It's been three months since Delphine Cormier was stolen from you.
Everywhere you turn, her memory remains; her smell lingers on your clothes and your bed sheets, her lipstick stains the wineglass you can't bear to wash and her soft French accent seeps into your dreams at night and whispers gentle nothings to your unconscious.
Each night brings her back to you and each morning you wake up with nothing but an empty side of the bed and an ache of longing in your chest that weighs down on your heart and threatens to suffocate you.
Time after time, the clones tell you things will get easier. Soon enough, you just nod and mumble in agreement to stop them from talking. Alison and Sarah are simply trying to help. They mean well, but you know they would rather have you settling back down to the science than sitting around, wasting away from the inside out.
You're still sick, you're getting worse with each day that passes, but the rattling in your chest and the constant sight of blood doesn't feel like a burden anymore.
Rachel Duncan spends her time goading Sarah into joining her cause. Doctor Leekie hasn't said a word since he sent the Neolutionists to rid his failed monitor from this world. You assume they're biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to throw more complications and bombshells into the mix, but they stopped being a concern a long time ago.
They have already won. They stole everything from you when they took Delphine. There is nothing left you for to possibly give them.
You visit her grave one day. You stroke your fingertips across the engravings of her name and squeeze your eyes tight shut. This time there are no tears. No whispers of apologies or desperate last words. Instead there's silence, peace, a strange sense of serenity. You sit and you remember Delphine; the way she smiled through her exhaustion on the nights spent huddled over textbooks and DNA sequences, the way she had practically flipped over the coffee table in excitement one evening when she made a breakthrough, the sparkle in her eyes and the curve of her lips when she finally said it: "We have done it, cherie! We have found the cure!"
You remember how the night after that she didn't return your calls, and you feel how your insides burned with panic when she failed to come home from her trip to the lab.
That was the night they took Delphine, and that was the night everything lost purpose.
You kiss the headstone and place down some flowers before you leave, mumbling a goodbye and a promise that you'll see her again soon.
That night you sit on Skype with Sarah, explaining how you had found the cure, the science behind it and how everyone else was now going to be free from this damned disease. You try to act like your usual, animated self, but there's a growing tiredness weighing down behind your eyes, wrapping around your bones and squeezing.
You never once mention that although this cure would save the others, it wouldn't ever do the same for you.
You made a promise to Delphine that you would see her again, and this is you keeping it.
You end the Skype call and you crawl into bed, though not before making sure all the files are appropriately packed and labelled for the other clones to be able to understand and use themselves. You had organized with Scott a few of the more scientifically challenging aspects finalizing the cure presented, and now you could rest knowing that you had done the best possible for your sisters.
Your chest hurts and your vision blurs, so you scrunch your face into the pillow and grip the covers tight in your fists. You know that tonight is the night. Your lungs struggle to find rhythm and your breath catches and chokes in your chest. Your eyes close and when they finally open, you hear her voice and it makes you smile.
She is everything you have ever wanted, and now you are both free.