Well would ya look at that-it's been a month since I last updated. I'm profoundly sorry I made you all wait so long to find out what happens next. I really am. Truly. Honestly. Really. I really am.

What can I say, this story has been a wild ride for me personally, as I'm sure it has for many of you who have kept up with it on a regular basis (am I allowed to say regular? I didn't post very regularly. That's really something I should work on, if I ever write another novel-length fanfiction). All that to say, I've really grown as a writer through this process, which has summarily eaten up 2 years of my life. Come to think of it, isn't today the 2 year anniversary of STID? I think it is! OMG this is so fitting wow! Ok, well, this isn't actually the last chapter. I'll be posting an epilogue sometime within the next month or so, so be looking for that. But this is the final "chapter". Yes, I know! So sad! Oh my god ugh. I'll never get those 2 years of my life back, but honestly I would not be where I am as a writer today if it weren't for this fic, and my original novels are about to start feeling the wrath of my growing authorly skills RAWR.

Ok enough of my ramblings. It's almost 1 in the morning here and I have work tomorrow! yay... Anyway, enjoy loveys!

Oh and shoutout to all my reviewers and readers! I'll do a more detailed thank you when I post the epilogue (in June probably lmao oops).

I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we'd given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.

- Clementine Von Radics, Mouthful of Forevers

Chapter 46 – Tabula Rasa

Madelyn looked back at McCoy, considering her options. Violent thoughts joined desperate ones. She didn't have many options left. Even if she managed to overpower everyone in the room without getting shot, she didn't have a clue how to wake Khan again. She needed him now more than ever and he was right in front of her, only just out of reach.

She inhaled with all the strength she could muster to keep from crying. She could mourn him later. Now, as everything threatened to turn red, the best she could do was to hold McCoy in her sights and demand an explanation.

"Nobody asked me if I wanted to see this," she said again, feeling like she was talking to an empty room.

"I know," McCoy replied. "Like I said, we don't have a lot of time. You ever flown a ship before?"

His sudden change of direction caught her off guard. "What?"

"From this moment on, you will be responsible for the wellbeing of seventy-eight cryotubes and their contents," said Spock.

Madelyn squinted at him.

"Jim," McCoy spoke into his raised communicator. "We've successfully returned Khan to cryostasis. Madelyn's in the medbay and her escort is outside, so we're good."

"Thank you, Bones. Be advised we're on track to arrive at the storage facility in a few minutes."

Madelyn grabbed at McCoy's arm before he could skirt around Khan's tube. "What the hell is going on?"

"Jim is about to risk all of our asses so he can follow through on the original plan."

"But you just put Khan back on ice!"

"Jim's orders, and we all feel a lot safer for it. No offense. When he wakes up again, you can be the first person he sees. That's assuming you get onboard with this."

Her anger, disappointment, and desperation were all washing away in a flood of confusion… and was that hope? "I thought Ceti Alpha Five was a dead end," she persisted. "Are you saying it's not?"

"No. It's dead alright. But we may have found another system. Starfleet didn't approve it, probably 'cuz it was easier to just say "oh well" and put him away like they'd planned before. But you gave us a better way and Jim…" McCoy paused. "Well, we all decided this was the right thing to do."

She stared at him, speechless, trying to process exactly what was happening. Another system. They'd found another system, and they were going behind the rest of Starfleet's backs to follow through on what had been promised before.

She and Khan still had a chance.

She glanced down at him, frozen and sleeping peacefully in his cryotube. His faint smile suddenly made so much more sense. It explained why he hadn't tried to put up a fight. She knew it had felt odd seeing him there like this, barely restrained, letting himself be drugged like that, letting himself be locked away.

This wasn't the end, and he'd known it.

"Once we get there, Jim'll have someone meet you in the facility's hangar and show you the ropes of navigation. There's an old transport ship there that should be able to get you where you need to be—"

"Bones, the last time I tried to fly anything, I ended up in the Bering Sea."

"Well, thank God for autopilot."

All she could think about was how the autopilot on that shuttle had failed. "I sure hope you know what you're doing," she said, watching as McCoy circled around to the opposite side of the cryotube, running a scanner over it. "What about Khan?"

"He's lookin' good."

"I don't understand. If you told him, if he knew the plan, why put him away?"

McCoy glanced behind her, to the door as Spock replied. "We have reason to believe Starfleet has planted unauthorized people on this ship, specifically to ensure Starfleet orders are carried out, according to plan."

"A Federation emissary is meeting us at the storage facility where we're supposed to be leaving all the cryotubes," McCoy explained. "But Jim's got a plan for a distraction. We won't have a lot of time for you to get out."

So it was all for show. It had all been for show the moment she'd stepped onboard the Enterprise. And that explained why her guards had been shut out of the medbay. Just in case one of them was just waiting to rat them all out.

"You must understand, Ms. McGivers. We have done everything to ensure your request is fulfilled," Spock explained. "The Captain did not believe that we should turn our backs on you after everything you'd been promised. Though he is going against every regulation he has vowed to uphold, I must admit that I do see the morality of such action. It would be better for Khan and his people to live outside of Federation boundaries if the alternative is to store them away only for a future Admiral Marcus to find and awaken them for his own purposes, essentially and most likely repeating the events that took place earlier this year."

She almost laughed at Spock's serious explanation of something that she'd thought was going to destroy her. Now her excitement was welling up because of it, and her crushed dreams were only dreams themselves. This was really, finally happening.

She moved quickly around to the side of Khan's cryotube, unable to take her eyes off his inexplicable expression of pleasant calm. "You need to show me how to wake him up," she realized.

McCoy nodded and held a PADD out to her. "For starters, you'll need this."

They arrived at the station, greeted immediately by the emissary McCoy had mentioned. Madelyn greeted him quickly, masking her expression so as not to reveal that anything was amiss. Hopefully she came off as dismissive and defeated. In her heart, she felt far from it.

She waited with Dr. McCoy and the Enterprise's chief engineer Lieutenant Montgomery Scott, until Kirk managed to distract the emissary into a conference room attached to the storage facility's main control room. The moment the door slid shut, they hurried down the corridor, following the readout on Lieutenant Scott's PADD to the far hangar.

The promised transport ship filled most of the hangar, a relic of a time when this station had first been constructed, when Starfleet had just begun to explore this corner of the galaxy. Using a remote control through his PADD to the Enterprise, Lieutenant Scott beamed all seventy-eight cryotubes from the Enterprise into the ship's loading bay, and then all of the storage containers, which Madelyn had not been aware were onboard the Enterprise in the first place. She wondered how they'd gotten them onboard without her knowledge.

"I don't have the access codes to open this ship from the outside. The only way to get in is to open the doors from the inside," Scott explained. "I can beam you in from here, but once you're in, you'll want to get things up and running as soon as possible and get out of here before our friend from the Federation finds out what's happened." He held up his PADD and motioned to the one she clutched to her chest, the one that contained McCoy's programming instructions to wake Khan and the others from their frozen sleep. "I can transfer the autopilot instructions to your PADD, but you'll have to turn the ship on manually to get them to work. She's an old ship, won't make it off the ground again once ya land—Pollux Five's your destination—but she'll provide ya with plenty o' spare parts, and shelter too if she makes it to the ground in one piece. Ya think you can manage it?"

She glanced at McCoy, then at her PADD, and then back at Lieutenant Scott, barely registering what he said about the ship being old. It was a ship, and it would get her where she wanted to go and that was all that mattered. "I don't have a choice," she said, handing him her PADD. "Give me everything you've got.

He quickly made the data transfer and handed her PADD back. "You're all set. Ready to be beamed inside?"

She almost nodded furiously, but paused. Once she was on that ship, there was no going back. She would never see McCoy again. She would never see Earth again.

Before he could protest or refuse her, she turned and latched her arms around the doctor's neck as tightly as she could without cracking the PADD stuck between them. She didn't let go when he made a choking noise. "I can't thank you enough for this."
"I know," he managed to respond.

She held on for another moment, then let him go and gave him a little room, keeping a hand on his shoulder. "I mean it, Bones. I know I've said this before—and honestly I've lost track of how many, but you deserve them all and more. Thank you."

He cleared his throat, looking surprisingly unsure of what to say. He didn't need to say anything. She held his gaze for a moment, letting him know without a word that she was going to be ok.

Because she was. Finally. She was going to be ok, and so was Khan.

Lieutenant Scott cleared his throat suddenly and broke the silence. "Alrighty. You ready?"

She nodded.

Scott keyed in something on his PADD and after a moment a familiar glow surrounded her. It brightened until it blinded her, and then when she could see again, she was alone on the bridge of an unfamiliar ship. She quickly got to work.

The instructions Scott had transferred to her PADD were technical, but she read through them carefully, her heart starting to pound. She only had a small window of time to get that ship away from the facility and out of range before the Federation emissary had a chance to escape Kirk's babbling and find out what was going on.

A few minutes later, the main control panels were glowing to life and the engines were humming beneath her feet. The landing bay doors were sealed shut, its contents secured to the floor by artificial gravity. The next thing she tried didn't work. Her heart pounded. The ship was on, ready to go, but it wouldn't move. She tried another combination of levers and buttons. Nothing.

Chewing frantically on her upper lip, she looked back at Scott's instructions. Oh.

"The parking brake," she breathed, laughing quietly and feeling like the biggest idiot in the galaxy. She released it and instantly the ship began to creep forward. She looked up at the viewscreen—which was covered in a faint layer of dust. That wasn't comforting. McCoy and Scott had disappeared from the hangar, so she triggered the hangar's wide doors. Debris and loose parts were sucked out into the vacuum of space. Now she could plug the PADD into the ship's system, and Scott's autopilot program would take care of the rest.

She kept a close eye on every system as the ship disconnected itself from the hangar floor and slipped out into the blackness of space. A moment later, it jumped into warp. She waited until a readout flickered onscreen that signaled everything was in working order, then she let out a breath, stepping back from the control panel until she could safely fall backwards into the Captain's chair. They were on course for Pollux V.

Nova was what she'd decided to call the ship. It was Latin for "new," and it seemed an appropriate title all things considered. Based on the navigation manifest in the pilot's control console, they would arrive at their destination in less than ten hours. It was still hard to believe this was happening, even as she stared out the viewscreen at blue and white streaks of light that passed them, the only noticeable thing about being at warp speed.

Once upon a time, this had been a pipedream.

With each passing second, Earth grew further and further away and she would never be closer to it again than she was now. Earth, with all of the baggage she had attached to it—her entire life really—was finally going to be a distant memory. A ghost of a recollection. The very notion of this made her feel like a different person—a liberated, hopeful person, with a future spread wide with possibility.

She wondered if she should go ahead and wake Khan. The instructions in McCoy's program said nothing about optimal lengths of time to remain in cryostasis before waking again, or whether there were any side effects. Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the longer a body was frozen, the more extensive the trauma induced upon reawakening. She wished someone had given her a report of Khan's treatment under Admiral Marcus, if it even existed. It probably contained some detailed information on how his body had been affected after being woken from a frozen sleep of over two and half centuries, but realistically, there was no comparison. Half a day was nothing compared to two hundred sixty years. He would probably wouldn't even feel the effects of it. Besides, she was itching to see him again.

Her mind quickly made up, she transferred Lieutenant Scott's autopilot program permanently into the ship from her PADD, then snatched the tablet off the console and made a beeline for the landing bay.

Seventy-eight cryotubes waited in neat rows that spanned the width of the room, each one bearing an Augment—a person. Their metal casings glistened faintly in the dim light. As she passed them, Madelyn could make out faces beneath their icy windows, eyes closed shut in peaceful, oblivious sleep. Most of these people had never even breathed 22nd century air. Most of them would never know about Admiral Marcus. Most of them were fresh out of the Eugenics Wars.

She recognized Kati, and then Cecelia, and then she paused when she came to Otto. She'd forgotten about Otto. Suzette's tube was beside his. For the moment, every single one of these people were in her hands. She could choose to pull the plug on any of them if she wanted. But try as she did to come up with a solid reason to end a life right then, right there, without even Khan knowing, she couldn't find the rationalization within herself. These two would be better off in some kind of tribunal, no doubt preceded over by Khan himself. They were problems to worry about later.

She finally came to the end of the row where Khan slept, his features serene and cool beneath the panel of iced glass, his lips frozen into a faint smile that she knew she should have recognized earlier as a good sign. He'd still managed to have the upper hand in that situation. It must have been excruciating to have withheld that information from her for those moments, when a façade had to be put up to ensure the Federation's emissary didn't catch wind of anything. She knew now that this last act of deceit had been completely necessary, that without it, she wouldn't be standing over his cryotube now, preparing to open it.

He would never know how much those moments had hurt her, because she couldn't even let herself look back anymore. Not when he was right here, and they were on their way to a new home.

Without further hesitation, she began initiating the sequence McCoy had shown her. In moments, the glass began to defrost. She carefully inputted the next few commands, and the tube's surrounding casing hissed. A rush of freezing air escaped as the casing slid back with a click, creating an opening far enough for her to see his chest rising and falling as he breathed. She reached down and put a hand to his face. His skin was cold, but she could feel the heat rapidly returning. She pressed her palm against his cheek, turning his face so that he would see her the moment he opened his eyes. His lips parted, a deeper breath escaping as he carefully, slowly opened his eyes, until they focused on her.

"Hey there," she murmured. "Sleep well?"

He stared at her for a moment, as though trying to remember where he was. The moment of realization rushed over his blues with shocking speed and he pushed himself up until they were face to face. She quickly initiated a final sequence so the cryotube could open completely, allowing him to pull his legs out and swing them around to the floor. She didn't budge from his side as he pulled her in with a wry smirk.

"I imagine everything has been explained to you by now?" he queried deep in his chest.

She inhaled at his confidence and nodded. "Still, you could have told me. Would have saved me a lot of trouble."

"If I had, we would not be having this conversation. I would still be in cryostasis, and you…"

His words lingered in the air, the sentence unwilling to complete itself. She was glad it never did.

"But you're not, and I'm not, and it's ok."

For the moment, the silence between them was the most satisfying thing she had felt in a long time. She knew when she was lost in the clutches of his piercing gaze, but the moment shattered when he began to take in their surroundings.

She could hear his sharp intake of breath as his feet met the floor and the room bowed to his gaze. He brushed a gentle hand across her arm as he slid past her. As he faced the rows of cryotubes that filled the room around them, he seemed to straighten, and to hesitate, as though what he was seeing might not be real.

"They're all here. Every single one," she reassured. "Even the ones I don't want to see again."

There was no response, though she hadn't expected one. He just stood there with his back to her, shoulders rising and falling steadily. Too steadily. So she sidled up to him, slipping her hand into his, stealing a glance at the man she loved who had fallen too silent for comfort. There were tears on his cheeks.

"I cannot tell you how many times I have wondered if I would ever see them again," he said quietly, in a voice that seemed to be barely holding onto itself. "To be honest I never imagined it would be because of you."

She wasn't sure how to respond to that. Maybe she didn't need to. His hand tightened fiercely around her own, until she might have tried to pull away if she didn't trust him so much not to hurt her.

"And yet," he continued hoarsely. "Here we are."

"Here we are," she whispered, unable to restrain the smile creeping onto her lips. They'd made it this far already. They only had hours—

"How long until we reach our destination?" His voice was clearer, more pronounced. Commanding.

"Last I checked, about ten hours."

He nodded. "Plenty of time to wake a few key personnel."

The idea both alarmed and excited her. "Already?"

Khan spun away on his heel and made his way down the lines of cryotubes, pausing over one and immediately inspecting the readouts at its head. "We want to arrive on the ground in one piece, don't we?"

She still felt unsure about the idea of waking some of his crew so soon. She wasn't even sure why. But when she caught his gaze, her worries vaporized.

"Only those who have no knowledge of Admiral Marcus," he said. "Nor of any recent events. They will be only the ones I trust most closely, whose loyalties I have never doubted."

She nodded slowly. She trusted him to make these decisions. She had to now. "How many of them?"

"For starters, the few who will be necessary for our safe arrival. I'm unsure how they will respond to being woken after such a long period of stasis. We can't afford to risk any lives."

"Then maybe we should wake Kati too."

He nodded swiftly, without hesitation, and proceeded down the row of tubes again until he came to the one he was looking for. He glanced up at her again after another brief inspection. "She certainly hasn't been asleep as long as the others. Your feedback is most appreciated."

She caught the hint of his smile before his attention was lost to the cryotube. A fleeting moment passed, in which she realized something. Three quick strides towards him and a tight grip on his arm, and her lips were locked on his. She shut her eyes, breathing him in, realizing how close she'd been to losing him—or rather, how close she thought she'd been. She was so glad to be rid of Starfleet's games. She was glad to be rid of them all.

When their lips broke apart, their bodies didn't. She gasped for air at first, keeping a steady hold on his arm, with which he was supporting the small of her back. "We have ten hours, Khan," she breathed. "Ten hours. Just us. Let's make the most of it."

It took barely a few seconds for her meaning to register on his face. "How could I refuse?" he murmured, lifting her from her feet enough to make her laugh softly, a laugh that was quickly stifled by hungry lips.

A few hours had passed by the time her breathing had caught up with itself and her heartbeat had calmed to a more reasonable speed. Her skin felt sticky from a layer of sweat, but it felt good to release all of that pent up stress she'd been holding onto those past few weeks.

She stretched out in the fresh, soft sheets, on the only bed they could find on the ship. The room was a small variant of a captain's quarters, and though Khan had lamented it was not big enough, she'd snorted and asked him how it couldn't possibly be good enough for the two of them in that moment. That had been enough to make him want to prove it to her. She made a mental note to try that again sometime, when they found themselves alone in an unusual circumstance. It had certainly been worth it.

She rolled over when she heard his footsteps. The shower had been off for a few minutes. He stood in the doorway, his hair combed out of his face, a towel wrapped loosely around his hips. Before she could say anything, he crossed to the bed and knelt over her, planting a gentle kiss on her lips that she relished. He always smelled so good, it was almost unfair.

"Thank you," he murmured, breath ghosting her ear after he broke the kiss.

Wracking her brain to think of reasons he would be grateful to her in this moment, the only thing she could come up with made her want to bark with laughter.

"No, I'm not referring to what you think I am," he continued, smiling freely.

"Damn."

"I wanted to thank you for reminding me why I am here. Before my people distract me from you—which, I can guarantee you this will happen."

She propped herself up on her elbow, not bothering to hold the sheets up around her body. "I guess I just needed to cement this. You know… the fact that we're finally together."

"I agree. These next few weeks and months will be very busy, potentially stressful. We will need each other more than ever."

"It's not just me that's going to need you. Give me eight months or so…" She waited for the recollection to flicker across his face. He didn't waste a second. His eyes brightened, but she didn't see much of them as his lips descended to hers again. A few more moments and then he broke away and straightened.

"We will have to think of names," he stated, turning his back to reach for his clothing, dropping his towel in the process. One thing was for sure: she would never get tired of admiring his physique. Mild disappointment flooded her visual cortex upon the introduction of pants, but his shirt didn't join them so quickly.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," she said after a moment. "We don't even know if it's a girl or a boy."

"Then we must plan for both. Other than names is there really much of a difference?"

She shook her head. "There shouldn't be."

Khan nodded and pulled his shirt over his head, mussing his hair in the process. Now it hung in his face. She might have gotten out of bed just to comb it back with her fingers, but at the moment she was far too comfortable and a little exhausted. "I've decided that Kati will be the first to wake. I will then wake three highly skilled engineers whom I trust completely. I would trust them with your life, in case you still have doubts."

She almost rolled her eyes. "You know all of these people. You're going to know who should be brought out of stasis first. Don't let me get in your way."

He smiled, but zeroed his gaze in on her. "And don't ever let me get in your way. I imagine that most of my people have some catching up to do?" He quirked an eyebrow.

"Over two hundred fifty years worth of catching up," she replied, the idea settling in that she was going to have plenty of things to do over the coming months. Years even. Though Earth history could ultimately be considered irrelevant on a planet where new history was constantly being made, the least she could do was show these Augments the damage their actions could cause to a society over the long term, even in the most miniscule of ways. She would do everything she could to ensure that her children were going to grow up in a world that was safe.

Eventually, she had to get out of that bed. Khan was still tinkering with the ship's main controls after she'd showered and clothed herself and found him on the bridge. He didn't waste anymore time and practically pulled her back to the landing bay where the cryotubes still waited.

"Do you have your PADD?" he said, after a moment of careful, detailed inspection of Kati's tube. Madelyn handed it to him. As he took it, he paused, holding her gaze, not quite taking it from her hand.

"Everything that happens after today will be my responsibility," he said. "This includes any actions taken by those who have harmed us before."

"Khan, I know you're trying to make up for the past, but—"

"Madelyn, I am being utterly and completely serious. I'm aware that you have freely chosen this path, that your desire to be with me is without and despite coercion or any misleading information from myself or others—"

"For fuck's sake, Khan! We're engaged! I'm carrying your child!" She pointed at her stomach with emotive gestures, mostly annoyed at his insistence on being so… so… what was he being?

The look on his face was one she'd never seen before—one that said he hadn't been expecting that reaction from her. The next was the same serious business face he always wore as he took the PADD from her hand completely.

"Very well," he said. A double take told her he was fighting a grin. She smiled fully in return. "You know you cannot make me respond the way you want," he replied. At this, she busted out laughing. Finally, a warm smile, then he turned his gaze back to Kati's cryotube. "Now, shall we begin?"

Yeeeeeeeeeee ok please leave your reviews and comments in the box below and I'll try to reply personally to each and every one of them since this. is. my. last. chance. (until the epilogue). LOVE YOU ALL.