Disclaimer: The Syndicate, CGB Spender and Alex Krycek belong to Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. No copyright infringement intended.
Spoiler: En Ami
Keywords: Angst, Romance
Archive: Only with the written consent from the author: TrekPhile47@hotmail.com
***
Wise men have been known to say that time moves on in good and in bad, and it is a human's business to move on with it.
The truth is always concealed by the lie, enveloped in a soft embrace and protected with harsh steel. It can only be one person to find their truth, no one can find it for them. If the time and opportunity is right, one can find the truth at any cost.
And still it moves.
***
It had been a long time in coming, but Demona Launce felt it was her due time. She had called up The Syndicate, asking for this meeting, knowing it would be her last, in whichever way The Syndicate wanted to take it.
Everything worth having came with a price: especially freedom. Freedom was want Demona wanted so badly, freedom since the fact that she had been closer to dying at the hands of The Syndicate than at any other time in her life.
It was easy to get The Syndicate together. They traveled in that courage-bolstering herd. All were there.
Except Krycek, who probably needed to hear this the most. He needed to know that she was moving up and on from this hell.
It had taken Russia and a year of other hell for her to realize it, the days had been so painful as she looked in the mirror every morning, she still could see some of the blackness under her eyes and the bruises at her neck still hadn't fully disappeared, making her skin look a lot like muddy water. The effect was disgusting and bringing her eyes to look at herself was almost too painful to bear. It wasn't even worth tying to plaster it over with makeup: makeup didn't cover the mental damage done by Russia.
She was a walking time bomb. She had nearly died at the hands of something so alien that she couldn't even grasp it with her openness of mind. It was what haunted her dreams and cursed her thoughts. She knew Krycek had lied about her condition---she saw it in his eyes, she could read it over all his expression.
She felt like she was radioactive. It had taken hours and hours in her shower to get her feeling decent, and still, she didn't feel like she could wipe the skin from her body. She didn't feel like she could ever feel clean again.
So now, all but Krycek were congregated here in the New York office, waiting for the bomb to drop. They seemed to suspect the truth. One of the lowly-ones does not just call a meeting to say that they were blowing their nose.
Demona stared at Spender, looking into his face, knowing the wrath that she had wrought by even thinking the thoughts that would blaspheme The Syndicate: "I'm leaving."
"You can't just leave," First Elder replied coolly, letting any emotion slide from his face, "this is not just some game you can forfeit."
"Too bad," Demona replied with an edge in her voice she recognized as hysteria. "I'm out and there isn't a damn thing you can say that can get me to stay here." She fumbled in her mind for all avenues of argument. Anything that she could use to win.
"You don't seem to understand what we are saying," Spender said, "you don't leave The Syndicate without something in repay."
"What do you want," she asked, tempting the caged animal.
First Elder smirked, "You don't leave this office with all the knowledge that had been pumped into your head."
Demona smirked and withdrew her gun, "Do you want to or should I?" She held the gun to the side of her head in mocking.
Everyone else looked at her as if she had gone insane.
"Or better yet," she trained the gun on one of them, "I know none of you are armed. How willing are you to loose one of your blessed own?"
Spender looked on her; "This doesn't have to end in violence---"
"The hell it doesn't," Demona replied, drawing the hammer back. "You scratch my back, I scratch yours. My life for his." She trained the gun so that he would be flossing with a lead bullet.
"Oh please," Spender sighed with trivial joviality.
"You think that I won't do it? I know you are trying to get back onto your feet," she laughed. The man with the gun at his head betrayed faint fear as she kept her hand steady. "Could you suffer a loss? Tell me Spender: do you have the balls to risk your own?"
"I have no doubt she will do it," Well-Manicured Man said to himself. He addressed her; "What do you want for this man's life exactly?"
"My freedom from The Syndicate, no strings attached," she replied, not taking her eyes from the potential victim. "His life for mine."
Silence. It was edged with fear and uncertainty. Demona could feel her fingers start to tremble with her own doubts. Would anyone hear if she blew them all to hell? Maybe, maybe not.
"It's a deal," First Elder replied. Spender shot him a withering look of hurtful accusation. Demona un-cocked her gun and replaced it in her lap, closing her trembling fingers into a tight fist. She controlled her quaking and swallowed hard, not believing she was free.
"Know this, you will have eyes on you: you utter a word of our plans to anyone---to a crack in the wall---and we will kill you. Are you clear?"
"Absolutely," Demona looked at them, then turned and left. The door clicked shut behind her.
"You goddamned idiot," Well-Manicured man accused to First Elder. He knew he was over-stepping his bounds, but he had to let out the exclamation of pure frustration. "We just let her go, who is stopping her from telling all of our secrets even at the threat of death?"
"You must remember, we have a level of impunity," First Elder said, "if we kill her later, no one will ever persecute us."
***
Her hands shook as she entered her apartment, and Demona sank to the floor after she was inside, weeping tears of relief and happiness. It was over; there was no more Syndicate.
It was only a matter of her slipping back into the mainstream of life and away from the wrath that she knew was going to follow her from The Syndicate.
One day at a time, she reminded herself. Take it one day at a time.
No more nights on the run, no more days of boring anticipation. She didn't have to answer to the Syndicate, and she was her own person again. She was free to live, to learn---
And to love.
But there was a vague chance that she would find anyone who had met to the same level that someone of her new past had.
It was time for her to begin a new life and existence. She had the ability to be whatever she wanted. She could be wherever she wanted without anything to hinder her or to nag at the back of her mind.
She burned the clothes she was wearing; she burned all the disguises, all the hardware, all the files, and all the pictures.
But that didn't keep them from staying in her mind.
***
Alex Krycek listened to his beeper going off at the side of his bed, jarring the wood and the empty tumblers around it. He wondered whether or not to answer it or to let it rattle itself onto the floor.
Fifteen days.
Fifteen days since he had returned from Russia, and already, he was beginning to long for a life he never had. Russia always tended to do that to him. This time, it had happened quicker than the last.
Of course, the last time he had come back from Russia, it had been with a prosthesis and a bad attitude.
His beeper stopped vibrating as he reached out for it. He sighed and rolled back over in the bed.
Sleep was so grateful, it never asked questions: it just let him go.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes again, waiting for somewhat of a drink-induced stupor. The images that he hoped wouldn't come came back. The dreams of his Syndicate ways always pressed and poked through at him.
These dreams didn't upset him anymore, not like before. They would have kept their under-level nuisance if only the star torture victim wasn't Demona Launce.
It was no use, he wasn't going back to sleep and there was no way to avoid the day. There was no way to avoid the fact that he was insanely in love with Demona.
He hadn't known love, only lust. Maybe this, too was lust; but it felt horribly like so much more. It was a feeling that left him empty when he thought of her, not full like lust.
If anything, he could always see her when he was working.
The beeper went off again. This time, Krycek looked at it. The Syndicate.
His cell phone was in the pocket of his jeans. There were three pairs lying on the floor of his bedroom, it had to be in one of them. He found it and dialed the number.
"Krycek," he snarled.
"Come to the offices," First Elder said. The line went dead.
And there goes Miss Congeniality, Krycek thought. He pulled on something that didn't smell like sweat and cheap perfume.
The car ride was misery, the light pierced right into his head. The boding darkness of The Lair was a welcome recovery.
"Sit. ...There is news that you must know."
"And?"
"Demona Launce is gone."
"She's gone," Alex Krycek swallowed hard. He wasn't sure what this entailed: she was ether dead or out of The Syndicate. It was either his greatest hope or his deepest fear.
"Demona left late last night," Spender replied. "One of our lives for hers."
She took one of them hostage; Krycek laughed deep inside himself. That was the best way to do it, if there was any way at all.
"We can't just let her go," Spender said. "She will be killed, if not today, then tomorrow, if not tomorrow, then the next day."
None of it registered to Krycek: Demona was free. It was one slave hearing that the other had ran away. Despite the fact that she had some hope of a life, Krycek felt the harshness of the selfishness that she had left him. She had left without him, to rot away in The Syndicate without her to keep him in reality.
"You must forget she existed."
Krycek snapped out of his thought. Forget Demona Launce? Never. If there was anything he had learned from The Syndicate, was to never let a passion go: never turn your back on what you want.
"I have to go," Krycek said without explanation. He was out of the door like shot.
"He's going to see her," First Elder replied. "I knew there was something there."
"So what," Spender replied, lighting the signature Morley. "Let him give her a pity fuck. It'll show him how much she really means to him. He'll be back."
***
Krycek sat in his car, waiting as the traffic died down on the busy street. He looked up at the high-rise apartment building, admiring its sleekness.
He read down the list of residents in the apartment, reaching the fifth floor and seeing Demona's name. He pressed the button and waited patiently.
Demona didn't seem to care who it was, she buzzed him in without checking the intercom. All the better, Krycek most likely would have choked up and left. It was easier to just see her and to talk to her. So what if The Syndicate knew? It didn't matter at this point; he couldn't let Demona walk out of his life as much as she had entered it with a bang.
He decided to take the elevator, his legs were too rubbery to climb the stairs. The elevator ascended in the apartment building with the same aggravating slow pace as his life dragged on. There were too many parallels. He tapped his foot impatiently as slowly he climbed to the fifth floor. The elevator music was really getting on his nerves by the time the doors slid open.
The inside of the apartment was pristine white with brass trim. The wallpaper was off-white with a feather design pressed into it, and the woodwork that reached to the middle of the walls was white with scroll filigree. The carpet though was green, but a light seafoam green that looked strangely like alien bloodstains. There were lamps lighting each side of the doors with frosted glass votives and brass vine work holding them from the wall.
Demona's door was like all the rest, plain and white, with a doorknocker. She seemed to want to jump out of the limelight and back into the main stream. She wanted to wear pressed suits to her desk job, drink plain, black coffee and read books off New York Times' Best-Seller's List. It seemed too plastic for Krycek to see Demona doing; after seeing her shoot people, beat the living hell out of him and being shady. Seeing her become a single, independent female in New York was not what Krycek saw in Demona Launce.
He rapped lightly with the back of his knuckles; they sounded like repeated explosions from a weapon. He waited as he heard Demona walking to the door, her feminine graceful steps echoing across what sounded like expensive wood floors. Krycek wasn't a complete dumb-ass, he knew Expensive when he heard it. Hearing the feet pause in front of the door and the locks creaking made him have a sudden seizure of nerves and felt like turning with his tail planted firmly between his legs.
Demona opened the door and a look of sheer surprise and fear fleeted across her face, "Krycek?"
She looked really, really good. The kind of good that came with time away from what stressed you out for months. She was wearing tight jeans and an oxford blouse (buttoned quite far down). He could see the edge of a lacy bra cup showing through like a foal behind its mother. Demona must have noticed it, too, she reddened and adjusted her stance.
"Please, Demona, just call me Alex for now. ...I'm not here to kill you," he added with a last breath. Her face fell visibly into the folds of relief. "Can I come in?" "I suppose," she replied with some degree of ice. She held the door for him and he took two wary steps in, knowing he was going to stick out like a sore thumb. Demona closed the door quietly behind him, making sure none of The Syndicate was there to attack her.
The apartment was furnished with classic furniture; all of it looked like it hadn't been lived in. A sweater draped across the back of one and magazines lay open like damaged butterflies. There was a faint smell of smoke in the entire house.
She led Krycek through her nice sitting room down the hall to her study, where she had him sit on a leather chair by a window. She lowered the volume on her CD, which was playing something soft and melodic and like jazz, but Krycek couldn't name the tune or the band.
Books lined the walls, some of them old, some new. Some lay out on her desk, open with dog-ears, some just stacked up in large piles waiting for Demona to reach out and read their delicate words.
They said nothing for a few moments; Demona sized him up to some extent, reading everything about him. She hadn't seen him in a week and she had already noticed things about him that were different. Why did he have to come? She was just starting to be comfortable without her erotic dreams about him. Damn him.
"Hello, Alex," she murmured. "How have you been?"
"Well enough," Krycek replied quietly. "I heard that you left. Congratulations."
She didn't share his exuberance. She was mutely silent---painfully pinched into uncaring. She was hiding something.
"Has The Syndicate done anything to you?"
"No," she admitted. "They gave their word..." she paused, knowing exactly what that phrase entailed.
"How are you handling the free life?"
She had taken a sighing breath that made her real face come through. It was a mixture of inane fear and extramarital bliss. It was as open as the book she had written her life into...Krycek didn't even need an answer; only a dolt would have asked twice.
"If not to kill me, then why are you here?"
Instantly, his mind went to their first kiss. He had tasted her passion in them, he had tasted fire and it didn't burn him: he wanted to do it again. "I was just wondering how you were doing."
"A person 'just wondering' does not risk life and limb," she commented colder than Jack Frost. Jeez, when had she gotten a psychology degree? She was starting to banter in the same way Mulder did when he was headlong in some explanation only cows would stand still long enough to hear.
She watched as Krycek's face played emotions over them: something like worry, then fear, then caring and then lust. She knew the last feeling well, too. So strange that now she needed him to be there, as somewhat her protective guard, and before he was quite a nuisance to her.
Krycek swallowed, attaining the defense that one had to get with Mulder: "I just needed to know that you were safe."
"Wouldn't The Syndicate have told you if they had killed me?"
Krycek choked back a snort, "They think that I had something to do with your leaving: that I told you how to hit them where it hurt. They haven't been informing me of everything since I entered this viscous circle."
Demona looked at him, with a sadness that only came from understanding, "Time changes so many things."
Krycek nodded. He was blank; his mind had nothing left to bring to her. All he needed was to look on her, to know that she was there and safe; not dead, dangling from a Syndicate noose or bleeding from a Syndicate gunshot.
It was too harsh for him to know and allow the fact that he had seen so much that he couldn't tell normal human reality from Syndicate reality. He wasn't sure if Demona could be real, if anything was real. He really wished he had pulled his head out of his ass sooner; maybe he could have joined the low-level witlessness that Demona was struggling to get back to.
Demona read his thoughts, "You know what Kry---Alex? I read that folder that The Syndicate without ever knowing what I had gotten myself into. I accepted The Syndicate without even knowing what water I was jumping into. I can't erase what The Syndicate has burned into my head. You were right in Russia when you mentioned the whole 'contract' thing to me."
Krycek nodded sympathetically; somehow, pouring Syndicate misery into the same pitcher with Demona wasn't as hard as he would have realized. Demona seemed to like the company he offered to her misery. "Think of the things that I have seen."
Demona closed her eyes, shutting her brain off the floodwaters of her imagination, but the over-stressed dams had given way to murky seawater.
She saw horrible deaths, saw medical patients lying on tables, screaming to be let free. She saw aliens, looking down on their subjects, their eyes blank and uncaring. She saw the Greys and The Faceless Rebels battling one another; she saw dying Alien Bounty Hunters, spraying green everywhere. She saw people staring at her; the Oiliens washed over their eyes. Everything she had burned had burned itself right back into her. It would take years of therapy to erase them.
"Demona? Demona!" Krycek said, rising from his chair. Demona had closed her eyes, then began trembling with tears running down her face.
He touched her gently and her eyes snapped open; her hands went to defend herself from an invisible assailant, but Alex only held her gently. She opened her mouth to speak again, and her body broke into full sobs.
Krycek could do nothing but pull her up into his arms, comforting her like he had in Russia. He pulled his own broken hands through her hair, whispering empty words that could never ease away the horrors of The Syndicate reality. Demona's eyes wetted his cheek, the salt stinging some scratches, but soothing the pain that he had felt damming up against him.
"I didn't mean to say anything," Krycek replied.
Demona conceded, giving way to the tears, letting them cleanse her. She took a shuddering breath and began with somewhat calmer, but not without an audible lump in her throat, "Years of wanting my own life led to my enslavement by something I couldn't understand: something I couldn't handle."
If there were only some miracle cure, Krycek willed.
"...I'm okay," she assured him, breaking away. She wiped the tears that had collected in her eyes, then wiping away Krycek's with tender hands. His whole being shuddered at her touch.
He nodded dumbly, he decided to sit in a chair closer to her, waiting for another inevitable collapse in Syndicate Withdrawal. He would be there; he would always try to catch the falling glass that was her demeanor.
"How can you think of it without all the pain," she asked.
"Because, Demona, I have turned indifferent eyes to it. I cannot be moved anymore by screams of fear and pain. I cannot look into a fear-laden face without turning icy," Krycek admitted with grief. "I can look a man dead in the eye when I kill them. Do you know how that wakes me screaming?"
New tears slipped down her cheeks; "There isn't a day that passes in my mind that I don't see my family. There isn't a day that passes when I think that I was so close to joining them when I was...infected." She swallowed off her last word, strangling the idea with a whipped-puppy noise. Her lower lip trembled with violence; "Some days I wish that I were dead now, but there is no way I could wipe what I have seen and done for The Syndicate from my soul."
Please don't, Krycek begged, I couldn't live if you died. I couldn't let The Syndicate live if you died. "After a while, you wonder if you ever had a soul."
Demona stared at him with the hollow eyes of pain, but knowing full what he had said.
Some days, he had to wake up and say, "If I kill today, it will not matter, I have killed before, I will continue to kill. One more screaming hybrid will not elicit my tears, one more dying Grey will not frighten me."
Krycek had willed those words into his brain day after day, hour after hour. His first killing had left him black, empty and guilty; his first screaming hybrid had left him sobbing in an abandoned office; and his first dying Grey had scared him to his very core---enough to be afraid to sleep.
"Have you ever felt for what you did?"
"At first," Krycek replied. "It made for very bumpy roads, which aren't comfortable to ride on. The option for me was to just not admit that my fear and regret affected me."
"Do you ever hate yourself down to every fiber of your existence for it," Demona's voice was not harsh and accusing, it was asking him whether or not it was the same way she felt.
"It makes my hate my entire existence, making me want to just peel off flesh and wonder if there will be a new me---an old me waiting beneath," Krycek said. "It makes me fear looking into The Syndicate."
Demona pressed her hands to her face, making her memories fall out of her head. They stubbornly refused to budge.
They sat in their silence; finally something of comfort that Krycek could almost feel around him. Demona was soft and serene, despite the fact that she was battling a plague of her tears. Krycek had realized that Demona was so inward that he had only seen her cry twice: and he was so stony that she had never seen him smile, laugh or at ease. Some couple they made.
Some couple they would never make.
"Thank you, Alex."
"For what?"
"Being here."
"I had to come."
"Why?"
Because I love you, he shouted in his head. "I had to know the truth: I couldn't let you die without seeing you."
Demona gave something of a snort and a sob: "There are so many things about me that you don't know, Krycek---there are so many things I don't even know about you. If I told you what I am hiding behind The Syndicate wall would you run? Would you not want to know the truth?"
Krycek looked on her with pure emotions. She was so strong, but yet almost too weak to stand on her own; she was so compassionate, but she hated herself for feeling. He wanted to help her stand; he wanted to show her how to feel (though he himself knew nothing in that area). "I want to know you, Demona. I've wanted to know you since I first saw you."
"There is nothing inside."
Krycek shook his head sadly, "There is something."
"I don't know myself anymore! Somewhere under all of this Syndicate mess, there is me, but I haven't seen it in so long."
"I know who you are," Krycek said, taking her hand and staring into her eyes. "I know you are strong, and I know that you are passionate. All I want now is to be a part of that passion: all I want is to be in love with you. I want you to love me back"
Demona didn't say anything: she took his face in her hands, tracing her thumbs over his lips. She leaned in and touched him briefly for a moment, then let any restraints go. Krycek accepted her into his arms, finally he was whole with what he desired and needed the most: the love of Demona Launce. As they held each other together, Demona cried, her tears falling down her face and into their mouths.
Her taste was salty and sweet to Krycek. It was everything that he had wanted in her, and so much more. Her mouth was hungry for him, hungry for his want to add to hers.
"I'm so lost," Demona's head fell back as he kissed his way around her neck, letting him take her flesh between his teeth, making her blood rise into her face.
"I'll find you," Krycek promised, "I'll look forever if I have to."
"I..." Demona was silenced as Krycek's hand found her head, pulling her into his mouth, into his head. She opened her mouth to him, letting him in to her mind and her thoughts.
"I love you," Krycek's words fell through her mouth like water. It was a lot easier to say to her than he thought they would be.
"Alex," she moaned, "I have wanted you so badly. I..." Demona was silenced as Krycek placed a gentle finger to her lips. She opened herself to him, letting him in to her mind and her thoughts.
"You need to know something Demona: you need to know that I love you. I haven't always in the beginning, but I always will," Krycek's words fell through her mouth like water. It was a lot easier to say to her than he thought they would be.
"Alex," she cried into his neck, "I have loved you from far away, but I was afraid to get near you."
It was all the invitation he needed. He kissed her again, holding onto her as if she were his last salvation---and she was, she was his last chance that he would ever have to live freely and to love.
She felt so small in his arms, like a piece of art almost. It was beautiful and grand as it sat up on its pedestal so far from reach, yet tantalizingly close. But once that piece of art is your and you can touch it and feel it; somehow it is real, and it is not so big anymore, but it is still precious and somehow worth so much more.
"I have loved you for so long," Demona said. "It was everything I have thought of."
Krycek nodded, working his hands through her hair. "The Syndicate can't have you, I won't let them."
Demona sighed against his cheek, unwilling to let go, "You cannot stop the inevitable. They want me dead, and no amount of your protection can stop what they want done. Are you willing to step in and perhaps get killed?"
"I don't care about the risks, Demona. I want you to be mine," Krycek said, his voice etched with serious pain. "I would die for you right here, I would sell my soul to whatever devil is beyond The Syndicate for you."
"I want you, Demona. I want you to be mine," Krycek said, his voice etched with serious pain. "I would die for you right here, I would sell my soul to whatever devil is beyond The Syndicate for you."
"Forever, Alex; forever you and I," she promised.
"Marry me," he begged.
"I can't," she shattered his world.
"Why can't you?" he said through shocked lips. Demona placed a hand to her mouth and shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she had said to him. "Demona, you have to tell me; you can't just lead me to the middle of nowhere and then tell me to get back on my own."
"I can't marry you because you are already married," she said cryptically.
"And when the hell was I told about this," he tried to cover his annoyance with a coy smile.
"I'm serious, Krycek," she said, reverting herself to calling him by his last name. "I can't marry you when you are still married to The Syndicate."
"Screw The Syndicate," he nearly shouted. The Syndicate is laden with lies, it makes up the rules as it goes. I am not married to it."
"So you say," she replied. "But you don't see yourself the way I see you: you are addicted to danger and inconsistency."
"I thought you were the one to enjoy danger."
"And you didn't? You knew the thrill of the hunt; the secrets that kept us all going! You probably know that better than I do," she hollered at him, barely able to control her shaking. "I barely know all of your actions in The Syndicate, and yet, I still know that whatever you have done has gotten you hooked."
"You think that I enjoyed the killing that I just told you I hated," his face flamed red.
She was silent.
Krycek pulled her to his body, enjoying the way her face betrayed fear in that he may try to kill her to. He kissed her on the lips, holding her there despite her struggles to break away. He finally broke and whispered into her ear; "How can I love you so much and still be of The Syndicate?"
"You can't."
"I don't want The Syndicate to kill whatever we have. The Syndicate means nothing to me anymore; it hasn't for a long time."
"Are you sure," she asked, deadly serious. "I can't live with you and The Syndicate as your shadow."
"Marry me," he asked again.
"No," she whispered.
"I will never let you leave me again," he avowed gently. "I swear to God I will follow you until you tell me you will marry me."
"Then you will be following me for a damn long time. ...You'd be willing to give up all Syndicate power for me?"
"I'd give up my life for you," Krycek replied, pulling her in for another found-love kiss. "Promise me you won't leave me for anything," he asked again.
"Alex, I could never promise anyone anything that would ever mean anything in the end," she said. Her voice was quiet even though the words were harsh rebuke.
"Demona, I can't ever let you go, I'll go crazy without you. I'll end up hanging or shooting myself," he said.
"You'll have to manage," she shrugged, but she comforted him slightly with a kiss. "You have to understand we both have issues to deal with: we're too screwed up now to make each other happy."
"I don't need anything to make me happy except knowing that you are with me."
"Shh," she placed a hand to his lips. "I won't hear it now, we'll discuss it later."
As a final comment, she rested her lips on his mouth, stinging him with her touch. Krycek could only bury his head deep within her chest; it was the only way to keep the hot tears from burning his eyes out. "Make love to me Alex."
"Here? Now?"
"Here, now and always," she replied as he lifted her from her feet. Let whatever hell come: it could not touch them.
***
Spender held his head in his hands; he had just received a call.
"You look like your world just fell apart," First Elder said with irony.
"Krycek just called. He said he's out."
"That just means that our cause to kill Demona will break Krycek as well," First Elder replied. "We kill Demona, it breaks Krycek, and we get him back. He never would have left if it weren't for Demona."
"So, we proceed as planned?"
"Absolutely."
-End-