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By the time Cosette Amell is twelve years old, she has been in Kinloch Hold for five years.
She knows she had little brothers, because she remembers making them laugh with dancing colored sparks until their nursemaid caught her and told the Templars, but she doesn't remember their names. She knows she had a mother, because she remembers her sobbing for Cosette when the Templars led her into the carriage to take her to the Circle, but she doesn't remember her face. She knows she lived in a city, because she found it on a map in a library book one day and tore the page out to tuck into her sleeve, but she doesn't remember how to get there.
First Enchanter Irving tells her that very good mages can sometimes get something called "special dis-pen-sation" to leave the tower and go other places, but Cosette is twelve years old, and if she ever went home she would only find strangers.
Even so, there's a whole world outside of the tower, beyond her old family, and more than anything she wants to be able to see it someday. She already has special privileges sometimes, the kind that come from being a very good student — Irving tutors her personally sometimes, and she's allowed to attend a few classes with older students, and with supervision she can even go to the upper libraries restricted to Harrowed mages. It can't be that much harder to prove she's also a good enough mage to be let outside.
Still, the idea of having to wait for years to be allowed to leave the tower is almost too much to bear, and Cosette buries herself in maps and travel books, drinking in the descriptions of places she can't even imagine outside of the sketches and woodcuttings included in some of the volumes.
And now, Cosette slips into the upper library, waving to the Enchanter in charge — he doesn't even bother to check for her permission slip, which she had been counting on, and she bounces a little with triumph as she passes through the maze of towering bookshelves. Her eyes flick over everyone's face, searching, searching —
There he is! The mage with sandy hair and a sharp nose. He's very tall, his long robes making him look even narrower than he probably is, and he's got a book balanced open in one huge hand while the other trails along one of the shelves, searching for some particular title.
One of the older apprentices described him to Jowan and Cosette, her voice hushed and secretive, telling them about catching sight of the Templars dragging in an escaped mage. He'd been gone for months, she'd told them, and Cosette had made her mind up right there.
She marches purposefully up to him, a thousand questions crowding around her head. "Excuse me," she says, reaching very high up to tap his shoulder like grown ups do, "are you Anders?"
He glances around — then his eyebrows rise and his gaze drops, and he looks down at her at his elbow, visibly surprised.
"What —" he says sharply, like a startled reflex, then with open confusion, "uh, should you even be on this floor?"
Undaunted, Cosette asks, "Is it true you swam across the whole lake and spent two months in Denerim?"
Anders suddenly looks mulish. "Yeah," he says, jaw tight. "You gonna yell at me for getting outside privileges taken away too?"
Oh, Maker. As if Cosette would ever miss running laps around the island. "I could not possibly care less about losing exercise hour," she says, lifting her nose in the air disdainfully. One of Anders' brows arcs farther up.
"I want to hear about where you went," she continues. "Tell me everything."
His mouth opens slightly, unexpected. Then, he does.
-
By the time Cosette Amell is twenty years old, she has been a Grey Warden for eighteen months.
She doesn't know how long it's supposed to take for someone to wake up after their Joining — she'd been a bit busy after hers and hadn't given it much thought, after all — so she and the seneschal carefully heave Anders' limp form onto a sofa in a connecting room. No reason for him to just lay on the throne room floor until he comes to.
The seneschal offers to stay with him, but Cosette waves him off, and settles down in a chair beside Anders' feet to read and wait.
About five minutes later, Anders twitches, then lurches up with a bone-rattling gasp, looking around wildly.
"Bucket by your head," Cosette says, glancing over the top of her book at him, and Anders leans over the couch to vomit right into it. Between heaves, he waves a hand at her gratefully.
When he's done, Cosette sends a little spark of mana toward him, a shard of ice taking shape in the palm of his hand. He pops it into his mouth immediately as he leans back against the arm of the sofa.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks. Part of her is genuinely curious — she remembers the Archdemon screaming at her, but what do new Wardens see when there's no Blight?
Anders just spits murky ice water into the bucket and shakes his head. "I think I'd rather have a drink," he mumbles, then laughs when Cosette obligingly produces a flask from her belt. "Oh, Apprentice Amell, how the world has corrupted you! I remember when you were this high," and he smirks, holding his hand flat six inches above the carpet, "begging me for stories."
"I never begged," Cosette says archly.
"'Oh, Anders, please tell me about the week you spent in Highever!'"
"That's not what I sounded like. I never say 'please.'"
"'Anders, will you tell me about the mountains? What do the trees smell like? Is the sand different in Denerim?'"
"Alright," Cosette admits, "I did sound like that."
Anders throws her back her flask and shakes his head. "Not that you'll ever need me to do that again. I hear you wandered all across Ferelden yourself, Hero."
"I did," Cosette agrees, taking a sip before tucking the flask away, "and it was awful. I slept in a tent. I think I went at least two months without washing my hair at one point, because we were in the Deep Roads, and I didn't want to risk what might happen if I washed with lyrium water."
"Poor little princess," Anders ribs lightly, smirk still firmly in place. "I'm sure it was nothing but misery."
The Deep Roads were a claustrophobic nightmare, her Warden senses bouncing off the echo chamber of darkspawn on all sides, and the broodmother a horror of its own degree. The forest was full of snarling yellow teeth, snapping jaws, and lies. Redcliffe showed her exactly what the world believed would happen to her if she was let out of her chains — Redcliffe could have been her, if she hadn't gotten caught as a child, if her mother had been successful at hiding her.
And the Circle — her home, for better or worse, her whole world for most of her life, gone warped and dark with evil, another image the Templars wanted her to believe could be her if she fell to temptation. That man Cullen, someone she thought was a friend, or at least as much a friend as a mage could be with a Templar, hissing venom at her as if it were her fault magic existed, saying... saying those things to her, about what he thought of her when she lived there...
Cosette takes a breath, steers her mind away from the memories. She thinks instead about the Dalish camp, the smell of burning wood and the lilting sound of their voices. She thinks about flecks of dust floating in the sunbeams that burst through the elven ruins of the forest, like swirls of gold. The whole place had been full of twisting roots, plant reclaiming stone. Life overcoming.
Orzammar had been warm enough she could have gone barefoot and sleeveless comfortably, lit from all sides with an unbelievable glow. She saw plants she never even knew existed, heard tavern music on instruments that looked alien and incredible.
The market in Denerim gave her the opportunity to eat things she had only heard described; greasy fried fish wrapped in wax paper and dripping oil through her fingers, and fresh fruit straight from the farmer's stand.
Haven was hauntingly beautiful, smelling crisp and untouched beyond the villages and into the mountain. She had finally touched snow that wasn't spell-made, had rolled around in it shrieking with laughter until Leliana and Alistair threw themselves down to join her, their faces red with cold. Wynne rolled her eyes at the antics, but made designs in it with the end of her staff when she thought they weren't looking.
"No, actually," she says quietly, her gaze unfocused, "I saw so many incredible things."
Anders blinks at her, his smirk slowly warming into a real smile across his face.
"Tell me about it," he says, shifting forward in his seat. "Tell me everything."
So she does.
-
By the time Cosette Amell is twenty seven years old, she has been Commander of the Grey for six and a half years.
A ship to Kirkwall costs much less gold than it probably used to before the place was turned into a smoking wreck, which suits Cosette just fine. She had expected it to be more expensive, needing to convince sailors to go anywhere near it, but apparently they make most of their money charging to get people out now, so many of them are already heading in that direction to start with.
It suits her less when she discovers that it's also cheap because they really aren't going straight to Kirkwall's harbor, claiming fear of crashing on debris; instead, the ship lets her off several cities over, to fill up on people fleeing even the merest hint of rebellion coming to their gates.
The detour adds a week of travel to her trip in her estimation, and she swings by the market to bolster her rations. Cosette tugs her hood over her hair and slips through the crowds, keeping her face flat to avoid broadcasting how irritated she is with the fear-mongering.
She gets rather lucky; it's only three days before the vial in one of her belt pouches begins to beat noticeably.
It's one day later that she sees a pair of travelers appear on the road ahead of her, heading in her opposite direction, both of them hooded against the blinding glare of the sun. They shift to one side of the road as she comes closer, politely intending to let her pass, until she reaches into her pouch and pulls out the vial.
It pulses like a heartbeat, and the pair of travelers react immediately. The smaller of them flings an arm out in front of the other, her hood falling back to reveal a snarl. The larger figure wrenches their hood off themselves, and he flickers a half-familiar blue.
"Anders, Justice," Cosette greets, her arms wide to show her lack of threat, "and cousin Hawke! I've heard much of you."
"App — Warden-Commander?" Anders says, the blue receding, leaving a startled look in its place.
"That's her?" says Hawke, looking just as surprised. "Maker, you were right. She looks more like me than Carver does."
Black hair in her face, the vivid Amell blue eyes, even a smear of crimson kaddis across the bridge of her nose. It's actually a little funny. Cosette wonders how they met, wonders if Anders thought Marian was Cosette at first.
"Are you here to arrest him?" Hawke asks sharply, recovering quickly from her surprise and looking ready to start trading blows. "Because I don't care how we're related —"
"I'm not here to arrest him," Cosette says patiently.
"— I will not let anyone touch — wait, what?"
Hawke and Anders are looking at her with the same narrow, suspicious expressions, and Cosette takes advantage of the moment to really look Anders over.
Is Anders all he goes by? How does Justice feel about that? Are they like Wynne, with Anders playing host while Justice sleeps until he's needed, or is it something else? Justice had been his own person — his own spirit, maybe — when Cosette had left Vigil's Keep for a conference with the Orlesian commander and they were both gone when she came back; how does that sort of merge work between them?
However it is, they clearly reflect the years the body has lived since she saw them last. From what she's heard, they've earned that.
"I executed the Constable who let the Chantry put Templars on your back," Cosette offers. "Years ago, actually. I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you then."
"So why are you here now?" Anders demands, a little sharply. She doesn't blame him. "If you're not going to arrest me, or take me back to the Wardens, then what?"
Cosette tosses Anders the vial, and he catches it almost by reflex, then holds it up to the light. A complicated expression shifts across his face, and Cosette knows he's realizing that the phylactery is thumping with the same beat of his heart. "I got to destroy mine," she says by way of explanation. "I thought you'd like to do yours."
The faint glow of the vial disappears as Anders closes his fingers around it, fixing her with a look Cosette can't quite interpret. It's a little contemplative, and a little cornered. She supposes they've earned that too.
"I want to hear from you what happened," she tells them softly, "before the Chantry warps the story. I know you, Anders. I know Justice. Neither of you would have done something like this if you didn't think you had to. I want to hear why, so I can help."
She smiles. "You're trying to set us all free, right? Tell me everything."
So they do.