"Oh. You'll get to see Circe dismantle people! It's great fun!"

"Oh, good! I've only done that medically, I've always wanted to see it from a different perspective," Anders laughs.

"I mean. You, uh, might see her dismantle people physically as well. Hazards of the job."

"I've seen plenty of that too. I was a soldier, of a sort."

No point distinguishing what a Warden was here.

Tana regards him for a moment. "That can't have been easy."

"No, but it was hard to leave."

"It is," Tana agrees. "I've never had to," she gestures at her legs. "But Rii- Rii and her lot. Deke. Leaving is a lot harder than anyone ever tells you. But sometimes you have to."

"There was something more I had to do." He laughs, but it's not a happy sound. "Though I guess that doesn't matter now."

"But it did. And that's important. Whether or not it matters now is irrelevant. It mattered then."

"I didn't finish it. What I started. What I left to do."

"Sometimes you can't. Life doesn't let you. But sometimes starting something can... It's like a drop of water in the ocean. It might not seem like much, but that drop? It can change everything."

In Kirkwall? It'd better be a very large drop. 

"I suppose you can only hope."

"Sometimes you don't have anything except hope."

"A tenuous thing to keep hold of."

"Tenuous, but with the right companions..."

Anders looks up at her. "Indeed."

"It'll be lunchtime soon, care to join us?"

On the one hand, no. The idea of food is making him feel sick.

One the other, he knows that it's a mental thing with him, that denying himself food is generally a sign that he is Not Good. 

"Sure. I don't think I could get this room any more organised without actually taking something apart."

"No taking things apart until I've given you a grounding in good practice. I mean. You can then ignore it. But I need to give you the spiel first."

"I swear by Andraste's knickerweasles, I will not touch anything until you've given me the spiel."

"...knickerweasles?"

"Weasles that live in knickers. Tricky buggers."

"...I see. I'll just be thankful we don't have those."

Anders laughs at her look. “It was something an apprentice started saying, back when I was first taken to the Circle. It was one of the very few things that made me actually smile.”

"...The Circle? The way you say that is...frankly it's making me think of 'prison'."