prologue !
-

At the beginning, everything was normal. It always is.

Rosa Lacuna went to school, argued with her sister, and ate dinner with her family just like many other seventeen year old girls do every day of their lives. She spent time with her friends who she loved and adored, though she hadn't ever been the sort to tell.

And so she loved silently; with her entire heart.

If she could go back, she'd tell it to them every single day, but life has a funny way of preventing us from going back.

It had been just like every other Friday afternoon at school. Everyone was tired, hungry and just wanted to go home to melt their brains with cartoons and video games. Maths class was the last thing anyone wanted and Rosa was among them.

She'd never been the academic kind of smart and, no matter what her parents tried to tell her, she just couldn't change that. Not that she'd tried.

If she could go back, she'd try until her hands were raw, until her brain fried.

It was that day Rosa had complained to her dad about feeling sick all night and hadn't been able to get much sleep. She'd wanted to stay home. He told her to stop lying and to get to school. Her sister had already left and the two of them usually walked together, but Julia wanted to get to school early today.

For whatever reason, Rosa didn't know. Either way, she'd trudged all the way to school. Alone, nauseated, and tired before the day had even begun.

She hadn't improved by maths class. In fact, she'd gotten worse.

Her stomach was churning over and over as if someone were turning a mechanism attached to her naval. Her fists were clenched so tight the boy next to her had spoken to her for the first time since they'd started for the year to check she was okay, to which she replied a firm no and they never spoke again.

If she could go back, she'd introduce herself on the first day, make an effort to be nice, not cold.

Next came the pain. Unbearable. As if some sick demon had crafted it just for her to tempt her to curl up and die, to let this happen to her, to crush her beneath its boot and laugh as she squirmed.

The streak of thick, black blood ran from her nose into her mouth as she rasped out a breath, shot from her chair and sprinted from the class room, but she barely made it two steps before collapsing onto the ground.

She convulsed, pain folded her in on herself as she dug her heels in, back arched.

When the teacher approached and her peers crowded around, Rosa made her attempt to stand and staggered to her feet. Wiped the blood from her nose with the back of her hand only for it to be replaced by the continuous stream.

"Rosa, I think we should take you to the nurse," Miss Harper said, sounding half as concerned as she looked. Maybe she didn't want to scare the kids. Maybe she didn't want to panic Rosa. Or maybe she just didn't want to admit that what she was witnessing was traumatic.

"The nurse?" Rosa murmured, right before another bolt of pain shot through her and refused to leave. She cried out in pain, sobbing as she fell to her knees.

She didn't know what was happening and, if she could go back, she couldn't have changed a thing.

Every single person in the audience took a step back when the wings began to push through her back, right through the uniform her mother had pressed of wrinkles that morning.

Her screams of pain as the dark feathers formed had more pupils rushing in to view the spectacle that was the becoming of, what they'd all later fear and call, The Demon of White Cross.

God, the pain was more intense than anything she'd ever experienced. When she was fifteen, she'd fallen from her tree house and snapped her leg clean in two. The pain was a lot like that, but unimaginably worse. To understand, the curious simply had to feel. No words could ever describe it.

When it dulled and she managed to stand, though she swayed from the new, unaccounted weight of wings on her back, there were two-dozen pairs of eyes staring back at her, wide and unmoving.

She stared back, confused and afraid. That's when it crashed onto her. Their minds. All open and inviting her in for a peek. To have a gander at their secrets and their desires. To take a hold of the reigns and take control.

It was all too much.

Rosa staggered back, charcoal wings flared. Tear stained cheeks and a bloody nose that just wouldn't stop bleeding. The flash of a camera, a growl that sounded like it came from her own throat but was so foreign she felt as if she was watching a movie unfold as she flexed her wings and snapped her eyes to the photographer.

"Delete. It," She managed to grit out between a clenched jaw, tight and bound.

The boy holding the camera stepped back, but only stared. She knew he didn't delete it. All she'd asked him to do was delete it. None of them helped her, but taking photographs of her as if she were some kind of new zoo animal for their entertainment was a new kind of low she hadn't anticipated from her classmates, even if this day had been as unpredictable to them as it had been to her.

Her mind was going at a million miles an hour and only accelerating as she watched herself take a step forwards and repeat herself to the boy with the camera.

He did not heed her request so, without thought, she forced him to comply without so much as lifting a finger. Left the boy convulsing on the floor, a bloody nose to match her own, only his was red and much more human.

Human. She wasn't human. Her mind slowed all at once and her wings droop as she stumbled back away from the life she'd ruined, back hitting the wall before she slid to the ground.

It was as if her mind had gone into overdrive and then completely cut her off as she passed out, oblivious to her terrified classmates as they fled the classroom.

As they fled from her.

-

When Rosa awoke again, she was somewhere unfamiliar.

Not at home, but not in the classroom either. The boy with the camera and the fried brain was nowhere to be seen, though she didn't like to think of him.

She was just about to climb out of the bed when the door creaked open and two men enter. The former in a wheelchair, the latter much taller and hiding behind a pair of glasses.

She stared at them both, analysing them just as much as they did her. Wondered who they were beyond their names. Were they vegetarians? Were they into rock music? Did they have any secrets they'd never told a soul?

"Hello, I'm Professor Charles Xavier and this is Hank McCoy," The man in the wheelchair greeted, extending his hand to her, though when she moved to shake it, her wing moved too and she jumped, forgetting their existence entirely. "You must be Rosalind Lacuna."

"Rosa," She replied, glancing from Charles to his companion. Was he his carer or was he something else? She had so many questions, but couldn't find the voice to ask many of them.

"Rosa it is," Charles confirms, as if he could've objected.

"Where am I?" She asked before he had chance to explain it. Rosa had already looked at every inch of the room and saw no clue as to where she was apart from it likely being expensive, though perhaps this analysis was simply to quell the shuddering panic rattling her system with every heartbeat.

"This is a school for gifted youngsters, like yourself. You were brought here after you came into your power just a couple of days ago," He explained, well-spoken as if he were delivering a speech. He even smiled too.

He meant to comfort her with those gentle words and his soft smile, but Rosa only exhaled a shaky breath and her wings, seemingly with a mind of their own, forced themselves from where she lay on them and shifted in ticks, darkness shimmering shades of navy and emerald in the glow of light.

"Is it because of the boy? Am I here because of him?" She turned her molten eyes on him with pure fear burning deep in their cores as if two suns had imprinted themselves there and intended to stay for a while. "The boy with the camera. He took my photo and I just-"

"Rosa, it's okay-"

"-killed him. I killed him, didn't I?"

She was sobbing again. Sobbing violently into her palms as she rocked back and forth, wondering how her life had come to this.

She was a murderer.

"You need to calm down. Listen to me, Rosa, you weren't in control. There's nothing you could've done to stop what happened and now the only thing you can do it learn how to control your power so that it never happens again," Charles told her, leaned forwards in his chair as if one beat of her wings wouldn't send him flying.

She knew he was right. She couldn't let that happen again. Be a spectator as her own body betrayed her, slaughtering right before her eyes. She'd rather die before she let that happen again.

Rosa lifted her head, swallowed the bile in her throat and stiffly nodded her head.

"Okay," She rasped out, "But how?"

"Well," the professor glanced to his companion and shared a knowing look, "you've already come to the right place, Rosa. Everything you need to learn, you can learn right here."

Rosa swallowed again and put on a brave face, despite the wetness of her cheeks and the puffiness of her eyes, and asked, "When do we begin?"

if she could go back, she'd tell herself it was okay to be scared.

-

1719 words
19.2.19
first chapter coming soon