But i am choosing to believe that Rand has to fake his death for the contract and his own life to be worth living and this must be as realistic and widespread a deception as possible to work- Mat and Perrin are both compromised. Arguably so are the 3 wenches though Rand can't do much there. All his loved ones have roles in fixing the land after TG and are leaders- Rand, as he realised towards the end of the series, is not a Peace Time leader, needs to "stay dead" an frankly deserves the break. Then after things have cooled down a bit I believe Rand will visit all his most loved ones, including the PowerTrio and Tam and Nynaeve for reasons stated above. But in all probability we'll never know, which is probably deliberate and something I am fine with. The book specifically states this is "an ending" and life will go on. We just won't get to watch. And just because Rand doesn't tell us these plans or thoughts doesn't mean he doesn't have them- people have messed up making that assumption before. Rand keeps his plans secret even from the reader throughout the entire series