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Her opponents keep getting more and more vicious as the night goes on. Maybe these aren't mutants they'd caught against their will anymore. Maybe these are mutants who've heard of her along the grapevine and come to see whether they can be the one to knock The Harbinger off her perch.

But maybe Rosa is just paranoid.

Though she can't help but feel her suspicions are slightly confirmed as they push her final opponent of the night into the ring. A woman with black hair slicked back from her face with deadly precision and piercing eyes of reddish-brown Rosa swears flare brilliantly orange as soon as they lock gazes.

"Are you gonna come down here, or do you want me to come all the way up there?" The woman calls up, her voice as light as a song despite their circumstance.

The crowd like her fire and roar as she grins up at their champion of the week.

Rosa stands and stretches her wings to their full extent, an unspoken threat as her mind works at the woman's own, searching for cracks and holes. All she needs is a way in. A door left unlocked, a window left open.

As she finds her way in, Rosa drops from the beam and lands on the opposite side of the arena to her fearsome opponent.

A mind full of death and disaster, it's not a wonder this woman wishes to kill. Maybe it's her only escape from whatever pain she's fighting against, but Rosa isn't ready to die.

So, in a kill or die world, both women choose to kill.

Rosa advances, eager to get the duel over with, and strikes straight for her head. This is no scared little girl who cowers at the first swing. No, this opponent blocks and swings right back, knocking Rosa right in the chin.

The crowd surges outside the cage.

Rosa narrows her eyes and tries again. This time more calculated, using her wings to her advantage. As she swings for the woman's face, she brings her wing around the opposite way, knocking her legs from beneath her even as she successfully dodges the punch.

For good measure, she kicks the woman in the front before she backs off, taking flight as she regains her own breath.

The woman cranes her head to glare at her, eyes burning that bright orange as she snaps an arm out and focuses a blistering shot of electricity into Rosa.

She cries out in pain, back arching as the electricity runs havoc in her body, shaking her bones and bringing her crashing to the ground in an instant. Her ankle rolls awkwardly beneath her, sending pain shooting up her leg.

Rosa hisses in agony, determined never to cry out like that again. Her head snaps to the heavily breathing woman who was dragging herself to her feet, perhaps recharging for another attack.

She clenches her fists tight as she pushes herself up, limping as they pace in circles around the arena. But Rosa isn't catching her breath. She's working, knitting herself into the woman's brain, taking control and finding the weak spots to exploit.

"You're hurt, Harbinger," The woman taunts, electricity flickering between her fingers as she plays with her prey. "It's time for a new champion to own this ring."

"Is that what you told your best friend when you left her for dead?" Rosa spits back, blood running down her chin. "Or the brother who begged for you to stay?"

Another bolt of electricity connects with her before she can dodge it. Too caught up in the mind to remember the physicality.

Her body trembles, but she fights against the agony. This time, she stays on her feet. Though blood runs from both nostrils, ears ringing and her muscles twitch.

"You don't know anything about me!" The woman shouts, anger fizzling as bright as the sparks in her eyes. Undeniably uncontrolled.

"Oh, but I do, Eleanor." She snaps her fingers and the sparks fizzle out.

The woman, though conscious, can't do anything. Not without the control of her own mind. It's as if Rosa has shoved her from the driver's seat and turned off the ignition.

"You're a strong girl, but strength is nothing if your mind is left wide open for any Tom, Dick and Harry to waltz on in."

Rosa limps over to the frozen girl and takes a hold of her chin between her thumb and finger.

The crowd call for blood.

"You came here to kill me. You wanted to be here. Well, maybe this is my gift to you." Rosa takes a step back and swings her wings in a flash, bludgeoning Eleanor with a sickening crunch as she crumples to the floor. Now, she's fighting for her life inside her own mind, but it's the one place where Rosa is stronger. "Mercy from this hell you walked yourself right into."

Rosa takes flight, relieved for the pressure to be off her ankle, and grips Eleanor by her neck, letting her hang limp as they go up and up to the top of the cage. This is it.

Her heart thunders in her chest as she realises this is who she is now. She's not watching someone else commit murder. This is her. This is Rosa Lacuna.

Murderer, champion cage fighter, Harbinger.

Though her body feels as if its going to give out at any moment, Rosa commits to the plunge. Diving with Eleanor before her, sending her into the ground with such force she feels, and hears, the girl's spine crack beneath her palm.

Staggering away from the body, Rosa wipes the blood running from her nose and sways as she watches them peel the corpse from the concrete to be burnt to ash.

Forgotten.

Her knees give out and she slams into the cage wall and prays a thanks to every god she knows that its electric current had been turned off before her fall. She curls her hands into fists and groans as she picks herself back up, every limp hanging heavy and burning in agony.

She's barely capable of putting any weight on her ankle as she balances upright.

Vision blurring as she glances around the crowd for familiar faces who aren't there. Haven't been there since the day she was caught. Were they even coming? The tiny coin weighs heavier in her pocket the longer she wonders.

So she stops wondering.

Maybe it hadn't been mercy to kill her before she could kill again. Now she will never be remembered by anyone except for Rosa. Gone before her time.

Erased from history by the Harbinger.

Rosa lets them lead her away in silence. She doesn't complain as her ankle aches and throbs in agony. Nor does she complain about her brain as it sloshes around in her skull, melted by the masses of electricity, which still feels as if its running circuits throughout her body.

Her eyes are already closing long before they lock her in her iron cage.

"Do you think she'll fight again?" The first man asks, gesturing to her with his gun.

"I don't know. Her wings are a little fried and she can barely walk." Between half-closed eyes she watches him shrug and that furious fire shoots up a little. "Guess if she wakes up in the morning they'll send her into the ring to die anyway."

"I bet you a drink at the pub she dies tomorrow night," The former says, bargaining on her life as if she's less than human to him. She supposes she is.

"You're on," The latter agrees.

As soon as their footsteps sound as if they're out of the room, Rosa forces herself to sit up and assess the damage, though she can barely see. Her skin is hardly visible beneath layers of blood and dust, fresh and old alike blurring into a second skin.

Thankfully, as she prods at her ankle tenderly and attempts to move it, she's pretty sure it's not broken. Tender and difficult to walk on, let alone fight on, but not broken.

Maybe she will die tomorrow and all of this will have been for nothing. She will have left everything she'd been lucky to have just to fly all the way to East Berlin to die. And what does she even have to show for it? A few new scars, names to her death toll and a silver coin?

A surge of anger rises through her and her eyes sting with hot tears as she strikes out, punching her fist into the metal bar again and again and again.

Until that deep voice of her neighbour shoots through the dark with an urgency she's never heard in him before. "Don't do that! You'll hurt yourself even more!"

She pauses, chest heaving with breath. Every inhale brings pain, every exhale even more. But then she watches motionlessly as Warren's fingers curl around the bar she'd been diverting her anger into.

"What's the point?" She rasps out, lungs ash in her rib cage. "You heard them. I'm going to die tomorrow anyway."

"You don't know that for sure," He reasons. His fingers flex around the bar as if he's worried she's just going to punch right through him.

Maybe she will.

She's got enough fury to keep going until her body gives out. Bitterly, she supposes that isn't long at all.

"If I can't fight, either the next mutant kills me or they do," She says quietly, though she drops her fists into her lap, bloody and throbbing. Rosa swallows thickly and reaches out on impulse, her fingers curling around his.

Needing the touch of another. Just to know he's real and he's there with her. To know she isn't alone in this hell.

To her surprise, he obliges and they sit there in the dark, iron bars between them, just holding onto one another as if they were the only other person left in the world.

The only thing holding the other back from giving in.

"I'm terrified of dying, Warren," She whispers, tightening her grip on him as if he's going to pull away at her admission. He doesn't.

"I know," He replies, "I am too."

Rosa lies back against the bars, body creaking and groaning at every little movement.

Maybe to die tomorrow will be a deserved mercy.

The tenderness of the touch of the other was foreign in a world of gore and decay. Neither seem willing to let go until they have to. Rosa brushes her thumb over the back of his hand. Smoothing over the bruised and bloody knuckles to match her own.

She swallows thickly and releases his hand. For a moment it remains, but then retreats from her. She watches it go as she rolls onto her side and pulls her aching wings around herself just trying to rest.

"If I die tomorrow, I want you to know I'll have died fighting," Rosa breathes, but there is no response from the man in the dark.

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23.2.19