A/N: Good Omens-ervation of the day: Sometimes I feel as though I am the only member of the fandom that does not have Crowley growing his hair out again. Don't get me wrong; David Tennant has the jaw structure and exquisite features what give credit to any hairstyle and, yes, I was not immune to how good 'Crowley' looked with his little half-pulled back bun thing that everyone ejaculates over. I've just always preferred short hair; on women as well as men. I think a beautiful face stands out more with short hair, and I honestly think Crowley looks a freakin' spunk bubble with his hair cut into its little spiky. (Shrugs) That's just me, though. Fandom is a wonderful world where we are free to indulge what we enjoy, and if you personally get off on Crowley with long, flowing lustrous locks what would put a palomino to shame, then go crazy with it. Outside of flashback scenes, however, it is not going to happen in this fic. No matter how much I love the idea of Aziraphale grabbing a big handful of it during particular not-safe-for-work... moments. (Drifts droolingly away into fantasy land)

(Clears throat) Anyway, moving right along! Thank you to those lovely people what dropped a review for last chapter and thanks also to everyone who is reading, following and favouriting! I hope you enjoy, gentle readers, and I shall catch you on the far side!

~X~

~Tuesday, April 9th - 2019~

London's Soho

Nine months to the Apex...

Humanitas had been knocking on the front door of A.Z. Fell & Co for quite some time.

Well, not consecutive time. That might very well have been considered far too sad for words and a terrible indictment of his not having otherwise the more interesting things to do with his day.

He had gone and attended to some other business when it became apparent that his summons was not being adhered to. Taken a short walk, purchased a coffee and a poppy seed muffin. Shared most of said muffin with the rather forthright ducks of St James's Park. Received a rather considerable fine from a somewhat constipated looking gentleman for feeding the ducks a poppy seed muffin St James's Park. Went to the post office and summarily paid the fine. Certainly, he might have used his magic to had dispensed with the matter entirely, but that was hardly in the nature of what kindness was all about, wasn't it?

Humanitas had in fact popped back to Aziraphale's store approximately three times in the course of one morning. He had supposed that the angel might very well have taken himself out and about on some manner of adventure, more the likely concerning the opening of some new delicatessen or patisserie or whatever other food specific organisation might have sprung up in Soho and might be frequented at that time of day. But it was strange for him to in fact be absent from the store for hours at a time.

At least it had been, so far as Humanitas was aware. And he felt that he did rather know the angel relatively well. They had been acquainted for over six thousand years, after all.

"Funny. He normally sings out that he's closed, in the least." Humanitas checked his watch; fake leather, (of course) older than the hills and encapsulating granule thin filaments what might have once been a battery but had rotted away over forty years prior. Pure force of will kept the hands ticking over and these hands indicated that the time was currently eleven am. "Odd time of day to be out. Breakfast must have run late..."

Humanitas supposed there were any number of things what might waylay an otherwise simple natured angel in todays' fast paced society. Indeed, it was more the likely that he had gotten caught up in some sort of caper orchestrated by his equally fast paced little ginger-haired demon friend. A possibility for which the Virtue could hardly imagine ever holding the angel to task. A handsome face was near impossible to say no to, at least so far as his own experiences were concerned.

The Virtue was snapped smartly out of his reveries by the itinerant jingling of his mobile phone. It was antiquated, much as his watch, and still had a small antenna which he was required to first yank out from the main body before flipping open the base and pressing yet another button further to answer it.

"Yes, hello?"

There was a brief burst of static interference, which the Virtue cleared with the slightest infinitesimal flicker of his mind. A voice what he hadn't heard for some time came through with a degree of clarity what a mobile phone of that advanced age really ought not to have succeeded with.

"Humanitas? It's Patientia."

Humanitas's smile warmed all the more brightly beneath the apron of his thick, impeccably trimmed moustache.

"Hello there, my dear! Oh it's been ever so long. How the devil are you?"

"To be honest... going out of my mind, a little." She gave a slight, rather the more feminine sounding chuckle. Patientia, the Virtue of Patience, was one of the few of their kind what chose to transition between genders throughout the passing of the years on earth. It was a means, they found, of better accommodating and understanding the various fluxes and particular circumstances of each individual they encountered. To better inform their practice.

In the past twenty years, she had been living as female; though Humanitas knew full well that the vulnerability in their voice would not have been less impactful, than if she had been male. The fear was so sepulchral. It resonated even through the speaker of the primordial mobile device.

"I... yes, the others told me that he..." Humanitas swallowed, surprising himself in that feeling of anxiety what had formed itself into a mean little lump in the nadir of his throat. It was rare, for creatures such as them. Secondary in power only to the Lord God, herself. "Well, that he's back."

"He landed somewhere in Italy." Patientia confirmed, her voice quavering. "Making his way closer by the day." She took a breath and Humanitas could near about feel her working on each individual nerve in her body so as to try and keep herself from falling apart. The drawing together alone would have been shock enough; after that insurmountable distance what had been dropped between the counterparts. But she, for that reason, was privy to the inner most workings of her other half. "I can feel it. In the earth. The air. He's... he's so... angry."

"Well, we all knew he was likely to be rather cross. Considering the circumstances." It was a vacillating understatement, of course. He turned his attention to more the relevant matters. Patientia had called him specifically and he had some understanding as to why. He was the living epitome of kindness, after all. "Where are you now?"

"Been plying my wares in America, for all the good it seems to be doing." She had a genuine little laugh at her own self-imposed folly. "Patience appears to be something of a foreign concept over here."

"Generational I think, dear." Humanitas remarked, fairly. "Not much better at it in most walks of the world, I'm afraid."

"True." She chuckled and Humanitas registered a muffled voice off in the background of wherever it was she must have been lingering. "I'm just about to board a plane back to England. He'll be arriving there soon. ...I need to meet him first."

"Let me know when your flight gets in. I can come with you to meet him."

"No. No, that... that wouldn't be a good idea... he's been gone so long. He was a handful before the sentencing, but now..." Patientia was clearly going to enormous strains to hold herself together but the terror was starting to take hold. He could hear it leaching into her words, twisting what he knew to be tears from her olive shaped eyes. "He might kill even me. He'll... well, he'll hurt me, anyway. He always did."

"Oh, my dear..." Humanitas murmured, taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket and using it to wipe at his own eyes. He knew entirely well in just what manner Ira meant to 'harm' his counterpart. They had seen it happen before; though Patientia had done her utmost to have kept it quiet, fearing reprisal on the part of her other half. It had been one of the reasons as to why they had agreed to send him far, far away in the first place. "Can you... not change your physicality? Would he be the less likely to harm you if you present yourself as male for the inaugural meeting?"

Patientia barked a bitter sounding laugh. "You must be joking. The body doesn't matter. So long as there's an orifice in which to stick it, what difference is the wrapping? And if there's no orifice available, he'll just go and tear me a new one." She had succumbed entirely to tears now and Humanitas could see her plain as day in his minds eye; slumped on a bench outside of the airport, cigarette dangling from between limp fingers and shoulders shaking with the force of her misery. "I... I'm afraid he will kill me. Over seven thousand years, Humanitas... He'll break all my bones, make me bleed... I'm so... I'm so fucking scared..."

"I shall come with you." Said the Virtue of Kindness with a firmness of tone he wasn't oft to employ. "You don't need to face this alone, Patientia."

"Please my darling, you are the very sweetest and gentlest of us all. I couldn't have you brought to harm. None of you." She sighed, marshalling some phantom degree of strength from some uncharted corner of her spirit and took another deep suck from the filter of her smoke. "No. He is my shadow. My responsibility. He has greatest need of me yet. The pull between us is worse still than the pain I know is coming."

"Is there anything at all I can do? Anything?"

"Just answer my calls. Such as you always do." He could see her still in the screen at the rear of his mind, mustering up that brave and selfless smile they all knew so well. "I'll see you soon."

"Yes. Fly safe." Humanitas murmured, waiting until it was she what had terminated the call before folding his phone back in upon itself and slipping it into his inside pocket. He spent a while simply standing there, stretching out the corners of his mind in a bid to touch to the borders of Ira's currently mobile rage. There was only silence in return. Strange to think, how something could be so resounding and violent to one of his kin and yet so indistinguishable to him.

A pair of hands slipped suddenly around to cover his eyes and he might have felt a burst of panic if not for the familiar and much coveted scent of oriental perfume drifting up to fill the channels of his nose.

"Guess who, my love?" Came the melodic voice from just behind his ear. His smile curled tightly in the corners so it appeared to be paying tribute to the gloriously styled hank of facial hair what rested above it.

"The same perfume as two hundred years ago. Does nothing change?"

"Why should I change something I know full well that you adore?" The hands slid away from his eyes and Humanitas turned. A woman was standing before him; Indian, so far as appearances were concerned and looking to be in her early to mid fifties. She was dressed in a bright, exotically detailed green sari and possessed the sort of brilliant, understated shine of a pearl.

"It's been too long." Invidia said, her accented voice (adopted entirely as keeping with appearances) and her lips curled up to form a lovely, subtle bow. Her hands, each exquisitely ornamented, refined and with nails scrupulously attended to, crossed over to rest abridge of her hips, with fingers lightly merged. The very definition of composure, which was a long running joke between the pair. It was such a feeble cover for the otherwise clamorous emotion just so barely restrained at their meetings.

"Ten years. Such lonely years at that." He extended his arms to her and she moved so as to be coveted by them. The kiss they shared conveyed a passion unrivalled by that shared between any two humans in all the ages having long since passed. Even when parted, their love could be readily measured in the passing of palms and fingers and gazes alone; caresses what reminded their owner of shapes long since relegated to memory.

"Astonishingly beautiful as ever." Humanitas at long last remarked, taking the delicate fingers of his counterpart between his own and guiding her to spin beneath the canopy of his arm.

"You always say that." Invidia smiled, lifting the hem of her sari so that the extravagant detail could best be admired. Since the moment of its cultural rise, Invidia had always adored India; in particular, its' fashion and architecture. It was of her opinion, that nothing save the decadent designs of the ancient world of Japan had ever compared to it. She spent much of her time on earth in India, carving out a home for herself and conducting what business what required direction from there.

Humanitas, of course, was never one to abide settling down. He would consider it far too self-indulgent. The world was much in need of kindness and sitting idle was not the means by which to most capably distil his influence. It required travel; both frequent and far.

Which was a shame for two creatures what loved one another quite as exquisitely as they did. Of the fourteen Vices and Virtues, they were the counterparts what were most deeply impassioned by one another; who were incomparably and unapologetically bonded.

Earth life might have worked to draw them apart all these years but distance changed nothing so far as what it was they felt for one another.

And now... now they need never be apart again.

"I always need to say that." Humanitas established, with a knowing twinkle of the eye. "You would suspect me of debauchery otherwise."

"Terrible." The Vice of Envy remarked, knowing it to be true and as frustrated by her integrated motivations as she always had been. "I trust that you will always be faithful but the long years apart... The plethora of willing, available human bodies-"

"-dim in abject comparison to that of your own, my dear. You know full well there is not but another star in the sky what shines brighter than you. You are my world, my Heaven, my everything." He kissed the back of her hand, his thick moustache tickling as it brushed atop her knuckles. She gave that same tinkling laugh; what always sounded so distinctly of a gathering of tiny bells, caught in a gentle breeze.

"I do love when you lay it on thick." She spared a glance towards the book shop, the corner of her lip twitching tellingly. "Visiting your little friend again?"

Invidia was not fond of Aziraphale, and ever the less fond of the friendship he shared with her counterpart. She would have much preferred to portray security in her relationship, but it was next to impossible when your very essence was that of envy itself. She could never help but take to wondering as to whether Humanitas derived something from his friendship with the angel, that she herself was unable to provide him with.

It was a fear what scraped against her soul like a steel grater.

"That was the intention but he doesn't appear to be in." Humanitas petted a hand to the satchel he continued lugging about over his left shoulder. He was aware that the weight was likely to be bending his spine permanently crooked like a banana, but it was a simple fix really and he'd had the bag an awful long time. And his were personal possessions what he could hardly bear the thought of parting with. So many gifts of gratitude from those humans he had helped... "Had this book over three decades now, you would think him anxious to be getting it back."

"Well I'm quite certain he hasn't been waiting around for it for thirty years." Invidia rolled her eyes, placing her hand in the crook of Humanitas's arm and giving him a light tug so as to guide him away down the footpath. "Come with me. You have time to kill and I rather fancy a reunion what takes place betwixt the privacy of four walls, don't you?"

It was crowded that morning, but the thronging human citizens found themselves compelled to move out of the way of the oddly paired couple; giving them free pass to the centre of the footpath. Even those mothers with prams found themselves willing to risk ejecting their newborns into the rush hour traffic, rather than continue on down the straight and otherwise vehicle free narrow.

"My dear, a demon could learn a thing or two about tempting from that wily tongue of yours." Humanitas said with a soft chuckle. His tone was somewhat distant, however and though it were unlikely to have been picked up on by those who did not know him, Invidia was intricately familiar with the ins and outs of her counterpart (though currently more the interested in exploring the in's, as it were) and observed what might otherwise have been interpreted as an ever so subtle nuance.

"You seem distracted, my love." She said and knew, from this alone, that Humanitas would profess as to why. He was a Virtue and they were not taken to lying under most any circumstance. And he most certainly would never have lied to her.

"I am, rather." He glanced down at Invidia. His body was that of a tall man in his late sixties and she was very slight by comparison; such that it was a little jarring to see them walking side by side. "Just received a call from Patientia."

Invidia nodded thoughtfully, understanding much of the context without Humanitas being required to go into further detail.

"Of course. ... And... how does she fair...?"

"Truthfully?" Humanitas gazed ahead, his moustache twitching its discontent. "She sounds terrified. Absolutely at the end of her tether. I offered to go and meet him with her-"

"And she refused."

"Quite. You should think her trait that of stubbornness, rather than patience." He set a hand to his stomach, an old pain resurfacing violently as the acids twirled about against the lining. He had an ulcer somewhere in there. It flared up whenever he got to worrying at considerable depth about things. And this was a concern what was more than likely to spot another couple of additional sores for his efforts.

"She was the only one ever able to reign in Ira's impulses when they flared and even she struggled at times." Invidia rubbed a palm comfortingly over Humanitas's forearm. "I wager she is only meaning to protect you."

"Protect us all." He sighed and flinched as his stomach roiled again, wondering if there might be somewhere along the way they could stop for a glass of milk. About the only thing that really seemed to settle it. "I can't even imagine what it should be like. Seeing him again after all these long years..."

"That's going to be one very angry Capital Vice."

"Angry? Oh, I hardly think that does the word at all justice, my dear." He paused as they crossed the street, cars slowing so as to permit them safe passage. The drivers were not even the least aware of their having feathered their brakes at all. "She is afraid that he will hurt her."

"Oh, he will." Said Invidia, not bothering the least with sugar coating it. That was hardly a Vice's want, to attempt to white wash a circumstance what was otherwise irredeemable. "Nothing more to be certain. The Vice and the Virtue are entitled to one another. Their passions, their will, their desires must be shared."

"But he has been alone over seven thousand years. And he was positively monstrous on a simple day by day basis. Even with more the..." He flinched his eyes shut; the thought abhorrent and distasteful. "... means he found to... satiate his... temper."

"Darling, there is nothing we can do. Patientia won't die from it. It..." She got on her tippy toes, so as to glance her fingers down either side of Humanitas's kind, loving and deeply lined face. All the worries of the world, all the cruelties of man had aged him; wracked his human body in a way what could never be undone. It was typical, she thought, for him to care so intensely for anything and everything other than himself. The sooner they could wipe those entitled wretches from the face of God's good earth, the better. "It will happen. She will heal and then the good work will begin."

"The work, you mean." He said, in a voice about as close to testy as Kindness could perpetuate. "Don't delineate it by referring to it as the 'good work'. We both know, at days end that it is simply 'work'. Thinking of it as 'good'... that just makes it all the more difficult to accommodate."

"Sometimes I hardly know whether it is that you are too sweet or too much in denial." Invidia smiled, raising her fingers so that a puddle into which they might otherwise have stepped dried up on the spot. "Either way, it is endearing and I do love you ever so much for it."

No more words were needed. Not for some time anyway. Over a decades worth of waiting was more the pressing matter. And such passions were hardly appeased by the inadequacy of conversation.

(One might go so far as to say that it was a life's lesson what quite a few creatures of the preternatural world were learning that very day!)

~X~

A/N: Thanks as always everyone for giving me just a little of your time today! If you enjoyed, it would float my boat immensely if you were to take the time to inform me as to why. Favourite or follow, you know the drill!

I shall see you over in the next update! Take care on your journey there, my darlings :)

With all my infernal love,

~MadamMortis~ xxx ooo