FIC: "Murder, She Wrote" [LotS; Cara/Denna, Cara/Kahlan]
Title: Murder, She Wrote
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Pairing: Cara/Denna, Cara/Kahlan
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 4378
Summary: AU - Cara Mason, Private Detective.
Disclaimer: "Legend of the Seeker", its characters, and the situations depicted are the property of ABC Studios, and Terry Goodkind. This piece of fan fiction was created for fun and not profit.
**
The day she walked out on me was one of the worst days of my life.. until the day she walked back in?
I never expected to see her again, not really. But then, the Wizard died - murdered. The new Seeker. An ineffectual puppet for The Council. The cops? Overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and unequipped to deal with a case of this magnitude.
And the One True Seeker? Locked away in a padded cell, his mind trapped in a place that was neither here nor the Underworld.
The Wizard was dead, murdered on D‘Haran soil. The threat of war choked the air, dank and musky like rough sex gone bad. If the murderer wasn’t found soon, the threat would become a reality.
And I knew I’d be seeing her again.
She entered my office, smelling like sin and redemption all rolled into one. Pale skin, sparkling blue eyes, and nothing but long legs beneath the gleaming white trench that ended just above her knees.
“Kahlan,” I sneered from behind my desk, chasing last night’s hangover with this morning’s left over bourbon.
“Cara,” she said back with a disapproving eyebrow rising on her forehead. Like she had the right to judge me. Maybe I lived in the gutter. Maybe she was the one who put me there.
Hands still in her pockets, she sat down in the seat across from me. Watched my eyes as she crossed her legs, daring me to ask what was underneath. I licked my lips, rolling my lower lip between my teeth. I already knew what was underneath that white wrapping, didn’t mean I no longer wanted a taste.
“You know why I’m here?” she said, more statement than question.
I slammed back the last of my drink, glanced at the bottle that was too far out of my reach before I turned my eyes back to her. “I have an idea.”
Her brows furrowed, face twitching like she was trying to forget a bad memory. Me, probably. “Will you help me?”
Something twisted in my gut, like bile and battery acid. She already knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway. She was the albatross around my neck, my Achilles heel, my one weakness. I hated her for it. Because she was the one thing I wanted that I couldn’t have.
She was the one I could never say no to.
**
Kahlan left and I walked. The thing I do when I need to think, or sober up, or both. On the surface, there wasn’t much to think about. Zeddicus had been murdered, Kahlan hired me to find her killer.
But, it’d been two years. TWO years and seeing her at my doorstep, it was like a stick to a hornet’s nest. And all those bees called memories and emotions and feelings were just buzzing about my head.
So, I walked. In my trench, and my fedora, eyes cast forward or downward or just blankly at the horizon, I walked through the city, just trying to get the buzzing between my ears to stop ringing. I walked until the rains came, hard and fast. Until the sun set behind the thick clouds and there was nothing but darkness painted by streaks of light.
I walked until I was in the Old City. Walking past the crumbling walls of the bombed out People’s Palace, feeling the unfamiliar stirrings of home. Past the empty temple. The place I did call home. Around the wall where old propagandist posters, faded and worn by time, still clung to the stone walls - the only wizard is a dead wizard, the only truth to seek is Rahl’s, (my personal favorite) the few, the proud, the Mord’Sith.
The Mord’Sith. The word ‘whores’ had been spray painted over it. My hand immediately reached for the spot on my hip where my Agiel no longer hung. Things were different in the ‘New D’Hara’.
I was back Downtown, with its shiny high rises, expensive boutiques and trendy restaurants. Despite the façade, there were still gutters, still grime and grit and sin running through the streets. I turned a corner into a non-descript alleyway and down a flight of stairs.
The place had no name. It didn’t need a name. It didn’t *want* a name. Just a stairwell, a corridor and a large, beefy guard before a grey metal door. He sneered at me rather than asking for my identi-card. Maybe that was his natural expression, maybe it was because I was the one that put the four-inch scar on his face.
He stared, hate in his eyes, as he spoke into the band around his wrist. “Mason’s here,” was all he said and the lock on the door behind him clanged open.
“Membership does have its privileges,” I smiled back as I shouldered past.
Things were different in the new D’Hara but some things stayed the same. Money and power, and how the two could buy the things that would get the average D’Haran arrested.
On the surface, it was nothing more than a bar that you’d find at any world class resort. One just had to look a deeper. A bar filled with former generals, warlords and the politicians crooked enough to rub elbows with the lot of them. Another failed D’Haran attempt at democracy. They were flocked by women, women who’s looks were as diverse as the price for their company.
I removed my hat, took a seat at the bar and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine.”
I shivered at the sound of her voice. Part revulsion, part arousal. She always had that effect on me.
“Denna,” I said with a half-smile, turning in my seat towards her. Her dress was black, hair platinum in soft waves spilling over her left shoulder like a golden-age screen star, skin pale as ivory and lips red as blood. She sauntered towards me like a big cat towards its prey and all my thoughts instantly turned towards being eaten. If Kahlan was my redemption, Denna? She was my damnation.
A glass tumbler, two fingers of aged bourbon, just like I like it, Denna placed it on the bar and pushed it towards me. Our eyes locked together as I downed the entire glass and she smiled as I did.
Denna leaned in close, like we were still lovers, like she knew exactly the effect she had on me. She smelled good, like sex on silk sheets covered in rose petals. “She send you here?” she whispered in my ear, low and throaty like a come on.
“Something like that,” I said in a mumble, wiping my lips with a sleeve.
She placed her hand on the small of my back, her eyes on my lips, both of us knowing how the evening would end. “Does it burn?” Her eyes lifted to mine and I caught the darkness in them. “Wanting something you can never have?”
“You tell me,” I sneered.
“When there’s something I want that I can’t get..” She smiled her Cheshire cat grin, leaning into me until her breath was warm and wet against my ear. “You’ll be the first to know.”
With that, Denna turned and walked away. Her golden hair spilled down her bare back. My eyes found the faded lines of scars long since healed. The ones I’d put there. The ones I didn’t. Denna didn’t look back to see if I’d follow. She didn’t need to.
**
We rode the elevator in silence. Neither of us much for chit-chat and there really wasn’t that much left to say. As much as I derided her current occupation, peddling flesh was beneath a woman like Denna, it certainly paid more than a private detective.
Inside her penthouse suite, Denna walked towards the floor to ceiling windows, the city more than a silhouette behind the pounding rain. She wrapped her arms around herself and I felt a stabbing sensation in my gut that felt a lot like guilt. We were Sisters once. Lovers. Warriors who’d betrayed our Lord Rahl each in our own ways.
I’d fallen and landed on the side of the true Lord Rahl, of the Mother Confessor. Denna had fallen. And landed in the one place a Mord’Sith should never be. Alone. In desperation, she’d reached for me, expecting, wishing, hoping I‘d pull her out of the darkness. Had I taken her hand, she would have followed Richard as blindly as I had. Instead, I’d swatted her hand away, and Denna fell. She fell here.
I pulled off my coat, tossing it onto a chair, followed quickly by my suit jacket. Then I was behind her, chest to her back, my hands on the swell of her hips, feeling the warmth just radiating off her.
She inhaled solemnly, leaning back into me. “We were good together, weren‘t we?”
“Yeah,” I nibbled at her neck, feeling her breath hitch. “We were.”
“We still can be.”
“We’re over, Denna,” I said in complete contradiction to the hands sliding her dress off her shoulders. “Let it go.”
She chuckled, the back of her head leaning onto my shoulder as her dress pooled around her feet. “I’m not the one having a hard time letting go.”
She was right. And I hated her for it. Too much history between us, good and bad. Always under my skin, in my blood, my bones. I was always pulling away, always running back. If Kahlan was what I couldn’t have, Denna was what I was supposed to get. It tore at my insides, like milk gone sour. I wanted to be free of her. I wanted to stop wanting her so fucking much.
“If you want,” she whispered tauntingly. “You can pretend I’m her.”
“Denna,” I growled, warning. Heart pounding in my ears, my hands were on her wrists, placing her palms against the glass.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” she purred, cat-in-heat rolling her ass against my hips, knowing all my buttons and just how to push them. “A whore as dirty as you are.”
My fingers fisted her hair in a vice grip, yanking her head back. “I said shut up!”
Her eyes were already closed, tongue licking over smiling lips. “Make me.”
She knew my buttons. I knew hers. I gripped her hair tighter, my other hand circling around her waist, diving between her legs. Mouth hanging open, she groaned as my fingers found her clit, rubbing like I was trying to break something. She was wet. Denna was always wet for me. I purred in her ear, said all the dirty, nasty things I could always say to Denna. The things I could never say to her. My hips rolled against Denna’s ass, pumping like I was actually strapped, hilt deep into her.
Not what I wanted. What I deserved.
Denna came, howling and bucking against me. I wrung her dry, mashing my fingers against her clit, cleaving my teeth into her shoulder, marking her as mine. Again.
“You..” she panted, slumping her forehead against the glass as I released my grip on her hair. “Are always so good to me.”
“Oh yeah,” I ran my tongue up the shell of her ear just to feel her shiver. “Why aren’t you good to me?” My other hand still between her legs and I scraped a fingernail over her still tingling and swollen clit. She bucked, gasped in surprise. “Where is it?”
She chuckled, shifting the weight on her hips because she knew what was to follow. “Where it always is?”
Despite the aching pulse between my legs, I felt hollow, empty. Like this was supposed to fill me up. But all I knew, all *we* knew was pain and pleasure. Even without my Agiel’s, the pain had been constant. Maybe a little pleasure, even if it was with Denna, would rebalance the scales.
“Don’t move,” I growled before stalking across the room, hurriedly stripping out of my clothes as I walked. Where it always was. Dresser. Bottom drawer. While I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe I was the only one allowed into Denna’s personal chambers, I knew *this* was for me and me alone. The harness slid easily, quickly up my legs, fit like a glove. The phallus was red like an Agiel but shorter, thicker.
I turned around. Denna was not where I’d left her, now crawling across the bed like a panther.
“I thought I told you not to move,” I said, moving towards the bed.
She smiled. Purred. Wiggled her ass in my direction. “Since when have I ever done anything you say?”
That was enough to get a chuckle from me. Then she rolled onto her back, arched, raised her knees and spread open her legs, exposing all that was mine for the taking. The chuckle turned to a growl as the hunger within me rose to a fever pitch. I clambered onto the bed, knee walking between her legs. I shoved three fingers deep just to watch her wince. Denna was tight and wet, always wet, my head filled with the memory of that first time the student surpassed the teacher. A moment just like this, my fingers deep in her, Denna gazing up at me with hooded eyes, an expression of an aching want that I didn’t understand then but did now.
We all want things we can’t have. We all have our Achille’s Heel. And I hated Denna for always openly crossing that line. For always wordlessly begging me to follow.
I withdrew my fingers, slicked the phallus with them then shoved it hard and hilt-deep into her. She howled as I pushed mercilessly into her, legs wrapping around my waist, ankles hooking together. I hissed as her nails dug into my back, drawing blood.
This wasn’t love. This ‘thing’ between us. Denna just.. owned a piece of my soul no one else would, could or wanted to claim. If this was love, it was always as Mord’Sith - the pleasure fleeting, the pain constant. My eyes snapped shut at the sudden stinging of salt. At the cutting pain that was sharper and deeper than any Agiel could reach. I’d reached beyond my grasp, stepped outside the lines.
I fell. Over and over again. And every time, there was Denna. She never caught me, just licked my wounds clean then watched as I walked away to step outside the lines, reaching beyond my grasp again.
“Cara,” she whimpered. Because Denna was never afraid to appear weak, even if that was all it was - an appearance.
I opened my eyes, anger coloring my gaze. I rose onto the palm of one hand, with the other, I wrapped it around her throat. Denna smiled a smile of pure pleasure before her mouth went slack as my fingers squeezed.
The game that wasn’t. Because she loved me. Because I hated her. Because I’d killed her in moments like these dozens of times before, when there was more pleasure, less pain. And I’d revive her afterwards with the Breath of Life.
As the heady rush of climax built between us like a speeding train ready to jump tracks, my fingers around her throat just itching to squeeze tighter I..
Let go.
I collapsed atop her, still pushing my hips, driving as we reached the edge together and fell. If Denna was what I deserved, what I ‘get’, in that moment, I couldn’t do it anymore. The constant mixing of pleasure and pain, sex and death. Everyone needed something to come home to. Even me. If Denna was what I deserved, I wanted it to be.. better.
“I think..” Denna panted after an eternity. “You’re getting soft on me, Mason.”
I lifted so our eyes could meet, half-smirk forced onto my lips. “Soft?” I paused to draw the tip of my tongue across her lips. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
**
Somewhere behind the thick blanket of clouds and pounding rain, dawn was breaking. I exited Denna’s bathroom, shower fresh but still feeling like a prize fighter after a 12-round grudge match. Denna was still on the bed, big cat content snuggled and smiling.
“Leaving so soon?” she said, propping her head up with one hand, circling the empty space on the bed with the other.
“You know me..” I sat on a chair, reaching for my shoes. “Don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“I doubt you could ever do that.” She shifted, her eyes going solemn-serious before her mask returned. “I have something for you.”
“I thought you already gave it to me,” I smirked.
“Smartass.” She pointed with her head. “Top drawer on the left.”
Eyes narrowing, I rose from my seat and made my way towards the dresser. Top drawer on the left, the expensive lingerie drawer. I met her eyes in the mirror, watched an impatient eyebrow rise. I broke our gaze to rummage around a bit more and my fingers felt it. A box. Wooden, the ancient carvings made my heart skip, my breath to hitch. My eyes snapped upwards.
“Denna,” I hissed softly through my teeth.
I pulled the box from the drawer, set it on the dresser surface. I flipped the hatches and lifted the lid. The air would neither enter or exit my frozen lungs, my heart stopped beating all together as I stared inside the box.
My Agiel’s.
The penalty for having an Agiel in one’s possession was immediate death. No questions asked.
The Mord’Sith were disbanded five years ago. Most were imprisoned. The rest fled, went into hiding. For a price, a Mord’Sith could buy her freedom. Denna had paid for hers. And mine. Not all of it with money. But this?
“Denna?” I said, unable to hide the gasp in my voice.
She pulled her lips into an empty smile before rolling over to her other side, back facing me. No more eye contact.
“I don’t know much,” she said, pulling the sheets over her shoulder. “I just know if you’re going to investigate the Wizard’s death, you’ll need those.”
I closed the box, tucked it under my arm and made my way towards the door. Like saying thank you would be beneath me. I slowed to grab my coat from off the chair.
“You could always come work for me,” she said and my feet slowed to a dead stop.
“I’m not a whore.”
“No,” Denna said. “You’re just broken.” Then she switched off the light, painting the room with darkness. “Just like the rest of us.”
**
I returned to my office. Kahlan was waiting for me. White trench, long legs and filled with expectations. Some, hell most, I couldn’t fulfill. Wrong place, wrong time. The unfocused anger welling within me found a target.
“You seemed to have forgotten how this works,” I said, angrily pulling off my hat and coat. “When I find something, I find you. Not the other way around.”
“I called.” She shifted in her seat, re-crossing her legs, giving me a nice, long look. There was a time when sex as a weapon was beneath Kahlan Amnell. That was before she met me. “Several times. You didn’t answer.”
“I was working.”
Kahlan huffed, sneered. “Is that what you call it?”
I grabbed the bourbon off my desk, not bothering with a glass, cap off and tossed somewhere behind my desk, I guzzled, let it burn as I drained the last of the bottle. Back of a hand across my mouth, I sneered back at her. “You don’t get to hire me then question my methods. You don‘t get to question me at all. Not anymore.”
She shot up from her seat like a rocket, blue eyes all brimstone and fury. “I ask you to find out who murdered Zedd. You’re *friend* and, instead, you go fuck around with that whore..”
One moment, I was standing by my desk, the next, I was slamming Kahlan against a wall, forearm to her throat. “If you ever..”
It’s a strange thing - these ‘feelings’. As a Mord’Sith, we are taught feelings are wasted energy, a one way street that leads to nowhere. The hardest part had always been learning this wasn’t true. Sometimes feelings are returned.
Because, sometimes even during the heat of anger, you look into someone’s eyes and realize she wants to kiss you as badly as you want to kiss her. You realize, had your feet taken you elsewhere, you would have shared a bed different than the one you landed in. The one you deserve.
But, I’d also learned the hard way that hope is the most dangerous feeling off all. Just as a piece of her was inside me, forever, a piece of me was inside Kahlan. But it was small, inconsequential to the part of her soul that was Richard. I could hope, I could give, maybe even love and she could give back to me. It would just never be the same. She could never give me what I gave her.
That deepest of cuts.
“Get out,” I said with a voice empty of emotion, hollow like I was. Pushing myself away, I turned my back to her, twice in the same day, closing my eyes to the stinging salt burning the corners.
“Cara.” Even with my eyes closed, with my back turned towards her, I could feel Kahlan reaching for me. I stepped away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize..”
“Realize what?” I whipped around and Kahlan stepped back as if struck.
She lowered her eyes to the floor, crimson flushing her cheeks. “I didn’t realize you loved her.”
I laughed. “What Denna and I share is no different than what I share with you. It’s not love, Kahlan.” I paused, my eyes darting towards the box holding my Agiel’s. “It’s convenience.”
Kahlan opened her mouth as if to speak then smartly closed it again.
A fresh bottle of bourbon screamed my name somewhere in my desk drawer. I answered the call, pulling it out, taking a good, long swallow. “I don’t see or hear from you in two years and you think you can waltz back in here, twinkle your eyes, flash a little leg and easy-peasy, make me walk through Hell for you again.”
Open nerve touched, Kahlan folded her arms over her chest, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve been a bit busy. You know, with my husband.”
“Yeah,” I snort. That should’a stung. A belly full of bourbon can take the sting off a lot. “Yeah and the man that did it is dead.”
Kahlan reeled. For a moment I actually felt bad. It was something I should have said back then before Kahlan and Richard said ‘I do‘ and that thing called my heart shattered into a million pieces.
“Liar!” She rushed towards me, hands balled into fists, ready to strike. Just as quickly the wind left her sails, the color left her cheeks and her eyes darted all little-girl-lost across the floor. “Not Zedd.. He wouldn’t.. He..”
“He changed things, Kahlan,” I finished for her and she lifted her eyes to mine, like I had the answers when I only had more pain. “You can’t change the world and not expect consequences. Zedd stopped being the old man we knew. You..” I paused, licking my lips as the memories, bad memories, flooded back. “And Richard just refused to see it.”
I set the bottle down on my desk and followed my feet as they took me to her, bridging the distance. It was instinct, my hand raising to her face, the backs of my knuckles grazing her cheek.
The memories, no, not memories, sensations, the deep down in my bones feeling things weren’t quite right. Everything off center by a half degree. Maybe that’s what made Richard insane. Maybe not.
“It wasn’t..” Kahlan stammered, pink tongue licking ruby red lips. “You didn’t kill Zedd, did you?”
I watched my fingers as they dared to caress Kahlan’s face, watched the pained expression that painted Kahlan’s features. She was mine once, before the world changed. Those sensations were deeper than any feeling. Deep down in the part of my soul that screamed for things to be like they used to. Where the scent of her hair still clung in my nose, her skin still tickled my fingertips, where her taste still lingered on my tongue. I turned my hand, trading my knuckles for my fingertips, tracing them over lips I’d kissed a thousand times. Lips I’ve never touched with anything more than my fingers. I watched as her eyes went hooded and her breath hitched. I watched as Kahlan remembered what never was.
Zedd changed the world. Zedd took her from me.
“No,” I smiled weakly. “I would have made him give you back to me before I did.”
Kahlan closed her eyes, deeply inhaled the resolve in the air. She grasped my hand by the wrist, pulling me away from her. This world’s Kahlan, the one always pulling away.
“Cara,” she said, opening reddening eyes welling with tears. “Find who did this. For me.”
Like I could refuse her. “I will.”
She stepped backwards, looking at me like she desperately wanted me to tell her to stay. I didn’t. I carried enough guilt on my shoulders. I wouldn’t bear that particular burden for her. But I also knew more in that moment than I ever had before. What she and I had been to each other, I wasn’t the only one who almost remembered.
Kahlan stopped at the door, turning back to me with a weak smile. “We were good together once. Weren’t we?”
“Yeah,” I weakly smiled back. “We were.”
“I..” she paused, stifling a sniffle. “I’m sorry I can’t be that Kahlan for you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
With that, Kahlan was gone. I slumped into my chair and listened to her heels on the stairs.
In the end, I’d find who killed Zedd. Maybe bring him to justice. Maybe kill him myself. It wouldn’t bring back Zedd. Our Zedd, the one who could fix this mess he, himself, had created. Kahlan would return to her broken husband. And I..
Would just be broken.
END
x-posted to lots_femslash, passion_perfect
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Pairing: Cara/Denna, Cara/Kahlan
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: None
Word Count: 4378
Summary: AU - Cara Mason, Private Detective.
Disclaimer: "Legend of the Seeker", its characters, and the situations depicted are the property of ABC Studios, and Terry Goodkind. This piece of fan fiction was created for fun and not profit.
**
The day she walked out on me was one of the worst days of my life.. until the day she walked back in?
I never expected to see her again, not really. But then, the Wizard died - murdered. The new Seeker. An ineffectual puppet for The Council. The cops? Overworked, underpaid, understaffed, and unequipped to deal with a case of this magnitude.
And the One True Seeker? Locked away in a padded cell, his mind trapped in a place that was neither here nor the Underworld.
The Wizard was dead, murdered on D‘Haran soil. The threat of war choked the air, dank and musky like rough sex gone bad. If the murderer wasn’t found soon, the threat would become a reality.
And I knew I’d be seeing her again.
She entered my office, smelling like sin and redemption all rolled into one. Pale skin, sparkling blue eyes, and nothing but long legs beneath the gleaming white trench that ended just above her knees.
“Kahlan,” I sneered from behind my desk, chasing last night’s hangover with this morning’s left over bourbon.
“Cara,” she said back with a disapproving eyebrow rising on her forehead. Like she had the right to judge me. Maybe I lived in the gutter. Maybe she was the one who put me there.
Hands still in her pockets, she sat down in the seat across from me. Watched my eyes as she crossed her legs, daring me to ask what was underneath. I licked my lips, rolling my lower lip between my teeth. I already knew what was underneath that white wrapping, didn’t mean I no longer wanted a taste.
“You know why I’m here?” she said, more statement than question.
I slammed back the last of my drink, glanced at the bottle that was too far out of my reach before I turned my eyes back to her. “I have an idea.”
Her brows furrowed, face twitching like she was trying to forget a bad memory. Me, probably. “Will you help me?”
Something twisted in my gut, like bile and battery acid. She already knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway. She was the albatross around my neck, my Achilles heel, my one weakness. I hated her for it. Because she was the one thing I wanted that I couldn’t have.
She was the one I could never say no to.
**
Kahlan left and I walked. The thing I do when I need to think, or sober up, or both. On the surface, there wasn’t much to think about. Zeddicus had been murdered, Kahlan hired me to find her killer.
But, it’d been two years. TWO years and seeing her at my doorstep, it was like a stick to a hornet’s nest. And all those bees called memories and emotions and feelings were just buzzing about my head.
So, I walked. In my trench, and my fedora, eyes cast forward or downward or just blankly at the horizon, I walked through the city, just trying to get the buzzing between my ears to stop ringing. I walked until the rains came, hard and fast. Until the sun set behind the thick clouds and there was nothing but darkness painted by streaks of light.
I walked until I was in the Old City. Walking past the crumbling walls of the bombed out People’s Palace, feeling the unfamiliar stirrings of home. Past the empty temple. The place I did call home. Around the wall where old propagandist posters, faded and worn by time, still clung to the stone walls - the only wizard is a dead wizard, the only truth to seek is Rahl’s, (my personal favorite) the few, the proud, the Mord’Sith.
The Mord’Sith. The word ‘whores’ had been spray painted over it. My hand immediately reached for the spot on my hip where my Agiel no longer hung. Things were different in the ‘New D’Hara’.
I was back Downtown, with its shiny high rises, expensive boutiques and trendy restaurants. Despite the façade, there were still gutters, still grime and grit and sin running through the streets. I turned a corner into a non-descript alleyway and down a flight of stairs.
The place had no name. It didn’t need a name. It didn’t *want* a name. Just a stairwell, a corridor and a large, beefy guard before a grey metal door. He sneered at me rather than asking for my identi-card. Maybe that was his natural expression, maybe it was because I was the one that put the four-inch scar on his face.
He stared, hate in his eyes, as he spoke into the band around his wrist. “Mason’s here,” was all he said and the lock on the door behind him clanged open.
“Membership does have its privileges,” I smiled back as I shouldered past.
Things were different in the new D’Hara but some things stayed the same. Money and power, and how the two could buy the things that would get the average D’Haran arrested.
On the surface, it was nothing more than a bar that you’d find at any world class resort. One just had to look a deeper. A bar filled with former generals, warlords and the politicians crooked enough to rub elbows with the lot of them. Another failed D’Haran attempt at democracy. They were flocked by women, women who’s looks were as diverse as the price for their company.
I removed my hat, took a seat at the bar and waited. I didn’t have to wait long.
“Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine.”
I shivered at the sound of her voice. Part revulsion, part arousal. She always had that effect on me.
“Denna,” I said with a half-smile, turning in my seat towards her. Her dress was black, hair platinum in soft waves spilling over her left shoulder like a golden-age screen star, skin pale as ivory and lips red as blood. She sauntered towards me like a big cat towards its prey and all my thoughts instantly turned towards being eaten. If Kahlan was my redemption, Denna? She was my damnation.
A glass tumbler, two fingers of aged bourbon, just like I like it, Denna placed it on the bar and pushed it towards me. Our eyes locked together as I downed the entire glass and she smiled as I did.
Denna leaned in close, like we were still lovers, like she knew exactly the effect she had on me. She smelled good, like sex on silk sheets covered in rose petals. “She send you here?” she whispered in my ear, low and throaty like a come on.
“Something like that,” I said in a mumble, wiping my lips with a sleeve.
She placed her hand on the small of my back, her eyes on my lips, both of us knowing how the evening would end. “Does it burn?” Her eyes lifted to mine and I caught the darkness in them. “Wanting something you can never have?”
“You tell me,” I sneered.
“When there’s something I want that I can’t get..” She smiled her Cheshire cat grin, leaning into me until her breath was warm and wet against my ear. “You’ll be the first to know.”
With that, Denna turned and walked away. Her golden hair spilled down her bare back. My eyes found the faded lines of scars long since healed. The ones I’d put there. The ones I didn’t. Denna didn’t look back to see if I’d follow. She didn’t need to.
**
We rode the elevator in silence. Neither of us much for chit-chat and there really wasn’t that much left to say. As much as I derided her current occupation, peddling flesh was beneath a woman like Denna, it certainly paid more than a private detective.
Inside her penthouse suite, Denna walked towards the floor to ceiling windows, the city more than a silhouette behind the pounding rain. She wrapped her arms around herself and I felt a stabbing sensation in my gut that felt a lot like guilt. We were Sisters once. Lovers. Warriors who’d betrayed our Lord Rahl each in our own ways.
I’d fallen and landed on the side of the true Lord Rahl, of the Mother Confessor. Denna had fallen. And landed in the one place a Mord’Sith should never be. Alone. In desperation, she’d reached for me, expecting, wishing, hoping I‘d pull her out of the darkness. Had I taken her hand, she would have followed Richard as blindly as I had. Instead, I’d swatted her hand away, and Denna fell. She fell here.
I pulled off my coat, tossing it onto a chair, followed quickly by my suit jacket. Then I was behind her, chest to her back, my hands on the swell of her hips, feeling the warmth just radiating off her.
She inhaled solemnly, leaning back into me. “We were good together, weren‘t we?”
“Yeah,” I nibbled at her neck, feeling her breath hitch. “We were.”
“We still can be.”
“We’re over, Denna,” I said in complete contradiction to the hands sliding her dress off her shoulders. “Let it go.”
She chuckled, the back of her head leaning onto my shoulder as her dress pooled around her feet. “I’m not the one having a hard time letting go.”
She was right. And I hated her for it. Too much history between us, good and bad. Always under my skin, in my blood, my bones. I was always pulling away, always running back. If Kahlan was what I couldn’t have, Denna was what I was supposed to get. It tore at my insides, like milk gone sour. I wanted to be free of her. I wanted to stop wanting her so fucking much.
“If you want,” she whispered tauntingly. “You can pretend I’m her.”
“Denna,” I growled, warning. Heart pounding in my ears, my hands were on her wrists, placing her palms against the glass.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” she purred, cat-in-heat rolling her ass against my hips, knowing all my buttons and just how to push them. “A whore as dirty as you are.”
My fingers fisted her hair in a vice grip, yanking her head back. “I said shut up!”
Her eyes were already closed, tongue licking over smiling lips. “Make me.”
She knew my buttons. I knew hers. I gripped her hair tighter, my other hand circling around her waist, diving between her legs. Mouth hanging open, she groaned as my fingers found her clit, rubbing like I was trying to break something. She was wet. Denna was always wet for me. I purred in her ear, said all the dirty, nasty things I could always say to Denna. The things I could never say to her. My hips rolled against Denna’s ass, pumping like I was actually strapped, hilt deep into her.
Not what I wanted. What I deserved.
Denna came, howling and bucking against me. I wrung her dry, mashing my fingers against her clit, cleaving my teeth into her shoulder, marking her as mine. Again.
“You..” she panted, slumping her forehead against the glass as I released my grip on her hair. “Are always so good to me.”
“Oh yeah,” I ran my tongue up the shell of her ear just to feel her shiver. “Why aren’t you good to me?” My other hand still between her legs and I scraped a fingernail over her still tingling and swollen clit. She bucked, gasped in surprise. “Where is it?”
She chuckled, shifting the weight on her hips because she knew what was to follow. “Where it always is?”
Despite the aching pulse between my legs, I felt hollow, empty. Like this was supposed to fill me up. But all I knew, all *we* knew was pain and pleasure. Even without my Agiel’s, the pain had been constant. Maybe a little pleasure, even if it was with Denna, would rebalance the scales.
“Don’t move,” I growled before stalking across the room, hurriedly stripping out of my clothes as I walked. Where it always was. Dresser. Bottom drawer. While I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe I was the only one allowed into Denna’s personal chambers, I knew *this* was for me and me alone. The harness slid easily, quickly up my legs, fit like a glove. The phallus was red like an Agiel but shorter, thicker.
I turned around. Denna was not where I’d left her, now crawling across the bed like a panther.
“I thought I told you not to move,” I said, moving towards the bed.
She smiled. Purred. Wiggled her ass in my direction. “Since when have I ever done anything you say?”
That was enough to get a chuckle from me. Then she rolled onto her back, arched, raised her knees and spread open her legs, exposing all that was mine for the taking. The chuckle turned to a growl as the hunger within me rose to a fever pitch. I clambered onto the bed, knee walking between her legs. I shoved three fingers deep just to watch her wince. Denna was tight and wet, always wet, my head filled with the memory of that first time the student surpassed the teacher. A moment just like this, my fingers deep in her, Denna gazing up at me with hooded eyes, an expression of an aching want that I didn’t understand then but did now.
We all want things we can’t have. We all have our Achille’s Heel. And I hated Denna for always openly crossing that line. For always wordlessly begging me to follow.
I withdrew my fingers, slicked the phallus with them then shoved it hard and hilt-deep into her. She howled as I pushed mercilessly into her, legs wrapping around my waist, ankles hooking together. I hissed as her nails dug into my back, drawing blood.
This wasn’t love. This ‘thing’ between us. Denna just.. owned a piece of my soul no one else would, could or wanted to claim. If this was love, it was always as Mord’Sith - the pleasure fleeting, the pain constant. My eyes snapped shut at the sudden stinging of salt. At the cutting pain that was sharper and deeper than any Agiel could reach. I’d reached beyond my grasp, stepped outside the lines.
I fell. Over and over again. And every time, there was Denna. She never caught me, just licked my wounds clean then watched as I walked away to step outside the lines, reaching beyond my grasp again.
“Cara,” she whimpered. Because Denna was never afraid to appear weak, even if that was all it was - an appearance.
I opened my eyes, anger coloring my gaze. I rose onto the palm of one hand, with the other, I wrapped it around her throat. Denna smiled a smile of pure pleasure before her mouth went slack as my fingers squeezed.
The game that wasn’t. Because she loved me. Because I hated her. Because I’d killed her in moments like these dozens of times before, when there was more pleasure, less pain. And I’d revive her afterwards with the Breath of Life.
As the heady rush of climax built between us like a speeding train ready to jump tracks, my fingers around her throat just itching to squeeze tighter I..
Let go.
I collapsed atop her, still pushing my hips, driving as we reached the edge together and fell. If Denna was what I deserved, what I ‘get’, in that moment, I couldn’t do it anymore. The constant mixing of pleasure and pain, sex and death. Everyone needed something to come home to. Even me. If Denna was what I deserved, I wanted it to be.. better.
“I think..” Denna panted after an eternity. “You’re getting soft on me, Mason.”
I lifted so our eyes could meet, half-smirk forced onto my lips. “Soft?” I paused to draw the tip of my tongue across her lips. “I’m just getting warmed up.”
**
Somewhere behind the thick blanket of clouds and pounding rain, dawn was breaking. I exited Denna’s bathroom, shower fresh but still feeling like a prize fighter after a 12-round grudge match. Denna was still on the bed, big cat content snuggled and smiling.
“Leaving so soon?” she said, propping her head up with one hand, circling the empty space on the bed with the other.
“You know me..” I sat on a chair, reaching for my shoes. “Don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“I doubt you could ever do that.” She shifted, her eyes going solemn-serious before her mask returned. “I have something for you.”
“I thought you already gave it to me,” I smirked.
“Smartass.” She pointed with her head. “Top drawer on the left.”
Eyes narrowing, I rose from my seat and made my way towards the dresser. Top drawer on the left, the expensive lingerie drawer. I met her eyes in the mirror, watched an impatient eyebrow rise. I broke our gaze to rummage around a bit more and my fingers felt it. A box. Wooden, the ancient carvings made my heart skip, my breath to hitch. My eyes snapped upwards.
“Denna,” I hissed softly through my teeth.
I pulled the box from the drawer, set it on the dresser surface. I flipped the hatches and lifted the lid. The air would neither enter or exit my frozen lungs, my heart stopped beating all together as I stared inside the box.
My Agiel’s.
The penalty for having an Agiel in one’s possession was immediate death. No questions asked.
The Mord’Sith were disbanded five years ago. Most were imprisoned. The rest fled, went into hiding. For a price, a Mord’Sith could buy her freedom. Denna had paid for hers. And mine. Not all of it with money. But this?
“Denna?” I said, unable to hide the gasp in my voice.
She pulled her lips into an empty smile before rolling over to her other side, back facing me. No more eye contact.
“I don’t know much,” she said, pulling the sheets over her shoulder. “I just know if you’re going to investigate the Wizard’s death, you’ll need those.”
I closed the box, tucked it under my arm and made my way towards the door. Like saying thank you would be beneath me. I slowed to grab my coat from off the chair.
“You could always come work for me,” she said and my feet slowed to a dead stop.
“I’m not a whore.”
“No,” Denna said. “You’re just broken.” Then she switched off the light, painting the room with darkness. “Just like the rest of us.”
**
I returned to my office. Kahlan was waiting for me. White trench, long legs and filled with expectations. Some, hell most, I couldn’t fulfill. Wrong place, wrong time. The unfocused anger welling within me found a target.
“You seemed to have forgotten how this works,” I said, angrily pulling off my hat and coat. “When I find something, I find you. Not the other way around.”
“I called.” She shifted in her seat, re-crossing her legs, giving me a nice, long look. There was a time when sex as a weapon was beneath Kahlan Amnell. That was before she met me. “Several times. You didn’t answer.”
“I was working.”
Kahlan huffed, sneered. “Is that what you call it?”
I grabbed the bourbon off my desk, not bothering with a glass, cap off and tossed somewhere behind my desk, I guzzled, let it burn as I drained the last of the bottle. Back of a hand across my mouth, I sneered back at her. “You don’t get to hire me then question my methods. You don‘t get to question me at all. Not anymore.”
She shot up from her seat like a rocket, blue eyes all brimstone and fury. “I ask you to find out who murdered Zedd. You’re *friend* and, instead, you go fuck around with that whore..”
One moment, I was standing by my desk, the next, I was slamming Kahlan against a wall, forearm to her throat. “If you ever..”
It’s a strange thing - these ‘feelings’. As a Mord’Sith, we are taught feelings are wasted energy, a one way street that leads to nowhere. The hardest part had always been learning this wasn’t true. Sometimes feelings are returned.
Because, sometimes even during the heat of anger, you look into someone’s eyes and realize she wants to kiss you as badly as you want to kiss her. You realize, had your feet taken you elsewhere, you would have shared a bed different than the one you landed in. The one you deserve.
But, I’d also learned the hard way that hope is the most dangerous feeling off all. Just as a piece of her was inside me, forever, a piece of me was inside Kahlan. But it was small, inconsequential to the part of her soul that was Richard. I could hope, I could give, maybe even love and she could give back to me. It would just never be the same. She could never give me what I gave her.
That deepest of cuts.
“Get out,” I said with a voice empty of emotion, hollow like I was. Pushing myself away, I turned my back to her, twice in the same day, closing my eyes to the stinging salt burning the corners.
“Cara.” Even with my eyes closed, with my back turned towards her, I could feel Kahlan reaching for me. I stepped away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize..”
“Realize what?” I whipped around and Kahlan stepped back as if struck.
She lowered her eyes to the floor, crimson flushing her cheeks. “I didn’t realize you loved her.”
I laughed. “What Denna and I share is no different than what I share with you. It’s not love, Kahlan.” I paused, my eyes darting towards the box holding my Agiel’s. “It’s convenience.”
Kahlan opened her mouth as if to speak then smartly closed it again.
A fresh bottle of bourbon screamed my name somewhere in my desk drawer. I answered the call, pulling it out, taking a good, long swallow. “I don’t see or hear from you in two years and you think you can waltz back in here, twinkle your eyes, flash a little leg and easy-peasy, make me walk through Hell for you again.”
Open nerve touched, Kahlan folded her arms over her chest, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve been a bit busy. You know, with my husband.”
“Yeah,” I snort. That should’a stung. A belly full of bourbon can take the sting off a lot. “Yeah and the man that did it is dead.”
Kahlan reeled. For a moment I actually felt bad. It was something I should have said back then before Kahlan and Richard said ‘I do‘ and that thing called my heart shattered into a million pieces.
“Liar!” She rushed towards me, hands balled into fists, ready to strike. Just as quickly the wind left her sails, the color left her cheeks and her eyes darted all little-girl-lost across the floor. “Not Zedd.. He wouldn’t.. He..”
“He changed things, Kahlan,” I finished for her and she lifted her eyes to mine, like I had the answers when I only had more pain. “You can’t change the world and not expect consequences. Zedd stopped being the old man we knew. You..” I paused, licking my lips as the memories, bad memories, flooded back. “And Richard just refused to see it.”
I set the bottle down on my desk and followed my feet as they took me to her, bridging the distance. It was instinct, my hand raising to her face, the backs of my knuckles grazing her cheek.
The memories, no, not memories, sensations, the deep down in my bones feeling things weren’t quite right. Everything off center by a half degree. Maybe that’s what made Richard insane. Maybe not.
“It wasn’t..” Kahlan stammered, pink tongue licking ruby red lips. “You didn’t kill Zedd, did you?”
I watched my fingers as they dared to caress Kahlan’s face, watched the pained expression that painted Kahlan’s features. She was mine once, before the world changed. Those sensations were deeper than any feeling. Deep down in the part of my soul that screamed for things to be like they used to. Where the scent of her hair still clung in my nose, her skin still tickled my fingertips, where her taste still lingered on my tongue. I turned my hand, trading my knuckles for my fingertips, tracing them over lips I’d kissed a thousand times. Lips I’ve never touched with anything more than my fingers. I watched as her eyes went hooded and her breath hitched. I watched as Kahlan remembered what never was.
Zedd changed the world. Zedd took her from me.
“No,” I smiled weakly. “I would have made him give you back to me before I did.”
Kahlan closed her eyes, deeply inhaled the resolve in the air. She grasped my hand by the wrist, pulling me away from her. This world’s Kahlan, the one always pulling away.
“Cara,” she said, opening reddening eyes welling with tears. “Find who did this. For me.”
Like I could refuse her. “I will.”
She stepped backwards, looking at me like she desperately wanted me to tell her to stay. I didn’t. I carried enough guilt on my shoulders. I wouldn’t bear that particular burden for her. But I also knew more in that moment than I ever had before. What she and I had been to each other, I wasn’t the only one who almost remembered.
Kahlan stopped at the door, turning back to me with a weak smile. “We were good together once. Weren’t we?”
“Yeah,” I weakly smiled back. “We were.”
“I..” she paused, stifling a sniffle. “I’m sorry I can’t be that Kahlan for you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
With that, Kahlan was gone. I slumped into my chair and listened to her heels on the stairs.
In the end, I’d find who killed Zedd. Maybe bring him to justice. Maybe kill him myself. It wouldn’t bring back Zedd. Our Zedd, the one who could fix this mess he, himself, had created. Kahlan would return to her broken husband. And I..
Would just be broken.
END
x-posted to lots_femslash, passion_perfect