Gabriels dissonance Condition.

[JCD]

Repentance includes the root word 'Penance'.

Penance is traditionally seen to involve punishment for one's action to atone. See Penitent from Medieval times.

So a repentant person would have 'made good' on the cruelty.

However, here is the rub which makes (in my mind) the point moot: Penance takes time.

A stepmother who was emotionally abusive to her stepchildren is NOT going to 'make right' in the time frame an angel would require to avoid dissonance. Penance would take a good deal of time to eradicate that which the cruel person did.

In this case, I would suggest that the Angel, seeing a person TRYING to repent, would find a way to insert themselves into the penance, so she could a) get rid of that pesky dissonance, b) make sure that the person didn't 'go cheap' on their punishment, and c) try to direct the person so they AVOID the mindset that made them cruel in the first place.

This goes into another discussion altogether: the educational nature of the punishment. A divorce attorney who enjoyed twisting the lives of his clients and the opposing parties of the divorce might get his leg broken by a Malakim. Ho Hum! There is nothing edifying or enlightening in that sort of punishment.

I would think it would be a much more artistic and of more importance in the long term for the angel involved to have the attorney feel an instructive lesson then merely a painful one. I personally would rule that an angel working toward a more elaborate form of punishment would be free from Dissonance as long as they were stridently working toward that goal.

YMMV.