Fanfiction: Legend of the Seeker: Unspoken Want
Title: Unspoken Want
Characters: Richard, Kahlan, Zedd
Time Period: Between ELIXIR and IDENTITY
Rating: PG
Story Parameters: One Shot Vignette, angst.
Description: Kahlan struggles w/ her inner secrets as tension between she and Richard builds as they dance around their feelings and growing attraction.
Zedd dove into his blackened trout with the gusto of a Midlander prisoner who hadn’t been fed in over a week. Kahlan and Richard watched with amusement as juice traveled down their elder traveling companion’s cheek as he noisily savored each bite.
Sensing two pairs of eyes on him, Zedd gruffly spat, “What? Can either of you remember when the last time was that we were lucky enough to enjoy such a filling supper while on the road?”
Richard knew where that query was leading and he immediately went on the defensive. “You know, my father and I had a large garden and raised our own chickens and pigs for feeding ourselves…what do you want me to be a world class hunter so that I can take down prey to fill your bottomless stomach each night or do you want me to be the Seeker and oh, I don’t know, kill Darken Rahl?”
“What would be the problem with hoping that you could be accomplished in both tasks? Hunting is a great skill to work on your concentration, your form, your poise - all things that will likely help you to defeat Darken Rahl.” Kahlan’s pale blue eyes sparkled as she smothered a grin behind the back of her hand as she watched Richard’s mouth gaped open in irritation and his dark eyebrows knit together in an indignant frown. Zedd grumpily ripped off another piece of his fish and chomped on it.
Dark brown eyes narrowing, Richard retorted, “You know, I’m an excellent bowman, but we’ve been a little busy with oh I don’t know running for our lives! The next time we get attacked by an angry quad of D’Haran soldiers and we are forced on the run, I’ll be sure to ask them if they’d hold up from trying to lob my head off for a minute so that I can be sure to grab the quiver and bow instead of leaving them behind knowing that YOU will want to be fed hours later!”
Kahlan struggled to maintain her composure and coughed to cover the laugh that was rising in her throat. Using her inner strength as a Confessor as her guide, she forced the corners of lips down into a disapproving scowl and scolded them, “This isn’t accomplishing anything, gentlemen. Why don’t we just enjoy this bountiful feast that Richard was kind to catch us this evening? We knew that being Wanted individuals would come with a price, if that meant having our stomachs go empty we’ll just have to consider it to be the price of fighting for freedom. We have enough people trying to kill us, we don’t need to accomplish the job for them and tear ourselves to pieces.”
Both Zedd and Richard’s frowns spontaneously changed from irritation to matching expressions of guilt. Kahlan studied the two men as she ate some of her fish and found herself noticing tiny nuances in their facial features that marked their familiar connection. Although Zedd, Richard’s grandfather, was hugely tall and his features were somewhat exaggerated, both men has similarly shaped eyes and their foreheads wrinkled in exactly the same way. She softly smiled at the realization but found her revelation to be bittersweet considering that Zedd refused to let Richard know that they were related in fear that Richard would do something brash and try to save Zedd if he was in mortal danger instead of putting his own life first.
Richard sighed, picked up his canteen and took a swallow of water. His dark eyes flickered over to Kahlan and noticed the soft, sad smile that marred her classically beautiful facial features. “I’m sorry Kahlan. I didn’t mean to sour your evening. I wasn’t thinking.”
Kahlan watched as Richard’s eyes turned downwards. She could tell that he had lost his appetite. When his eyes flickered up again they locked onto hers like an arrow hitting its mark dead center. She gulped. Somehow, whenever he bore his gaze into her like that she felt like he could read right into her very soul. Her palms inexplicably began to sweat as she irrationally worried that he was seeking out her secret.
“It’s alright, no harm done,” Kahlan managed to croak. “Will you excuse me?” Taking her plate with her, Kahlan bolted from the safety of their fire and blanketed herself into the darkness of the forest towards the river where Richard had caught their dinner earlier. The three quarters full moon hugged the horizon and cast flickers of light across the dancing water. From around her, Kahlan listened as night birds and insects chattered amongst each other while the water lapped against the shore. She inhaled the late summer air which held the promise of fall: it was getting cooler at night. The soil had a hint of aroma of natural decay that usually made her happy for the change of seasons, but knowing that lodging won’t always available to them and she began to worry about the weather turning against them on their journey.
Kahlan’s eyes flickered to the water and became lost in a memory. Earlier in the evening she had been out in the woods looking for either bird’s eggs or berries to enhance their evening meal when she had come across Richard in the river. His back had been to her and he stood waist deep in the rushing body of water. The water from the river had come as run off from the local mountains that were still snow covered and even in the heat of the summer Kahlan knew that the water had to be cold. If it was, Richard gave no indication of noticing any discomfort. He stood completely motionless as the late afternoon sun basked his upper torso in gloriously warm orange light. His body was bronze in color, Kahlan couldn’t help but think that any artist would rejoice is using his perfect form as a model for his artwork.
The Confessor found it impossible to rip her eyes from Richard’s form. They had been traveling together for two months now, she had caught various glimpses of him in half states of dressing, but she could tell by the height of the water against his lower back that Richard was out catching their dinner nude. The mere realization banished all ability to think from her brain. Her eyes drank in the sight of his broad perfectly defined muscular back and felt her mouth go completely dry. She forced herself to blink and yanked her gaze off of him as he raised a wooden spear high above his head and slightly shifted his wrist’s angle. He threw the spear into the water and cursed…he’d missed whatever he had been aiming at. Before he could catch her gawking at him, she darted into the trees and out of sight while Richard dove into the river to retrieve his spear and try again.
Her palms were now slick with sweat from the memory, just thinking about it caused another vision to surface, it was the way that he had stared at her when he caught sight of her at the waterfall the other day just outside of Drenidril when she was drying off from her own bath. Kahlan realized with a start that he was probably stuck in the same frozen stupefied state that she had been upon finding him in such a delicate manner. She placed her plate on a nearby rock and rubbed her hands dry on her green traveling outfit’s skirt. Suddenly a new scent tickled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and inhaled…him. With tantalizing and forbidden visions of him already fresh in her memory, she could feel his body heat radiating from directly behind her as his particular masculine aroma filled her with comfort and desperate longing.
Richard softly coughed to alert her to his presence. Kahlan’s eyes grew wide and she rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead and face to wipe away any stray sweat that might’ve been there, she was feeling flush. She closed her eyes for a moment and turned to face him. Richard stood less than a foot away, she always felt unbalanced when he did this. With her magical birthright people rarely intentionally stood too close to a Confessor. She never had to worry about people invading her personal space…in fact most people avoided it with the irrational fear that she would turn against them with her power. Richard on the other hand liked to size up the people who he spoke to, he had an easy nature that made it rarely seem that he was overstepping any social boundaries or invading their personal spaces. He did this equally with either friend or foe; if there was one thing that could be said for Richard, he fearlessly always marked his dominant presence in any situation be it social or hostile and usually did so without the others being aware that they were being sized up. He preferred to judge a person by what they said with what their eyes stated, not their words.
With Kahlan his motives were purely personal. They had endured many battles together and shed blood side by side, they had already helped each other through emotionally trying situations and with each one they found walls of social conventions falling between them. They discovered that they were developing a deep comfortable familiarity together that is usually only reserved for family…or lovers. For Kahlan who no longer had any family and had never had any friends, she found it all to be intoxicating and unnerving at the same time.
Richard’s dark brown eyes were filled with pain and want. He gently took her hand in his and massaged her palm with his large thumb. “What’s wrong?”
Every nerve in her hand exploded with tingles where Richard’s thumb traveled across her palm, tracing the lines and creases on it. Her already dry throat felt like it was going to crack as shivers coursed through her entire body reaching her toes. She coughed uncomfortably. She whispered, “I don’t know, actually.”
“I was being a jerk,” he groaned and looked away.
A sliver of a smile spread over Kahlan’s face. “No you weren’t, Zedd and I have put a lot of pressure on you over the past few months it is understandable that it’ll eventually get to you. You’re not an all powerful spirit, Richard, you’re only a man and we’ve put you in an impossible position. You deserve the right to blow off some steam once in a while.”
Richard frowned let go of her hand. He stepped away from her and stood at the water’s edge. The waves lapped in front of his boot tips. Kahlan stared at his broad back while his left hand unconsciously rested itself on the hilt of the Sword of Truth. His shoulders slumped. “Do you know back in Westland that I never got angry? Never. Now it seems that that’s all that I ever do these days.”
Kahlan’s heart ached. She whispered, “We did this to you.”
Quickly, Richard spun and faced her and watched as a single tear fell down her porcelain white face. Wracked with guilt, Richard reached his long arm out and pulled her towards him and gently thumbed away the tear. “No, it’s not your fault Kahlan. I was blind and ignorant before I met you. I lived the life of a simple fool who was shielded from what real misery and suffering meant. I’m angry because of the things that I’ve seen and how powerless I feel that I can’t just magically take away the pain from all of the people that we meet each day.”
“Spoken like the true Seeker,” Kahlan replied with a small knowing smirk. “Always thinking of how to protect others.”
Richard’s face brightened seeing that he’d finally cracked through her melancholy. He then realized that he still had one hand on her face and one on her waist. The moonlight on the water caused flashes of light to flicker over Kahlan’s face. Her blue eyes looked bewitchingly purple. Every nerve in his body urged him forward to kiss the beautiful woman before him.
She saw it in his eyes, the shift that quickly altered from concern to something primal. Her mind briefly wandered back to a time when she spoke to one of her maids back in Aydindril about what it was like when she had her first kiss - the maid had talked about the world blurring into non-existence and how her stomach flopped up and down like it was full of butterflies. Kahlan felt that now...the entire world vanished around herself and Richard as his hand moved from her cheek into the dark recesses of her thick brunette hair. Richard loosely knotted his fingers through her long locks as their gaze burned into each other…it was filled with unspoken need; as if they both sensed that if they dared to cross that line that for their first time in each of their lives that they would finally feel whole and at peace.
Every fiber of Kahlans being screamed with want…for all of her life she had been denied the right to feel normal. Being able to give love freely to others was a curse that she could never experience for herself and in this particular moment her soul wailed at the injustice of her birth. Richard saw the flicker of fear in her eyes and he shifted his trajectory and gripped her into a tight hug.
Zedd’s warning and reminder that she and Richard could never be together surfaced in her mind as Kahlan absorbed Richard’s body heat into her own and felt his heart race against her chest. Even with him being about as physically close to her as possible, Kahlan felt a giant chasm between them. Her mind rationally told her that she had to tell him the truth. He deserved to know, not telling him was cruel. But Kahlan couldn’t bear hurting him, the thought of the pain that he’d feel when he learned that she’d been keeping this from him promised more agony than she currently experienced with the awkward confused void that existed between them and kept them apart.
Richard’s hand moved out from her hair and made warm, large circles on her back. She turned her cheek and rested it on his shoulder. His gentle massaging reminded her of her mother; the former Mother Confessor used to do that to Kahlan to help her go to sleep at night. It was one of her earliest memories of her mother. The fact that Richard seemed to instinctively know that this would comfort her left her head fuzzy with confusion.
“I’m terrified, Kahlan.”
Her brows knitted together. “Of what?”
“I don’t know how to fix you…and us.” Kahlan’s eyes grew wide and her fingers dug tighter into his back, she refused to meet his eyes. “I sometimes feel that there’s a boundary between us…something invisible always seems to be there, preventing…I don’t know what it is or how to fight it.”
Goose bumps erupted all over her body. It unnerved her how he could yank thoughts right out of her brain, it was like his was sucking her worries right out of her body and into his own but the message got jumbled along the way. Kahlan could tell that Richard was standing on the precipice and was about to rip open that forbidden door and that he’d force her to tell him the truth. She should do it…it was more than time; they were no longer simply friends. But she couldn’t do it, losing his friendship would devastate her and she knew that once he learned why they couldn’t be together, he’d never willingly hold her in his arms again, he’d grow distant…and her heart would be destroyed. She’d be hollow. She clung to him tighter to drink in his heat and relishing the human contact.
Richard’s fingers moved from her back and found the delicate curve of her face. “I just need to know one small thing…am I imagining things that aren’t there?”
Richard had to only glance right into her wet eyes to know his answer. He smiled softly and the corner of his mouth lifted acknowledging her answer. Pressing her face back into his shoulder, Richard gently started to rock her in his strong arms. A sliver of fear raced through him, Kahlan was the strongest woman he had ever met, yet something terrified her to her core about them being together. Renn had mentioned that it had something to do with her magic. He felt like the answer was out there - just out of reach, lurking in the mist waiting to attack when he wasn’t ready. If she feared this monster, he knew that whatever it was had to be bad. He didn’t know what it could be, but he knew that the Sword of Truth would be useless against it. He feared that his body would come out unscathed in this particular battle but that his heart would be left in shreds.
Richard had never been in love before, but something told him that these feelings that he kept experiencing whenever he and Kahlan got closer were the promises of love. And not just love, but epic, grand love the kind that you only read about in fairy tales and great heroic adventures. He knew that she must’ve sensed it as much as he did and it puzzled him as to why she held her feelings back. He nuzzled her hair with his cheek and felt her adjust her arms tighter around his waist. All that he wanted was for her to be safe. He wanted a world where she didn’t have to constantly put herself in harms way…to protect him. When she opened up about how her father had used her as a child, Richard wanted to smother those memories out of her mind and let her forget them. He wanted to shower her with Westland’s sunshine and bring her to that happy place where he lived before the boundary went down…to a world without magic, where they could just exist and be happy together.
He wanted the fairy tale and he sensed that she wanted it as well. Kahlan was too jaded though to ever believe such things could ever happen, she’d experienced too much suffering in her life. In her job she’d had people tell her horrible things and she would be forced to forgive the brutal inner nature of man or condemn the person to his or her death. He couldn’t imagine the kind of strength of will that would be required to do such things as an old person, much less a child.
Lightly he pecked the top of her head and extracted himself from their embrace. In a hoarse voice he said, “We’d better bury the food or else we’ll have predators sniffing around our campsite.”
“You’re right,” Kahlan agreed. Together they cleaned their dinner plates in the river in comfortable silence. They both stood up and stared into each other’s eyes. “We should probably get back to the camp.”
“Yes, Zedd will likely think that we’ve run off on him if we don’t,” Richard quipped, lightening the mood.
“Or were eaten by a bear,” Kahlan sniped back.
Richard smiled. “I’d like to see a bear try that. Of course Zedd would probably be thrilled...we'd have plenty to eat.”
With the pale moonlight bathing her in its luminescence Kahlan turned and flashed him one of her special smiles - the ones that she reserved only for him, close mouthed, broad, and that reached her eyes. Richard lost all breath from his body and his heart thundered in his chest. When he could finally breathe again she was forty paces ahead, retreating back into the forest towards camp.
“You’d better follow Seeker, it would be mighty embarrassing if I had to save you from being eaten by that bear because you were too silly to return to the safety of the campfire,” Kahlan called back to him.
Grinning mischievously with one hand on the hilt of his sword he trotted behind her enjoying the view as her hips swayed as she stepped over large clumps of grass. If they couldn’t be together in life, at least he would be soon asleep where he’d be able to kiss her all night long without disapproving eyes watching on. Although he had no right to do so, her hourglass figure in her dress made him sweat and his heart race. He liked the feeling that he got from just watching her move. He burned the image into his mind and was satisfied with the promise of pleasant dreams.
The End
Characters: Richard, Kahlan, Zedd
Time Period: Between ELIXIR and IDENTITY
Rating: PG
Story Parameters: One Shot Vignette, angst.
Description: Kahlan struggles w/ her inner secrets as tension between she and Richard builds as they dance around their feelings and growing attraction.
Zedd dove into his blackened trout with the gusto of a Midlander prisoner who hadn’t been fed in over a week. Kahlan and Richard watched with amusement as juice traveled down their elder traveling companion’s cheek as he noisily savored each bite.
Sensing two pairs of eyes on him, Zedd gruffly spat, “What? Can either of you remember when the last time was that we were lucky enough to enjoy such a filling supper while on the road?”
Richard knew where that query was leading and he immediately went on the defensive. “You know, my father and I had a large garden and raised our own chickens and pigs for feeding ourselves…what do you want me to be a world class hunter so that I can take down prey to fill your bottomless stomach each night or do you want me to be the Seeker and oh, I don’t know, kill Darken Rahl?”
“What would be the problem with hoping that you could be accomplished in both tasks? Hunting is a great skill to work on your concentration, your form, your poise - all things that will likely help you to defeat Darken Rahl.” Kahlan’s pale blue eyes sparkled as she smothered a grin behind the back of her hand as she watched Richard’s mouth gaped open in irritation and his dark eyebrows knit together in an indignant frown. Zedd grumpily ripped off another piece of his fish and chomped on it.
Dark brown eyes narrowing, Richard retorted, “You know, I’m an excellent bowman, but we’ve been a little busy with oh I don’t know running for our lives! The next time we get attacked by an angry quad of D’Haran soldiers and we are forced on the run, I’ll be sure to ask them if they’d hold up from trying to lob my head off for a minute so that I can be sure to grab the quiver and bow instead of leaving them behind knowing that YOU will want to be fed hours later!”
Kahlan struggled to maintain her composure and coughed to cover the laugh that was rising in her throat. Using her inner strength as a Confessor as her guide, she forced the corners of lips down into a disapproving scowl and scolded them, “This isn’t accomplishing anything, gentlemen. Why don’t we just enjoy this bountiful feast that Richard was kind to catch us this evening? We knew that being Wanted individuals would come with a price, if that meant having our stomachs go empty we’ll just have to consider it to be the price of fighting for freedom. We have enough people trying to kill us, we don’t need to accomplish the job for them and tear ourselves to pieces.”
Both Zedd and Richard’s frowns spontaneously changed from irritation to matching expressions of guilt. Kahlan studied the two men as she ate some of her fish and found herself noticing tiny nuances in their facial features that marked their familiar connection. Although Zedd, Richard’s grandfather, was hugely tall and his features were somewhat exaggerated, both men has similarly shaped eyes and their foreheads wrinkled in exactly the same way. She softly smiled at the realization but found her revelation to be bittersweet considering that Zedd refused to let Richard know that they were related in fear that Richard would do something brash and try to save Zedd if he was in mortal danger instead of putting his own life first.
Richard sighed, picked up his canteen and took a swallow of water. His dark eyes flickered over to Kahlan and noticed the soft, sad smile that marred her classically beautiful facial features. “I’m sorry Kahlan. I didn’t mean to sour your evening. I wasn’t thinking.”
Kahlan watched as Richard’s eyes turned downwards. She could tell that he had lost his appetite. When his eyes flickered up again they locked onto hers like an arrow hitting its mark dead center. She gulped. Somehow, whenever he bore his gaze into her like that she felt like he could read right into her very soul. Her palms inexplicably began to sweat as she irrationally worried that he was seeking out her secret.
“It’s alright, no harm done,” Kahlan managed to croak. “Will you excuse me?” Taking her plate with her, Kahlan bolted from the safety of their fire and blanketed herself into the darkness of the forest towards the river where Richard had caught their dinner earlier. The three quarters full moon hugged the horizon and cast flickers of light across the dancing water. From around her, Kahlan listened as night birds and insects chattered amongst each other while the water lapped against the shore. She inhaled the late summer air which held the promise of fall: it was getting cooler at night. The soil had a hint of aroma of natural decay that usually made her happy for the change of seasons, but knowing that lodging won’t always available to them and she began to worry about the weather turning against them on their journey.
Kahlan’s eyes flickered to the water and became lost in a memory. Earlier in the evening she had been out in the woods looking for either bird’s eggs or berries to enhance their evening meal when she had come across Richard in the river. His back had been to her and he stood waist deep in the rushing body of water. The water from the river had come as run off from the local mountains that were still snow covered and even in the heat of the summer Kahlan knew that the water had to be cold. If it was, Richard gave no indication of noticing any discomfort. He stood completely motionless as the late afternoon sun basked his upper torso in gloriously warm orange light. His body was bronze in color, Kahlan couldn’t help but think that any artist would rejoice is using his perfect form as a model for his artwork.
The Confessor found it impossible to rip her eyes from Richard’s form. They had been traveling together for two months now, she had caught various glimpses of him in half states of dressing, but she could tell by the height of the water against his lower back that Richard was out catching their dinner nude. The mere realization banished all ability to think from her brain. Her eyes drank in the sight of his broad perfectly defined muscular back and felt her mouth go completely dry. She forced herself to blink and yanked her gaze off of him as he raised a wooden spear high above his head and slightly shifted his wrist’s angle. He threw the spear into the water and cursed…he’d missed whatever he had been aiming at. Before he could catch her gawking at him, she darted into the trees and out of sight while Richard dove into the river to retrieve his spear and try again.
Her palms were now slick with sweat from the memory, just thinking about it caused another vision to surface, it was the way that he had stared at her when he caught sight of her at the waterfall the other day just outside of Drenidril when she was drying off from her own bath. Kahlan realized with a start that he was probably stuck in the same frozen stupefied state that she had been upon finding him in such a delicate manner. She placed her plate on a nearby rock and rubbed her hands dry on her green traveling outfit’s skirt. Suddenly a new scent tickled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and inhaled…him. With tantalizing and forbidden visions of him already fresh in her memory, she could feel his body heat radiating from directly behind her as his particular masculine aroma filled her with comfort and desperate longing.
Richard softly coughed to alert her to his presence. Kahlan’s eyes grew wide and she rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead and face to wipe away any stray sweat that might’ve been there, she was feeling flush. She closed her eyes for a moment and turned to face him. Richard stood less than a foot away, she always felt unbalanced when he did this. With her magical birthright people rarely intentionally stood too close to a Confessor. She never had to worry about people invading her personal space…in fact most people avoided it with the irrational fear that she would turn against them with her power. Richard on the other hand liked to size up the people who he spoke to, he had an easy nature that made it rarely seem that he was overstepping any social boundaries or invading their personal spaces. He did this equally with either friend or foe; if there was one thing that could be said for Richard, he fearlessly always marked his dominant presence in any situation be it social or hostile and usually did so without the others being aware that they were being sized up. He preferred to judge a person by what they said with what their eyes stated, not their words.
With Kahlan his motives were purely personal. They had endured many battles together and shed blood side by side, they had already helped each other through emotionally trying situations and with each one they found walls of social conventions falling between them. They discovered that they were developing a deep comfortable familiarity together that is usually only reserved for family…or lovers. For Kahlan who no longer had any family and had never had any friends, she found it all to be intoxicating and unnerving at the same time.
Richard’s dark brown eyes were filled with pain and want. He gently took her hand in his and massaged her palm with his large thumb. “What’s wrong?”
Every nerve in her hand exploded with tingles where Richard’s thumb traveled across her palm, tracing the lines and creases on it. Her already dry throat felt like it was going to crack as shivers coursed through her entire body reaching her toes. She coughed uncomfortably. She whispered, “I don’t know, actually.”
“I was being a jerk,” he groaned and looked away.
A sliver of a smile spread over Kahlan’s face. “No you weren’t, Zedd and I have put a lot of pressure on you over the past few months it is understandable that it’ll eventually get to you. You’re not an all powerful spirit, Richard, you’re only a man and we’ve put you in an impossible position. You deserve the right to blow off some steam once in a while.”
Richard frowned let go of her hand. He stepped away from her and stood at the water’s edge. The waves lapped in front of his boot tips. Kahlan stared at his broad back while his left hand unconsciously rested itself on the hilt of the Sword of Truth. His shoulders slumped. “Do you know back in Westland that I never got angry? Never. Now it seems that that’s all that I ever do these days.”
Kahlan’s heart ached. She whispered, “We did this to you.”
Quickly, Richard spun and faced her and watched as a single tear fell down her porcelain white face. Wracked with guilt, Richard reached his long arm out and pulled her towards him and gently thumbed away the tear. “No, it’s not your fault Kahlan. I was blind and ignorant before I met you. I lived the life of a simple fool who was shielded from what real misery and suffering meant. I’m angry because of the things that I’ve seen and how powerless I feel that I can’t just magically take away the pain from all of the people that we meet each day.”
“Spoken like the true Seeker,” Kahlan replied with a small knowing smirk. “Always thinking of how to protect others.”
Richard’s face brightened seeing that he’d finally cracked through her melancholy. He then realized that he still had one hand on her face and one on her waist. The moonlight on the water caused flashes of light to flicker over Kahlan’s face. Her blue eyes looked bewitchingly purple. Every nerve in his body urged him forward to kiss the beautiful woman before him.
She saw it in his eyes, the shift that quickly altered from concern to something primal. Her mind briefly wandered back to a time when she spoke to one of her maids back in Aydindril about what it was like when she had her first kiss - the maid had talked about the world blurring into non-existence and how her stomach flopped up and down like it was full of butterflies. Kahlan felt that now...the entire world vanished around herself and Richard as his hand moved from her cheek into the dark recesses of her thick brunette hair. Richard loosely knotted his fingers through her long locks as their gaze burned into each other…it was filled with unspoken need; as if they both sensed that if they dared to cross that line that for their first time in each of their lives that they would finally feel whole and at peace.
Every fiber of Kahlans being screamed with want…for all of her life she had been denied the right to feel normal. Being able to give love freely to others was a curse that she could never experience for herself and in this particular moment her soul wailed at the injustice of her birth. Richard saw the flicker of fear in her eyes and he shifted his trajectory and gripped her into a tight hug.
Zedd’s warning and reminder that she and Richard could never be together surfaced in her mind as Kahlan absorbed Richard’s body heat into her own and felt his heart race against her chest. Even with him being about as physically close to her as possible, Kahlan felt a giant chasm between them. Her mind rationally told her that she had to tell him the truth. He deserved to know, not telling him was cruel. But Kahlan couldn’t bear hurting him, the thought of the pain that he’d feel when he learned that she’d been keeping this from him promised more agony than she currently experienced with the awkward confused void that existed between them and kept them apart.
Richard’s hand moved out from her hair and made warm, large circles on her back. She turned her cheek and rested it on his shoulder. His gentle massaging reminded her of her mother; the former Mother Confessor used to do that to Kahlan to help her go to sleep at night. It was one of her earliest memories of her mother. The fact that Richard seemed to instinctively know that this would comfort her left her head fuzzy with confusion.
“I’m terrified, Kahlan.”
Her brows knitted together. “Of what?”
“I don’t know how to fix you…and us.” Kahlan’s eyes grew wide and her fingers dug tighter into his back, she refused to meet his eyes. “I sometimes feel that there’s a boundary between us…something invisible always seems to be there, preventing…I don’t know what it is or how to fight it.”
Goose bumps erupted all over her body. It unnerved her how he could yank thoughts right out of her brain, it was like his was sucking her worries right out of her body and into his own but the message got jumbled along the way. Kahlan could tell that Richard was standing on the precipice and was about to rip open that forbidden door and that he’d force her to tell him the truth. She should do it…it was more than time; they were no longer simply friends. But she couldn’t do it, losing his friendship would devastate her and she knew that once he learned why they couldn’t be together, he’d never willingly hold her in his arms again, he’d grow distant…and her heart would be destroyed. She’d be hollow. She clung to him tighter to drink in his heat and relishing the human contact.
Richard’s fingers moved from her back and found the delicate curve of her face. “I just need to know one small thing…am I imagining things that aren’t there?”
Richard had to only glance right into her wet eyes to know his answer. He smiled softly and the corner of his mouth lifted acknowledging her answer. Pressing her face back into his shoulder, Richard gently started to rock her in his strong arms. A sliver of fear raced through him, Kahlan was the strongest woman he had ever met, yet something terrified her to her core about them being together. Renn had mentioned that it had something to do with her magic. He felt like the answer was out there - just out of reach, lurking in the mist waiting to attack when he wasn’t ready. If she feared this monster, he knew that whatever it was had to be bad. He didn’t know what it could be, but he knew that the Sword of Truth would be useless against it. He feared that his body would come out unscathed in this particular battle but that his heart would be left in shreds.
Richard had never been in love before, but something told him that these feelings that he kept experiencing whenever he and Kahlan got closer were the promises of love. And not just love, but epic, grand love the kind that you only read about in fairy tales and great heroic adventures. He knew that she must’ve sensed it as much as he did and it puzzled him as to why she held her feelings back. He nuzzled her hair with his cheek and felt her adjust her arms tighter around his waist. All that he wanted was for her to be safe. He wanted a world where she didn’t have to constantly put herself in harms way…to protect him. When she opened up about how her father had used her as a child, Richard wanted to smother those memories out of her mind and let her forget them. He wanted to shower her with Westland’s sunshine and bring her to that happy place where he lived before the boundary went down…to a world without magic, where they could just exist and be happy together.
He wanted the fairy tale and he sensed that she wanted it as well. Kahlan was too jaded though to ever believe such things could ever happen, she’d experienced too much suffering in her life. In her job she’d had people tell her horrible things and she would be forced to forgive the brutal inner nature of man or condemn the person to his or her death. He couldn’t imagine the kind of strength of will that would be required to do such things as an old person, much less a child.
Lightly he pecked the top of her head and extracted himself from their embrace. In a hoarse voice he said, “We’d better bury the food or else we’ll have predators sniffing around our campsite.”
“You’re right,” Kahlan agreed. Together they cleaned their dinner plates in the river in comfortable silence. They both stood up and stared into each other’s eyes. “We should probably get back to the camp.”
“Yes, Zedd will likely think that we’ve run off on him if we don’t,” Richard quipped, lightening the mood.
“Or were eaten by a bear,” Kahlan sniped back.
Richard smiled. “I’d like to see a bear try that. Of course Zedd would probably be thrilled...we'd have plenty to eat.”
With the pale moonlight bathing her in its luminescence Kahlan turned and flashed him one of her special smiles - the ones that she reserved only for him, close mouthed, broad, and that reached her eyes. Richard lost all breath from his body and his heart thundered in his chest. When he could finally breathe again she was forty paces ahead, retreating back into the forest towards camp.
“You’d better follow Seeker, it would be mighty embarrassing if I had to save you from being eaten by that bear because you were too silly to return to the safety of the campfire,” Kahlan called back to him.
Grinning mischievously with one hand on the hilt of his sword he trotted behind her enjoying the view as her hips swayed as she stepped over large clumps of grass. If they couldn’t be together in life, at least he would be soon asleep where he’d be able to kiss her all night long without disapproving eyes watching on. Although he had no right to do so, her hourglass figure in her dress made him sweat and his heart race. He liked the feeling that he got from just watching her move. He burned the image into his mind and was satisfied with the promise of pleasant dreams.
The End