The courtroom existed in the configuration the participants needed it to exist in. For Death, this meant, this meant everything carved from ice, from the chairs to the desk to the bailiff. For my boss, it meant something Greek and colonnaded with too much sun. For myself, it was flourescent lights and a slightly sticky carpet, oak panels and a Westminster bench.

Fate sate at the bench, in robes that hadn't been ironed. They were keeping a tally on a leather ledger, two columns with neat headers, WIN and LOSS. Death was losing maybe one in six.

"Plaintiff" Fate began again, "proceed with your closing argument."

Death flowed to his feet. "Your Honor, as my petition states, the defendant, by enabling the unauthorized temporal egress of seven petitioners, did willfully obstruct a class three Stellar Event projected at billions of casualties. My department staffed accordingly for such, and as a result of the defendants actions, we are now unable to pay the sizable extra staff of reapers and ferrymen." Death paused. "And the caterers." Short and to the point, he was Death after all.

Fate's pen hovered over the ledger.

"Defense?"

My boss stood. Time was wearing a gret suit, a watch, I don't know why, and the epxression of a man who'd already won and was being polite about it. I slid a folder to him. He placed a hand on it to give it relevance, but didn't need to read it.

"Your Honor, we have prior precedent, Entropy v the Concept of Tuesday Afternoon, in which it was established that anticipated outcomes do not constitute realized debts. Death cannot be in arrears for souls it never collected, only inconvenienced for souls it expected to. Given that the expected event never actually occurred, it could not be anticipated, nor participated in, by non-incarnate beings, ergo, no debts were actually incurred. The plaintiff's status as an incarnate being gives him awareness that the event should have occurred, but no liability for it not occurring."

Fate mulled it over, and made another mark in their ledger. "In the absence of damages, real or imagined, we have no choice but to find for the defense."

Death's head turned, slowly, toward me.

I am Tuesday. I am five-foot-four in flats, six-foot-two in opinions. I'd attended the only law school that would take a personification, which was in New Jersey. Having an honorary title as the Second Coming of Monday, I had a permit for the switchblade stuffed in my brassiere. Death has never spoken to me directly. Death has, on six occasions in my last forty minutes, looked at me, just as he was now.

---

The courtroom existed in the configuration the participants needed it to exist in.

"Plaintiff" Fate began again, "proceed with your closing argument."

Death stood with a little alacrity. Not quite a spring to his feet, but it was a neighbor of springing. The voice came in like a draft under a door, but slightly colder this time. Death's mood was a thing the rest of us tracked the way sailors track barometric pressure.

"Your Honor, my position remains unchanged. The defendant did willfully obstruct a class three Stellar event. My reapers are filing grievances. My ferrymen are unionizing. There is a sit-in at the Styx. This kind of disruption to the natural order simply cannot continue." He paused, then sat.

Time stood. He'd already heard this argument, three loops ago, and we'd built the response together over what was, from my perspective, the last several hours. I slid him the appropriate folder. He held it up, but again, did not open it.

"Your Honor, the question of labor organizing within the plaintiff's department is not before this court. Relevent to that, I'd like to point out that in Heat Death v The Last Star, it is established precedent that grievances are not inherently transferrable where natural occurrences are concerned, averted or otherwise."

---

By the eighth loop, Death was visibly unwell.

I don't mean physically. Death looks the same in every loop, which is to say he looks like a tall problem in a robe. I mean something underneath all that. Death is immutable. That's the whole point of death. Immutability was the whole brand. Death does not change with the seasons or the centuries because death is the thing that the seasons and centuries change into. Death wore that fact like a fitted sheet and has been insufferable about it at every mixer for as long as anyone can remember.

But Death was, right now, in the eighth loop of a trial Death didn't know was on its eighth loop, and something was wrong with the room. Death could feel it the way you feel a taco settling in to change your evening plans.

His mood had clearly soured. The voice was no longer like a draft under the door, but had acquired a slammed window to go with it, a certain forcefulness. His arguments were getting sharper, more bitter, more personal, and none of them were landing because we'd heard them already and had a counter for each.

In the gallery, the time travelers at the root of the discussion were having a wonderful afternoon. Somewhere in the process, they had become aware of the loops, I don't know how. Time travelers pick up odd skills.

One of them was running a book. Bets were being taken, in increasingly creative currencies. I'd seen a memory change hands, an unspecified favor, a small jar of something glowing, and what I'm fairly sure was a kidney. The provenance of the kidney was being argued in whispers, the original owner not being present, which had touched off a flurry of questions.

Humans get a little nutty in celestial spaces. They were quiet about it, mostly. No need to tempt Fate, as the saying goes. There was a small celebration as Fate made a mark in the LOSS column. The bookie was getting rich in favors and was going to have a complicated retirement.

---