It has been ages since I have sat down and put pen to paper or fingertips to keys. There has either been no need or no time, but Devnet has demanded an accounting of my time since my re-emergence into this world. She needs it for the journals she keeps on all of us, or so she says. I think she sees herself as the Celtic Perez Hilton sometimes.

Today I finally gave Dev what she needed, and I thought it might be right to set it down for myself as well. Too much goes on around me most days, and it might do me good to place it all out in order so I can see the patterns for what they really are. My heart could certainly use the help because it is more battered and bruised than I could have imagined.

After nearly 40 years on this Earth as what the storybooks and movies call a mere mortal, I am finally back to myself again. All the memories have finally returned after many years of piecing them together. And I have a man with gleaming claws and his cadre of friends to thank for that.

To cut part of the story short, Merlin's trick of scattering my being to the four winds worked too well. Part of me wound up in modern day Westchester County, New York as the daughter of a man who is technically a clansman in the first place. I cannot explain how it all happened, but I was truly normal. Unspectacular. Ordinary. That is, I was until the day someone from my past nearly killed me before I could be reborn.

Enter the man with the gleaming claws, the furry blue scientist, the weather witch and the human firecracker. If they had not been there to chase off those who wished to kill me and pull me from the car I was driving as it started to explode, then I would surely have died that day. And luckily for me, that foursome saw me start to use my powers as they pulled me from that car. That was why they took me home with them, thank the God and Goddess.

The Pantheon moves in mysterious ways, and Morrigan most of all. She saw fit to give me enough power to help me start to get out of that burning junker and show my rescuers what I could do. She tipped the scales for my rebirth.

Now I just wish she could help me figure out what to do next. Confusion and pain seem to be my constant friends, and I wish I could banish them for eternity. I can't blame anyone but myself, really. Of late, I have fallen in love with the wrong men. No. Man.

Logan.

He freed me that day from the burning car, and he is the one who was the catalyst in my rebirth when he plunged his claws into my heart on a blood-muddied battlefield in New Fairland, Scotland. He was under the thrall of Apocalypse. He was Death. But the funny thing is that I was drawn to him at that point more than before. Maybe it was old memories kicking in, or maybe it was something Apocalypse did? I will likely never know.

Part of it likely is the fact the man seems to be my anam cara, the half of my soul that I thought I lost so long ago. Steadfast warrior. Stalwart friend. If not for the fact he loves another, it would be a perfect match.

But to add to the pain, his love Jean Grey is dead but might rise at any time to claim him as her own. Ah, the life of an X-Man surely is fraught with such insanities. Celts are not the only ones who can corner the market on resurrections and rebirths.

I cannot act on what my heart tells me. Jean divorced her husband Scott shortly before she died, and she and Logan never had the chance to be a couple. It would not be fair to him to stand in the way if that chance is indeed a possibility. And to be perfectly honest, I wonder if my heart could take losing him if she did come back? I would have to back away. I would not want Logan to have to make that choice. Better to enjoy what we have, a truly wonderful friendship, than to wreck it all and leave our hearts in pieces.

After the hell Logan has lived through, it is the greatest gift I can give him. And any gift of this kind is only truly worth giving if you water it with the blood of your heart.

~~Fleas~~

The great white headache.

Logan coined that phrase about Emma in the same talk he had with me about our relationship. It makes me giggle when he says stuff like that. Gets to the heart of the matter with the precision of a surgeon and rips it apart like a great comedian. He knows the White Queen and I are not exactly going to go shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue any time soon. We’d make Page Six, and not for the best of reasons. Think Lindsay and Paris on a bad night in LA.

Emma has Scott by the balls, and everyone knows it. And in turn, Emma thinks Logan and I have consummated our relationship in the middle of the lawn under a full moon. Logan is too much of a gentleman, and he has let me know at every turn in that unspoken language we have found that he would wait as long as I needed. To that I always reply in the same way that we will figure it all out. To be honest, I’m happy to walk a bit more slowly. Not glacially, mind you, but slowly.

But Emma will not let up. She seems to think that the world’s bedroom habits are her concern as a qualified sex therapist. Dana once said if Emma got into her and Pete’s business that Emma would end up with a need to go for a rhinoplasty. I then reminded Dana that Emma can turn to diamond, and my dear sister thought better of it.

“So, is he as good as he says he is?” Emma asked the other day over coffee in the kitchen when she got up. Of course it was noon, but she really, really hates mornings.

“At what in particular?” I knew what she meant, but I was not about to let her think I knew. “He did fix my car today if that’s what you mean.”

“The horizontal mambo. The deed. The nasty. Whatever you two call it when your basest instincts kick in and you let him do you. Oh yes. Rutting. Animals rut, right?” Emma by now had poured her second cup of that weird coffee she got from Africa. Logan insists it smells like elephant dung, and I will take him at his word. It sure tastes like it.

“Do you want to wear the mug, Emma? I can arrange that,” I asked as she rolled her eyes in mock horror. Scott and Logan were both nearby. Logan’s presence, to me anyway, had become like a warm blanket on a cold day. Comforting. Reassuring. I also knew he was hearing every word. This was going to be interesting.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to get you so upset. But I know he had the the hots for Jean and that they never did anything about it. I was wondering if you could spill the details. Jean was apparently very, well, mundane in bed. No spice. All wrapping and no substance. I’m surprised Logan would have wanted her if what I saw in Scott’s mind was any indication…”

“What details? I do not kiss and tell, Emma. And don’t speak ill of the dead. Many people under this roof loved Jean, and there is no need for you to drag her through the mud.”

“Enough about Jean. I want details on the prowess of the self-proclaimed “best at what I do” man. Well? Do you have to comb his hair before you let him near you? I would think as a feral he gets fleas sometimes.”

With that I turned and glared at Emma. “Listen, you pasty white harpy, Logan is ten times the man Scott will ever be. And while he could show you a thing or two, maybe he can just show Scott? I’m sure you aren’t enough woman for Logan, Emma.”

“Not having any in 200 years does make you a grouchy bitch, doesn’t it?”

“At least I didn’t steal someone else’s husband! Sex therapy on the astral plane my ass.”

“She ain’t worth it, Red,” Logan said as he walked into the kitchen and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Is this the Hallmark moment?” Emma snapped as Scott walked in. “Or is this the Lifetime movie of the week? You two are insufferable sometimes!”

“Sometimes? And here I thought I was all the time. Comes from being 200 years without a good…well, you get the idea.”

{{You’re right, She is not worth the trouble, Logan}} I said as we walked out of the kitchen. We could hear Emma muttering under her breath about fleas as we left.

TBC

~~Creed, Part 1~~

If anyone was an idiot back then, it was me. How many times can you be told not to do something only to end up in the middle of the thing you were not supposed to do?

I will never look at Central Park the same way again.

It was one of my stupid attempts to be normal. Go to the city. Take a walk in the park. No other X-Men.

Just me.

Yeah, like that is ever a good idea.

Logan warned me. Drilled it into my head. Told me time and again the rules of war as far as Sabertooth was concerned.

1. Do not trust the man to fight in any way, shape or form that is acceptable. He fights dirty. Period.

2. Sabertooth hates women, and he especially hates woman who are connected to Logan. He rapes them for fun and guts them because he can.

3. You never fight him on your own. Get Logan.

Well, that last part I almost did right. When Creed tracked me to the park, I tried to call Logan, but Sabertooth knocked the communicator out of my hand. He threw me up against a tree and started pounding me like I was a heavy bag at a gym. I was lucky he didn’t rape me. I was not lucky enough to escape his adamantium tipped nails.

I don’t remember much after that except for a few screams and grunts. I’m still not sure if I made them or if someone else did. I remember smelling blood and getting knocked around like some ragdoll, and then it suddenly stopped.

Hank, bless his heart, filled me in on the rest.

“To be perfectly honest,” he started as he shook his finger at me, “you should not be alive. The reason we think you are is the hypo you got the other day. The one with Logan’s modified healing factor. He was very worried about you. He’s not likely to say a word about that, but he was. Sat by your bed for three days until you were out of danger.”

“He probably wanted to yell at me for being so damned stupid. I was stupid. I lost my communicator when Creed hit me. I think it broke, but I’m not sure.”

“Oh, it broke. When it did, it set off a distress signal. You fell off the map as far as we were concerned. Amanda Sefton was here, and she gave us a lift to your last location. Needless to say, we all lucked out on that one.”

“Logan’s going to read me the riot act. I just wanted to have a normal afternoon. I was going to see the new Celtic exhibit at the Met. I heard someone screaming and ran to see what was wrong when I got jumped. The screamer turned out to be…”

“Mystique. Yes, we found that out fast enough. She jumped Logan while Creed kept pounding on you. Scott shot her off Logan’s back, and Kurt teleported you out of harm’s way while Logan expressed his displeasure at the situation to Sabertooth.”

“Logan is going to kill me…”

I remember thinking that for what seemed like hours. The team had been called on a mission, and there I was, stuck in med bay and making a pain of myself to poor Hank. I finally stopped thinking and closed my eyes, but all I kept seeing was Creed ripping into me.

And then I started to remember what exactly happened. Creed had been close to raping me, but Logan arrived at exactly the right moment and nearly ripped the bastard’s heart out. That was when Mystique tried to get Logan in the back but Scott took her out.

They all could have died because of my stupidity.

~~New Fairland (or the end of the beginning)~~


It should have been a mission like any other, but the loss of Wolverine and Storm was more than the team could bear. Their deaths left a huge hole in the hearts of everyone around them. But then it got worse. En Sabah Nur stepped in and made Ororo one of his Horsemen.

Losing Storm to Apocalypse sent everyone over the edge, and our worst fears were realized as soon as we touched down in Scotland. There stood Logan in some odd outfit that looked like it was stolen from the set of a movie. Blue tunic and armor, red cape, ram’s head belt buckle and a scimitar. He looked scarier in that than I could ever have imagined, and he sort of corners the scary market most of the time in battle anyway.

Jean was in her full Phoenix glory trying to get Ororo back to the side of the angels, and the others were trying to figure out what to do about Logan when I got the bright idea that I could get into his head and fix things. Kurt was hollering at me to get out of the way, and Bobby tried to put up an ice wall between me and Logan, but I just kept going. I was carrying a set of clawed daggers that looked like some weird props from the Lord of the Rings, so smacking at the ice was a hell of a lot easier than it should have been.

“Logan, I do not know what that crackpot did to you, but we can fix that,” I said softly as I kept walking forward. He never said a word. He just raised his scimitar and came after me. “Logan, you do not know what you are doing. I am not moving until we fix this…”

A blast of ruby red light flew past me and knocked the sword from Logan’s hands. When he seemingly died, Logan did not have his adamantium. I was fully expecting bone claws to be popped in short order, and I got the shock of my life when gleaming adamantium ones connected with my chest and plunged into my heart.

When you die, it really is like a slow motion movie at times. I saw everything I knew and everyone I had ever loved pass by me, and things slowed to a crawl as I closed my eyes one last time.

The next part I only know because Kurt told me after the fact. He teleported me back to the jet once Logan went off to get his sword and take care of Scott. Kurt said a small prayer over my body as Hank pronounced me dead, and the two of them went back into battle, getting out of the jet as a bolt of lightning hit it. Kurt assumed it had been Ororo doing her worst, but when he got outside, he saw Jean had taken Storm out of the equation. Logan was trying to stab Scott in the chest with his sword, so Nightcrawler forgot about the lightning long enough to help Cyclops fend off the attack.

Everyone forgot about me, and that was how it should have been. Letting Nur run rampant in this world was not an option. He had to be stopped, and so did his agents. But the funny thing was, in forgetting about me, they set me free. Or should I say the claws to the heart did.

I still remember Kurt telling the whole story to me, Logan and Ororo one night at Harry’s after things had been set to rights again. After he teleported Scott away from Logan, he turned to see the jet rock back and forth. The door blew off its hinges, and the stairs that descended from the craft were ripped and twisted as if Magneto himself were joining the attack. Something shot out of the Blackbird and banked as it flew over the Scottish countryside, not stopping until it came back into the battle.

It was me, but it was not exactly the same me who had died at Logan’s hands. If I remember correctly, Kurt said I looked a wee bit scary as I came crashing into Logan, plowing him backward into what amounted to a trench in the Scottish soil. Wolverine was living up to his name as he kept trying to slice into me, and I was sure he’d take off my head if I let him, so a few well placed runes were needed to knock him senseless for a bit.

“Where the hell is his sword?”

That was the only thing I asked as I grabbed onto Logan’s tunic and held on for dear life as I tried to push into his mind. My own memories were flooding back on me as I crawled slowly into his mind. Children I had seemingly forgotten. Friends I had left behind. Battles fought and won and lost over centuries. Loves old and new revealed.

“Cyclops, where is that damnable sword!” I shouted as I kept sending runes at Logan as he fought to get back to the world of the conscious. Nightcrawler was the one who finally handed the blade to me. “Tis the only thing standing between me and Death,” I said as I took it from Kurt. As I had somehow guessed, it had been forged of adamantium. It felt like no other metal when you held it. It had a signature all its own. “No, you are not getting this back, friend,” I said as I forced every memory I had had with the X-Men until that point into Logan’s mind. “Phoenix, I have need!” I screamed as Jean flew to my side and helped get into Logan’s head so we could undo what had been done by Nur.

By that point Apocalypse was on the scene himself and was not exactly pleased when he saw the “red haired witch” kneeling at the side of his now deprogrammed Horseman. “I wondered when you would be back,” he intoned as I looked at him and smirked.

“I come back when I am bidden, Nur. Now, go back to the black pit from which you have crawled,” I said as I held the adamantium scimitar in my grip. “I claim this blade, Nur, and I place the X-Men under my protection as the avatar of the Morrigan. I suggest you leave. Now.”

Apocalypse only stood there laughing as his hand shot up and sent a blast flying at the team that was now gathered around Ororo and Logan. A flurry of runes danced in between everyone and the blast as my eyes went black. By then the Pacrat landed, and Cable went after his nemesis Nur with a vengeance. I felt like going after Apocalypse myself, but that would wait for another day. “I can heal them. Go fight the bastard!” I screamed as I started to send a healing light over Storm and Wolverine. I was pulling their injuries into myself, and I soon found the pain and physical torture was more than I could bear. As they both were fully healed, I smiled at them. “Good to be among true warriors again,” I said softly before I passed out. At my side was not the blade Logan had attacked everyone with. It had been transformed into a new sword although at its heart was still the blade of Death. This one had Celtic runes on it, and the hilt had on it a raven sitting in the center of a circle with an X in it. Beside it sat another blade and a shield. Those I knew right away as the Unifier and the Groaner, my weapons from ages past. This new blade still does not have a name, but one day it will tell me itself what it is.

Eireann/The Goddess Is in the Details


It should have been a mission like any other, but heaven help me, it all went to hell as soon as we crossed the border into Irish airspace.

Charles had rounded up the usual suspects to make a quick stop in London to attend a conference. Jean, Kurt, Logan and I were picked to bolster Charles a bit on this trip. I wish I had declined, but my memories were still spotty at best, and he and Jean thought leaving me rattling around the school unsupervised was not the best idea. No plan had been made for us to set foot in my homeland, but the Goddess had other plans. She always does.

To get to England from the States, you have to fly over Ireland. Going other routes was just not practical. I just wish I had had the common sense to ask them to alter the route a tad. Logan and Kurt were busy piloting the jet, and Jean and Charles were trying to make the best of the trip by poking around in my head. I was tired of it beyond words. I think they had all had a hard time coming to terms with who I really was. Check that. Everyone except Ororo, Kurt and Logan. Maybe Logan and Kurt volunteered for this trip because they did not want me falling into some abyss of mental torment? Maybe they wanted me to take them to some pub I had visited in the past? I never asked.

“Can’t we just stop for a bit?” I pleaded as Charles looked a bit vexed. We had supposedly been making progress, or at least that is what he and Jean kept saying. But I kept feeling walls going up in my mind, and all I wanted to do was pull back and find things out on my own terms.

“Take ten, Red, and look out the window,” Logan said as he nodded toward the right side windows on the jet. “Forty thousand shades of green, right?”

“Home,” I whispered as I ran to the window and gazed down at the green fields that seemed to stretch as far as my eye could see. “O Morrigan, we call your name across the dusty years. You speak to us, of blood and lust. You show us all our fears. You are a goddess, old and wise. Of holy power you have no dearth. Beneath your wings: Black, red and white, we learn of death and birth,” I started to chant as I looked down at the fields of my birth. “You walk about, this ancient land, your hungers raw and clear. You make the crops grow rich and strong, as well your geese and deer. A flirting maid, a lusty hag, a mother of great girth: Without the touch, of your black wings, we cannot heal the earth.”

Healing. That is what I needed. Peace. And in the back of my mind, the Morrigu was telling me that this was not the way to find it. The X-Men could not possibly understand who I was, what I was or what my role was in this world. Without thinking, I got up from my spot at the window, crossed to Logan and pulled him into a kiss before vanishing in a flash of light.

{{It is, as always, the hunter who protects me}} a voice said in all their minds just before I vanished. Or should I say we vanished. By that point I was not myself any longer. Morrigan had taken hold of what was hers and pulled me back to her world. If the X-Men wanted me, they'd have to find me on The Morrigu's terms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was between Samhain and Yule, but the fire inside me burned like it was Beltane. The Morrigu apparently got as much of a thrill from kissing Logan as I did, and therein would be a world of trouble. She did not understand why I didn’t just claim the man, and in my small, still voice I tried to explain that it was a bit more complicated than that. He had another that he loved, and I had to respect that. The Goddess did not like the answer, but for the moment she would live with it. The more pressing concern was the fact that we were floating naked in a field, sitting directly above the center of a labyrinth cut into the ground below us.

The last time this had happened was when Galen had died at Arthur Pendragon’s side. Aoife, Deirdre and Roan were all with Morgaine and Enya, and the Goddess used my pain as her foothold into Camelot and Glastonbury. I had not been her prize while on the Holy Isle. Others were the Matronesses of Avalon, and Morrigan was seen simply as another aspect I brought with me. On the isle I was Branwen’s daughter, the child of the white crow and not the battle raven. But the Morrigu came full bore onto the playing field through me, and it was happening again now. She knew not of X-Men nor did she care. Their leader, the man whose name she hissed in displeasure as we floated above the earth, had tried to breach the sanctuary of my mind, and he would pay for that in one way or another.



--More to come--


OOC: Poem is an excerpt of "Hymn to the Morrigan" by Issac Bonewits

April 14 or Famous Last Words

Anyone who knows anything about magic knows that names are powerful. The truth is, dates can be just as powerful. Dates bring a certain clarity to things, but they can also bring confusion and pain if you let them.

The date of one's birth, for example, can be as defining as one's name. It helps to set us apart, and it gives us a place to begin. For some reason the date of my birth, in both my original time and in the current era, have a special meaning. I wonder if all my scattered pieces share the same date? Until they all come home, I will never know.

Holidays, of course, and the dates they fall on, can also be powerful. December 25th is a prime example. It is a time of year that those who follow the Lord and Lady call Yule, the period when the light starts to gain ground over the darkness. It is no wonder that early Christians, in an effort to convert those they called nonbelievers, chose that day to celebrate Christmas.

Then you get to the other personal days like anniversaries of events, both good and bad, that you do not wish to forget.

April 14th is one of those anniversaries for me. It was the day all hell broke loose. The day I almost lost everything before I ever really had it. It was the day Emma started to plant seeds of doubt and pain, and I was stupid enough to let her get away with it.

It was no secret to Emma, especially to Emma, that I liked Logan. A lot. She also knew that my memories were clashing in my head on a daily basis. There was the part of me that wanted to rush to him and pledge my love, and then there was the part that knew this would be the worst thing to do to the man. He loved Jean, and it was starting to look like Jean and Scott's marriage was falling apart a bit more every day.

Emma started drilling it into my head that eventually Logan and Jean would be together. "There's nothing you can do about it," she'd say so very matter-of-factly as she watched the students in their Danger Room exercises. "They're fated," she'd bring up as we changed in the lockers before a mission. "You've lost before you even got to run the race."

Those little chats went on for months, but they came to a head in July. Bastille Day to be exact. July 14. That was the day Emma more or less said I would never have Logan and to just give up and leave.

"Emma, I have no clue why you think you have all this insider information, but I wish you would just shut up." I said as I sat in the gardens and tried not to feel the pain of my breaking heart as the White Queen shoved it all in my face.

"Just because some part of you bore the man a child in another dimension does not mean you are destined to be his lover here. Jean is. Do you want to sit here and watch her falling all over the man you love?"

Emma kept up with the trash talking for the rest of the summer and into the fall. She'd pick at me like some would a scab on a cut. She wanted me to break, and I would be damned if I'd let her do that to me.

Fall came in crisp and clear in September, and soon after I finally learned why Emma was so bound and determined to see Jean and Logan together. I had decided to go down by the lake to pick the last of some of the medicinal herbs for the season. "Logan went down there a little while ago," Emma said as I passed through the kitchen on my way outside. Unfortunately, she had left out one very important detail.

As I made it to the lake and pulled out my bolline, I saw Logan in the distance. I waved to him as I prepared to cut the peppermint and basil, but I almost cut myself as I saw Jean make her way to Logan and pull him into an embrace. I dropped the bolline into my basket and headed back into the mansion. I saw Emma at the kitchen window smirking, and I wanted to fling basket and bolline at the woman as I ran inside.

To this day Logan has no idea what Emma did to me, and if I am lucky, he never will. And I only found out later why Emma was so desperate for me to go. If Logan came to me, he would leave Jean free and clear to reconcile with Scott one day. Emma could not risk that, so she sacrificed my heart on her bloody altar.




--more to come--