DISCLAIMER: Angel or any of the other Buffy characters aren't mine.They belong to Joss. The Listener is my creation.
Pain laced into every pore, and he felt like it was ripping him apart from the inside out. Everyday, every year, it was a new torment, sometimes physical, like this time, at other times, it was emotional and psychological. *It wasn't me. IT wasn't me! IT WASN'T me!* he repeated over and over in his mind as the torture escalated.
"IT WASN'T ME!" he finally shouted.
"I know," a calm voice replied, and suddenly, the pain stopped. Angel found himself lying on a cold stone floor, staring at the pair of black boots in front of him. He followed the boots up to the legs they were attached to and finally up to the blond woman that stared down at him; she raised her eyebrows at him. "You okay?"
"I've been in Hell," he ground out; the woman scrunched her face up in a look of disgust.
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," she grinned. Then she turned from him and perched herself on a stone outcropping that looked surprisingly like an altar.
"Where are we?" he asked softly, pressing his head against the coolness of the stones beneath him.
"Um, I guess you could call it Purgatory," she replied, looking him over. Angel was suddenly very conscious of his nudity, but his brief embarrassment was cut off when his body broke into the cooling sweat that had been denied him in Hell.
"Who are you?" he asked, pushing himself up with his hands.
"The Listener."
"Are you like the Whistler?"
"An immortal demon sent to even the score between good and evil?" Angel nodded. "Nope," she replied with a grin.
"Then why are you here?"
"Because the Boss sent me here," she replied mysteriously.
"The Boss? Springsteen?" Angel joked, without thinking.
"Great, I get the vamp who can still joke after a hundred years of torture." She turned her eyes, skyward. "Thanks."
"You know I'm a...." he trailed off, not knowing how to proceed.
"Vampire? Soulless creature of the night? Yeah, I know," she commented. Angel opened his mouth to correct her, but she beat him to it. "I also know, not so soulless."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why would...He send you here to help me?" Angel asked, looking away from the woman.
"Forgiveness," Listener stated simply.
"I don't deserve it," he countered.
"Let Him judge that." She looked skyward again suddenly and silent for a moment as if she was living up to her name. After seconds of silence she turned back to Angel. "Tell us?" she offered.
"What do you want me to say? Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned?" he laughed bitterly.
Listener cocked her head to the side, "If you wish." Angel took a deep breath.
"I hunted her. I hunted her friends. I killed one of her friends. All for the joy of it. I tortured a girl because I wanted her; I broke her mind and made her mine. I killed my family and their families. I enjoyed the feel of blood on my hands." By the end of his tirade, tears were streaming down his face. He met Listener's eyes. "Do I deserve forgiveness?"
"If He can forgive what I did, He can forgive you," she replied.
"What you did can't possibly be worse than what I did," he commented bitterly.
"I fell from Grace. I sided with the Dark One in the Uprising, but I saw the error of my ways. He showed us what would happen after Man got fire; it was horrible. The wars, disease, death and destruction. I thought it would help Man." She kneeled down until she was nose to nose with Angel. "I begged. He forgave."
"If He forgave you, why aren't you with Him now?"
"I knew what I did was wrong, but I also knew what He did was wrong. One mistake and we were tossed like last week's chinese food. He forgave me, but I can't forgive him," she smiled softly then her attention was drawn skywards again.
"Did you love her?" she asked suddenly.
"Who?" Angel asked.
"Her," she insisted, gesturing to the wall which now held a shimmering portrait of Buffy.
"Yes," Angel replied.
"Do you love her still?"
"I can't stop," he responded. At that, Listener beamed. The portrait dissolved into tiny balls of light that surround Angel. He shrunk back from the lights. "NO! No more. I won't go back!" he screamed, thinking of Hell and the torture that awaited him.
"Don't worry, Angel. You're not," Listener appeased as the light began to engulf him. "Hell has no room for love," she smiled. With that the light completely took him and transported him back to the floor of the mansion.
He looked skyward as the light faded away and murmured his first prayer since his change.
"Good luck," Angel heard Listener whisper before the light completely disappeared.
*You're going to need it.* was silently added in Purgatory.
FIN