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Watching Hawke, her sword and shield in hand, it terrified him. He hadn't neglected to notice the lyrium vials she kept on her person; the moments where she thought he wasn’t looking, where she’d take a sip from one and replace it into the depths of the satchel just as quick; that she would not part with the final bottle of liquid magic even if one of her companions were in need of it.
She was learning Templar abilities - as crude as they were - the simple fact that she felt compelled to do so frightened him, and infuriated Justice.
Daughter to a once Circle Mage and elder sister to a once apostate, Hawke grew up with threat and displacement that bit at the heels of any free mage outside of the Tevinter. She understood the mage’s plight, she understood their anguish, she understood their power, the respect they deserved.
But here Anders stood, surrounded by ashes and drowned rage, behind the woman who had braved the Deep Roads. A blood mage at her feet, the white flames of the Holy Smite quietly burning away at the hems of tattered robes.
She lost her sister to the Templars, yet still she collaborated with their creed.
Hand gripping his worn staff tighter, he looked on. This wasn’t the first and would by no means be the last time Hawke will be faced with mages who threatened the safety of her charge or herself. She had good reason in looking to the Templar Order.
This did not make the bitter salve any easier to swallow. Every Templar was indeed a threat to Anders, yes, and that had made things simple: black and white. This… this was not so rudimentary. Hawke was his friend, she travelled with him, laughed with him, aided him. Maybe he saw her as more, if he would allow himself to admit it. But this made the concept of anything more than strictly professional pull even further from his strained reach.
Hawke was not inherently evil; she was anything but that. She was compassionate, empathetic, sensitive. She did her best to avoid conflict. Does that justify this? Would this comfort his uneasy stomach next they sit across one another at the Hanged Man with the rest of her charge, when she smiles at him and the white glint of her teeth remind him of the white flames that tainted his memories of numerous recaptures now that he has seen this?
Justice picks at the frayed edges of himself, biting and pinching and teething at the worry, at the anxieties he couldn’t bring himself to fully realise. Anders was associating with a woman who could potentially disarm him entirely; cut the movement for freedom at the tether; take his only source of strength and reduce him to the very ashes that pile around him in this clearing along the Wounded Coast.
His assured death by her hands should he ever lose his way was something Anders decidedly found solace in. For he knew that Hawke was more like Justice than he himself.