Changeling!Russia x Reader: Wings

Ivan couldn’t be sure exactly when he had fallen in love with his childhood friend. Perhaps it had been when they first met, when she was five and he was six; or maybe it had been during their early teenage years, when hormones raged like storms.
   
Either way, Ivan was deeply in love with ______. However, there was a problem.
   
He had always known that he was different. The other children in the small village where he lived would run away if he asked to play with them. He didn’t do anything to scare them; there was just something about him that was frightening.
   
Even so, he couldn’t complain. That was how he met ____ .

~~~~~~

Small feet crunched through the deep snow, frozen hands held out for balance. The chubby boy lifted his head to the sky, the sight of snowflakes swirling down making him dizzy.
   
He sighed, white breath curling up from his mouth like a dragon’s. This was boring, running around in the snowy forest on his own. He wished some of the other boys would be friends with him.
   
After scanning the surrounding trees, Ivan spotted a large fallen log a few metres behind him. He pulled himself up and sat on it, swinging his legs.
   
The boy’s stomach rumbled, so he pulled a chunk of bread out of his pocket and nibbled the end. It was hard and stale, but it was all his family could afford.
   
He didn’t understand his family, either. They wanted nothing to do with him. Was it because he looked so different to his siblings? Sometimes his parents made him feel like he wasn’t a part of their family at all. An outsider.
   
A sharp chirruping noise to his left caused him to look down. Perched on the log next to him was a small brown bird, glaring up at him with beady black eyes.
   
Ivan laughed and broke a piece of the bread off, holding it out to the bird in the flat of his palm. The bird hopped forward and snatched the bread, before flapping off into the trees.
   
Even if all the people around him were scared of him, he would always have the birds. Ivan gazed up into the bare branches above him. He so desperately wanted to sprout wings and fly away from everything. He wanted it so much that he could almost taste it. He closed his eyes and stretched his arms out, imagining powerful wings sprouting and—
   
“Can I have some of your bread, please?”
   
Ivan jumped, rudely snapped out of his daydream by the girl’s voice. He looked down at her form his position on the log.
   
She was smaller than him, perhaps a year or two younger. Her (h/c) hair hung around her face, limp and heavy with melting snow. Her cheeks were flushed with cold and she had inquisitive (e/c) eyes.
   
Ivan hesitated. This was all the bread he had, and who knew when he would have this much food to himself again? Still, the girl was much thinner than he was, and he was all too aware of what real hunger felt like. He could hardly say no.
   
“Of course,” he smiled, holding his hand out to the girl. She grinned and let him help her up onto the log.
   
“What’s your name?” she asked curiously as he gave her half the bread.
   
“Ivan,” he answered. “What’s yours?”
   
“______,” she said through a mouthful, crumbs flying everywhere. “Thanks, Ivan,” she continued. “I haven’t eaten today.”
   
“Oh,” Ivan said quietly. “Me neither.”
   
There was a moment of silence as they both devoured the food. Then, ______ spoke up again.
   
“Ivan, can we be friends?”
   
The boy blinked, startled. “But we’ve only just met. And you’re a girl.”
   
“So?” she shrugged. “You’re a boy.”
   
“People might think we love each other,” Ivan grimaced. “That’s gross.”
   
______ giggled. “Then we’ll just have to keep meeting out here, where nobody can see us!”
   
And so, on a grey December afternoon, Ivan made friends for the first time in his life.  

~~~~~~

He was sick of it. The whispering. The fear. The stares that followed him everywhere he went. The whispering behind his back. Ivan was sick of it all.
   
He gritted his teeth as he trudged up the hill, pinpricks of light from the village twinkling beneath him. He shifted the pack on his back to his other shoulder. There wasn’t a lot in there; just some spare clothes and enough food to last until he got where he was going—wherever that was. Still, the pack was painfully heavy, even for a strong eighteen-year-old like him.
   
Leaving hadn’t been an easy decision to make. Even though he had wanted to do it for a long time, there was one factor that always made him stay.
   
______.
   
Even she had deserted him now, though. Just the thought of her cast a violet aura over his thoughts and his very being.
   
The day she had married that other man had been the day he had decided to go. He knew it wasn’t exactly her choice to get married, but that knowledge did nothing to calm the rage that had built up over the years. She had been his friend. She should have been his.
   
But that hadn’t stopped her marrying someone else.
   
His blood boiled at the thought of her beautiful face and the years of memories he had of it. Images of her laughing with him and smiling at him flashed though his mind.
   
It made him want to scream.
   
At last, Ivan reached the top of the hill. The cold autumn breeze toyed with his hair, bringing promises of yet another bitter winter. He stretched his arms, yearning to feel the air rushing beneath his wings. He didn’t know why he needed that. It just felt right. All he was sure of was that, when he needed to fly, his wings would be there.
   
A tear threatened to escape Ivan’s eye as he took one long, last look at the village and forest he had called home for so long. He let the tear fall and flicked it away. There was no point in crying; the village had nothing left for him. The people probably wouldn’t miss him.
   
It was time to find his real family.