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The first thing you know about the Anchor is the simplest thing in the world.
It hurts.
As Cassandra threatens and yells it's there, constantly, a ripple of something that doesn't have any word for it but green. Not a good green, but a waking dream of agony. And as your jailer takes you outside, you realise why it's a dream of agony. Your pain is only an echo of the pain of the sky, of the earth, split by the Fade.
And each time the Breach grows, it brings you to your knees. Almost every time, it brings you to your knees, pleading. Just make it stop.
It's the most peculiar feeling, when Solas picks up your hand, and it rushes through the Mark like a dammed river finally given a place to go, a pain like peeling off a scab echoing through your hand. It never changes, never hurts more or less, except when it's time to close the Breach. The Breach is pain, the breach is agony, it hurts, can't stop, just let it be done it hurts...
The darkness afterward is a blessing, but waking up afterwards is terrifying. (What will they do to me now?)
~~~
They ask you the same question a thousand times in a thousand different ways. Cassandra, first. But then all of them start to ask; your companions, your lover. They ask that simple, unutterably stupid question.
"Does the Mark hurt?"
You always answer No, lying through your teeth with a smile, or maybe a glare. Or nothing. They should be able to work it out without asking that question, surely. The Mark on your hand was branded on and it holds tight for some reason you can't quite understand, aching and twisting over-under-inside your skin with power you knows nothing of.
You rip apart the Veil on painful instinct, the reflex to save your life whatever the cost. You hold that power under your skin. (No wonder it hurts)
Even when everything is done, the Anchor still burns when it flares, still aches while it curls under the skin.
You've grown used to this Mark of your status and power, you don't mind the price of pain for being able to save the world. But you can't help but wish, sometimes, that this agony belonged to someone else to endure.
A selfish thought, perhaps. But honest.