as soon as garrett bristles, as soon as the heat rises between his teeth, anders knows. but he must've already known — must have seen it in the symbols carved, must have felt it in the swell of the fade's musk needling down his own throat when hawke's fire had flared aglow within the dark of his glare and the tides of the battle had turned. but something within him, the sad and pathetic pining of him, had been determined to cut the truth out of his own eyes. but he cannot allow it of himself now, when the truth sprawls out between them like a corpse still cooling; ugly, unsettling, easier to accept if buried.
so his voice is quiet at first. it almost can't find itself, scraping up concave walls, before he forces it through his teeth. "…so that was what i saw? what you did?"
he shakes his head, needs to walk to the wall to steady himself with a palm pressed there for purchase as the reality of it continues to throw its weight over long, lanky shoulders. but it's more like a punch to the gut, reminiscent of those thrown from a templar's silverite gauntlets that used to send his knees to a hard stone floor.
finally, though, it’s his anger that catches up with him. and it is a righteous, white-hot anger that burns in his stomach all the way up to his throat to push furious zeal back into his voice; makes it harsh and sharp and as accusatory as the glare he points toward him like the shift of steel, of a blade angled toward a beating heart. maybe that's how his own feels right now, drumming rapid against his breastbone.
"i can't believe you. after everything we've seen, everything i've told you—" of his own mistakes, his own vows in blood that puppet his limbs with the will of something greater than himself. he can't even finish his sentence, though he does push himself off the wall to approach. because he wants to look garrett in those eyes; wants to stare long and hard all the way through them into what lives behind them and actually sees. "do you understand what you've done? actually understand? because i don't see how you possibly can and then proceed to do something so absolutely, incredibly stupid with everyone watching? with the templars— meredith watching?!"
that's when he tastes something abruptly metallic at the back of his tongue. justice presses up just beneath the surface, a booming in his head that forces him to clench his jaw so tightly rigid that it's a spike of pain pressing into bone that he forces down in a thick swallow.
HIS FOOLISH STUMBLING WILL BREAK WHAT WE BUILD. HE THREATENS WHAT WE ARE, WHAT WE WILL MAKE. RECKLESS, CARELESS—THE INNOCENT WILL BLEED IN THE FALL OF HIS MISTAKES AND THE ROT WILL SPREAD. DO NOT ALLOW IT, DO NOT ALLOW HIM—
anders' eyes scrunch shut, his head bows. he pushes down the fog of the spirit's will threatening to assert itself over his own in the heft of a shudder. and he's not stupid. he knows how this looks, knows the hypocrisy that it shines over every word he's been spitting. which is, perhaps, why his next few come out so much more quiet. and why, when his gaze shifts back to garrett, it's shaped so much more out of hurt and confusion.
"please just tell me why."
