By coincidence, and the fact that it's less than comfortable to sit in a chair wearing what amounts to a giant stick, Hawke is undoing the leather strap that supports his staff when Anders comes out with that, and if anyone is keeping a score board (someone probably ought to be), finds himself bereft of words yet again. His hands finish working open the buckle, slowly (his fingertips have gone numb, he realizes distantly), an autonomic series of gestures clearly no longer connected to the brain. "That'd be an odd choice," he answers slowly--carefully, the way he'd approach something skittish and feral, "turning me into something I've been all my life."

It's almost funny, Hawke thinks - he can find anything funny; a person laughs or he shatters - when he considers what he's survived--the Blight, seven years in a place that swallows mages whole, one death after another - maybe this, if it's what it seems, what it could be--maybe this will be the thing that finally guts him.

"Anders--" still with that caution, an undertone of coaxing, "who exactly do you think I am?"