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The first time was an accident.
The simple task of barn chores with his father turned to a single, life-changing accident - if that was even the word one would use for an outcome he had had no control over. He watched the building burn to the ground, the heat warming his face with an almost mocking comfort in the chilly morning air, and finally worked up the courage to glance at his father. Somehow it was the stare he received in return, not the fact that sparks had flown from his fingertips only minutes before, that frightened him most of all.
He begged his father not to tell the chantry, he promised his mother to never use magic again, he prayed to the Maker to please not let him be taken away, and it all proved to be for naught when a pair of armoured men appeared at their door not three days later.
“Be brave.” His mother was crying as she hugged him. She pressed a small pillow into his arms and squeezed him tightly before his father pulled him away from her and towards the men waiting outside.
And as the templars all but dragged him away, leaving his softly weeping mother and emotionless father behind, he felt anything but brave. He continued screaming for his parents long after they were out of sight, voice eventually growing hoarse from the yelling. Words shifted from frantic pleas to denials he knew were useless even as he continued to repeat them. The men flanking him on either side ignored him with trained indifference even as he continued the useless repetition, voice quiet and eyes rimmed red. “I didn’t...I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it...”
~
The second time was instinct. The fight or flight response had him leaning towards the former.
Though he had excelled in various aspects of the arcane, he had always avoided fire spells and any related magic, going so far as to make campfires by hand during his times...’away’ from the Circle, and simply shivering through long, dark nights when he failed at doing so. But this had been different. One moment he had been dozing, only distantly registering the sound of footsteps running down the stone hallway towards him, and in the next of his captors was fumbling with the key to unlock the enchanted shackles around his wrists.
“You must help us fight them!”
“Who?”
As the chains fell away, his answer came not in words. The templar crumpled to the ground, a rusty axe lodged firmly in his back. One look at the assailant standing in the doorway and all traces of drowsiness were gone in an instant, replaced with nothing short of adrenaline-infused terror and instinct took over.
When he heard footsteps again, he had to force himself to pause and turn around rather than simply continue throwing flames at anything that moved towards him. When he saw people, actual people and not the disfigured attackers that now lay as burnt corpses around him, he felt rather proud of his self control. Pride that quickly turned to an uncertain (but not altogether necessary, some part of him argued) sense of regret at his choice of defense. He made a show of shaking his hands as if to put out the flames he had conjured from them, forcing a grin even as the newcomers eyed him with varying degrees of concern.
“...I didn’t do it.”
~
The third time...he still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened the third time.
He woke to the sights, sounds, and smells of crackling flames and burning bodies - things he had become far more accustomed to than he ever would have preferred before his months as a warden.
As it was, he remembered agreeing to being Justice’s host - something he had truly believed would work out to be beneficial for all involved - although that confidence was already wavering as he looked around, forcing himself to sit up. He remembered taking Justice’s (Kristoff’s?) hand, the blinding light that forced him to close his eyes, the searing pain that lasted only a moment but forced him to his knees nonetheless, and then...nothing? He had opened his eyes to see Kristoff’s body on the ground, empty and unseeing once again. He didn’t feel any different, not exactly and not at first. Not until Rolan and the others had shown up. And at that point, as they denounced and condemned him with a sort of rehearsed eloquence that suggested they had been waiting for something like this to happen, he remembered the feelings of shock, and something that might have been hurt, before they escalated into something else entirely.
And he remembered nothing else.
Slowly getting to his feet and glancing around again, he took in the destruction, the fires still burning, the charred bodies in various stages of dismemberment and the surprising amount of blood on his own person - was it even his blood? He didn’t feel any injuries, but...was that a stab wound?
Perhaps it was some small mercy that he didn’t recall all the details. He couldn’t imagine himself doing this on his own, let alone of his own free will. Even when he and the other wardens were all but swarmed by darkspawn, he had never again resorted to using flame to fight back, never mind...this.
“I didn’t do it.” He spoke aloud to the forest, no one left to hear his faltering surety. “...did I?”
~
The fourth time was planned. And not fire, exactly...
But this was bigger than a burning barn. Bigger than wardens and darkspawn and a new chance at a life that was something more than chains and stone walls. Bigger than that chance going up in flames, along with the templars and wardens he may have considered calling friends until he accepted Justice and everything changed yet again. And so it deserved to be something bigger than simply flame.
The explosion was huge and bright above them, smoke billowing high, burning debris of all sizes beginning to fall around them moments later. He watched with what seemed an almost passive resignation, but after his impassioned outburst minutes before he was afraid of giving in to much more emotion. He wanted to remember this. For better or worse.
He did his best to ignore the raised voices around him - some outraged, some afraid, some a mix of the two - and simply waited. For whatever way this would end for him, he would wait.
And then, the one voice he would never be able to block out, even if he truly wanted to. He couldn’t place the emotions he heard in the single word. Confusion? Anger? Betrayal? Heartbreak? It didn’t matter really, he supposed he deserved to hear all of them and more.
“Anders...”
His reply was quiet, he wasn't sure Hawke would even hear him. But that didn't matter, and as he watched the flames in the sky he spoke with a conviction that never wavered.
“I had to do it.”