“Magic-user prison. Religiously enforced, and I mean religious. Any one living outside the Circle was an apostate, an illegal mage.”

Anders pushes something on the desk slightly to the left. “I was sent there as a child, once my magic manifested. Then I spent the next twenty years trying to get out.”

"-What the fuck? What the actual fuck? And- you don't get a choice in being a mage?"

Anders summons a flame to his hand, and remembers the night he set his father’s barn on fire. 

“A gift from the Maker. Can’t be learned.”

She reaches out to squeeze his wrist. "Then penalising you for it was wrong. Complete bullshit."

Anders tilts his head back and barks out a laugh. "That's what I've been saying!"

"Hard to get people to listen to that when there's a hateful rhetoric ingrained into society."

"I had a plan to make them listen. Wasn't a particularly long-sighted plan, I'll admit, but every revolution starts somewhere."

"Drops in the ocean."

He doesn't really believe that, but he believes in Tana.

"You said something about lunch?"

"I did! With any luck, Deke's cooked."

And she'll lead the way up towards the ward room.

He follows, banishing thoughts of his lost crusade.

Rex grins up at them and garbles what is probably a hello through a mouth of food.

"Eloquent, Rex!" Anders laughs.

Rex swallows. "Eloquence is overrated."

"You and I are definitely going to differ on that."

"Different opinions are what make the world interesting."

Anders laughs. "Both true and untrue, depending on your definition of interesting."

"Our definition has been known to include starting or finishing brawls."

"As did Hawke's."

"There's worse definitions."

"As they are the definitions I've grown fondest too, I guess I'll keep them."

Anders smiles knowingly at Circe.

She gives him a knowing look in return.

He lets the eye contact linger for a moment, and then turns back to Deke. "Hawke would often drag me out on expeditions into the mountains she claimed would be simple, and then promptly we'd stumble over a nest of slavers, or pirates, or Tal-Vashoth."

"Ah, there is a difference. I will admit we rather go looking for the trouble some of the time. A pirate's life and all that..."

"I cannot blame you for that. One of my closest friends was a pirate, not that I fault her for that."