Well, it's been a while but here's a new chapter. I'm finally thinking of a back story for Arianna so you can expect some more chapter sooner, hopefully. I hope you like the direction i'm taking this, and once again, any feedback would be very much appreciated. Enjoy~ :)

It was taking all our concentration to keep going with the job for a few days but we gradually relaxed into a routine again. Hardison was having more trouble leaving it in the past though. Parker was at him non-stop about the fairy tale crack he'd made about Sophie and Nate. Apparently there was more proof to the princess theory that Parker had than I'd be told. Still, it seemed like things got back on track since the air was cleared.

"He's really buying it," Parker mused one night. "I find it funny how people believe us so easily. I wouldn't believe us."

I giggled. "Do you think that might have something to do with the fact you know it's a con?"

"No," she replied simply.

I had to stare at her for a few moments to get her to elaborate.

"Well, when I was little, I trusted barely anyone," she explained. "Everyone managed to break my trust."

"Well maybe these people have been able to trust others more in the past," I suggested.

"But that's silly," she responded. "Trust gets you hurt."

"You trust us don't you?" I asked seriously.

She blinked when she realised her error.

"Yeah," she admitted sheepishly. "I didn't to start with. Maybe you just need the right people to trust."

"A bunch of thieves?" I inquired sceptically.

"Exactly!" she exclaimed.

I laughed so hard at the irony. Though, thinking about it, I had to admit I was doing the same thing.

"You're definitely right there," I agreed as I jumped off the sofa.

It didn't help my shotty balance when Parker caught me off-guard by asking, "Do you like Elliot."

"Parker," I sighed, "I thought we discussed this."

"No, no, no," she said, shaking her head. "Not as in sex. I mean as like friends."

"Okay," I groaned. "One: sex is not a synonym for relationship, two: yes, I like you all as my friends. "

She beamed as she joined me in going to check on dinner. Elliot had recently challenged Hardison to try cooking as well as he could in one of their, it's-just-food-versus-it's-an-art, fights. It was going dreadfully to say the least. Think smoke was issuing from a pot. The fire alarm had long been disabled due to the continuous stream of high pitched noise that would be going off if it hadn't. Elliot was watching as Hardison made a huge mess of the kitchen.

"Hardison, just admit it," called Elliot over the sounds of Hardison's bad cooking. "You can't cook, and it's harder than you thought."

"Hell no!" Hardison spat back, trying to get a pot under control after it had bubbled over with some gooey unidentifiable substance.

"We don't have to eat that, do we?" I mumbled as I reached Elliot.

"Nah," he chuckled, "I ordered pizza ten minutes ago."

I breathed a sigh of relief on;y to choke on some fumes issuing from the pot of goo. Not a minute before the pizza arrived did Hardison admit that Elliot was right. We could all see him trying to hold back from his defeat after he found out none of us had any hope in his cooking abilities and were eager to get the pizza inside. As punishment for his naivety of the art of cooking, Hardison had to clean the kitchen by himself and, adding insult to injury, take a cooking lesson from Elliot. Parker slipped out to the kitchen when Elliot left for bed, and I tucked myself in soon after.

My dreams that night were as eerie as they had been the first night they began. They were all memories, but they weren't my own. I had never had these experiences in my life, but they were definitely me. I couldn't explain how weird it was.

When I finally woke up, I felt so drained, even though I'd had at least ten hours straight sleep. As I pushed up from my pillows, I couldn't help but fall back down. This was not going to help me. Today is the day we close on the mark. We had all the traps planted and there was no escape left. I finally managed to stumble to my en-suite and take my medicine when a familiar knock caught my attention.

"Come in," I called, "But expect loopy in about ten minutes."

"Well I'd better take this back to be heated in an hour again," Elliot's voice responded.

"Yep," I agreed. "Plus I'm too beat to eat anything right now."

"You didn't have another midnight surveillance call did you?" he asked seriously.

"No," I yawned, "Just weird dreams ruining my sleep."

"Have you had them before?" he questioned.

"No," I replied as I joined him sitting on the bed. "Only the last few days."

He fell into silent though for a few minutes but noticeably shook himself out of it.

"Well you better get some more sleep now," he said after a few moments.

I knew I should have asked, but I just felt so tired that I seemed to drop off sooner than usual. There were no dreams in my induced sleep so I slept peacefully. I guessed it had been a little too peaceful when another know woke me almost two hours later.

"Yeah," I slurred quickly as I tried to clear my blurry mind.

"If you wanna see us close the mark, y'all better get that butt in gear girl," Hardison's dull voice answered from behind the closed door.

"M'kay," I groaned sleepily.

I got up as quickly as my legs would allow and trudged to the lounge. I instantly fell back on the couch and let my head rest on whoever's shoulder. I watched the large screen as Jacob started running his "foolproof, quick money making" business. In just a few hours, it all came crashing around him. This was thanks to Hardison mass posting bad reviews of the business as widespread across the internet as possible. Emails were sent to everyone that Parker had listed as great potential clients to Jacob warning them the he was a con-artist and to pass on the message. After burning through the client list, he tried random numbers. Luckily, Hardison had also hacked these to go the same phone; his. Obviously he let all of us take turns in character to tell him off. A press release had been set up as well as many online publishers posting degrading reviews on the scandal. At the press release, Eli said that it was very saddening and shameful that his brother had come to act in such a way, and that he was very much happy to refund any money he had taken from anyone. Many people came forward afterwards, trying to squeeze some money from Eli, but all were turned away as he knew they were all fraudulent. Eli thanked us immensely and was able to reinstate his usual procedures. He offered to pay for our work, but instead received half of the money that we'd gotten from Jacob as 'start-up' money. The rest was split between us and I was astounded to receive just as much as the others.

"But you all did more than me," I tried to reason as I stared and the fifty thousand dollar cheque.

"If it wasn't for you, we would have closed on the wrong mark," Elliot replied as he cracked open a celebratory beer and passed it to Hardison.

"Can you imagine how bad things would have gone if we'd closed on Eli?" Hardison asked as he took a sip. "That old man has tried to do nothing but good in his life. It's not his fault he got taken advantage of like that."

"And he's even tearing down all the bad playgrounds and rebuilding them," Parker added. "And he's looking after his wife. He even said he found a way to cut costs and recycle at the same time without sacrificing the safety of the kids."

I still couldn't believe the amount of zeros on the small piece of paper in my hand.

"And don't worry about cashing either," Hardison chuckled. "We have you a one hundred percent safe account with Leverage incorporated set up. So you just have to put it in there and no questions asked about where it came from."

I was still baffled at how easy it was to steal from people and get away with it, but I knew that if was with these three, it was definitely for all the right reasons.

"To us, I guess," I called as we all toasted and sat down to Elliot and Hardison's home cooked dinner.

"It's edible!" Parker gasped in awe.

The hurt on Hardison's face was poorly masked.

"Oh come on Hardison," I nudged him encouragingly. "After last night's fiasco, can you blame her."

"Nah," he admitted grudgingly. "But y'all should still have more faith in my skills as a cook."

"If you don't keep up with my lessons, no-one's going to even have faith when you cook 2-minute noodles," Elliot added.

Both Parker and I laughed with Hardison joining in when he truly remembered how bad the kitchen had been to clean.

"There aren't any clients lined up for a while," Parker informed us when the laughter died.

"That's good," I breathed in relief. "I have to head back to Australia soon."

"What!?" exclaimed the three thieves.

"Not forever," I added, shaking my head. "My brother is getting married soon, and I need to change my visa to a working one."

"Why don't you just move over here?" Parker suggested.

I hesitated. I'd though about it, but I had relied so much on my family, it felt unnatural to be away from home for so long. I had my suspicions that the reason I couldn't sleep well was homesickness.

"I'll have to think about it," I replied. "It's a big step. I mean, I had trouble enough trying to move out within an hours drive of home, a different country is a whole other thing."

The silence after I said this stretched to awkward lengths. I guess they had really though of me as a new, permanent, member of the team.

"I don't know about y'all, but I think Arianna should stay with us," Hardison announced breaking the silence. "But if you need to figure things out, then you take your time. We'll always wait for you to come back."

"Here-here!" slurred Parker in agreement.

"Baby, have you been drinking my beer again?" Hardison groaned.

"Maybe a teenie bit," she replied, laughing hard enough to spill said beer which was still in her hand.

"Wow," I mused into the now lighter atmosphere. "I've never thought of how Parker would be when she's drunk."

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Elliot replied seriously, helping Hardison lift her.

He grabbed some padlocks without keys on the way through to Hardison's room. When Elliot returned he explained that Parker goes super thief when she's drunk, wanting to unlock everything in the premises and sometimes sneaking out on a crime-spree. Luckily it was only rare and they'd been able to devise a plan to keep her safely cooped up.

"So she just sits there and tries to teach Hardison to pick a lock?" I laughed. "And he pretends he can't get it so she just opens it herself then they do it over again on a new lock?"

"Yep," Elliot breathed as he cleaned the table. "It keeps her busy, plus she wants Hardison to learn so badly in that state that she doesn't give up until she falls asleep."

"Sneaky," I giggled as I helped him. "It must suck for Hardison though."

"Not really," he replied, shrugging. "He loves her, and the way she can do that stuff. Plus he thinks it's, quote: 'Adorable as to see her get frustrated but still try for his sake.' unquote."

I just smiled at that. It had such a sweet sentiment.

"It's getting late," Elliot said, breaking through my thoughts. "You should get some sleep with your track record."

I groaned but didn't fight it; I'd been yawning all day so I knew he was right. It still didn't make me want to sleep though. I was still excited from how the plan had come together in the end and how good it felt to help put a stop to someone like that. I turned from drying the dishes as I yawned yet again.

"Goodnight," Elliot called as I left.

I just waved back in response.

That night's sleep wasn't any better than the night before. The dreams were even more weird though. I was seven. I was watching my sister walk along. I tried to warn her. She wouldn't listen and by the time she did, it was too late. I jumped in the way just in time to save her. Waking up it occurred to me. I don't have a sister. Not one that lived past birth anyway. I tried to put the morbid thoughts out of my head as I went to take my medicine. I thought I might as well go see if Elliot was almost done breakfast so I could tell him that I wouldn't need it until later. When I got there, I looked up at the clock and realised how early it was. I normally wouldn't be awake for at least two more hours and Elliot was nowhere to be seen. I knew there was one place he probably was though. No self-respected exercise freak would give up the morning cool. I wandered down to the gym and sure enough, there he was. When he saw me, he was really surprised.

"This is the earliest I've seen you awake," he said as he continued jogging on the treadmill.

"Well if I'd realised it was this early before getting up I would have gone back to sleep," I replied.

"Dreams again?" he asked and I nodded.

He stopped jogging and began his cool down stretches.

"Maybe you should see a doctor," he suggested as he joined me on the floor.

I laughed. "Get tested by a shrink to see if my loopy is getting worse, not likely."

"You never know," he breathed. "I mean the drug is experimental, right?"

"Yea- wait! How do you know that?" I asked incredulously.

"You told me," he sighed and rolled his eyes, "While you were her."

"Her?" I questioned.

I never heard his reply before waking up two hours later back in bed.

"Again?" I growled at myself.

I wondered what random stuff I'd said to Elliot this time but secretly thanked myself for letting him be the only one to see that side of me. I didn't want everyone worrying if I had gone bonkers.

I got up and headed to the kitchen where breakfast was actually being cooked this time. Taking a spot on an empty part of the bench I sighed and braced myself.

"What did I say this time?"

"Nothing much," he replied nonchalantly.

"That's bull and we both know it," I growled.

He didn't reply for a few moments and kept cooking. I tapped impatiently and he relented.

"You kept saying this stuff about when you were seven," he said finally.

"What did I say?" I asked curiously.

He was silent again but surprised me by asking a question about something I'd never told anyone.

"Who is Katheryn?"