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Lavellan is drawn to the mirror and she’s not sure why. There are a thousand and one crazy and impossible things about the Black Emporium. A mirror, by contrast, is downright ordinary.
But maybe it’s the way the light catches it at a strange angle, maybe it’s the dry chuckle in the back of the proprietor’s throat when she glances in the mirror’s direction. And maybe it’s the way that when she looks into the glass, what she sees isn’t precisely the same as what she knows should be reflected in there. Dark shapes swirl across the surface, casting strange shadows, distorting and twisting what lies within.
She stares intently, across features that she’s learned to… deal with could be the best way of putting it. Her jawline has always been too hard, her shoulders too broad, and there’s certainly a compelling reason that she keeps a kerchief around her neck, spends so much time each morning arranging and rearranging a brassiere that contains nothing but padded cloth.
Yes, Lavellan is intimately familiar with her own appearance, and just which parts of it she wishes she could be without, or have altered, or have at all.
She glances over her shoulder, towards the cadaverous cluster of waxen limbs that comprises the figure known as Xenon the Antiquarian.
“Excuse me?”
“Mm… yes?” Xenon replies in a voice like the scraping of a sarcophagus lid.
“What’s this mirror?” Lavellan finds herself looking at her reflection again as she speaks. She isn’t sure why. She’d, frankly, rather be looking at just about anyone else’s face.
Another chuckle, putting her in the mind of the crackling of paper. “Perhaps you should continue looking. No charge, no charge! Couldn’t move the blasted thing out of here if I tried.”
Lavellan frowns, a hand brushing across the tip of one ear – an unconscious habit of hers. While there are all manner of relics in the Emporium, esoteric, bizarrely mundane and impossible alike, all seem to carry a fee of some description. Is the mirror defective somehow? Though, how precisely a mirror can be defective is quite another question.
Still, Xenon has given permission, so she transfers all of her attention onto the mirror, tries not to scowl. It’s all too easy to be drawn into scrutinising every little part of her face that she doesn’t like, and yet she still can’t look away, somehow. What is it about this mirror?
With a sigh, she reaches out and touches the surface, a wistful, rueful smile crossing her face as she traces the line of her jaw and-
Her whole body tingles.
Lavellan doesn’t just startle, she full-on leaps backward, boots scuffing along the floorboards, narrowly avoiding teetering over and wiping out the Lost Hat Stand of Weisshaupt. What the- what was that?
“Oh come now. No need to be so, mm, melodramatic. Honestly, staring at it that long and you barely changed a thing... Hrmph. Kids these days.”
Changing… anything?
A perplexed frown, and rather than looking into the mirror’s dark surface, Lavellan runs a hand across her face, her chin-
And she freezes.
It feels different. Her face feels different. By the Creators, what…
She scrambles forward, not even bothering to stand, and stares into her reflection.
Wide eyes, open mouth, and a jaw that’s several degrees lighter than it was before, the angles not nearly so hard or bulky.
Lavellan trembles, just looking at her own face.
And bursts into amazed, astonished tears.
After Lavellan leaves the Emporium, the mirror dwells in her mind for a long time. Is it merely an elaborate illusion, compelling her to view herself differently? It’d be a cruel turn if so, but Lavellan is all too used to such hopes coming to nothing. Back in her clan, the Keeper used to prepare an utterly vile herbal mixture for her to drink, supposedly to help Lavellan cope with her body image. It never worked – or at least, not to Lavellan’s notice, and when she came to the shems' lands, she stopped using the mixture altogether.
But as time passes, and Lavellan sees herself in more mundane mirrors, she can’t help a little spring of happiness entering her step. It’s such a small thing to have changed, but it means so, so much. And the change persists. Lavellan had expected that it would wear off after a time, but whatever magic contained within Xenon’s mirror, it’s long-lasting, enduring, even when Lavellan is hit with spells that dispel barriers and the like.
Maybe, just maybe… it’s permanent?
And the more she thinks about it, the more Lavellan knows that she must figure out this mirror, determine if it has specific rules, how much it can be controlled. Her insistence on controlled, methodical testing has long driven her clan to distraction, and the Inquisition tends to feel similarly, but Lavellan doesn’t care. She needs to know for certain – or as close to certain as possible. ‘Good enough’ is not something she can accept.
So, she returns to the Emporium when she’s able to, making an excuse to Cullen that there are some specific supplies worth picking up, and that Xenon had extended the invitation to her, specifically.
“Aha… you’re back. Thought we might, mm, be seeing you again. Come in, come in, browse to your heart’s content! Don’t, mm, look too closely at the statue of Divine Rosamund, she’s shy.”
“Can I look at the mirror again?”
A sepulchral laugh is her only response.
Lavellan takes it as a yes and approaches. Those few steps seem to stretch miles, as if the closer she gets, the more reluctant she is to actually close the distance.
She knows it’s because she’s daring to dream, daring to hope, and the longer she delays, the longer she doesn’t know, the longer she can go on without that dream crumbling to dust. The mirror will be broken, or not work as she thinks it does, or only be able to change one thing at once, or, or…
Lavellan stands in front of it again. Just as before, odd angles and tricks of the light creep over her face, pulling her vallaslin this way and that.
All right. All right. If there’s a limit to its use, or it can only make a single change at once, then Lavellan knows she had best make it a good one.
She tugs aside the red kerchief at her neck – something that most of the Inquisition would be entirely astonished to see her do – and exposes her throat.
For a moment, Lavellan just looks with a tremor of disgust. She hates seeing her bare neck, she hates it. And there, halfway down, is why – the conspicuous lump, the reason she tends to speak softly, that she has to put in so much Creator-damned effort just to pitch up her voice, so that she doesn’t have to risk bursting into tears every time she opens her fucking mouth.
She extends her hand, and touches the mirror, concentrating hard, focusing mentally on what she wants to change. For a few moments nothing, and then…
Fire in her throat, like swallowing one too many nips of that Antivian brandy.
Lavellan drops to her knees, choking and gasping, coughs wracking her entire body, great heaving hacks coming from the very pit of her lungs. She falls back on her backside, breathing heavily, shuddering, trying to get herself back under control. It doesn’t hurt exactly, but it’s less than comfortable-
Then it’s gone, as suddenly as it arrived.
She almost doesn’t dare to touch her throat.
It’s smooth.
“Oh my creators,” she murmurs. And her voice is different. Blessed Mythal, her voice is different. Still her, of course, but without that soft strain in the back of it, without the effort she’d always needed to exert to keep it level.
Her hand shifts upwards, to her face. Her jaw remains in its new shape. It hasn’t changed back.
Lavellan’s eyes start stinging.
“Oh really now. Mm, if you start crying again, you could at least have the decency to bottle them. Mm, could find a market for Inquisitor tears…”
“Ma serannas,” she says, and marvels at the sound of her own voice, smiling through more tears. “Ma serennas for this gift, hahren.”
An awkward cough. “Yes. Well. Mm, don’t go spreading tales of generosity around. Takes away all the mystique.”
Lavellan almost doesn’t dare believe it as she leaves. Surely this is her imagination, surely she will wake up at any second.
She doesn’t.
At times, Lavellan feels almost giddy. When the initial suspicion and concern wears off, she’s left free to have her moment in the sun, enjoy what the mirror has allowed her to do. She sits for hours in her quarters, just staring at the ceiling and running through sentences, saying every elven word that she knows, delighting in the altered cadence and tone, how differently it all reaches her ears. She still wears the kerchief, but she’s had that for so long that it’s just a part of her now, like her security blanket.
The others – at least, some of the others – they notice. Iron Bull gives her a long and lingering look when she joins the Chargers for drinks and joins in with every raucous tavern song. Maybe he’s picking up on the change, maybe he’s just amazed to see Lavellan actually coming out of her shell and socialising. Usually she just orbits these kinds of gatherings, enjoying them by being there, not by throwing herself into the fray whole heartedly.
Leliana’s head snaps around sharply the first time Lavellan gets her attention in the aviary, an unspoken question dying on her lips. She didn’t recognise Lavellan’s voice as her own. She says nothing, but she certainly knows. Solas is similar, though he actually gives Lavellan the benefit of a smile, making her aware that yes, he caught that, and yes, this is the only response he’ll be giving the matter.
She tracks down Krem, privately, draws him aside, and is entirely frank about the discovery she’s made – lets him know that he can come along with her anytime he wants, if indeed he does. When Lavellan leaves, Krem is smiling, amazed, not quite believing… exactly how she felt, at first.
Cole hugs her.
“You hurt less now. It was all tangled, twisted, torturing… and you untied it. I’m glad.”
“Inquisitor? I am so sorry, I didn’t realise it was you.”
“It’s fine, Josephine. How is everything?”
“Terribly busy, as usual. The Comte de Marriot has very particular needs for lodgings. Importing that much flowering rashvine has proven to be troublesome."
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“A great deal of practice. Though, speaking of which, have you been taking those speech lessons? You seem to sound… different.”
“I um… well… not exactly, Josephine.”
Lavellan returns to the Emporium each time she can make an excuse to and doesn’t leave the Inquisition in the lurch. She becomes, over the next few months, quite the expert at managing to incorporate visits to Kirkwall into various expeditions into the Free Marches. Varric even secures a membership for a couple of the city’s seedier bars for her.
She doesn’t go to them, but she does appreciate the gesture.
She remains careful each time she visits, not changing too much, not being too daring, or trying to push the limits too far. As always, she’s methodical. Xenon, the old man slash desiccated almost-corpse, seems surprisingly grateful for the company. Apparently repeat customers are relatively few and far between, and that Lavellan occasionally actually buys something too has the antiquarian pleased as punch.
The shoulders are next. A little slimmer, a little less broad – and she takes it in increments, tucking in the broadness bit by bit, satisfied at the third attempt. Xenon seems amused by how subtly Lavellan is taking this all, but she doesn’t care. This is about her. This is about reshaping herself while still guaranteeing that she is her. There might be aspects about her body she dislikes, hates, even, she doesn’t want to become a different person entirely in the process.
There’s the adjustment period, too. When she takes first an inch, then two, then three from her height, Lavellan gets the most alarming sense of vertigo, makes her struggle to balance right at times. It’s many hours in the training yard with Bull and Cassandra before Lavellan can properly retrain herself, and that’s when she isn’t constantly getting distracted by the altered perspective being shorter bestows her with. She’d always despised being tall, but it did have its perks, like being able to see across a crowded room, and longer strides.
Plus, it’s just pretty odd to handle the slight shift in perspective. Lavellan’s always been so used to being taller than Cassandra, and now she looks up to her. She’s shorter than Sera, even, and the other elf finds that absolutely hilarious, asking if she ate some kind of ‘elfy’ thing that made her shrink. There’s actually some alarm around the Inquisition, wondering if there’s magic afoot, if Lavellan’s being targeted. She has to assure people that while yes, magic is involved, it’s both entirely her choice and entirely under her control.
Leliana probably thinks that Lavellan doesn’t see the pair of spies assigned to guard her from that point on, but she doesn’t mind.
“It’s so good to see you again, Inquisitor.”
“I told you before, Josie, you don’t have to be so formal all the time.”
“Ah-! My apologies, Inqui… I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“That you are. Don’t worry, it’s better than being called by the wrong name.”
“Oh? When has that happened?”
“I- uh- w-well, it was more when I was younger. My clan and I, um… let’s say we disagreed on what I should be called.”
“I see. Has this anything to do with the changes you’ve been undergoing recently?”
“I… what?”
“The changes. I hadn’t wanted to be impolite, so I did not say anything, but you’ve looked different of late.”
“…Yeah, yeah I have.”
“I hope it is not too bold of me to say, but you have also seemed in higher spirits since.”
“It’s … it’s not too bold at all. Thanks, Josie.”
Lavellan takes a deep breath, looking into the mirror. This, she has promised herself, will be one of the final occasions she uses it, if not the last, period.
There’s a line between her own peace of mind, her own happiness, and out-and-out vanity, and Lavellan is determined not to cross it. This isn’t about her looks. This is about her body, and matching it with the spirit that the Creators gave her. There’s a difference.
“Mm, still looking, are we now? You can use a regular mirror to do that, and not track sewer water across my mm, boards.”
“Sorry…” she mumbles. “I’m just… just thinking, is all. There’s a… big step to take.”
Xenon starts muttering under his breath for a while, and Lavellan resumes looking at the mirror.
Another deep inhalation, and Lavellan puts out her palm, touches it to her reflection’s chest.
No pain this time around; it merely feels warm, her face going flush with the heat. This is… different from before. Rather than smaller, less, there’s more, a subtle swelling in the middle of her chest, a gentle blossoming of new flesh. Not much, really, not too large – Lavellan has never wanted much so much as anything at all.
She can’t resist taking a peek down her shirt anyway.
The strangled squeak of delight is so loud it echoes out beyond the emporium and into the sewers.
“Josie, have you got a few minutes?”
“Certainly… you have quite the grim look on your face. Is something troubling you?
“Yes- I mean, no… I just… I w-was wondering if you wanted to walk with me.”
“I would like nothing more. One moment, let me finish this note… and there we are.”
“Sorry, I always seem to be pulling you away from work.”
“It is no trouble. If anything, it is a welcome reprieve. You undervalue your own company.”
“I just… wanted to make sure you knew how much I appreciate you being around. Out of all these humans I was meeting, you were the first to ever make me feel welcome. Like I was… me.”
“You have always been you.”
“It’s only recently I’ve-“
“No,” Josephine puts her hands on Lavellan’s shoulders, stopping her. “Your heart remains the same, regardless of how you’ve become different on the outside. Please do not feel that what came before was not worthwhile.”
“I… I suppose. But I’m so different from-“
“The only reason you are more beautiful, ma'vhenan, is that now you are happy.”
“Did you… did you just call me-“
Josephine answers with a kiss, and Lavellan knows for certain.