Work Text:
She says, “Why do you watch the ocean so closely?”
He turns to her. Hugo is playing with the Elsens, on the pink shore by the white sea. She has taken a rare day off from her sacred work to spend time with them.
He says, “Because it is pure.”
“It is dead,” she said. “Nothing lives there. The plastic is the boundaries of life.”
He looks back out over the ocean. “It is perfect. Life could never be so.”
“Why so morose today, my love?” she asks. “I am here. Our child is here. What more could you want?”
“Purity,” he says, but she laughs and stops his mouth with a kiss.
-
Most of the time, he does not go to the shore with her. She is too busy, she is ruling the new world. She has more important things to see to than him and their son.
But he takes Hugo there alone, and he stands on the shore, at the very edge of the metal, and stares out into the endless white of the ocean.
It is blank, and perfect. Wherever else he looks, he sees imperfections and impurities. In her, in their son, in their world. All of it flawed.
Only in the blank emptiness of the ocean does he see perfection.
“Papa!” calls Hugo. “Papa, come look!”
He does not want to look away, back to his son. But he does, and quirks his lips in a smile for Hugo.
Someday soon, he will not look away.