Chapter Text
Tommy never thought he would live for very long, but he hadn’t anticipated his life being quite as short as it was.
There had always been a strange certainty sitting somewhere in the back of his mind. Not a fear exactly. Fear meant there was still something unknown. This was different.
This was expectation.
He had never pictured himself old. He couldn’t.
He had never imagined grey hair, wrinkles, or the kind of life where the biggest problem was forgetting where he left his keys. He had never thought much about the future because, somewhere deep down, he had never truly believed there would be much of one.
Not for him, at least.
Not after everything.
When people spoke about death, they spoke about it like it was something mysterious. Like nobody knew what would come next. Tommy had always found that strange.
He knew.
Or, at least, he thought he did.
He had spent years preparing himself for it.
Not consciously, maybe. Not in the way people prepare for exams or interviews or important moments. But in every time he replayed a mistake in his head, every time he remembered something cruel he’d said years ago, every time he lay awake wondering if he was actually a good person or if he just wanted to be seen as one…
He was preparing.
A list existed somewhere in the universe.
He was certain of it.
Maybe not written down. Maybe not on paper. But somewhere beyond what he could see, every mistake he had ever made had been recorded.
Every lie.
Every angry outburst.
Every time he had been selfish.
Every time he had taken something for granted.
Every time he had thought something he knew he shouldn’t have.
Tommy remembered being younger and believing that people were either good or bad. That there was a line somewhere, invisible but real, and once someone cried it there was no going back. The problem was that he had spent years finding new ways he had crossed it.
He had lied. He had been angry. He had been ungrateful. He had said things he didn’t mean and meant things he wished he hadn’t. He had questioned things he had been told were unquestionable. He had wondered why certain people suffered. He had wondered why forgiveness seemed so easy for some people and impossible for others.
He had asked questions.
That was the worst part.
Questions were dangerous. Questions meant doubt. Doubt meant you weren’t trusting enough. And if you weren’t trusting enough… then maybe you didn’t deserve to be.
So when everything finally went quiet, when the world as he knew it disappeared and there was nothing left but the strange awareness that he was no longer where he had been before, Tommy didn’t panic. He didn’t scream. He didn’t wonder where he was.
His first thought wasn’t I’m dead.
It was simply ‘Oh.’
Because he knew.
The waiting was over. The uncertainty was over. There would be no more wondering whether he had done enough. No more pretending he wasn’t afraid. Someone would finally tell him the truth.
Someone would finally look at everything he had done on earth and say what he had always suspected.
See?
You’re awful.
We were right about you.
He expected darkness.
He expected fire.
He expected something terrible enough to match every terrible thing he had convinced himself he was.
He expected punishment.
What he did not expect… was sunlight.
At first, Tommy thought it was some kind of evil trick. His eyes opened slowly, almost cautiously, as if looking too quickly might make everything worse.
But there was no smoke. No flames. No endless screaming. No terrifying creature waiting to explain what would come of him and exactly why he deserved this.
There were fields? Endless fields stretching beneath a sky brighter than anything he remembered seeing while alive. Flowers grew without anyone tending to them. Trees moved gently in a breeze that felt impossibly warm against his skin. Somewhere nearby, water flowed over smooth stones, calm and peaceful. The kind of peacefulness people spent their whole lives trying to find.
Tommy hated it immediately.
Not because it was ugly.
Because it was unfairly beautiful.
Because it was exactly what he had been promised.
He looked around, waiting for the illusion to break. It didn’t.
People walked through the fields like they belonged there. Some were crying as they held onto people they had missed for years. Some laughed. Some simply sat together, looking happier than Tommy had ever seen anyone look. Happier than he had ever thought possible.
Nobody looked afraid. Nobody looked like they were waiting for eternal punishment to begin.
And that was the problem.
Tommy knew exactly where he was.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him.
He knew the golden light. He knew the peace. He knew the warmth that seemed to exist everywhere at once.
He was in Heaven.
And that was impossible.
Because Heaven was for people who deserved it. Not people like him.
He waited. A minute passed. Then another. Nothing happened. No one came to drag him away. No one looked disappointed. No one realised their mistake.
The longer he stood there, the worse it became. Because if this was a mistake, surely someone would fix it. Surely someone would notice. Surely someone would come along and say there had been an error.
But everyone who passed him looked at him like he belonged. Like there had never been any question. And Tommy couldn’t understand that. Because he had spent his entire life believing there was one thing he could be certain of.
One thing that made sense.
He might not know much. He might not understand himself. He might not understand the world. But he knew where he was going.
He knew what he deserved.
And now, standing in a place he had never believed he would see, Tommy was forced to confront the one possibility he had never prepared for. Maybe he had been wrong.
And somehow… that scared him more than Hell ever could.