Story Note: Continuity is after Excalibur ended, and Wisdom joined X-Force, and after the Warlock limited series.

All characters are copyright of Marvel Comics Inc, or out of my own head. This is fanfic, for entertainment only, and nobody's making any money off of this. Comments or rants can be emailed to cunningvixen@hotmail.com.

It was an absolutely average evening on Muir Isle; a chill wind from the northwest, Moira a little drawn and anxious but also cheerful, an early dinner of roast chicken on the table. Rahne had noticed that it was about five weeks since she'd come back from Amsterdam, and two weeks from her regrettably eventful non-birthday.She decided that there was no better time since her return from Amsterdam to have That Talk.

The pretty mutant girl, with a caretaker's eye, waited until her adopted mother had finished eating. It wouldn't do to upset Mum and not have her eat a proper dinner besides, when she needed it, staving off the Legacy virus.

"Mummy, I need to ask you a question. Rather serious."

"All right then, love. What's bothering you?"

Rahne began to talk, looking down and twisting a paper napkin in her hands. "If you dinna use drugs—and I dinna, an' I never will—is it still a'richt to be friends with people who do use drugs? I mean, they're na' doing anything else wrong except using drugs, an' they're na' like irresponsible addicts or anything—they seem like good people truly—I mean you would like them for friends except f'r that."

Moira sighed. The way she'd been drinking lately, she wasn't one to talk. "It's complicated f'r us. What if you're caught at a party where there's drugs, and you get arrested because of it? But at the same time, I've had friends just like that, especially when I was younger."

"Really?"

"Mostly when I was a student. I rather outgrew them later. What are they like, these friends?"

"Oh, ever so nice. They're mutants in Amsterdam. One of them works in a record shop, and one of them is a DJ, and one of them works f'r a fashion designer even. They're all responsible." This was giving Trani very much the benefit of the doubt, thought Rahne.

"Would you say they're...alternative? Very liberal an' all?"

"Yes. Rather. Does that mean you don't approve?"

"It depends. What sorts of things do they do?"

"Och, they're practically all vegetarian. Um, they're all very fashionable, into the latest music an' clothes." Moira chuckled; this explained the suitcase full of crisply styled clothing Rahne had returned with from her Amsterdam trip. "None o' them like how the US handles mutants, nor how industry treats us, and I , well, it makes sense, I rather agree. They're into... alternative lifestyles, lives outside o' societal strictures, not liking advertising.They don't care f'r fighting. Some of their things are actually—I mean, there's certainly nowt wrong wi' it." Rahne summarised. 

Moira sighed. She knew Rahne well enough to know that "outside of societal strictures" was as recently imported into the girl's vocabulary as the street-chic clothes into her wardrobe.

"My own opinion? I don't think there's any way to isolate you from it. I prefer that you're not around it, but it means a lot that you're responsible enough to tell me. It helps me trust you an' believe you. Use yuir own judgement wi' these people, lass. You can be friends wi' someone wi'out telling them every wee thing about your life, or doing everything they do."

Moira tapped her glass thoughtfully. "This may seem a bit o' a non sequiter. But this actually seems like a good time to tell you about your own mum. Your birth mum. What do you know about her?"

Rahne blinked in astonishment. "I---that her name was Maire, and she was thirty-two, and she died in Ullapool when I was born, and, and they didn't include my father on my birth certificate. Nobody was able to say what she did, an' she didna' have any family in the area..."

"Would you like to see a picture of her? I've only got one. Shall I get it?"

Without waiting for an answer, Moira left the room.

As she left, Rahne succumbed to shock. Her mother! Moira was going to tell her about her birth mother! At last! So soon after the strange Solstice adventure--the Cailleach Buel had kept her promise. But what if there was something terribly wrong with her mum, that Moira had waited so long, and until this conversation? Was her mother a criminal? A drug user? She remembered the last thing Reverend Craig had spat about her mother, calling her "a dock worker's whore." She'd always pictured something vague but pleasant, most recently a pretty red-haired woman looking sad, someone naive enough to be overly charmed with Reverend Craig and do the wrong thing one night and not know how to take precautions. Was it true, then, that her mother had been as the Reverend had told her—a wicked woman with no morals? But no, Trani in Amsterdam was a prostitute, and she wasn't a bad person.

"Here's the photo, Rahne," said Moira, returning. "Your mum was a...little unusual."

With trembling hands, Rahne took the picture and gazed at it in pure bewilderment.Finally, she spoke, her voice rising less with emotion than surprise. "My mum was a hippie?"

"Yes. Yes, she was."

The picture showed a woman sitting spread-legged on the hood of a truck or van, smiling and squinting in the sun, her purple bellbottoms draping over muddy work boots, the long green fringe of her suede vest spreading over the truck hood. A shock of fuzzy red hair spilled out from beneath a knotted headscarf. Her freckled face was half-obscured by moon-sized tinted glasses; all that you could see was a crumpled nose and a smile as wide as the spread of the Hebrides. She had lean, freckled arms. A sticker-covered guitar case and a lurcher dog (half sheepdog, half greyhound, and 100% trouble) were also in the picture. The back of the picture bore a wide-scrawled note-- Thanks again for the crash land—best of luck with your boy and SLAINTE—Maire Sinclair.

Rahne looked up from the laughing, half-tamed woman in the photo to Moira, staid Moira with her neat brown bob, tidy Dr. MacTaggart in her immaculate lab coat.

"I don't look a lot like her," she mumbled.

"It's na' the best picture. Actually, you do look like her, if y' stripped away her hair an' her freckles an' the outfit. She was much prettier than the picture shows."

Rahne looked at the picture again and shook her head. "I canna believe my mum was a hippie. Did you know her?"

Moira nodded. "Josst vaguely. She worked in one o' the Ullapool pubs f'r about a year, an' during that time she became pregnant wi' you. She got in some legal trouble f'r bein' suspected of a citizenship scam wi' some characters from Ireland. Reverend Craig," Moira spat the name, " got involved in the case like a busybody an' the two of them hit it off.She stayed in the area f'r the legal proceedings, to clear her name, an' wound up staying."

"How on earth did she an' Craig get along?" Just looking at the picture, she couldn't imagine two more different people.

"Volunteerin' for Scottish independence fra' Britain. It was verra popular in this area at the time. An' Reverend Craig always had a crack at convertin' any Travellers or hippies or itinerants wha' came to Ullapool, at that time."

"Oh." Rahne had known that Reverend Craig worked with the sailors' mission in Ullapool, but not that.

"They were always verra' lively, quarrelin' back an' forth—she was a sharp woman. At the same time, she was involved wi' a lobsterman, a hippie fellow like herself. He'd fish during--well, y'ken how the lobstermen work. He parked on some o' my land, livin' out o' a truck, in exchange f'r pickin' up litter from daytrippers an' fixin' fences. I gathered fra' the gossip that she was spendin' most o' her time wi' the lobsterman, but tha' Craig ...did you ever read a short story by a man named Somerset Maugham? A very famous story called Rain?"

Rahne shook her head and resolved to read the story immediately.

"Och, never mind. He was...rather infatuated with her, an' spent a lot o' energy tryin' to wear her down intae Calvinism. As y'turned up i' yuir own research, it turned into a wee scandal. Anyway, at the end o' the summer, the lobsterman—I canna' remember his name--died in a fire on his boat."

"Oh, no!"

"Aye. By then, Maire was seven months pregnant, which I only found out later. I wasna' her doctor then—she was very adamant about hatin' doctors an' hospitals."

Rahne looked down and fussed compulsively with her napkin again. "My birth certificate doesna' say who my father was."

Moira sighed and looked away. This was the hard part. "I honestly canna' say if Maire would be able to tell you hersel'. I know what you think about Reverend Craig bein' your da. But under the circumstances...She was a charmer ..."

"How did she die in childbirth wi' me, if you were her doctor?" Rahne said. She'd seen Moira save life after life during the Morlock crisis—Why couldn't she save a normal woman? Maybe I was born in my wolf shape and hurt my mum, tore her up inside?

Moira stood up and began to pace. Something in her voice chilled. "Maire was bent on havin' a child an' havin' it her way. She didna' believe anymore in organised medicine. A midwife what used to live on a commune that used to be out here tended to her. I didna' get involved until I got a phone call, asking me to come out. I was letting her stay in Roan's truck on the land—that was his first name, Roan, now I remember, he'd only died a month before, an' she was planning to drive the truck away after the end o' the tourist season. I arrived an' found her in premature labour, due to placenta previa."

"What's that?"

"It's when the placenta, wi' all its blood vessels an' the umbilical cord, grows over the cervix. It's verra dangerous an' can lead to infection, serious bleeding, an' premature birth. The midwife should ha' caught it but your position i' the womb was normal, so nowt was noted. Until she went into labour early. They called me in, soon as they could--no cellphones then---and I helped as best I could." Moira decided not to mention Maire's flood-like bleeding. "We had to bloody force her to the hospital."

Moira paused. Rahne had been weeping silently, a sheet of tears silvering her face.

" She died that night, haemorrhaging further in her sleep."

"What—what happened to me next?"

"You were healthy an' normal, but premature. I was actually investigated f'r not forcin' her to go in sooner. Once the legal issues from that settled down, Reverend Craig put in a bid to foster you an' was accepted as "morally suitable." I'm sorry to say that he never adopted you because of the fostering fees—"

"Which would ha' stopped if he had," finished Rahne, bitterly.

There was a silence, which Moira breached. It sounded like she'd been saving up a little speech inside her, packaging it for this moment. "Yuir mum was... a complicated person. She didna' do things the easy way, and she didna' do what most people thought was the right thing wi' some of her affairs. But she always had her integrity an' her own set of standards. She was very much of that crazy seventies moment in some ways, and ahead of her time in others. She might still be alive if she'd been willin' to make a compromise, or look further beyond the moment."

"Why are you tellin' me all this now? Why not before?"

Moira began to make a cup of tea. "Bein' in these superhero teams...in some ways, you get plenty of experience, an' in other ways you remain verra sheltered...."

Rahne exploded. "Wha' do I care about that? I needed t'know! All these years y'could ha' told me. Y'could have! It explains sae bloody much! Why I couldna' find many records if she was a traveller, why Reverend Craig—why Craig—" Rahne choked into silence on thirteen years of hard memories and eighteen years of longing, her face puckered with rage. Then her voice came back. "You had her bloody PICTURE the whole bloody TIME!"

Moira clenched her fists. "Y' will na' even let me explain!" 

"You're na' listening to me! How could y'bloody hold back the most important thing o' all? Did she use drugs? Is that why I'm a mutant?"

"No—I dinna know—I thought—"Hell, thought Moira, I thought I was your bloody mother and I go ahead an' tell you about your birth mum an' now I'm not good enough? "I thought y'were fine wi' things the way they were," said Moira coldly. "An' I'm tellin' you now, an' this is the thanks I get?"

"It's na' the same!" Rahne yelled. "I needed t'know!"

"You're na' makin' any bloody sense," snapped Moira.

"And I bloody asked, years ago, an' y'didna' tell me all this! I ASKED!"

"You were a child. You were na' ready."

"I was sae ready. So ready," said Rahne. "An' I asked again after bloody Genosha—I was nae child after Genosha."

The two Scotswomen glared at each other with white faces and hard brows, both angry, both needy, both proud, ironically alike.

Through gritted teeth, Rahne said, "I think I'll gae for a walk." She snatched up the picture and fled. Moira saw her stiff back, but not the fresh tears on her cheeks.

From the kitchen window, Moira numbly watched the young woman pelt out of the house and dash up the island ridge. Perhaps another woman would have felt rejected, but being yelled at was a lesser rejection than her mutant son trying to kill her, or her brutal husband philandering for years, or—and she winced to think it—her lover's interest fading away. Perhaps another woman would have resented that the decision she'd made for someone else's good had gone awry. But it was a lesser wrong than people said she had done when she re-engineered Magneto's genes, and it certainly didn't have global repercussions, like that had. Her mind said, Rahne's been angry at me like this before; she'll get over it. But her heart felt as if it had been burned down to a cold coal. 

On the cliff edge again, Rahne shifted into her full wolf-form—something she did rarely nowadays-- curled up into a ball and tried to stop the leaking tears beneath the slow autumn sunset. 'My mother, after all this time, my mother. I'd wondered why Moira never told me, even when I asked. I pictured a bad strumpet, I pictured a, a lady like my teacher in first form, or like Stevie Hunter except white. She doesn't look like a mum in the picture. But I never thought my real mum would ha' accepted me as a mutant—I always thought I'd have been rejectedf'r that anyway. But if she was a radical hippie..... then maybe...I could have been a Traveller love child werewolf, instead of, well, boring, like I am. If she could see me now, she'd accuse me of working for The Man and havin', how would they say it, a hung up trip—but I could probably have talked to her about, oh, about boys and...sex.She looks like she would have been a raver. But she was seeing a midwife ...she played a guitar....I never even tried to play an instrument at all....'

Heart aching, tired of thinking— there was no escape even in her full-wolf form, which only gave her the distressing desire to throw back her face-muzzle and howl— Rahne shifted back to human and watched the setting sun. When her eyes were burning from the light, she wandered the weedy island cliff towards the west, picking a bunch of loose, bright weed-flowers, purple and white asters and tall yellow dandelion-like ones, seeds blown over from the mainland. The gangly bouquet seemed appropriate. 

She imagined herself as a child, handing it to the happy hippie woman in the photograph, pictured that wide smile beaming at her, the ring-burdened, freckled hand clasping her own. When she came to the western cliff-edge, she bound the flower-sheaf with a knotted stem and tossed it into the sea, with a prayer. A chaotic, curling wave absorbed it from the rocky water-edge and swept it away. 

She stood a while longer, letting the northwest wind scour her until her heart was lightened enough, and the sky darkened enough, to make the house lights look inviting again.