Chapter Text
Colt is very calm. He is very much not on the verge of hyperventilating.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the - what the fuck is happening here?
"Take all the time you need", the dapperly dressed old man sitting at the table across from him gently says while Colt tries not to fall over. "Being told you're dead can be quite an overwhelming experience for a lot of humans. It'll pass soon."
The word rings in Colt's ears.
Dead.
No, the fuck, he isn't, he's sitting right there! In this weirdly neat office, with a guy who claims to be some sort of other-worldly higher being named Michael.
He feels his breathing get even quicker. It’s the only sound in the room, apart from his heartbeat that he’s sure Michael can hear because it’s so goddamn loud right now.
Colt doesn't know how much time has passed when the look on Michael's face grows concerned.
"Uh, I know I said 'Take your time', but people usually don't need that much time", he says nervously and starts rummaging through his desk drawers until he finds what he was apparently looking for and produces a folder that he drops on the table.
He frantically skims through it. "This place is designed to make people feel at peace and calm," he makes a whimsical hand gesture, "but I guess the system must have failed. There's a lot of tension in you, and let's be honest, the human psyche, specifically the male human psyche, specifically your human psyche, is quite a fragile thing", he babbles on. "Give me a minute, I'm looking through the manual... what do humans eat...no...human enrichment ideas...ah, there! Human anxiety. Boy, have I dealt with that in my lifetime, which is, like, from the beginning of the universe to now. There's these four humans, you'll meet them soon. They helped me save the afterlife from a rigged point system and evil demons. If it weren't for them, you'd be in hell right now getting your penis flattened all day long. And not in the fun way."
Okay, Colt thinks. Totally normal information. Totally normal. It's so normal that he's hyperventilating now.
Michael sees it and starts all but panicking with him. "Whoops, my bad. Shouldn't have said that. Sorry, bud." He clears his throat and starts reading the manual. "To relax your human, make them feel grounded in reality. Make them aware of the sounds and smells around them, put a hand on their shoulder, blah blah blah, is there any useful information somewhere?"
The manual bursts into flames.
"What the fork!", Colt yells and is immediately deeply displeased because he has NOT meant to say "fork".
"Sorry", Michael says. "It was a magic trick. Humans like magic, right? Did this cheer you up? Are you feeling calm and serene? You look calm and serene."
Colt does not feel calm and serene.
"Fork", he tries again. What the fuck? Frustratedly, he slaps his hand on the table. "Fork!"
Michael gives him a sympathetic look. "Sorry, buddy, but you can't curse in the Good Place."
"That's bullshirt!"
Michael laughs. "You know, that's exactly how Eleanor reacted back then. I'll introduce you to her, I have a feeling you two are going to get along. You're the first one from your family and friends to have arrived here, I wouldn't want you to feel lonely."
"Family? I have a family?", Colt asks, dumbfounded. "And what the hell is the Good Place? How did I die? What the fork is happening here?"
"One thing after the other", Michael says calmly, and Colt forces himself to relax, even though literally every single one of his muscles is tense.
"First of all, the Good Place is what you humans would call 'heaven'. You underwent a test before you got here to see if you belong, and you passed. Which means you can now spend the rest of eternity here in whichever way you please."
That doesn't sound too bad, Colt must admit.
"Second of all", Michael continues, "yes, you do have a family. You don't remember because we have temporarily erased your memory. Common procedure after traumatic deaths."
"My death was traumatic?"
"I'd say so. Would you really like to know what happened?"
Colt wants to shake his head, but feels himself nod.
Michael picks up a file and clears his throat. "Well, when you were alive, you used to be a stuntman. One day on set you were supposed to be thrown out of a window, but the stunt coordinator messed up and miscalculated, so you landed on the ground and not, y'know, on the soft pillow that was supposed to keep your fragile human body from collapsing in on itself."
"Oh."
"The astounding part is that you landed right next to it. Just a few more milimeters to the right and you would have made it."
"Well, that's..."
"Face down. On the pavement. We all cringed when we saw that. Not from embarrassment, it just looked very painful."
"Thanks for the clarification", Colt mutters under his breath.
"You're welcome."
"So what about my family?"
"Ah, yes. Your wife Jody Moreno was present when the accident happened."
Colt's heart skips a beat.
The name sounds familiar. Moreno, that's his last name, too. And Jody... suddenly his mind is filled with images and memories he didn't have a minute ago.
A woman with blonde hair, smiling cheekily, laughing loud and hearty, looking at him disapprovingly, asking him if he's okay, kissing him...
The way his body and mind both start to remember her at the same time feels like warming your freezing hands on a warm furnace and slowly feeling the stiffness go away.
Then Michael's words fully register.
She was present when it happened.
"Oh...oh gosh... Jody...how is she? Is she okay?"
Michael looks at him like he can't believe he's asking this. "Is she okay after watching her husband crash into the ground face-first and not get up?"
Experimentally, Colt gives a careful and hopeful nod. Maybe Michael will tell him that yes, she was able to come to terms with it very quickly, and even though it would hurt that she'd forget him so easily, at least he hadn't traumatized her for the rest of her life.
"No, Colt. No, she isn't okay", Michael says then and Colt deflates like a balloon.
Oh god. Oh god. He has ruined her life. In the prime of her career, too. It happened on her set! She is going to be cancelled! She... oh god.
His Jody. His beautiful, happy, excited, talented Jody. He has hurt her already when he pushed her away after his accident, and now he's hurt her in a way she might never recover from.
His heart rate picks up again and he already starts mourning all the movies she'll never make because she's going to be too busy grieving her idiot husband who can't hit a giant fucking pillow right.
And he's mourning the children they're never going to have, and yes, he's also mourning the fact that one day, she will move on and forget about him and settle for some dork who doesn't even know that she drinks her coffee with so much sugar that she might as well just not add the coffee at all, or that she reads exactly ten pages of a book before going to sleep, not a single one more or less.
The thought makes Colt feel sick.
Michael's face softens into compassion and maybe a bit of regret. "But she will be. And don't worry, she won't forget you. Never."
Colt exhales and a heavy weight is lifted from his chest.
She'll be okay. That's all he needs to know.
It's a testament to how much he loves this woman. If she had been anyone else, he might have been hurt to hear they'd eventually move on from him. Sue him, he's just a person, and yes, he does have a bit of an ego to him.
But with Jody, he just wants her to be alright. He wants her recover rather sooner than later, and he shudders when he pictures her reaction to his death. He hopes he never has to hear about it.
Suddenly, he pauses.
When he thinks about what Jody must be going through, it almost feels...familiar. Like he has went through it too at some point.
The trauma of watching someone die...spending days like in a vacuum, spending weeks like in a vegetative state...feeling the disbelief over a person suddenly being gone who was such a given to be around all the time, just a phone call away, whose company he has taken for granted so much that the thought of them disappearing is simply absurd.
Except it's more intense than that. It's like... it's like this person was almost...intertwined with him.
He sees his own face in its grief, gaunt and unkempt and with long hair, and Jody trying to convince him to eat and drink something. He sees himself shutting her out again, shutting everyone out, and something cold wraps itself around his ribcage, restricting his breathing.
"Did...did I...did I have other family?"
Michael takes a deep breath like he doesn't really want to tell Colt about this. "Yes. But again, this memory is rather painful and traumatic. Would you still like to know?"
Colt carefully nods.
And then the memories come over him like a flood.
Colt doesn't remember passing out, but here he is, on a white couch with soft cushions, his legs propped up on the armrests.
And by the way, what kind of bullshit is this? Passing out shouldn't be a thing in heaven. Or the Good Place or whatever. He's being pranked. That's the only reasonable explanation. It's either that, or he's dreaming.
"Ah, you're awake."
Michael comes back in. Colt makes no move to get up or acknowledge him.
"So, how are you feeling?"
Colt presses his lips together and gives Michael a look.
The old man raises his hands placatingly. "Point taken. Just felt the need to check on you. I mean, you said you wanted to know, but I still feel a bit responsible for your little..." he makes an awkward hand gesture, "mental breakdown."
Colt pointedly averts his gaze again and bangs the back of his head against the couch, once. It's too soft and quiet to be satisfying. He does this and realizes he's being rude to Michael who isn't to blame for any of this.
“t’s not your fault”, he mumbles.
Michael approaches him and tentatively puts a hand on his shoulder.
A warm, fuzzy sensation spreads over his skin and inside his chest. Colt doesn't know if it's because his day has been so fucked up that he's yearning for touch or because Michael is literally a supernatural entity, but he feels his heartbeat and his breathing slow down. Suddenly, he feels bad for being so dismissive. But hey, it's been a long day.
"You and your brother were very close, weren't you?"
Colt makes no move to agree or disagree. He thinks his little breakdown from earlier speaks for itself, and he still feels the sensation of the sudden grief all over his body.
Like someone has massacred a healing wound.
He distinctly remembers that this was how he reacted when he first heard Ryland was dead. Or, well, was about to die. Whatever you want to call it when you watch TV and a news anchor excitedly announces that your twin brother is going to be part of a fucking suicide mission in space. That he, by the way, never agreed to be on, as Colt later learned.
The fact that Ryland had been unconscious when he was wheeled towards the spaceship should have been a massive red flag, but to be fair, Colt had been way too shocked to even notice what was going on in the first place.
He had stared at Ryland's waxy face like he was a stranger, because his brain hadn't caught up with the news yet.
Surely Ryland, the guy who insisted on listening to the same old Christmas CD every single year during Christmas dinner, who sent Colt a text message saying "Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to Me ♬" every time the fifth of August came around, who always, always left crumbs wherever he sat, no matter what he had eaten, who grinned smugly whenever he was teasing Colt about not knowing something that, according to him, EVERYONE knew, and who cried every single time they watched Good Will Hunting, couldn't be the one they were talking about when they used words like "astronaut" or "hero", and yet it was unmistakably him.
Why did it have to be him?
At first, it had been overwhelming, then paralyzing. He remembers Jody cursing and grabbing his hand, wrapping something around it. Only then had he realized that he'd gripped his glass so tightly that it had splintered. Blood had dropped onto the carpet, and Colt had stared at it and wondered how much more of it he had to give to bring Ryland back. As if he was a fucking witch sacrifice or something.
Naturally, it hadn't done a damn thing to stop him and Colt had watched as his brother got loaded into the rocket like he was a parcel. Which was so wrong because he should be sitting here with them, on their couch, eating chips and leaving a mess of crumbs behind that Colt would give him shit for later.
He would love to give Ryland shit for leaving a mess again. And for eating so unhealthily, and overall for being a pain in the ass, because dear god, Colt misses him, but he was a pain in the ass.
In the years that followed, Colt had developed a new quirk, which was breaking into tears whenever he found crumbs in his apartment after his first instinct had been to yell at Ryland only to realize he wasn’t there.
Jody had been so considerate, always making sure to tidy up as well as she could, while also gently nudging him to search for a therapist.
He'd love to say that it helped. But he still couldn’t bear having crumbs in his apartment, the Christmas-CD had went straight to ebay, and on the fifth of August he had felt so lonely and empty that it physically hurt even though Jody and their shared friends tried their best to be there for him.
For years he would write "Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to Me ♬" to Ryland until his number was given away to someone else and he felt like he lost him a second time.
And he lost him a third time when the news announced that the three astronauts had officially run out of food and were likely beginning to either starve or commit suicide now.
She said it so clinically, like it was simply a given, and Colt's mind had wandered to places he'd never wanted to revisit.
He knew for sure that Ryland wouldn't commit suicide, even with the alternative of starvation hanging over him.
When they were kids, he used to tease him for being "such a baby" whenever he accidentally hurt himself, and when they got older, it was Colt who learned how to take punches and throw himself off of tall buildings and broke the glass of windows with his body. And it was Ryland who damn near ruined all the takes because he was screaming and gasping so loudly.
There was no way his twin brother would take a gun to his head and shoot, or even take an overdose of sleeping pills or whatever, so Colt has had to live with the fact that his brother most likely starved to death.
In a spike of curiosity, he had read about what starvation feels like when he was younger. Remembering that in this context felt like someone had punched him in the gut and he’d felt like throwing up.
He hasn’t touched the question of how Ryland died with a ten foot pole ever since that, and he still feels uncomfortable with it now, even with the knowledge that there's an afterlife.
Suddenly, he pauses.
His heart starts beating faster, though this time it’s out of excitement.
There’s an afterlife.
If this is real, if this is actually heaven, then...
"Where is he?!", he demands. His voice comes out rougher than he meant it to. "Sorry for yelling! Can you please tell me where Ryland is? He has to be here, right?”
Michael doesn't give him an answer right away. Instead, he makes a face. Why is he making a face?
Colt feels his smile falter.
If he's about to tell him that Ryland, literal savior-of-the-world-Ryland, is in hell right now because he failed some sort of stupid test, he's going to blow this whole place up.
"I don't know how to tell you this, bud", Michael says regretfully. "But Ryland isn't here."
Colt's throat feels dry. His stomach drops.
They put his brother in hell.
They put his fucking brother in hell.
"What?", he snaps.
"We don't have any explanation for this, but it seems like Ryland's soul never made it here."
Colt relaxes for a moment.
Not hell, then. But where is he?
He frowns. "Are you saying...are you saying my brother got lost?"
"That seems to be the case, yes", Michael says matter-of-factly. "That's never happened, but then again, no human has ever died in a different solar system before. Our afterlife department has no control over that."
"So let me get this straight." Colt takes a moment because he genuinely can't wrap his head around this. "You're telling me my brother got forced on a suicide mission, saved two entire forking planets, and as a Thank You he is excluded from heaven because he wasn't in the right solar system when he died?!"
"I know, it's crazy, I don't know what to tell you. Trust me, we've been waiting for Ryland's soul to arrive for hundreds of bearamies."
"Bearamies?"
"It's the way time passes around here, I'll explain it later. As I said, we've wanted to get our hands on Ryland's soul for a long time because completing the Trio of Earth's brave saviors would have been...how do you humans say it? A massive flex."
"Ew, cringe", Colt mumbles and regrets it as soon as it leaves his mouth. Thankfully no one except Michael was around to hear that. Then he realizes what he just said. "Wait, complete the Trio?"
Michael nods thoughtfully. "Ilyukhina and Yáo have arrived here a long time ago. They died while still in our solar system."
Right, because that was another jackpot in the bullshit lottery that was apparently Ryland's life. Not only did he get forced on the mission, but he also woke up completely by himself next to two corpses.
Colt swears, if he ever gets his hands on Eva Stratt...
"Okay, so...what do we do about Ryland now?"
He thinks of his brother's soul eternally trapped with his own decaying body in a spaceship and feels his stomach churn.
Michael takes a deep breath and exhales. "Buddy, to be honest with you, we've tried everything, but the Judge is very particular about extra demands and..."
"The Judge?"
"Yes, she's one of the leading figures of this place. She has the last Say, and since this is the Good Place for humans and not for other beings, she fears this could set a bad precedent."
Colt crosses his arms in front of his chest. "So she decided to let my brother spend the rest of forever in space instead of heaven where he forking belongs because, need I remind you again, he saved two planets!"
"I understand how you feel, but these rules don't exist for nothing. We don't know the possible consequences for the Good Place if we start mingling with the afterlife of other star systems. But I can assure you that we’re trying to work something out."
Colt raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Work something out, huh? So you won't leave Ryland to fend for himself?"
"Of course not. But...I just can't promise anything yet."
Colt feels bile rise up in his throat. He wants to punch something.
He was so close, so close to seeing his brother again.
"If you're not going to try, seriously try, to find him, then I will."
"Oh, Colt, I don't-"
"I will find him", Colt says again, leaving no room for arguments. "I will be so obnoxious to this judge-lady that she will consider kicking me out herself. I will not rest until I get answers. I will find my brother, and I will bring him here."
"That is literally impossible", Michael says and sounds like he's a bit baffled by Colt's stupidity. "I'm an immortal being with powers that exceed your wildest imagination and not even I could bring him back."
"But I'm his brother, that has got to be worth more than whatever immortal bullshirt you have going on."
"I mean...no. Figuratively and literally, no. Not even a little bit."
"What do you suggest then?" Humiliating tears threaten to fall. "After years of missing my brother I finally get a chance to see him again, and now I'm just being told to...what, sit back and relax while he's in deep space probably crying his eyes out because he has an eternity ALONE to look forward to?”
Dread pools in his stomach at the mere thought. God, he must feel so alone, so scared, so betrayed.
He has no one. Not even Rocky, the only good thing that happened to Ryland after boarding the Hail Mary. And would you believe him if he told you that Rocky is a goddamn alien-spider from a planet named Erid and on top of that Ryland’s best friend?
“If it helps”, Michael says gently, “you actually can see him again. When you start exploring the Good Place, you will notice the green doors everywhere. They will lead you to wherever you want to go. France, Italy, your brother’s apartment, your apartment with your brother in it…”
Colt eyes Michael suspiciously. The words sound compelling and soothing and his hands are itching and he almost tells Michael to take him to one of those doors immediately. He’s greedy to a comical degree to see his brother again. But…
“It won’t be the real him.”
The look Michael gives him is both sympathetic and sad. “It will only be the concept of him, yes. But he will look and act and sound like him.”
Colt processes this information. Then he shakes his head. “Then I don’t want it. I want my real brother.”
“I hear ya, but there’s nothing you can do, bud.” Michael sounds a bit desperate now, like he really needs Colt to just accept it.
Colt suspects he doesn’t have any siblings.
“You said something about other departments that handle aliens and shirt. Can’t you just…I don’t know, call them up and ask if Ryland is with them?”
“We tried that”, Michael says. “Obviously. But they don’t have him either.”
“Have they at least seen him?”, Colt asks desperately.
“Here’s the problem”, Michael sighs. “They are very tightlipped about what’s happening on their planets and they can be, frankly, quite mean.”
“I am not missing out on seeing my brother again just because you guys have some sort of weird afterlife beef going on”, Colt snaps. “And by the way, what kind of ‘powerful’ eternal being are you anyway if you don’t even know what’s going on in other solar systems? Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”
“First of all, ouch.” Michael touches an offended hand to his chest. “Second of all, this is not about ‘beef’. Every afterlife department has the right to reserve any information as they wish. Our case here is obviously a bit more complicated because Ryland is a human, so we’d technically have the right to know about his whereabouts; but he’s in the wrong solar system, which they have complete rights and control over. We tried a court case, and they won, unfortunately. They won’t give us any more information than that, and there’s nothing we can do.”
Colt snorts. “Like heck!”
“Colt.”
“Why the fork is the Eridian afterlife so…mean? Rocky wasn’t like that! Are they all just a bunch of ash-holes over there and Rocky was the exception or what?”
“We don’t know the reason.”
“He saved their forking planet, he starved for them, and they’re fine just letting him spend eternity in a forking spaceship on his own!”
He wants to sink to his knees and have a good cry about it. He wants Jody. He wants to feel her warm hand on his back and hear her soft voice tell him everything is going to be alright.
God, it’s been what, a day? And he misses her so fucking much already.
“I know it seems unfair”, Michael says softly. “And maybe we’ll be able to figure something out in the future. But for now, you need to let it go and rest. Let me show you your house.”
Colt wants to argue, but he feels so exhausted in that moment that all he can do is nod.
Before he exits the room, he pauses and looks at Michael.
“I’m going to find him.”
Michael gives him a sad smile in return.