seven !
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Rosa awakes when they drag her neighbour from his cage. He goes quietly. He knows the rules by now. Knows the consequences for stepping out of line.

She can barely move through the paralysing ache which has overcome her entire body after her fight the night before, but when they come and wrench open her cage, she has no choice but to oblige.

But something is different today.

They are bringing her out before they've returned Warren to his cage. This was new. A new puzzle for her to piece together. A new event for her to fear as the gun presses into the back of her skull and she's led to the doors.

"You've been around for too long, Harbinger," The man at her right hisses. When she glares at him out of the corner of her eye, she realises its the very same man who alerted the guards here to her presence in the first place. Harry. "It seems they can't trust any of the mutants they've dragged in recently to do the job. So, if he wins this fight against that blue fucker, it'll be our very first aerial battle."

"Champion against champion," The man with the gun murmurs.

Rosa inhales sharply as her eyes sting with tears. She doesn't want to fight him. She'd fight anyone but him. She refuses to be his undoing after promising him freedom.

"What d'ya think about that, girl?" Harry brushes his gun against her tender wing and she fights the urge to flinch. "Does that ruffle your feathers? Excite you? We've all seen you in that ring. Showing off for the crowds, performing your death drops, flexing your wings as if you're something special. Well, I've got news for ya, you're not. You're just another dirty mutant who deserves to be right in that cage, lined up to die."

Rosa reminds herself to breathe. Reminds herself of who she is and who she isn't. She is Rosa Lacuna. Rosalind Lacuna. Rosalind. Rosa. She closes her eyes, breathing in deep though it pains her to do so. She remembers the boy with the camera, the flash of her photograph, and her origin centres her.

When she opens her eyes, she opens them just in time to watch Angel get thrown into the cage wall and convulse as the electricity wreaks havoc through his body. Her heart leaps into her mouth when he crumples to the floor and she fights the urge to move, to run to the cage and scream at him to get back up.

If she isn't dying today, then neither is he.

But she can't move. The gun presses harder into her skull as if he can read her mind.

"Guess you'll be fighting the blue thing then." Harry rolls his shoulders, grinning with broken teeth, the golden one glinting mockingly in her peripheral. "Makes no odds to us. You'll die either way, Harbinger."

Rosa breathes out air she didn't realise she was holding when Warren gets back up. Though he's battered, his wing hanging awkwardly. Twisted and broken. Those beautiful white wings, angel's wings, destroyed in this sick sport.

Raging fire coils in her stomach at the sight, though it is short lived as the cage sparks and fizzles out. The electricity, the only barrier, gone. Alarms sound, ringing through the air between shouts and screams of humans suddenly terrified for their lives.

In the panic, Rosa seizes her chance with both hands as she whips around to the distracted men. Harry fires his gun straight through her thigh and she cries out in agony, quickly lashing out with her wing to send him flying, her robust feathers slicing through his stomach.

She whips around, gritting her teeth through the pain as she brings her wing across to bludgeon the other two. Striking them down. In an instant, she invades all of their minds. ramming through their weak defences and yanking every wire from its socket.

Their eyes go dark and their mouths trickle blood as they die, choking on their own life force.

Rosa wishes she can stay and watch, but that will only result in her capture once more. She isn't prepared to endure this hell any longer.

So, when she watches Warren rip open the arena and fly out, though his wings are in tatters, she follows. Barely dodging bullets as she rises into the air. He bursts out of a window, sending shards of glass everywhere, but there it is.

The open sky.

Though it is dark in the thick of night, it calls to them both and they soar right into it, welcoming the call of the wild, the brush of the wind.

And, just like that, they're free once more, though Rosa can't help but wonder just how free they really are. What they endured will likely stay with them for the rest of their lives. God, she doesn't even know if Warren's wings are fixable.

She doesn't dare ask.

Not now.

For now, she lets the wind slide between her feathers, despite the agony burning like a forest fire in her muscles, desperate for some rest. For a chance to relax rather than living in constant fear of her life.

They fly and they fly, disappearing into the night like ghosts, until they find an abandoned warehouse and, without exchanging a word, decide this is their best bet.

They decline and land, both staggering and steadying the other with clutching hands, bloody and desperate for reprieve. Crash into the warehouse and stumble to its darkest edge, begging for its concealment with tired, bloodshot eyes.

Exhaling shakily, Rosa thuds back against the wall and slides down until she meets the solid ground. Through the dim light, she watches Warren doing the same, his aching body still wrought with fresh wounds.

As she lowers her head to the ground, using her wing as a pillow, she wonders how long this peace will last and fears the answer as sleep overcomes her, dragging her down into its depths with the promise of release.

She obliges and sinks.

-

-

When the light comes pouring in, Rosa's eyes crack open and, for a split second, she doesn't believe the night before was real. It had just been a dream. A haunting dream, a reminder of what she can't achieve in her wildest dreams.

But then she sits up and glances around the warehouse, sees Warren's broken pair of wings, and knows it's her new reality.

Once again, everything has shifted.

Rosa runs a light finger over the carved scab down her forearm and knows that many of these physical wounds will never leave her. They forever brand her the Harbinger. Brand her that woman who'd done everything to survive and a little bit more.

How many has she killed? She curses under her breath, pushing her hands into her hair. She's lost count. How could she lose count when she'd vowed to remember them all?

Maybe there is just too many to remember them all now. She'd been in that hell for days on end and fought several every day to the point of exhaustion. She supposes her exhaustion is incomparable to their death, their murder.

Even if she can't remember their names, she remembers their faces.

Sees them everywhere she goes.

Warren rolls over, face crumbling into a deep frown as he murmurs something to himself in his sleep. It would be so easy for her to slip inside his mind and find out exactly what he's dreaming of, but she doesn't.

Committing invasions of privacy to those who do not deserve it is something even the ever-curious Rosa doesn't allow herself to indulge in.

Though she leans her head back against the wall and allows herself to wonder.

Allows herself to wonder until his eyes peel open, revealing skies of blue thick with rolling thunderclouds. For a moment, he lies there and blinks up at her. As if he too can't decide whether this is real, but he must conclude that it, in fact, is very real for he manages to sit up.

She chews on her nail, but quickly stops when all she tastes is blood.

Thickly, she swallows as if all that floods her mouth is ichor.

Though she wants to, she can't bring herself to move a muscle to sit up a little straighter as she talks to him.

"I thought you were dead," She manages to say, though her voice is foreign and afraid in her mouth. "When you hit the ground I thought you were dead."

"Well, I'm not," He replies shortly, groaning in pain when he tries to move his wings behind himself.

"They were going to make me fight you next. They wanted you to kill me. That's why I wasn't locked away when everything happened." Somehow, her voice sounds even less her own. She clears her throat and blinks away the tears collecting in her eyes, brimming at her lashes.

His crystalline eyes flicker across her every shattered feature as if he's trying to decide whether she's lying. He hopes she is because he doesn't know what he would've done if he'd been faced with the options of kill her or die.

They'd walked through hell side by side and yet they'd come so close to not making it together.

"Then we should be grateful that escape came when it did," He replies, fingers curling into his palms as he rises to his feet. Quickly, not giving himself time to wince in pain. He's not been free in what feels like a lifetime and he intends to stretch his legs.

But, as soon as he makes to step away, Rosa's hand shoots up and grabs his, tugging him back around to face her. He stares down at her with the force of a waterfall, thundering down as he silently questions her impulsive act.

"I wouldn't have killed you," She rasps out, her voice cracking as her fingers clutch onto him tightly. Those molten eyes of hers bore into him desperately. "I couldn't have done it."

His jaw locks tight and no words find him. Warren pulls his hand away from her and she lets him go, dropping her hands into her lap. He watches her throat bob as she swallows.

All he can manage is a nod and that's enough for her to know he understands. Knows that, even though she would've been incapable of killing him thanks to her injuries, she wouldn't have chosen to kill him.

Would rather die with one last shred of dignity to her name than murder the only one who held her hand as they walked through the Devil's blaze.

-

1820 words
24.2.19

so now we're into the events of x-men apocalypse and things are gon' get juicy now there's no bars separating my new fave ship