbed her sides, pressed at her hips or pulled her hair, she resisted as if escape was all there was for her. They both avoided one another's eyes.
"Leo..." Snake nodded, "don't you ever let a bitch squirm around on you." She indignantly shuffled her boot and only felt some level of satisfaction after it had kicked Denna's cheek for the third time.
Leo flipped Denna over, taking his Mistress' advice as fact, crushing Denna's bruising face into the floor and rocking her back into him with a newfound sense of confidence and strength. His goal hadn't been to hurt Denna, only to focus on his task, and if she suffered in the process, then it was just as well. He was ripping into her, his muscles unnecessarily flexed boyishly and convulsed with every exerted slam and grunt.
"Now doesn't that feel better than Dahlia?" Snake offered. "When you're a mother, you'll understand the finer points of consequence."
Denna bit her tongue with more reverence than she usually did, relishing the sensation of restraint as her body was pierced again by Leo, deeper and deeper as Snake's eyes grew impatient and expectant.
Leo took one look at his Mistress' narrowed eyelids and repositioned Denna against himself, twisting her with no regard for the ground, gripping her lower back with a agile pinch and renewed his resolve and his need. Denna exhaled, involuntarily whining as he pounded, and finally, with one frantic burst, he came into her and gasped a frenzied sigh of relief as she took it awkwardly and seamlessly, looking only at her own hands.
Leo softly ran his sturdy fingers along Denna's curves, inexplicably craving an intimacy that he was unsure of, and sorely embarrassed by. He laid her back down, careful not to drop her down on her belly, and looked to Snake for the delicate approval to pull out.
"Stay for just a moment longer," Snake smirked, kneeling down. "It should please me to remember the day that my child was conceived."
Leo's touch was gentle as it stroked though the cold, moistened mop that had become Denna's hair, attempting plainly to comfort her, and himself. She shook his hand away and wiped her face, the mucus from her nose and the thought from her mind. She told herself there would be no child today nor ever, and that it was merely a show, a demonstration of power and threat, and that her body would be smart enough to handle this swiftly and destroy the possibility.
Snake crouched down as low as she could go until she was eye to eye with Denna, and let her lips slide sensually over Denna's wet forehead, a gesture Cara had long mimicked on Dahlia, before she was ready to connect their mouths, reminding Denna how she kept her word, and with her tongue, owned every piece of Denna's dignity and regret, not shocked in the very least how anxiously Denna kissed her back.
If Denna could respect and love anything, Snake always realized, it was when a Mistress knew true punishment.
When she was satisfied, and not a second before, Snake knocked Leo off her pet with one single blow to the head and he toppled soundlessly backwards. Snake paid no mind to where he landed and instead focused on pulling Denna up into her lofty arms and hushing her.
"You will love my child," Snake said, smoothing out the frizz that had formed on the top of Denna's hairline and tapping on the purpled spot below Denna's eye. "Your love for it will even rival your love for me."
"I don't love you as much as you think," Denna spit, melting shyly against Snake's breast. It sounded like a lie, and it felt like a lie too.
Snake smiled, sucking mindfully on Denna's ear, caressing her palm into Denna's stomach. "Love needs no thought."
Denna blinked viciously, processing the concept with a steady hand of confusion, acceptance and contempt. She hated Snake for this threat of forced motherhood, hated the idea of any child, and hated herself for allowing Snake to have just cause to carry out such a possible punishment. The uncertainty of conception was the most torturous aspect of her sentence, and Snake surely knew that. Denna kept that knowledge close, and made her fold her into Snake's arms a little tighter because, had her Mistress truly wished it, a wizard could have been persuaded at any time to ensure the arrival of a new life on Snake's terms alone.
"Would you rather rest against me tonight..." Snake asked, then glaring dismissively at Leo, "or him?"
She was tormented by the reality of her own preference. "With you, Mistress."
Though she was no stranger to it, the pain of vocalizing the truth was even worse than how it felt. Snake was the worst kind of Mistress, for even in Denna's lowest moments of desperation and shame, there always seemed to be a level even below that, one that was ripe with all her shortcomings and all her childish sentiments. Her Mistress knew how to make her yearn for her mother like no one else that had ever lived.
"When you were a child," Snake said, soothing her down, stroking her back with most delicate of touch, "there was such little fear in your eyes. I miss that."
Denna considered the image, a speck of pride in knowing that her Mistress longed for something she once had. Then she darkened her vision, weakened it, hoping to escape the joy of the memory. "I don't want to be a mother."
"Comparative to how I didn't want your disobedience," Snake scoffed, and added as a snide afterthought, "I feel nothing like Dahlia."
"I thought all Mistresses knew a compliment when they heard one."
"Dahlia is the worst kind of lover," Snake replied, "she thinks about herself far too little."
A few silent moments fell upon them. Snake wondered about her child, it's quickening possibility. "Do you feel anything?" she asked, the curiosity blossoming the longer Denna laid upon her.
"No, Mistress," Denna replied honestly. She looked at a speck of blood on her forearm. "Other than I'd rather be anything than a mother."
"Quiet now, Denna," Snake replied, her voice gentle, primed with patience. "You can give birth a hundred times and still never be that."
Somehow, that was comfort. "Thank you," Denna murmured, only a glint of sarcasm, focusing more on the sensation of Snake's fingers along her backbone, how it scratched, tried to demean and cherish in the same unfettered instant.
Denna cleared her throat, hoping any more words would fade out before they grew. She wanted to tell Snake how she loathed her, resented being anything but Mord'Sith, despised children almost as much she despised this comfort for all it was, and for what it could never be. She hadn't dreamed in many nights.
"Do you still miss your Sisters?" Snake asked, a faint hum of a maternal exhale curled along with a lock of Denna's hair into Snake's hardened pinky.
Denna closed her eyes, a sleepiness washed into her spent skin. "All things end, Mistress. Even love." She clung to this thought, and no amount of longing for it to be any other way would change that truth.
"It's such a tragedy, isn't it, my sweet girl?"
"Only for those who are left behind."
***
Kahlan brought a bowl of soup to where Cara laid, alive but motionless, and watched as Dahlia continued to make steady, loud rounds about her. Her Agiel was reholstered, her nose reddened, her arms crossed like they could not be positioned in any other manner. She didn't look up, acknowledging Kahlan would've meant she had to take one eye off Cara, and Dahlia was supremely focused: she didn't even notice that the fire was about to be lost to the scratching darkness that had begun it's reign of empowerment.
"Where do you want this, Mistress?" Kahlan asked, dizzied by the sight of Mistress Cara, unsure if the food was meant for Cara or Dahlia, or if it was to be shared.
"Sit up, Cara," Dahlia said, itching her own forehead in frustration, "look what Kahlan has brought you."
Cara's eyes strained and squinted to see the offering. Food usually meant nothing to her, Dahlia knew this, but even a body as strong as Cara's needed it to keep itself sustained. Cara had to know this too. She was human. She was a woman. Dahlia needed to be reminded of this too. She needed to see Cara eat.
Dahlia took the bowl with one hand and with the other, stroked Kahlan's cheek with an affectionate pinch and nudged her away, directing her towards the room, far away from them. These times were not meant for her.
Only when the last of Kahlan's shadow whipped across the floor did Cara finally will herself to sit up, involuntarily shaking as she shifted all her weight onto one calloused forearm at first, realizing she'd need to devise a better plan. She realized, to do this, she needed Dahlia. To do anything in life properly, she needed her. For a potent moment, Dahlia saw this in the failing weakness of Cara's upward glance, in the subtle way her fingernails could not find anywhere to claw, and how each breath she expelled, seemed to wander in a hopeless drift.
Dahlia edged herself down onto her own knees and took Cara into her chest, putting the bowl at Cara's lips, gently tilting the bowl up and hoping it would empty fast.
They each anticipated a struggle, one of different sorts to define the strength of the other, but Cara calmly drank, and Dahlia finally discarded the bowl to the side and kissed softly at Cara's swelled temple, hoping each word could enter Cara's ear with all the loyalty, reverence and truth the closer her mouth lingered there.
"Cara..." Dahlia said, "if I loved Denna, you would be ten years in the Underworld now, your body rotting in the sea, my memories of you nothing more than a flash of a blonde child's smile."
Cara coughed, humbled by the intensity of her own inescapable tears, her own relief and her own blinding doubt. She wanted to believe Dahlia, to know her as seamlessly as she always felt she had...but sometimes, it occurred to her, that maybe to know Dahlia, was to know she couldn't know everything about her.
Cara only knew that, in the bitter darkness of this moment, that, even though her body was cracked, she loved Dahlia as solid as ever and that she was loved in return and that, no matter the odds, this was one thing that could not be broken, sold, or murdered. There was no cost involved. There was no profit to be had.
"Our love is like nature," Dahlia said, looking over the twists of knotted hair, "beautiful, mostly, but unable to ever recognize good or evil, only balance and imbalance. I need to restore balance, Cara. And I need to restore it now...whatever the price."
Dahlia's mind went somewhere high above them as she continued wearily, "I can't watch the life drain from your eyes," she whispered, "I can't bury you. But you...maybe should bury me."
Cara relaxed back into Dahlia's embrace, let the softness envelop her in a manner that she had not anticipated, allowing her body to know, despite all it's leaked blood and injuries, it was protected, and there was still life within her, even if was underneath all these things... and that could it be healed.
The thought of digging a wretched hole into the earth under the moonlight, throwing in Dahlia's limp body, hearing it's thud, and staring down at her blue lips before covering her with dirt, and knowing she would stay there forever, sickened her, killed something unspeakably fragile within her...and she knew, for the very first time, that redemption was something that she could believe in, on the one condition that she would be able to experience it with Dahlia, that she could make Dahlia proud again, whole again.
Cara breathed in, the scent of Dahlia's promises were better than the air itself, and it was the leather against Cara's bare skin that poured something hot and clear into her awkwardly beating heart. It was the knowledge that Dahlia had always been Mord'Sith that physically winded Cara, that Dahlia had learned from lessons that even Snake could never attempt because some of the bravest and cruelest lessons were taught and mastered out of love, and nothing else, and nothing less.
Dahlia laid them down together, thoughts of childhood filled each of them, they could almost hear Snake's breathing above them. "Dahlia," Cara started gently, "we never broke each other. You were never one that needed something to fix anyway. But...you bring out what I lack, nurture what I would destroy..."
"Cara...tell me that the worst is over, that you love me..."
"I wanted us to belong...Mord'Sith or not, the truth is rarely simple and almost never pure. But this is...the day I bury you is the day I would finally be broken."
***