The equivocation (if it can really be qualified as such) isn't what draws Atticus' attention, isn't what causes him to draw slightly closer to Anders through the dreamscape around them. It's the act itself of excising a thing from the soul, when all others have believed, forever, that it cannot be done. It's looking a death sentence in the eye and choosing instead to live--or at the very least, to die on one's own terms.

He waves a hand as though brushing the other man's justifications aside. He doesn't care. "How did you do it?" he presses. "How did you free yourself?"