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He knew.
He’d known the second the Inquisitor emerged from that green rip in the sky.
But he’d asked them anyways.
Desperately hoping he was wrong. Desperately hoping that for once in his damnable life that the twisting deep in his gut was wrong this time.
Losing Hawke had never been an option and faced with it now Varric finds he had nothing to offer it. No tears. No howls of grief. Nothing but the pained and aching silence of his disbelief.
He doesn’t cry on the way back to Skyhold. He doesn’t say a word.
And Maker knows the others tried with their soft words and gentle voices.
None of it reaches him.
It doesn’t quite feel real until he’s lost an entire day to staring at the flickering flames of the main hall’s hearth. Doesn’t quite connect until he’s staring at the Inquisitor and sharing that stupid story about the Carta and Wicked Grace. Picking open the raw wound Hawke’s death has rent upon his soul.
Varric doubts it will ever feel real. Doubts that this death will be one he files away as neatly as he has all the others.
Bethany. Bartrand. Anders.
Hawke.
He aches but somehow finds the strength to pull out his quills and paper as the fire begins to stutter and fade. They all deserve to know through him and not the elaborate networks of connections and spies they all use and sometimes share.
Their letters are not hard, but nor are they easy. For a man of so many words Varric finds very few of them worth using.
He saves Fenris’s for last.
He knows that there is nothing he can put to paper to make what he must say hurt less for him of all people.
And the words do not come easily to Varric. Everything he writes feels so disgustingly inadequate that there is more paper on the fire than wood.
How do you put grief into words?
How do you tell someone what they’ve lost with paper and ink?
If his own grief feels like a yawning chasm, he can scarcely imagine what it will be like for Fenris.
Bitter, angry, volatile Fenris.
Varric itches to grab his things and leave. He knows where they’ve been staying, knows that news like this deserves to be given in person, not on paper.
But, damn him to hell, he cannot.
Not now. Not on the heels of such an overwhelming victory against Corypheus. Not when the next, logical, move is to strike him hard where he’s most weak. The Inquisition needs him…
Or perhaps it’s he that needs the Inquisition.
At this point, Varric can’t tell the difference between the two. Stay and fight the thing that took Hawke away from them all or leave and risk never finding his way back.
It’s dawn by the time he picks a side and finds the words he needs.
They are all wrong.
And they are disgustingly inadequate.
But they are all he has.