"I can understand that." He imagines it must be a different order of magnitude, for rifters. But he remembers the strange comfort of finding Benevenuta here, when he first joined, the strange reassurance of someone who had known what his life looked like years before the war. (Wars.) "I imagine the little glimpse many of us got did not really ... living there must be an entirely different thing. Even the Fereldens who saw the Fifth Blight, it was a year or two only. I would think coming here would have been. An adjustment."

He looks briefly sheepish, then, hearing his own words and feeling their insufficiency. He wants to extend empathy, but he's not sure he hasn't overstepped. She can almost see him resisting the knee-jerk impulse to apologize.