ORIGINS

Part III: Ireland

By Ed Ainsworth

“You must be Brian?” the small old looking woman said. She brushed some of her grey hair, still flecked with ginger, from her face.

Brian Braddock coughed and straightened the collar on his shirt, wondering if he should have gone with the black shirt instead of the one he was wearing, a blue and white Hawaiian. He smiled and nodded.

“That’s right, nice to meet you,” he said, reaching out a hand to the older woman. She took it and pulled him into her for a tight hug.

“Pleasure t’meet you, I’m Noola,” the older woman replied, pulling him into the house. It was a small, respectable double story house out in the middle of the sticks, just shy of Cork in Ireland. “Donald’s in the other room, reading his papers.”

He followed Noola into their small house and smiled admiring their decorating and how welcoming it all felt.

“Brian,” he turned around to face Captain Ireland. She had dressed up for his arrival, in a long figure hugging green dress. A belt ran around the thin expanse that was her waist as she stood at the bottom of the stairs. Brian swallowed loudly and looked over his shoulder at her Mother.

“Ah, what a fine looking dress you have on, Clodhga.”

“I think I’ll echo that statement,” Brian agreed. She smiled and blushing gesturing for him to follow her up the stairs. “I’m going to show Brian some of my things before dinner, Ma. Okay?” she said, a little more edge in her voice that there needed to be.

“Sure, sure. Just make sure you wash your hands, Clod. I don’t want you making a mess at the table.”

“Oh for Godsakes…” she muttered under her breath. Brian smiled and examined his hands quickly.

“Don’t take His name in vain, Clodhga,” her Father piped up, with more than a hint if irony, never once looking up from his paper. The green haired Captain shook her head and waved for Brian to follow her, as she quickly ascended and turned the corner into her room.

“This is not quite what I had imagined when you said to visit you, Ireland.” Brain admitted as he turned the corner into her room. It was a strange sight to behold. In essence it was a child’s room, with film posters on the wall and a computer desk and editing suite by the bed. It wasn’t a big room by any means, small and confined, Clodhga closed the door and leaned against it.

“I had to show you me, Brian and not what I represent. After all, whenever someone thinks of Irish Superheroes, we’re basically limited to Banshee and Shamrock,” she admitted, gesturing for Brian to sit on the bed.

He sat down softly and watched her move. She was trying to be deliberately sultry, moving her hips in a way that didn’t appear to be natural to her. He smiled to himself and looked down at the floor.

She sat down next to him and put her hand on his knee, letting her green hair fall over her shoulders and onto her chest. She leaned in closer, letting her hair hang loose over her face and allowing her eyes to stare up at him from underneath her eyelids.

“I’m glad you came, Brian, I’ve missed seeing you,” she whispered, locking her eyes onto his and moving in close.

“If you want me to see the real you, Ireland, you should be yourself, because you’re not right now.”

Brian looked up from underneath his eyebrows, as Clodhga’s face changed. Her expression dropped to embarrassment and she pulled away.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, crossing her arms and moving away, as Brian spread himself out more on the bed. He opened his legs and leaned forwards, his body hovering in the area he claimed for himself in her room.

“That’s an odd question. I just want to know you, Clodhga. You have a lovely house here,” he smirked as she cocked her head to the side.

“You being sarcy, Brian? I live with my bloody parents. There’s nothing lovely about that. I’m in my flippin’ twenties and I love at home.”

Brian nodded and leaned backwards on the bed, his elbows propping him up.

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“There’s EVERYTHING wrong with that, Brian. I’m supposed to be a Captain of Ireland. A Captain of Britain and here I am living in the same room I have lived in for the past twenty years with the same parents who respect and believe and support me in everything I do!” she blasted. Brian blinked a little, not quite understanding why that was a bad thing.

“Forgive me for a moment, Irish, but, why is that a bad thing? Most people want their parents to love what they do? I worked for years to gain my Fathers respect.”

“Oh, and I suppose you found out in the end that he’d always respected you and that you only believed he didn’t, thus proving the everlasting bond between Father and Son?”

“It didn’t, actually.” Brain related quietly.

“They do,” Clodgha continued after a moment’s silence “I do want them to support me, but…For Godsakes, they don’t give me anything to rebel against. A little bit of rebellion can go a long way, Brian,” she pulled her hair back and tight into a bun to keep it from her face. “It’s not like they pay proper attention at any rate. They’re supportive from a distance.”

Brian’s puzzled face must have asked the question he needed to, as she got to her feet and walked over to her computer.

“I spent most of my life trying to find something to get them to react, Brian,” she began, sitting down heavily at the PC and flicking the monitor on. “I got a tattoo when I was 16. They loved it. I started trying out drugs, they supported me. Dad bought my first stash of Weed for me!”

She shook her head and smiled a smile devoid of any emotion.

“Nothing I do can help them hate me. I just want them to feel a little bit of disappointment, a little bit of anger or emotion, because as it is, I get nothing.” she hung her head and rubbed her face gently, as Brian put his hand on her shoulder.

“You don’t feel loved?” he asked, kneeling down next to her.

“I don’t. Not really. They’ve not said a word to each other for two days now. Mum makes Dinner, Dad reads or watches TV. In the evenings they go to their separate rooms and sleep in different beds. This house is so devoid of love it just makes me…”

“Crave it?” he asked, referring back to her touching his leg. “You know that isn’t love, right?”

She nodded slowly, grabbing hold of the mouse and opening a few folders.

“I know it isn’t love, but it is close. Intimate. Intense. Those are the things that I want for me. I want to have that feeling between two people, I want to feel it and hear it. Instead, I get this…tundra of emotional devastation. It feels like a holocaust of the heart around here.”

Brian recoiled at the imagery and removed his hand.

“Probably not the right words to conjure any kind of positive visualisations there, Clod.” Brian replied, somewhat repulsed by her use of the Holocaust to describe a lack of love.

“I can’t think of a more appropriate word, Brian,” she snapped. She then pointed to her computer screen and scrolled through the files.

“When my brother left, because he could, I was left with Mum and Dad. Didn’t have any other choice, because my only source of income was working at the local super-market.” She clicked a file to open it, her first movie playing out on the screen.

“So, I went into film making, Brian. I tried to film mundane stuff and make it interesting. That never worked, so I ended up trying to make my parents angry. I filmed myself having sexual experiences, doing drugs that sort of thing,” she pointed towards the screen as Brian recoiled at the sight of it. For a moment he wondered what exactly led Roma into giving these abilities to Clodhga.

“That never worked, so I quit it all. I knew it was wrong but…you have to try these things right? Vice never bothered me.”

Brian shook his head and looked away from her for a moment. Vice had bothered him. The vice of a loveless relationship so he was never alone. The vice of thirsting for leadership, to order people about and lord it over them, as he did many times when he led the Original Excalibur and finally, the demon he struggled with to this day.

Alcohol.

“I can’t say that I could do all of those things and walk away from them, Clodhga,” Brian admitted after a few moments of silence. She smiled softly.

“That’s more like it,” Brian responded, touching her finger gently, “That looks like a real smile.”

“Turns out that I enjoyed making films more than I did making my parents unhappy,” she continued. Brian leaned forwards again, removing his hand from hers.

“Why are you telling me all this, Clodhga? I mean, it’s not like I don’t appreciate it, because I do, but there’s a lot of detail to this.”

“I need you to trust me, Brian. I need you to trust and understand who and what I am.”

He nodded gently and waited for her to continue.

“I learned a lot of things from my little dalliances into film and I went on to work for a small independent Irish TV station.”

She smiled, remembering those times. She moved forwards, noticing something flicking on the bottom of her taskbar.

“Brian…I think we might need to skip dinner tonight,” she began, looking over her shoulder at him. His attention was immediately captured. She wasn’t propositioning, her demeanour had changed completely.

“Uniform?”

“Uniform.”

The pair pelted down the stairs to the hallway of Captain Ireland’s parents’ house, leaving the odd juxtaposition of two superheroes, in full costume, in a small town house hallway.

“Mum, we’ll be back when we can! Save us some dinner!” Clodhga called, as she shot out the front door and took to the skies.

“Sorry about this, Mrs. Lyons!” Brian waved as he followed their Daughter. The older woman stood in the doorway for a moment, waving to the pair before she closed it and turned to her Husband.

“Just the pair of us for dinner, Donald,” Noola said, offering a half-hearted smile.

“Mmm,” Donald responded.

“Any idea exactly what we’re facing here?” Brian asked, quickly catching up to Captain Ireland.

“Have you heard of that song, ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary?’” she asked, dipping down to drag her fingers across the tops of the orchard of fruit trees below.

“Yeah. Old World War song isn’t it?” Brian answered. Clodhga nodded in return.

“With the loosing of all that crazy energy from Otherworld, some of the more…odd elements of Irish folklore become more pronounced. Limerick City for example became a land of Double entendres until we worked out a way to sort it. It appears that Ireland is the home of living songs.”

Brian shook his head and smiled, dropping back from the Captain before him and watching her fly ahead.

“I have to say, Clodhga. In all my adventures, across space and time and with the X-Men and the Excalibur before you other Captains…I’ve never come across such completely insane sentences as the ones we’re forced to speak.”

“I know!” she laughed, turning on her back to face him. “A city of clever poetry, spreading like a virus…a country of living songs? It’s just…well, it’s silly isn’t it?”

“It is! It is. Mind you, we’re flying through the air as living embodiments for those countries, so doesn’t that make us silly?”

“Some of us are, but there are the few who really fit that description.” Clodhga gave him a slightly seductive wink before she reversed herself onto her front.

Brian’s eyes widened for a moment before he pushed ahead of Ireland, towards the sounds of gunfire below.

“So, what of this song, Clodhga?”

“Call me Ireland now we’re getting close, England,” she replied, her face dropping from that playful look into that of seriousness. Brian couldn’t get over how one person could change their personality so much within a single meeting. Flirtatious and sexual, moving to genuine and almost childlike, into playful and excitable and straight into serious and dedicated. It was as though Brian couldn’t predict what she was going to do and he almost liked that.

Almost.

“The song is about an Irishman, Paddy, going to London to fight in the war. He leaves his love, Molly-O back in Tipperary and goes off fighting. Anyway, later he receives this letter from her saying basically If you love me, come back or Mike Maloney is going to marry me.”

Brian nodded as the sounds of gunfire grew louder and louder.

“So, I imagine that Paddy has come back for Molly and now him and Mike are having a gun-fight below?”

“That’s about the long and short of it,” Clodhga replied. “It’s nice having a little network of spies around the country. Means someone’ll email me and I can get straight to the heroing part. Not sure I really like the name though.”

“What is the name?” Brian asked, flying alongside her. She forced back an ironic smile and looked straight at him.

“The IRA. Irish Reactionary Alliance. Apparently, the Government wanted something that would re-tool the name into something a bit less….reactionary.”

Brian hung in the air for a moment of silence. He was shocked. How could IRA be spun into something good. How could it ever be used as a force for what is right?

“I must admit, it’s a very modern way to be a hero,” Brian replied trying not to comment at all on the Governments choice of agency name, dropping through the sky and straight into the ground before the suited gentlemen, who held two very modern looking and very powerful sub-machine guns in his hands.

“I imagine that while the song is old, you’re modern representations of it, isn’t that right…Mike?”

“You don’t belong here, English,” the man before him said as he opened his clips into Brian chest. Bullets bounced off his body and ricocheted over the street, crashing through windows and knocking chunks of mortar and wall free from their original position.

“This isn’t exactly comfortable, but you’re not hurting me,” Brian responded, stepping forwards as the gunfire stopped for a moment. “That’s better. Now I’m sure we can talk about this like sensible…”

The grenade landed at Brian’s feet. He swore under his breath as it went off, the explosion throwing him backwards and through a supporting wall of a small shop. Sifting through the rubble, Brian sat up to witness Clodhga handle the situation.

“Neither of us can die,” Paddy said, looking up to Clodhga, his blue eyes slowly healing themselves, pushing the bullets that had been fired into them out through his tear ducts. “We’ve shot each other to pieces, but there is no end to this fight.”

Captain Ireland pushed some of her green hair from her face and helped him to his feet.

“Don’t fight. I know how we can fix this,” she pushed him to the side and nodded to him gently. “Go find Molly, and I’ll deal with Mike for the time being. Bring her back here as soon as you find her.”

The man nodded and ran towards the back streets, disappearing from view. Clodhga turned back to Mike Maloney and cracked her knuckles.

“I imagine you think you’re a sort of…immortal terrorist or something, right? Here to celebrate the rising and to beat down anyone who’s sympathetic towards England?”

Mike said nothing, cocking his guns at Captain Ireland. She smiled and opened her arms up, making herself a bigger target.

“Times have changed a little bit, Mike. Ireland isn’t as insular as it once was. We’re loved all over the world – We’re part of Europe now, not just some little country on its own. We’re suffering, we all know that, we need help from the rest of the EU but this…this violence. It doesn’t help Ireland herself.”

“What will help her then? Allowing others t’pollute her and to lean on them when we can do it ourselves?” Mike replied, rushing are Clodhga and slamming the butt of his gun into her face.

She stepped backwards, taking the momentum away and staring into his eyes.

“We don’t have any jobs, Mike. The economy doesn’t work without jobs. There comes a time when every proud country, or man, or woman needs to say I can’t do this alone.”

“We can do it alone! We can and we will, we’ve just stopped trying!” he shouted, ramming his gun into her stomach. She stumbled a little as he brought it down on the side of her head, knocking her to the side.

“We can’t. Sooner people like you accept that, sooner we can all move on. You don’t stop things happening by blowing people up and using violence. You use words and your brain and whatever the hell else you’ve got that doesn’t involve hurting people.” Clodhga got to her feet, grabbing hold of the gun as Mike swung it down a final time. She crushed it between her fingers and threw it to the ground.

Paddy and Molly-O, a beautiful slip of a girl came to a halt at the corner of the road. Brian slowly exhumed himself from the rubble and moved silently towards the pair, picking pieces of grit from his hair.

“Those two over there? They’ve been ‘in love’ since World War One. That was a long time ago, you understand?” she nodded over her shoulder to Paddy and to Molly.

“They’re made for each other in a way we can’t even understand, and your man over there is going to Marry her. From what I’ve seen of you, that’s probably a good thing. Shooting up people with grenades and machine guns in a public place.”

“You don’t understand, we’re in love. She wants to be with me!” Mike screamed, throwing his fist into Ireland and leaning into her, trying to knock her off balance. Ireland stumbled backwards, landing on her back. She looked up at him and smiled.

“I don’t need violence to beat you, Mike. You’ve beaten yourself.” She pushed him off and delivered a swift, sharp kick to the testicles.

“By the power of Captain Ireland, and everything that invests me as the embodiment of this great country, I pronounce you, Paddy, and you, Molly-O, as Husband and Wife. You shall live out your lives in honour of each other and away from this dirt-bag in front of you.”

“What?” Mike replied sheepishly. “You can’t do this!”

“Just did, man,” Clodhga responded, as she drew her leg back and kicked him in the chest. “You’re bullet proof and can heal from explosions. You’re probably practically immortal because you were never really alive, you’re a song, and as long as people remember that song you’re around but…”

She offered him a wink, and walked over to Brian, whose hand she took tightly and gave it a squeeze. She looked into his eyes and smiled, touching his face.

“There’s more than one way to kill a man, and really, only one of them involves actual Death.”

Next Issue: Captain Wales – Bang Tidy!