Epilogue

Beyond the walls, the moon was edging back towards the horizon, swollen and too-bright. Nathaniel appreciated the lack of windows, the lack of any light beyond the torch burning in the hallway outside of the room. It made the details of the revenant's face harder to make out. Without strong light, he could pretend the narrow jaw and wide mouth weren't there. He could pretend he hadn't felt a memory of curves and muscles against him. He could pretend that each brittle strand of hair hadn't once belonged to a soldier who hadn't deserved to die.

He could step forward, sword in hand, and contemplate the angle and force it would take to lop off the demon's head.

The revenant's fingers curled, fetid breath hissing between its remaining teeth. The dark blue eyes he'd grown accustomed to had either rotted or been eaten by maggots long before, sparing him her gaze. Still, he didn't step forward. His fingers tensed around the hilt of his blade, then relaxed, unwilling to take its weight.

"It's not her," he whispered. "You're not her."

Behind him, no doubt, Surana stood in the hall. He waited for her laugh, or her frustrated order. Even a footstep. Please tell me to do this.

If there was a single hope for pulling back that honor and integrity to this world, wasn't it their duty to pursue it? But he remembered Surana's words all too well. There's nothing we can do, Howe. That's not how the Fade works. The Fade worked by creating dreams that would evaporate come morning, or a healthy splash of ice water to the face. He bowed his head.

Give her rest, Surana had said. That's what you'd want somebody to do for you, right?

With a frustrated growl, he lifted the sword. He did still have a shred of his old honor left to him, and his badly reined anger. That was what carried him forward a few quick, sharp steps, and what brought his arm down in an arc that held enough force to sever the revenant's head.

The helmet fused to what had once been Cauthrien's scalp clanged as it rolled across the stone. His sword followed it.

He turned to see Surana, waiting where he had imagined her. She had the decency not to clap, or even smile. She simply motioned with a jerk of her head to the hallway. Once he was gone, she would burn the body.

The body hung limp and lifeless, finally just bone and skin and rot and nothing more. It looked hollow.

He turned and left.

"She was a good woman," Surana said the next morning when he still couldn't summon even a nipping comment, let alone a biting remark. She must have been able to see something written in his face, or perhaps in the crown of his head as he bowed it, hiding his grimace. "I'm glad I was able to speak with her. To know that... she approved of what I did."

He grunted.

"She... was relieved. That you were alive."

Surana nodded. "I got that impression. She fought as hard for me as she ever did with Loghain. I think that means she liked me." Her lips curled.

He hummed assent, then tried to drink the hot tisane somebody had set before him. It was lukewarm now. It was bitter and pungent. Unpleasant. He set the cup down far away from him.

"Well," Surana said. "Back to Amaranthine then, I suppose. Excited to be going home?"

The Hafter was swollen this time of year.

There had been no service held over her ashes, and it only took half a day's delay to find Cauthrien's old home and leave a memorial offering there at the edge of the northern field, near the tree she had shown him. He trusted it was the right tree. In truth, the memory of it was already failing.

The cottage, at least, was real. There was no sign of the bench her father had carved, and there were other differences, large and small. The roof had fallen in. But if he stood on the porch and squinted, he could almost imagine the tall weeds that had taken over the land were towering crops.

And then it was time to go.

"Aren't you going to ask what I saw? When the demon got me?" Nathaniel asked as their horses plodded along the old road towards the keep. Surana hadn't mentioned Cauthrien since the farm, but she was still all he thought about. His dreams echoed what he'd lived for that brief period, and the nights he didn't wake up in a cold sweat, afraid that the demon of sloth had him once more, he didn't want to wake up at all, hoping that it was really her on the other side of the Veil.

"Are you going to ask me?" Surana asked.

Nathaniel frowned. "No." I'm not interested in what you saw. It had barely occurred to him that she'd seen anything, and he looked away.

"I find," Surana said, "that these things are private matters. Though your entire stay seems to have been a private matter." She was laughing at him. He glanced skyward.

"I miss her," he said after a moment, the words barely audible even in the still early evening air.

"She was just a dream of a ghost, Howe," Surana said, nudging her horse to a faster trot. "Just remember that you didn't really lose anything."

His room in the Vigil was cold and dark when they arrived, no runner sent ahead to warn of their coming and have the fires lit. He was saddlesore and weary. Gingerly, he felt at his side. The ride had jarred the raw new flesh there, a reminder of where the revenant had nearly killed him. Soon, there wouldn't be so much as a pink line to remind him of that, either.

He shucked his riding leathers, bearing the chill and ignoring the hearth. This was a room he had once played in, as a boy. Could he reconstruct it from bare memory, from desperation for home? He ran his hand along the wall. Did he know the bumps, the irregularities, the details? And would the Taint even allow him to construct his own crypt when he died?

He tried to tell himself that he didn't need to think so far ahead. He had thirty years. He had a family, of a sort, and no matter what the demon had said, he hadn't abandoned them. And he had Surana, and the Wardens, and a purpose. This was all a momentary lapse, grief for a fallen comrade. It would pass. It must pass. Life would overtake death. He had known her for the blink of an eye, and had never really felt her breath upon his lips.

Reaching a corner, he turned. A few steps more took him to the dusty vanity, with its uneven glass mirror. There was an edge of cold dawn peeking into the room, and he stared into the glass until he could make out the edges of his face.

There. The lips, the line of the throat, the eyes- it was all so clear, her features overlaying his. He reached out a hand to touch the mirror. That wild thought took root, seized control of him. He hadn't lost anything. If Justice could have followed them out of the Fade all those months ago, if he could have taken up a dead body, then partnered with a living one-

He shaped her name with his mouth.

The illusion shattered.

He was alone. And Maker, he was tired.