A/N: No reviews! I am now very sad…I try my best to carry on.

Disclaimer: "I do not own Teen Titans."

"You're lucky this score is worth so damn much, or I never would have gotten up so early on the weekend." Black Thorn said as she hopped over the front counter of the bank.

It was a massive building in the heart of the finical district of the city. It was the national headquarters for this bank, and the largest bank on the west coast took up the first five floors. The grandiose front doors opened into a main hall that contained all the counters, with tellers on three walls and a massive fountain in the middle which reached into the air up to the third floor of the bank, whose ceiling went up the full five. The water sprayed out of the top and cascaded, in a feat of amazing engineering, without losing a drop, down the impressive obelisk into a waiting, ten-foot deep pool at its base.

"Hey, don't complain, you always leave it up to me to find jobs and good targets, if you don't want to get up early, then find some targets you want to hit…" Ariel responded as he leapt over the counter and he and Black Thorn ran down a wide hallway to a very discouraging looking vault.

"Fine, I call the next one." She said, wasting no time as she affixed a white box the size of a pack of cards to each of the three, massive, hinges.

They both ran back a few yards to take cover around a corner. As soon as they were both around it Black Thorn produced a small remote, which looked very much like a devise one has to unlock the doors of a car. She pressed first a gray button that made the green lights on the three small boxes turn red, and then a red button that brought with it a powerful explosion, quickly followed by a loud crashing noise and a small quake in the floor.

Both of them ran around the corner and over the four-foot thick steel door that now lay on the floor discarded and destroyed.

They wasted no time as they both quickly began to affix the familiar discs to the huge pallets of sealed and packaged 100 dollar bills and stacks of government bonds.

After a minute they had marked everything they had come for and stood together in the middle of the vault.

Ariel produced a similar controller to Black Thorn's and pressed one of the buttons. All at once the heavy pallets of cash and bonds disappeared to an unseen location, many miles from the bank.

"How did you say you got these things?" Black Thorn had turned to him to ask her question and now they both had their sides to the door.

"I've got an uncle who works at Area 51, remember?" He responded with no sarcasm in his voice

"Oh yeah." She said, turning to go. Only milliseconds between her words and her motioin a shot rang out and a bullet found its mark; putting a hole through the middle of the right lens of the sunglasses Black Thorn was wearing.

Ariel watched as Black Thorn fell backwards onto the ground, her arms reaching forward as she fell, trying to grab the air. She hit the ground and did not move.

He reacted not by drawing his weapon to slay the shooter but instead flipped a small chunk of concrete into the air off the top of his foot and then with almost inhuman speed and strength spun around, connecting a side-kick with the debris. The newly minted missile sliced through the air towards a security guard who was using the vault door as cover, connecting with the barrel of the .38 Special, ripping it out of the hands of the guard and then connecting it with his forehead.

He turned on his heels to look at where Black Thorn lay unmoving.

"Next time…we check the bathrooms…" Said Black Thorn, still lying on her back.

Ariel had walked over to her and now offered her his hand. She sat up; the sound of a coin hitting the ground was heard as the bullet fell to the marble floor of the vault. She grabbed his hand and he helped her stand.

They were close enough that he had to look down at her and when she looked up their eyes, or rather on each of their eyes, locked together: through the hole in her sunglasses.

He had seen her new eyes only once before, three years ago.

Three years ago

Rome, 10:30am

"Lire 5000 per favore, signora." Said a man from behind the small, beaten up ice-cream cart. He was somewhat on the short side, not much taller than Black Thorn; he had warm, gentle face and a seemingly bottomless well of smiles and a worn leather cap sitting on his head.

"Qui siete signore." Black Thorn responded, holding out her hands: one to take the ice-cream cone and one to pay the man.

"Grazie, sig—." He stopped to look at what she had handed him, a 20000 Lire note. He held out his hand to her, his palm open, thinking she had made a mistake.

"No, no, lo mantenete." She said closing his hand and smiling at him.

"Grazie, signora. Grazie." He said with a smile, pulling back his outstretched hand.

Black Thorn turned around and walked off the curb and headed across the street to a corner and a figure in the shadow of the building, barley visible—even to the constant stream of people mulling about the sidewalks—waiting, licking her vanilla ice-cream and looking quite pleased as she went.

The figure then stepped out of the shadow and began to walk with her down the narrow street.

"Tell me again, where'd you learn Italian?" Ariel her asked as they both strolled along pleasantly.

"My dad." She replied, not taking her eyes off her ice-cream as they walked.

Ariel spoke after a few moments, glancing over at her "No elaboration to that, it just ends there?"

"Yep." She responded without missing a beat.

"Fine, but don't get on some High Horse because you can speak it and I can't."

"Without me you would never have understood any of the information you received from your contact."

"Without me you wouldn't have that information!" He laughed.

"I'm sure I could get your guy to talk to me." She looked over at him and grinned devilishly.

"Really? Remind me, when was it that you learned Mandarin Chinese?" He asked in a sarcastically mocking tone.

She stopped, as did he, and turned towards him, glaring with a murderous look in her eyes. They both began to laugh hysterically. Then, after recovering slightly, they fell into fits of laughter again. Finally Ariel looked at their surroundings and discovered where they were.

"Thorn, do you realize we are only a few blocks away from the Vatican? The Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica…" He looked off into the distance, his voice almost seeming to swoon over where they were.

"Let's got. We've got time before we have to do the job…not that you've told me what that job is."

"Come on." He said enthusiastically. He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her towards his objective.

"Alright, alright, calm down." She said pulling her arm back from him, neither of them were people who enjoyed being touched by others so she surmised this must be really special for him. She had no problem going to see the famous cathedrals and frescos but she didn't want to scrub the job because they had to go sightseeing all day.

They slowed down from the run to which Ariel had taken to a calmer pace, not wanting to attract undue attention in so densely crowded of an area.

"I guess you're wondering why I am so eager to see this stuff." He said as they walked across the massive courtyard with a throng of tourists and blending right in.

"Just a little curious…"

"When I was a kid, my…uh, parents, took me here. I fell in love with all the wonderful paintings; it made me want to become an artist…" He stared over at the fountain in the middle of the courtyard that they were now passing "ah, the road not traveled." He said, then looked over at Black Thorn and grinned slightly.

"You, a painter? I can't even imagine that!" She said laughing.

"Hey, I was serious, I was taking some small classes, tried my hand at it a bit." He saw her look at him incredulously "I was damn good too. I was going to a world renowned art college, then…" He trailed off, looking down and away from her.

Black Thorn didn't press the matter; neither ever really talked about their pasts', only what little they found out when they met and what slipped out during casually conversation. There was no reason to, their partnership was built on trust, not prior friendship, trust they had built, and made.

Ariel thought about what he had been about to say, Black Thorn seemed to be consume by something as well and they were both silent. They knew so little about each other, he didn't even know her real name, not even her first. But that was all for the best, the less they knew about each other, the less one of them could tell the authorities should they be captured.

They were familiar with one another but they did not really know the other person, much in the same way as a pen pal does not truly know the person he corresponds with.

"So…why don't you paint now?"

"Don't have the free time, I'm doing the only other job I've ever loved."

"That is BS, all you do is lie around!" She said jokingly.

"Yeah, planning all the jobs we've been doing is lying on my ass. You'd have been out of work two years ago if it weren't for me."

"Whatever."

Ariel smiled with his small victory. They both became very quiet. They were nearing the Sistine Chapel's great entrance and silence was beyond golden there, to the tune of uniformed guards standing on either side of the narrow line into the church armed with sub-machineguns.

After only a few minuets wait they were inside the chapel and staring in wonder at the magnificent, and massive frescos on the walls and ceiling, as bright and as vibrant as they were the day they were painted, thanks to the painstaking restoration work they had recently undergone.

Ariel was staring at all the paintings with his mouth agape, just as it had been many years before.

"Amazing…" he whispered almost inaudibly.

"Yeah…" Black Thorn Whispered back but not really paying attention to him. She had seen the painting before, in books and pictures and on TV, but that was nothing compared to how they looked in person, she had an appreciation for the arts, more than most people and more than anyone her age but really this knocked her socks off. She was astonished.

They shuffled through the chapel in complete silence, and reverence, along with the rest of the crowd that was filing slowly past. They both looked at the frescos in wonder until they were finally out of sight as the line drove them through the threshold of the door and out into the warm, midday Italian sun.

"That was…incredible!" Black Thorn exclaimed once they were out of the watchful eyes of the guards who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'silent as the grave'.

"It is just like I remember. No, better than a memory. But that's not all, we have one more famous building we must see before we leave Rome." He continued, turning his body slightly, lifting his arm, and pointing to St. Peters Basilica.

They entered the cathedral several minuets later and marveled at its size and architecture. As they approached the alter, with a gargantuan crucifix that had a statue of Jesus nailed to it hanging above it, they walked slowly between the two wings of pews. A few yards from the alter rail Ariel dropped to one knee, bowed his head, mumbled something Black Thorn could not understand, and as he began to stand made a movement with his right hand that look like the sign of the cross.

"I didn't take you for a Cathloic." She whispered.

"Look," he said, pointing to the stained glass, the light shifted slightly and the colorful beams of light danced across their path.

"So tell me," she said in a hushed voice, looking over her shoulders and about the cavernous room to see if there was anyone about, and continued when she saw they were in the clear "what is our target, here in Rome, what was it the source gave you that made you want to work in Europe for once?" She had leaned in close to him, now standing only inches away.

"You're standing on it."

A/N: I'm sorry for the cliffhanger, exactly half of you love them and exactly half of you hate them, it couldn't be avoided with the way I want the story to play out. Hope you enjoyed. Please review.

I've realized that someone had to have said this first; we have all been plagiarizing their work by not using quotes!