Heaven is bright. Uncomfortably so.
Grace opens his eyes and immediately squeezes them shut once again, recoiling away from the source of light and wincing as his body protests the motion. Grace groans, head swimming and body aching as he parses through thoughts that move like syrup.
Grace has been drifting in and out of conciousness for…
…he's not sure, exactly. It's hard to say where days began and ended when Grace's only metric of time was how often he awoke, managing a few seconds of painful awareness before he was dragged back into a fitful sleep.
Grace is awake now, though. He almost wishes he wasn't.
Grace opens his eyes once again, squinting up at the white above him as he tries to reorient himself. He blinks a couple of times, weakly raising an arm to rub at his face.
A ceiling. Grace is looking up at a ceiling. He's lying in bed, looking up at a ceiling.
Oh, yeah, I'm dead. There's no way the Eridians could have made all this so fast.
There's no way they could have made beds this soft, blankets that smell like apples and iron and cushion the way my bones protrude.
There's a whirring at Grace's side. He turns his head, squinting as something moves in his peripheral.
I thought you were supposed to be healed of all ailments in Heaven. Do glasses follow you into the afterlife?
There's a tugging on Grace's forearm, a slight pinch that's gone as quickly as it came. Grace is already finding himself exhausted once again, pulled back towards the tumultuous deep—
Grace reels back as a mechanical claw appears in front of his face. He scowls, hand weakly raising to swat it away. It complies, receding back to wherever it came and leaving Grace alone once again.
He's not alone, though. Grace isn't sure how he knows that.
Grace rubs at his face, atrophied muscles weakly protesting as Grace moves for the first time in far too long. He's tempted to sink back into the bed, to indulge himself in the meager comfort when—
It's muffled but it's distinguishable, low and softly delighted. It's the most beautiful thing Grace has ever heard.
Grace moves towards the source of the noise unthinkingly, rolling onto his side beneath sheets on a bed that feels far too forgiving. It's an arduous process to use a body so intimately familiar with comas.
Grace squints, blinking rapidly as his pupils adjust to the light. He's looking out of a window, he could gauge that much, brain puzzling through the contrast of a wall decorated with frames and a pane of glass in the middle. Grace blinks, and blinks, and—
Grace thought a lot about what Heaven might be for him during those last few weeks on the Hail Mary.
(Grace knew he wasn't getting into any kind of good afterlife but it was a nice distraction from the way his skin drew over his ribcage and how his hair fell out in clumps.)
For some reason, Grace always returned to the Garden of Eden.
Grace wasn't religious. He wasn't raised in any kind of faith and never felt particularly called to choose one— but the tale was always uniquely compelling.
A bright and beautiful place with no worries, where food was plentiful and companionship was always to be had in your other half. A utopia in every sense of the word, only to be shattered by humanity's inherent greed.
It was a tale fascinating for Grace because he knew exactly how it would end for him. The apple would be just a little too tempting to resist, a little too shiny and appealing with the secrets it promised to reveal.
Maybe this was a test. Maybe this was the universe throwing him a bone and saying, hey, you know better. Here's your shot. Don't screw it up.
Because there, just outside, reaching up into a lush tree just feet away from the window was a man. A man with hair that tumbled down his shoulders, silhouette draped in soft materials that made no effort to conceal places where flesh gave way and had since healed over.
I'm dead, Grace thinks, thoughts echoed in tremendum. I'm dead. This is the Garden of Eden.
The man outside plucks an apple.
inspired by this comic by @acatin!!! this is such an incredible au, thank you so much for letting me play with your guys <33
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