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She wasn’t allowed to take anything to the circle when she left home. Never had any real personal items, well, except her pressed flower book. When the flowers in the nursery were in bloom she would sneak in when no one was looking take a small one, one that was hidden, one that no one would notice its absence.
Each time she added a flower to the journal she felt something growing inside her - it made her stomach warm, do flips sometimes - encouraged that harmless little act of rebellion.
And just like that, it was gone.
The circles went into chaos and everyone fled, the last thing she remembers of her room is fire.
On the run; every time she saw a flower in its fullest bloom she couldn’t help but feel what had grown so big inside her die a little.
She was back at the start; no possessions to call her own beside the clothes on her back and the staff she stole.
That’s why she hesitated.
When Cullen held out the small piece of silver, time stopped.
She didn’t have anything from her family, every coin she got went to the Inquisition, it didn’t feel right to spend coin on herself when others needed supplies.
A place that meant so much to him, a place he considered his own, a place where he wasn’t a man he didn’t like.
A place he brought her.
And gave her the only thing he had from home, a thing he broke rules to keep, his secret, his brother, his family.
She wore it every day, slept with it on, she never went anywhere without it. It was something that meant so much to him.
She caught him staring one day, as she leant over the war table, he had a glassy look in his eyes and that gentle smile that always came before the bigger ones. She couldn’t figure out what he was staring at, until she stood up straight and felt the silver thud against her chest. His eyes followed the necklace as she stood. There it was, that smile, that face that was just for her, the one that doesn’t make him look 10 years older, the face that he only makes when he's not conscious of his expression. And there it goes, as he looks into her eyes and that small smile grows larger.
It’s a private moment between the two in a not so private setting, Leliana smiles and raises an eyebrow at Josephine as she pretends to look at her reports but smiles anyway.
Time fell away, everything they felt but had yet to say was said in seconds, lifetimes were lived in that moment.
The smell of flowers came through an open window.