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CHERRY LOST TRACK OF TIME WHILE WANDERING THROUGH TARTARUS!
She should've made like a prisoner and found a wall to scratch lines in until she drove herself mad. She didn't even have an estimate of how much time she spent in there.
There was nothing for her except solitude there. All she really could do was walk. One foot in front of the other for eternity.
If she got bored, she could shout into a cave and hope the echo would allow her to pretend she wasn't isolated.
All she had was time to think. To wonder. To regret. She did with every single cell of her being.
Her father had made a living off violence. The money that paid their rent was physically clean but the cost of his mind with every bullet.
She thought of how the human mind could've been so against itself it could drive someone to a rushed end.
Cherry had been wiped from existence after becoming a god. Her father looked like a lunatic, rambling on about a daughter who had never traveled a womb.
His death was her fault, too, but what wasn't?
Right and wrong. It was an objective and now Cherry didn't understand. It was one or the other. In between, Percy had answered. He'd taught her the gray area, but she'd never liked gray. It was too devoid of color. Of life. Was she still living? Had she ever been?
Gods existed to serve a purpose. If she was no longer serving her purpose, what was she? Dead? She didn't feel dead. Had she ever felt alive?
The concept of morality led her to ponder the trolley problem.
A runaway train is headed towards five people on a track. You can divert the train to another track where it will only hit one person. Should you divert the train or let the five people die?
Any person would try to save the most people. Sacrificing one person to save more seemed like a smarter decision.
Except people weren't numbers. They were living beings with oxygen in their lungs and stories that would never be passed down.
Their existence was in her hands and she had killed them.
There was no difference between killing and letting someone die. What was the difference between a hand and an eye? Which of the two was less evil, to be the attacker or to be the bystander?
Cherry had been reminded multiple times that gods could not die from self-inflected causes. They had to be forgotten, and as long as Percy lived, she would not be granted that fate. It was much too kind.
