A/N: Continued Trigger Warning for suicidal themes. Seek help if you need it. Always Keep Fighting.
Gretchen shook with anger and fear, and found herself pacing the room like a caged animal.
There was the dagger, gleaming on a side table, and there was Kh'thoh's body, his rigid, grimaced face and dried blood. There was nothing she could do for him. So many of his organs had been destroyed, even if she could get him to Voyager there was no hope.
The pyre he was laying on had statues of Kahless, the merciless god hero of the Klingons.
Why did Kh'thoh do it? She thought with a wave of sadness.
You know why, answered Gretchen's brain immediately as she continued pacing, Because he felt like he was alone. Because his whole ship was dead. Because he didn't want to try again.
Because he was tired.
Gretchen keened in frustration, and felt herself sit down, on one of the low sleeping palettes in the next room.
She stared at her mother. She had still not woken up.
They had said she would not.
Until Gretchen herself died.
Gretchen moaned and hung her head.
She had been trying to heal. And now Kh'thoh was dead. And her mother would not wake. And Gretchen was trapped in this tiny cave.
With a dagger.
Gretchen screamed, and kicked something, sending a water bowl across the room, where it shattered.
All the next day Gretchen paced and cried, and screamed, banging on the doors and trying all forms of escape. Her own crystal, her mother's, finally she gulped and approached Kh'thoh's pyre and found his communication crystal soaked in blood.
It did not work either.
She cleaned her hands, and tried to wake her mother again. When she failed a second time, she put the older woman on a bed, putting a quilt over her and making her look comfortable.
It was all she could do, and after pacing and raging longer, she finally exhausted herself, and fell asleep.
When she woke up she could smell an obviously rotting corpse.
Gretchen's heart stopped in her throat.
Her energy seemed gone, she moved her legs out of the bed sluggishly.
Her mind moved slowly now, and her shoulders hunched. There was nothing she had not tried.
Nothing but the dagger.
Shut up, Gretchen told her brain.
Your mother would be able to go, if you were dead.
She wouldn't want that, hissed Gretchen at the voice.
She looked at her mother, lying in the bed, still asleep. Captain Kathryn Janeway, Starfleet Officer, humanitarian, believer in life.
There was no doubt in Gretchen's mind she would not want Gretchen to commit suicide to free her.
Mom's far too stubborn, thought Gretchen with certainty, Maybe she doesn't care about me specifically, but there's no way in Hell she would ever encourage a member of her crew to kill themselves.
What did she say to that demonic alien that wanted her soul? That threatened her with eternal limbo if she didn't give in?
"We can stand here for all eternity, and I will never choose to go with you."
Yeah, that.
I won't be manipulated either.
She glanced at Kh'thoh's pyre, his body beginning to rot.
A permanent solution.
The wrong solution.
There must be another one.
Gretchen sat down on the floor and thought again.
It was a slow, agonizing process.
She was no longer thinking of how she could break down the wall, or jury rig one of the crystals to contact the ship.
Maybe Voyager will come for us. But until they do…..I have to think of how to complete this ritual.
I failed.
But I could still succeed. I know it.
That's what mom would say if she was awake.
Why did I fail?
Gretchen groaned at herself, hands on her knees as she sat on the hard stone.
I failed because I wanted Thomas.
And Thomas is dead.
Because I refuse to accept that they're not coming back.
Because I refuse to look forward.
Gretchen sighed and found herself wiping away tears.
I'm crying again. I'm wishing again.
But it won't do any good.
Yes, I altered time once. But it isn't as if I can undo what I've done again.
Thomas was willing to die for this plan.
I agreed to it.
….I just didn't expect to live through it.
That's the truth. The cusp. I didn't expect to live through this mission.
She keened and wiped away tears again, feeling them flow freely down her cheeks.
I didn't expect to live this long.
She cried for a long time, remembering her promise to Thomas.
I promised him I would see Kronos.
But he only made me promise in the hopes I would stay alive to fulfill it.
He never cared about me going to Kronos.
And somehow…somehow that promise became a convenient excuse.
An excuse to leave Voyager behind.
To run. Where no one would be watching.
…My mother's right, she thought, gasping and crying harder, I was going to Kronos to die.
I was ready to die.
I was ready to leave everything and everyone behind.
And die.
I still am.
She fell to her side, and shuddered, catching a glimpse of Kh'thoh through the doorway.
Even after everything, she gasped again, I'm still ready to die.
Her body wracked with pain, as she curled into the fetal position and sobbed for a long time. She bit on her fist and screamed as the tears streamed down her face.
Gretchen's body ached, and hurt, and her throat was parched when she began to stir again. She got up and went to the washroom, threw up and drank several mouthfuls of water.
She went back to her bed, and fell asleep. A short time later she woke up.
No longer sleepy, aching, or thirsty, there was only a bone deep weariness.
More exhausted than she had ever been in her life, Gretchen sat on the floor again.
I have to move on. Whatever it costs me.
I can't stay here.
Physically or metaphorically.
She sighed, becoming even more tired. Tired of being tired. Of going in circles.
But if I do move on, will I even still be myself?
I would rather die than leave everything I've ever believed in behind.
Than leave my crew.
Gretchen breathed shallowly, rubbing her legs as they began to hurt again.
This is Hell.
Going around again and again.
Isn't that one of the circles in Dante's Inferno?
They're just stuck there forever.
The damned can't change.
Don't want to change.
Even though they know the outcome of their decisions.
They would make them again.
As she sat there, her mind began to whisper, and remember her mother's words.
"They made their own hell, and they're forced to live in it."
"It's very dangerous to know the way you're going leads only to destruction, and to choose it anyway."
"No one in Hell, none of them want to change, even when they know the outcome of their decisions."
"The point of the book is that there is a way out, that Dante gets out, that he escapes Hell. That no matter how badly we get lost in life, no matter where we end up or what happens, we can get out."
I don't have much of a choice do I? If I keep on like this I'm going to die.
…Do I care?
Most of Gretchen, the tired, lonely being, no longer cared.
But there was a tiny pinprick in her soul that did.
It was a minuscule light against the overwhelming darkness.
But it was there.
I'm out of ideas though.