LOTS Fic: Aydindril Burning 3/? (Cara/Kahlan)
Kahlan had lost her mind. Somehow and somewhere, her mind had fallen out of her head and wandered away. There was no other explanation for the brazen way she had just kissed a nearly complete stranger -another woman!-right after receiving news like that. Her body didn’t mind the loss of her mind though, and had already begun clambering for more. She fisted her hands against her thighs to keep from reaching out to grab Cara and pull her in again. She took a few deep breathes while her eyes remained locked with Cara’s. The expression on the blonde’s face was impossible to read. She hadn’t slapped her yet, which was probably a good sign.
Time ticked away. Seconds extended into minutes into eternity. Kahlan felt almost certain she had been trapped in that in between moment for her entire life. Then Cara moved, just slightly, a pulling back, a caving in. She hunched her shoulders up, pushing further into the closet, hands still tight on the gun. The obvious vulnerability of her posture tugged at Kahlan.
“I need you to move,” she said finally, and Kahlan was startled at how steady her voice sounded. “You’re making me feel trapped.”
Letting out a long breath of air in an audible woosh, Kahlan sat back on her heels and then slowly pushed herself to her feet. Her knees ached from kneeling. She couldn’t think of any words to say so she turned to exit the bedroom, pausing to linger at the door and look over her shoulder at Cara. They made eye contact again, and Kahlan wasn’t sure if it made her feel like she was being undressed, or being sized up for a coffin.
The downstairs was still littered with construction materials, forcing Kahlan to pick her path carefully into the kitchen. There was half a carafe of tepid coffee in the pot, so Kahlan poured herself a mug and sat at the table, back comfortingly to a wall. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that Cara’s behavior scared her a little, not really because she feared danger there in her own house, in her own town - the setting was simply too banal - but more that Cara had been unflappable in the few days she had known her. Thinking about Cara’s stoicism only brought to mind her smirk, which was the only expression she displayed besides her impassive mask, and that naturally led to thinking about her lips as she smirked, and from there it was a simple progression to reminiscing about the silky feel of them under her own as they kissed.
Her chin was propped in her hand while she daydreamed, sipping her stale coffee. When Cara finally descended the stairs, she found her off in her own fantasyland. Cara’s full duffel was over the blonde’s shoulder, and she tossed a similar, though empty, one at the table in front of Kahlan.
“You need to pack.”
Cara’s actual lips were moving but Kahlan had to force herself to physically concentrate on the words they were forming and not the curve of their sensual shape. That was just wrong. She never had that trouble with Richard. He was handsome, to be sure, but not distractingly so. A tidal wave of guilt hit her low in the gut - Richard, her husband. She had kissed someone that wasn’t her husband and worse still, she enjoyed it and she wanted to repeat the experience.
“You. Need. To. Pack.” Cara repeated slowly, enunciating exaggeratedly like she was talking to a small child.
Her brisk attitude, delivered from such a divinely kissable mouth, met Kahlan’s guilt and transmuted, twisting into hot anger. Words, powered by the force of her emotion, spilled out of her nearly unbidden and certainly more than she meant to verbalize. “No. I am not going anywhere. This is my house, the house my grandmother built, and I am the Mayor of this town. I can’t just walk away from my duty,” Kahlan slapped her palm against the tabletop to emphasize her point. “Especially without any explanation from you. Just because you’re in league with Richard doesn’t mean you can just walk in and run my life!” Inwardly she cringed at how much the last part reminded her of herself as a teenager, raging at her mother who insisted that Kahlan accompany her to the Mayor’s office so she could learn the ins and outs of government bureaucracy firsthand.
“You’re in danger. Isn’t that explanation enough?” Cara sounded decidedly exasperated.
“No. It’s not.”
Cara’s duffel slipped off her shoulder and thumped against the floor next to her feet. She followed, dropping onto the floor across from Kahlan. “What do you need explained exactly? The dictionary definition of the word ‘danger’?”
Kahlan wanted a lot of things explained, dangerous things. Cara’s mystery was magnetic to her, an enigma that she wanted to crawl inside. She wanted to know everything about her, be the only person who really knew her, be privy to her immeasurable secrets. She imagined that knowing even the littlest thing about Cara would be more intimate even then sex. And just as unlikely to occur. Kahlan refocused herself on the more pressing issues.
“Why are we in danger? Why do we have to leave? Why are you renovating my house without permission?” Kahlan heard her voice rising in pitch but she couldn’t control it now. “Who you are? How you know Richard? Why he sent you here?”
“That’s a lot of questions.” Cara set her elbows on the table and leaned forward. Intensity radiated off of her. “Why don’t you ask the question you are really curious about, and then you can get to packing.”
“What question is that?” Kahlan leaned back to match Cara’s advance. Inexplicably, she began to blush.
“Did I like it when you kissed me?” Cara nearly purred. Her accent made the question nearly obscene. Kahlan gasped softly and tried to look anywhere but directly at Cara. “And the answer is yes. I did. But now we need to get moving.”
Waves of heat started around Kahlan’s breasts and swept downward, inundating her body. Dampness gathered between her thighs, but she had to concentrate. Richard, Kahlan mentally chanted, Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard. She tried to summon a mental image of him, but it was muddy and dissipated as soon as she glanced across the table. It felt like Cara was swelling to fill her reality, causing her skin to tingle and buzz. She shifted in her chair.
“I need more than that,” Kahlan breathed, unsure herself of whether she meant information or Cara.
Either oblivious to Kahlan’s growing arousal, or ignoring it, Cara chose to interpret Kahlan literally. “The…people…I used to work for. I think they’ve found me. And they will have seen you, and they are not afraid of,” Cara paused meaningfully, “collateral damage.”
The idea of commandos repelling into Aydindril to shoot the place up was just too ridiculous, to foreign to her entire concept of the world. Kahlan’s mind rejected it, saving her from the mental dissonance it would cause. “I think maybe you are really tired Cara. This isn’t a battlezone, its Montana. You’re safe here. I told you I would protect you.” Kahlan stood up, moving to the sink to rinse out her coffee mug to keep her hands busy. It was easier to talk with her back to the blonde. “Tomorrow I’ll make you an appointment to see the doctor. Maybe the war just…got to you.”
That was a mistake. She could hear the scratching of the chair against the floor as Cara stood, and exited the room without another word. Whatever she had hoped to accomplish with their conversation, she had failed, and she had learned nothing more about the circumstances that had brought Cara to her.
CHAPTER SIX: Here we go again, I kinda wanna be more than friends
The explosion of mortars around her kicked dust into the air, chocking her as she tried to scream. Muzzle flares flashed off through the growing clouds of chaos, disrupting her feeble attempts to concentrate enough to push to her feet. She crawled to her knees. Blood and gore hung down from the huge hole in her stomach she could no longer feel. She was in shock. A hand reached down, grasping her hair and yanking her hard to her feet. Instinctively she reached back, grabbing at the wrist of her capture, to no avail. Blood loss had made her inexcusably weak.
“Cara,” her attacker leaned close, murmuring into her ear, reminding her off all the times that Triana had whispered her name like that while they lay naked in bed. Power plays were power plays though, and nothing was a better cover for a political assassination then a battle - Cara should have remembered that. No one reached the top in an organization like the elite Mord-Sith without breaking a few eggs, and the upper echelons of their military encouraged such behavior - weed out the weak, feed the killer instinct, allow the cream to rise to the top. Now the cream was being skimmed.
The knife slid in, so sharp it was nearly painless, parting the flesh between her ribs. A last, unnecessary gesture since her life was quickly running out of her, like her guts. Triana’s laugh followed Cara into the darkness of eternity.
Grime and goo crusted Cara’s eyes closed and it was torturous to open them. More of a struggle was mentally sorting out how it was that being dead she still had eyes to open. In the low light, and perhaps as a result of the head wound she had sustained besides, it took longer than usual for her eyes to focus. Standing over her was an American, dressed in an ACU with Major’s insignia - and the shaggiest haircut she had ever seen on a soldier. The change in her breathing must have given away her return to consciousness because he leaned forward before her eyes were totally opened and reached out to check the pulse at her neck.
He waited until she had reoriented herself before speaking. She was laying on a cot, covered to the neck by a white sheet, in a tent printed in desert camo colors. Cool air was being circulated by a buzzing machine in the corner but aside from a few tables and the beeping of the medical equipment connected to her by a series of wires and tubes the tent was empty. Apparently she was the only patient.
“Welcome to Operation Seeker,” the man above her smiled kindly. “My name is Major Rahl and I have been authorized by my government to provide you with this offer for your consideration.”
For your consideration.
For your consideration.
BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.
Cara snapped immediately from sleep to wakefulness, a skill that had served her well as a soldier. In a split second she evaluated the room, everything was in order. That didn’t necessarily improve her mood, however, trapped as she still was in Kahlan’s deathtrap of a Victorian and no closer to convincing the frustrating woman into heading somewhere safer with her.
Days had passed, nearly a week Cara realized, since the phone call. Kahlan had remained adamant - she went to work, accompanied by a watchful Cara; she ate lunch at Denee’s, accompanied by a watchful Cara; she insisted on doing all the cooking and cleaning, still accompanied by a watchful Cara. There was no way that the Mord-Sith were joking. They hadn’t forgotten about her, which would have been perfectly fine in the nihilistic sense if Richard’s full blown stupidity and dangerous desire to care for people hadn’t brought her to Aydindril and put Kahlan directly in the cross-hairs.
The time spent together was not exactly a chore, Cara was forced to admit. Kahlan did everything with a natural grace and dignity that seemed wholly out of place in her rural surroundings. It was a particular pleasure to watch her walk, from behind, and Kahlan either didn’t notice or chose to ignore Cara’s ogling, which had become more blatant. If Cara was going to be responsible for something horrible happening to that woman (and her breathtaking rack) then she was at least going to enjoy the view while everything was in one piece. They talked, rather Kahlan talked, over lunch about little things. Kahlan’s favorite topic of conversation seemed to be feelings - not Cara’s favorite. But there was something mesmerizing about the play of the muscles in her throat as she swallowed and spoke, so Cara forgave her tendency to chatter on.
What she couldn’t forgive was how readily her body responded to the slightest stimuli related to Kahlan. The brush of her hand on Cara’s when they both reached for the salt, the bump of her hip when they walked too close together on the way to her office in the morning, the intensity that burned in her blue eyes whenever they made eye contact - all of it spelled doom for the physical integrity of Cara’s panties. It was a terrible breach of the iron control that she usually exerted. Years of training, physical and mental, had honed her body into the perfect weapon - weapons were only perfect when they were well balanced. Being lust drunk over your friend’s wife was indicative of an imbalance.
Cara slid out of bed, pulling the tank top on that she had discarded on the floor next to her bed the night before, and made her way downstairs, fully expecting to see Kahlan cooking breakfast. There was no coffee brewing when she reached the kitchen, and the brunette was nowhere to be seen. She was a morning person, something that Cara found annoying, and so there had not been a single morning that she hadn’t woken up before Cara. Concerned, Cara headed back upstairs to check her bedroom. Kahlan’s sheets had been slept in, the room smelled like the perfume she spritzed on after doing her hair and right before putting on her jewelry (Cara prided herself on remembering the little things). No sign of a struggle.
A mounting sense of concern crept into the back of Cara’s mind. Maybe her nightmare was a premonition, her subconscious alerting her to the presence of danger. She grabbed her Agiel, slipping into the back waistband of the jeans she hurriedly pulled on before dashing out of the house. She prowled the exterior, searching for even the most minute sign of intrusion. Her senses were honed - in war details were the difference between life and death. Nothing was out of place. Concern reached the it’s peak, transforming into unfamiliar anxiety.
She sprinted down the street, accelerating past quiet houses full of sleeping occupants unaware of all the wolves in their midst, and took the corner onto Main Street so fast that her bare feet (and when had she forgotten to put her shoes on!) slipped on the gravel, causing her to nearly tumble. Her reflexes saved her from disaster and she regained her balance, not even pausing in her run.
The door nearly came off the hinges, Cara hit it so hard as she charged into City Hall. Her breath was coming hard now, raggedly tearing at her lungs. Around the corner, down the hall, through the door - like she had every day that week, except now she looked wild and half-dressed, moving at a speed that turned her into a blur.
Emily screamed as Cara burst in, but Cara didn’t stop. Just as she slammed open the door to Kahlan’s office, the brunette was leaping out of her chair, probably scared by the sounds of her secretary’s distress.
“Shit,” Cara murmured, stopped finally in her tracks by the sight of Kahlan unharmed. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Time ticked away. Seconds extended into minutes into eternity. Kahlan felt almost certain she had been trapped in that in between moment for her entire life. Then Cara moved, just slightly, a pulling back, a caving in. She hunched her shoulders up, pushing further into the closet, hands still tight on the gun. The obvious vulnerability of her posture tugged at Kahlan.
“I need you to move,” she said finally, and Kahlan was startled at how steady her voice sounded. “You’re making me feel trapped.”
Letting out a long breath of air in an audible woosh, Kahlan sat back on her heels and then slowly pushed herself to her feet. Her knees ached from kneeling. She couldn’t think of any words to say so she turned to exit the bedroom, pausing to linger at the door and look over her shoulder at Cara. They made eye contact again, and Kahlan wasn’t sure if it made her feel like she was being undressed, or being sized up for a coffin.
The downstairs was still littered with construction materials, forcing Kahlan to pick her path carefully into the kitchen. There was half a carafe of tepid coffee in the pot, so Kahlan poured herself a mug and sat at the table, back comfortingly to a wall. She would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that Cara’s behavior scared her a little, not really because she feared danger there in her own house, in her own town - the setting was simply too banal - but more that Cara had been unflappable in the few days she had known her. Thinking about Cara’s stoicism only brought to mind her smirk, which was the only expression she displayed besides her impassive mask, and that naturally led to thinking about her lips as she smirked, and from there it was a simple progression to reminiscing about the silky feel of them under her own as they kissed.
Her chin was propped in her hand while she daydreamed, sipping her stale coffee. When Cara finally descended the stairs, she found her off in her own fantasyland. Cara’s full duffel was over the blonde’s shoulder, and she tossed a similar, though empty, one at the table in front of Kahlan.
“You need to pack.”
Cara’s actual lips were moving but Kahlan had to force herself to physically concentrate on the words they were forming and not the curve of their sensual shape. That was just wrong. She never had that trouble with Richard. He was handsome, to be sure, but not distractingly so. A tidal wave of guilt hit her low in the gut - Richard, her husband. She had kissed someone that wasn’t her husband and worse still, she enjoyed it and she wanted to repeat the experience.
“You. Need. To. Pack.” Cara repeated slowly, enunciating exaggeratedly like she was talking to a small child.
Her brisk attitude, delivered from such a divinely kissable mouth, met Kahlan’s guilt and transmuted, twisting into hot anger. Words, powered by the force of her emotion, spilled out of her nearly unbidden and certainly more than she meant to verbalize. “No. I am not going anywhere. This is my house, the house my grandmother built, and I am the Mayor of this town. I can’t just walk away from my duty,” Kahlan slapped her palm against the tabletop to emphasize her point. “Especially without any explanation from you. Just because you’re in league with Richard doesn’t mean you can just walk in and run my life!” Inwardly she cringed at how much the last part reminded her of herself as a teenager, raging at her mother who insisted that Kahlan accompany her to the Mayor’s office so she could learn the ins and outs of government bureaucracy firsthand.
“You’re in danger. Isn’t that explanation enough?” Cara sounded decidedly exasperated.
“No. It’s not.”
Cara’s duffel slipped off her shoulder and thumped against the floor next to her feet. She followed, dropping onto the floor across from Kahlan. “What do you need explained exactly? The dictionary definition of the word ‘danger’?”
Kahlan wanted a lot of things explained, dangerous things. Cara’s mystery was magnetic to her, an enigma that she wanted to crawl inside. She wanted to know everything about her, be the only person who really knew her, be privy to her immeasurable secrets. She imagined that knowing even the littlest thing about Cara would be more intimate even then sex. And just as unlikely to occur. Kahlan refocused herself on the more pressing issues.
“Why are we in danger? Why do we have to leave? Why are you renovating my house without permission?” Kahlan heard her voice rising in pitch but she couldn’t control it now. “Who you are? How you know Richard? Why he sent you here?”
“That’s a lot of questions.” Cara set her elbows on the table and leaned forward. Intensity radiated off of her. “Why don’t you ask the question you are really curious about, and then you can get to packing.”
“What question is that?” Kahlan leaned back to match Cara’s advance. Inexplicably, she began to blush.
“Did I like it when you kissed me?” Cara nearly purred. Her accent made the question nearly obscene. Kahlan gasped softly and tried to look anywhere but directly at Cara. “And the answer is yes. I did. But now we need to get moving.”
Waves of heat started around Kahlan’s breasts and swept downward, inundating her body. Dampness gathered between her thighs, but she had to concentrate. Richard, Kahlan mentally chanted, Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard. She tried to summon a mental image of him, but it was muddy and dissipated as soon as she glanced across the table. It felt like Cara was swelling to fill her reality, causing her skin to tingle and buzz. She shifted in her chair.
“I need more than that,” Kahlan breathed, unsure herself of whether she meant information or Cara.
Either oblivious to Kahlan’s growing arousal, or ignoring it, Cara chose to interpret Kahlan literally. “The…people…I used to work for. I think they’ve found me. And they will have seen you, and they are not afraid of,” Cara paused meaningfully, “collateral damage.”
The idea of commandos repelling into Aydindril to shoot the place up was just too ridiculous, to foreign to her entire concept of the world. Kahlan’s mind rejected it, saving her from the mental dissonance it would cause. “I think maybe you are really tired Cara. This isn’t a battlezone, its Montana. You’re safe here. I told you I would protect you.” Kahlan stood up, moving to the sink to rinse out her coffee mug to keep her hands busy. It was easier to talk with her back to the blonde. “Tomorrow I’ll make you an appointment to see the doctor. Maybe the war just…got to you.”
That was a mistake. She could hear the scratching of the chair against the floor as Cara stood, and exited the room without another word. Whatever she had hoped to accomplish with their conversation, she had failed, and she had learned nothing more about the circumstances that had brought Cara to her.
CHAPTER SIX: Here we go again, I kinda wanna be more than friends
The explosion of mortars around her kicked dust into the air, chocking her as she tried to scream. Muzzle flares flashed off through the growing clouds of chaos, disrupting her feeble attempts to concentrate enough to push to her feet. She crawled to her knees. Blood and gore hung down from the huge hole in her stomach she could no longer feel. She was in shock. A hand reached down, grasping her hair and yanking her hard to her feet. Instinctively she reached back, grabbing at the wrist of her capture, to no avail. Blood loss had made her inexcusably weak.
“Cara,” her attacker leaned close, murmuring into her ear, reminding her off all the times that Triana had whispered her name like that while they lay naked in bed. Power plays were power plays though, and nothing was a better cover for a political assassination then a battle - Cara should have remembered that. No one reached the top in an organization like the elite Mord-Sith without breaking a few eggs, and the upper echelons of their military encouraged such behavior - weed out the weak, feed the killer instinct, allow the cream to rise to the top. Now the cream was being skimmed.
The knife slid in, so sharp it was nearly painless, parting the flesh between her ribs. A last, unnecessary gesture since her life was quickly running out of her, like her guts. Triana’s laugh followed Cara into the darkness of eternity.
Grime and goo crusted Cara’s eyes closed and it was torturous to open them. More of a struggle was mentally sorting out how it was that being dead she still had eyes to open. In the low light, and perhaps as a result of the head wound she had sustained besides, it took longer than usual for her eyes to focus. Standing over her was an American, dressed in an ACU with Major’s insignia - and the shaggiest haircut she had ever seen on a soldier. The change in her breathing must have given away her return to consciousness because he leaned forward before her eyes were totally opened and reached out to check the pulse at her neck.
He waited until she had reoriented herself before speaking. She was laying on a cot, covered to the neck by a white sheet, in a tent printed in desert camo colors. Cool air was being circulated by a buzzing machine in the corner but aside from a few tables and the beeping of the medical equipment connected to her by a series of wires and tubes the tent was empty. Apparently she was the only patient.
“Welcome to Operation Seeker,” the man above her smiled kindly. “My name is Major Rahl and I have been authorized by my government to provide you with this offer for your consideration.”
For your consideration.
For your consideration.
BUZZ. BUZZ. BUZZ.
Cara snapped immediately from sleep to wakefulness, a skill that had served her well as a soldier. In a split second she evaluated the room, everything was in order. That didn’t necessarily improve her mood, however, trapped as she still was in Kahlan’s deathtrap of a Victorian and no closer to convincing the frustrating woman into heading somewhere safer with her.
Days had passed, nearly a week Cara realized, since the phone call. Kahlan had remained adamant - she went to work, accompanied by a watchful Cara; she ate lunch at Denee’s, accompanied by a watchful Cara; she insisted on doing all the cooking and cleaning, still accompanied by a watchful Cara. There was no way that the Mord-Sith were joking. They hadn’t forgotten about her, which would have been perfectly fine in the nihilistic sense if Richard’s full blown stupidity and dangerous desire to care for people hadn’t brought her to Aydindril and put Kahlan directly in the cross-hairs.
The time spent together was not exactly a chore, Cara was forced to admit. Kahlan did everything with a natural grace and dignity that seemed wholly out of place in her rural surroundings. It was a particular pleasure to watch her walk, from behind, and Kahlan either didn’t notice or chose to ignore Cara’s ogling, which had become more blatant. If Cara was going to be responsible for something horrible happening to that woman (and her breathtaking rack) then she was at least going to enjoy the view while everything was in one piece. They talked, rather Kahlan talked, over lunch about little things. Kahlan’s favorite topic of conversation seemed to be feelings - not Cara’s favorite. But there was something mesmerizing about the play of the muscles in her throat as she swallowed and spoke, so Cara forgave her tendency to chatter on.
What she couldn’t forgive was how readily her body responded to the slightest stimuli related to Kahlan. The brush of her hand on Cara’s when they both reached for the salt, the bump of her hip when they walked too close together on the way to her office in the morning, the intensity that burned in her blue eyes whenever they made eye contact - all of it spelled doom for the physical integrity of Cara’s panties. It was a terrible breach of the iron control that she usually exerted. Years of training, physical and mental, had honed her body into the perfect weapon - weapons were only perfect when they were well balanced. Being lust drunk over your friend’s wife was indicative of an imbalance.
Cara slid out of bed, pulling the tank top on that she had discarded on the floor next to her bed the night before, and made her way downstairs, fully expecting to see Kahlan cooking breakfast. There was no coffee brewing when she reached the kitchen, and the brunette was nowhere to be seen. She was a morning person, something that Cara found annoying, and so there had not been a single morning that she hadn’t woken up before Cara. Concerned, Cara headed back upstairs to check her bedroom. Kahlan’s sheets had been slept in, the room smelled like the perfume she spritzed on after doing her hair and right before putting on her jewelry (Cara prided herself on remembering the little things). No sign of a struggle.
A mounting sense of concern crept into the back of Cara’s mind. Maybe her nightmare was a premonition, her subconscious alerting her to the presence of danger. She grabbed her Agiel, slipping into the back waistband of the jeans she hurriedly pulled on before dashing out of the house. She prowled the exterior, searching for even the most minute sign of intrusion. Her senses were honed - in war details were the difference between life and death. Nothing was out of place. Concern reached the it’s peak, transforming into unfamiliar anxiety.
She sprinted down the street, accelerating past quiet houses full of sleeping occupants unaware of all the wolves in their midst, and took the corner onto Main Street so fast that her bare feet (and when had she forgotten to put her shoes on!) slipped on the gravel, causing her to nearly tumble. Her reflexes saved her from disaster and she regained her balance, not even pausing in her run.
The door nearly came off the hinges, Cara hit it so hard as she charged into City Hall. Her breath was coming hard now, raggedly tearing at her lungs. Around the corner, down the hall, through the door - like she had every day that week, except now she looked wild and half-dressed, moving at a speed that turned her into a blur.
Emily screamed as Cara burst in, but Cara didn’t stop. Just as she slammed open the door to Kahlan’s office, the brunette was leaping out of her chair, probably scared by the sounds of her secretary’s distress.
“Shit,” Cara murmured, stopped finally in her tracks by the sight of Kahlan unharmed. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.