Before

Via

CW: Isolation from peers and sibling fights

Having a twin felt like having someone who you could rely on, or at least that's what it felt like for Via. She was born having a friend for life. All the way through school she had someone who she knew, someone who she could hang out with in class and during lunch. They had been in the same classes all their life, they sat together in each class. They switched between being at the front because that's where Via liked sitting, and going up the back because that's what Blaze liked. Via liked being up the front when it was a class she enjoyed most, it felt like you could get so much more out of the lesson when you were closer to the teacher. Via couldn't imagine what it would have been like in school without her brother, her twin, her other half. She struggled with making friends so being born with one was a good thing for her.

- - - - - -

Going to an admin academy was hard for Via, she didn't think about the fact that she wouldn't have Blaze with her. The academies were sister schools so they weren't far away from each other, about a twenty-minute walk between campuses, but she would be staying in the admin dorms. She would be sharing with someone else, she was used to it having shared a room with Blaze for all of her life, but it would be weird for it to be a stranger rather than her brother. She had only partially paid attention during orientation, she kept looking at the people next to her expecting one of them to be her twin. She was excited about being at the academy, after all, she was hoping to go far as an admin. She really wanted to be one of the admins who went out to all kinds of servers and helped fix bugs, she thought it would be fun to see all the amazing builds that players had built. So she would be studying hard, and paying extra careful attention in the coding classes.

She had been given her key after orientation, and her bags were apparently already in her room, which according to the number on her key was room 2. She made her way over to the dorm building, which was on the left side of the campus, in a big group along with the rest of the first years. She wasn't sure if her room was going to be close to the door, or down in a corner, and she honestly didn't know which one she would prefer. She looked at the sign and saw that her room would be located down one of the far ends. She made her way down to the second door from the end, there was a large number 2. Her name was written beneath, as well as her roommate, Millie Veretic. She made her way inside, the door was still locked so she was the first one there. She automatically made her way over to the left of the room, it was always her side of the room whenever she shared with Blaze, but she wasn't sure which side her roommate would want, so she decided to wait.

Her roommate didn't say anything when she came in. She went straight to the left side of the room, the side that Via wanted. Via didn't want to deal with confrontation so she placed her bags on the right side of the room. It felt weird to her, and she thought that she might even fall off the side of the bed since she wasn't used to what side the wall was on. She tried to start a conversation with Millie, she said, "Hi, you're Millie right?"

The admin looked around at her, rolled her eyes and ignored her, it made her feel bad about herself. This person who didn't know her seemed to be acting like she had done something wrong. "So are you excited about classes?" she asked, trying again.

The admin looked back at her with a death glare before she spoke, "You and I will not be friends. I can see you are one of those rule-following boring teacher's pets, not the sort of person I hang out with. Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours,"

Via had to stop herself from crying as they continued unpacking in silence, she just wanted to have a friend. She wished her brother was there.

She tried talking to a few other people during class, but many of them weren't interested in talking to her. For the next few years, she chose to focus more on her studies to try and be the best admin she could be. She still spent the holidays at home with her family, and it sounded like Blaze was having more luck in the friend department than she was. They did have some occasions at the academy when they could cross campuses to meet up with the watchers at Blaze's school, but he was often too busy with his new friends so she spent the days in the library studying. She managed to make it to the top of her classes and she wanted to keep it that way, and it wasn't like she had anyone else to hang out with either. Even with the others who tried hard in class, she couldn't make friends with them, they were all competitive so they only saw Via as a rival to crush.