"C" Chulainn..." The name was near whispered out.

"Aye, I was known by tha' name, once. A long, long time ago, in another life, ye could say."

The woman's voice was still a whisper. "You claim to be he?"

"I said I was the one ye call C" Chulainn, once. But like all good thin's, tha' life came t'an end a long time ago. Now, I'm Finn...but I still have all th' memories o' tha' life. It was a good life, tha' was...back when people still believed in 'eroes."

That life had been equal parts elation and sorrow, triumph and tragedy. There had been many lifetimes of such exploits, though never on the grandest scale. Not because he wasn't capable, but because the lives of grand adventure had, in truth, never appealed to him. History's greatest heroes were as often reviled as villains as they were praised as saviors - it all depended on perspective.

Even his life as C" Chulainn, great as it was, had terrible parts to it, things that were recorded but often as an afterthought, as though it were a necessary, expected thing.

In the end, he had found through ages upon ages, it was not how history recorded you, or how you were remembered. If it was a life you could be proud to have experienced, for good or ill, there was little more you could ask from it.

This life was no exception.

It was still strange to him to have found, here, a following after the warrior woman whom had played such a key role in his own history, a subject he was perfectly content to let rest most of the time. But his encounter with the Scathachian woman had piqued his curiosity.

And so he found his feet leading him to the place they resided, which most called the Sanctuary. Its walls and gate in sight, he allowed himself another small smile. That he, who had trained under these women's deified figure, should find them after so long, and being women of such charity as well as ferocity, if all he had heard was correct, was something of a phenomenon to him - despite his mostly unkempt, shambling and shabby appearance, he had his own role as warrior and savior, and yet he kept his own sort of Sanctuary in the form of the Sacred Flame, in WestEnd.

Perhaps his influence in their development had been greater than he supposed, though it was most likely largely unremembered as such. It was fine to him - he was glad enough to see the fruits of his labors in the long run without needing to take the credit.

Now, coming to a halt outside the grounds, he looked the Sanctuary over, his gaze approving in its covering of the walled property, dressed in an oversized, beaten-looking olive-drab coat over a dark t-shirt, jeans that were stained and torn, and boots that looked as though they had more than a few hard years worn into them. The place looked the part of being a temple, all right, as well as the Sanctuary it was called - pristine, peaceful, quiet and mostly unassuming, away from the hustle and bustle of the city proper.

He liked it right away.

And yet there was the brooding feel to it, as though this were a place getting ready to be under siege. Tension charged the air, called to his attention as he stood there, getting ready to walk inside. Something was afoot...or perhaps amiss.

Well...he's always been able to be in the right place at the right time. Perhaps this was going to be another of those occasions.

With his rolling, shambling stride, the Irishman, wandered through the gates, a short, lean figure looking around and apparently taking a self-guided tour of the grounds.

(The above conversation at the beginning of the post is taken from live RP with thanks to Issy and Renna.)

He paused in his admiration of the orchard at the sound of the familiar voice. True, he'd heard it only once, but like many other things - his life as C? Chulainn included, which was a long way back indeed - it was filed away in his memory along with so much else. And never had that memory failed him.

He'd found the graden state of the temple grounds to be a deliciously impressive contradiction. A spot of land nurtured and cared for by a society of women whose business was war and battle, he found the paradox intriguing to say the least. And adding to that this magnificent speciman of Amazon-esque physique, dirty, disheveled and hardly at what most women would regard as their best appearance and kneeling before a man of a much leaner, more ordinary appearance...it topped the scene off perfectly.

It could have made an excellent picture. Rockwell meets Larson.

It wasn't the first time someone felt the urge to bow, once they discovered that he was more - much more - then the guy that might be found sitting passed out in a corner of a bar with three empty half-gallons of Irish whiskey laying around him.

But the truth of it was, he found the prospect ridiculous. He was just another, like so many others, wandering life's roads and paths and trails. Longer lived, perhaps, and with gifts...but other than that and the fact of gender, not so very different from the woman kneeling before him.

So it is that he chuckles, leaning down to help Issy to her feet. "Och, lass, I'm nae th'Pope...i's just Finn, now." The sky-blue eyes look from her to the Sanctuary's grounds, clearly pleased by the sight and admiring it. "I's funny, y'know...I pictured summat more...Spartan in its appoi'ments." He looks back to Issy with a lopsided grin. "An' if ye're wan'in' tae know, I was won'rin' how I might be helpin' ye...ye 'pear t'be in more need of it than I."