Ink & Ashes // Arcane Fanfiction Viktor x Reader

25

Much quicker than you would've preferred, you began to grow up. You shed your childhood in colourful paper shreds, falling too quick to grasp ahold of. You don't remember the exact time, place, date you realized you changed. It wasn't as if you woke up one day to a new body, new face, new thoughts, like you thought it'd happen. But at some point your limbs seemed too long, body too alien.

You mourned who you once were, the little, foolish thing you had been. You wanted to feel that pure, foolish ignorance that came with youth. Though... you didn't quite know why. You were older now. Old. You were supposed to want to be old, supposed to want to grow up. You weren't sure why it felt so... wrong. So sudden.

Then one day, you were given by your mother a knapsack, directions to the centre of the city, and a kiss on the cheek, then promptly sent into the world. Or, at least, a few blocks away.

It wasn't long before you unknowingly slipped into a stream of other children and teenagers heading the same way as you. Some were around your age, the youngest few barely teens, but the majority were verging on young adults. It was the day of the interviews: The thing that determined whether or not a child would be able to enroll in the prestigious Academy.

You'd barely been outside alone, save for a few visits to shops and friends' houses, but never truly alone alone. You felt stuck in the awkward space between child and adult: Little kids that you swore you had been no taller than only last week now looked up to you with the same timid awe you once regarded adults with. Yet the older kids were loud and boisterous, shouting greetings to friends across heads and so awfully confident in themselves. They knew who they were, what they were.

You envied them - both naïve children and comfortable adults; although for what, you weren't entirely sure.

In a flurry of long corridors, trodden-on feet, and repeating your name a bajillion times to a bajillion people, you finally found yourself dumped into a waiting room.

It was a long, stuffy room that contrasted starkly with the otherwise airy and open grandeur of the Academy. No windows, no marble, no big fancy paintings. The air was thick with apprehension and hummed with the flutter of two dozen stomachs worth of nervous butterflies. Seats lined each wall, all filled with kids with fidgeting fingers and bouncing legs, accompanied by the occasional nagging parent.

You pried your hands apart. They'd been subconsciously picking at a hangnail, and you realized then you'd drawn blood. You put the said finger in your mouth, and hoped no one noticed.

Sit straight, your mother's comforting voice chided in your mind. Chin up. Hands clasped. Look confident. It doesn't matter if you aren't - if you believe you are, you will be. Just be natural. Be you.

But who were you? A million memories and thoughts and feelings and ideas all smushed into skin and held up with bone.

You'd started fidgeting with your hands again. This time, you didn't stop. One thing about this new adolescence you hated was that it came with too strong emotions. Everything was stark and vibrant and suffocating. Highs were too high, lows were too low. Fear, as you felt then, was a violent shade of lavender. It made you want to throw up.

"Have we met before?"

The question had been aimed at you, you realized after an awkward beat of silence.

You looked to your left, to the source of the sound. A boy sat beside you. You swore he hadn't been there when you sat down, and you hadn't noticed him sit since. 

He looked to be around your age - he held himself with the same uncertainty that betrayed the unfamiliarity of his new self; legs bent uncomfortably, neck unsure quite how to sit. His brown hair looked as if it had had a comb ran through it, though was still unruly and unkempt. He stared at you with striking dark eyes that darted hastily to the floor when he noticed you looking.