Well yes, this conversation was going to go just as badly as he thought. Just not for the reasons he believed. It was like Anders had taken the blade and stabbed it directly into the black heart of James's one doubt, the one thing he had to keep secret within himself to be able to keep going. Put the blade in and twisted.

If he were a more open man, he might have wept.

Instead, he looked at his hands, and said in the most dead tone, "I know. I know they are Templars. I know that they did everything they did, under the sword and shield I have carried for almost half of my life. I know these were abuses that I never saw, for all my time in Ostwick, but I cannot un-see them now. I cannot un-see any of this. I cannot make it better, and I cannot atone for it. All I can do is ... serve something that is so tainted that it will slowly kill me inside. But serve it I must, because it is the only way it will ever be clean again."

Sacrifice. It was all about sacrifice. He would wear the shield and the sword all his life and never take another step out of bounds, to bring the Order back, even if it had broken his faith in the Order. It had not broken his faith in doing the right thing.