Morgan!

So Vin kidnapped the Wylies.

What a great start to this! He captured them both, but Katie, bless her adventurous heart, escaped somehow. In perhaps the bizarrest team-up rescue efforts ever, I worked first with Mara, then with Don, to bribe the hell out of everyone we possibly could to get us info, delay Vin's ship in port... everything.

We were *almost* too late, when we finally found him. But using our awesome ninja skills, Stormy and I successfully rescued him and got him to the hospital. Once there, he promptly had about six bazillion complications, but as of now he's doing much better. I hope he'll be home soon.

(And good lord, Katie, take care of yourself better. I swear, I practically have to mother her to keep her eating and get her to take care of her sciatica. She needs to be home in her own bed and comfy chairs and near food, and not stuck in that room with him.)

Diast came back after a "mission" which was really them re-granting her the title of Jedi Master. Sweet! I think they seem to be more accepting of her marrying me, now; isn't this a sign? They wouldn't do this if they had doubts or concerns about her ideology and performance.

Just let the last piece fall into place...

Diast came back! Diast came back!

Of course, it was utterly like her to just walk into the Rose without forewarning. I swear she was testing me. "Let's see if Morgan can avoid dragging me into the bathroom." I did, somehow. I don't know how. I was so glad to see her.

I'm amazed at how much she's throwing herself into wedding planning. Even from the beginning, she dove in with a singlemindedness that astounded me. She's really taking this all the way; dress fittings, catering, the works. We've decided on having two weddings; one in Pittsburgh, to be the show wedding, the 'look at society's sweetheart' show affair. To be honest, I hate the whole idea. In a lot of ways I'd almost be happier to keep Diast my secret, out of the limelight of Earth and away from their problems. So much of life is already hiding who I am and what I am, and I don't want her to walk down that path too. I'm afraid of it causing problems, as well; I don't knoiw how well the Order would react to her hiding her nature, and I'm afraid of attracting Technocracy attention. But she's willing to do it, for me. She insists on it, because she knows I've got an image on Earth to maintain. I won't keep her out of my life if she wants to be in it, for any reason whatsoever. I believe we can weather whatever comes our way.

The private wedding ,of course, will be an entirely different affair. This will be our chance to be us, Morgan and Diast, Akashic and Jedi. That will be the one that means the most. That will be the true, full joining of hearts.

Seamus has agreed to be a groomsman, which pleases me immensely, and we're leaning on Emmy to be flower girl. I need another groomsman, but I'm not sure who to ask. Leon comes to mind, actually. Really, the only depressing part of this whole mess is Stephen. I asked him, what, two months ago to be my best man? He hasn't even said no. Hell, he's been avoiding me entirely; I can't get his attention to save my life, and he never has time to come hang out. Or maybe he just is saying that. I don't know. I really don't. Diast is convinced he doesn't like her; I think I've pissed him off somehow unknowingly, as I'm good at doing. I just don't know.

Emmy actually gave us both a hug. There may be hope there yet. We have got to find her sister, somehow. I need to talk to Diast about that, but I just don't have the time. I swear she's been working out more these days. It's incredibly distracting. How can something be so hard and so soft at the same time? Mmmmmmm.

I can't believe this is actually going to happen. I barely feel like it is. Like this whole marriage is just a dream or a fantasy; not that I, Morgan Knight, will in a couple months' time marry the woman I love. I sometimes think I should ask other people what it was like for them, but then I realize I don't want to. I want this experience to be entirely my own. I will change, after this, and I don't know how, but with her in my life I know it will be wonderful.

Life is going to be wonderful.

Not forgotten.

Somewhere in my head, the image I have of the strong, capable, confident Katie is really, really jarred. I've never seen her break down so catacylsmically before, especially not into the sort of reflexive mental "I'm bad" processes that just plain aren't rational. This, then, would be the legacy of her past.

I am not the only thing she has. But I meant it when I said she was one of the best things to ever happen to me. She is. She *is*, dammit, and for that reason alone I couldn't ever let her go off and do something like she wanted to. God, the bitch of it all is that Seamus is really the one who's the most hell-bent on *hurting* the slavers. It's gonna be like walking a minefield, I swear.

I need to not spend a night alone with myself and my thoughts.

I've been reluctant to talk or write about this for fear of jinxing it and inviting disaster... but people are starting to learn now, so it's official. What the hell, here goes: I asked Diast to marry me, and she said yes.

Now, I knew for a fact she would say yes, she's told me as much previously, but quite frankly asking her scared the holy hell out of me. I almost didn't do it just because it scared me so damn much! But I did, and I didn't screw it up, and she accepted. She accepted!

Man. I know it's not gonna be easy, with her duties and my schooling and all the crap we have to wade through to just be together, but it's gonna be *good*. I couldn't be happier about this.

I've been kind of scared to actually, purposefully bring it up, though. I want to ask Stephen to be my best man, of course, but things have been so weird for him lately, and he's been so generally angry and upset, that I don't think he'd welcome it. He hasn't officially asked me to be his, of course, but I think it's sort of assumed. Maybe that's a dangerous assumption. But he's in no hurry, Cat's still got a couple years of school left before she graduates. Anyway, I'm worried about him; I think I need to drag him out and get him to have some fun. Cat too. I should plan for that.

Still, I'm so excited!

Diast says she believe in balance. It does seem to exist, but I wish it didn't exist by huge extremes.

So last night, some punk I've never even seen before, evidently someone Irina's been shacking up with to judge by their conversation earlier, comes up to me and tries to pick a fight with me. Says we have a mutual friend, and that I'm giving that pain grief, and I need to stop it.

So Seamus, Katie, and I are all looking at each other like, "the hell"? Because none of us have any idea where this is coming from. Turns out the punk is claiming I was somehow being criminally unfair to Irina, and he was going to mess me up if I didn't stop. Not that I WAS doing anything in the first place. Or that he could mess me up. But whatever.

Things got ugly. Katie threw him out, then threw me out after I fired back at Irina that she cheated on Jack and had leapt into the pants of available males at first opportunity once he was dead. (Which is true, he's been gone what, a couple of weeks, and she's already solidly hooked up with Dimitri and planning to have a hot tub orgy with two other guys and him, in public. Spades are spades.) So fine, I go outside... Irina accuses me of hating her for her never sleeping with me (Hee hee!) and focusing my energies on hating her. Dimitri starts babbling, I get mad at her because she DID cheat on Jack...

Katie drops one hell of a bombshell on me...

I go home, fully prepared to saddle up my chocobo and ride out to live the life of a hermit...

Diast declares that she will gladly have a future with me.

The sound you hear is my mental gear shifting from R-3 to 6 without the clutch.

We're moving in to the mansion very soon. It's going to be great.

I had thought that, with the return of Seamus, Cat, and Don, that perhaps the war was winding down. That our victory was somehow imminent, with them feeling free to let all go. That shows what I know. They simply seem to be taking a different tack.

In other words, they activated me.

To be honest, I'd half-forgotten I'd even gotten myself into this mess. Certainly the message hand-delivered to me by the mailman was a shock. "Report," it said, with a time and a place and an official seal that left no questions as to the nature of the report.

"Well," I thought, "THIS is cutting it close to school start."

Heh, that was the last time I thought that for a while.

They needed me to infiltrate a concentration camp. A freakin' Auschwitz for the supernatural. Bound down with heavens know what sort of technology, magic, or what have you to keep them contained. With mixed-breeds, mages, mythic beasts...all chomping at the bit to get free, and fighting amongst themselves in the meantime.

"Hell of a vacation," I rememeber saying. "Purely out of curiosity, why me?"
"You're of werewolf descent, so you qualify to be in the camp. Also, you won't break under the torture."

Can you imagine how thrilled I was?

Getting in was easy enough. I just got myself into a mess in their lines, deliberately bungled a seeming stealth mission. I got captured, slapped in irons, and shipped out. And I have to say, right here, it could have been a lot worse from the start. I didn't have any access to my magick, of course, since Cross was at home, but neither did anyone else. And many of them had claws, or teeth, or just a lot of anger, but I can take care of myself. I had to.

The camp was a cold, miserable place off the shore of an ocean. It had a seawall and an ocean pen for aquatic or semi-aquatic creatures. I guess some Artic current slapped up against that place, because it had nothing to say for it except cool-to-miserable temperatures. Gummy buildings hastily slapped together from concrete and cement, save for the guards' quarters which were of course quite nicer; pavilion tents mechanically heated. We were put to labor, all of us, with not enough food nor sleep...

Do I really need to go on? When I re-read this, I won't want to rememebr the tableau of suffering I saw there. I experienced it to a lesser degree, because I am myself, of course, but to watch it was simply, truly, utterly painful.

I don't want to remember it, but I will. And there was torture, to which I made the best effort to act like I was being hurt. The Chorus was better. But other people... didn't have the advantages I did, of course. Did suffer, did sometimes break.

In the end, I killed. Again. I killed the guards, a few anyway, because they thought they had broken me, and they didn't have a defense against Do. We escaped... with casualties, with injuries, with any amount of degredation to our spirits... but our spirits are no less real or valid than theirs, no matter what they might say to the contrary.

I hate killing. I hate it so much. Even that perverse, insane necromancer who killed Sashra... even his death haunts me even now. I'm not a killer. I didn't learn all this just to cut lives short. I'm a fighter. I will fight for what I believe is right. I will fight to the death to defend that which I believe in...

But how many deaths will I accept on my karma? For Sashra's memory, for Seamus's family, for the principle of thing... Is that all I'm good for?

I wonder what I bring to this world, to the people I know, that could ever balance that out.

Jack is dead; Cat is magically psychotic; Diast is summoned for a trial for gods know what reason. It's all falling apart again... slowly but surely, all falling apart.

I hope I have the strength to hold myself together one more time.

Nothing ever seems to get easier around here.

Cass disappeared on me. I don't remember if I mentioned that, I'm too lazy to flip a page back. I tracked her down. I was afraid she'd lost it, she'd slipped a little, she'd gone back to living on the street because she'd forgotten she had people out there who care about her, who don't want her to be sad or lonely. It turns out she's just been staying with that guy she's been dating.

So she didn't forget those people are out there, she just... stopped caring about it.

I don't know what to make of that. I really don't. I thought we were friends, but... all she's said to me in two weeks is that she's alive, when she popped in for a brief visit at the Rose on my shift. Other than that, nothing. Has she just decided to abandon me, her things, her animals? Her cat's still here, for heaven's sake! Her chocobo is still here! Has she just abandoned them?

Is this my fault somehow? I can't see how it isn't. This is a pattern all too familiar.

Katie is doing better, Seamus says. I've tried to stop by and visit her a couple times, but I always seem to manage to pick a bad time. She's up and around and not being different, I heard, and that's everything I could hope for. I just wish I could see her.

I said I had passed on my right to vengeance to Sal. But Seamus told me that Sal was hurt, and couldn't do anything, and so it fell to me once again. I'd taken some hair from the alley where her attackers had huddled, the day of the drowning. I traced them with Correspondance, read the names of their superiors with Mind. And I killed them. I killed them.

I traveled ten steps up that chain, leaving death in my wake, till I was stymied at the very last and could go no higher. I didn't save Connor, I didn't slaughter Vin. All I managed was to leave a trail of meaningless death and destruction in my wake. I carved a huge chunk out of his organization, but that doesn't even matter, according to Seamus.

And then a couple of days later Sal was up and around and doing fine. I did it all for nothing. NOTHING. Everything I did that day was meaningless except to weigh against me in the Record. I am nothing more than a murderer and a thug, and regardless of what I strive to be, I can never again claim to truly be anything more. I imagine this might explain why Nhairis has been distant lately.

Knight Comics has disaster written all over it. My artist is complaining about the basic setup. At least I managed to talk to her about it before it got too bad. I don't know what she expects me to do when I KNOW what she did to betray Jack, but... it isn't realistic for her to expect me to behave towards her professionally as I do personally. I just hope that that's the end of it. I may have to kill Joe if he keeps up this crap about me raping her mind to force her to sign the contract. I don't even *have* enough Mind to do that.

I told Seamus and Cat about my plan. I'm going to do it. Soon, Cass or no, even though I need her for it. If she doesn't want to... I won't be surprised. But I'll do it anyway, even if it kills me. What does it really matter if it does?

Cass is just another in a list. Kym and Ronnie just disappeared out of my life. Stephen is too busy, Cat... is distant, and I don't know why, but I can't think of the last time we hung out together. She's hurt now, sure, but even before that. Katie I get to actually see so rarely. Irina treats love and important things too casually for me to trust her. Jack I never see, with the exception of the other day when he needed me to kick ass on his behalf. Cadence dumped me for another guy. Vee seems to dislike me, I don't even know why. Sashra died, of course. Diast is not around nearly as often as I could hope. My own twin sister hates me.

Seamus and Cat think I'm an idiot, for planning to save my parents. Seamus pointed out that it wouldn't change anything, I'd still have grown up without parents. Duh. That isn't the point. The point is to give them the life they never should have lost. The point is to be of the universe, and in doing so, move with it and guide it all at once. The point is to do it because it's the right thing to do.

And maybe, just maybe, I can bring someone into my life who will stay there. Just once.

On Monday I got a call, a frantic call, from Cass. She'd had a vision, a vision of Katie dead. I begged her to go over to her house quickly (I don't know why she did it, I haven't even SEEN her since then), and I even shut the Rose down early so I could get there and stop whatever it was that could bring this vision to pass.

But my travel was intercepted. Midway through the journey, which is difficult to describe since it crosses a few steps in the space of a heartbeat, something stopped me. It appeared to be a knight, wielding a blazing sword of light. It offered no hints as to its presence or its motivations. It simply attacked.

The fight was hell, but I eventually evaded it long enough to reach the Wylies' house. Too late, of course. Seamus was giving Katie CPR on the bathroom floor. Someone had bound her and tossed her into the full bathtub. Unable to struggle, she'd drowned. By some miracle, we got her breathing again, but she stopped again by the time the ambulance came to pick her up. Seamus said it was minions of Vin, his former owner, who were making this a message. I have no doubt he's correct, given that she was marked with a V.

They took her to the hospital. Sal was there, I haven't the slightest clue how, except for the fact that he's Sal. I... He'll be taking revenge on Vin and his minions, not me. I couldn't even do that much right. And the next day, the doctors took her off the ventilator.

I could not stop them. I could not stop them, no matter how much I tried to bribe or threaten, I couldn't do it. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I failed to heal her, as well. I couldn't do anything for my poor sister, my poor dying sister. I couldn't do anything.

Now I'm just waiting, for something that's already happened. I have messages on my phone, I know what they say without even having to listen to them. I'm afraid to. Maybe if I don't listen to them, I can pretend that I don't already know what they have to say.

She's dead.

My sister is dead.

I could write a book, I swear.

Nothing ever seems to come easy. Things had been going very well with Katie living down the hall. We hung out, I watched Liam sometimes to give her a break, I learned a little bit more about cooking. What *she* got out of it I don't know, but I hope it was something. Then bam, back comes Seamus. Not only do those to reuinte with a fight, big surprise there, but Seamus pops up later about how he doesn't want Katie to live away from home. Doesn't want her to stop thinking of it as home, as if she ever could.

Back up a moment. Cass basically moved out on Irina, and I can't blame her. Nonentity is too charitable a word to describe how I regard her and the others involved... Anyway, Cass was intent on leaving, so since she and I get along well, I said she could move into my apartment. She hasn't lost the need for someone to be around to keep her from brooding, to drag her out and keep her from slipping back into old habits that are no longer useful in Rhydin. I wasn't about to let her just go rot, so there you go.

Now Seamus offers to let me sleep in the spare bedroom at their house. Now A, I didn't even know if he'd begun to discuss this with Katie, or if she wanted me there, and B, fuck! How can I watch over both Cass and Katie at the same time? Cass decided to solve the problem herself, and was on the hair's edge of moving out and abandoning everything. She and I had words about the matter. Strong ones.

In the meantime, things get shockingly weirder. Gin-Hu, a Jedi -- I'm sure I've mentioned her before -- anyway, we've been walking once or twice, walking and talking, and generally making common cause. She pops up and asks me, in a distracted way, if I view her as a woman. Confused, I finally manage to get it out of her that she has some actual interest in me. Why is it even good news is bad? I don't know if I'm ready for this. They say it takes a year to get over someone.. And when I look inside myself, I can feel how different I've become, in these short months. Scarred, is the best way to put it. I've had scars carved across myself, and when I check to see if I can move in old ways... everything's different.

I really don't know how to put it. But of course I didn't even get the luxury to think about it. No sooner did Cass tell me she was moving out than Gin-Hu pops up and tells me she's being reassigned, nice to know you, never gonna see you again. And an easy, if cowardly and painful, way out that would have been, had it evidently not been the last snowflake needed to spark massive internal rebellion against the ways of the Jedi Order. She suddenly decided to abandon her own, and abscond to the one Mer's Jedi friend belongs to, which as I understand it is more advanced in the reforms made after the re-founding of the Order. I wished her well, and said goodbye.

Things just hung for a few days. Cass apologized, and didn't leave, though she has a new friend now and I haven't much had a chance to speak to her. Gin-Hu reappeared abruptly the other day, dramatically changed in appearence and calling herself Diast now, in keeping with her new identity. It's been four years for her -- stupid Rhydin time warps, though I appreciate not having to wait that long. It seems to have helped her a great deal, the move, she definitely seems happier than she did. Maybe she just feels freer to *be* happy.

Cass shipped out today. Seamus is back, so I can only hope she won't stay away long. All I can do at this point is keep my fingers crossed for everything to work out okay.

Goodbye, little neice, who never had a chance. Goodbye, Maddy. I never met you, but I loved you still, and I always will.