Anders watches man and dog for a silent moment. This really is the Nathaniel he first met all those years ago: gruff, stiff, formal, ready to work himself into high and righteous indignation at the drop of a pin. And in some ways, Nathaniel's the same man all these years later too. Grown more comfortable in his skin, grown more certain of his own esteem in a Ferelden no longer hostile to every Howe, but the same prickly-vulnerable person inside.

Anders can know him better now, and know these things about him, only because Anders has done some growing up himself. The Anders who was contemporary to that younger Nathaniel had been a creature of surfaces, glinting bright, willfully shallow. He'd been too wrapped up in his own problems and pursuits to dig much past the surface someone like Howe might present. Even so, he'd tried for some shared feeling -- expressed through Howe jokes, alas. And some part of Anders, too, will always be the same man as he was then. He's been indulging that part just now. Finding humor in what could well be a very serious situation; forcing that humor onto poor Nathaniel, at Nathaniel's expense if also at his own.

When he speaks again, it's in a more subdued tone.

"I'm sorry. This must be hard for you. If it's any comfort, the disorientation you're feeling ought to pass, sooner or later." All the other changes Exsilium has wrought upon them have passed. The drugged food and water, the memory-simulation ...