Work Text:
1. Never be the first to believe
Vivienne stared at her reflection, a golden-orange doppelganger in the burnished copper.
It was a gift from an enamored baroness intent on spoiling Vivienne rotten for the new year—or so the woman claimed. When Vivienne had asked for a mirror, she had expected a glass pane with reflective silver. Not an Antivan copper disc.
Imported special for you, she slurred, teeth stained purple from wine.
Imported cheaply for me, Vivienne had thought back.
It wasn't sexual attention; the baroness had no magical ability and thought herself a patron of the next generation of collegial talent. Vivienne was simply one of several in the baroness’ favor, picked up and discarded like treasured dolls, hedging her bets should one of them prove spectacular.
Ah. There it was. A minute twitch in her eye, a pursing of the lips. Vivienne schooled her face once more.
Masks were an integral part of society, a crutch for those who couldn't hide their inner thoughts from the Game—or those who wanted respite from keeping them hidden.
Vivienne did not want to be either. She wanted her thoughts to be her own, private, and revealed only when she wanted them to be. Vivienne was already spectacular, but she wanted to be flawless.
She wanted her lips to not be chapped.
That thought earned her a frown she couldn't control. Frustrated, Vivienne got up and searched her bag for the beeswax salve she packed before this venture east to Cumberland. She had been preparing to face off against sharp-tongued Mortalitasi; she hadn't prepared for her true foe being a late spring cold-snap.
Vivienne was one of two dozen promising apprentices invited to the bi-annual convention, partially to gain exposure to the magical studies of their kindly neighbors, but mostly to take notes for the senior enchanters so they could doze off between lectures.
She was sharing quarters with a kind, slightly thick-headed young woman who had a rich aunt and an equally simple-minded sweetheart, so Vivienne was mostly left to her own devices until Enchanter Ryckus called for her to accompany him. Before arriving, Vivienne had been thrilled at the opportunity; at fifteen, she was one of the youngest apprentices in attendance, and she wasn’t going to squander the chance to learn.
No, Ryckus would squander it for her. He was decent enough at the Game, but intellectually lazy and unambitious in a way that set her teeth on edge. He made her take notes with direct transcription, which was too tedious to allow her to fully absorb the lectures.
Absent-mindedly in the present, she tried to soothe her dry lips and raw knuckles with the almond-scented beeswax. Did Nevarrans keep their colleges as cold as iceboxes to limit the stench of their dead?
The sharp sound of laughter cut through her thoughts, and the thin windowpane.
Vivienne peeked out the window. Her lodgings overlooked a courtyard, and despite the chilly air and frosted grass, some apprentices or junior mages were huddled directly down around a wooden table. Judging by their thick, dark robes, they were likely Nevarrans.
Squinting, Vivienne could make out an hexagonal chess board. Hm. Tevinter rules, then. Vivienne was partial herself to the four-sided board. It didn’t originate in Wycome, but the city gladly adopted it in celebration of their four gated entrances.
One of them, a girl with bushy, dirty-blonde hair, cackled so loudly in triumphant success, her companions winced and Vivienne could hear her plainly in her own room.
Vivienne shook her head. Distracting, but didn’t concern her.
She sat back down at the table, stared her own reflection down, and began reciting the Elemental Principles of Etheric Values. She had memorized them all by twelve, and disagreed with two of the principles. Her aim was to convince herself of holding differing views at each intonation.
The next time Vivienne attended this conference, she would not be scribbling notes for an enchanter whose breath stank of brandy and hadn’t published a compelling paper for over a decade, and she would not be playing chess outside with necromancers until her fingers went corpse-numb.
She had her sights set on a different Game entirely.
2. Never be the last to deceive
“You’re that new mage from Montsimmard, aren’t you?”
Vivienne halted, forkful of trout halfway to her mouth. She put it back down on her plate and looked aside. A Nevarran woman stood beside the table, staring down at Vivienne intensely.
“I’m a mage from their Circle, yes. And you are…?” she asked, internally annoyed at the interruption. Vivienne was to give a presentation later in the afternoon, and while she typically enjoyed discussion afterwards, she preferred a quiet meal in the common hall to focus her thoughts.
“Johanna. So how did you do it?” The woman sat down, a frenetic magnetism to her manner that was refreshingly abrasive in comparison to Vivienne’s fellow silver-tongued mages. “They’re saying you disproved an Elemental Principle.”
“Then I suppose it wasn’t so elemental.”
The woman—Johanna—laughed, throaty and loud. Several nearby mages glanced over at the noisy behavior.
Vivienne straightened her back. Good. If they were to stare at her, let them.
“If you’re truly curious, you should come to my lecture,” Vivienne added. She skimmed her eyes over the Nevarran’s attire. Ink-stained, but expensive fabric. Signet signifying the Mourn Watch; interesting. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years older than Vivienne.
“Can’t. One of my colleagues is giving a demonstration.”
Vivienne mentally flipped through the day's more intriguing planned events. “Minute fingerspelling or corpse whispering?”
Johanna grinned. “The latter.”
Vivienne’s eyebrows raised. Well now, that was impressive.
“Not my personal expertise, of course,” the woman continued, “but I co-authored the paper, so naturally I can’t miss the demonstration or every middling enchanter from here to Anderfels will attempt to write a critique. You know how they can be.”
Unfortunately, Vivienne did. This was her third summit at Cumberland, and she had already experienced the rage and humiliation from reading a pointed, poisonous rebuttal journal entry against her work.
“Come find me later,” Johanna said. There was a flyaway hair that had escaped her bun. It wasn’t artfully messy; it was simply messy.
“How?” Vivienne took a small bite of her now cold fish entree. “I don’t know your full name.”
The woman huffed, shockingly transparent irritation. “Johanna Hezenkoss, of course, as I said.”
She didn’t, but Vivienne didn’t push it. She knew how to swallow her emotions down.
“Yes, of course,” Vivienne replied instead.
After the woman was gone, Vivienne centered herself once again, running her speech again in the quiet of her mind.
3. Nobody's on nobody's side
Except—she did find Johanna later. After Vivienne’s lecture, after Johanna published a paper refuting Vivienne’s findings, the snake. Vivienne didn’t mean to, exactly, but it was hard to avoid the woman, especially now that her eyes seemed to be able to pick her easily from the crowd, even years later.
“If you didn’t want me to refute your work, do better work,” Johanna countered. She moved a piece on the board within a breath of Vivienne making a move. Sometimes, Vivienne wasn’t sure which core trait was more in control: genius or impatience.
Used to her now, Vivienne considered Johanna to be the type of rival that circled back around to a certain level of familiarity. And, just to annoy Johanna, she paused, languidly considering her next move despite knowing the next three she wished to make.
It worked. Johanna’s fingers twitched at the sedate pace.
Carefully, Vivienne made her next move.
Johanna again struck rapidly, except—
“Check,” she said smugly, grinning at Vivienne like she performed an impossible trick.
Which she did.
“You’re cheating,” Vivienne accused.
“I’m winning.” Johanna pointed at the board. “Your king will fall in three moves. If you wished to stop the game or reset the pieces, you should have done so before defeat.”
“I’m not defeated yet, dear. According to you, it’ll take three more moves.”
“Then move so we can finish this game and do another. I have a twist on the Chevaliar’s Gambit I want to show you.”
That was Johanna, through and through. Genius, impatient, but not one to celebrate her wins alone. She needed a partner, if only to witness her triumphs and feed into her spite and determination through her failures. It was why Johanna co-authored so frequently with that colleague of hers, the corpse whisperer, despite appearing to have the temperament of one who preferred to work alone.
“Perhaps tomorrow. I have a dinner with the Senior Enchanters I’m attending tonight.”
Johanna rolled her eyes. “How you stomach those things, I have no idea.”
Vivienne shook her head. They were necessary. Johanna might needle Vivienne for refusing to join a fraternity, but she was too caught up in the pragmatic ideal of magical invention and scholarly pursuit. What good was the squabbling and henpecking of these summits? It was nothing compared to the power and respect one could achieve in a single evening at a salon in Val Royeaux.
Their disagreements didn’t stop them from falling into bed, either.
That was newer. And, sometimes, when they really began to argue over new research, or theorems, Vivienne would actually forget they had a physical side to their relationship until Johanna was half in her lap and Vivienne’s hand was inside her blouse.
“I stomach them very well. I heard the cook is serving braised veal.”
“Funny.” Johanna glared daggers as Vivienne got up to leave her suite. “Are you really going to leave without finishing the game?”
Vivienne considered it.
“Yes.”
It was the only way to keep Johanna from winning, and since she was the one who cheated, more importantly Vivienne would not lose if she simply stepped away from the table.
She almost kissed Johanna’s temple in farewell, not that the woman would have allowed it.
Perhaps later. She would come back to Johanna’s suite at least one more time before she headed back to the Circle; Vivienne was curious to learn about the gambit.
4. Never make a promise or plan
And then, there was Bastien and his peonies.
Vivienne didn’t understand, until then, what it meant to have someone play the Game with you.
After news spread when she froze that first bard through, she received a letter from Johanna. Over the years, they had invited each other back to their respective colleges. Not once had they taken each other up on it.
There was no hint of jealousy. She simply asked Vivienne how the spell worked; it was hard to freeze someone so thoroughly and so quickly without their corpse exploding. The Mortalitasi wanted to add the spell to their repertoire.
The next bards that attempted to embarrass Vivienne were a duo. Vivienne sent one back to his employer and the other to Necropolis in a bespelled crate for safe travels.
Vivienne wished she could have seen Johanna’s face receiving the package. While they were never committed lovers—and even using that word felt far too sentimental—Johanna was perhaps one of the only enchanters that knew Vivienne as a young mage that she still allowed social contact with. Johanna never cared, not about the fine workings of the court. But she would appreciate the statement Vivienne was trying to make.
Oh, Vivienne had been so confident in her ability to mask her thoughts and emotions. Silly child, making faces in copper as if it was actually part of the Game.
Johanna never tried to play it. She still rubbed elbows and sweet-talked grant writers, and she forged ahead without masking her desire for greatness. For discovery.
Vivienne desired greatness, too, but she wanted to be great. Johanna wanted the research to be great. As… satisfying as their arguments and challenges could be, ultimately they had no use for each other.
Eventually, Vivienne stopped sending invitations; there was no place for Johanna in the Ghislain estate.
And she stopped receiving them, too. There was equally no spot for her at one of Johanna’s lectures.
5. Take a little love where you can
Vivienne let her mouth twitch as she approached the Blackthorne Manor.
Nevarran’s weren’t known for their, ah, welcoming architecture. More of a shock and awe approach to hosting soirees than the opulence of an Orlesian social event.
But really, Johanna, the desiccated front lawn and skittering skeletal servants were a little much. The manor also oozed the tang of necromancy and blood magic, so old and layered it was impossible to tell how recent the caster had been here.
The ballroom was cozier, well lit with a decent band.
“Madame de Fer!” a lower Nevarran duke approached her, delighted to catch her acquaintance. She didn’t blame him; she was, undoubtedly, one of if not the most influential woman in the room. Once, it was flattering. Now, it simply felt like a waste of her time. “I thought that was you. We met at the Winter Palace in ‘34.”
“Hello, dear,” she replied, irritated that the man assumed she would recognize him without offering his name. She knew it, of course, the eldest van Hartl, but still. The principle of the matter.
She exchanged pleasantries with him by rote, including his party.
By Vivienne’s estimation, the guest list was curated to eccentrics and minor nobles. Those who had nothing better to do than to attend any soiree Johanna would hold, especially in an infamous estate, just to gossip about the host and the tantalizingly vague magical presentation the invitation teased.
Vivienne excused herself to make the rounds, to see if she could find the absent hostess herself. And to buy herself time to collect herself.
She did have better things to do.
Orlais was in chaos. While she and Divine Victoria clashed amiably over politics for years, they were grimly aligned when it came to the blight tearing Orlais up in the streets. The uneasy stalemate between Celene, her lover, and her cousin was similarly being tested, but they were prone to cracking rather than forging in fire.
And still she had not found Johanna!
If the Inquisitor hadn’t helped her get access to an eluvian, she never would have made the journey to Nevarra to find the madwoman.
Vivienne understood the necessity of soirees, even during war—especially during war. But this wasn’t even an impressive gathering of allies, they were too powerless to be needed by their country during this assault by ‘the gods’, or they never would have attended.
Truthfully, Vivienne was surprised to receive an invitation and surprised she had accepted it. But she had; she had missed Johanna. Missed her shameless pursuit of her studies, missed her shrewd ambition and lack subtlety playing the Game. It had been decades since they’d had a direct conversation.
She hadn’t heard from her in ages, not since… well. There was no blow up fight. She simply faded from Vivienne's life, until her outline was so faint that Vivienne didn't know how to fill her back in again.
Now... now she missed it. Missed feeling Johanna's chest under her ear, the sharp intake in breath that signaled new thoughts and theories were swirling through her quick-mind. The transition between pillow talk and academic debate and then back to charged heat between them, over and over in quick succession. How Johanna simply considered Vivienne's importance as a scholarly rival, rather than a piece on a board.
Here and now, so many years later, Vivienne had to admit she spent too much time thinking about Johanna and not enough about how she herself had changed.
The last time the world was coming to an end, Vivienne left her love’s side to fight a war. She didn’t regret her choice. This time, she was older and no wiser. She didn’t want to storm the battlefield, muddy her boots and be covered in stinking darkspawn ichor. She had policies to plan, students to mentor, contingencies to execute.
She wanted someone who understood her. Who she was, who she had been. Someone who didn’t care that everything that Vivienne had worked for and bled for and killed for was rapidly becoming unraveled by blight and corruption.
It was an hour into the soiree—starving from the microscopic hors d'oeuvres, Johanna had spared many an expense—when she finally caught sight of her walking the outer edges of the room and grabbed her aside before any of the gibbering dukes and academics could.
“Vivienne!” Johanna exclaimed. She took a step back, hugging the wall. She had on a pair of thick glasses and must have spilled an entire bottle of pungent perfume on herself. “You’re here.”
Vivienne raised an eyebrow. “Yes, dear, that’s what happens when you invite someone.” She let her eyes roam the ballroom; Johanna appeared to have invited everyone. And she didn’t exactly know how she was supposed to be looking at Johanna. “Did you want me to leave?”
“I—no.” Johanna smiled at her, wide and a touch manic. It was unsettling, and nostalgic. “No, no. It’s good you’re here. Very good. Better than I expected, even. I’m just… busy. I have some more preparations to make.”
Vivienne didn’t frown. There was something off about her. She reeked of death and foul magic.
“Johanna—” she started, genuinely concerned.
Either the woman didn’t believe the care in her voice or wanted none of her pity; Johanna shook her head, body language angled toward the door and clearly wanting to leave.
“We’ll talk later. After the presentation. I—goodbye, Vivienne,” she said, clearly distracted, and left.
“Later it is,” Vivienne murmured to herself. As she reentered the ballroom proper, she avoided the political figures and targeted the professors and scholars. If she was to be here, she would make the most of an exchange of minds.
Something in the upper balcony caught her eye.
If Vivienne wasn’t mistaken—and she hardly was—somehow one of the Inquisition’s old scouts had infiltrated the event.
Vivienne sighed. But she inclined her head so that the light fixtures would glint off the iron plating of the horns in her headdress. If the scout wanted to approach her, she could.
And then the Gloaming Lantern rang.
+1. Nobody's on nobody's side
Vivienne made her way through the Lighthouse library.
It wasn’t her first time here since Solas and the gods were taken care of, but it was the first time she had come here for herself, and not to discuss the end of the blight.
She let herself into Volkarin’s study, some of his books already moved back to his office in the Necropolis, and pulled up a chair in front of Johanna’s skull.
She waited, silent, until—
“Well?” Johanna’s voice was annoyed, clearly audible if somewhat tinny. Vibrations pulled from the etheric energy pulsing through the air, and not the vibrations of a windpipe.
“Well what, dear? I thought you were the chattering skull.”
“Oh, very funny. Making fun of an easy target.”
Vivienne inspected her nails. “As opposed to attempting to kill a hard one.”
Johanna paused, minutely. “I didn’t actually expect you to attend. And it’s not like I could have kicked you to the curb, not when I was so close.” If she still had a nose, she would have sniffed it, dismissively.
Usually their banter was, at the very least, entertaining. but now Vivienne just felt… tired. Exhausted.
Johanna was a paperweight on a mantelpiece. A half-lich failure, after decades of ambition and drive, always a step out of Vivienne’s reach. More free, more unburdened, more dedicated to the magic and science and exploration than Vivienne was, or could have been, not without sacrificing her security and position.
And now here they were, the both of them.
Vivienne got up to leave. She didn’t want this—this itchy feeling of regret. She didn’t know what she expected, but not this. She was not unfamiliar with allies and ex-lovers betraying her. But Orlais was half-destroyed. If she had to cling to something, it would be to her home.
“Was that it?” Johanna said. “You wanted to see me and gloat?”
“No, dear. Not to gloat.” It came out neither kind nor unkind.
“I still have a mind, you know,” Johanna blurted. “That paper you published last year about runic properties for heating bathhouses and floors was drivel, obviously, but not without larger implications.”
“Co-authored, in name only. I was the woman's advisor and steered research.”
“But I'm still right. Your ‘woman’ is wasting her time with interior decorating.”
Yes, she was. It was a heat source that came from interlocking runes, and triggered by the vibrations of feet walking across specially designed floorboards. The type of expensive design that the nouveau riche would clamor for as a novelty. The true genius was how you made the process more efficient, or linked more together without the entire design exploding or degrading. It also expelled energy as heat, but with a converter to electricity or ice or even poison, if you had the mind to do so, you could trigger any number of secondary purposes.
Oh, Vivienne had certainly understood when she came aboard the research, rare for her these days. These runes were the building blocks of a much larger, grander style of magic. Rival scholars were already aware and intrigued by the studies, and the paper offered good cover while they honed the work.
That at its initial purpose it would also supply a steady, private source of income once patented… well, that was always useful, especially for a young, promising mage who couldn't count on the Circles’ continued existence like Vivienne had when she was building a name for herself.
Or it would have been useful. Poor Seleste was overrun by darkspawn several months into the blight.
A harsh world they lived in. Not that it was better, exactly, when Vivienne was that age. She just understood the shape of the world better. Vivienne still had no truly legal way for her to control property without a benefactor like Bastien putting her up in his apartments, no way any invention or scholarly paper would protect, not like the Game could. Not then.
But she was still good at it. Vivienne never lost sight of the true rules of the Game—everyone played alone and everyone eventually lost.
Johanna tried to cheat, and it cost her.
And yet, “Very well. Let us hear what it is you think we've missed.”
Vivienne closed the study door and sat once again in front of one of her oldest, dearest rivals. Perhaps she would bring a board, if there was a next time.