Work Text:
Elora reported that the word around the Academy was that the awarding committee was surprised Mel had offered her services.
“They don’t want to draw a Councillor away from more serious matters.” Elora cocked an eyebrow. “It’s quite a project.”
Mel sat back on her chaise and brought her hands together in deference. “Now, what could be more serious than commemorating a trailblazing Piltovan inventor—the frontiersmen of our city of progress?”
Elora gave her a low-lidded smile, though she kept her tone oblivious. “You have a line for everything.” It made Mel laugh behind her sealed lips, glancing back at her coyly.
Her frontiersman, as she had discovered well in advance, was a woman. Just as last year and each year before that, every Piltovan in a civil office received the news in their bulletin exactly a month from Progress Day—when all would be unveiled. But Mel already knew the details from Jayce and Councillor Heimerdinger and a handful of others from the selection committee that had hoped to impress her by whispering them in her ear.
This year’s inductee into Piltover’s esteemed Hall of Fame was none other than Jayce’s enigmatic partner, and Mel was going to paint the portrait.
-
After some probing, Mel learnt that the committee had alighted on Viki on the back of some revolutionary discovery, but the kind that was opaque to anyone not already mired in the work. Jayce had raved about it, clutching reams of copied notes in his hands, all of them inscrutable to Mel.
Mel was more interested in the woman behind the science, and when their first sitting came it could not have come sooner.
Now, Viki made a stiff model, there was no denying that. But there was a gleam in her eyes that reminded Mel, to her surprise, of Jayce. Viki’s eyes scanned the meeting room, chosen by Mel for its seclusion and ample light—high ceilings and fusty corners, the dust motes floating in the sunlight. Her impassive face still somehow gave the impression of scrutiny.
Mel watched Viki carefully as she prepared her materials: the slopes and planes and crevices of her face, hard and not a little foreign under the stark light. It was a storied face, alluring in its own way. She imagined being Jayce watching her, what he saw in Viki, if there was anything there…Since after all, that wasn’t low on the list of reasons the prospect of this pleasant, if meticulous, project had become a quiet obsession before even Mel knew it. Was this woman the reason that Jayce had been surprisingly slow to take up her advances, despite his clear interest?
“It’s a far cry from the science fair, all this,” she said conversationally. “Though I’m sure you aced plenty of them in your girlhood.”
“You have no idea, Miss Medarda,” Viki replied, and Mel couldn’t tell how serious she was, if she had taken offence to the comment, until she gave her a wolfish smile.
-
The underpainting was all shabby taupes and cloudy mauves, atypical for Mel. She had to carve out some extra time to mix them, sending a few loiterers at her office off at the last minute to hunt for pigments.
Viki declined to change out of her workwear.
“There was a ‘suggestion’ in the invitation that I wear something nice for the portrait,” she explained, glinting with humour.
“And you’re opposed to the principle because…?” Mel cocked an eyebrow, eyeing her behind the mount.
Mel had the impression that Viki was softening her words for her benefit, smoothing the sardonic crimp out of her voice. “This is the nicest thing I own. And I was not going to splurge on a portrait dress. Of course, you can dress me how you wish with your paintbrush!”
Huffing, Mel lowered her gaze. Unbidden, her mind had sprung first to the thought of undressing Viki with her brush. She wiped her fingers on the rag as she traced the thought to its root.
Viki presented a new aesthetic territory for Mel—for her paintbrush, as she might say. There was something intractable there, ragged and undefined, creeping out from beneath her cowed frame and her plain clothing. It was the sort of quality that could be an artist’s worst nightmare—or their greatest muse. Either way, Viki made a poetic contrast to the kind of beauty Mel was used to capturing, on the rare occasions she did portraiture. Mel was used to her subjects drowning what negligible personality they had in a cacophony of opulence and finery and splendid airs. As she made the comparison, Mel’s gaze travelled Viki’s face like her brush.
She thought she would tell Viki about this contrast; it was a compliment, after all.
“Oh, I’m flattered,” Viki said, brows drawing together in slight surprise. She coughed. “You should see the art of the undercity. Maybe you would find some inspiration.” She made a vaguely unimpressed gesture to the beautiful yet bare symmetry of their surroundings.
“In the undercity?” Why had that never occurred to Mel before? “Are there galleries?” She had heard many a rumour about the curios that could be found in the nooks and alleys of the undercity; the taste for the outlandish and the arcane that the collectors down there were infamous for. Doubtless there were treasures aplenty, grotesque though some of them might be.
“Galleries? Perhaps.” Viki looked wistful. “But that is for those interested in money and status—“ she spared Mel an almost nervous glance “—not art. The best art is part of the living chaos of the undercity. It’s on the buildings. And the bodies. Not that I know much about art,” she added darkly, making Mel scoff.
”How did you get into the Academy, if I may be so bold as to ask?” There was a note of disdain in Mel’s question that she didn’t quite manage to suppress. It fought with the fondness she already felt for Viki—but it couldn’t be denied there was something a little churlish about her, and she couldn’t imagine her tone impressing the board at the Academy very much. Maybe she hasn’t always been this way. “The fees, I mean,” Mel corrected herself gently. “And… everything.”
“I lied,” Viki said. “I made up a whole new pedigree, a fortune on paper. And once they found out where I really came from, they were too impressed with my research to deny me a scholarship.”
”But—exactly, the scholarship. Couldn’t you have just applied anyway?”
Viki looked at her imploringly and gave a rather rueful laugh.
-
As Progress Day approached, they were forced to work around their increasingly tight schedules, sitting for only a half hour a time. Yet it felt as if time was arrested during their sessions, a recess in the day that Mel looked forward to almost as much as she looked forward to her meetings with Jayce. It was close to their final sitting when Mel floated a new idea to Viki.
“I’ve been thinking about your recommendation. Maybe I could refresh my portraiture by painting more subjects from the undercity. If they’re anything like you,” Mel said carefully, “they might prove to be the spark I need to really get back into painting. I would pay handsomely, of course, and perhaps the proceeds from the collection could go to charity. I know a few involved in the undercity cause.”
Viki must have known that Mel was searching for earnest feedback, and yet she could not seem to suppress the slight roll of her eyes. Mel, never married to any one idea, was shrewd enough to sense her displeasure and confront it.
“You don’t like that. Why?” She said, with genuine interest, setting her brush down.
Viki was chewing her words. Eventually, she ventured, “Charity… is a charade. Where will your proceeds go, but the same pockets who buy the art? Your charities, your middlemen to the undercity—are their overlords. There is no method there to make it otherwise.” After a moment, she added, “If you want to help… No, you need to revolutionise life in the undercity.” Her fingers curled in a stretch and then she pointed one out to the cloister of government buildings outside, glistening in the sun. “That’s what I want to do. That’s why I’m going in the Hall.” She gazed defiantly at Mel.
What was it that Jayce said once? They were heading to the Councillors’ soiree one Progress Day when Mel asked him what he thought of the inventions so far. Parlour tricks, ways to improve daily life by only a fraction.
Clearly, she had to think bigger if she was going to impress Viki. It dawned on Mel, as if it should have been obvious all along, that Viki embodied everything Jayce found lacking in the conventions of Piltover. It wasn’t Viki that Jayce was preoccupied with, but the same vision that preoccupied them both. Not even the sense of foreboding at Viki’s dramatic words, the fray in her voice, could prevent Mel from concurring with them now that she considered it.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said cryptically, picking up her paintbrush again.
-
The new plaque with Viki’s name on it was being engraved when Mel went to the Hall of Fame with an out of hours pass. She wanted to survey her work in context, with space for a true appraisal, and if she allowed anyone else there with her, the platitudes would just crowd out her thoughts. Jayce had come to see it earlier, bobbing with pride for them both.
The Hall was long and Viki’s image wasn’t out of place in any concerning way. Indeed, a few of the inventors that lined the walls seemed to be wearing the clothes of their vocation as a point of pride, although many more were dressed to the nines. Some carried a fanatical gleam in their eyes, their dogged pursuit of scientific progress at any cost immortalised; the noblest of causes in the eyes of this city. None were quite like Viki, though. Mel scrutinised the portrait hanging on the wall. If she was still concerned that the essence of her subject had eluded her, she could say that much—the portrait looked like no one else hanging in this room. Shrouded in an air of mystery, the barest whiff of acrimony lurking in her otherwise neutral expression.
The first scientist from the undercity to be admitted to the Piltover Hall of Fame! One of Mel's charity acquaintances was in the process of writing a glowing spread about the opportunity that Piltover’s great Academy had provided this young, deprived and crippled talent, hoisting her from her unfortunate station to successes never even dreamed of among her peers—what an inspiration, no barriers to aspiration, no excuses.
Mel knew that Viki was singular for other, better reasons than that.