AN: Yeah... I was meant to upload this days ago but I forgot. Sorry!

Thanks again to everyone who reads, especially those who follow/fav and super awesome thanks to everyone who reviews. You guys are awesome!

Super special thanks to Spyke1985 for betaing for me!

Okay, hope you guys enjoy!

Chapter Twenty Four - As The Curtain Falls

Tiberius had never been used to good things happening to him. It wasn't that his life was any kind of terrible hell, but he had learned over years of experience that nothing came without a price.

You find a great opportunity and manage to find a job that you actually like, and your mother dies in an incident that might have been prevented, had you only been home.

You find a perfect woman who gets you like no one else, and she's dying a slow and painful death.

You finally find the base you've been hunting for, for almost a year, and…

Almost a year.

Ten months. That's how long it had been since he had been reunited with his love, the woman he was pretty sure he couldn't live without and-

No, he couldn't think like that. It was bad enough feeling Sarah's stress levels rise as time ran out on them. He needed to remain optimistic, for both of their sakes, despite how difficult and futile it felt.

The datapad in his hands seemed to grow unnaturally heavy with his thoughts. It had taken months, but Cerberus had finally slipped up. They could finally make their move. And, of course, Sarah would insist on accompanying them. And, if she hadn't been cured - which seemed more and more likely with each passing day – he knew that her first response would be to offer herself up as bait, something he still was far from comfortable with, despite knowing how much pain she would be in just two months from now.

He pushed away those thoughts as he arrived back at Sarah's office - which, he supposed, had long ago stopped being an office, instead becoming a weird, makeshift apartment, complete with a really tiny, shitty bed, and various cooking instruments, like a microwave, kept on top of filing cabinets and in desk drawers - they wouldn't make a move on Cerberus until Sarah finished the cure for the other hybrids, so there was no point in worrying about it now, he reminded himself.

He entered the room, only to find Sarah lost in thought, her distant gaze fixed on the terminal screen in front of her.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, pulling her from her reverie.

"Yeah," she replied quickly. He didn't need a window into her head to know that she was lying.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

She gave him a blank look before cracking a smile that, despite the fact that it did little to erase the tired look of her features, warmed his heart. Smiles had been all too rare lately. "Where did you pick up that phrase?"

He shrugged. "Must have been one of the others."

"Do you even know what a penny is?"

"No. Not exactly," he admitted, "but you're avoiding the question."

She sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I was just… thinking about my family…" The phrase was so weighted, but she didn't elaborate as her eyes took on the distant look once more, giving a small smile as she lost herself in her memories. "I was actually thinking about my granddad."

"Turian or human?"

"Turian. You know, he used to spoil me rotten. It would drive my mum up the wall. But, of course, she preferred it to the alternative. He'd never exactly been impressed with my father for bonding to a human - a Spectre, at that. I guess she was worried that he would think I was some kind of… abomination. Of course, she was more than a little surprised when he ended up doting on me. My dad figured that it was his way of dealing with the loss of my grandma. He just found something else to live for… It just made me think…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "Never mind." Her face instantly fell once more as her gaze returned to the terminal in front of her. "Sorry, my mind has been wandering ever since, well…" She spun the terminal to face him. He didn't understand most of what was on the screen, but he didn't need to. It quickly became clear that she had been running a simulation. The important point was flashing at him from the bottom of the screen.

Simulation Complete. 100% Cure Success Rate.

The Spirits were laughing at him, he concluded as he looked down at the datapad in his own hand. Now it was simply a matter of planning. A matter of weeks before she-

There is still hope, he told himself, but the words felt feeble in his mind. He was going to lose her, that he was almost sure of, and it broke his heart; shattered it into a million tiny fragments that he was sure he'd never be able to fix.

"You will," she told him earnestly, addressing his unspoken thoughts, although her voice cracked as she did so. "You have to. I… I have to know that you'll be okay when I'm gone."

"Blue, I know what it's like to not have you here, to believe that you're gone, and I have no desire to relive that experience. A universe without you in it… How can that ever be okay?"

She seemed to shrink a little at his words, as if they scared her.

God, I never should have gone to C-Sec, she thought to herself as she shook her head, as if trying to dispel the unshed tears that were burning her eyes and throat.

"Red, please, I just… I need to know that you'll be okay."

He sighed as he regarded her closely. The woman he loved. She was still as sickly looking as ever, holding her arms close to her chest in a way that only accentuated how little was left of her, as she desperately tried not to cry. That seemed to be the default for them both in the past few weeks; desperately trying to not buckle under the weight of the knowledge that their time was up.

He could lie to her, he knew that, but she would have simply seen through that. So, he told her the truth, hoping that she had enough left in her to handle it.

"Blue, I doubt that I will ever be okay if I lose you, but… I still have things to do. Scores to settle. I figure I owe Cerberus for every second I spent without you over those three years. It's probably revenge enough to keep me occupied for more than a couple of years."

"And then?" she asked, her voice still small.

He simply shrugged, his gaze dropping. "I don't know. I don't think… I couldn't go back. Not without you, ani."

Her heart broke a little as he called her 'ani', but she kept on, moving close to him so that she could cup his face in her hands, bringing his gaze back to hers. "Promise me that you'll try to find something else to live for," she pleaded with him, softly, tears finally falling down her hollow cheeks, "please."

He responded by wrapping his arms around her waist so that he could hold her a little closer, lowering his forehead to hers as she dropped her hands down to his shoulders. "I don't know that I can promise that," he admitted, refusing to lie to her.

"Just… Just try, please, that's all I ask," she somehow managed to choke out.

"Alright. I promise I'll try."

That finally brought a smile to her face, but it was quickly followed by a sob as how little time they had to spend together dawned on her once more, breaking her completely as he pulled her close to him, his talons running gently through her hair as his subharmonics made soothing noises, bringing her some reassurance as she cried into his carapace.

She'd never been afraid of dying before. Death had been a familiar companion in her youth; the one constant that would never change. It took her years to even realise that it was different for other people, that death wasn't such a constant presence for them as it was for her, at least, not at her age. She had always known that she would die young; it was just an accepted fact. In fact, finding out that she actually had years in front of her, decades even, it had been the strangest thing, completely messing with her perspective.

Of course, she'd found other ways to brush with death.

Not that she'd had a death wish, but she had thought her survival instinct long since eroded by years of staring down Death, and simply waiting for the day he got sick of waiting for her.

Tiberius had proven her wrong, as was his infuriating habit, but now… She couldn't die. Not when she knew what it would do to him.

Death has a funny sense of humour, she figured, just waiting until I had something I can't live without…

She had tried to ask Nat about how she was progressing with the cure, but she simply kept on shushing her, especially over the past week, telling her that she was distracting her. It was clear to Sarah just how frantic her friend was getting as time ran out. It was simply confirming for Sarah that time would run out.

She figured that she would have to start figuring out how to contact Cerberus. How to offer herself up as bait, to actually manage to get the cure to the other hybrids…

Tiberius seemed to respond to her thoughts, pulling away a little to draw attention to the datapad in his hand.

"We found them," he told her simply.

The flow of tears finally seemed to halt as she simply nodded resolutely.

So, this was how she would go out? She asked herself as she reviewed the data in front of her.

She could think of worse ways to go.

Sarah had barely slept an hour when she was up again. She hadn't slept properly in months, but this was possibly the record for how little time she had managed to spend unconscious. She figured that maybe her subconscious wanted to spend as much time awake as it could, making the most of every moment she had left, but she knew that it was probably just that she was stressed.

Which lying awake in the middle of the night was not helping.

She thought about getting up and doing something to occupy her mind but, as if he sensed that she was thinking of leaving, as soon as she considered it, Tiberius responded by tightening his arm around her, making her smile. She shifted so that she was facing him, her smile widening a little as she saw how peaceful he was when he slept. She had noticed how haggard he had seemed over the past few weeks, but it was particularly noticeable now that it was gone. He had always had a weight on him, ever since she had met him, and it broke her heart that being with her had only made it worse, but she wished that she could see him without the pain she had caused him weighing down on him, just one last time.

She knew that she had to extract herself at that point. She couldn't let her fucking pathetic self-pity seep through their bond and disturb his sleep. It took some creative maneuvering, but she managed to get out of his embrace, feeling a little disappointment at the lack of his familiar presence, but knowing that she wouldn't be able to sleep until she did something productive.

She smiled once more as she took one last glance of his sleeping form as she left the room, although it had a bittersweet edge to it. She hated herself for what was going to happen in the next couple of months. She had always hated just how much she had screwed up Red's life, just by being near him, but she couldn't deny that the knowledge that he would continue the fight against Cerberus without her made her feel better about... leaving. She knew that her death wouldn't be the end of the story, that the others would continue without her, and that knowledge gave her a sense of peace that she desperately needed as she approached the end. She knew that between her friends, her parents, and the rest of her family, Cerberus was in trouble, and the other hybrids would be taken care of.

Of course, she was halfway to the lab when she remembered that she had nothing productive left to do. She knew that the best use of her time would be to start helping Nat with her own cure, but she had no idea where Nat even was with it. So, she couldn't really do any work on that, but by the time she had figured that out, she was already at the lab, only to find that someone was already in there.

"Nat?" she asked, her voice still sleepy as she suddenly became very aware that she was still in her pyjamas.

"Hmm?" was the only answer she received as she entered the room, finding Nat with her gaze fixed entirely on the terminal in front of her.

"Nat, it's the middle of the night," she pointed out, immediately feeling guilty for putting her friend in this position. It would have been much easier if it had been a stranger with the knowledge Nat had of hybrid biology. Sarah knew that it would have been easier for Nat if they weren't so close.

"Shh!" Nat held her hand up, her gaze not leaving the screen in front of her. "I am very busy."

Sarah shifted awkwardly at that, but didn't leave. "I... I finished the cure for the other hybrids. I ran a dozen different simulations this afternoon and... well, it works. But now I have nothing to do, and I can't sleep, so I figured you might need a hand-"

"Sarah! Shh!" Nat told her, holding up her hand once more in a silencing motion.

Sarah frowned at the action, but remained silent, sitting down on one of the desk chairs, waiting until Nat had the time to tell her just where exactly she was with her project. Although, if her frantic nature was anything to go by, it wasn't far enough.

Sarah refused to let her observation bother her, since she had no concrete evidence, as she attempted to wait patiently. She tried a few times to speak to Nat, only to find herself shushed once again. It was almost dawn before her friend made any noise other than 'shush'.

"Ura!" she yelled, prompting Sarah's head to shoot up.

"What, what is it?" she asked blearily. She really hadn't had enough sleep.

"This." Nat moved over to the area where she had been working.

Sarah sighed at the screen. She loved Nat, but she was the worst for not using HC in the lab - even though it was standard practice across all human colonies - and Sarah's Russian wasn't that good. "What is it?" she asked.

"Just..." Nat grabbed her forearm, ignoring the fact that Sarah had been bruising easily over the past few weeks, and sat her down on the examination table, grabbing a vial from where she had been working.

"Nat, what are you doing?" Sarah asked, more than a little confused.

"You see this?" she asked, holding the vial up so that Sarah could see it. "This, my friend, is your future."

"Wait, what?!"

"The main problem I had was that your system couldn't take so many changes at once-"

"Yeah, I had the same problem-"

"-but then I had an idea yesterday and it worked so perfectly. I have been up all night checking and rechecking simulations, and it works!"

Sarah just stared at her blankly, her mind unable to truly comprehend what she was being told. "So, you..."

"Have a cure, right here. All of your defective gene sequences will be replaced. Zu, you're going to be fine. You'll be just like any normal, perfect hybrid."

Sarah had no response to that. She had done it, she had resigned herself to death, she had tied up all of the loose ends, there were papers signed that said that she didn't want any further medical care other than to relieve pain and...

And it was all unnecessary.

She was going to live.

Not only that, but she would never have to leave Red's side again. She wasn't going to do that to him.

She was pulled from her daze by a sharp pain as Nat injected her with the contents of the vial. "You need it three times a day for the next week, but the virus should rewrite all of the genes in your body, even those in your bone marrow. This should be a permanent solution, but it might take a couple of tries to take properly." Sarah simply nodded, still dazed. "Zu, are you okay?"

Sarah responded by pulling Nat into a bone-crushing hug. "Thank you," she told her, her voice choked with emotion. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

Nat simply laughed, shaking her head a little. "It was my pleasure."

Sarah just grinned as she practically skipped towards the door. "I've gotta tell Red!"

"That you do."

Sarah was still skipping as she entered her office, bounding up to the bed where her love still slept, jumping excitedly like a child on Christmas morn.

"Red! Red! Red!" she yelled excitedly, climbing up so that she was kneeling next to him.

He groaned as he turned over to face her, giving her the most confused expression she had ever seen as he tried to sit up. She barely let him get propped up on his elbows before she had moved so that she was straddling him, her lips eagerly seeking his.

He was frowning a little as she eventually pulled away, remembering that it was important to actually breathe. "This is the most confusing wake up ever," he told her, his voice still husky with sleep in the most delicious way, "I mean, at first I thought there was a fire, and now you're kissing me, and I'm pretty sure I'm still asleep..."

"If we're still asleep, then I never want to wake up," she told him, not managing to hold back a grin, "because Nat did it, Red. I'm going to be fine."

His mandibles widened in shock before as he remained still for several moments, processing the information. She was about to ask if he was okay when he suddenly moved, flipping her back so that she was lying on the bed, looking up at him as his eyes seemed to dart about her features, as if taking them in for the first time all over again.

She decided that she was too impatient to wait for him to get over the shock, her lips hungrily seeking his once more, although this time she merely brushed his plates with her lips before slowly pressing them together more firmly, careful to keep the kiss deep and slow, purposefully drawing attention to the lack of frantic edge that had been present in all of their romantic interactions over the past few months, as if they had been trying to convey their desperation with their bodies.

No, today they had all of the time in the world. There was no frantic rush to memorise every inch of the other's body for fear that, in the end, memories were all that would be left. She had the rest of a very long life to spend with this man, and she damn well intended to spend it well.

He seemed to catch on quickly to her intent, his hands moving slowly down her sides, the light touch almost torturous as he reached her waist. She suddenly became more than a little self-conscious as she felt his hands move over her bones, wishing for the curves she had once possessed rather than these harsh angles, cursing past-her for complaining about her ample figure.

He didn't seem to care, however, the pace of his movements remaining constant as she gently brought her hands up to his neck, tenderly trailing up and behind, towards the soft spot just under his fringe, being sure to do nothing more than softly tease as he moaned into her kiss.

She pulled away for breath once more, panting slightly, as she used the opportunity to pull her shirt over her head, discarding it on the floor as she sat up once more, leaving both of her breasts exposed to him. A fact that he was quick to take advantage of as he began slowly nipping down her neck, towards one of her breasts, his tongue softly tracing over the points at which his teeth had made contact with her skin.

His hands, however, were lightly tugging at the waistband of her shorts, shimmying them down her legs as slowly as he could manage, light caresses nearing her inner thighs as he went, almost causing her to squirm a little with impatience. It wasn't long, however, before he threw the shorts across the room to join her shirt, his hands trailing back up the inside of her legs, softly caressing the back of her knees, followed by her inner thighs as he moved upwards as slowly as possible, his touch circling back down occasionally, causing her to groan a little with frustration.

She responded by moving one hand back down from the sensitive spot she had been carefully working, using the fact that that her fingers were slimmer than their turian counterparts, allowing them to slip between his plates, slowly teasing the sensitive skin, earning her a growling tone in his subharmonics as his hands lost their rhythm for a moment.

He decided to repay her by moving his hand all the way up to the junction of her legs, his fingers carefully slipping between her lips, earning a pleasure filled gasp from her. She shifted at his touch, pulling down the blanket that, somehow, still covered his hips, finally revealing that his plates had long since shifted, his member fully erect beneath her, making her wonder if he had woken up hard.

He quickly brought her attention back to him as he began to circle her clit, prompting her to angle her hips so that his tip was at her entrance, silently begging him to enter her. He did so as slowly as he could manage, pausing once he was completely enveloped by her, before pulling away slightly, setting a languorous pace, thoroughly enjoying every whimper and moan he pulled from her lips, especially the slight growl her subharmonics took as she approached her climax.

She moved her hands to his mandibles, cupping his face, as she felt herself getting closer, allowing her to pressed her browplates to his. "I love you, ani," she told him softly as her ice blue eyes bored into his piercing green ones, with all of the promise of tomorrow, something both of them had been lacking for so long.

That was all it took to push him over the edge, spilling into her as she brought her own fingers to down to continue teasing her clit as his faltered, bringing her own climax mere moments later, her inner muscles milking the aftershocks out of him.

"I love you, too," he whispered into her ear, as she rested across his torso, trying not to focus on how light she still felt against him.

She's going to get better. He had honestly believed that he would never see her healthy again, and just the thought of her no longer looking so ashen brought a grin to his features as he admired her once more, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear.

His. She had always been his, but this was the first time, in the many years he had thought that way, that the idea no longer scared him. She was his and he was hers, and it was now completely within their power to make sure it stayed that way.

He was brought from his thoughts by the sound of her giggling, a sound he was pretty sure he'd heard... never.

"What's so funny?" he asked, grinning back at her as she kept on laughing.

"I just... I'm going to be alright!"

"I told you so," he joked, prompting another round of laughter from her.

"You did. You really did. But, I mean, I never..."

"What?" he asked, frowning a little as she tried to search for the words to describe how she felt.

"I've never been... okay before. I just... I've been planning as if I had so little time left, and now that I have so much... What do people do with their time?"

He shrugged. "Anything they want."

She grinned at him once more, lowering her browplates to his once more as she looked at him through her eyelashes in a way he was damn sure should be illegal. "Like living with you on some faraway colony?"

"Just like that."

She sighed a little, the edge of her smile fading just a bit. "I guess we still have to actually stop Cerberus from trying to kill me."

"That I can deal with. It's my specialty," he told her, but her smile refused to return to its full strength.

"And then I guess we have to convince the Council to not murder all the hybrids, which I'm not entirely confident won't include me..."

"I won't let them lay a hand on you," he promised, before sighing himself, "but how about we take a moment to enjoy victory before we start worrying about the road ahead, okay?"

Her smile finally widened once more at that. "Yeah, okay, you're right. I'm sorry, I just can't help it. I'm not used to things going right... it feels off."

"Yeah... it kind of does, doesn't it?" he agreed, laughing himself at just how terrible they both were for not being able to accept the good in their lives.

Their attention was pulled across the room by the sound of her terminal beeping.

"Shit, it's the Emergency Channel," Sarah told him, her smile dropping completely as she scrambled about, trying to pick up her clothes so that she looked halfway presentable.

There were only a handful of people with access to that comm line, and Sarah couldn't think of a good situation that could arise from one of them calling.

She opened the channel as soon as she was halfway decent, only to see that the person who had called her was Cee. "Hey, Cee, you okay?"

"Yeah," her friend replied quickly. "I mean, I think so. Mostly. I mean, it's awesome, but I'm also freaking out, just a little."

"Cee!" Sarah interrupted her friend. "What are you calling about?"

"Oh! I'm pregnant!"

Sarah's eyes widened at that. She had really lost track of time these past few months, she figured as she realised that Cee would have gone into heat in the past few months. "Congratulations!"

"Yeah, but, erm, well... I kind of need a doctor who knows the first thing about hybrids. I mean, my doctor thought that I was crazy until she triple checked the tests."

"Yeah, the Council are still being tight-lipped about the whole thing," Sarah figured.

"So, how long until you can be here?"

Sarah took a moment to think it over. It would require them dealing with the nearby Cerberus forces, but that would be done in the next month. The problem would be that Sarah wouldn't be safe until they had put a stop to Cerberus once and for all, and there was no way she was dragging Cee's family into that mess.

"What about Nat?" Red asked her from the other side of the terminal as he followed her train of thought. "She's done with her work here and she knows everything you do."

Sarah nodded in agreement, turning back to the terminal. "Would that be okay, Cee? Things still aren't safe around me."

Her friend nodded. She had never been overly close with Nat, but she was on the 'friend' side of acquaintance, and if Sarah trusted her, then so did she. "Nat will be fine. I just need someone who knows what they're talking about."

"I'll brief her on your case and send her right over," Sarah assured her friend as the channel closed, before turning to her bondmate. "Please don't let me wake up..."

"Never," he assured her, pushing away the thoughts of upcoming battles, both physical and political. Right now, the woman he loved was safe, and that was, really, all he cared about.