On the one hand, I'm not sure I did a very good job writing these guys. Possibly if they threw a boatload of snark at each other instead, but let's just say they try to be civil once in a while.

I wanted to focus on Mephistopheles not really having a concept of time, and what that means to him, especially in terms of his falling out with Providence versus his love for Her.

Providence was relaxing in the ear-popping silence of space. She had the same infuriatingly divine poise as always, Her form commanding and Her suit pristine. She turned to watch as he moved into that same stretch of space. The void seemed to instantly leach the heat of Hell from his body.

"Glad you could join me."

Mephistopheles rolled his shoulders, settling his suit jacket straight and smooth. His smile came easily, wide as the span of his confidence and doing nothing to warm Her face. "See what happens when you ask nicely?"

This was the closest they had to neutral ground, not Heaven or Hell or the surface of the world She had created. She hadn't given him a reason to come, which meant being here in the same time and space was the only reason. He wasn't sure how long ago She had started doing that, Her requests the only thing memorable enough to mark off uncounted units of time. It was almost human of Her. It was sentimental. It was weird.

"We could make it a tradition," She suggested. He hated when She guessed at his thoughts.

"You're basing it on time? That's such a human concept."

"I think it's clever. Did you notice they made a new calendar?"

"That doesn't actually impact us, does it?"

This insistence on thinking in linear time didn't solve anything. Time hadn't made Her bored of Her little human project. Time didn't buy anyone forgiveness.

"It impacts them. You spend so much time playing with human souls, I'm sure you would understand it if you tried."

He still didn't understand why She didn't make them in Her image. Oh, some of them, vaguely, if you squinted to only see that narrow band of light caught by human eyes and ignored the staggering octaves of Her voice and the fact that She smelled like the center of a star. She had soon gotten bored with that and allowed them more variety. Which, being human, they now fought over.

They were clay and salt water. She was starlight and dark matter, energy and entropy, the terrible beauty of life and the calm mercy of death.

And She was watching Her terrarium again, chin resting on Her hand as the world turned and sunlight glowed through the soft eggshell of the atmosphere. An easy smile creased Her face, the expression holding more nuance for him than the continents below.

He wanted to study that smile, to bask in Her presence as he had for an eternity that had been allowed to end, but for that he needed to prove something about Her human experiment.

"Well, can't waste this 'time' of yours sitting around here. Some of us have a lot of souls to punish, after all."

Providence turned back towards him, Her smile widening to include a flash of perfect pointed teeth. "I could almost suspect you were trying to do your job."

"Maybe because I am doing my job." She had a habit of making him feel like a sulky angel again, and it drove him crazy because that self was gone.

"Mephistopheles." She was the only one who could load so much weight into his name. That never changed.

Nothing changed. Nothing was changing. Nothing was allowed to change. If he was angry and dissatisfied, if he was unforgiven, that was how it would always be.

"Do you have something to say to me?"

"Not a thing." He reached for Her hand and could swear She sighed when She offered it for him to kiss. It was one vanished gesture he had regained, regulated to these meaningless moments.

To borrow a human word, he might have called the kiss he pressed to Her palm 'tradition.'