Dear Merrill,

Shit. I never wanted to write this. I never wanted any of this. I always hoped that everything would get better. But it never did, and... Tear stains mar the parchment, rendering the rest of the line unreadable.

Shit, Daisy. Hawke's dead. The Inquisitor... Malika... We were battling the Grey Wardens, at Adament. They were using blood magic to bind demons to themselves, making themselves slaves to this Darkspawn Magister called Corypheus. The Inquisition... We went there to stop them.

It was a fucking mess. Our soldiers and the Wardens were dying left and right. But we got through. We found the creepy bastard that had tricked the Wardens. We – Hawke, Me, The Inquisitor, Cassandra (remember her, from the other letters?), this Elven mage called Solas and this uncorrupted Warden named Loghain – chased after him. He sicced a dragon on us, it screamed and raged and spat red lyrium, you know, normal day for Hawke.

But then the Warden-Commander had the bright idea of blowing up the bridge we had chased the bastard onto. With us still on it. We fell towards a Fade rift, and... Well, it was fall to our deaths, or chance the rift. Not that Malika gave us much of a choice.

The short version, Daisy, is that we entered The Fade. Physically. It wasn't fun.

I'll spare you the details – mainly because Malika and Cassandra are being leery about them and they are terrifying when they agree on anything – but we wandered around for a while, following this spirit (NO YOU ARE NOT RIGHT, FADE SPIRITS ARE STILL DANGEROUS) to a way out and...

Well, there was this massive demon. And... Shit... The parchment is smudged and water stained, wiping several words from its surface.

We had to escape. And the Inquisitor... She... She couldn't save us all. Someone had to stay behind, to stop the demon from eating us. So... Hawke stayed behind. And he... I...

Andraste preserve me, I'm so sorry, Daisy. It's my fault. It's always been my fault. Everything since me and Bartrand found that blasted thaig... Everything's gone to shit and it's all my fault.

Malika... She said that his last words were "Tell Merrill 'I'm sorry.'" Typical Hawke.

I'm staying here, at Skyhold, with the Inquisition. And once this is finished, I'm going back to Kirkwall. We may not have a body, but I'm not letting him be forgotten. He deserves better, after everything.

I miss him already.

Varric.


A/N: NOT SORRY. AT ALL.