The compound was dark, everyone – save those who worked the graveyard shift – had long since sought their beds in the hope that somehow sleep could ease the worry and fear that was the constant companion of all who lived in this sad place.

Piotr crept silently through the orderly ranks of tents and outbuildings that housed the sick and dying of Genoshia Island, and headed straight for the low building that housed the cluttered laboratories where doctors, geneticists and scientists from all over the world studied the so-called Legacy virus.

He ground his teeth together against the impotent fury that burned inside him. He would no longer sit idly by and watch as everyone around him sickened and died from that damned bug. Losing Iliana had crushed him, but caring for Eric Lenshire had helped him to rebuild himself, and to prepare him to do all he could to fight this evil virus.

He had left the dying old mutant in the care of the Acolytes and come to Genoshia because here is where Dr. McCoy was. Since the accidental death of Moira MacTaggart, He was now the foremost authority on the Legacy Virus, and Piotr was going to help in every way he could.

He knew that Dr. McCoy would be in the lab this late, and he would be alone. It was Piotr's only chance to speak with the radically changed Doctor privately. Finding the door unlocked, he marched right in.

As he approached, he could hear voices from within the main lab. He silently dodged into a darkened adjoining room to wait for his chance to speak to the Doctor alone.

"…the only way." Came Dr. McCoy's familiar rumble. "The antivirus must be absorbed and reproduced by a living mutant."

"But why you Hank?" Cried a woman whose voice Piotr recognized as the doctor's wife. "Why are you so quick to experiment on yourself? You of all people know how dangerous this is!"

Piotr noticed a gap in the blinks that allowed him to peek into the nest room. Dr. McCoy and his wife were sitting next to a metal table, facing one another. Lying between them on a small metal tray was a syringe.

Dr. McCoy sighed and gently laid his hand atop the metal tray. "I cannot ask someone else to do this, Anna." He said quietly. "It's too much to ask."

She seized his wrist. "There has to be another way!," She wailed with tears streaming down her cheeks. "You can't do this Hank! You just can't do this! What if it doesn't work? What if you die? Who knows this damned virus as well as you do? Who could possibly continue the research then?"

McCoy released the syringe and took her face tenderly between his massive hands.

"Whom would you rather take my place, Anna? Logan? Piotr? Marie? Which of our friends would you ask to make this sacrifice?"

She collapsed into his arms with a heart-wrenching sob. The hulking scientist enfolded his tiny wife in his great arms and they wept together.

Piotr swallowed the lump in his throat. Iliana's little face, deathly pale as she too her final breath, filled his mind, and he struggled to choke back a sob. How could Dr. McCoy even consider doing such a thing! How could he so easily decide to take his own life and leave his wife behind to suffer? Piotr's own pain cried out against the thought of anyone suffering as he did.

His musings were interrupted when the McCoys spoke again. He bent to peek through the blinds.

"Will you stay with me?" McCoy asked his wife in a small, timid voice.

Anna sniffed loudly. "What? Tonight? Now?" She moaned.

"There's no point in prolonging the inevitable," He replied in a heavy voice.

"No!" She wailed, clutching at him again. "Please! Can't we hold off for a few days? Don't I get a few days to say goodbye?"

"My Love, there are too many who are sick and dying. They won't last a few days." He had the syringe in his hand again.

"So they get your life while I get nothing?" She cried desperately. "Please, Hank! At least give me tonight!"

They stared at one another for a long time, and then slowly, McCoy lowered the syringe to the tray.

"Alright," He breathed in acquiescence. He took her into his arms again. "And tomorrow, will you stay with me?" He pleaded quietly.

She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed her assent. Wit his own eyes streaming tears, he kissed her long and hard. With one arm, he picked her up and with the other he moved the tray and syringe into a tiny table top refrigerator. Without looking back, he carried his mourning wife out of the lab and locked the door behind him, sealing Piotr inside.

It was nearly dawn, and his ppoor anna had finally succumbed to a fitful sleep. Even in repose, her lovely face was filled with sorrow. He had sworn to never again cause her pain after that terrible month following the attacks on the team's families, and he was filled with guilt and remorse for having to break that promise to her.

As he reflected on his decision, he realized that he couldn't put her through watching as he took his own life. It was a tremendously selfish thing to hope for, and even more monstrous of him to even ask.

Resolved to do what he felt was necessary, he gently kissed his sleeping wife and crept silently out of bed. He stopped only long enough to write her a brief letter of apology and an affirmation of his love, which he left on the nightstand for her to find in the morning.

His mind was remarkably clear as he made his way through the darkened hallway to the lab. He would need to install an IV, and ie would have to be sure to notify someone just before he injected himself so that they could lose no time in testing for and then harvesting the cure.

As he approached the lab, he saw that there was a light on inside. Puzzled and revising his plan, he unlocked the door and strode in.

As he entered the main lab, he was shocked to find young Piotr sitting where he and Anna had been just a few hours ago. And in the young man's fist was clenched the syringe with the anti-virus. A peaceful smile spread over his handsome features.

"I will take up this burden , Dr. McCoy. I am strong, and so the cure will be strong, too." A flash of pain shot across his features. He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard. "I am lost without Iliana, and your wife will be even more lost without you. I can't let her suffer like I have." Piotr's eyes glazed over, and he sucked in a deep breath.

McCoy leaped forward. "No! Wait!"

Grimly, Piotr plunged the needle into his thigh and injected himself. Too late, Hank snatched the syringe out of the doomed mutant's hand. He stared at the now empty syringe and the young man in horror.

"Why, Piotr?" He whispered gruffly.

Piotr's eyes became haunted, and the deep, abiding sorrow he felt was clearly reflected in his countenance. "I failed her, Dr. McCoy." He breathed in a tortured whisper. "She cried out to me to save her, and I brought her to the place that killed her." His voice broke and a single tear coursed down his cheek to disappear into the dark line of two-day long stubble along his jaw. "I cannot stand by, for even one more hour, while somewhere, someone else's little sister is dying of this disease."

He glanced up at the older mutant with a stern frown. "But you Doctor. You have much to live for. You were wrong to try to do this. You have a wife who loves and needs you. You have a responsibility to the rest of the world to cure this evil plague. If this anti-virus doesn't work, your sacrifice would have been in vain, and the real cure would have been delayed until someone could learn it as you know it. How many thousands or millions would have died, all because you were too cowardly to ask someone to make this sacrifice?"

Hank stared at him, unable to think of what to say. He was right. The realization of the full gravity of his foolish and thoughtless decision settled upon his conscience with an unbearable weight. The thought of millions of people sick and dying and ultimately untreated because the foremost expert on the thing killing them had once again foolishly used himself as a guinea pig, made him sick to his stomach. When he thought of Moira, the first normal human victim of the Legacy Virus, he was staggered by the sheer magnitude of the damage any delay would cause. Yet despite his stunning revelation, he still could not fathom asking someone else to sacrifice his or her life. It was unthinkable.

"Son, I…"

Piotr's jaw clenched, and his breathing sped up. "Снежинка Я прихожу домой. (Snowflake, I am coming home."

"Piotr! NO!"

With a grunt, the handsome young man transformed into the mighty, gleaming Colossus. Half a heartbeat later, he jerked spasmodically and fell forward over the table. His skin became a mottled patina of his steel and normal skin. Hank leaped over the table as the striken young man toppled to the floor.

Frightened by the speed at which the anti-virus tore through his teammate's body, he shuddered to think that ten minutes ago, he'd been hell bent on doing this to himself. He swept the convulsing young hero into his arms and ran for the ICU.

She awoke with a violent start, confused and scared. The sun was shining thin bands of sunlight across the otherwise empty beed through the makeshift blinds over the windows. The source of her fear was slow to dawn on her, and slammed down on her consciousness like a ton of bricks the moment her eyes fell upon the folded piece of paper on the nightstand.

"No," She gasped. "He wouldn't!"

With her heart in her throat, she reached out and picked up the note. Her hands shook so badly, that she almost couldn't read what was on the page. Her eyes scanned the page and her growing sense of dread quickly became full-blown horror. Without thinking, she threw on a bathrobe and ran out of the bedroom as if the deil himself was after her.

She tore through the complex, heedless of the startled stares that followed her half-najed flight through the makeshift blinded by tears, she burst into the lab only to find it empty. Her eyes fell upon the askew table and overturned stools. She stumbled weakly against the table and stepped on something.

Numbly she crouched to retrieve it, and held it up before her unseeing eyes, only to drop it the moment she realized what exactly it was.

The syringe!

She clapped her hand over her mouth and almost vomited. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat with a choked sob and watched as it rolled across the floor and came to a stop in a beam of sunlight. The cursed thing gleamed up at her evilly and she lurched away from it as if it would rear up at any moment and bite her.

She whimpered in desperate fear and stubborn refusal to believe it could be true. She shook her head in denial, yet bolted for the ICU. She knew that he'd not have much time, and she'd already lost too much.

"Damn you, Hank!" She wailed as she fled from the spent syringe.

Exhausted and beyond hope, Henry Phillip McCoy quietly left the bedside of the man who was far too young to die. Piotr's labored breathing had been eased enough to allow him to sleep, but his body was still being ravaged by a terrible fever that no amount of medication or cooling could lower. The only ray of sunlight in his terrible ordeal lay in the sudden reversal of the virus in the other patients dying in the ICU.

Pushed almost beyond his own endurance, the sorrowing doctor left the bedside of his young teammate in search of fresh air. He slipped out into the late-morning sunlight and let the heat wash across his weary brow.

From the direction of the laboratory came the sound of running feet. He turned toward the sound to see Anna skid to a halt a few yards away, wearing only his bathrobe. Her expression was torn between hope, despair and stunned disbelief, and her eyes were streaming tears.

Anna!

In the chaos surrounding Piotr's illness, he'd forgotten all about the note whereon he'd inscribed his final farewell. Kicking himself for being an idiot, he hurried over to comfort her.

He never saw it coming.

As he bent to enfold her in his arms, she pulled back her hand and slapped him full across the face. He shook his head, stunned momentarily, and was nearly bowled over when she tackled him and buried her faces in his chest.

"You stupid sonofabitch!" She bawled into his shirt.

A bizarre mix of relief and guilt swept oer him and he held her to him for dear life. Words failed him and all he could manage was "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," over and over again as their bodies shook with the intensity of their swirling emotions.

It took them a long time to come to their senses. Drying her eyes on the sleeve of his bathrobe, she brought them both back to the present.

"Where is Piotr?"

Hank pulled out his hankie and wiped at his nose. "He's just inside the…" He began with a gesture to the ICU. Then the impact of her question registered on his foggy mind and he went cold inside. A terrible suspicion welled up in him and he stopped to stare at her.

"You knew?" He whispered.

"The moment I saw you alive and well," She affirmed softly.

The implication of her confirmation horrified him. His exhausted brain simply would not accept this latest revelation and he felt suddenly dizzy and disoriented. Unconsciously he backed a step away from her.

As if she could hear his thoughts, she answered his fears. "No, Hank. I didn't know how it as going to happen. I knew that it was likely to happen this way, but I didn't know for sure. I didn't force you to delay just so he could die in your place. She lowered her eyes and shuddered