I

14 years ago, August

It's 4 am. The neon green of the heart monitor glows in the low light of the ICU and Donna watches the numbers with bated breath, willing them to stabilize. She is lying in the hospital bed with Alice curled up in her arms, tubes and wires tangled around them like awkward extra limbs and yet that little body still fits itself seamlessly against hers, a unification she imagines only a mother and her child can achieve. It's as if there was a nook carved out of her the day Alice was born that she clicks right into. A beautiful extension of herself, cut into her center, stuffed with every good feeling she's ever known.

Alice's breath stirs the stillness between their bodies. It comes out hot against Donna's neck following the timed interval of the ventilator; the smell of it is caustic, almost like the acetone in nail polish remover, something so chemical it seems incompatible with life—

Donna tries not to think about this.

Like she tries not to think about the frailness of the tiny body in her arms, or how the heart beating alongside hers is pumping at an unsustainable triple speed, or that her baby's beautiful porcelain skin has taken on a horrifying yellow tinge. She remains focused with practiced apathy on those neon green numbers, even when the tears filling up her eyes begin to blur them illegible, she won't let them spill. She vows to hold on to her composure until the very end, giving Alice something solid to cling to. No matter how soul shattering this situation gets, she won't break while her daughter still breathes.

At some point in this predawn hour fingertips reach out and sweep aside Donna's hair, soft lips press against her temple. "You should be sleeping," he tells her.

She shuts her eyes, her husband's voice sending waves of relief through her, loosening up some of the aching twists in her gut. She reaches for the hand combing through her hair and holds it against her cheek with a desperate grip, afraid he might slip away from her again. "Where have you been?" She whispers.

"Do you really want to know?"

She opens her eyes and looks into Jonathan's gray irises. Cold like the winter sea. Those waves of relief begin to swell, a rising tide crashing against her a little too hard. Her knotted guts are no longer kinked but sinking. She can almost taste the salt.

"It doesn't matter," she says, relenting where once she would have demanded answers. Now, it seems, there's too much weight pressing down on her to worry over his absence.

"Has she been awake?"

"Off and on." Donna runs her fingers through the little girl's sun-bleached red hair, trying to work out the bedhead tangles, cherishing the way the long wispy strands still feel baby-fine. "She's been a little disoriented. Talking in circles, something about a baseball and a man named Todd— Do we know a Todd?"

Jonathan shrugs, less because he doesn't know and more because he can't be bothered. "She's off her Harvey-kick, then?"

"No, she goes on about him too." Donna smiles to herself, pulling forward that forever ingrained image of Alice's enamored face as she stared out at the attorney—over eager smile, awe in her eyes—like Harvey's presence gave her a boost of vitality. It hits her then that his visit may end up being the last time Alice is truly conscious and that upward tilt of her lips collapses back to baseline. "He came to see her yesterday."

"That's suspiciously kind of him," Jonathan says mildly.

"He was good with her."

"Don't tell me you're in love with him too."

"I might be." Her words are a tease, but her voice is so flat it comes out like an unintended threat: you're not around, so why not?

Jonathan remains impassive. She could have told him she had sex with the man fifteen different ways and his expression would show nothing more than a vaguely curious crease between the brows. She used to find this enduring. She could read everyone, but never him. His emotions were always an enigma; she'd spend days, weeks, months, trying to solve him, memorizing the slight shift of his features as if they meant something. Now, after years of being married to the man she realizes there's no mystery here, he looks unfeeling because he is unfeeling.

It's times like this she thinks her mother was right with all her crazy astrology talk and some people really are inherently incompatible with each other. She warned Donna relentlessly that Johnny was too aggressive and cold, herself, too trusting and compassionate. They'd clash. His detachment and negativity would ware at her but her loyalty would keep her grasping at the pieces, at ashes. She'd call herself a martyr, but deep down it won't be willingness that holds her to him but conditioned desperation. A bird who, when let loose, flies straight to its cage.

Of course, Donna didn't listen. In fact, she had rolled her eyes, thinking it absurd that the star alignment in the sky could dictate who she is, that she could be shoved into a box filled with pre-determined character traits, never able to spill out of it. She wonders now if she were to look up her horoscope, if stubborn to a fault would be in among her list of attributes. Poor mom, she thinks. Poor mothers. Only wanting what's best and hardly getting what they wish for.

Donna and Jonathan step out of the ICU together and into the fluorescent hallway. She keeps hold of his hand in an unromantic way, a tether more than an embrace, and leads him passed the nurse's station and into a quiet alcove where the coffee dispensers are kept.

Jonathan is the first to break the silence. "She's yellow."

"What?"

"Alice. Her skin."

Donna, having sensed he'd start here, drops his hand, grabs a Styrofoam cup and pours herself a coffee. "Yes. She's yellow."

"Care to explain?"

"Her liver's failing."

"Her liver's failing," he repeats, needing to hear it in his own voice to make sense of it. "I thought it was her kidneys?"

"That was yesterday."

"Dee—"

"Jonathan, she's dying. If you want specifics, go find her nurse. I shouldn't have to fill you in."

He steps closer to her, a tall severe man, hard-muscled and hard edges, who has to pour his own coffee now because Donna has forgotten to think of his needs. She's certain he sees this as an angry gesture—normally it would be habitual for her to grab two cups—but that wasn't her intention and this sort of scares her. She sees this as another crack in their marriage, this growing neglect toward her wifely duties.

"You act like you're in this alone," he says, offering her the plastic pitcher labeled 'Milk'. He won't pour for her, he's always either too much or not enough. Eight years and he still can't find the balance.

"Maybe because I am," she replies. "You're not here, are you?"

"I am now."

"For how long?"

He takes her hand back into his and she thinks for all his hardness he has such soft palms. "For as long as you need me, Dee."

His words make her heart ache because she wants so badly for him to mean them. "I need you always," she tells him plainly, holding his gaze. "I know it's not easy having to sit here and watch her suffer, but the fact that you've left me in this alone is making me resent you." Her words bite, maybe a little too harsh, and because she loves him—out of habit mostly, leftovers of the real thing—she feels the need to protect him. She elaborates, throws in a damping layer, "I don't want to be angry at you, Johnny because I understand why you've turned your back. You get to spare yourself from all the worst parts of this and maybe you'll get to scrape by without getting completely destroyed, but I'm telling you right now, I can't keep this up. I can love her for two and I sure as hell have enough hurt inside me for two, but I don't have the strength of two."

Jonathan's hand moves to her wrist, shackling her. The tightness of his firm, smooth fingers makes her bones feel like chalk. Strength of two? His grip seems to say, You don't even have strength enough for one. "Have you signed the DNR?" he asks.

The question comes out of nowhere. Donna's put off guard. "Why are you—"

"Yes or no."

"Jonathan—"

"Yes or no, Donna."

"No."

He nods slowly as if this was the answer he had been expecting. "I'll stay, but we're signing the DNR and we're withdrawing life-support. I've let you make the decisions—"

"You've let me?" Donna interrupts, shocked by the shear fucking nerve of him, disgusted by his conditions. "You turned your back the moment she was diagnosed."

"No, I turned my back the moment I realized the numbers didn't add up, that her five year survival rate was fucking zero. We were never going to save her. I told you I didn't want to put her through chemo, but you wouldn't listen."

"And look how many years we got because of my decision," she argues, her voice taking on a tone and pitch that draws nearby stares.

"Yeah, Dee, years. And how many surgeries? How many hospital visits? How many sick days? What sort of extension did we give her? She fucking suffered through the whole thing, and I'm the bad guy because I can't bear to be a part of it and you're the saint, holding her down while they cut her open."

Donna steps back, suddenly weak kneed and breathless. Jonathan's grip constricts, pinning in her in place. "What are you trying to say?" she almost whispers.

"I'm saying you have to stop being selfish and let her go while she still has some goddamn dignity left."

"Selfish…" Donna repeats, the single word leaving her lips slowly as if it's foreign and she can't quite get the pronunciation right. Has she been selfish? There was a line somewhere between saving her daughter's life and prolonging her death and they've crossed it, she knows this, but part of her still wants to believe there's a way back. Denial, Johnny would call it, and now that she thinks about it, maybe he's right. Maybe a large chunk of all this awfulness building up inside of her is guilt. Maybe she's put her daughter through too much, not because it's what Alice wants (had she thought to ask?), but because she can't bear the thought of losing her.

These thoughts wrap around Donna's neck like a noose—selfish, cruel, hypocritical—and Jonathan stand before her as if waiting for the chair to topple. Like he wants nothing more than to watch her hang.

Then, strangely, she finds herself thinking of Harvey Specter. We don't give up, he told Alice, and those deep blue eyes stared back at him, determined, her little fist clenched as she wiped away her tears.

No, she hadn't asked Alice what she wanted, but that's because she already knew.

"I'll sign the DNR," Donna says, surprised by her own firmness, "but we're not withdrawing life support while Alice still has some consciousness left in her. If you knew your daughter at all you'd know her dignity relies on the fact she fought this to very end."

II

Donna emerges from behind the bedroom door, abnormally pale and fragile-looking, her eyes glittering from bruised hollows, large and dark and almost frightened as though she's somehow found herself lost inside of her own home. Mike fears she's about to pass out and reaches for her elbow. "You okay?" he asks.

Slowly Donna pulls away from his supportive grasp. The vigor returns to her eyes, a magic trick, a floodgate she opens full of reserved composure. "I'm fine, Mike," she says, with just enough firmness in her voice to keep him from pressing. He steps away, giving her room to breathe and her eyes slide to the open bedroom door, hesitate there, not expectant but regretful. When her gaze shifts back to his she says nothing, but the faint concern in her expression articulates enough: he needs you.

Mike nods his head in perfect understanding. "Are you sure—"

Something shatters in the dining room; someone gasps, a feminine sound, probably Louis. Donna shuts her eyes, looking so damn tired Mike feels the urge to reach for her again but before he can latch on she's swerving around him, obligated towards another mess, spreading herself too thin. He thinks if he listened close enough he might actually hear her bones creaking beneath the weight stacking up on her shoulders. He stands there looking silently after her, wanting to shout at her back, 'you don't have to hold us up,' but not daring because truthfully, maybe she does.

Mike finds Harvey standing at the center of Donna's bedroom, staring at floor as if willing it to open up and swallow him whole. "Morale was probably asking too much," Mike jokes. "We should've aimed for more of a gentle hostility. Baby steps, right?" He tries for a smile and gets ignored; then—maybe it's the look in Harvey's eyes—he becomes serious. "You have to give her time."

Harvey says nothing. His lips are set tight and he swallows in an overexerted way, like his sadness has taken the physical form of a golf ball sized lump in his throat. He looks both old and lost. It breaks Mike's heart to see him this way, like he's facing his hero's mortality, struck with the awareness that the world can break even the most solid people.

"She feels exposed and that's making her defensive. Coming at her demanding answers will only drive her away." Mike's recycling what he said to Rachel after Donna snapped at her this morning. It sounds forced, even to his own ears, but he can't think of what else to say. He knows what it's like to keep secrets, and he knows Donna will feed them one truth at a time and cling desperately to the rest if they keep backing her into corners.

Harvey sits down at the edge of the bed, closes his eyes and absently runs a hand through his dark hair. "I let her down," he says. His hand falls limp into his lap and he looks over at Mike, agony in his brown eyes. "She needed me and I just stood there. Thousands of words in the English language and I couldn't put one fucking sentence together."

He brought up Alice, Mike realizes, recalling Donna's haunted look, those dazed doe eyes. He finds himself thinking of all the condolences he received when his parents died, a monotonous train of clichéd apologies that only ever seemed to remind him of his loss. It was Gram's firm presence that impacted him the most, sobbing in her arms as though it was his refuge, letting loose some of that heaviness in her understanding embrace. "She doesn't need words, Harvey."

"What else is there?"

"Seriously? Is your head so far up your ass you can't see any alternatives?"

Harvey frowns. He says weakly, "What are you getting at, Mike?"

"I'm getting at the fact that you act like there's a mountain range standing between the two of you. But there's not, Harvey. There just isn't. It's a couple of feet and you being too much of a coward to face how you feel about her." The words tumble out of Mike's lips with unwarranted frustration and savage curiosity. They fill the empty space between them, push like the wind.

Harvey stares Mike down with an almost tangible aggression, like he's attempting to force the words back down his traitor throat. "You think I don't know how I feel about her?" Harvey stands up, anger reviving his solidity, shaping him back into that imposing force Mike recognizes. "Mount Everest could stand between us and I'd take it down rock by fucking rock to stand beside her. This isn't denial, Mike. This is a woman who has been by my side for years, putting up with my endless trivial bullshit all the while dragging this dead horse of a life, this fucking heavy heart, and I've been too much of an oblivious self-centered asshole to see her strain. The problem isn't how I feel. It's who I am."

For a moment Mike is certain Harvey is going to lose it. He has to look away. Let the man be. He wants to tell him that it's not his fault, that maybe Donna attached herself to him because he is oblivious and self-centered. He never saw that dead horse or heavy heart but only her capability and surely she must have been grateful for that.

Mike chances a glance back and sees Harvey has it together again. "All I know is that you've got to stop fighting with her," he says. "Your relationship has taken a huge hit and the more you two clash the further you'll drift apart."

Harvey takes a moment to process this. He's edgy now, paranoid—drift apart?—Mike's struck a nerve. "I didn't come here to fight with her," he argues, lacking the confidence of an attorney and sounding more like a man on trial. "I came here to try and work this out."

"I believe you."

"I have good intentions, but it's like…"

"They get lost in translation?"

"Something like that."

Mike nods. He digs into the pocket of his jeans for the bag he got off Coffee Cart Guy. He thought they'd be smoking in celebration—Harvey becoming Managing Partner, Mike, a bar official attorney—but circumstances change and now he thinks Harvey needs the high just to get passed Donna and out the door without one of them going nuclear.

"Gram used to tell me anger is a secondary emotion." Mike pulls a pre-rolled joint from the bag. Harvey hesitates long enough to give him a curious brow and then he's turning around, sliding open the glass door to Donna's balcony. The sound of heavy rainfall fills the room. A humid, almost tropical breeze brushes against Mike's skin and sticks as a film of sweat. "We feel angry because we want to cover up our vulnerabilities—humiliation, fear, rejection, whatever. Pick your poison. Maybe if you figure out how you're truly feeling you can speak to Donna with a clearer head and a better understanding of where to focus the conversation."

Harvey stubbornly dismisses the notion. "Like I said, I know how I feel."

"So you know you're in love with her?" Once it's out, Mike stands and waits for the explosion he's sure will follow. None comes.

Instead, Harvey says, in good humor, "You act like there's the option of not knowing."

Mike wonders if this means what it seems. He rakes his brain, trying to think of a delicate way to probe. He gives up. "Well, you sort of have the emotional awareness of a five year old."

"My therapist estimates six-and-a-half."

Mike hands the joint to Harvey, honoring him with the first hit. "Does she know you refuse to eat if Donna isn't around to cut your food up for you? Because if so, I might have to check this woman's credentials."

"Probably a good idea. With the amount of inspirational quotes she spouts off I wouldn't be surprised if she got her degree from Hallmark."

"Ease off," Mike says, laughing. "That lady is putting herself on the frontline to peel off all those layers of asshole."

"You make me sound like I'm an iguana. Peel off my skin and I'm a new man. That's not how it works."

"You have to be receptive."

"I don't have to be shit," he mutters, slipping right back into his habitual bitterness.

Mike rolls his eyes, points at the joint in the older man's hand. "Light up, you miserable bastard."

III

At the center of Donna's kitchen, Rachel, Gretchen and Louis stand in a conspiratorial circle, panic in their eyes and drunkenness in their postures, arguing in heated whispers above a mess of broken glass and electric blue liquid. "What the hell," Donna says, walking in from the dining room.

Louis wastes no time shifting the blame. "Gretchen and her weak arthritic wrists is what the hell."

"Bullshit, you shimmied your ass straight into me."

"That wasn't a shimmy, Gretchen, that was sashay. A shimmy has more shoulders and less hips, I've explained this to you."

Gretchen tsks, mutters something Donna can't hear but she thinks she approves of it by the deeply offended look that cramps Louis' features.

Rachel, realizing she's third wheel in this fight, backs away from the group and settles her gaze on the redhead. The tenderness Donna sees in the young woman's brown eyes reminds her of melting chocolate, so soft they practically ooze sympathy. She just can't help herself. "You okay?" Rachel mouths.

For a moment Donna doesn't know how to react. Am I okay? She wonders. There is an emotion inside of her that she can't quite catch the meaning of, something like pins and needles, somehow both painful and numb at the same time. Mostly, she thinks she's just tired. She feels like she's spent the past few days running around trying to collect bones from all the skeletons spilling out of her closet, desperately hiding them away before someone starts to fit the pieces together, matching radii to ulnas, building up her crime scene.

Crime scene. That's what it's becoming. She thinks of Harvey and how he kicked aside those closet skeletons; his focus on the 206 bones buried inside of her: Donna Martell. It's like he shoved her face against a mirror and asked her to identify the body, ignoring her cries of denial—I don't know her, I swear! I've never seen this woman in my life. He pressed her until she broke, pleading guilty, until she all but fell to her knees in a confession so shameful it felt like profanity was spilling from her lips—I was her mother and I couldn't save her. I was her mother and I couldn't save her. I was her mother and...

God help her, if only she could unsee his eyes. If only she could take back the desperation written all over her face, unspill her tears. God, if only she could blame him—for his silence, for his inaction, for the way his stare cut away from her so he didn't have to see her ache—but this is Harvey and if she's honest with herself he reacted just as she always expected he would.

Rachel's brows begin to come together in worry and Donna quickly flashes a masterful smile, small but reaching up into her eyes, reflecting wholeness and stability, feeling neither. Rachel doesn't buy it, at least not completely, but Donna's dark and tense posture tells her there can be no argument. Surrendering, Rachel turns her attention back to the pair arguing before her and says in the firm voice of a mediator, "Louis, I think you should just apologize to Gretchen for being clumsy and help us clean this mess up."

Louis smiles, thin lips drawing back from big white teeth. Horse teeth, Harvey calls them. Donna always thought of Bugs Bunny. "I'm sorry, Rachel, did I ask for your opinion?"

"I—"

"No, I didn't, because your super chic Sarah Burton wedding dress tells me you're too uncultured to have one."

Rachel goes wide-eyed. He might as well have reached across the kitchen and slapped her. "You take that back," she demands, stepping over glass to press a finger into his puffed out chest.

"I'd mud in a cat box before ruining my integrity by calling a spade anything other than a spade."

"You son-of-a-bitch—"

"Okay," Donna interrupts. "That's enough. This is my home and I won't have my friends disrespecting each other in it. We tear each other down enough at the firm and I think we deserve one night where we at least try to be decent human being to each other, and if you can't do that"—she gestures over her shoulder, eyes sliding over the three individuals in front of her—"you can get the hell out."

Rachel backs off, casting Donna an apologetic look. Gretchen resigns herself to the sink, looking irritated but in a disarming sort of way; she won't cause trouble. But Louis stands his ground. He turns toward Donna, a single finger raised in a demand for silence anticipation. They stare each other down. Donna tries to look intense and impatient, but secretly she digs his theatrics.

"Listen," he says, "I'll help clean up, but first, I have to know."

Louis catwalks across the kitchen, shoulders swaying back and forth alternatingly, hips far too focal. The redhead watches with unbiased appraisal.

"Definitely a shimmy," she concludes.

"Goddamn it."

IV

"Did you know Donna won an international award for her performance in The Maids?" Mike asks, exhaling a cloud of smoke with his words. It doesn't dissipate, but hangs, trapped behind a curtain of rain, surrounding the two men on the narrow balcony. "It came up in Rachel's research. One of the critics said when she performs—un monde en feu—a world ablaze."

Harvey lifts a curious brow, gesturing with his fingers for Mike to pass the joint. "No shit?" he says, although he's not at all surprised. He's sat through a few of Donna's theater performances—far too few—and each time her stage presence had set his flesh sizzling, scorched a little of his soul, ignited an inferno of pride inside of him. He'd take her out to dinner afterwards and feel a bit star-struck. Say stupid things like 'the stage can't contain you,' and he thinks maybe she took this as a discouragement because she stopped inviting him to her shows. If he was a different person he would have told her what really meant, which is that she belongs in the spotlight, a worldly wonder, like Mecca, Hajj, people should pilgrimage to her. It's not misunderstanding either—he knows what he's saying—he's just selfish; he wants to hoard her away, wants to look up from his desk and see Ophelia, talented enough to bring an auditorium to it's knees, radiant as the sun, locked up in her cubicle, answering his phones. "Un monde en feu," he repeats, smirking. "Suits her."

Mike nods distractedly, toeing the clay planter of succulents at his feet as if testing the pot's structural integrity. "I think you should tell her," he says.

"You want me to tell Donna she's a world on fire?"

"No." Mike glances at Harvey, his facial expression too serious for all the smoke they've inhaled. "I think you should tell her that you love her."

Harvey knew the kid was building up to this—probably had been for a while—and is more relieved than offended that he's brought it up. Best get it dealt with. Still, he lets Mike squirm in anticipation while he takes a long drag of the shared joint. The smoke burns his lungs, but he holds it down, lets it mesh. Finally he says, "She already knows."

"You've told her?"

"More or less."

"What does that mean?"

"That she knows." Harvey nudges his companion, offering him the joint. "Now drop it."

"Right, so, in other words you haven't told her. You just figure she knows because she's Donna…"

"More or less."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means stay the hell out of it," Harvey snaps, annoyed, but at the same time he's high enough to find the kid's frustration a little amusing. "Donna and I don't want to be together and telling her how I feel—whether I feel anything or not— isn't going to change that."

Mike makes a face, his brain assembling the half-truths Harvey's feeding him, trying to piece it all together into something that fits whatever fantasy he's trying to sell himself. "I think you're afraid," he says, and then nods at his own deduction, looking mildly surprised that he's reached a 'eureka,' like it was too easy, like the emotions of the man looming before him were supposed to be more of a puzzle. "You won't tell her because it might mean losing her if things go south and you don't want to take that risk."

Harvey finds himself wanting to shout at the kid, what risk? Risk means there's potential to gain something. Risk is a two-sided coin and on one side there is an attainable relationship with her. But there is no risk because he's done the math; he's made a list of what he can give her and what she deserves and he falls short no matter which angle he looks at it. There is no risk when inadequate is written on his soul like law and he can't find a weak clause to work around. It's not risk that he's up against, it's inevitability. He's run every possible scenario and the outcome is always the same: she leaves him.

He sees it on repeat, different versions of it, hundreds of them, playing inside his brain in high definition and surround sound, jolting him up in the middle of the night, breathless and coated in sweat. In some he sees her eyes when she tells him; in others, she can't even look at him. Sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's too angry for tears. Once in front of the entire office. Another in front of all of Manhattan. He's seen her older, fifty maybe, and they're living together but her suitcase is at the door because he's run out of things to offer. Her voice on his answering machine, too tired to continue. A resignation on his desk. A text message, just one sad line: I can't do this anymore. He sees her leaving him, no matter which path he chooses, she walks away again and again and again.

Fuck, if this was risk, he'd gamble his whole life away.

Harvey, tired of this, stares Mike down, warning him that what comes next is the end of the conversation: "I care about Donna, but beyond that, there's nothing to tell."

Mike holds his ground, meeting Harvey's severe stare with a near equal amount of force in his gaze. "You think if you do nothing then nothing can change. But I've noticed a difference between the two of you since she's come back to your desk and I'm noticing an even bigger difference now. There's too much between you guys and if you don't sort it out soon you might need to face the possibility that you have something to lose even if you do nothing at all."

Harvey feels these words viscerally; they give way to tangled thoughts and a sinking feeling in his gut. He's brought back to last year, when Donna left him for Louis' desk and how even her hypothetical absence from his life spread like poison through his bloodstream. He felt it full body, as though they were conjoined and she ripped herself away, tore through the elasticity of his skin, through muscle and tendons, bent his bones to disentangle from him. It wasn't even an end, not really, she was just down the hall, he could see her if he shifted five steps to the right of his desk and craned his neck, and still he was sent into a downward spiral, operating at half capacity. He had to go to therapy just to learn how to breathe again. It's terrifying, how incomplete he is without her.

And Mike's not wrong. She came back to him but it's blatantly obvious that they're not the same. They're like a simulation of the old Harvey and Donna: programmed, empty, acting. It's like putting on an old dress shirt, telling yourself it still fits but your spilling out, ripping at the seams. There's too much context in their glances now and everything they say to each other comes out masking what they continually bite back, and he's afraid he'll let something slip again, so he says less and the silence fills with the 'I love you' he couldn't choke down anymore and her eyes beg him to elaborate and his are stuck in the mantra: I can't I can't I can't.

He can't. And he gets it, he's on borrowed time, and yes, he'll lose her of he does nothing, but doing any more just means there's more to lose.