Contains Dragon Age: Inquisition spoilers. Read at your own risk.
When they step into the sparsely lit darkness of the thaig, they're holding hands. It is heart-breaking that these are with all probability their last moments together. In an hour, they might already be laying in a ditch swarmed with darkspawn, overrun and defeated.
Rilke just hopes she'll be dead before the beasts seize her and turn her into some ghoulish horror—a grotesque breeder her female kin have so oft become. She grasps the Warden-Constable's hand tighter and trusts that his instincts will alert them to the enemy's presence in time. Even so, she keeps her free hand hovering over the throwing axe hanging at her hip—just in case.
Why did she come here, you ask? Why did the sturdy surface dwarf choose to return underground, to walk the paths wrought by the hands of her ancestors when above a name, fame and a title awaited her? Now that she was a hero who suppressed the crisis and restored order to Thedas—albeit shortly?
The answer is him.
Unexpectedly they found themselves overcome with passion one night before battle and passion overcame them many nights since. She would giggle when his shaggy beard scraped against the skin of her neck, shattering the stony walls of indifference Rilke had built around herself and enhanced throughout the decades. Blackwall ignited her heart like no man—dwarf or other—before him. They swore their loyalty to each other and she would not leave his side even as he ventured to meet certain death on his Calling.
What was there for her to breathe for when he would gone?
She'd much rather lose her breath to battle than heartbreak and abandon.
They stalk the tunnels and caverns for several hours when they encounter a nest of deep stalkers—they swing their weapons with ferocity and chase the vermin away, but not before half a dozen have been slain.
Then, they rest and she clears his wounds, the bites insistent enough to penetrate the padding of his armour, the poison spits that gnawed right through. Then they whisper and kiss and he prepares a fire whilst she skulks away to hunt for nugs and deep mushrooms on which they dine, suck a deep stalker egg and drink bitter dwarven moss-ale.
They have brought supplies, but she is hesitant to delve into them until they're too desperate or wounded to hunt.
As they prepare for the night's rest, they tell each other stories of the battles they've seen and lived through, together or apart, and Rilke scoots closer to sit on his lap and lays her cheek upon the cold steel of the cuirass protecting his chest. She falls asleep in minutes whilst he holds the first watch, his mind alert from the long years of fighting. His nightmares would allow for little sleep anyhow—they're worse under earth, where his senses are a-tingle with creeping corruption.
She weaves her fingers through his greying hair in her sleep and he smiles. He still doesn't understand why she would spare and love him after his lies have been revealed to her, but she took mercy on him and allowed him to join the Wardens for real, accompanied him on his travels to Weisshaupt and back, continued to make love to him when he was almost sure she was lost to him. She still called him Thom only hesitantly and he cherished the sound of it upon her tongue even though he loathed all else it stood for. She was the greatest wonder in his life and all days were a wonder by her side—even in the unhospitable wastelands of stone.
For a while, they lived in the woods together, a humble cottage that they kept and maintained away from the bustle of the cities and Skyhold, all by themselves, all to each other. A mabari pup whom she named Seuss their sole companion. He would carve ornate chess pieces and toys for their children—alas they never came, no matter how they wished and tried. It was to be expected, really—he was past his prime and a Grey Warden, she a dwarf, cursed with low fertility by nature. Rarely did a dwarf-human bonding yield a child, and they were no different, if not even less likely.
Eventually, they've grown restless in the complacency of the forest and their bodies would urge them to seek out battles to take part of—not in vain is it said that the old habits die hard, and so they would fight together, side by side, as once they used to.
That is when he began to hear the song in his sleep, luring him in beyond the earth he stood, into the depths, and she would come with him. The taint took toll on him sooner than others for his advanced age of Joining and she would not bear to part with him.
As he plants a kiss in her hair he lets out a silent prayer. If the fortune is with him, he'll be the first to die. If the Maker is good, they'll be both struck down at once so that neither has to bear the pain. And then he'll go—wherever liars and killers go and heroic dwarves do not.
Though, if he knows her temper, she'll claw her way through to him no matter what, through the Fade itself if need be.
The thought gives his heart comfort while his mind remains vigilant.