Rachel slid her arm around Maisy's shoulder as she watched TV with her. Unsurprisingly, Hell's TV shows had a very relaxed attitude towards sex and violence. Quite a few shows would be mistaken for porn on Earth until you realized that they had more plot than a children's picture book.
Rachel suddenly flinched as loud, off-key singing filled her ears. Her sharp senses told her that it was coming from the kitchen. She ran in to find the butler slumped in a chair with a bottle in each hand. He was warbling drunkenly at the top of his lungs.
"Looks like his sentence is now 5,100 years... at least," Maisy said as she joined Rachel. "His original sentence was just for two hundred years, but he can't put those fucking brandy bottles down."
Rachel looked at the butler as he fell out of the chair. Her heart suddenly twinged with sympathy. The man had sinned, but he looked more pitiful than evil. For all the harm his alcoholism had caused, this poor soul was essentially being punished for coping poorly with an illness.
"Is it weird that I feel kinda bad for this poor bastard?" Rachel asked Maisy.
"Is it weird that I'm feeling it, too?" Maisy responded.
"I mean, I looked my rapist in the eye earlier," Rachel said, "and most of your dad's servants are slave-owners from the Confederacy. This guy just doesn't compare. I'm seeing a decent guy who screwed up hard."
"Yeah, but he did screw up hard," said Maisy. "What's to be done?"
"Not this," said Rachel, gesturing to the butler as he sloppily guzzled down the offending brandy. "It clearly isn't working. He needs guidance more than punishment. When I was a kid, my dad used to slap me every time I got a bad grade in school. It did jack shit to get my grades up."
"What are you proposing?" asked Maisy.
"Could people like him be sent to Purgatory to get treatment for shit like alcoholism or drug addiction?" asked Rachel. "Same for people who committed violent acts because they had a mental illness like schizophrenia. Maybe we could include the suicides, too. A lot of people who kill themselves wouldn't have done it if they'd gotten some kind of help in life, you know. I'm sure Charon and Remeila could set up a therapy program for sinners of these kinds."
"That's actually a really cool idea!" Maisy grinned. "Fair warning, a lot of the traditionalists in the court like Nergal, Belial, and Lamashtu won't like it. They see sinners as existing to be harshly punished... ALL sinners. The anti-human ones like Lamashtu and Nergal are the worst about it. The idea of treating damned humans with mercy will churn their stomachs. They also won't like an ex-human like you 'getting a big head' and proposing policy changes."
"They'll just have to get used to it," Rachel said. "I am going to be the wife of the Archdiablesse, after all." She approached the butler. "What's your name?"
"N... Nigel..." he slurred. "Nigel... Farnsworth."
"Well, Nigel," Rachel smiled, "How would you like to get out of Hell?"
"You mean... Heaven?" Nigel asked groggily.
"Not just yet," said Rachel. "But I'm intending to have the Devil reset your sentence to its original two hundred years and let you spend it getting therapy in Purgatory. My future brother-in-law says its a pretty nice place. He and his wife will get you off the booze and prepare you for Heaven. Sound good?"
"Y...Y...Yessss..." Nigel choked out before passing out in an alcohol-induced slumber.
"It's settled, then," Rachel smiled. "We're proposing this to Lucifer at the first chance we get."