Chosen One: A Swiftly Falling Darkness
chapter one: the slayers
It was nearly half-five when Angel was interrupted by his secretary.
Nearly two hours since she last asked if I needed anything, he thought. That's almost a new record.
She walked into the room after a perfunctory knock and slipped a new wad of reports into his in-tray. "End of the day memos, Mr. Angel," she said in a cool, slightly husky voice. "I'm about to leave. Would you like another glass of blood before I go?"
"No, thank you, Zanne. Please shut the door as you leave."
Zanne did so with precise movements, no effort wasted. Angel glared at the door after she was gone.
His secretary got on his nerves. It was nothing she said or did - she was the perfect secretary, thoughtful, courteous, helpful. Angel just didn't like her and her damned efficiency.
Maybe he'd just gotten too used to Cordelia's haphazard methods of organising his office all those years ago.
Angel felt a pang of regret-sadness-anguish-anger at the thought of the vivacious brunette, now comatose and in the care of a bevy of trained nurses and specialists. He got a report on her condition every week, letters from the specialists on the new treatments they'd tried, ranging from the metaphysical to the magical.
So far, it didn't look like there was anything that could bring a person back when a rogue Power-That-Be had taken the body over as an incubator.
Another knock heralded the secretary's return. "Mr. Gunn to see you, Mr. Angel."
From behind her, Gunn mouthed, 'Mr. Gunn?' He strode into the room, looking decidedly business-smart in his suit and tie, the whole 'lawyer' image completed by the file under his arm.
"Uh, thank you, Zanne. Have a good night."
She nodded, "You too, Mr. Angel."
And, turning on her heel, she left.
Angel noted how Gunn watched the secretary leave before turning back to him. Since his split with Fred, Gunn had become very open about admiring other women.
"If those heels were any higher, she'd be able to slam-dunk for the Lakers, you know?" Gunn grinned as he took a chair. "Nice ass, though."
"I didn't notice."
"But you looked, didn't you?" Gunn asked, a twinkle in his eyes. Then he regarded Angel a little more soberly. "Seriously, if she's that irritating, why don't you fire her?"
"She has a six-month contract in that role."
The whistle was surprised. "Who got her to sign that?"
Angel knew his expression was sour. "Who do you think?"
"Lilah."
"Lilah," Angel confirmed. It was almost certainly a parting taunt from the dead lawyer; it had all the hallmarks of Lilah's modus operandi. Pleasant and apparently helpful on the surface, but a neat little backslam beneath. "She might have had her uses..."
"If evil lawyerbitches are your type," Gunn muttered.
"...but I'm not sorry she's dead." He could say that. Angelus hadn't killed her, after all.
Gunn grinned, but tutted. "Just don't say that around English."
"Do I look like an idiot?" A finger pointed at Gunn even as his friend opened his mouth. "Don't answer that," he warned. "Why'd you come by tonight, Gunn?"
"I got orders," the black man stated, stretching out in the chair, his hands folded low on his abdomen. "We're going home in thirty, and we're dropping in at a restaurant, a real, sit-down one, on the way."
"Wesley's idea?"
"He and Fred thought it up. Lorne's with it. He was so eager to go, he nearly hung up on his client."
Time out – even at a restaurant where Angel couldn't eat the food – sounded good. Since they'd taken over the law firm, the former Angel Investigations gang had not had more than a couple of moments to themselves. The takeover wasn't easy, even if it was entirely friendly. Each member had to be individually briefed on the state of their department and that took a fair amount of time.
And running a thousand-employee workplace was considerably more difficult than running a small business with six people. As Angel's desktop was daily witness.
"I haven't finished my work."
"Haven't you learned that the work is never done around here?" Gunn asked. "Might as well just let it sit there another day. Or...wait!" He stood up and began shuffling through the 'in' tray contents, picking out specific documents. "Sign this...and this...and these...and then let the rest sit there until tomorrow."
Angel picked up the first one and read the subject line. A quick glance at the others showed the same thing: they were all from the Legal department. "Sneaky." He leaned back in his chair and began reading through the docs.
"Hey, you're here, they're here, might as well bring 'em to your attention." Angel skimmed down the page, his eyes reading the lists of defendants for the week and the states of their cases, barely paying attention to Gunn.
He was aware the other man had gotten up and was moving about the office, but didn't know exactly what he was doing until he looked up and found Gunn in a fighter's stance, punching the air in front of him like a boxer against an invisible opponent.
"A little restless?" The man managing the Legal department of Wolfram and Hart was a far cry from the young leader of the gang of vampire hunters Angel had met four years ago. Angel knew there'd been a deal with the Senior Partners for the legal knowledge. He hadn't asked exactly what Gunn had traded to change the streetwise boy into a shrewd legal eagle. It wasn't presently something that worried him, although perhaps it should. And, judging by the punches Gunn was throwing, the mental exercise wasn't quite taking the place of the physical exercise.
"Something like that. This place really needs a dojo."
Angel initialled the first report Gunn had given him and tossed it to the side. "There's a gym somewhere in the building."
Gunn shrugged, "Yeah. Full of pretty white boys trying to make themselves look muscular." Disdain oozed through his voice. "I want somewhere to train, Angel, not develop showy muscles."
"Maybe you should talk to someone about the lack of space," The second report was initialled and tossed.
"I am."
"Someone who can do something about it."
"You can."
"I'm the CEO of the company," Angel corrected him, and held up the third report as he leaned back in his chair. "I sign off the reports. I don't organise the building."
"So who does?"
"There's a building manager somewhere. I think. Fred had to go see him about rearranging the labs."
"Oh." Gunn glanced at the mess on the desk. "Got the office directory somewhere under that?"
While Gunn used the phone to contact the building manager, Angel swung back the thick curtains of his office to reveal the twilight-tinted cityscape. No smog tonight, just the brilliantly clear view of the high-rise buildings over the street and beyond, across the city.
He only opened the curtains after sunset. The glass was necrotinted, but Angel refused to take advantage of that.
That first morning, he'd pulled open the curtains for one, too-brief second. Sunlight had pierced his eyes, his body, his hands, his heart. The brilliance and beauty of it was as stabbing as any accusation of guilt, as any tears wept on his account or blood shed during his history. Angel had leapt back from the windows, back into the shadows.
After that first morning, he worked by the office lights only. No sunlight.
His friends said nothing about his preference for the dark. They probably thought he was just accustomed to the dark. In a way he was. Darkness hid his sins so much better than daylight.
Behind him, Gunn was arguing with the building manager, "...we really need all those meeting rooms? They're not all used at the same time... What? Submit plans? You're the building manager, it's your job to deal with... Well, then send one of your guys over with some plans... Fine, then."
The phone was slammed back into its cradle. "Sonovabitch."
Angel didn't turn from his contemplation of the city. "No dojo?"
"I'll bring him around to it." In the reflection of the windows, he tucked his hands behind his head and stared out at the city, the solitary inhabitant of the room.
Silence.
Around him, Angel could hear the distant murmur of voices on the phones in the offices to either side. Beyond his office and reception was the faint clatter of heeled shoes across polished floor, the distant ripple of voices rising and falling in cadences of speech, the tinny tones of a cellphone as it buzzed Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy.'
The building was rarely silent. Even when the office workers had gone home for the night, the R&D department seemed to work on through the evening hours. More than once, Fred had arrived back at the house in the early hours of the morning, her delicate features tired but happy. More than once, Angel had heard one of their house-mates chewing her out the next morning for her long hours.
The door clicked open, and Fred peeked into the room before she pushed the door wide open. "Are you guys ready to leave? Wes called up and said he'll meet us down at the limo – he got a call from someone in Europe and had to take it."
Gunn spun about in the chair to face her, "Ready to go!"
Angel turned, his curiosity ignited. "Did he say who called?"
"No. He said he'd be down before long, though." She leaned against the door frame, looking a little like a child playing dress-up in the suit she'd donned today for the departmental heads meeting. "I'm really looking forward to dinner. We haven't been out to dinner in..."
"A very long time," Lorne announced behind her. "Fred, my dear, dare I hope that you picked somewhere that serves demon clientele? Or am I going to have to languish in the limo while you kids dine on caviar and champagne?"
"I don't know where we're going," Fred admitted. "Wesley was the one who organised it. But he said something about a new restaurant in town that caters for a broad range of customers."
"Including demons?"
"I'm sorry, Lorne, I didn't think to ask."
"I guess we'll find out soon enough, sweetpea." Lorne turned to Gunn and Angel, "Well, since Wesley has gone to all the trouble of booking a restaurant that probably serves green-skinned demons, are we going to make a move towards dinner any time soon?"
"Wesley's taking a call," Angel said, crossing to the phone and pressing a button that would let the chauffeur know to have the limo ready to go. "He'll meet us downstairs."
"Taking a call at this hour?" Lorne rolled his eyes and adjusted his tie. "Can anyone say workaholic?"
"He's not the only one in the office until this hour," Gunn said pointedly, as he sauntered towards the door, picking up his file along the way.
"Sweetcakes, I'm not the one with 'lawyer' tattooed over his ass," the green-skinned, red-horned demon retorted.
"How do you know what I've got tattooed on my ass, anyway?"
Angel began tidying his desk, listening to the easy bickering of his two friends as they wandered out into the corridor. Fred remained where she was, at the door.
He glanced up to find her soft brown eyes resting on him, thoughtfully. "What?"
She took her time in answering. "You've been very quiet lately. I mean, you're always quiet. But now you're even quieter. It's as though...something went missing and you haven't yet found it."
Long years of practise at dissembling and lying helped him keep moving instead of freezing up at her words.
Yeah, he was missing something.
He was missing his son.
It ached, especially since Connor was in LA. So close, and yet he might as well be a thousand miles away.
Angel had gone to see him once, going into the campus at night and following Connor's scent. He'd found him so easily, walking back to his dorm with a bunch of friends, grinning at the jokes the others told. The sight had been like a red-hot poker speared through Angel's stomach. Connor was no longer the haunted, driven boy whose childhood had been stolen, first by Wesley, then by Holtz, and finally by Cordelia, Jasmine, and even Angel himself.
Connor got to be what he should have been in the first place: a normal young man without a care in the world beyond his next set of exams.
Angel didn't regret the bargain.
It was worth it to see Connor happy – truly happy.
What was one more burden on Angel compared to that?
More than anything else, it was the secret of Connor that was contributing to his distance from his friends. So much of their history together was bound up in Angel's son: in his kidnapping, in his return, in the conflicts he'd brought with him into their midst...
And he couldn't talk to them about it.
Fred was still watching him, earnest and concerned. He managed a smile for her. "Just the stresses of running Wolfram and Hart," he told her, regretting the lie, but accepting the obligation willingly. For Connor's sake. "Maybe once I get used to it..." He trailed off, suggestively, and indicated the door, hoping to take her attention elsewhere. "Shall we go, before Lorne starts singing?"
She laughed and preceded him out of the office.
Downstairs, they found Wesley already sitting in the limousine, looking grim.
"That's one long face," Gunn commented as he settled himself opposite Wes, "Can't be good news."
"It's not," Wes replied, shortly. He seemed older tonight, bone-weary as he waited for the others to get into the vehicle. "I received a call from Giles. Someone's killing off Slayers in Europe."
Angel glanced sharply at the Englishman as the limousine moved smoothly away from the kerb, sudden fear spearing through him. "Buffy?"
Buffy didn't seem to want him in her life, and Angel had created himself a world without her, but that didn't mean he didn't still care. They were just on different paths now.
"She and Dawn are both fine. However, two girls in Western Europe are not." He looked grim. "Giles says the bodies were mutilated in similar fashions. Another four girls are missing – spread out across Eastern Europe and across into the Middle East."
"Mutilated?" Lorne shook himself with a slight shudder and held up one green-skinned hand. "Don't tell me how. There are some things I don't need to know before dinner."
"Giles said, and I quote, 'It's just about the most horrible thing I've seen in my life.'"
It was bad, then. There couldn't have been much the Watcher hadn't witnessed during his years on the Hellmouth – including finding his girlfriend in his bed with a broken neck, courtesy of his Slayer's ex-boyfriend.
Some horrors could never be forgiven.
"Do they know why the girls were..." Fred paused, wincing, "...killed?"
"No. Not yet. Giles wished to know if the same thing has been happening here in America, or if it's confined to Europe. I couldn't tell him."
"Haven't heard anything," Gunn said, glancing around at the others. "Of course, it's a big country."
"We can run a search for coroner's reports on mutilations," Fred suggested. "It shouldn't be too difficult..."
"Aren't there a couple of them up in Cleveland or something?" Gunn asked
As the others discussed ways to find out if any of the American Slayers had gone missing, Angel found his attention drawing away from his friends, to Europe – and Buffy.
Dawn sent him postcards from everywhere they travelled. She also had a 'blog' that was, apparently, some kind of diary on the Internet in which she recorded what happened from day to day. Angel didn't like computers. Whenever information like that was required, he'd left the operation of the computer to Cordelia. These days he got his secretary to do searches for him. He could never remember how to find Dawn's 'blog' either, although Willow had sent him detailed instructions.
But if Dawn was talkative about her European adventures, Buffy was silent. Angel hadn't heard from her at all. Any information about her was second-hand, through Dawn. Or, in this case, through Giles.
He used his imagination a little though. Buffy would probably love Europe. He could imagine her loving it. The ancient splendours of the cities, quaintly packed together, as unlike the American suburbia in which she'd lived the last seven years as possible.
The streets of LA slid past his eyes. Angel never saw them.
He was seeing Europe again.
Angel remembered the hollow expectancy in the air as he stood in a chapel in Constantine, admiring the artwork of some third-century sculptor. He recalled the crisp, biting night air of the Swiss alps, and the picturesque look of the villages, so sweetly gingerbread. He thought of the spicy breathlessness of Madrid at the time of the running of the bulls, dark-haired girls flirting with him as he sat in the shadows.
He remembered the blood and the screams, the fear and terror, and the death and the dying.
Angelus had made a name for himself in Europe. Every city held memories of the pain and suffering of his victims. He'd revelled in the cultural beauty of Europe and revelled in the decadence of his own malevolence. He'd slaughtered innocents like cattle, drank their blood like it was fine wine.
Angel had little desire to remember Europe.
Which was exactly why Angel had left Europe behind to come to America – to seek a new world, a new start. There was no way Angel could escape the memories Angelus had made, no way he could deny what he was, deep beneath the exterior casing of Angel. He could feel the demon inside him hungering again and again, the dark voice that lurked in his subconscious and occasionally broke through to glory and hunger and rage in his consciousness.
So Angel had lived like a pauper, merely existing, without purpose or drive. Life was lost to him, and living was impossible with the guilt that woke him every night, fresh bloodstains on his memory.
Then, one day, Whistler pointed Buffy out to him, and Angel learned about living for someone else's sake.
He didn't learn about living for his own sake until he left Buffy in Sunnydale and came to LA.
"Angel?" Wes' voice broke into his thoughts, and he glanced around, finding everyone watching him with varying degrees of concern written on their faces.
"Sorry. Just thinking."
"Watch out world, here comes Mr. Broody," Gunn said, matter-of-factly.
Angel ignored him. "What was the question?"
"I was asking if you'd heard from Faith lately," Wes said, with a touch of impatience. "Giles said she went northeast after the battle against the First, but they haven't heard from her since."
He'd heard from her once. The letter had been delivered to the Hyperion, messily addressed and posted from a town just beyond Sunnydale. It had arrived just after the Sunnydale Hellmouth collapsed, just after they'd taken control of Wolfram and Hart. "Uh...I heard from her while we were still moving out of the Hyperion. It was pretty short."
In fact, it had contained nothing more than a couple of scrawled lines in an untidy hand.
'In once piece, going travelling with a friend for a while. Stay shady. Faith.'
That had been... Angel counted the weeks and was surprised to realise they'd moved out of the Hyperion just over two months ago.
"She didn't say where she was going, just that she was going to be travelling around."
"So she could be anywhere."
"Faith's clever," Fred offered, looking from Angel to Wesley.
"She's a Slayer," Gunn added. "That would count for something, right?"
Angel and Wes exchanged glances. They knew quite well that Slayers were only human, prone to all the failings of humanity.
"It would," Lorne said with the knowledgeable air of a demon who'd studied his lore. "Against vampires and your standard evil demons, that is." He began to rummage in the limousine fridge. "I'm guessing this thing that captured and killed those Slayers is pretty powerful. Or pretty sneaky to get five of them. Schnapps, anyone?"
Wes shrugged, "I only know what Giles told me and it wasn't much. They're looking into the problem, and he asked if we could run a check on the Cleveland Hellmouth. Willow and a few of the other girls went there after Sunnydale collapsed. They might have an update on the location of most of the other Slayers." He fell silent, staring into a space in the middle of the car.
Wesley didn't need to mention that it was largely Faith he was worried about. Angel understood. Once a Watcher, always a Watcher – even expelled from the Council. And, since Wesley had been the one to break Faith out of jail last year, he probably felt responsible for her safety.
Angel felt responsible for Faith's safety, too. He'd place a few calls in the morning, use Wolfram and Hart contacts to determine where she'd last been seen. The network of information the law firm commanded kept an eye out for the supernatural and unusual. A girl like Faith was unlikely to keep a low profile wherever she was. She'd be easy enough to find.
"It's...what? Ten in Ohio?" Gunn asked, loosening his tie. "Probably too late to call them now. They'd be out on patrol."
"And Willow has our numbers if something comes up they can't handle." Fred added, glancing at Wes. Her regard got Wes' attention as little else could have.
"Yes," Wesley conceded, "I suppose she does." He favoured Fred with a slight smile and she smiled a little but looked self-consciously away. Angel didn't ask. He didn't need to know – not really. Their relationship wasn't his business, anymore than Gunn and Fred's relationship had been his business.
In the space of two weeks, Angelus had caused enough trouble among Angel Investigations to last them a lifetime. Causing rifts. Talking about things they didn't mention. Telling them about things they'd kept secret.
Angel saw a lot of things, and Angelus had used that knowledge without mercy on Angel's friends.
Thank the Powers That Be that Wes had thought to use Faith to bring Angelus in.
Faith, who was out of jail and in parts unknown. Faith, who might already be dead or dying in the hands of whoever had taken the European Slayers.
Angel had a sinking suspicion that it wasn't a question of when the US Slayers would start dying off, but a question of how many of them were already dead.
He hoped Faith wasn't one of them.
"Faith will be okay," he said, as much to reassure himself as Wes. "She's a survivor."
----
She was surviving, but barely just.
If I have to serve one more table of screaming kids, Faith decided as she passed the 'family' of four year olds at table seventeen, I'm going to pick up a knife and slaughter the lot of them.
The thought brought her a guilty stab of pleasure. Violent instincts were hard to let go, as she'd repeatedly told Angel during his visits. He'd said he understood exactly what she meant. But she'd bet he'd never had to work all day in a diner full of assholes - both customer and staff - and keep a 'happy smile' on his face 'because we pride ourselves on being pleasant!'
Pleasant was the last thing she felt after a night spent patrolling solo. No Scoobies, no Watchers, no Robin, just her and Mr. Pointy.
She made her way back to the kitchen where the grumpy cook was churning out the orders with precious little regard for hygiene. Faith worked here. She didn't eat here.
Pots clashed and pans clattered as he slammed them down, in a mood that matched her own. "Orders for number twelve," he ground out. "And don't break the plates this time!"
"It wasn't like I did it deliberately the first time," she said, sullenly. Those plates would be coming out of her pay – and there wasn't all that much of it anyway.
Her nerves were just worn enough that she'd forgotten her own strength and snapped two plates this morning while taking meals to customers.
This time, she held the plates as though they were expensive china instead of cheap dishware. Slayer strength might be a great thing when dealing with vamps, but it could be a bitch when you were tense and tired and forgot that porcelain was very easy to snap between your thumb and first two fingers, no matter how 'sturdy' it was supposed to be.
Table twelve was in the corner; a bunch of college boys. They'd become regulars over the last couple of weeks, coming in every few days to eat lunch, although she'd seen a couple of them at breakfast one morning. They made lewd comments about her when they thought she couldn't hear.
Faith ignored them as much as possible, although she really wanted to throw each and every one of them through the window and out into the street beyond.
"Two chicken fried steaks, one hamburger no cheese," she said as she put them down in front of each of the boys and addressed the last two. "Your orders are on their way."
When she returned, two of the guys had already hoed into their food, the third was talking to the fourth, and the fifth...
The fifth boy was watching her.
It wasn't a smirking or sneering look. It was a calm, measured gaze, the pale eyes slightly narrowed as he studied her, lips caught in something that wasn't quite a smile.
This one she didn't remember from the previous visits. The other four were familiar, this one was a new inclusion, and she slid her eyes over him as if he was unimportant. "One lasagne, one battered fish. Enjoy your meal."
She turned on her heel and went over to the register, taking a moment to lean on the counter and sigh. Another four hours on this shift and she could go home and get some sleep. God, sleep. She'd almost forgotten what that felt like.
Right now, she wasn't getting much of it.
Isn't there some song about sleeping when you're dead?
At the rate she was going, she'd be dead much sooner than she anticipated.
How long had it been since she'd gone slaying without someone to back her up? Years. She'd forgotten how hard it was.
LA was the big city. The vampires were everywhere, itching against her senses like a rash she could never be rid of.
It was impossible to believe that in one of the largest cities in America, she was the only Slayer.
It was impossible to believe that the vamp population of LA could be so damn endless.
It was impossible to believe that Angel and his crew were gone.
The Hyperion was empty. Abandoned. When she broke in to check things out, the rooms were ransacked, the office files gone. The goons at Wolfram and Hart were her guess for the perps. Faith wouldn't have put it past them.
In the absence of the people she'd hoped to find, she'd cleared out one of the rooms on the first floor and was using it as a base. It beat paying for a motel room, and she didn't make enough at this shitty job to sleep under a roof and eat.
A shitty job that included screaming kids.
Another round of screeches lanced into her brain like the metal spikes for which William the Bloody had been named. Her teeth gritted in pain and she fisted her hands into balls.
The other waitress brushed a hand over her shoulder as she passed. "Could be worse," she murmured, trying to be sympathetic. "Ian nearly pulled this shift." Ian was a first-degree asshole. You could stake vampires – but there wasn't much you could do about the bastard managers of seedy diners, except bite your tongue, resist the urge to punch his lights out, and fix a smile on your face as you went to serve the next set of customers.
Faith managed a return smile for the girl. Hayley wasn't too bad. Practical and down to earth. At least she wasn't like some of the other airheads who occasionally worked this shift. "Lucky us."
"Oh yeah..." Hayley rolled her eyes and went to get the next set of meals for her side of the diner. Faith grimaced, rolled her head around to loosen the stiff muscles of her neck, and ignored the eyes she could feel burning into her back.
She didn't look around. Why encourage him?
Men looked at her. Faith counted on it. There'd been a time when she enjoyed their gazes, whether admiring or disgusted. She got them under the skin, at the bone, in the balls – and she loved it.
Not so much anymore. Not since jail and the break-out. The break-out which still worried her a little. Technically, she was on the lam. LA was hardly safe for her.
Still, she was the Slayer. Nowhere was 'safe' for her.
"Kiddie Korner is waving at you," Hayley muttered as she passed by the register. "Better go see what the grommets want now!"
Faith fixed a smile on her face, hoped it didn't look too much like a grimace, and went to see what she could get the brats. Hopefully the check. Or maybe some eternal peace? Hey, a Slayer could always hope.
An hour and dozens of meals, desserts, and drinks later, the place was almost empty but for an ancient dodderer who was slowly chewing through his fillet steak. Personally, Faith was amazed the geezer had the teeth to chew the meat. His mouth seemed more gappy than toothy.
Faith wearily cleared away the dishes and glasses from the now-empty tables, taking them back to the kitchen.
"You getting lazy with the cleanup, Faith?" The cook was in an absolute stinker of a mood. He was going to pick a fight today if it was the last thing he did.
Faith wasn't in the mood for a fight. Verbal fights would only turn into physical ones and physical ones would involve throwing him through the back door – while it was still shut.
"Working as fast as I can," she defended herself.
"Work faster, then!" Never mind that they had no customers left but the old guy.
She didn't tell the cook where to shove it. She didn't beat him black and blue with his own frying pan. She didn't do any of the things she thought she'd like to do, including showing him the five torture groups until he was quite familiar with all of them.
Instead, she stalked out and went to clean up after the college kids.
Her thoughts were on taking a breather out the back, having five minutes to lean up against a wall and squeeze in a quick powernap. So she didn't notice the odd crackle of one of the bills she slipped into her pocket from the tips the boys had left. In her room in the deserted Hyperion, she pulled out the money she'd made that day in tips and found a scrap of paper crumpled up among the bills.
Her fingers tingled, pregnant with possibilities as she uncurled it and read the four words there.
You are the Slayer.
----
A/N: I know that Harmony is Angel's secretary in Angel Season 5, but there are plans for Zanne and plans for Harmony, and it's all going to work out, so trust me.