Viktor thinks his leg should go without saying. Everyone else seems to disagree.
He is a cripple, not deaf or blind. He is perfectly capable of hearing the whispers over the thud of his cane as he passes by, not so focused on walking that he cannot see the way their gazes track him as he shuffles down the Academy’s halls.
There are too many stairs in the Academy, he is finding. Every time he encounters another set, he grits his teeth, hefts his bag a little higher on his left shoulder, and climbs, despite the growing ache in his right hip and the inordinate weight of the tomes he carries.
There is only the work, he reminds himself.
The number of people does not shrink as he climbs up to the fourth floor. They eye him in a way he cannot easily describe. It is not… hate, that is in their eyes. It is not quite suspicion, though Viktor is sure it would be were it not for the too-loose, too-stiff, too-fine Academy uniform he is wearing. It was a courtesy of Professor Heimerdinger, who had sent it along with the books and a map of the Academy, annotated with Viktor’s class schedule.
Heimerdinger has worse handwriting than the “doctors” Viktor is well acquainted with in the Undercity. Hence the early-morning visit to his office, where he is the entertainment for the other early Academy students. The ones who are more assured of their belonging here, if he can judge by their jewelry and their shoes.
(He wears no jewelry, has never owned any, and he stapled the outsole of his right shoe back together this morning.)
The other students, congregated around classroom doorways in their impenetrable social groups, stare at him in the same way he used to look at strays back home. They were a good source of amusement, given the absence of human company that plagued his childhood. He liked those animals. He fed them when he could, pet them when he couldn’t, and learned early how to tell when one would bite.
He realizes, as he spots the plaque outside of Heimderdinger’s office, that these students stare at him like that. They smirk with bemusement or avoid his gaze altogether. They hide their remarks poorly behind their hands.
They regard Viktor as a stray. Something to pity. Something to be cautious of. Something to be nice to, if he can prove himself by rolling over enough times.
Viktor supposes he is a stray, with how Heimerdinger plucked him off the streets of the Undercity and gave him a new “home.” What, does he now need a bell around his neck? Perform tricks?
He breathes and takes a moment to unclench his right hand from around his cane before it cramps too much to be useful. He resolves to do what he has done all his life: ignore the way they make him a spectacle, though they are worse up here, like they have never seen a cripple before.
Maybe topsiders have not. Viktor cannot recall seeing anyone like him so far.
He knocks on the office door before his brain can take him too far down that path. Unproductive.
Heimerdinger answers promptly. It is odd for Viktor, at his height, to have a superior he must look down at. He supposes it is something else he must get used to.
“Viktor,” the professor says, surprised, though he does let him in. “It’s early. Very early, my boy. Classes don’t begin for another half an hour.”
Viktor stands in front of the massive, dark wood desk and waits for Heimerdinger to sit back in his chair before he says, “Your map is illegible, and there are too many stairs.”
Undercity habits beget speaking quickly and directly; in an environment in which nothing is wasted, words are no exception. Topsiders, however, can afford waste.
“Professor,” Viktor tacks on in a too-late attempt to adhere to topside standards of respectability.
Heimerdinger, thankfully, chuckles. “Terribly sorry. You’d think that after enough decades of scribbling on blackboards, I could use a pen well enough.”
Well, no. After seeing this map, Viktor began to fear for this man’s students, himself included. Professor Heimerdinger teaches his introductory engineering course.
He draws up a new map, humming as he works. With nothing else to occupy himself, Viktor leans his cane against the desk, placing both hands on top of the furniture to take some weight off his hip, and surveys the office.
A bookshelf, matching the dark wood of the desk, stands along the far wall. Its shelves are bowed under the weight of the tomes it contains. Most of the spines are in languages he can read, some are not, and his fingers twitch toward them all the same. He stands on a plush, patterned rug - that explains the instability of his cane, and of his leg, he should rest a little more weight on this immovable desk - that would be better used as a blanket down below. Trinkets and baubles clutter the desk, the biggest of which is a globe. It spins of its own accord, illuminated by… something.
Viktor wants to take it apart. See how it works.
He takes his weight off the desk to kill that temptation and barely muffles a hiss at the flare of pain that shoots up his right leg from ankle to hip. He stretches his right hand surreptitiously behind his back, preparing to grab his cane once again.
This office looks exactly as he had expected it to from his one previous meeting with Professor Heimerdinger. It is practical… by topside standards; it is as large as his kitchen and bedroom back home put together, and any one of the items on the desk could pay three months’ rent, though that is… “low-balling” it, as he has heard some people say.
“Here you are,” Heimerdinger says, handing him the new, blessedly legible map.
Viktor takes it and scans it quickly. His first course is on this floor, thank goodness, but the rest…
“Professor, these are,” he pauses, trying to think of how to phrase his concern. He cannot seem ungrateful, not when Heimerdinger has already helped him and when he has him later for class, and he cannot be annoying, not when he was already ignored when he brought up the stairs the first time.
But his leg screams at him, and to prevent the pain from giving him a sympathetic headache, as sometimes happens, he grabs his cane. To hell with the hand cramps.
“Is there any way to have all my classes on the first floor?” he finally says.
Heimerdinger glances at his cane, and his furry eyebrows raise. This is not the first time he has seen it, but Viktor thinks it is the first time the professor remembered it was there, or that it meant something besides… well, he does not know. A fashion statement, maybe?
Perhaps topsiders haven’t seen a cripple before. They would see plenty if they ever went down.
“We can’t move classes this late, I’m afraid,” Heimerdinger says sympathetically.
Viktor hears the unspoken “but if you had asked earlier” and bites his tongue against excuses.
“It’s fine. I will manage.” And Viktor will, because Undercity habits mean that opportunities are not wasted either. A little pain is worth it. It will be no more difficult than anything he has already done.
Heimerdinger hops down from behind his desk and totters toward the door. As he passes Viktor, he pauses and makes an aborted movement to reach out to him before correcting course.
At least he stopped himself, but that was probably only for practical reasons. Unless Heimerdinger wished to replace his cane altogether - and what a shoddy replacement his bouncing steps would be for solid wood - there is nothing he can do.
And Viktor can walk on his own just fine. It is why he has the cane in the first place.
He grips the map a little tighter, hefts his bag onto his shoulder, and turns toward the door.
He makes it one step (on his injured leg, cane in his right hand) before Heimerdinger asks, “Viktor, which one of your legs is the bad one?”
He grits his teeth. There is no moral attribution to his body. It is neither good nor bad. It just has parts that work and parts that do not. He has one leg that works and one that does not. If he could chastise it into functioning by calling it “bad,” it would have been fixed when he was a child. But that is not how it works, and it is wasted energy.
“My right leg, Professor,” he says because he always wishes that any and all conversations about his leg be redirected to important matters as soon as possible.
Heimerdinger hums. “You’re using your cane incorrectly. You should hold it in your left hand, not your right.”
He mimes the motion, and Viktor tries not to feel… insulted? Ashamed? Coddled? Belittled? He cannot quite put a finger on it.
But there is no time for him to articulate it. Heimerdinger checks his pocket watch, squeaks, and runs faster than Viktor estimated his legs could carry him, leaving him alone in the threshold of the hallway.
He tries Heimerdinger’s suggestion, out of curiosity. The class is on this floor, and he has more than enough time to get there.
When he was a boy, no one taught him how to use a cane. He did what felt natural and what let him move the fastest. It was awkward, sure, but anything that caused him less pain was deemed a success.
It is awkward now, with the cane in his left hand. Slower as he walks down the hallway, because it is new. But it is more stable, he finds. A little less painful, as the pain stays localized to his ankle and knee, rather than his hip.
He could get used to it rather quickly, once he stops feeling so stupid about not knowing.
As he gets to his first class - it is in a room bigger than most big Undercity shops - the thump of his cane and his slow pace prompt more students and even his professor to stare at him. Viktor takes the closest open seat and is briefly, ludicrously, tempted to bark at them.
If they are going to treat him like a stray animal, should he not act like one?
No. He should not. Nothing is wasted, least of all this opportunity. He ducks his head down and opens a book on subjects he knows, matters he gets right, instead of wrong, like how to use his own cane, apparently.
Viktor thought he knew the comprehensive list of all his nonworking parts: the leg, of course, but also the childhood rickets, his lungs, his spine, the calcium deficiency that left his teeth stained slightly more yellow than topsiders’, whatever made him bendier than the average person, and not always in a good way.
Evidently, topside is intent on adding more to that list. Like the cane.
It does not matter. When he is the only one in the lecture hall who can answer the professor’s question - a leading one that she said they will know by the end of the semester - as a largely self-taught trencher, he relaxes. He even smiles.
