Here you go: I hope you like, and that you let me know. Thanks again to everyone who is taking a few moments to review: I really appreciate that! Smishes to Cerridwen7777 [you rock, doll, for all your cheerleading and support when times are difficult] and to AmberDreams for your proofreading. I tweak endlessly, so any typos are mine. And also to ster1: I could not have gotten this chapter the way I wanted without your insights, G, and I really appreciate the time you took over it. ;-)

Some dialog borrowed from Two Minutes to Midnight

Warnings Foul language, blasphemy up the wazoo and back again, S5 spoilers

Bogus Journey

Bobby curses softly under his breath at Dean, and heaves him up and out of the back seat of the Impala like he's hauling a sack of russets up from his cellar. Dean flails his arms pathetically and slurs out a mouthful of generic abuse, flops limply into a sitting position and gapes down as the old man squats, lifts his boots up onto the footplates.

Bobby nods in satisfaction. "Well, I had thought to crush the damn thing, but maybe it'll come in useful after all."

Dean scowls down at him. "Your wheelchair?" he says frostily. "Are you kidding me? I'm the prince of fuckin' light, for crying out—"

"Prince of fuckin' darkness, more like," Bobby barks out as he stands. "Do you kiss our Father who art in Heaven with that mouth?"

Dean grits his teeth, tries to push up himself, groans out as pain crests. "It's a steaming bucket of fail," he hisses out bitterly. "I can walk. Hell, I can fly. I'm feeling better. It's wearing off." And then he slumps dejectedly, hunches forward to keep his shoulders clear of the chair back, and he's trembling, blood boiling hot one minute, and freezing his veins solid the next. "Jesus. What did that bastard put in me? What has he done to me? This can't happen to me now…"

He's rambling, losing it, he knows, because the devil has Sam in his grasp and might be raising Hell with him even now, might be coming for them, and he can't protect them. And he can see his brother, see Lucifer, in his head, and it's Sam's face, staring at him with that supercilious, pitying look, and he can hear him tsk out his disgust at how low Michael has fallen, consorting with the hairless apes, seeking their counsel and taking comfort in them, being led by them. He squeezes his eyes closed, leans into his hand. "Don't go too fast," he mutters. He remembers something then, cranes his neck around painfully. "Where is Castiel?"

"Asleep in the front seat," Bobby says. "He's worn out. I covered him, he'll be okay until he comes round. Nights are warm enough now so he can—"

"No…" Dean makes his voice as firm as he can, lifts a hand, clutches at thin air until he grabs a handful of Bobby's sleeve. "No. That's not happening. You need to get him up, get him inside. If he sleeps, he needs to be with people. With us. So we can wake him if – if he needs to be woken."

Bobby fixes him with a beady eye that reads him loud and clear, and he nods slowly, makes his way around to the shotgun seat. Dean lolls his head back, rests it at an angle on his shoulder, stares up at the sky. He feels drugged to the gills, disoriented, and he wonders if he will ever feel the clouds against his skin again.

Castiel rouses with a yelp, emerges wild-haired and bleary-eyed, smothers a yawn and skulks up alongside the wheelchair. He eyes Dean critically. "You don't look any better," he says, and his tone is disappointed, undercut with a sharper note of accusation. "In fact, you look sicker."

He opens his mouth on a tart reply that turns into a fit of spluttering and coughing, sees Castiel's eyes widen, and then Bobby is thrusting a handful of paper towels under his mouth and they blossom red as he spits up. "Ugh."

"Gabriel," Bobby says pointedly. "Will he come? After what you did to him?"

He runs his tongue along his teeth, shudders, hoiks up some more bloody saliva. "He'll come," he husks out messily. "He's probably already here. Hiding."

The old man starts pushing him towards the house, jangles the doorkeys out of his pocket as they grind over rough ground that sends pain jarring through Dean's back until he's gasping with it. He feels weak, weary, can feel his eyelids sagging, feel his jaw go slack, feel himself slipping into a state of torpor that makes him wonder if he's going into hibernation.

"We can only wait so long for Gabriel," Castiel says suddenly, from beside him, and when he continues, it's low and apologetic. "If this really is Detroit, then we need to assume the worst. If Lucifer has Sam, he'll know you're damaged. He'll come for you, and you won't have much of a chance in this condition."

Bobby is putting his back into pushing the wheelchair up the ramp, pants out the effort when they come to a stop outside the door. "What is it with Detroit?" he snaps out irritably. "You said that before. Detroit. Like it meant something big, like it was significant." He jiggles the key in the lock, pushes the door open. "I know you've had your doubts, Dean," he says. "We all have. But Sam might have gotten out of there. And even if he didn't, it was real important to him that we have faith in him. Shouldn't we at least try?"

Castiel reaches inside and snaps on the lights, sighs. "Sam would have called us by now if he was safe, Bobby, don't you think? And Lucifer is – persuasive."

Persuasive like Alastair was, Dean thinks, and he wonders abstractly how many times Sam might have been made whole again. The lights hurt his eyes, and he squints into the brightness before he blinks his lids tight closed and lists over, and he's numb. "You don't know, Bobby," he whispers. "You have no clue what it's like, to be persuaded. And you haven't seen what I've seen."

"Well maybe if someone would tell me," Bobby scathes out, as he pushes the wheelchair into the den.

"Detroit, it's… significant," Castiel says cautiously from behind them. "Dean…?"

Dean braces his head on his hand, leans into his clammy palm. "Tell him, just tell him," he murmurs, and he can feel the chair moving again. "Need to lie down. Detroit… s'worst place in the galaxy. It's blessed with suck. Best part about Cleveland is that it isn't Detroit. Shouldn't even be in the fuckin' dictionary…" He goggles up at the old man as Bobby and Castiel lift him up and maneuver him onto the bed in the den. "Detroit is exactly how you imagine it."

"Why don't you tell me how you really feel, son?" Bobby says. "And aside from all that, I—"

"You haven't called me son since… since," he says stupidly. "And Sam said yes in Detroit."

And he closes his eyes, turns his face away and drifts.

There's a cadaverous old man dressed in black who looks like Severus Snape sitting on a rock about ten feet away. The guy is hunched over like a vulture, hands clasped on his thighs, gazing out over the precipice into a cerulean blue sky, and Dean muses that it's nine kinds of weird, since his last memory is of Gabriel's skinny features creasing with worry because nothing was happening, Michael wasn't responding, wasn't getting better. And he can remember that Bobby pressed his hand up to his mouth and turned away, and Castiel looked down at him and said his name, said both of his names, and his face crumpled up with grief and tears. And then Castiel heaved their brother up by his shirt collar and hollered down into his face, while Gabriel just stood there and took it, his own sadness shadowing his eyes.

But what the heck, the weather is great here, and he isn't hurting, so he hails the guy. "Where is this place?"

The man glances over briefly, doesn't respond, turns his gaze back to the front.

Dean starts picking his way over the stony ground, wondering idly if this might be the precise spot where Gabriel found him. "Hey. Where are we?" he says again, as he ranges alongside the man's rock. "What place is this?"

"The Toroweap Overlook," the man supplies distantly, as he keeps staring out. "We are three thousand vertical feet above the Colorado river, about fifty miles downriver from the south rim and seventy miles upriver from the skywalk."

"Uh-huh." Dean sits his own butt down on a flat rock, rests his chin on his knees, and spends a few minutes drinking it in. "I always thought I'd come here with my brother," he says randomly.

The man snorts out in amusement. "Which one? Your brothers are legion, Michael. For they are many."

And that prickles. "Don't talk about us like we're demons," Dean replies shortly.

"The legions of Heaven and the legions of Hell are two sides of the same coin, Michael," the man says. "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, in my experience it usually is a duck. Even if it is a different color."

"Yeah, well I avoid clichés like the plague," Dean bats back, and he shrugs. "Sam, actually. But he never seemed all that interested."

The admission sends a sudden bolt of regret streaking through him, for the years of driving desolate roads across the lower forty-eight without ever seeing beyond the next kill, the next bar, the next nameless drunken screw in the toilets, without ever checking out, without ever letting down his guard, without ever seeing the good, the right and the pure, regret for constantly looping a quest he inherited before he even really knew what it was and what it meant. And regret for the way it crushed his hope, his brother's too, regret because part of him died when that happened, regret because he knows it couldn't ever be any other way, because maybe they never really had any control to begin with.

He senses rather than sees the figure glance down, the curl of his lip.

"And now it's too late for Sam Winchester, Michael," the man drawls sonorously. "So instead you visit this place with Death as your guide."

Too late. It's acute, the way it skewers into him. He feels his pulse start throbbing above his right eye, and he's well aware of how he flinches. "That's melodramatic," he says, and he tries to be curt, but his voice wobbles. "If par for the course." He pinches the bridge of his nose, slants his eyes up, manages a thin smile. "So how's it hanging, Death? And I assume this is a dream?"

The Horseman nods graciously. "You assume correctly, Michael. It is the only way I can talk with you."

"Uh-huh," he grunts back noncommittally, even as he hikes his eyebrows up suspiciously. And the weird just ramped up to eleven, he thinks, because why Death should want to talk to him instead of squishing him underfoot like a bug is beyond him. But what the fuck, he plays along, hopes that myth about dying in real life if you die in your dreams isn't true at the same time as he wonders if it even applies to what he is now. "So what now, we play Battleship?" he says wearily. "Best, three out of five? Or have you come to reap me? Given that you're on my brother's team."

"You have a vastly inflated sense of your own importance," the Horseman says placidly, and then he smiles, just barely. "But, since you raised the subject… is that what you still want?"

Dean shivers, swallows, deflects. "Things like you don't scare me as much as they used to," he offers, and he hopes it sounds convincing. "I'm right up there with you on the totem now. And you can't do anything to me that hasn't already been done."

Death smiles properly now, regards him thoughtfully for a long, dragged-out moment. "Perhaps you should be scared, since I know all your secrets," he says then, softly, intimately. "Everything you want, and need, everything you yearn for. How you don't want this cup you've been given. How you crave peace, tranquility, rest. And how ironic it is that all these years it needed only one mistake, one slip, one split second of inattentiveness, meeting that one lucky demon, or werewolf, or wendigo, or angry spirit. How ironic it is that you killed with abandon, but that you had to be lucky every single fraction of a second of your life. How ironic it is that whatever killed you would need to be lucky only once, one single fraction of a second of luck. And yet they never were, even though you wanted it, and longed for it, and dreamed of it. The peace it promised." The Horseman pauses, sighs out reflectively. "And how ironic it is that even when you seized your chance and welcomed it, there was no peace… and how ironic it is that you killed with abandon even in death."

Dean bristles hostility, thinks he might even flick poisonous porcupine spines out of himself. "Yeah, well irony can be pretty ironic sometimes," he says tightly. "And I didn't deal for my brother as some sort of suicide by hellhound. I didn't seize my chance. And I didn't welcome it either." There's no point in denying the rest of it, he thinks, so he doesn't, he just glowers.

The Horseman considers him for a moment. "You're missing my point," he says finally. "You're thinking like Dean Winchester." His eyes narrow critically. "But you're not really him and never were. You're Michael. The good soldier, the obedient son, the righteous man, doing your duty and following the path that was set for you. Alerting Azazel to the Winchesters, and making your demon deal, so you could cast yourself into the Pit to fulfill the prophecy and break the first seal."

Dean freezes for a moment, and it's a vicious silence. "That's crap," he says finally, low and savage, through a frown. "There was no path. I didn't tell Yellow Eyes anything. What does that even mean? It makes no fuckin' sense." He forces out a humorless laugh, describes air quotes with his fingers. "And you forgot coming to theaters near you this summer."

Death raises an elegant eyebrow, isn't deterred, comes right back at him with a smooth forehand right down the tramline. "These prophecies can be such complicated things," he concedes mildly. "I find a flow chart helps, but I'll go step by step for you. Step one, it was prophesied that Michael would kill Azazel. You know this. Step two, you told Azazel that you would be the one to kill him. It's why your grunt was told to send you back in the first place. And step three… that was how Azazel knew Sam Winchester would be the vessel he sought for his grand plan to free Lucifer and build Hell on earth. It had to be brothers, you see. It had to be Michael's brother."

It's like a gut punch that slams right through his middle and out the other side with his vital organs clutched in its grip, cauterizing his nerve endings as it rips him apart inside. It leaves Dean hollow and burnt out, wheezing for breath as the air is forced out of his lungs, and he rewinds to that moment, hears himself, right up in Azazel's face, look into my eyes, you sonofabitch, 'cause I'm the one that kills you. He squeezes his eyes shut, swallows back red-hot acid bile, slams his hand up to his mouth, falls forward onto the other hand, hacks the searing fluid into the dirt, chokes out a dehydrated, incoherent, shivering protest. "That isn't… I didn't do that, I didn't… know. Christ. Sammy."

"There was always a subtext, Dean," the Horseman chides languidly. "You always were the good son, doing your Father's bidding, even if it doomed your brother. Because Michael was always there, after all." And now he's implacable. "Driving."

Dean swipes his mouth harshly with his sleeve. "I didn't tell Yellow Eyes that so he'd – fuck." He spits out again, and the raw, shriveling sensation in his guts makes him groan out in distress. He knows his voice cracks with his own desperation. "I didn't know any of that. I made the deal to save my brother. It wasn't a puzzle piece in some grand plan." He looks up at the Horseman through watering, burning, blinking eyes. "And I didn't red flag Sam to Yellow Eyes," he whispers. "There's no subtext to any of it. That isn't how it was… I wasn't – Michael wasn't – always there."

The Horseman smiles again, and his tone manages to sound irritable and patient at the same time. "What came before is academic. Dean's memories are academic, memories of a reality that no longer exists, that never really existed. A shadow play." He pauses a beat. "But I'll humor you," he continues and his voice is light now, mocking. "I'll compromise. Perhaps it was a mixture of Dean throwing himself in the Pit to save his brother, and Michael throwing himself in the Pit to doom his brother." He nods sagely. "After all, that is what you did, isn't it? Doomed your brother even as you saved him. How convenient it is for Heaven's own grand plan to defeat the devil and build Paradise on earth."

Dean can feel the knot of tension in his stomach pull even tighter. "There was no grand plan," he insists again, and he knows it's futile.

The Horseman stares back. "If you say so," he retorts acidly. "I suppose we can call it a hidden agenda, if you prefer. And how advantageous it is for the hidden agenda that your brother is alive to meet his destiny alongside the good soldier who blindly follows his orders without questioning their intent and who is giving them."

Dean stares ahead, resolute. "Listen, you sonofabitch," he spits out. "I may be him, but I'm me too and my memories are real. I made that deal to save my brother, because I love him and he's a good man who deserved better than some demon-blood Yellow Eyes spawn backstabbing him in the dark. My life wasn't a shadow play before this Michael thing. It was real. And I wasn't following anyone's orders."

Death is still studying him, and when he replies his tone is one of finality. "You know I'm right, Michael. From the beginning, your Father knew this was how it would end. You did too, deep down inside, and you played your part to perfection. As you will continue to do." And he curls the corners of his mouth up in a smile that is at once sympathetic, understanding, and patronizing. "For the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." He nods thoughtfully. "Of course the question now is what you decide to do about all of this. Now you have considered all of the steps along the path to this moment. And how you were… steered."

And the words echo around Dean's head, and fuck, he doesn't ever want to think there was anyone else steering, wants to believe he saved his brother for his brother, wants to think he did it as himself, as Dean Winchester, that no one was pulling the strings and that there isn't even the remotest possibility that he wouldn't have given himself up for Sam if it weren't for Michael pushing him in that direction, Michael pushing him for an ulterior motive that had nothing to do with his grief, and his loss, and the emptiness, and despair, and wretchedness of Cold Oak. But even while he wants to believe it, there's a minute where he reflects on the million random acts of chance, the million random choices, each one of them bringing him here to this point, this choice, and this destiny. And fuck that.

"No," he says, and his voice cracks on the word. "You're wrong, you sonofabitch. I won't be a part of this, and I'm not throwing anyone in the fire. I'm not a hammer, and I have had it to here with being manipulated by my family, whoever they may be. Fuck you, fuck orders, and fuck the grand plan to Hell in a handbasket. There's a right and a wrong here… I have free will, I have a choice, and I'll damn well make my own destiny." He stops for a second, sucks in a breath, and suddenly he can hear his own words to Castiel, clear in his head. "And it's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in Paradise."

The Horseman tsks laconically. "Is this mutiny? What will your Father think, Michael?"

Dean surges bolt upright, takes a few steps towards the edge of the drop, leans to pick up a rock and hurls it violently into the ravine, hears it echo as it clatters its way down until it falls silent again except for the buzz of insects and the cries of far-off birds. "I don't give a damn about my Father's orders," he grits out. "He told me I'd have to kill my brother… he dumped that on me, and then he left. What the fuck kind of dad does that?" He can hear a note of hysteria in his voice, and he fists and unfists his hands rapidly, closes his eyes, and deep breathes his heart down from the jump into hyperspace to something manageable.

"It's disobedience."

"I don't give a damn if it's disobedience," he snaps back roughly. "See, you might want to look at all this as Michael making me what I am, and how everything I've done was all him. But maybe I'm what makes him who he is. Maybe I call the shots now. Maybe I'm the boss of him."

The reply is succinct, satisfied. "Good. And let's hope there were no hikers further down."

Dean whirls back round, exasperated. "Good?" He clutches at the back of his neck with both hands, tips his head back to stare up into the blue for a few seconds, grounds himself before he looks back at the Horseman. "Look, what the fuck is this, anyway? You came to me. What do you even want if you aren't here to reap me?"

The Horseman's gaunt, shadowed face splits in a hideous grin, and his dead eyes are suddenly sparking alight with sly satisfaction. "I want to make a deal."

"Word to the wise, pal, you look even creepier when you do that," Dean snaps, and he bends to pick up another rock. "And I don't make deals anymore. I'm my own man, remember?" He weighs the rock in his hand, tosses it up into the air, catches it, pulls back his arm to let it fly, stands there then, sort of aimlessly really, and scuffs his boots in the loose shale underfoot.

"I'm not unsympathetic to your dilemma, Michael, despite what you may think." The Horseman's voice is curiously gentle now, might even be sincere. "I know that you feel torn. I know that you're being pulled in two directions, by your grunt and your friend on one hand, and your sense of duty and your dreams of peace on the other. I know the thought of destroying your brother tears and terrifies you… and I know that you hunger and thirst to watch him die at your hands, like he is meant to. And yes… I know you do have a choice, in a very real sense. An alternate course of action. Plan B."

Dean feels himself tense then, feels his jaw lock, finds his hands are shaking, and he rams them down into his pockets. His voice is ragged and hoarse. "How do you—"

"Oh, it doesn't matter how," the Horseman says, suddenly brisk and dismissive. "And don't panic, I haven't told your brother."

"You haven't told my… why haven't you told my brother?" And Dean trails off, studies the Horseman, sitting there, hunched and forbidding. And now suddenly his brain is whirring, and he's thinking, wondering, surmising, and he's twisting his mental Rubik's cube around, left, right, up, down, doubling back, until all the colors match. And he pulls his hands out of his pockets and rests them on his hips, because they aren't shaking anymore, and he feels composed, collected, maybe even serene.

"You tell me I have a vastly inflated sense of my own importance," he says, and his voice is rock steady. "But you want to make a deal. With me." He smiles. "That means I'm important to you. That I have something you want."

Death dips his head minutely, grudging confirmation.

Dean cocks his head, eyeballs the saturnine features for a minute that stretches out between them like taffy. "Well. Here we are, taking potshots at each other's battleships after all," he says easily. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

The Horseman stares him down. "All I really want is to sit here and look at the view," he replies. "Look at it, Michael. It's one of the many embodiments of this world's unsurpassed beauty, and your Father's awesome power. Look at how beautiful your Father's creation is. Look at it, and contemplate your own insignificance in comparison." He leans forward slightly. "Honestly, I wish you would."

Dean doesn't know if the old guy is pushing him with his Horseman mojo, but he treats it like the order it is, complies, turns, stares out at the vista sweeping before him. The sun hasn't long risen, and it bathes the blue morning with its light, a pastel glow where the land meets the sky on the other side of the canyon. He can see the colors etched into the bedrock as he sweeps his eyes down walls dull with gray, buff and brown, flaring with orange, pink and red, layered limestone, sandstone, shale, granite, schist, slopes, cliffs, crags, vertical fractures, pillars of rock intercut by flat-topped mesas and buttes. It's vast, a wilderness, breathtaking, and he chokes out a soft, formless noise of joy at its glory.

"I am as old as this place," the Horseman declares, suddenly wistful. He nods in affirmation. "Of course you know this already, Michael."

Dean smiles crookedly, despite himself. "That's random. And, yeah… old." And what the fuck, he thinks, might as well give it another shot of bravado while he's still breathing. "You look good," he says cautiously. "You won't be getting carded at the liquor store, but you look good." He flinches at the Horseman's look: grim, hard, and heavy. "So you are sentimental about the view," he throws out, as diplomatically as he can.

"Oh yes, I am partial to a room with a view." The Horseman stares up at him, eyes narrowed and speculative now. "Of course, a room with a view costs more." And he flicks his gaze back ahead, looks fixedly at the horizon.

Dean rubs at his jaw, can feel himself getting testy and confused again. "Look," he says finally. "Aside from all the psychoanalysis and doublespeak, do you actually have a point?"

Death's face contorts abruptly with distaste and displeasure. "Yes, I have a point," he hisses sourly. "Your brother has me bound to him with some unseemly spell. He has me where he wants, when he wants. He is making me his weapon… storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, destruction, death. My reapers are no longer my own, they are entranced, enchanted, and enslaved. And I want this leash around my neck off." He shakes his head in what looks like disbelief. "I'm more powerful than you can process, and I'm enslaved to a bratty child having a tantrum. "

Dean looks straight into the Horseman's eyes then, snorts out a false laugh. "I can relate," he says dryly.

"You can unbind me if you choose to," Death continues.

"If I destroy my brother?" Dean snorts. "I'm not fighting him any time in the near future, much less killing him. Your buddy Pestilence fricasseed me but good." He grimaces dramatically. "Hate to tell you this, but it isn't looking good for our hero."

Death tilts his head, amused. "I think that when you wake you'll find your injuries are no longer a problem, Michael."

Dean makes his half-nod-half-smile-half-wink face in acknowledgment, tracks the Horseman's hand as he raises it, and the ring glints in the sunlight, dull silver, obsidian stone in the center.

"You want this," Death says flatly. "And I'm inclined to give it to you."

Dean waits a beat, puzzled and wary. "You are?"

"I am. If you promise to be bound by my terms."

And that pulls Dean right up, flips him back to Crowley's cocksure confidence that he could waltz right into Bobby's and make it out the other side, and the memory of how he couldn't bring himself to let the knife fall, how even the thought of breaking his sworn promise filled him with self-disgust. "Your terms?" he ventures suspiciously. "And what terms might those be?"

"That you promise to do whatever it takes to put Lucifer back in his cage," the Horseman says, and his eyes are knowing, his lips thin and pursed. "I like this world, and its inhabitants, Michael. I don't want it or them annihilated. So I want your promise that when the time comes, you'll throw your brother in that fiery pit and back into his cell with a smile on your face, no matter who he's wearing. And I will give you the means to do that."

Dean gapes inelegantly, gropes for words. "Let me get this straight," he manages. "You bring me here and tell me all about how everything I've done has been setting me up for this destiny… that I'm going to destroy my brother and this planet, and jumpstart judgment day. And then you do a one-eighty and sign up for plan B. If I bind myself to you."

Death shrugs. "Something like that. So. Deal or no deal?"

Dean can feel a muscle twitch in his cheek, feel his heart start to pound, because he somehow knows he's full-steaming ahead with an iceberg looming, that two thirds of whatever he's about to commit to is hidden beneath the surface of some murky, swirling sea, and that if he says the words they will sear his throat and tongue and shred his lips as they leave his mouth.

He stares unblinkingly into the Horseman's empty eyes. "Death is a tree-hugger," he marvels. "And he's pro-life. Who'd have thunk? And no deal."

And that gets a reaction, a slight tremor, and Death's knuckles whiten as he grips onto his bony knees. "No deal?" he snarls.

"No deal. Sorry, Death, you lose. It was Professor Plum."

Dean turns back to gaze out over the canyon, sweeps his hand expansively across thin air. "Look at this," he says, and he shoots a look back over his shoulder, smirks down at the Horseman's flinty-eyed annoyance. "Honestly, I wish you would. Nearly two billion years of this earth's geological history exposed as the Colorado River eroded its merry way through this canyon. It took that water seventeen million years to do this. I always wanted to see it. And now I'm here, and you're right, it's a thing of wonder…" He glances back at Death again. "I suggest you look at it and contemplate your own insignificance, because next to this you don't matter. What you want doesn't matter. What matters is this. Isn't that why you brought me here?"

He makes his way back to his rock, sits down. "It's like I said," he offers. "I'm not a hammer. But I'll humor you. I'll compromise." And suddenly the words spill out smoothly. "I'll throw my brother in that fiery pit and back into his cell, and I'll do it no matter who he's wearing at the time." His voice is assured, certain, decisive, and he isn't remotely perturbed. The words don't hurt, and his heart beats slow and steady in his chest. "But I'm not binding myself to you. If I do it, it'll be because it's the right thing to do, to save this world and everyone in it. Not because someone new is jerking my chain down the road."

He slants his eyes sideways. "You can give me the means to do it," he says, and now he injects a note of menace. "Or I can take it. Because I'm running this show."

The Horseman regards him through a long, weighty silence, and then he tips his head.

"I believe you have sunk my battleship, Michael."

TBC

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