AN: prompt from tumblr about a continuation to the 'Let's call it hope' scene. Here you go
Hope.
Marcus Kane has a tendency to forget the very concept even exists because, if he has to save lives by the number, he cannot stop to take hope into account. Quantity over quality.
But that was before he was stripped of the privilege of opinion over humanity's future. Scratch that, his own future.
He made ghastly arrangements based on that alone, thinking he was doing the right thing for them all, when them all was still the only notion of humanity that they had, when their world was narrow, artificial and unforgiving, when he still dreamed of Earth, empty, scorched and far away.
Like hope.
He can't look away now. Abby's warm hands still mid-air between them, fingers curling around whirling thoughts, and he just can't look away. He feels like on the verge of a cliff opening on the unknown: there is a truth between her lips and her eyes, hanging on an eyelash, but it's already blurring at the edges.
Quantity over quality seems like a very bleak idea now since the majority of his people voted for Pike. (Which, in Abby's biased point of view, tremendously decreases the quality of it. He must bitterly admit she's got a point there).
But what can hope do when a quick reality check points towards his biggest failure? And what should he hope for? Absolution?
Abby composes her features and diverts her eyes, dropping her hands in his, casually, as casually as he brushes his thumbs on her knuckles like feathers. Like butterflies in the pit of his stomach when he catches a light blush that shifts his thoughts on its axis towards a more personal kind of wish.
Perhaps he's looking beyond its meaning.
Perhaps he doesn't need absolution for the past or the future, perhaps that's what her lips on his skin felt like, and perhaps the truth lies in the blurred edges where their hands rest.
He stares at Abby, a breath away, and quantity and quality merge into a whole. Just one.
Abby. The tune he doesn't have the lyrics for, but that makes him dance light on his feet. He catches his timid smile before it spreads into anything inappropriate for a man about to risk his neck, and stands up, pulling on their joined hands to keep her in his space.
She doesn't step back but he doesn't linger. "We have work to do," he says as departing words, and their breath mingles.
She hums and nods once. She's all the hope he will ever need to boost his shaken resolutions and weary limbs into action again.