basically what it comes down to is that Elijah doesnât care if Anders was ârightâ or not, or if anyone was ârightâ in fact. it was never his duty nor his desire to judge Anders, and being forced into that position greatly distressed him.
Anders was his friend. it didnât mean that they always got along, or that they agreed on everything, or that they always took each otherâs advice to heart, or that they didnât hurt each other. to Elijah, it meant that he wouldnât abandon Anders, even if it meant standing beside him at the gallows (or, at the Gallows, as it were). it meant that when everyone else would have given up, Eli would not.
he kicked Anders out of Kirkwall because he felt heâd done all he could. he felt that if Anders stayed, he would have fought to protect Anders, because that was his impulse-- and nothing would be learned from that. he felt like a hypocrite, because heâd killed as many people over time as Anders had, and this incident wasnât even direct action on Andersâ part. he felt like a turncoat, because how many times had he stood between Anders and those whoâd sought to punish him? and now he was the punisher? what fairness was this?
but as Fenris said to him, it wasnât about fairness anymore. nothing about this situation was fair. it wasnât fair that Anders had suffered for so long. it wasnât fair that Justice had been pulled into a union neither of them could truly handle. it wasnât fair that the Chantry let atrocities be committed under their jurisdiction, and that Chantry officials didnât seem to care. it wasnât fair that red lyrium had warped Meredith even farther beyond her own control. it wasnât fair that the Circle suffered for it. it wasnât fair that people had to die because other people felt so oppressed and dehumanised that they could imagine no other course of action. it wasnât fair that Elijahâs dear friend, the seer Daniel, had to die to prevent even more people from dying in the Chantry blast. the list of unfairnesses was astronomically long.
what, then, was this unfairness? what, then, was Anders returning to the life of a fugitive, with Justice-become-Vengeance burning lesions in his mind, far away from his friends, a war roaring to life around him, a war that he did not begin, but helped to begin -- a war that heâd wanted?
it wasnât fair. but it was just. Justice would have appreciated it, had he still been himself.
