A lot of Hawks's personality is also a defence mechanism, of course. He cares way more than he lets on. He doesn't think everything's funny. He talks to fill the silence, which is half-calculated (people underestimate how much he actually pays attention) and half nervous energy (the result of an abusive upbringing that he pretends didn't affect him as much as it did).

Hawks doesn't know these words, at least in context, Templars and Circle. Bad places, bad people. He gets the gist.

"Dads suck, man," he says, but his tone finally changes, like it affects him to say it. He's not even allowed to use his family name. Most people don't even know his name. "We're better off without 'em." He most certainly was, and it sounds like Anders was too, but that can't erase all that damage. Another similarity there; Hawks has never addressed or dealt with any of that trauma from his childhood. The Commission wasn't really all about that kind of help. So, repression it is!

Whew, this is a lot of shit to lay at someone's feet when you first meet them. He didn't even catch the mage's name in all of this. So he wrenches his eyes away from the skull and back to Anders.

"I didn't say they were good answers." And what this has to do with so-called redemption, he's not sure.

He has no idea about the spell of the skull, or if they're stuck here trauma bonding or any of that. But if they're going to keep doing this weird comparing scars thing, he does at least want to know who he's talking to.

"I'm Hawks, by the way," he says.