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It's so subtle, the way she says it.
"Thom," she whispers in the late night, when the nightmares have dragged her awake, or the phantom mark has left aching pains stumbling up her shoulder. He stirs, and he guides her through the dark nights, the least he could repay for all she has done for him.
"Thom," she laughs, when he quips a joke her way, talks gossip he has heard around the stables. She sounds as carefree as the wind, as deep as the rivers through the Hinterlands. He has never thought he could ever such deserve the way his name sounds on her lips, but it is music to his ears, effervescent.
"Thom," she stutters, hiccups as she cries, as he holds her, regardless of her being too big to fit just right in his arms, smooths her hair down behind her ears. She cries herself to sleep and his heart aches, only allows himself to deflate once her snores softly hang in the pauses of the room.
Its so subtle, the way she says it. and yet it never fails to catch his attention.
"I dont deserve your forgiveness," He confesses to her one night, when the moon has overtaken the sun and blue dusk has settled across Skyhold. He stares out the balcony, armor stripped to its barest form as he leans over the railings. Skyhold is beautiful at night, soft and tender, no noise but the faint clang of swords, the drifting sounds of unsteady horses.
It is quiet. Special.
He thinks that it and Lavellan are very similair.
She joins him, leans into his side and settles calmly there. Her eyes dont meet his, instead gazes across the stables, over the battlements at a point only identified by her own sight. He wonders if she heard him, if she knows that he does not deserve her in any way.
"... Its not a matter of if you deserve it or not," she answers after a poignant pause. "You have it irregardless. What matters is what you do with it."
Her hand finds his as they stare out across the ramparts, at the deadend night. Her hands are nice, sturdy and calloused enough for a mage, yet always soft, always oddly endearing. She has freckles on the back of her hands, speckled dark brown and grey. He’s counted them before, but can never remember the number. It always changes.
"Work harder to be a better man."
A speech-bound promise, a pledge to her in his heart. Be someone who she can be proud to come home to. Everything he does is a silent promise, for her, for her, for her.
She sighs and sets her head upon his. "Oh, Thom. You already are."