five !
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By her third fight of the evening, she is dripping blood.

Every bit as demonic as the onlookers brand her, calling for her already infamous death drop at every turn of the fight.

Her once cherished wings are slick with blood as she flips in the air and pounces on her opponent, flooding her head with her own memories of a summer long gone by as she grips her by the neck and holds tight.

The woman beneath her struggles, clawing at the hands around her neck and gasping for air, even as she drifts away into the memories of a happier life.

A broad shouldered man brandishing a gun swaggers up to the cage, though he knows better than to touch the metal, and yells, "Give the crowd what they want. Death drop her before I put a bullet through your damn skull!"

Rosa swallows thickly, the metallic taste burning her tongue, as she numbly nods her head. Her hands tighten on the woman's neck and her wings beat, taking them both into the air and sending the crowd roaring as they know what's coming next.

This is what they'd paid to see.

Rosa is just another cog in that money-making machine, working until death and replaced by whatever unfortunate soul follows her.

As soon as they reach maximum height, Rosa's onslaught into her mind shifts from the soft lullabies into the screaming rage as they plummet, wanting it all to be over before they even hit the ground.

The woman's eyes roll back into her head, mouth streaming blood, and Rosa knows this will be painless as she pounds the corpse into the concrete, bones cracking and crushing beneath her force.

As she stands above the broken corpse, they chant her name. Not her name, but the name they brandished her with when they made her into this monster. Fighting for sport behind an ulterior ego.

The Harbinger. The bringer of death.

The one who was supposed to be the saviour, but ended up in the claws of the dragon. A new toy to bet away earnings on as if they don't have families waiting at home for dinner.

The cage door locks shut once again and this time Rosa is too exhausted to roll over, to curl her wings into a feathered blanket.

All she does is lie there and stare at the ceiling of her tiny cage, wondering when the hell Ezra and the others are going to break her out of here.

Somehow, sleep finds her for a few hours. Cradles her in its arms as if she were a new born babe, soothing the frown lines from her face and bringing some much needed energy back to her system.

But she jolts and falls from its clutches when the cage next to hers slams closed again, the clang of metal on metal and the key in the lock sending her heart racing as she's terrified its her time to fight once again.

When no hands reach for her and no guns are shoved into her back, her shoulders sag and she sits up to stretch her wings as far as she can, though this isn't far.

Her feathers ruffle, though they're dusted with dried blood, and fold behind her once more as her curiosity begins to burn.

"Who are you?" She asks softly when she's sure the guards have left. Even though she can't see him, she hears him turn over to face her as if he's trying to figure out who must be on the other side of the dark.

"Who are you?" He repeats the question, though his is packed with a lot more hostility.

"They call me Harbinger," She says, the name foreign on her tongue. Its taste twists her stomach unnaturally.

"But who are you?" He asks. She hears some movement and assumes he's sitting now, though, as her eyes adjust to the dark, she's sure she can see him peering right at her. "Or who were you?"

"Rosa Lacuna." Though the name has always been her own, it's a perfect reminder of who she is. She isn't the Harbinger all these humans claim she is. She is Rosa and she will not break at their will. "Who are you?"

Only silence answers her.

"Come on," She grumbles, head rocking back against the bars, cold and unforgiving against her skull. "I told you who I am. It's only fair you-"

"Warren Worthington."

"Look, Warren, I know we don't know each other, but I swear we'll get out of here alive," She whispers fiercely, her resolve not broken by the staring eyes of the dead quite yet.

He doesn't reply, but Rosa knows she's been heard. Whether he believes her or not is up to him, but she's quietly determined and faithful in the team she'd met. She knows they'll come through and get her out of here. They have to. Or else she doesn't know what she'll do.

Keep fighting forever? That's not an option. She's bound to lose sooner or later. It's a simple game of odds and she can't be lucky for life. Eventually, it has to run out.

It's just a matter of when.

-

-

On the third day, they take him first. He's gone for hours until they drag him back in and lock him away again, drenched in the blood of his kills and rocking hollow in his confines.

In his place, Rosa takes centre stage. As if this were her very own Greek tragedy. Brought to her knees by her own will to do good having landed her in this hell these humans think of as fun.

They fear her. She can tell. Every time she enters the ring, she can see it on their faces, but still they rally and yell and bet because she is caged and they're on the other side of the bars.

Tapping on the glass despite the signs.

Rosa unfurls her wings, stretching them out though her muscles scream for rest. Throb and ache as she flies up onto the beam, painted in dried blood, to observe her opponent being brought in.

Like all the others, this girl is afraid.

The fear flies like a banner of human design, flapping in the wing in colours of red and yellow, stark against the impending darkness. A banner man of her tribe thrown into the electrified cage and locked into her death match with the reigning champion.

But there's something different about this one, which piques that curious part of Rosa that never sleeps.

She can't quite decide whether this girl is afraid of dying or afraid to kill.

She's a young one too. About eighteen. Baby-faced and glassy eyed as she peers up at Rosa, her impending doom.

This girl has barely seen the world and yet here she is, offered up to death on a silver platter.

If Rosa isn't already bitter about human treatment of mutants, she is now.

A burning rage inside of her ignites into a fireball as she stares down at the girl, hearing the cries of her captors telling her to get a move on or die, and she decides that as soon as she's free of these shackles, she's going to slaughter every single one of them.

Slowly, painfully. No mercy, no pain-relief from the lullabies of her mind. No, she will make them suffer. Purge the Earth of their being and make it an undeniably better place.

With that, she jumps and brings the girl to her untimely end before the enthralled audience, roaring their name for her as if she enjoys this as much as they do.  

When they throw her back into her canary's cage, she lies there, the only sounds her beating heart reminding her she is still alive and her heavy breathing as cracks shudder up her walls, attacking her resolve and winning a battle at last.

The young girl she'd just murdered stands over her, hands curled around the bars and head pushed between, just watching as Rosa tries to swallow back her tears.

She presses her bloody palms into her eyes, blocking out the hallucinations, but only succeeding in smearing the blood of her victims across her face.

The smell sends her onto her hands and knees retching onto the concrete.

"Stop," Warren has the gall to complain from his neighbouring cage.

"I can't." Again, she retches and this time her body commits, the remnants of whatever they'd fed her evacuating her body and splattering beneath her.

"You're not making it out of this alive if you can't stomach the fight," He says and she knows he's right.

But her body fights against the rationality as it vomits again, shaking as she pushes herself back, her sweaty body resting against the cool metal, suddenly thankful for its relief despite its confinement.

Rosa wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and shuffles as close to the bars as she can get, making sure he can see the molten of her eyes in the little light they'd been gifted by whatever mercy as she promises, "I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill them all for what they've done to us." She draws in a shaky breath, reaching out between the cages to clutch onto the bar of his cage with a hand still slick with blood. "And they are going to know my pain, our pain. I swear it. I will show no mercy. They deserve none."

His jaw is wound so tight all he can manage in response is a heavy nod of his head, the hollows of his face shadowed in the dark.

"I swear it," She repeats, her voice a whisper through the dark as her fingers uncurl and retreat back into her own cage, leaving behind a sticky residue of ichor as the only evidence she'd ever reached out.

She lies there muttering to herself until she falls asleep. Her purpose has been changed once again by circumstance.

Before it had simply been to protect and be the saviour, but now? Now it's about causing as much destruction as she can. To play their game and rip them apart from the inside out, painting the alleyway bloody, and bringing cold, hard justice to this dark, dark part of the world.

One way or another.

-

1766 words
22.2.19

maybe she really is the harbinger