Work Text:
"Woah..."
Sevika just about shat herself upon suddenly hearing a little voice far too close to her face for her liking. "What the fuck was that for? Don't sneak up on me!" She huffed, turning to the boy who had somehow managed to surprise her by appearing out of absolutely fucking nowhere. She quickly covered the piece of paper sitting in front of her with her arms.
"I didn't sneak up on you." He frowned, annoying as ever, leaning over the bar to try and get a good look at the paper, "My cane makes a lot of noise, you said it yourself. You were just too focused to notice me."
Maybe he had a point... "Shut up."
He shrugged, rolling his eyes at her like the insufferable, annoying little brat he was before taking on the arduous task of climbing up onto his usual bar stool. Sevika felt it was mean to laugh at him since it wasn't as if he could control the fact that he had limited mobility. She laughed at him anyway because she was mean and he was annoying.
He eventually managed to successfully climb into the seat and while she was distracted laughing at him, he snatched the piece of paper from under her arm, examining the portrait she'd been drawing on it.
"Hey! What's that for? I don't go around snatching your weirdo sciencey notes from you?" She exclaimed, trying and failing to snatch it back.
He gave her a deadpan look, holding the paper just out of her reach. "Yes, you do. Regularly."
Okay. Maybe he had a point. Again.
He rolled his eyes at her once again before turning his attention to the drawing in his hands. "This is amazing..." He muttered, tracing the intricate lines with his finger.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Tease me all you want." She scoffed, crossing her arms by her chest. "Just know I have plenty of ammunition to argue back."
He frowned as if genuinely confused by her assumption. "I'm not teasing you. This is actually really impressive. Why have you never spoken about liking art?"
"Because I don't like it. I just... do it sometimes. When I've got nothing better to do. And also, some people are able to keep their thoughts to themselves instead of ranting about stupid sciencey stuff nobody else understands for an hour straight." She snapped back, definitely not aimed at anyone in particular. Not at all.
"You should draw more often." He commented, electing to ignore her jibe, "It would really be a waste of your talents not to pursue it."
She scoffed at the idea. "Me? What— some sort of artist?" She spat the word out like an insult. May as well have been.
"What's wrong with that?" Viktor questioned, tilting his head at her in the way she always knew realistically wasn't trying to be mocking but nonetheless always came off that way.
"In case you haven't noticed, with your head buried so far in your notes, there's no place for 'arts' down here. That's a Piltie concept for people who have way too much time on their hands and nothing better to do with it."
"Then maybe you could be the first to do it, to make a change down here." He suggested as if it was all just that easy.
"Maybe that's the case for you, but that's because you're special. You're smart and you're polite and you're just the sort of Zaunite pet those guys up there would want to use as a charity case. Maybe you're fine wasting your life on that but I'm not." She bit back rather harshly.
He scowled at her words. "So you're just going to throw your talent away to spend your life beating people up down here?"
He sounded eerily like her father and she hated it. She would have punched him square in the face just to make him shut up if she didn't have the restraint not to knock out a ten-year-old.
"You know what? Yeah! And maybe I'm fine with that!" She exclaimed, slamming her hands on the bar as she stood up, snatching the picture out of the boy's hands, and turning to the door
"You don't have to be fine with it." He spoke up. She wished he knew when it was time to shut his mouth. "They have schools the size of factories up there in Piltover, just dedicated to art. You could do something meaningful."
She looked down at the picture in her shaking hands. The boy she'd hoped to immortalise on paper as the person he'd once been instead of the lifeless, bloody head that haunted her dreams. Mateo.
Her grip tightened on either edge of the paper and she pulled. She pulled and pulled and kept pulling until the force was too much and the picture ripped apart, right down the middle.
"Fuck Piltover."
And with that, she let the halves fall from her hands and flutter down to the floor before being crushed under her boots as she marched away.