fic: storm born - chapter forty-four
Title: Storm Born
Author: Morgen
Summary: It was supposed to be their one chance to be together. Instead it plunged them straight into a nightmare.
Disclaimer: I don't own LOTS or profit from it in any way. Just worship it from afar.
Rating: PG-14
XLIV. MOTHER
Kahlan breathed in slow and tentative. It hurt. She couldn’t remember it ever hurting so just to breathe. She kept her eyes shut because it had taken a monumental effort to lift her eyelids, and she wasn’t sure she could do it again. Her throat felt like an open wound, and she longed for more water, but even requesting another drink seemed, in that moment, the equivalent of scaling a mountain with her bare hands.
And so she just lay there, relishing the feel of Richard’s hand holding hers tight. He was her anchor, and all else was adrift. Her thoughts were muddled by the pain, and she was so, so tired. It was in her bones, a draining away of everything good, like when she’d lain there on the floor of the Underworld, certain she would die. Perhaps she had died, and this was the afterlife. Only the room seemed too unremarkable, and Richard too haggard for that. Her feet were too cold, her blankets too itchy. She had to be alive.
Wincing her way through another breath, Kahlan tried to think. The last thing she remembered was the birth of her daughter. She felt different now without her there; hollowed out, almost empty. For a moment she lay there awash in sorrow, missing the life inside her. A desperate whine picked up inside her head, her thoughts racing faster. Her daughter was gone from her. No longer safe. Cara had held her, and then Zedd. She hadn’t… She hadn’t been breathing.
Her eyes flew open. Richard was right there, a disheveled ghost of himself with dark circles beneath his eyes. What had happened to him? But the only two words she could form were a frantic question, “The baby?”
He understood at once. She knew he would. He smiled at her, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “She’s well,” he said. “She’s perfect. She’s here in the room.” Richard glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, towards a part of the room she couldn’t see while lying flat on her back. He stood up, letting go of her hand. “I’ll get her.”
Yes. Get her. That was what she needed. What she wanted to say next, if she hadn’t still been trying to summon the energy to speak again. She watched Richard cross carefully back to her bed, carrying a tiny bundle in his arms. He settled on the stool and beamed down at her.
“This is our daughter,” he said softly, with more pride than she’d ever heard before in his voice. And then he was leaning over and setting the little creature right on her chest. She was a tiny thing. An insignificant, precious weight between her breasts. Kahlan felt her draw in a soft, hushed breath.
“Oh,” she moaned, smiling wonder down at the little, delicate face. Her daughter stared silently up at her with impossibly dark eyes. “Oh…hi.” A tear rolled down her cheek. It took all her strength, but she lifted her hand up to rest against her daughter’s back. Reverently she reached her fingers up, and stroked her silky hair.
She felt growing in her chest a feeling far fiercer than any she had known before. A deep, unfathomable love that eclipsed the world. It seemed to her that her heart now existed outside her body, locked forever inside this little person. She needed only to be there with her for there to be meaning. And yet she had tried to kill her; she had clenched her legs together and screamed and begged for death. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the memory that it had been to spare her from the Keeper popped up, and she clung to it. The alternative was to drown beneath a black wave of misery and grief.
They were here now, and they were safe. She hoped only that her daughter somehow understood. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I love you.” As if in answer, her daughter reached for a lock of her hair, clutching it tight in her little fist. The sight made her so happy, she thought she might weep. This must have been how her own mother had felt when she and Dennee had been young. She had never really understood before.
She stared at her child, and her child stared back, and she never wanted to move from this moment.
Finally she glanced over at Richard. He was a part of this too. She wanted to see if he was feeling as she was. He sat with his hand pressed over his mouth, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. He saw her looking and shook his head. “I…” His voice cracked. “It’s the first time you’ve held her.”
Kahlan smiled and closed her eyes. She wanted to ask what had happened to make him look so fragile and scarred, but even holding a hand to her daughter’s back was wearying.
Richard cleared his throat again, scooting the stool closer to the bed. “I, I named her Amara. We can change it if you like. I know we were going to name her together. I waited, but I…” He faltered again, and she forced her eyes open, taking in his unwashed appearance. He had far more of a beard than she remembered. His hair was wild, his eyes red. It looked as if he had not slept in weeks.
Something clicked into place in her mind, and she asked, “How long?” How many hours had he been keeping vigil at her bedside.
“Today is the tenth day. I named her this morning.”
Ten days. She’d lost well over a week, the very first week of her daughter’s life. She felt a pang of sorrow in her chest, and looked down at the little baby. But it was her own hand that jumped out at her. Lying there against the soft, rounded body of her child, she barely recognized it as her own. It looked withered and skeletal. Just skin stretched tight over bone.
“I’m supposed to be dead.” It wasn’t a question.
Richard looked at her helplessly before nodding his head. “Zedd told me you’d never wake up. I didn’t want to believe him, but…” He trailed off. But she’d been turning into a skeleton before his very eyes. Her hand alone gave her shivers; she feared to see the rest of herself.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. She would have lost her mind watching him die one day at a time.
But he looked heartbroken at that. “No, no,” he said over and over again. “Don’t be sorry. Just keep breathing.”
She wanted to smile then for his sake, but it took too much effort. All she could do was what he asked; she drew in another raw, painful breath.
For a long time she just lay there, breathing in, trying to gather the strength to speak again. This time she kept her eyes closed. It was a little less tiring that way. “So,” she whispered. “Amara?”
“Yes.” He sounded tentative, almost as scared as he’d been of her right after Amara had been conceived. “Amara Amnell, if you like.”
“No,” she breathed. And she knew if she opened her eyes, his face would be a web of grief. Kahlan forced herself to speak swiftly though her throat felt skinned raw. “Amara Amnell Rahl. Ours.”
“Ours.” He was grinning now, of that she was certain. They had a daughter, and her name was Amara.
“Richard…” There was so much more she wanted to say to him, but she felt as if she were drifting away.
He seemed to understand, and smoothed back the hair from her brow with a large, warm hand. “Shh, it’s okay. Sleep. There will be time. There will be plenty of time.”
“Stay?”
He took hold of her hand. “Always.”
---
When she awoke again, Richard held her up and made her eat and drink. Another woman had taken away her daughter to nurse her, and that made her want to weep, but it also made her swallow a fourth spoonful of gruel when her throat cried out after three. Richard promised her that her milk would come back if she would only eat.
She dozed off again soon after her required three sips of water, though she’d meant to talk with him awhile. She drifted through a hazy cycle of sleeping and swallowing spoonfuls of gruel and sips of water. Time passed, but she couldn’t track it. She thought she saw Zedd at one point. Then Cara. Always Richard, though. Always Richard, and usually Amara.
The next time she was fully aware of being awake, it was dim in the room. Outside the window, the sky was a dusky blue, and the fire painted long shadows on the walls. She heard a low voice, softly crooning what sounded like a lullaby. The melody rose and fell, and wrapped her up warm like a cocoon. When she turned her head, she saw Richard standing a little ways off, rocking their daughter in his arms as he sung to her. She said nothing, content just to watch the two of them together in their private moment.
When he glanced her way, the song died on his lips. “You’re awake.” He was at her side in an instant. “How are you? How do you feel?”
She looked up at him, her eyes taking time to focus in the dim light. He’d bathed recently, and his hair was no longer so wild, but he still had the beard. And his eyes were still so frightened. She lifted a hand to touch his cheek, wishing she could wipe all his worry away.
But he was still waiting nervously for her answer. “Better,” she said. Her voice was a little stronger now, but her throat still felt tender when she swallowed. She smiled at him anyway. “A little better. Amara?”
He looked down at the babe in his arms. “Just fell asleep. Let me set her down, and then I’ll get your food.” She watched as he pressed a kiss to Amara’s brow and lowered her carefully into the cradle. He’d dragged it over closer to the bed, and she liked that. She didn’t think she could ever bear to be far from Amara.
“There.” Richard straightened up. “You’ll eat more, right?” he asked, already moving to fetch the bowl of thin, tasteless gruel. “You need to eat.”
She made a face, but nodded. Soon he was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her up against him with one hand, and spooning out gruel with the other. “Zedd’s promised a few more days, and you can move on to something that tastes better,” he said as she dutifully swallowed her mouthfuls.
It felt wonderful resting against him, but all too soon, the room started to spin. Her head drooped against his chest. “Down,” she whimpered when she could stand it no longer, trying not to look at her awful, bony hands. He did as she asked, already practiced at just how to turn to set her quickly and gently back down on the mattress. She lay there, breathing hard. There was a clunk as he placed the bowl on the floor. This was where sleep usually came rolling in, but this time it didn’t take her.
At last her heart stopped racing, and Kahlan found she could speak. “How many days,” she whispered, “since I first woke up?”
“Four.”
Four more days. Time seemed to always be slipping away from her now. “What happened to me? Why… Is this all from the birth?”
Richard’s face darkened, though he tried to hide it with a thin smile. “No. Zedd healed you from the birth already.”
“Then what?”
He took a deep breath. “It’s the Underworld. Being down there made you sick. Zedd said it was like a poison in you that he couldn’t draw out.”
Kahlan grimaced. “The Sisters of the Dark made me drink something, before they took me into the Underworld.” And she’d drank their poison without a second thought. “I was so foolish,” she said angrily, but Richard shook his head.
“Don’t start that game. Isobel betrayed you.” He fidgeted with the edge of her blanket. “Maybe this is how it had to work out. For the prophecy to be fulfilled.”
She stared up at him in astonishment. “You don’t believe in prophecy.”
Richard shook his head. “It showed me how to get to you. I never would have found you without it…” He trailed off, a lost look in his eyes.
“How did you find me?” she asked, realizing that she did not actually know. She hadn’t had the strength to wonder when he’d finally appeared before her. “I was in the Underworld. Rahl closed the way behind me. How did you get there?”
“I died.” He spoke as if it was a simple answer, but her heart began to beat faster. She forgot the pain in her throat and the heavy weariness cloaking every limb.
“You died? You died…in battle?”
He looked away. “With the Sword of Truth.”
“With the sword?” she echoed, and then the answer was there in her hands. He had killed himself to come after. “Oh, Richard.” She reached for him, weaving her fingers with his. “You shouldn’t have. Not for my sake.”
“Don’t tell me that.” His voice was hard, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were filled with dark, dangerous things. “You were gone, Kahlan. My daughter was gone. I was already dead.”
The corners of her eyes pricked with tears. She struggled to sit up, lifting her weight with arms that felt like brittle twigs, about to break. She made it halfway to him before she pitched forward, blackness blotting out her vision in a sudden swoop. His arms caught her before she could tumble off the mattress, and then he was cradling her close and laying her down.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. You’re only supposed to rest. It’s okay. It’s all okay.” She felt a teardrop land with a wet splat upon her cheek. “Please be okay.”
She wanted to open her eyes and tell him she was fine, but she couldn’t push the blackness back. It kept coming in stronger waves, dragging her under until she could not resist, and then she slept.
Author: Morgen
Summary: It was supposed to be their one chance to be together. Instead it plunged them straight into a nightmare.
Disclaimer: I don't own LOTS or profit from it in any way. Just worship it from afar.
Rating: PG-14
XLIV. MOTHER
Kahlan breathed in slow and tentative. It hurt. She couldn’t remember it ever hurting so just to breathe. She kept her eyes shut because it had taken a monumental effort to lift her eyelids, and she wasn’t sure she could do it again. Her throat felt like an open wound, and she longed for more water, but even requesting another drink seemed, in that moment, the equivalent of scaling a mountain with her bare hands.
And so she just lay there, relishing the feel of Richard’s hand holding hers tight. He was her anchor, and all else was adrift. Her thoughts were muddled by the pain, and she was so, so tired. It was in her bones, a draining away of everything good, like when she’d lain there on the floor of the Underworld, certain she would die. Perhaps she had died, and this was the afterlife. Only the room seemed too unremarkable, and Richard too haggard for that. Her feet were too cold, her blankets too itchy. She had to be alive.
Wincing her way through another breath, Kahlan tried to think. The last thing she remembered was the birth of her daughter. She felt different now without her there; hollowed out, almost empty. For a moment she lay there awash in sorrow, missing the life inside her. A desperate whine picked up inside her head, her thoughts racing faster. Her daughter was gone from her. No longer safe. Cara had held her, and then Zedd. She hadn’t… She hadn’t been breathing.
Her eyes flew open. Richard was right there, a disheveled ghost of himself with dark circles beneath his eyes. What had happened to him? But the only two words she could form were a frantic question, “The baby?”
He understood at once. She knew he would. He smiled at her, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “She’s well,” he said. “She’s perfect. She’s here in the room.” Richard glanced over his shoulder as he spoke, towards a part of the room she couldn’t see while lying flat on her back. He stood up, letting go of her hand. “I’ll get her.”
Yes. Get her. That was what she needed. What she wanted to say next, if she hadn’t still been trying to summon the energy to speak again. She watched Richard cross carefully back to her bed, carrying a tiny bundle in his arms. He settled on the stool and beamed down at her.
“This is our daughter,” he said softly, with more pride than she’d ever heard before in his voice. And then he was leaning over and setting the little creature right on her chest. She was a tiny thing. An insignificant, precious weight between her breasts. Kahlan felt her draw in a soft, hushed breath.
“Oh,” she moaned, smiling wonder down at the little, delicate face. Her daughter stared silently up at her with impossibly dark eyes. “Oh…hi.” A tear rolled down her cheek. It took all her strength, but she lifted her hand up to rest against her daughter’s back. Reverently she reached her fingers up, and stroked her silky hair.
She felt growing in her chest a feeling far fiercer than any she had known before. A deep, unfathomable love that eclipsed the world. It seemed to her that her heart now existed outside her body, locked forever inside this little person. She needed only to be there with her for there to be meaning. And yet she had tried to kill her; she had clenched her legs together and screamed and begged for death. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the memory that it had been to spare her from the Keeper popped up, and she clung to it. The alternative was to drown beneath a black wave of misery and grief.
They were here now, and they were safe. She hoped only that her daughter somehow understood. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I love you.” As if in answer, her daughter reached for a lock of her hair, clutching it tight in her little fist. The sight made her so happy, she thought she might weep. This must have been how her own mother had felt when she and Dennee had been young. She had never really understood before.
She stared at her child, and her child stared back, and she never wanted to move from this moment.
Finally she glanced over at Richard. He was a part of this too. She wanted to see if he was feeling as she was. He sat with his hand pressed over his mouth, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. He saw her looking and shook his head. “I…” His voice cracked. “It’s the first time you’ve held her.”
Kahlan smiled and closed her eyes. She wanted to ask what had happened to make him look so fragile and scarred, but even holding a hand to her daughter’s back was wearying.
Richard cleared his throat again, scooting the stool closer to the bed. “I, I named her Amara. We can change it if you like. I know we were going to name her together. I waited, but I…” He faltered again, and she forced her eyes open, taking in his unwashed appearance. He had far more of a beard than she remembered. His hair was wild, his eyes red. It looked as if he had not slept in weeks.
Something clicked into place in her mind, and she asked, “How long?” How many hours had he been keeping vigil at her bedside.
“Today is the tenth day. I named her this morning.”
Ten days. She’d lost well over a week, the very first week of her daughter’s life. She felt a pang of sorrow in her chest, and looked down at the little baby. But it was her own hand that jumped out at her. Lying there against the soft, rounded body of her child, she barely recognized it as her own. It looked withered and skeletal. Just skin stretched tight over bone.
“I’m supposed to be dead.” It wasn’t a question.
Richard looked at her helplessly before nodding his head. “Zedd told me you’d never wake up. I didn’t want to believe him, but…” He trailed off. But she’d been turning into a skeleton before his very eyes. Her hand alone gave her shivers; she feared to see the rest of herself.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. She would have lost her mind watching him die one day at a time.
But he looked heartbroken at that. “No, no,” he said over and over again. “Don’t be sorry. Just keep breathing.”
She wanted to smile then for his sake, but it took too much effort. All she could do was what he asked; she drew in another raw, painful breath.
For a long time she just lay there, breathing in, trying to gather the strength to speak again. This time she kept her eyes closed. It was a little less tiring that way. “So,” she whispered. “Amara?”
“Yes.” He sounded tentative, almost as scared as he’d been of her right after Amara had been conceived. “Amara Amnell, if you like.”
“No,” she breathed. And she knew if she opened her eyes, his face would be a web of grief. Kahlan forced herself to speak swiftly though her throat felt skinned raw. “Amara Amnell Rahl. Ours.”
“Ours.” He was grinning now, of that she was certain. They had a daughter, and her name was Amara.
“Richard…” There was so much more she wanted to say to him, but she felt as if she were drifting away.
He seemed to understand, and smoothed back the hair from her brow with a large, warm hand. “Shh, it’s okay. Sleep. There will be time. There will be plenty of time.”
“Stay?”
He took hold of her hand. “Always.”
---
When she awoke again, Richard held her up and made her eat and drink. Another woman had taken away her daughter to nurse her, and that made her want to weep, but it also made her swallow a fourth spoonful of gruel when her throat cried out after three. Richard promised her that her milk would come back if she would only eat.
She dozed off again soon after her required three sips of water, though she’d meant to talk with him awhile. She drifted through a hazy cycle of sleeping and swallowing spoonfuls of gruel and sips of water. Time passed, but she couldn’t track it. She thought she saw Zedd at one point. Then Cara. Always Richard, though. Always Richard, and usually Amara.
The next time she was fully aware of being awake, it was dim in the room. Outside the window, the sky was a dusky blue, and the fire painted long shadows on the walls. She heard a low voice, softly crooning what sounded like a lullaby. The melody rose and fell, and wrapped her up warm like a cocoon. When she turned her head, she saw Richard standing a little ways off, rocking their daughter in his arms as he sung to her. She said nothing, content just to watch the two of them together in their private moment.
When he glanced her way, the song died on his lips. “You’re awake.” He was at her side in an instant. “How are you? How do you feel?”
She looked up at him, her eyes taking time to focus in the dim light. He’d bathed recently, and his hair was no longer so wild, but he still had the beard. And his eyes were still so frightened. She lifted a hand to touch his cheek, wishing she could wipe all his worry away.
But he was still waiting nervously for her answer. “Better,” she said. Her voice was a little stronger now, but her throat still felt tender when she swallowed. She smiled at him anyway. “A little better. Amara?”
He looked down at the babe in his arms. “Just fell asleep. Let me set her down, and then I’ll get your food.” She watched as he pressed a kiss to Amara’s brow and lowered her carefully into the cradle. He’d dragged it over closer to the bed, and she liked that. She didn’t think she could ever bear to be far from Amara.
“There.” Richard straightened up. “You’ll eat more, right?” he asked, already moving to fetch the bowl of thin, tasteless gruel. “You need to eat.”
She made a face, but nodded. Soon he was seated on the edge of the bed, holding her up against him with one hand, and spooning out gruel with the other. “Zedd’s promised a few more days, and you can move on to something that tastes better,” he said as she dutifully swallowed her mouthfuls.
It felt wonderful resting against him, but all too soon, the room started to spin. Her head drooped against his chest. “Down,” she whimpered when she could stand it no longer, trying not to look at her awful, bony hands. He did as she asked, already practiced at just how to turn to set her quickly and gently back down on the mattress. She lay there, breathing hard. There was a clunk as he placed the bowl on the floor. This was where sleep usually came rolling in, but this time it didn’t take her.
At last her heart stopped racing, and Kahlan found she could speak. “How many days,” she whispered, “since I first woke up?”
“Four.”
Four more days. Time seemed to always be slipping away from her now. “What happened to me? Why… Is this all from the birth?”
Richard’s face darkened, though he tried to hide it with a thin smile. “No. Zedd healed you from the birth already.”
“Then what?”
He took a deep breath. “It’s the Underworld. Being down there made you sick. Zedd said it was like a poison in you that he couldn’t draw out.”
Kahlan grimaced. “The Sisters of the Dark made me drink something, before they took me into the Underworld.” And she’d drank their poison without a second thought. “I was so foolish,” she said angrily, but Richard shook his head.
“Don’t start that game. Isobel betrayed you.” He fidgeted with the edge of her blanket. “Maybe this is how it had to work out. For the prophecy to be fulfilled.”
She stared up at him in astonishment. “You don’t believe in prophecy.”
Richard shook his head. “It showed me how to get to you. I never would have found you without it…” He trailed off, a lost look in his eyes.
“How did you find me?” she asked, realizing that she did not actually know. She hadn’t had the strength to wonder when he’d finally appeared before her. “I was in the Underworld. Rahl closed the way behind me. How did you get there?”
“I died.” He spoke as if it was a simple answer, but her heart began to beat faster. She forgot the pain in her throat and the heavy weariness cloaking every limb.
“You died? You died…in battle?”
He looked away. “With the Sword of Truth.”
“With the sword?” she echoed, and then the answer was there in her hands. He had killed himself to come after. “Oh, Richard.” She reached for him, weaving her fingers with his. “You shouldn’t have. Not for my sake.”
“Don’t tell me that.” His voice was hard, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were filled with dark, dangerous things. “You were gone, Kahlan. My daughter was gone. I was already dead.”
The corners of her eyes pricked with tears. She struggled to sit up, lifting her weight with arms that felt like brittle twigs, about to break. She made it halfway to him before she pitched forward, blackness blotting out her vision in a sudden swoop. His arms caught her before she could tumble off the mattress, and then he was cradling her close and laying her down.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. You’re only supposed to rest. It’s okay. It’s all okay.” She felt a teardrop land with a wet splat upon her cheek. “Please be okay.”
She wanted to open her eyes and tell him she was fine, but she couldn’t push the blackness back. It kept coming in stronger waves, dragging her under until she could not resist, and then she slept.