Sir Anthony Strallan was in heaven. Quite literally.
After a long life - sometimes happy, sometimes very less so - he had finally left this world and gone to a better place. Which was more of a relief to him than anything else.
Or had he gone to heaven? He wasn't certain if he had or not, everything was so strange.
The last thing he could remember was being out for a walk in London one morning. Suddenly his head started to spin and then he fell to the ground without being able to catch himself.
His last conscious thought was: "Now I'm dying. So be it." After that everything went black.
...
The next thing that happened to him was that he woke up in a very bright place. Or woke up is perhaps too strong words, he was drifting in and out of consciousness.
Sir Anthony hadn't had any very clear preconceptions of what heaven would be like, although he was a religious man. Or perhaps it was because he was a religious man.
But this must be heaven, he thought. What else could it be?
He was lying on his back, probably on the celestial equivalent of what is on Earth called a bed. Above him was something very white. Probably the heaven covered in clouds. The clouds where the angels are sitting, he thought. When they sing and play their celestial music.
His eyes were rather dim, so he didn't see any angels. And he didn't hear any music or singing. Everything was very quiet around him.
But in the corner of his eyes he suddenly noticed someone, a woman bending over his bed. When he looked closer he recognised her.
Lady Edith Crawley.
...
Perhaps Sir Anthony would have realised after a while that this wasn't really heaven. If it hadn't been for Edith.
Because Edith was the strangest thing about it. The thing that made him certain that this wasn't any earthly reality.
It had to be a dream or a hallucination. Or else it must be heaven.
Dreams don't age. But women do. And Edith didn't look a day older than she had been when he left her that horrible day.
When was that? 1920, if his muddled brain remembered it right. After the war when he was wounded and before the new war. Which had also been over for quite a long time.
...
Sir Anthony closed his eyes. He hoped that Lady Edith hadn't come to heaven to reproach him.
AN: Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think of the story!
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I don't know what this came from. There will be another chapter, but just the one, I think.
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I have 49 unpublished documents - they are chapters for most of my unfinished stories, some of them only stubs. You are not allowed to have more than fifty documents on fanficdotnet. I have reached that level a couple of times, and then I can't save any new ones. So I have to either publish some or throw some away.