Archive of Our Own ^beta

The vestigial is a late-night beach. Salty, sandy, it’s surreal how the misting waves gather and sputter into Seawatt’s face like an animal snaps its jaws, the grains beneath his running sandals crunching and kicking up whilst he searches for just one sign of life– or, well, unlife is what he guesses is a better word. 

There’s a metaphor here but he can’t say it out loud, can’t conjure the imagery to verbalization by his own hand. The audience will have to do it for him. Teeth clicking, throat strangled, voice choked by grief and recollection, Seawatt blames his shock for his sudden bout of silence. 

“Father,” he spits out after a moment of struggling with a clumsy tongue, as his frenzied mind finally regains its focus on why he’s here, on who exactly he’s here for. “Father! Father, are you here?” he repeats, straining his ears to listen for the jingling of bells or maybe that of a sharp, clear voice that he would recognize even deaf.

But alas, nothing but the whistle of wind and the crashing of water against rock and soil is all he gets as an answer. Lonely is what he is now, lonely is what he’ll be forever, when without his father by his side.

No, Seawatt blinks back tears, mouth shaped into a scowl of frustration as he denies reality and forces fantasy to become tangible, no, no, no– the director said that all recently deceased were meant to arrive here, preserved by isolation’s depraved hand, so where is his father?

“Father!” he calls out once more, and of course, that is the moment where his tears choose to spring up and overflow, welling up within his eyes and blurring his vision as he runs against the coastline, careful not to slip and fall into the foam which curdles as spoiled milk does. “Father, please, where are you?”

There’s no end to be seen though, even if he were not hindered by the tears which blind him and streak down his face. It’s endless, the yellow dunes and the indigo tides, and he curses out the events which led him here. 

It’s his old man’s fault, if he had just let Seawatt repeat his father’s eulogy as many times he wished, say one more parting word, utter just another Father would have loved this, then this would have never happened. It’s his fault, Seawatt knows it, and eventually he stops along the foreshore, crumpling like tissue paper submerged, cradling a mascara-stained face within tightly laced fingers as he allows sob after sob to escape his lips.

He recognizes none of the scenery that surrounds him, sprawling desert to his right and an expanding plain of blue that was previously lapping at his heels and is now trying its best to swallow him whole within brine and swirling water. He sees none of the sprawling hills of yellow and gold, nothing of metallic scars in the far distance, anything he had derived comfort from abandoning him like everything else that consoles him.

He’s lost without any exit in sight. Maybe that’s what he deserves, for failing his father like this.

“Son? Son!” 

Like he was stricken, Seawatt’s posture straightens at the voice, because– 

“Is that really you, old man?” he gasps, rising from the shallow silt floor, ignoring the dampness of his robes to stare blankly at the man who’s name he was just decrying moments ago.

Nodding, he scrolls right past his question to take his hands into his own, wrinkled fingers holding onto the back of his hands as if he’s convinced that he’ll take off right then and there. 

“We have to go home,” he tells Seawatt instead, and he pries himself out of the old man’s grip to stand up fully, a frown reaching his lips as he shakes his head. 

“I don’t have a home. Not anymore,” he retorts, voice breaking as he takes a step back, one which his dad meets with one forward.

“Listen, son, I know things are hard, but we’ll get through it, together–”

“How can you say that?” Seawatt interrupts, anger a chain’s weight, grief a bruise he keeps on pressing against, his tongue an animal caged by teeth and just let loose, “How can you say that when Father’s gone, and you can’t even say his name?”

“Because it hurts too much. Why can’t you understand that I have to grieve my memory of him too?” 

He swallows back his temper. “But you’ve left me behind in the process,” he says, voice a shaky thing, brittle and fragile, all words which he empathizes deeply with. “I don’t want to forget about him like you have, please, don’t make me forget him,” he begs, and his dad blinks at the confession, his face softening in something like sympathy, of which Seawatt has to resist the urge to bristle at. 

A steady, quiet voice is what he speaks with, when he responds, his words careful and slow. “Your father knew that this would happen, you know? Well, not this, but a few months before his… before his finale, Clown told me that no matter how hard it may be, no matter what occurs between us, we would have to get through it together. I thought that he was speaking about us, but now, I’ve realized; he was talking about us.”

Seawatt lets him pull him into a tender embrace, resting his head onto the man’s shoulder as he holds him close like he hadn’t done since he was young and far from the age of maturity. 

“I’m scared that I’m going to forget him,” Seawatt confesses once more, needing to make sure of one more thing, voice a hush and trembling thing whilst he asks, “Promise that we can talk about him?”

Pulling him back with limbs molded with age, his dad’s face is one verging on tears. “Of course, son. Any time you’d like.”

“Okay,” is all Seawatt can whisper in response, wrung dry of all emotional displays he can give, “Let’s go home now.”