WANTED U | ANGEL | X-MEN APOCALYPSE

prologue

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.