A Good Cleansing
Truth be told, it had been far too long since Jill set foot inside Our Lady of Victory.

Not that the agent was the sort of person to think church attendance was mandatory to being a good Christian, but the rigors of her job often required more personal and solitary worship. It had been four whole days since Jill last read from her Bible, so burnt out by the drama involving the case she could no longer investigate for the FBI. Being Dylan Coker's former attorney, investigating his alleged drug dealings represented a conflict of interest -- one Wolfram & Hart would not hesitate for a second to exploit. And though it was tempting to use mystical resources to give the law firm a taste of its own medicine, Jill couldn't bring herself to suggest it.

It was all so unseemly, and on some level, the FBI would be no better if it went down that road. While the federal government was certainly not above morally ambiguous actions, it was still better than Wolfram & Hart. Come to think of it, a root canal with anesthetic in the bottom layer of Hell was still better than Wolfram & Hart.

Jill hoped David was here. It had been too long since she last saw the man, and after her run-in with Elise -- and having to set foot in that building -- Jill felt the need to see a friendly face. And really, what was friendlier than someone who devoted their life to God? Especially when they did without going to war.

The room was quiet, and near as Jill could tell, empty. Candle light flickered against the walls, and the statue of Mary was as striking as it had been the first time she sat within these walls.

"Hello?"

"... so it will probably always be open," David finished, leading a gaggle of Our Lady of Victory's newest altar servers out of the sacristy. "If the door is locked, you just go find Sr. Agnes and she can unlock for you, but Fr. Denis, Fr. Norb or myself will probably be here first and open up for you."

Pausing before the tabernacle, he turned to face the group. It had been wise for the Church to begin allowing the young girls to take up the candles alongside the boys; they had been excluded for too long, and the number of children reaching out to the Church and taking the acolyte training had nearly tripled by then. He stood before a group of four eleven-year-old boys and seven girls, all listening intently as he explained his lesson. A good number of them would be taking part in their very first Mass that coming Sunday.

"I think that is enough today. Do we have questions?"

Seeing David talking to a group of children, Jill decided to take a seat in one of the back pews. She smiled at the children, finding it oddly refreshing to see people so young devoting themselves to a higher power. They seemed to enjoy it, too, which took away the theory that this was something their parents were forcing them to do. It was adorable, and in the privacy of her own head, Jill said a prayer for the children -- so they wouldn't take the same path she did. To go from childhood innocence to unbridled evil ... it was something of a miracle that Jill made it back.

Even if she wasn't all the way there, and she knew she never would be. But she was no longer in Wolfram & Hart's shackles, and nothing proved that more than her meeting with Elise. Sure, Jill was off the case now, but the fact that she walked in, didn't back down, then walked back out spoke a lot to her newfound sense of self.

Catching David's eye, the agent gave a smile and a wave. Still, she sat in the pew, content to let him finish with the children before asking him for his time. She had no way of knowing how hectic David's schedule was.

The children gave a collective shake of their heads, and David sent them on their way back to class. He had noticed Jill's silent greeting, and as soon as the children filed out, he headed towards where she sat. Smiling in greeting, he shoved both hands into the pockets of the grey hooded sweatshirt he wore; the days had gone cool and pleasant, making the large marble-draped church seem chilly in the late afternoons.

"Jill! I had wondered if you would return. I'm glad that you did."

Heaving an exhausted sigh, Jill gave a weary smile, resting her head against the back of the pew. "Needed to see a friendly face," she said. "Work has been --" Could one say hell when in a house of the Lord? "-- it's been rough."

Ultimately, being taken off the Coker case didn't matter. Flores was a good investigator, and the bureau was still going to use Jill to give advice on how to anticipate and handle the various strategies Wolfram & Hart might employ. Considering the years she spent within those walls, it was experience the FBI could put to good use. Jill just couldn't help but wish on some level that she didn't have that knowledge.

But she did, so she might as well use it.

"Also, I think I could use a good cleansing," she added with a cringe.

Chris frowned. "I am sorry to hear that. You ... you work in law, correct? You had told me about your ... previous employer." He didn't want to go much further than that; his curiosity for the place had been stirred, and a phone call mentioning the place to Fr. Ben at the Vatican had resulted in the older priest letting out a flurry of curses not at all befitting his order. After a brief apology and a short prayer of repentance, the older man had told all he knew.

And it hadn't been good.

"In times such as these, with so much ... strangeness unleashed on the world," he began again, thoughts flitting briefly to his ghostly schoolteacher friend, "I can understand how that would be a very, very difficult path in life."

"I had to go back the other day," Jill began, her eyes averted. "We arrested a guy, turned out his lawyer works for Wolfram & Hart." The agent chuckled. "We used to be co-workers. I had to walk right into that place and actually look those ... people in the eye and pretend I wasn't sickened by the whole lot of them.

"There were threats, some very unkind words spoken. I was later taken off the case because of my previous association with the suspect, but ... I walked in that place, and came back out alive, and I just feel so dirty."

David shook his head. "Why should you? You're not one of them any longer. Going back, maybe this was a good thing." He paused, frowning. The woman seemed so unsure of herself; he knew she was on the right path, but then ... it must he hard, he reasoned, for those who weren't raised on the Gospel. He had perhaps had an advantage in life, orphaned or not.

"You went in to do a job, and you walked out. That counts for something."

Jill gave David a warm smile. He was right. The fact that she was able to walk in and walk out unscathed did matter a lot -- especially to her. At first, Jill would've been content to spend the rest of her life without again setting foot in a Wolfram & Hart building. But she realized she would've probably had to go back eventually, if for no other reason than to prove she would walk in and then right back out without having everything she'd worked to build over the past year-plus crumble before her.

But that place, it was just so ... ugh.

"You've never been inside those walls," she said. "That place leaves a funk on anyone with even an ounce of virtue. The place is that evil."

She leveled a serious glance the young man's way, for a moment appreciating the irony of his name. A man named David once delivered her before evil, and now another man named David was helping deliver her away from it. "Wolfram & Hart actually has a stake in the Apocalypse. I kid you not."

David sighed. "There is more evil in the world than I care to recognize most days, but believe me when I say I have seen it."

He paused a moment, wondering what more he should say. Jill seemed honest in her approach to the church, someone who truly sought guidance and even deliverance from the evils of the world. He needn't say too much, maybe. Just enough to show that he understood.

"There is a church in a small town in Ireland," he told her. "It had long been abandoned by the people. They knew there was something wrong. And living there was a young girl who had once been in my care. She was an orphan, taken in by the Church ... like I was. But she had been taken in by a dark spirit masquerading as St. Theresa, appearing to her in visions and afflicting her with a very painful mockery of the stigmata. Time went and the girl's last act to to slit her own throat with a piece of a broken stained glass window. And my job? To go there, to go into that tainted church and collect the bone relic of St. Gregory from the altar. The place reeked of evil. I understand what you must have felt."

It was one thing for evil to permeate a law firm, or even a government office building ... but a church? It wouldn't have surprised Jill if the firm had something to do with that, too; she remembered sitting in on more than one department meeting predicated on the concept of corruption through Christ. Nothing ever stuck, and nothing ever worked. Now more than ever, Jill was convinced God had something to do with that.

Now if only He could smite down the rest of those horrible little maggots.

"It sickens me," she said softly. "But I think more so because I used to be among them. I ... I used to feed on that darkness. I savored it; a good day was one in which I helped a murdered stay out of jail and killed a co-worker."

The agent blushed and she tried her damnedest to look at David, but she couldn't bring herself to do so. "I even wanted to be turned into a vampire so I could spend the rest of eternity climbing up their corporate ladder. All the way to the Senior Partners ..."

In some ways, Our Lady of Victory was Jill's confessional. She rarely spoke of the atrocities she committed at Wolfram & Hart anymore; they were rarely relevant to her job, and she didn't see the point in bothering others with the knowledge in her personal life -- such that it was. But when she set foot in the church, free from the judgement of others and at her closest connection with God, the agent felt as if she could say, quite literally, anything.

It was refreshing.

"We make mistakes. This is human," David replied. "We were given free will for a reason, Jill. Righteousness is not righteousness if we aren't allowed to stray from the path. Like Lao Tzu said ... like and unlike create each other. But don't tell the Pastor I was quoting a Taoist text, okay?" He finished with a smile.

Leaning against the back of the pew, he pulled his hands from his sweatshirt pocket and crossed them over his chest.

"We cannot praise a man for resisting the darkness of the world if he has never been confronted with that darkness. Faith is tested, Jill. Even Christ faltered and cried out to the Father in anger. Because he was God ... but he was human. This is who we are. We recognize good and evil and we can make our choices. Remember ... St. Paul was once Saul the Roman, who persecuted Christians for their faith. We can change. You tasted the darkness but in the end, you walked away."

Jill chuckled at his request to not tell the Pastor. "It's okay," she said. "The FBI asked a Pagan goddess to protect me when I went back to the firm."

Which went back to the agent's assertion that there was no right or wrong when it came to religion -- simply belief. Hell, maybe everyone was right. Or maybe everyone was wrong. Either way, did it really matter as long as people treated each other with respect and love? Did it really matter as long as there was good in the collective heart of humanity?

In spite of what Jill knew what out there.

"I killed the guy who brought me into Wolfram & Hart," she said simply. "Twice, even. Pretty sure God'll give me a pass for that one, right?"

"That's between you and God, Jill," David responded. "In spite of what the Church sometimes says ... I have seen miracles and I have seen demons. I believe that if we live a good life, a sorry for the wrongs we commit ... ask for forgiveness ... that we will be forgiven."

His mind flashed again to the young girl in the Irish church; Stefania had been his first assignment, and he had failed. He had watched the spirit as it grinned at him with the dead girl's mouth, throat wound a bloody gaping maw. The image would stay with him forever.

"We are human. We make mistakes."

"His name was David, oddly enough," she said, her eyes fixated on the Mary statue. As striking as it was, it didn't intimidate her. Rather, it calmed her, told that everything would be alright, in spite of the things she had done in her past and what she was currently forced to endure. Like a good mother, Mary was comforting, reassuring. Like Jill's own mother, before she killed herself.

But that was neither here nor there.

"The strange part is," she added, "as angry as I was over what he'd done over the years, as right as killing him felt at the time ... I am sorry for it now. I don't regret it, but I am sorry. I'm ... not sure I understand that."

"We're not meant to understand everything," David told her, shaking his head. "Each time science believes it reaches an absolute, there is something new found. Smaller and smaller particles, a bigger and bigger universe. We do things, and don't understand why. There are more things in heaven and earth ... you understand?"

He sighed. His job would be easier, he reasoned, if there were absolutes. If he had all the answers, the exact ritual or words to say, to make bad feelings disappear and wash away the lingering guilt. But the mystery of it, the journey ... that, he reasoned, was why some were called. No absolutes meant that everyone could be saved.

"I do," she said with a single nod. It wasn't nearly as simple as Jill would like it to be, but she supposed if it was simple, fighting so hard for it wouldn't have been anywhere near worth it. Truth was, it could be just about anything, and in Jill's case, it was personal redemption.

"I think so, anyway; I understand that I'm ... not supposed to understand."

David gave a sad smile. "I wish it were more simple, that I could give you a penance prayer and it would be all over. But I believe you grow stronger in your resolve every day, Jill. If you are looking for redemption, I believe you are well past that. Now you just have to find your peace."

"And maybe setting foot in there one more time was part of that," Jill admitted, giving David a sidelong glance. He seemed genuinely frustrated that there wasn't something more he could say or do; Jill appreciated him for that. She gave a soft smile of her own, touched at the young man's willingness to help -- even when there was nothing he could really do beyond the usual listening, counseling and praying.

"When I was a child," she began, "I dreamed of being a police officer. My dad was one, and he was ... he was my hero. I'd love to be able to say that changed when he went to jail on drug and murder charges, but ... I allowed Wolfram & Hart to suck me in. I believed everything they told me, and I signed on the dotted line. There was blood on my contract, yet I still signed it.

"But now look at me. I'm not a cop, but I'm the next best thing. I get up every morning and I go after the bad guys. I flash my badge, pull my gun when necessary and at the end of the night I can finally lay my head on my pillow and sleep peacefully. No more looking over my shoulder to see which co-worker's going to banish me to Hell this week, and no more wondering where i all went so wrong."

Looking over at David once more, Jill found herself curious. Who was he really? Where was he from, and what brought him to Chicago? Did he grow up among the Church, or was he a convert like her? She guessed he'd been a lifer of sorts, given his knowledge and passion for the faith.

And yes, it was a faith. Jill cringed at the word 'religion.' It seemed so ... organized.

Leaning over, the agent kissed David on the cheek. "Thank you," she offered. "You've been a tremendous help to me."

A savior, one might call him -- were they prone to such hyperbole. Fortunately, Jill was not.

David's face went red, and he stumbled, trying to take a step backwards even though the wooden arc of the pew stopped him from being able to move. His sneaker got caught in the bottom rung of the retractable kneeler and he had to grip the wooden pew backing to remain properly standing. After a few seconds to regain his footing, he swiftly slipped out of the pew and took a rather large step backwards on the marble floor.

Laughing shakily, he pushed a hand back through his hair, embarrassed. "Th-th-that's why I'm h-here," he responded in a nervous stutter.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Jill said through fits of giggles. "I didn't mean to startle you!"

A seemingly innocent gesture was all it was, really. But it seemed to flummox David so, and though the agent felt bad for that, she couldn't help but be amused at his reaction. It was cute, adorable ... even a tad hilarious. Jill stood, straightening the skirt once she was upright once more.

Collecting herself, Jill took David's hands into her own, giving him a warm smile. "Thank you. Things are much clearer now." She checked her watch, frowned. "I have to get back to work. I'll see you again, though. And I promise, it won't take me this long next time.

"God bless."

"Take care," he responded with a modicum of regained composure. Watching the agent leave, he found it hard to imagine her as anything but repentant soul she had become; the idea of her as some violent bastion of hell's presence on earth was difficult to digest. Still, he knew people could change -- he'd seen it enough over the years.

He only hoped that Jill's newfound faith would carry her through.