AN: I can stop. Really, I can. I just choose not to. Besides, come on, I can't be the only one who watched X-Men: The Last Stand and thought Angel deserved some character development. 2/14: Currently being reworked and will be updated randomly, as the plot bunny seems to have been resurrected when I found my DVDs and comics again. Not sure how long it's gonna last, but I'm trying. It's a thing in progress. Respect the thing.

Pretty much everybody but Alyssa is borrowed from somewhere in the X-Men franchise…which I don't own. So yeah.

Code Name Angel

Chapter One

Rain pounded the outside of the Xavier Institute For Gifted Students, turning the grounds into one giant mud puddle. Warren (Worthington III, not that he bothered to use the last name unless necessary) turned away from his window with an irritated sigh. No outdoor exercise for him today, unless someone had the ability to expand the danger room to ridiculous sizes to accommodate his need for a long flight.

Tucking his wings securely down against his back, Warren glanced out of the door cautiously before leaving. The X-Mansion might be a safe place for mutants, but years of keeping his wings covered in public wouldn't be undone overnight, or over-week, or over-month.

The main halls were strangely quiet, even for a school morning. Must be an X-Men field training day. Storm had mentioned that Warren was welcome to train with them if he wanted, but the whole idea just didn't sit well. Maybe it came from being pretty much on his own in an anti-mutant world for so long, or maybe the accusations from middle school bullies that he didn't have the guts to throw a punch had an element of truth to them, but fighting just wasn't one of his interests. So he had turned her down, as politely as he knew how.

Speaking of personal interest, his wings were definitely starting to ache from staying flat against his back since the evening before. Since no one was around to be startled, it couldn't really hurt to stretch them a little bit, could it?

Of course, the second he allowed the wings to flare out fully (almost knocking a vase off an end table in the process) a female voice behind him yelped, "Holy crap!"

Warren spun around, instinctively clamping both appendages down against his back again. "Oh my God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"

"No, no, it's okay!" A slender girl materialized from the shadows in the corner, her dark hair taking just slightly more time to appear than the rest of her. "I didn't mean to scare you, it's just…damn. How did you get so lucky?"

The realization gradually dawned on Warren – she was talking about his wings. 'Lucky' wasn't the word he would have used, but she probably didn't see it that way. "Uh…I was just born with the right gene, I guess?"

"That is so awesome." The girl's eyes widened in delight as she crossed the room, almost but not quite standing close enough to touch him. "I'm Alyssa Hill. I've seen you around a few times, but I'm usually hanging out with the kids and don't have time to talk. I guess my mutation is pretty obvious, huh? I can blend into any shadow, as long as there's a little bit of one. Nothing that shows up on the outside and nothing that's anywhere as cool as, say, telekinesis or elemental powers. It's kind of boring, relatively speaking. That's why I'm not one of the X-Men. And sometimes I do it when I didn't really mean to. So…um…what's your name?"

Alyssa's explanation, rattled off with barely a pause for breath, had left Warren slightly dazed, but he managed to shake himself out of it. Now that she mentioned it, he was pretty sure he'd seen her somewhere before. "I'm, uh, Warren. Warren Worthington. You already saw, um…"

"The wings? Oh, God, yes." Alyssa nodded and glanced over at the feathers visible behind his shoulder. "Is that all you've got, or do you have other powers too?"

"I...I don't actually know." Warren thought about that for a moment. "Wait, I thought you only got one."

Alyssa giggled. "Oh, secondary mutations are a thing. But if it's never shown up, you probably don't have any others. So…" She pointed to his back. "You can probably unfold them now."

His wings twitched involuntarily, reminding him of just how nice it felt to not keep them clamped down all the time. "Oh. Right. Thanks. I kind of need to, or my wings start to tense up." He flexed them out carefully, watching to make sure he didn't hit anything, and noticed with some embarrassment that his wingspan pretty much took up the entire room. "You don't mind, right?"

"Heck no!" Alyssa sat down rather abruptly on a chair a few feet away. "Stretch all you want! And while you're at it, I'm curious – how'd you get here? I've got the typical mutant story – you know, discover powers, hide powers, have powers found out, run away from home, end up here. I think most people have that. You…well, no offense, but somehow I don't see you hiding those wings from the day they developed until now."

Warren tried to wrap his mind around what she had just said, and chose to ignore the comment about the wings. She wasn't trying to insult him. Probably. "So…um…you were a runaway?"

"Yeah. I was fourteen. Spent the last four years here." She blinked quickly and flicked her hair out of her eyes with a too-casual shrug. "You?"

"Um…" Warren frowned. There was such a thing as pushing it, even if the offender was a cute girl who obviously just wanted to talk. (And how rare was that? Maybe for good reason.) "I don't really like to…it's not a subject I like going on about."

Alyssa's face fell slightly. "Oh. Okay. I get that." She brightened a second later, clearly deciding to ignore the awkward moment. "You wanna go see if any of the danger rooms are open? I don't really train, but sometimes I like setting them for low-level simulations. It's fun. Or at least something to do when it's raining."

"Sure…I guess?" It was more of a question, but before Warren had time to ask anything else, Alyssa was on her feet and halfway down the hall.