Fic: After the End, Sequel to Master

[hrhrionastar]

Title: After the End
Characters: Rahl/Cara, Richard/Kahlan, past Rahl/Kahlan
Length: 1593
Rating: R for violence.
Spoilers: Reckoning
Warning: Character death!
Summary: AU Reckoning: What if Kahlan succeeded in killing Nicholas? This is the sequel to Master; when Richard and Cara appear in the future, they find more has changed than they bargained for...and it's all Kahlan's fault.

 

After the End

Richard and Cara appeared just where Shota had said they would, after Darken had Confessed her, years ago now. (The dungeons had needed emptying out.)

Darken smiled sharply, watching them coalesce in the gloom.

His Mord’Sith were there at once, the bag containing the Boxes of Orden wrested from Richard’s grip. Darken waited until they had pulled Cara away from Richard as well, leaving the Seeker of Truth quite defenseless.

(Darken had left the Sword back at the Palace—no need to give Richard anything he might use against Darken.)

“Hello, brother,” he said, reaching out a hand and closing his fingers around Richard’s throat. Richard’s eyes widened, and he struggled, even the temporal displacement of fifty-eight years not enough to completely disorient him.

But Darken didn’t let go. In a moment, it wouldn’t matter—not Richard’s strength, not Richard’s perfect righteousness…”Long time,” Darken purred, staring into Richard’s eyes, “no see.”

And he released his power—the white fire of Confession, burning through his veins as though it belonged there.

Enough power to keep him in the Land of the Living, in spite of those intervening fifty-eight years…enough power to keep him forever from the family he had lost. Kahlan and Nicholas—the reason he had this power.

(Not that he missed them.)

Richard fell to his knees, adoration in those warm brown eyes. “Command me, Confessor,” he said.

Darken’s smile widened.

Leisurely, he reached out a hand. His Mord’Sith put the worn bag in his hands, and he pulled out the Boxes of Orden, setting them down carefully on the ground. There was no need to rush—not anymore.

As the last Box clicked into place, the power flooded Darken’s system, taking his breath away—vistas of possibility opened before him like flower petals, each more captivating than the last.

It was magic, it was freedom, it was…everything—

“How can I serve you, Master?” Richard asked eagerly, like a puppy at Darken’s feet.

Darken spared him a glance. Once, he would have kept Richard by his side, a family at last—but he was done with such foolish fantasies.

“You can die,” he said calmly.

Richard’s eyes slid shut, he slumped to the ground, and Darken reached over his brother’s body and curled possessive hands around Cara’s waist.

He saw her eyebrows had climbed nearly to her hairline, and almost laughed. His Cara—she had come back to him at last. As it should be.

(She was the only one whose loyalty he trusted, and then he lost her to Richard’s wild magic—never again would his brother take anything from him.)

Darken kissed Cara, tasting her fear and bemusement, and finding them intoxicating. At his feet, Richard’s body grew cold, and the Boxes of Orden sparkled like jewels.

He was Lord Rahl, and she was Mord’Sith—that was all there was. All there could be. He knew better than to hope for the impossible joy of family.

They were in the Underworld. And it was all Kahlan’s fault.

 

 

“It’s all my fault,” Kahlan’s spirit wept.

“No,” Richard said automatically, but he was thinking of all he’d lost—death seemed to have come too suddenly. There were things he wanted to do—

And he had failed. The mission was what mattered—kill the tyrant, end the suffering, save the world—and Richard had not done it.

The moment Rahl’s hand had closed around his throat had been the worst—and last—of his life.

Now—a perpetual now—Richard stared vaguely around the Underworld, thinking it looked crowded.

Thinking he wished Kahlan weren’t dead.

Thinking he had lost everything, at the very moment of victory.

“It is,” Kahlan was moaning. “If I’d killed Darken Rahl—strangled him in bed, I certainly had the chance—you wouldn’t be dead!”

“What?” Richard was paying attention now. “What do you mean?”

“I had to do it,” Kahlan said, her tears vanishing into the green mists. They left no mark on her cheeks. “You understand—I had to do it.”

“Do what?” Richard couldn’t understand what Kahlan was saying. Had Rahl forced her to—?

“Kill him,” Kahlan said.

“Rahl?” Richard asked, thinking if that had been Kahlan’s plan, it hadn’t worked; not that he had done any better.

“Nicholas. My son.” Kahlan was cold, now, her spirit almost fading into the green of their surroundings.

She was dressed in a dark red gown the color of blood, and with a start, Richard realized it was blood—great streaming pools of it, enveloping her—only her white face and black hair were free of that deep, paralyzing red—

“He was evil,” Kahlan went on. “I bore him that you might return to me—Shota told me it would work, she told me—but he was a male Confessor. He would have destroyed us all. I should have done it when he was a baby—but I couldn’t. I was weak.”

“You killed your son?” Richard asked, vaguely surprised to find he could still feel anger in this echoing gloom. His body had died, but his spirit lived on—he and Kahlan were reunited. Yet the vile weight of failure made their reunion a sorrow.

“I had to do it!” Kahlan almost screamed. “You understand, I had to…”

Detachedly, Richard wondered where the Keeper was—shouldn’t He be gloating over Richard and Kahlan’s spirits?

Once, Richard had believed they would bask together in the Creator’s Light, but Kahlan had been dead for long enough that, if the Creator were to claim her soul, She already would have.

Yet neither did the Keeper’s laugh echo around them, a prelude to the agonies of the Underworld…so where were they? And where were They?

Kahlan grabbed Richard’s shoulders, her ravaged face inches from his, her hair hanging lank and dead down her back…”Do you forgive me?” she asked. There were tearstains on her cheeks—or was that more blood?

“I…” Richard wanted to say the words, but they stuck in his throat.

He wanted to cry out that this was not Kahlan, it couldn’t be…

But it was.

And Richard squeezed his eyes shut, mourning all he had lost, in what, to him, had been mere moments…

A traitorous part of him hoped the Keeper would come, would torture him, would make him forget the impossible loss of Kahlan—for all she stood before him now—

But she was only the ghost of the woman he had loved more than life itself.

Richard hated that he couldn’t forgive—he couldn’t even understand.

He never would, now. He was dead.

 

 

Lord Rahl claimed the power of Orden would protect Cara from his Confessor powers.

She had her doubts, but that was immaterial—he could simply order her to his bed.

Besides, she admitted to herself a certain curiosity—something had happened. For her, no time had passed, but Lord Rahl had seen sixty years go by. Yet he remained outwardly unchanged—he had seemed old, hair white and back stooped, but when he had put together the Boxes of Orden, Cara had watched the years fade from his face, until it was the same as she remembered.

All except for his eyes.

Cara had broken many men, and she recognized the signs. Lord Rahl would never show weakness before her, or anyone—yet she read the marks of suffering in him, coiled tension and something calmer, almost like despair—

When she had been Lord Rahl’s First Mistress before, he had sought power, had craved it—yet now, he possessed it fully, more power than anyone had ever held. Always he had been looking ahead, to the next conquest, to the Seeker’s defeat, to his own ascension as Master of Orden—

He no longer looked forward. Cara wasn’t certain he looked back, either. It was more like he looked at something beyond normal sight, something lost in another world.

Cara had often envisioned her own son as Lord Rahl’s heir—but now she was not certain he would ever die.

She wished she knew her son’s fate.

She wished she had not missed those sixty years—she had a feeling they were important.

Yet she couldn’t help her fascination—someone had broken Lord Rahl. Their mark was all over his spirit. But who? And how?

Clearly, whoever it was had been a Master—or a Mistress—of pain Cara could not match.

She hardly knew whether to stand back and admire the perfection of their work, or whether to seek to undo it—a task that might prove beyond her power.

But—an uncertain smile played about Cara’s lips—she knew she didn’t really have a choice. Not anymore.

 

 

Many, many years after Mistress Cara’s death, they said Darken Rahl still ruled. The Deathless Lord, locked in his palace. Many were Confessed to him, and no assassin could resist the power of Orden, but even those that had never felt his great powers never spoke of their fears, going about their ordinary lives as if they didn’t see the looming shadow of Orden.

Perhaps, one day, a new Seeker rose, young and idealistic and successful, where the prophesied Son of Brennidon had failed…

Or perhaps not.

Darken Rahl continued deathless, and lifeless, at last free of all those who had sought to control him…even the Keeper’s might could not compel Darken’s soul to return to the Underworld, when he commanded the Power of Orden.

“And it’s all your fault,” Darken said to the painting of his long-dead wife in his study.

His cruel laughter echoed through the empty room.

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