She says, “Okay,” back to him, pressing a cup of tea into his hands. Stays there, standing close enough that her toes bump into his feet, touching her thumb under his chin to tilt him a little bit and add, “I should trim your beard.”

It’s not Asher that she thinks of, though he was the only other exception besides Stephen to her remarkably cleanshaven romantic history (and Thranduil, exempt from the process altogether); that’s not a particular intimacy they ever shared. It’s her mother’s steady hands with a blade at his bedside, the kindness of them, and that it was as much a comfort to her when she asked to be taught how, afterwards, as burying her tears in Morrigan’s shoulder had been.

She doesn’t want to have (another) fight.