Gretchen found herself in one of the twin beds in Marla Gilmore's room a little after 11:00pm, staring at the ceiling. She had tried to take the couch, to put a slight bit of additional distance between them, but Marla had insisted that the bed was more comfortable and she would be a bad host if she let Gretchen sleep there.

Gretchen knew the girl was just trying to be hospitable, just trying to make her first Academy sleepover a success. She understood, all too well, the desperation to be liked and approved of.

Except Marla already was liked and approved of. Her parents obviously loved and doted on her.

Somehow looking up at the ceiling of Marla's childhood bedroom, she remembered her own. Her childhood had not been idyllic, and yet now as she remembered the loss of it hurt like fire.

She would never be a tiny child in her father's arms again. Never walk down Voyager's corridors holding her mother's hand tightly, heading to the playroom.

She had not thought she missed it. It was so long ago, what she remembered now.

Tom's face before his accident drifted in her mind. Thomas as a baby. The rest of their family, three girls and B'Elanna. Long corridors and unknown faces floated in her mind. Half remembered sounds, memories that whispered mysteriously.

Was that Miral? Gretchen had not seen her face in decades.

She hurt and ached with the memoires.

A world that was gone.

Gretchen expelled all the air from her lungs. She looked around and tried to distract herself, her gaze settling on a sleeping form with blonde hair. Gretchen could not see the form's face, but she knew exactly who it was beside her.

She would have grown up anyway of course, but it was the woman next to her who had ripped her mother away. Who had ended her innocence.

Gretchen sighed, and turned over, and tried to sleep.

Gretchen woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. After the few hours of rest, she was no longer nostalgic, but hyper aware of where she was.

Her mother's murderer was sleeping next to her.

She thought of the adult Marla Gilmore now, in the new timeline, exiled far away from Starfleet, living on an alien planet in the Delta Quadrant. She would never choke Gretchen or take Kathryn's life. In fact she had helped save Kathryn's life from her own crewmates during the mutiny.

But she had still helped murder 42 aliens on the Equinox. Captain Rudy Ransom had turned his ship into a war crime. And Marla had participated freely in those murders, using her engineering talents to rip the aliens' life energy away, hoping to get home sooner. And so she was exiled.

Exiled from her family and yet with the possibility of a new one. Gretchen had used her knowledge of medical advances to give Marla the ability to have healthy children. It had been over a year ago now. Perhaps Marla already had a child. A child named after Gretchen. Her real name.

Marla Gilmore was the only one in the new timeline who knew her real name.

Gretchen moaned and sank into the bed.

Perhaps it's not such a bad thing, came a voice from nowhere.

Yes it is, came Gretchen's thoughts, hissing.

Why did I do it?, she thought desperately. Why did I help her?

Gretchen shook her head.

It was a mistake.

I can't fix it…..but I can do something.

The idea came to her suddenly. In a soft, lovely whisper.

This Marla is here now, in the twin bed next to me asleep.

There was nothing to protect her if Gretchen attacked. Gretchen could do it. Gretchen had lost every physical fight she had ever had growing up with B'Elanna's children. But she had learned a lot, and Marla was only human.

Human, and very vulnerable.

She could silence Marla before she could scream, and slowly choke her to death as she had tried to do to Gretchen.

Gretchen shook her head. It did not seem fitting. She did not like the thought of imitating Marla's method of strangulation.

Perhaps she could find a knife in the kitchen. It would be bloody, and violent, exactly as her mother's death had been.

She looked over.

The girl's soft, innocent face infuriated her.

Gretchen moved to stand up and as her bare feet hit the floor, the coolness woke up her.

This Marla isn't real. But do I really want to kill her?

Gretchen quickly left the bedroom, her mind racing.

It seemed rather evil, to kill a defenseless girl, even if she was not real. A girl who had only been kind to her, who had only wanted friends.

Marla Gilmore is only human. An unwelcome thought.

Maybe I should've gone to the farm with Kathryn?

The point of Dante's Inferno is there's a way out of Hell.

Is there a way out?

Gretchen found herself wandering into the kitchen. It was quiet and empty. The lights were off, and as she sat down she noticed a tank of neon colored fish.

She sighed, putting her arms on the table and falling into them.

She would not be in this situation at all if L'Naal had not decided to lead a mutiny on her timeline's Voyager. The Voyager she had grown up on, which had gotten stuck in The Rift. If L'Naal had not attempted to destroy the Rift Aliens, imprisoning Gretchen and the rest of her Bridge crew to do it, laughing all the time, Gretchen would not have been sent back to this timeline alone. She would not be so horribly stuck now.

Gretchen sighed again, head beginning to ache.

She loved L'Naal. Despite everything.

She would never like L'Naal. But she loved her.

L'Naal's hideous laugh.

So like Marla's.

Her skin crawled, remembering. Marla had laughed as she tried to strangle Gretchen to death, as she had killed her mother.

As a child she had not understood, that that laugh was pure despair.

As an adult, hearing the same laugh from L'Naal, she had not understood either.

L'Naal had known, as they all had, that The Rift was a death trap. They had known. And yet for 7 years, they had managed to live, even thrive under the circumstances.

The loss of Voyager's First Generation, they had tried to forget it. They had succeeding in forgetting it. They had had to.

They were lucky they were young, that no one their own age had been killed. It felt like a sort of eternal holiday, freedom from the adults, their own ship, to use as they liked.

They had known they were doomed. But they could forget.

But when Mary had died it had ended any hope. L'Naal knew she was standing on a ship of corpses. And so she had made it happen.

So soon after that, there had been four more dead bodies on Voyager, including L'Naal's.

That laugh was the last thing Gretchen had ever heard from L'Naal, as Gretchen had been tied up and thrown in the Brig. Thrown in the Brig with her remaining loyal crew members, Thomas and Lynna. Lynna who would be dead so soon. Thomas who had had the crazy idea to alter time.

That laugh.

Gretchen would never forget it.

Gretchen understood it now.

That despair.

Nothing left.

Perhaps Gretchen did feel sorry for Marla Gilmore. The woman who had nearly choked her to death. The woman who had killed her mother.

The woman who had watched her children die, decades away from the medical care they needed. The woman who had only given birth to them because she believed they were safe.

And then she had watched them die.

The woman who had lost her husband. And her last hold on sanity.

Marla had killed Kathryn Janeway.

Had laughed over her corpse.

But that laugh had not been one of triumph.

It had been one of despair.

So many times Kathryn has held me back from the brink. My mother and the Captain I've followed all my life.

In her heart Marla Gilmore's Captain was still Rudy Ransom. Rudy Ransom who practically stank of fear.

Gretchen sighed and slowly got up, and turned on the lights. Then she returned to the chair and sagged again on the table. On the Gilmore's clean table, in their well lit kitchen, with the neon fish swimming in the background.

I hope she's doing well. The real Marla. I hope she chooses better this time.

Gretchen gulped, the lump in her throat almost closing it.

She did not want to be Marla Gilmore.

I miss my mom.