WANTED U | ANGEL | X-MEN APOCALYPSE

two

two !
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Rosa tugs on her huge denim jacket, complete with slits to accommodate her wings sliced down its back, and folds up the necessary papers and notes to take with her.

Everything she'd found out over the past few months condensed and scrawled out in her barely legible handwriting. Contacts, names, prices. All of it on two sheets of paper, which she folds up small and conceals.

For her eyes only. The only pair she can trust without question. The only mind she can defend and know that those defences will hold true against almost all attacks thrown its way.

Like a medieval castle built to stand against a siege, she too will hold strong. Would rather starve and die than give up the ghost.

She cracks open her bay window, its sill cleared of her various plants and books to make room for her late night take off, and steps up onto the desk, which creaks under her weight. She flexes her wings out to her full wingspan, ruffling her black feathers. They glint in shimmers of royal blues, emeralds and amethyst.

A controversial work of art. Considered demonic by most. Creations of a dark art form, brutal and packed with lean muscle ready to send her into flight speeds most mutants can't run at. The perfect vessel for a mind ready to tear her opponents to shreds the moment her physicality isn't enough to defend her.

Her fingers crunch into fists as that powerful mind of hers locks onto the idea of becoming someone with more to her name than a pair of wings and the ability to flay a mind without blinking.

As she's checking her boots are tied tight enough again, her door creaks open and Alex enters her room, more subdued than he'd been earlier that day. She observes him as he closes the door behind himself, perhaps more out of concealment than out of politeness.

"If you're here to persuade me not to go, then you're wasting both of our time," Rosa tells him, her voice cold through the hum of the evening.

She's never been a particularly warm person. Even before her mutation made itself known. But since whatever had been happening between her and Alex had ended, she's been an extra degree below freezing.

"Whatever it is you're so desperate to go out there and achieve, I just," his jaw clenches as he glances away and softens by the time he looks back to her, "I hope it's worth leaving all this behind for."

Rosa scowls at him, a flicker of anger sending her feathers into their signature flare. "I'm not leaving anything behind. I'm coming back eventually."

"Why can't you just stay?" He asks so softly that even her irate wings deflate.

If this was how he is going to try to make her stay, he's too late.

"You want me to stay?" She questions, dropping down from the desk.