Chapter Text
The hallways of Piltover's prestigious academy are just as inhospitable as they have been the last eight months of Viktor's attendance. Far too many jostling students carrying loud and inconsequential conversations in the echoing hallways, ignoring him for the most part, which is preferred as he struggles to carry an armful of textbooks on one side and maneuver his cane with the other.
He bites back a curse, urging his expression to return to neutral when his left shoe slips on the tiles. He'd glued the loose sole back on last week, but years of wear has left the underside of the shoe entirely without grip. Not a big issue on rough cobblestones, but a recurring one on the well polished tile. Viktor breathes in deep through his nose, hiking his stack of books back up under his arm and continuing on. He has one class left for the day, then he can go back to his dorm and seethe however much he needs to, but he is here to learn and nothing is getting in the way of that.
It's an overcast day, the sun shining muted behind the clouds outside the academy windows. Filtering through in drips and drabs that catch on the well polished doorknobs and handrails. Viktor scoffs, long past the point of being shocked at Piltover's needless display of opulence, the feeling instead sitting bitterly in his stomach each time the loose fabric of his ill-fitting uniform rustles against itself, each time his shoe slips on the fucking tiles.
Class doesn't start for another two hours, but he has taken to walking the long way around, cutting through the fine arts wing and avoiding two sets of stairs, killing just over an hour in the library right across from the lecture hall and then taking his seat fifteen minutes (at minimum) before everyone else. Arriving early to class gets him dirty looks even now, but they aren't ones worth entertaining, even if he can feel them burning into the back of his head for the entire lecture.
Just as he reaches the end of the fine arts wing, he's startled by a voice behind him shouting. He almost moves to keep walking, assuming whatever outburst that was had nothing to do with him until the voice continues.
"Your uniform doesn't fit!"
Viktor's lip curls. He does not have time for this, but anyone with intention of talking down to the Zaunite will just follow him the rest of the way down the hall and waste even more of his time if he doesn't give them the attention they crave. So he schools his expression, raises his chin and turns.
It's a girl, standing halfway down the hall, hands balled at her sides, breath fast. She's mousy, with round cheeks and poorly styled hair. Viktor tilts his head, her expression seems more nervous than jeering. He straightens himself, "Really? I hadn't noticed."
She blinks at him with bright, confused eyes, "You're Viktor, right?"
"It seems my reputation proceeds me." He responds bitterly, trying his best not to wonder the circumstances under which this girl leaned his name.
Her mouth pulls in a tight line and she takes a few quick steps towards him. Those seem nervous too, "I can help." She blurts, avoiding his eyes.
Viktor appraises her some more, notices the glint of diamond studs in her ears, but the absence of any other jewellery. She is of some wealth, clearly, though nothing exceptional, at least not by academy standards. He also sees a pincushion tied to her wrist, "Ah, you are in the textiles course."
"Yes." She replies, nervous eyes darting around like some sort of prey animal.
Viktor just barely resists the urge to scoff, "Why are you acting like I might sink my teeth into you?"
She squeaks, eyes snapping up to his, "H-Huh?"
Viktor adjusts himself, taking a measured step towards her, "Do you think I am dangerous?"She blinks some more and Viktor finds himself quickly growing tired of her shivery little mousy behaviour, "I have places to be, if you need something from me you had best spit it out, unless of course it's another uninspired jab, I've heard them all before and it would just be a waste of both our times."
"Oh, no, nothing like that I um-"
She introduces herself, quickly and without any sort of proprietary. Viktor also notices that she doesn't bother offering a last name. Not from a house then. Not anyone of note at all. No Piltie worth their salt would introduce themselves without the needless gravitas of their surname. She must be here through patronage, which indicates at least some measure of expertise, however minor.
"I want to tailor your uniform for you." She says in what he can only interpret as her version of firm. Her voice still wavers on each word, but her hands are balled into fists again.
He scoffs, "I am not in the business of accepting charity from strangers."
"It wouldn't be charity!" She blurts, "I'm working on an assignment, I major in alterations instead of design. You get a uniform that fits and I would just need a few photographs, before and after, for my assignment." Then quietly, to herself, "provided someone will let me borrow a camera, of course."
Viktor had been nimble enough with a needle and thread to hem his trousers, but they barely hold up even with his belt done up to the tightest notch and both his shirt and vest hang loose around the barrel of his chest, dipping whenever he bends over his desk. He assesses her offer carefully, weighing the benefit of a better fitting uniform against the revulsion churning in his gut at the though of accepting some topsider's help. Charity or no.
"Please?" She asks, "It would be fully anonymous on your part and we would both be better off." Then again, but with feeling, "please?"
Viktor eyes her again and against his better judgement, presents an undeserved olive branch, "Will you be here tomorrow?"
Her smile is so wide it almost makes him want to recoil. It's as if her mouth is too big for the rest of her face, all white, straight teeth, "Yes! Yes I can be here, thank you!" She points behind herself to a half open door a little ways down the hall, "I'll just be in there! Morning would be best for me, but I can make afternoon work!"
Viktor doesn't have any classes tomorrow, it's usually valuable study time for him, but so long as it's only a few hours he's sure he will survive, "Morning is preferable."
Her smile doesn't wane, he wonders if her cheeks hurt, "perfect! I'll see you then!"
The next morning she looks nervously at the clock on the wall for the fifth time, it's still another quarter hour before Viktor said he would arrive and she has already organised and re-organised her sewing kit in preparation. She sucks a breath in through her nose to calm herself, Viktor is just a person and she knows the rumours are all made up so there is no reason for her to be so skittish. She still can't stop her hands from shaking and it's making her current task difficult.
"I didn't realise we took in charity cases." One of her classmates calls suddenly from the other side of the room.
She startles, almost dropping film cartridge that she is struggling to insert into the camera she borrowed from one of the journalism students, "What?"
Her classmate turns from where she is working on pinning a piece of delicate lace to a dress form, offering a knowing smirk, "You're taking pity on the Undercity boy."
She frowns, still fighting with the camera, "It's not charity or pity, Eliza it's for my assignment."
Eliza titters with false politeness and answers, "You should be proud of your capacity to do a good deed," she carefully folds the fabric of the skirt she is working on, pinning the pleats in place, and adds, "Some of us are far too busy to entertain the notion."
She has been at the academy long enough to notice a politely wrapped jab when she hears one and resists the all too familiar urge to tell Eliza where she can stick it, "As much as I enjoy our chats, it would be best for you continue your work in one of the other rooms." She says, finally succeeding in loading the camera with film, relishing in the satisfying click, "It would be rude for the two of us to hold a private conversation with someone else present."
Eliza hums, peering at her with a cruel smile tugging at the corner of her lip, "I see then," she finishes pinning her fabric and the quickly snaps her sewing kit shut, "I was thinking it was about time for brunch anyway. Would you like me to bring you anything? I know you haven't had the chance to try my usual cafe."
The unsubtle implication of you couldn't even afford the food there hangs heavy in the air, swinging back and forth. She has grown used to ignoring the pendulum, "No, thank you. Though I appreciate the offer."
Eliza gives her a pinched little smile before resting her hand on the doorknob, "Then I'll see you this afternoon," she opens the door a little and then whirls around as if she forgot something, "Oh and do try to keep an eye on his hands, I've had enough pins go missing this week as it is."
The door slams shut and she is left glaring at the wood. Now that Eliza can't see her, she thumbs her nose in her direction and curses under her breath, shaking away the itch of frustration in her hands before digging through her sewing kit for her set of pins. Just like Eliza's set, several of them are missing, but that's just because they are pins, exactly the sort of thing that goes missing every single day, like socks, or buttons. Plenty of her other classmates, including Eliza, love flaunting completely useless sets of luxury pins, with gemstones or pearls on the ends. Last year, she was the one that was blamed whenever they went missing, but these days their minds are otherwise occupied.
Rumours spread fast in the academy, they always have. She's been studying here for almost two years now and fluidity of the rumour mill is sometimes more difficult to stay on top of than her classes are. Truthfully though, there was never something or someone that generated rumours quite like Viktor. She's heard practically everything since he quietly slid into the academy at the beginning of the year, all of it a nebulous web of half-truths that the rest of the student body seems exhilarated to become tangled in.
Some students postulated that he wasn't from the Undercity at all, that it was an elaborate sting operation by the council. But to what possible end? Nobody seemed to have an answer.
One afternoon in the cafeteria she heard some biology students speaking in hushed voices at the table next to her. They seemed to believe that he wasn't even here to study, that he was collecting intel to take back to the slums in preparation for a full scale invasion. That's just silly. She catches his walk through the fine arts wing every Thursday afternoon and only someone truly passionate about their studies would move the way he does, determined and with purpose, clutching tightly to his textbooks like they are worth their weight in gold.
The most ridiculous rumour was started by one of her own classmates, made as if anyone in the textiles course could possibly know anything of consequence about a student from a completely different field of study. They said that Viktor hadn't even been officially enrolled, that he gutted a student on their first day at the beginning of the year and stole their place. That's why his uniform doesn't fit, they had whispered gleefully, failing to put their own textiles knowledge to use. His uniform is at least five years old, she can tell by the older button design, and the sharper lines on the piping.
So she knows that none of it is true, at least none of the truly awful parts. That's why she feels a little guilty at how relieved she was when the rest of the textiles students found someone new to spread lies about in her place. She at least has the guise of propriety to hide behind, but he doesn't have even that. Truthfully, thinking too much about him makes her feel cowardly, spineless.
She sighs, taking a seat on a low stool in the corner of the room, thumbing awkwardly at the camera she borrowed and trying to resist the urge to look up at the clock again, knowing that it can't have been more than five minutes since she last looked. This was a good idea, she tries to reason, she is going to help someone who actually needs it instead of catering to the whims and fancies of the rest of the student body who only ever ask for their waistlines cinched, or thigh-seams tightened.
Her work has to mean something, or she will have failed completely.
Somewhere across campus, Viktor is regretting his decision to leave his dorm this morning. The autumn chill bites through him as he crosses the open courtyard that separates the dorms from the academy proper, the cold has left his leg stiff and even more frustrating to work with than usual. He has a bag slung over his right shoulder, a spare set of clothes to change into after he forfeits his uniform over to that girl.
That thought alone nearly makes him want to turn back, he knows that he only needs to hold out for a few more months before he can request his own official uniform in the correct size, but the idea of getting tangled in his own pant legs for even a few more months has him gnashing his teeth. It's difficult to ignore the alarm bells, he hears them constantly, sometimes they are correct and the students around him want nothing more than to lie and deceive, to exclude him in any way possible. Sometimes, however, they are wrong. The first time a professor kept him back after class to congratulate him on a perfect assignment, that had not been a trick. When the dean of the academy summoned him to his office with a promise of official enrolment instead of the expulsion and banishment he had been expecting, that hadn't been a trick either.
And now, this girl is offering to tailor his uniform and every muscle in his body wants to tense at the thought, his gut churns at even the suggestion of giving up his uniform for her to alter however she sees fit. So he tries in vain to ignore the alarm bells, because while they do quiet, they never fully come to a stop. It's exhausting being always on edge, but he doesn't know any other way to be, even if it means he returns to his dorm each night with a migraine, the result of grinding teeth and a tightness in his jaw that he cannot do away with.
He breathes a sigh of relief when he finally reaches the large double doors of the fine arts wing, grunting as he pushes one of the doors open with his shoulder and feeling the warm air inside curling down into his bones. The wing is mostly empty today, there are very few classes running the last day of the week, it's mostly students work-shopping their own projects and Viktor's teeth grit again at the thought of how much it must cost to heat this whole building for the scarce few students inside. He adjusts the bag on his shoulder and winces as he begins walking over to the textiles rooms, trying to ignore the ache as his stiff leg adjusts to the change in temperature. He really should have just stayed in his dorm, this whole excursion cannot possibly be worth it.
There is no one else in the hall as he walks, the sound of his cane echos off the tiles and down the empty corridor. He isn't sure if he is supposed to knock when he reaches the girl's classroom, in the end he decides not to, grabbing the handle and yanking the door open before he can change his mind.
The girl is the only one in there, and she yelps when she sees him standing in the doorway. Quickly rising from the low stool she is sitting on with not an ounce of grace or poise, she stumbles, laughing nervously as she finds her footing.
"You're here!" She exclaims, almost as though she doesn't quite believe it.
Viktor is exhausted already, but tries not to let it show on his face, "Yes. I am."
"That's um-" she sounds almost out of breath, "That's so great, I'm glad you decided to come."
He doesn't have time for pointless platitudes, "Yes, you're welcome. What exactly do you need from me?"
Her bright eyes blink quickly at him again, processing. She lacks any of the uptight perfection of her Piltie counterparts, but exhibits none of the straightforward single-mindedness he aches for from Zaun. He misses it, when people would just fucking tell him what they wanted and why. Her tight pose and the way she clutches her hands behind her back exhibits an attempt to fit in, and on second assessment Viktor realises that her poorly styled hair is a failed imitation of the popular style he sees most of the other girls wearing these days.
"Yes! Sorry!" She says quickly, gesturing to a raised platform in the middle of the room, about half a foot or so off the ground, "If you could just stand up there for me, it will make it easier for me to take my first set of photos, and to pin your trousers, when we get to that."
Viktor eyes the platform, it does at least seem wide enough to accommodate his cane. So he does as asked without acknowledgement, stepping quietly up onto the platform, left leg taking the brunt of his weight.
"Oh! That was fast, thank you!" She replies and Viktor is growing tired of every one of her responses being an overenthusiastic exclamation. He watches quietly as she darts back to the stool she had been sitting on when he entered the room, grabbing one of the new cameras he has seen around the academy, a recent invention, capable of developing an image without the need of a dark room.
"Like I said yesterday, I just need some before and after photos of the areas I will be altering, just ah, just try to stay still and it should only take a second."
"I know how a camera works." Viktor responds.
She blinks at him again, "I-I… Yes, sorry. I'm not very familiar with them so I thought-" she shakes her head, "It doesn't matter. Sorry. I'll start now."
Viktor straightens himself, trying to ignore the way his heart pounds at even the thought of being photographed. He carefully adjusts his weight to mostly rest on his left leg, holding his breath in an endeavour to stay completely still. She chews on her lower lip, ducking down a little to get the baggy ankles of his trousers into frame. Viktor flinches at the sounds of the click and curses himself for it, raising his head and hoping she didn't notice.
"Hm? Oh." She mutters and he hears the click again, then three more times, "What- Why?"
Viktor peers at her, she's squatting down now, the camera held between two hands as she rotates it around, "Is something wrong?" He offers.
She looks up at him, appearing especially mousy from so low down. Her brow crinkles with confusion, "The camera isn't working and I don't-"
"Give it to me, I'll fix it."
Her breath hitches a little and he notices a blush blooming on her upper cheeks, "No, no, it's okay, I'll-"
Viktor huffs, ducking down and holding his hand out to her, "I am an engineering student, give me the camera."
"Okay!" she squeaks, handing it over. Her hand brushes his, it's sweaty.
"See? That was much easier than talking around in circles for hours." He stands back up, quickly assessing the device, "I do not understand you topsiders and your rituals. Never asking for anything unless indirectly and then declining it when it is offered, how do you ever get anything done?"
She wrings her hands together, "It's polite, I guess."
Viktor briefly lowers the camera so he can look at her, "What it is, is a waste of everyone's time."
She doesn't respond, adjusting herself to sit cross-legged on the floor as Viktor pops open the back of the camera. He sighs, "You have inserted the film in upside down."
"What? How? It clicked in and everything."
"Yes." He responds, sliding a fingernail down the side of the film cartridge and carefully wriggling it out of the camera, "You have certainly jammed it in there, in fact, you are lucky it did not break anything."
She whines, crossing her arms over her knees and burying her face in them, "I'm so sorry, I've used a camera before but it was a different kind and I thought I could just, I don't know, figure it out?"
Viktor nearly wants to roll his eyes at the sight of her, but instead finds himself feeling oddly solicitous. Maybe the sight of a Piltie on the floor at his feet is appealing, or maybe she is just so sufficiently pathetic that he can't help craving any way to make her self-effacing stop, "Look at me."
Her head lifts up from her arms, paying him great attention as he removes the film and inserts it back in the correct way.
"This is exactly what I was talking about." He says quickly, gesturing to her with the camera, "Stop standing on needless principle, or you will never get anything done."