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Love is fighting a losing battle. Varric fought it as long as he could, but as Fenris once said, some wars are lost by inches. The inches were small moments strung together over time and the slow realization that he was losing more and more of his heart. One day he woke up and couldn’t remember why he was fighting it so much.
Inches like when Hawke would lean over to whisper something in his ear during a game of Wicked Grace and show him her hand. He’d still let her win half the time. Or how she would smile into her tankard while listening to one of Isabela’s raunchy stories. The warmth of her body when she sat a little too close after a few rounds in the Hanged Man.
Inches when she would turn down everyone who asked her to come home with them only to smile at him from across the room before making her way back to his room away from the din of voices in the main hall. They’d talk quietly, or not so quietly, into the night and rather than have Hawke navigate the lowtown streets at night he’d offer his bed.
Inches by laying beside her, basking in the afterglow, with her head on his shoulder and one arm draped over his chest. Her hair tickling his nose and getting caught in the stubble of his beard. Falling asleep to the sound of her breathing and waking up to the sun illuminating her hair.
He lost the war long ago, by inches, over time and now he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He found he didn’t want to.