This was written before Trespasser came out. I haven't played it yet, but I've heard things. Things that displease me. I debated going back and changing elements of this epilogue to fit more with the DLC, but screw it. I like my ending better.

I believe that, in the end, the truth will conquer. ~ John Wycliffe

The sunny patch of ground between the stables and the kitchens remained Thom Rainier's favorite place in the fortress of Skyhold. The walk grew a little longer every year that passed - his knees and back were not what they had once been after fifty years of fighting and it was rare that he could make the trip without pausing to rest a few times - but it was a daily ritual that he was not willing to forgo.

What had once been a training yard was now a small garden, the soil turned and planted with the heavy heads of snowbell and white Andraste's Grace. A stone bench sat under the shade of a gnarled oak and it was here that Thom eased himself down, wincing at the complaints of old bones and war injuries, stooping forward slightly to lean more comfortably on the knob of his walking stick.

Had it really been twenty years since this spot had last hosted the bustle of the Inquisition's horses and soldiers and stablehands? Across the way, the old stables and paddocks still stood, though less crammed and busy than they had once been. It felt like such a short time ago that Thom - Blackwall then - had called the barn home, sleeping in the loft between field missions and spending his evenings around his small fire or in the rowdy tavern. He missed it sometimes, the sounds of the horses, the smell of the hay, and the glimpse of frosty stars overhead through the hatch. He had not been sorry to make the move to living permanently with Aelis in her tower chamber when the time had come, but now and then he had still snuck down to the barn to lay in the hay loft and remember. Even better the times when Aelis had found him there - she had always known how to find him - and joined him, curling up beside him in the straw and teasing him about the early days of their courtship.

Twenty years. The Inquisition had accomplished its mission. The Breach was dissipated, Corypheus defeated. There had been other battles, demons and darkness aplenty. The work of heroes was never done. The circle of companions that Aelis had gathered around her during those years had held together for a time, but most had gone off to lead their own lives eventually. Varric was viscount in Kirkwall. Cole had returned to the Fade, slipping away as enigmatically as he had come. Iron Bull, free of the Qun, was off with the Chargers finding new battles to fight. Dorian was Archon in Tevinter now and, according to all accounts, enjoying himself immensely as he rooted out the corrupt magisters and rained witty repartee down on his political enemies. Cullen and Josephine, to everyone's surprise, had married in the end. They had remained at Skyhold for as long as they could, but eventually Josephine had been called back home to manage her family estates and business interests. They wrote regularly and seemed happy and prosperous enough in Antiva. Three children had followed.

Cassandra had been installed as the Most Holy Divine Victoria, and had immediately set about restoring order with her customary vigor and intensity. La Sainte Terreur, they called her. The Templars and the Seekers flourished under her reforms. With Grand Enchanter Vivienne continuing as the head of the Circle and Leliana wielding her influence as the Left Hand, the Circle was beginning to see the reforms it needed as well. In the end, as unlikely as it had seemed, Aelis and Cassandra had become friends. The struggle to defeat Corypheus had changed both of them. Their differences put aside in service of a greater goal, they had discovered that they were not so very different after all.

In the end, only Sera and Thom had remained, and the elven prankster was never one to let the dust gather. She came and went like a cat, sowing mischief in her wake, but she always called Skyhold home. All of the children who had grown up at the castle in the years following the Breach had heard of the antics and tales of Red Jenny from an early age. Thom, content to be wherever Aelis was, had eventually become Skyhold's warder, seeing to the military affairs of the fortress and guarding the mountain pass that had become a well-traveled trade route through the Frostbacks.

Aelis had never intended for the Inquisition to become a permanent institution. What good is an Inquisitor when there's nothing interesting left to inquire about? Thom could remember her saying, in her growly way. Like many Marchers, she had an innate suspicion of those who held the reins of power too tightly, and more than once she had underlined her plan to quietly disappear from public life once everything was over with.

They'll never let me alone, she had told him, scowling. I'll have people hanging around here trying to get me to solve their problems forever more. And there's already some fool trying to have the Chantry declare me a saint or something. Can you imagine? Saint Aelis the Inquisitor, patroness of avalanches and inconvenient coincidences? No thank you.

When the last rift in the Fade was healed, when the last of the Red Templars and rogue mages were rounded up, when the Chantry was restored and there was no further need for a heavy hand to keep the institutions of Thedas in check, Aelis - with Cassandra's blessing - had declared the Inquisition at an end, and not a moment too soon. Neither Orlais nor Ferelden were pleased to have an army on their doorstep. Aelis' practical, no-nonsense brand of diplomacy soothed their fears, though it allowed the Empress and King Alistair to once again turn their ire back to each other.

By that time, Thom had been Aelis' paramour for nearly two years and the only constant in both of their lives was each other. He'd regained his name, clear now in the eyes of the law, and had tried to make amends with those he had harmed. Aelis had done the same, and even reconciled with her family in Ostwick. It had been nearly a decade since she had seen them or the Free Marches. Though there had been letters and forgiveness, she had confessed to him that she did not think she would ever be able to return to Ostwick. There were too many painful memories there to relive, too many reminders of her life before the Inquisition, too much guilt in the wake of her brother's death at the Conclave.

In the end, they had decided to travel to Orlais to join the Grey Wardens, who were trying to rebuild their numbers and their honor there while the difficulties at Weisshaupt were playing out. Despite the danger and the difficulty of the life the Wardens offered, it had seemed only fitting. They had both intended to join in the past and it would provide them some small amount of anonymity and a cause to work towards. That plan too had had to be abandoned after the unexpected discovery, a few weeks before they were to leave, that Aelis was pregnant.

A slight breeze riffled through the glade, tugging at the fringes of Thom's beard, grown hoary white now these many years. He smoothed it, smiling at the memory. In all of his life up to that point, he had never imagined that he would be a father. His service in the army had kept him away from home too often and the burdens of home and family hadn't appealed to him at that time. After his disgrace, he had been a fugitive for a long awhile, and after that he had been too ashamed to even consider the possibility that he could be fatherly when it had been his orders that had cut short the lives of another man's children. Yet, it was Aelis who had taken the news the hardest. She could face down a horde of enemies and never flinch, she had stood up to an ancient Magister darkspawn and a dragon without fear, but the prospect of motherhood sent her into a full on panic.

I can't be anyone's mother, she had insisted anxiously as she paced the floor of their chamber. What am I going to do, strap it to my backplate while I'm out killing darkspawn and demons? It'll come out swearing and demanding a mug of ale. It'll grow up thinking that all this is normal. Maker's balls, it'll grow up to be like me.

Thom had risen from his perch on the end of the bed and pulled her, her shoulders shivering, into an embrace. We'll manage, he had told her. And they had. Aelis had become the permanent castellan of Skyhold - by then a legal freehold under the auspices of the Chantry between the Orlesian and Ferelden borders and a popular place to conduct trade and diplomacy between the two countries - and they had married. Some months after that, their daughter Lydia had been born and then there had been two women that Thom was utterly besotted with instead of just one.

She was perfect, his Liddy, in every way that it was possible for a child to be perfect and it never ceased to amaze him that he could have helped create something so beautiful and good. When Aelis had proposed naming her after the sister he had lost in childhood, it was as if the events of his life had finally come full circle and he could see what it had all led up to.

She had grown up into a tall, fair dark-haired young woman just as her namesake might have, with her mother's impish blue eyes and teasing wit. No doubt she was even now breaking dozens of hearts up in Ostwick where she was attending school and being brought out into society by her Trevelyan relatives. His own heart was among those broken for her being so far away, but she would be the lady of Skyhold when she came of age and so needed a better education than what the remote castle could offer. Aelis would have scoffed at the idea of a daughter of hers as a society noblewoman, but Liddy was no demure damsel either and Thom knew that her mother would have been proud of the girl all the same.

It had been an assassin's poisoned blade that had taken Aelis from him in the end. After surviving the disaster at the Conclave, the avalanche at Haven, the nightmare of the Fade, and Corypheus, she had seemed nearly indestructible. True to form, her last act had been to snap her attacker's neck before succumbing to her wounds on the floor of the bedchamber she had been staying in while on a visit to Val Royeaux. The poison had already done its work by the time help arrived and she was gone. Even the best of Leliana's efforts had not revealed the name of the person who had hired the assassin or the reason for the murder. It remained a mystery.

Aelis' death had crippled Thom for a time. Both of them had understood, without needing to say it, that death would always be as close as the next fight and so they had loved furiously, making a point never to let disagreements or hurt feeling linger. The last words he had spoken to her had been ones of love, and so there was nothing there at the end to regret except that he hadn't been there on that particular trip to protect her. Losing her had gutted him all the same. She was the rock on which he had rebuilt his life. With her gone, it was as if the ground had fallen out from under him and the sun had gone out. But, there was Liddy to raise. She had been six years old then and unable to fully comprehend the tragedy, only that her mother was not coming home. For his daughter, he had picked himself up and continued on.

Sera had returned to the castle, stepping in to take on the role of a sort of surrogate aunt, for which Thom was profoundly grateful.

I know what it's like to not have a mum, the elven rogue had told him. And no one can hold a candle to her mum. Can't teach her swords or how to make cookies or anything, but she's going to need someone around to teach her how to have fun if she's got a broody-beard like you for a father. May as well be me.

In time, the crushing pain had faded and he had been able to remember the good times again. For ten years, he had had everything he had ever truly wanted in his life - everything that the pride and greed and carousing of his past had never been able to provide him. In addition to her love, Aelis had given him back himself as he had always wanted to be. She had given him forgiveness and helped him allow himself to be forgiven. And, in forgiving him, she had finally been able to forgive herself for the horrors in her own past. Even if their time had been too short, she would have wanted him to hold on to that instead of breaking under his grief, and so that was what Thom tried to do, though he missed her daily.

Sometimes, he thought that he could still feel the subtle sensation of her fingers caressing his beard or the soft touch of her lips to his cheek in the dead of night. Now and then, when walking the corridors of the castle, out of the corner of his eyes, he would glimpse a flash of red that was the same color as her hair and find it gone as soon as he turned to look, or hear the distant echo of a voice that reminded him of hers. Perhaps, it was hers. When he visited the garden that had been planted in her memory, it was easier to feel that she was still there, just outside of his skin, nearby if not explicitly present. Aelis had never believed in the Maker, but if her soul had rested somewhere, it was likely to be here; near to the people and the place that she had loved.

Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met that day? If I'd left Haven a day too late or gotten held up on the road and you'd already gone off somewhere? she had asked him once. They had just made love, the covers twined loosely around them, and there was snow falling outside of the tall windows. Thom, laying on his side facing her, tracing the curve of her side, had let his hand move down to rest on her belly and the newly noticeable bulge of his child growing there under her heart. He had had taken her hand in his and kissed her calloused fingers, before gathering her into his arms and kissing her scarred brow.

Never, he had replied. And he didn't. It was inconceivable now to think of a life without her in it. Sometimes he felt as if he had never truly begun to live at all until she had come along.

The sun was lower now in the sky, the change in the light signaling to Thom that it was time to begin the long limp back to the main hall before dinner. He stood, wincing and leaning on his stick, and sighed. There was always something that needed his attention in the fortress, but it was time well invested. Liddy would be returning home within the year, old enough now to take up her mother's mantle at Skyhold, and Thom wanted everything to be perfect for her when she arrived.

He crossed the manicured garden lawn to the statue that stood next to the wall, backed by the pale stars of climbing jasmine flowers. The figure was as familiar as his own face: a tall woman in plate armor bearing the Inquisition's burning eye sigil, her bearing military, a long greatsword clasped point down between her fists. The smile on her scarred face was as vivid as it had been in life. The sculptor had been a stonesmith at Skyhold during the Inquisition and had done the piece full justice. Thom did not have to read the words inscribed around the base of the pedestal in remembrance of her deeds. He had been there. He knew them all by heart.

"She's fine. She'll be home soon," Thom told the statue of his wife as he did every day, trusting that Aelis - wherever she was now - would know. "We miss you."

His large hand, the skin now creased and spotted with age, rested over her stone fists for just a moment before he turned to leave. "Good night, love."

The way back to the main hall always seemed longer with its many stone steps and a day was coming, Thom knew, when he would not be able to make the journey anymore. But not yet. He would see Liddy settled in her place at Skyhold - perhaps even married, if her affections for Cullen and Josephine's eldest boy continued past this youthful stage. She needed him, and he could no more refuse her than he had ever been able to refuse her mother. And when his life was done, he would rejoin Aelis and they would go on to the next adventure together, hand in hand, as they had since the beginning.

Thanks for reading!