Disclaimer: I don't own any of the guys from Prison Break, innocent, guilty, convicted or free. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Paul Scheuring, 20th Century Fox Television, Adelstein-Parouse Productions, and Original Television in an original wrapping and unharmed.
I make no money, I mean no harm.
WARNING: This little piece plays around with religion, afterlife and other themes you may NOT find suiting for funny purposes. I admit it's careless and lacks respect. Don't read it if you think you can't take it.
Also, doesn't express my actual belief, at least when it comes to details.
Promise
The darkness crept closer and his vision blurred around the edges. Someone clenched his hand and Scofield's face swum before his eyes. He gathered his remaining powers to say, "Give Anna her Poppa's love."
"I will," Scofield answered. Even if he stayed around a little longer, the promise was the last thing that Charles Westmoreland really registered before he died.
It only lasted... he couldn't tell how long it lasted, since there was no way to measure time. He didn't even have his heartbeat to count away the passing seconds. But it didn't take very long and the darkness was swept away by piercing light. He was at the pearly gates.
Charles hadn't been a religious man by nature, but years of incarceration had given him enough time to think about literally everything. He had read about practically every religion there was, and of all of them offering foregiveness he had chosen Christianity simply because of its availability - a priest had been in prison round the clock, if necessary, always willing to supply prisoners with empathy, prayers and kind words. He had spent several years thinking about afterlife, and God's judgement, and generally what it would be like, and he had created a good number of theories, which he had shared with Marilyn, but none of the theories could cover how the pearl gates looked like in real. He couldn't quite believe it.
He found himself standing in a civil reception. Brightly lit, warm and friendly-looking, but otherwise completely normal. There was a plump smiling woman at the counter who beckoned him closer.
"Charles Westmoreland," she said in a lilting voice. Charles nodded, although it hadn't been a question. The woman brought a large dusty tome on the counter and shot Charles a nasty look, as if the state of the book had been his fault.
"It is your fault, you know," she stated. "You all imagine we would keep tracks of your good and bad deeds in such an old-fashioned way. I heard about them computers - why don't you believe we are up-to-date here?" Charles smiled apologetically, preparing to say he was an old-fashioned man, when he realised she had answer a question he hadn't voiced.
"Excuse me, do you read my mind?"
The woman looked up from where she was reading in the middle of the book and shook her head.
"Of course not, dear." She put a finger on the page, mouthing something as she read. Another person entered behind her, a young man with a carefully trimmed beard. He stood behind the counter and smiled. Three seconds later, an old woman appeared at the door - not having opened there, just appeared inside the room.
"Deborah Williams," the man said with a friendly smile. "Please come here, madam."
"Now, dear," Charles' assistant said, closing the book with a sharp snap, "this is not very bad, but you are no saint either. You will have to visit the purgatory." Her smile never wavering, she pointed to a door at the side of the room. "Through there. Come back here when you're done."
Charles followed her directions. There seemed to be nothing behind the door once he opened it, but since he was already dead, he figured there wasn't much to harm him and stepped through.
The second time Charles entered the reception, it was buzzing with activity. Apparently, he thought, there had been a major accident or something. There were even lines, and Charles walked to end of one of them, when a young man at the counter waved at him.
"Charles, please come here. Yes, right now." Charles stepped up to the counter again. He looked around, but couldn't see the plump woman from previous... day? Month? Year? He couldn't really decide. But she wasn't there. He scratched his head.
"You can make the itching stop just by realising you don't have a body anymore, you know," the man said. "It's all your imagination, the way you are used to think about yourself. Force of habit, nothing more." The ever present smile would have nagged Charles before, but he felt strangely at peace and just wondered whether it was the effect of the purgatory and whether it would last forever. He smiled back and patiently listened as the other man - a boy who had been killed in an accident when he had been eighteen, Charles learned - expalined the details of afterlife in Heaven, which was what Charled had in front of him for the rest of eternity.
It all sounded completely different to anything he had thought of before, Charles mused, but then, not very many people had returned to life from that point, had they?
The man was currently explaining all kinds of bureaucratic duties he could choose to fulfill should he feel bored or restless, when a smaller hand slipped into Charles'.
"Poppa," a familiar voice intoned softly.
"Anna!" he exclaimed and held her incorporeal body in his incorporeal arms. "How..." he started, that realised he knew the answer and changed his question. "When did you die?"
"At the beginning of July. I really had nothing to wait for, what with you gone... Poppa, how could you! Why did you even take the risk?"
"They wouldn't let me go and see you, honey. Didn't Scofield tell you? That I love you and that I wanted to tell you in person?" She furrowed her brows, leaning backwards to better see his face.
"Scofield? Who - wait, was he in prison with you?"
"You mean he didn't see you?" In spite of all the calmness and peace and everything, Charles felt a tug of annoyance. The man at the counter tutted and they turned to him.
"The department of broken promises had already taken care of it," he informed them with a slight, not exactly saintly smile. Then he looked over his shoulder at another man, much more rigid and very obviously deeply pious, and leaned over the counter to whisper with a wink, "There's a betting pool on how long before the guy gets a clue."
It was raining heavily in Panama as two cars pulled over before Sona. The weather seemed to correlate with Michael's mood, as he was unloaded, unshackled and led to the entrance. Just as he stepped over the threshold of yet another prison, he thought, "This can't be just bad luck. No bad luck stretches that far."