one !
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Rosa hadn't liked being at Xavier's school to begin with, but, eight years later, she has no one to thank but him for helping her become the woman she is today.

Bitter nonetheless, but strong and, most importantly, controlled.

He'd stood by her when she'd pushed everyone else away with lashings of her tongue and flares of her wings, striking out verbally and physically as she worked every single day to learn to fly, to learn how her abilities work.

Today, she's undeniably grateful for everything. This place saved her from a life in solitude after her parents shunned her and her sister could barely speak a word to her. That hurt almost more than the excruciating pain of her wings bursting from her spine that first day in the classroom.

She doesn't need them anymore though. Not here. Not when she'd been given a new purpose in life. Charles had asked her to help train new students about five years after she'd first entered his school, when he believed she was finally ready.

As a sleek flyer herself, Rosa had been tasked with teaching any air-borne students how to fly. How not to break every bone in their body when landing, how to leave it to the last second to veer to safety, how to fly in a formation without hitting into anyone. There was more. Always more.

It was a class she enjoys teaching without a doubt, but it never quite feels like her being was fulfilled just flying around in circles above the mansion with half a dozen terrified students trailing behind.

Sometimes she wants to soar away from them all and not come back to this place for a long while. Just to have a break from the routine she's known for so long.

Maybe go home. Seek Julia out and just talk to her. Have a little piece or normality come creeping back into her now mutated life.

But she can't do that.

Julia doesn't want to see her.

So, Rosa sought out another cure to her itching boredom with Xavier's school and found it in the rumours of a sickening place where mutants were abducted and forced to fight one another. Fight or die. Fight and maybe live to see one more day, or die in a pool of your own blood with hundreds of beady eyes watching.

She was just reading over a recent report which one of her many acquaintances who owe her favours had brought to her when her door flings open and Alex Summers saunters in, shamelessly looking her over from where she sits, feet up on her desk.

Casually, she folds the paper in half and slips it onto the desk.

"What can I do for you, Summers?" She asks coolly, folding her arms across her front.

"You're supposed to be teaching a class right now, remember?" He says, pointing abruptly to the clock as if she didn't already know the time and had been toying with the idea of blowing off the class to fly to East Berlin and see the horrors for herself.

Lazily, Rosa follows his gaze and observes the time, per his request. Slowly she peels herself from the seat and stands, brushing down her jeans of imaginary dust and readjusting her white vest to conceal her modesty.

"You're right. My bad." She shrugs her shoulders, black feathers ruffling and sliding back into place as she pushes past him, out the door.

The wings always, somewhat, had a mind of their own, but now it was a mind Rosa knows how to control. Bend to her will to take her into the skies and taste a little freedom.

Alex's hand snaps out in a flash and grabs her wrist, pulling her back around to face him, not gawking in fear as her wings flare behind her, rallying defence at a flicker of a threat, no matter how small.

His eyes lock with hers as the molten bronze swirls around the black island of her pupil. A dangerous ocean and yet inviting all the same. He'd taken a dip once and they'd never been the same again.

"You sound like you don't even care about it anymore," Alex accuses, taking a stab into the dark because he could never know what was really going on inside her head.

"No, I definitely still care." She slides her arm from his grasp and tucks her blonde hair behind her ears, choppy and hanging above her shoulders. Her wings simmer down as she takes a step back from him, retreating once again. "You can still be bored even when you care." A twisted smile wanders onto her face before she can stop it. "I thought you would know that better than most."

"No one is making you do anything," Alex replies, attempting to ignore her dig, though it crawls under his skin and makes its home there. "You can leave whenever you want."

Rosa chuckles and shakes her head. "You have no idea how chained to this place you really are. They might not be physical, but they're mental. Do you really think that, if I left, I would feel no remorse? No guilt? That's not how it works, Alex."

He pushes a hand through his hair and watches her carefully as if he can read her mind, or is desperately trying to.

"So, you're not leaving?"

She smiles grimly. "Let's just say, I'm on the fence." She pulls open the door and waits for a heart beat to see if he's going to ask her to stay. But he does't. That ship sailed a long time ago, though it doesn't exempt her from the flickering ache that shakes through her body. "I'll see you around, Summers. I've got a class to teach, remember?"

-

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Rosa spends the next hour running over a drill of formation, but the students just keep on getting it wrong today. Someone in the wrong place, someone flying too low or too high, two students bumping into one another and almost engaging in an aerial fist-fight.

The list is endless.

"Jean, either stay in formation or get out of the sky!" She barks into the air as the group of seven circle above her, trying their best to stay in line whilst also managing to keep in the air.

"Sorry!" She calls back, tightening her position and flying a little closer to the group. The very same group who think her a freak and make no attempt to hide such opinions.

Rosa had been in that place once. That dark place where it seems like there's no end to their cruelty. One day, she realised she didn't need to be afraid of them. They were just like her and she was just like them. With one lash of her wings, they didn't bother her again and she didn't bother them.

Though she could have. She could've ripped open their minds and brought them to their knees screaming bloody murder, begging for her mercy.

But she didn't. And Charles had, of course, praised her for that self-control, but it didn't mean the thought hadn't crossed her mind.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

She can sense him before she can see him, though she doesn't turn to face him even as his wheelchair creaks to a stop behind her.

"Rosa, I think we should talk," He says, clearly suggesting she follows.

Rosa, with her eyes still trained on the sky, asks, "Should we? Has Alex not already told you everything you need to know?" Biting back at his authority with snapping teeth, her mind clamping shut before he can even take a tentative peek at her intentions.

"I want to hear everything from you."

"Fine," She replies, giving in to the man who'd held her up when she'd only wanted to fall.

She takes two steps forwards and lifts her fingers to her mouth, whistling loud and hard. The students, surprised, immediately forget their formation as they make their landings, some of them stumbling and others completely falling, whilst the select few make their perfect landings.

"You are dismissed," Rosa says, folding her own wings neatly behind herself. "Thank you."

She turns from them and walks alongside Charles as he wheels himself along. She knows better than to try and push him at this point.

"Look, Charles, I'm very grateful for everything you've done for me. You already know that. But there's only so many times I can fly in a circle before I start going crazy," She tells him, being as honest with him as she's always been.

Select truths and nothing beyond.

"So, you want to leave?" He concludes, though he phrases it more as a question, perhaps in hope that she'll prove him wrong.

"I'll come back," She says, tucking a short strand of hair over her ear. "I just need a break from this."

He almost looks hurt by her intent to leave.

"When are you leaving?" He knows there's no point trying to convince her to stay. Rosa has always been headstrong and resilient. She will do what she desires no matter what is said in an attempt to prevent her.

It is in her nature to rebel and she does it with ease. Like a bird on the wind.

"Probably by the end of this week." She shrugs her shoulders, walking a few steps ahead of the professor. "But I haven't decided yet."

"You haven't got a plan for where you'll go?" He frowns at her, an expression she is used to by now.

"Oh, of course I do," She says, hand on the doorknob for the house. "But, if I told you, then I wouldn't exactly be going off the grid, would I?"

She pulls open the door for him and waits for him to pass before closing the door behind her. She jogs a few steps to catch up, dark wings fluttering as she falls into step beside him again.

"I thought you just want a break. Not to disappear entirely." He can't even get into her mind anymore. He'd realised as much when he wanted to call her to his office for this exact conversation, but was only met with a towering brick wall which he couldn't get through no matter what he tried.

She is blocking him and he didn't understand why.

"At the end of the day, what I do is none of your business," She says, knowing her room is around the next corner and praying he will just let her slip away into it. "If I don't get a break now, I'll want to leave this place completely in a few months. I'm sick of the same old views."

Lead him down the path to a conclusion he's happy to come to and he will not push her further. Convince him this is about boredom, not a search for a greater purpose than settling as one of his lackeys.

A want to be something greater.

"Fine," Charles finally says, admitting defeat to the stubborn woman, "but if you're not back within a month then I'm sending someone after you."

"Send whoever you want as long as it's not Summers," She shoots back, grinning like a cat who got the cream. "Thanks, Professor, I really need this. You know what to do if you there's an emergency and my presence is desperately needed."

"Yes, and I will not hesitate," He replies firmly, eyes like steel.

"Nothing is going to happen where you're going to need me to fly back here like a bloody rocket, Charles. Stop worrying." She chuckles, dragging a hand through her blonde hair. "Everything is going to be okay." She gives him one last smile before they arrive at her door. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some packing to do."

She shoots him a wink before slipping away into her room, shutting the door before he can protest her decision any further, and hurries to the desk to continue analysing the report of yet another mutant who died in this sick cage fighting.

She knows this is where she needs to go. This is her new purpose, if not her last, and she will fulfil it, no matter what. Save as many as she can from their confinement and bring justice to those who seethe at them simply for the mutations they could never have prevented.

Those cruel humans using frightened mutants for their entertainment will heed her justice and beg for mercy from the winged woman who'd come to play this final game.

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2137 words
21.2.19

i know this was a long ass chapter but i wanna get the introductory shit out of the way and get into the meat of the story asap