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And then he was dead. No pain, no crying out, just… dead. Edgar couldn't pinpoint how he knew—his eyes were still closed, he could still feel the warmth of his Mikey bear wrapped around him, but something about it all was off in just the wrong way.
He opened his eyes. Mike was still there, clutching his body as though he could keep him alive by sheer strength alone. Both of their faces with streaked with matching tears.
Everything was duller, now that he was dead. The brilliant cerulean blue comforter on the bed they shared—had shared—seemed as though it had faded to the color of a cloudy sky. Mike's choked sobs persisted, though he hadn't realized the sound was muffled until he tried to focus on the sweet nothings that were being repeated on a loop. He tried to reach out and brush away the tears, to place his palm against Mike's cheek and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but the effort it took to move was far greater than expected and, when he finally extracted himself from his body, his fingertips passed straight through.
It was real. He was dead. He was dead for good, and it was real, and he was really dead. And he wasn't coming back, and no one was going to correct him back into existence no matter how much it tore them to leave him like this. They were going to leave him like this. Oh god, they were going to leave him like this, in this muddled world with nothing to do but watch his husband grieve again and again and again until the end of time—beyond the end of time? How long was this going to last? What's going to-
A gentle knock at the bedroom door pulled him out of his thoughts, and a tall, blonde man looked at him with a twinkle in his eye and a warm, pitying smile on his face. Edgar found that he'd sat up in his bed in the midst of his panic, somehow leaving his body behind entirely. The man, an iteration of himself that looked to be around five years his senior, wordlessly gestured for him to follow into the white void that waited on the other side of the door.
Edgar slowly removed himself from the bed, careful not to disturb Mike with his movements. Not that Mike showed any signs of perceiving his presence, of course. He was a broken record in time, starting a whisper halfway through the sentence and ending halfway through the next as the same sniffles repeatedly reverberated between him and Edgar's body.
He looked again at the older iteration waiting patiently for him at the door. With a deep breath of ghostly air, he leaned down and pressed a final kiss to the forehead of his husband's facsimile.
The first thing the other Edgar did when he crossed over the bedroom's threshold was pull him against himself and wrap his arms around the frame of the recently deceased. Some time passed—a minute, an hour, it was impossible to tell in a world free from temporality—before the younger Edgar pulled himself away and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
"I take it you're here to bring me into the afterlife?" Edgar asked.
The older iteration nodded, closing the bedroom door with a finality that Edgar hadn't realized he'd still held on to. Gone was the hope that he was dreaming, that it wasn't real, that he would wake up again in the morning and rest his head on Mike's rising and falling chest. He would never see his husband again. His memories, his friends, his life—everything he knew felt like it had died with him. His breath hitched, and the other Edgar's face fell. He took Edgar's hands in his own, shaking his head solemnly as he rubbed circles into the skin over the joint of his thumb. Edgar let himself panic. He ignored the measured squeezes his iteration gave his hand—inhale for one, two, three, four five, hold for one, two, three, four, five, exhale for one, two, three, four, five, and hold for one, two three, four, five—until he had let his mind race to the worst of his worries and back again. Then, and only then, did he pay mind to the grounding touch and allowed himself to breathe.
There was little else to use for grounding; they were standing in an endless expanse of white. No shadows danced beneath them, no sounds echoed besides the air flowing in and out of their lungs. Edgar let himself be led through the brightness by the pulling at his arm from the iteration.
Mirages of memories began rising from the floor like holograms. He saw his mother cradling his infant body in her arms as she lay against the pillows in her hospital bed. He was wrapped up in a baby blue blanket. She looked at him as though he were her whole world. Together they rocked back and forth, back and forth, until the memory gave way to the next.
His father sat on a bench while he toddled around the playground with his older brother. They climbed up the ladder, Edgar in the lead, until they reached the top of the metal slide and sat themselves side by side. His brother called out to their father, Count us down! Count us down! and Edgar erupted in giggles when he heard Zero! and pushed himself down the ramp.
The two iterations continued down the path, hand in hand, watching as memory after memory rose, played out, and fell. They celebrated together when Edgar articulated the final word in the 5th grade spelling bee and the judge gave him the biggest trophy he'd ever seen. When his childhood gray tabby cat passed after seventeen long years together, they turned away from the image and mourned.
Three decades of life. Any moment that Edgar had ever deemed significant in his three decades was played before him and his guardian iteration. The time he lost his first tooth. The painting class his sister convinced him to take with her. Walking across the stage at his high school graduation, crutches keeping him upright after he'd fallen during a weekend hike with his friends. His first day at his first shitty office job. The day he met Mike in 116e. Strategizing with Anne for mission after mission. The year he'd lost and swore never to tell. Arguing with Mike before Rugby. His wedding day, with all their friends and family in the audience. Countless date nights, countless parties, countless hours spent coaxing Mike back to sleep after nightmares.
He took his time going from hologram to hologram. The other Edgar would drag him along if he thought he was taking too long on one or pull him back if he tried to skip past a more unpleasant moment. The good needed to come with the bad, the small pieces of death speckled within a life.
Finally and suddenly, they came upon a wall not unlike the one he had left at the beginning of this journey. The other Edgar let go of his hand and gestured towards the doorknob—a singular, solid object in the sea of white.
"Aren't you coming with me?" Edgar asked, failing to conceal the concern in his voice.
The other Edgar shook his head and made a motion of ushering at the door. Edgar already knew what was waiting for him. He placed his hand on the doorknob and turned back again to face his guide. He was alone.
With a twist and a push, he opened the door to see himself and his Mikey bear lying on their queen-sized mattress, curled up in one another. They smiled sweetly despite the salty drops pooling into the sheets below them. His hand rested on Mike's cheek; his thumb brushed gently beneath his eyes in a futile attempt to dry his skin. Quiet whispers escaped Mike's lips, broken up by choked breaths and poorly restrained sobs.
Edgar watched the scene from the foot of the bed, watched as he closed his eyes and Mike began the final sappy sentiment he'd say to a living Edgar.
And then there was nothing. And then he was dead.