Jay counted them, wishing they were not real.

  More hands than the other side.

  By one.

  A silence fell over him. Not the fighting, his body was still pulling at the chains, still burning, still running through every approach it knew. But deeper than that, a quiet settled in, the kind that comes when there's nothing left to do but accept what's happening. He looked at his son standing alone in the centre of an infinite court, dried tear tracks on his face and Bonk's blood on his knees, and felt his soul crack.

  He needed Luv closer. If he could get even the tips of his fingers on him, he could reach the blocks he'd placed on his son's powers month ago and deactivate them. He could then steal his powers into himself. He would deal with the morality of taking a child's abilities without consent later. Right now he just needed Luv to move three steps.

  "Luv," he said, keeping his voice as level as he could manage. "Come here. Just come to me."

  Luv looked at him.

  And for the first time in his four-month life, he didn't follow his father's instructions. His first rebellion, even if it hurt them both.

  "I shouldn't have asked Mom to save me," he said.

  The words were barely a sound.

  But in a room with perfect acoustics and beings capable of hearing atoms, they landed everywhere.

  Jay went still. "What? No. Fuc...Luv, that's not- Christ, just come here, okay? Just-"

  Luv's voice had gone calm and resigned, too calm for any five-year-old to know. "If I'd stayed quiet in that grey place. If I hadn't cried out and kept to myself, Mom wouldn't have come to save me. And then you wouldn't have to be like this." He looked at the chains digging into the flesh and the blood drying under his father's eyes. "You wouldn't be like this because of me."

  The gallery, which had been noise and argument and ancient agendas, was completely silent now.

  Several of the beings present had existed since before the concept of time had anything to mark. They had watched entire civilizations run their course from first fire to last breath. A five-year-old child reasoning himself out of existence to spare his family was not something any framework they possessed had been built to process.

  A few of them at least looked away.

  Jay pulled against the chains. He needed to reach his son because Luv, a five-year-old child, had just concluded that his own survival was a mistake, and every instinct Jay possessed was screaming that he needed to console his child right now.

  "Luv." His voice came out very level because he knew if it broke Luv would hear it and it would make this worse. "Son! Look at me. Right now."

  Luv slowly looked at him.

  "Asking for help is not the problem," Jay said. "Asking for help is never the problem. None of this is your fault. You are my son, I love you more than my own goddamn life and none of this, none of it is your fault. Do you understand me? None of it. Not one fucking second of it."

  Luv didn't answer. He'd gone still, like a child who has heard something they want to believe but can't quite trust yet.

  The Queen of Nevers leaned toward Eternity and said something low and urgent, "Love, you have to save Jay and little Luv. That's what you promised him, didn't you?" Eternity turned toward her and formed a closed fist out of frustration, "Not now. Now's not the right time".

  The Queen of Nevers looked like she had more to say, but seeing Eternity's frustration stopped her in her tracks.

  The Living Tribunal settled back into his delivery.

  "The vote stands eight to seven. Luv has been found guilty of existence. Since the Outsider is protected by The One Above All's mark, this court hereby moves to remove him and his mother from exis-"

  "This ruling is unjust."

  The voice came from the platform's edge.

  Boots on stone. Quick, purposeful steps from someone who had already decided what they were going to do.

  A figure stepped up onto the platform.

  Black jeans. Black tank top. The button-down jacket worn open. Long-barreled Colt hanging easy on one shoulder.

  Then the gallery saw the rest.

  Wide-brimmed hat tilted at the angle it always sat. An ankh necklace resting at her collarbone, and fitted into the loop of it like it had been made for exactly that setting, the Death Stone caught the light and threw it back at all of them.

  Neena Thurman scanned the room in one sweep. Her mouth had already started composing sentences that would have adequately communicated her assessment of this court and every being present who had voted the way they had.

  Then her eyes found Jay.

  He was wrapped in a cocoon of golden chains, half compressed, his eyes red with burst vessels from the strain of what he'd been attempting. She could read the exhaustion in his jaw the way she'd learned to read it over years, the look he got when he'd pushed well past reasonable and had no intention of stopping.

  Her heart, which had been hammering since the moment she understood where she was and what was happening, went somewhere worse.

  Then she found Luv.

  Her son was standing next to Bonk. Poor Dino was mortally injured in trying to save his friend.

  She then studied Luv and her heart stopped from dread as she saw the face he was making. She knew that face the way she knew her own hands.

  The brightness was gone. The joy, the wonder, even the fear and angst, every emotion a child could face was gone and what remained were empty eyes staring at her in disbelief.

  Neena dropped off the platform and walked toward them. Golden chains descended to meet her, the same restraints that had taken Jay, snapping toward her wrists and ankles with the full authority of the Tribunal's power behind them.

  She noticed them for a moment and just swatted them out of the air.

  The gallery gasped. Old certainties crumbled. The Living Tribunal's three faces shifted a fraction. Oblivion went still, realizing their plans had failed and now they'd have to start from scratch.

  Neena walked to Luv and put her arms around him. Felt him relax against her, just a little. That unwinding that only happened when both his parents were in the room. She held on and didn't let go.

  "Mom, I'm sorry, if…" he said, very quietly, against her shoulder. Just that. Just the word.

  "Shh, I've got you," she said. "I've got you, baby."

  She held him for a moment. Then she crouched next to Bonk.

  The small dinosaur's breathing was shallow, too slow. His scales had gone grey at the edges, that grey that meant blood loss, shock, vital damage. She'd seen it before. She knew what it looked like when something was dying.

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  She put her hand on Bonk's side, just above where his heart would be.

  The Death Stone pulsed once as the ankh at her throat grew warm.

  Bonk's eyes opened. He made a small questioning sound at her, like a creature who had been somewhere far away and wasn't entirely sure how it got back.

  "You're okay," she said quietly. "You're going to be okay."

  Luv's eyes went wide. "Bonk? Bonk, you're--"

  The small dinosaur turned his head toward Luv and chirped, recognizing someone he loved.

  Luv made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and buried his face in Bonk's neck.

  She held him for a moment, and if her eyes were bright, none of the assembled cosmic entities made the mistake of commenting on it.

  "Look who finally joined us." Oblivion's smoothness had returned. "Saved us the trouble of finding you. We were going to deal with you anyway."

  "Dom." Jay's voice was rough at the edges. "Please. Take him and run. You need to get him out of here right now. Please, Dom, just…"

  Neena raised the Colt.

  Purple light ran along the barrel and stock in lines that pulsed at irregular rhythms. The shot she fired didn't go toward Oblivion or the Tribunal or anyone who had voted against her son. It went into the chains wrapped around Jay. The golden links suddenly unwound, peeling back and dissolving. Where the energy touched Jay, it didn't damage him. Instead, it undid the damage already done. She watched the colour come back into his face, the burst vessels in his eyes clear and the exhaustion from burning himself out reverse itself until he looked like himself again.

  He stared at her.

  She let the corner of her mouth do what it did when she needed him to understand that she was here now and things were going to be alright. That she'd burn this entire fucking dimension down before she let anyone touch their son.

  Jay's throat worked. "Dom—"

  Then she turned to The Living Tribunal.

  "This ruling is unjust."

  The murmur that followed was shock. In the Dimension of Manifestations, in the court of the Living Tribunal, that phrase did not get spoken. It wasn't just controversial. It simply wasn't a phrase that existed in this context.

  The Living Tribunal regarded her. "On what grounds do you accuse me of such?"

  Neena reached up and lifted the ankh from her collarbone. Held it out where all of them could see it, held the Death Stone up where it caught the light and split it back across the room.

  "You're missing an abstract, a very important vote", she said. "You're missing Death himself."

  She let it land.

  Then she let go of whatever she had been holding back since she walked in. The authority she carried moved outward from her in a wave that reached into every consciousness in the room and pressed against the part of them that understood what death was. But it was different from what they remembered. Nothing like the Lady Death they had known before, nothing of rot or cold finality or the dread of a door closing. This was the same truth with a completely different feeling. Renewal and rest. The pause between one thing and the next. Peace, when it was finally permitted to arrive.

  Every being in the gallery got to their feet.

  Some from shock and some from recognition. The ones who had spent ages quietly afraid of the previous Death and had never quite put that fear down stood from a reckoning. They had known this was possible. The rumors had circulated. But knowing something and feeling it are separated by a distance that sometimes takes centuries to cross.

  Oblivion, across the court, was not at peace.

  "You wretch." His voice had lost everything regal about it; there was raw pain underneath it now, pain that had been sitting there a long time waiting for exactly this wound to open it up. "You stole from my sister. You lay with this outsider. You took in that abomination. And now you stand here and do this, you two-bit wh…"

  A fist came from across the court before the word finished forming.

  Jay had been across the court. Then he was not. His fist was exactly where Oblivion's face was, stopped a centimetre from contact by the containment barrier that surrounded Oblivion, invisible and cosmically dense, built from the power drawn from the outer void. Jay didn't pull back. He pushed and kept pushing, a sustained load against a wall that had never needed to hold against anything like this, and held it there.

  Hairline fractures spread through it like ice cracking under weight.

  The entire gallery saw them. Watched a mortal crack a cosmic defense through sheer will, through nothing but the fact that someone had been about to call the woman he loved something unforgivable and his body had moved before his brain caught up.

  The Living Tribunal, with a wave of his hand, relocated Jay back to the platform.

  The cracks in Oblivion's barrier stayed where they were, glowing faintly, visible proof that a mortal had just done something that wasn't supposed to be possible.

  Neither of them acknowledged it.

  Everyone else did.

  "Maintain," the Tribunal said, and it was directed at Oblivion alone, "the speech appropriate to one of your standing."

  The Living Tribunal called the gallery back to order. Then all three of his faces turned inward for a moment of consideration that was not a short moment.

  When he came back from it his ruling was delivered without ceremony. "Neena Thurman is, for all current purposes, the Death entity of the Marvel Multiverse. Her vote is therefore required for this court to function with any legitimacy." He looked at her. "How do you vote?"

  Domino looked at the entities that had voted for her son's erasure. Sire Hate, dripping with malevolence that she could feel from here. Master Order, sitting in his perfect stillness. The Powers That Be, with her many arms and her fear of being replaced. Abraxas. The Goblin Force. The Griever. The Ivory Kings and Last of all that bastard Oblivion.

  She took a breath.

  "Right," she said. "First of all, each and every one of you sanctimonious fucks that voted to erase my child can get individually and thoroughly fucked with something sharp and rusty, and I will be making time in my schedule to address that personally and thoroughly, because I am Death now and have an eternity to make you regret this shit."

  Mistress Love covered her mouth, and Lord Chaos made a sound like a gleeful bark and said, loudly enough for several tiers to hear: "Holy shit, I fucking love her."

  "Second," Domino said. "No. Obviously fucking no. Obviously, I vote against the existential erasure of my five-year-old son, you absolute collection of retards!!"

  The gallery erupted.

  The wave that rolled through the gallery was nothing like the arguing that had come before it. Mistress Love started clapping. Lord Chaos leaned toward his neighbour rubbing his hands together with audible delight. Several beings who had maintained careful neutrality throughout discovered they were smiling. Even the warmth coming off the Phoenix Force increased noticeably.

  Jay exhaled for what felt like the first time since the chains had taken him.

  The Living Tribunal stood.

  When the Tribunal stood, it was not a theatrical gesture. It rearranged the architecture of the room, everything else becoming secondary to those three faces at full height, three expressions of cosmic justice looking down at a court that had just produced a tie.

  "The vote stands at a tie. Eight to eight." He looked out over the gallery, over the court, over all of it. "An alternative resolution to this matter is therefore required."

  Eternity descended from his throne.

  He came down slow, his vast form filling the space around the platform the way morning fills a room, the living embodiment of time and everything contained in it moving without hurry because he had never once been late, was already present everywhere. He took apart the foundation of the trial methodically, thoroughly, like someone who had been paying careful attention and had strong feelings about what had been built here.

  "This trial was a farce."

  Not loud. Not performed. Just put down in the room like a stone being set on a table.

  "A mechanism." He let it sit. "Dressed in procedure because it couldn't survive being said plainly. So let's say it plainly. A path back to what was lost when a mortal stole a Stone and a court found Lady Death in violation of cosmic law. He moved his eyes across the gallery, section by section, slow and deliberate, giving everyone present the chance to meet his gaze and disagree with him.

  Nobody took it.

  "Most of you who voted for the motion did so not because you believe this child should be erased, but because you are afraid of what Oblivion might do if you voted otherwise. Which tells you something about the state of this court."

  The Powers That Be and Sire Hate shifted.

  Eternity didn't even look at them.

  "Lady Death is gone," he said. "And I am going to say the thing that every being in this gallery has been carefully not saying in rooms with more than two people present." He turned his eyes to Oblivion and left them there. "You were glad. Most of you. Nearly all of you. You have not once, in all the time since, genuinely wanted her back." His voice didn't rise. Didn't need to. "Except the ones whose reasons have nothing to do with the multiverse and everything to do with personal grudges."

  Oblivion said nothing. The shadow around him had pulled in tight.

  Nobody in the gallery was looking at him directly. Several of them had found the floor interesting. Several more had discovered interest in the middle distance. One or two were looking at Oblivion with expressions they were working to keep neutral, and not quite succeeding.

  Eternity let the silence run.

  "But," Eternity continued, and several beings leaned forward because a cosmic entity saying but after a monologue like that was either going to resolve everything or make it much worse, "the vote has been cast, and it has landed where it has landed. Which means we do what is done when a cosmic determination arrives at a tie."

  He glanced at Domino briefly, a quick and deliberate glance, and held it just long enough for the two people paying close attention to catch what it communicated.

  Then, slowly, in the way that large and ancient things do things slowly when they have already made up their minds, he smiled.

  "Since the proceedings have arrived here," he said, his voice reaching every corner of impossible space without any apparent effort, "we'll have to settle this the old way."

  The gallery leaned forward as one.

  "I propose trial by combat."

  The sound that rose from the tiers was immediate and unanimous, thousands of beings who have spent eons adjudicating and maintaining and watching and containing, finally getting something they hadn't known they were desperate for. After all of it, all the careful grinding gears of cosmic order, the things that filled this gallery were, underneath every title and every abstraction and every ancient responsibility, exactly what they had always been.

  They wanted to see what happened next.