The brief press of his mouth against her hair was warm, comforting -- a gesture she appreciated all the more considering the way she was. Deidre had grown up starved for affection, some degree of acceptance, and found it in those trying years through one person only. Her behavior, because she didn't know how else to be, typically drove the other children away from her as a Chantry ward, most of them having placed there with a purpose in mind and a good chunk of them dedicated to it. To feel it now rendered the coalescing knot at the back of her throat difficult to dispel and swallow. And as she struggled to keep herself dry-eyed despite her uncooperative eyeballs, she marginally succeeded by closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
It wasn't going to come to that, she decided. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced Aurin was right. Why else would they be here, brought here by Luck or Chance or Fate, if not to keep it together? She might not be devout -- for all intents and purposes, her accumulated knowledge of Thedas rendered her too worldly to blindly believe in an absent creator, but she could easily believe in something else that was infinitely greater... something that had a genuine power to make things happen.
"You are," she agreed, burying her face further into her tunic to hide the expression on her face further. "Idiots. The two biggest, daftest idiots I know and the ones I know the best."
She fell quiet once the words left her mouth, squeezing her arms around his shoulders. There was strength there, though it was indeterminable whether it was from newfound determination or recalcitrant stubbornness. She could be tempestuous when riled, volatile, wild as the errant waves of her emotions carried her up and down the slope of her crazy life. But the tides usually ebbed as quickly as they came. Deidre Aisli wasn't one to sink low for long, managing as always to find something to buoy her flagging spirit back up again.
If she tired of him stroking her hair, there was no indication of it. She finally opened her eyes -- just a sliver, hints of amber and green visible under the dark copse of her lashes.
"So you volunteered originally so you could keep Rick from volunteering and look after Beth?" she reiterated quietly, reading between the lines. Despite her own worries, she still managed to process what Aurin had told her a few moments ago. "It sounds...like something you would do. Beth mentioned when we were talking on the way here that the two of you grew up together, and that you played out the Adventures of the Black Fox when you were kids." She fell quiet -- but only for a moment, and then she was speaking again. "I like her...out of the new group, she was the one I liked the best."