"Can't sleep?"

Natalie shrugged. "I'm on London time. How about you?'

"Rio time." Kat answered. She flicked the kitchen lights on and walked to the freezer. The petite thief opened a bag of broccoli and pulled out a small tub of cookie-dough ice cream. "Don't tell, Nick. He's a cookie-dough fiend."

"Does hiding it like that really work?" Natalie asked.

Kat shrugged, "Nick hates broccoli. Refuses to go near the stuff. But luckily James inherited my love of broccoli."

"And his love of squash? Was that from you too?"

Kat wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Must be from his father's side." She handed Natalie a spoon and they began to attack the ice cream together.

"How is he? James?" Kat asked. It occurred to Natalie that normal mothers should never have to ask that question of someone they barely knew. But there was nothing normal about Katarina Bishop.

"He's the same as when I met him, just more focused," Natalie replied.

"Sometimes I worry he sets his sights on targets that are too big."

"He's a Bishop, he has to live up to the name."

"And you're a West."

Natalie sighed, "And I'm a West."

"Natalie, I watched Hale go through the same thing you're going through now. We nearly lost him. I nearly lost him."

"This is different. I haven't lost anyone like he has."

"It may be different but I want you to know that you don't have to keep pulling jobs. The crew will be there whether you're one of them or not. Family doesn't disappear just because you don't have time to rob the Queen of England anymore."

"Family?" Natalie asked hesitantly.

Kat chuckled, "Of course you're family, Natalie. You didn't think we let just anyone in here did you?"

"Thank you," Natalie said. "It means more then you know."

"Don't thank me. It was James who brought you to us. Our side of the family has a long standing tradition of bringing in strays."

"Well, I don't think James could get rid of me now even if he wanted to."

"Siena thinks you two are bad for each other," Kat commented in a nonchalant manor.

"Siena worries too much." Natalie renewed her assault on the ice cream.

"Every crew needs someone to reel them in," Kat warned.

"Push and pull," Natalie nodded. "That's what Siena says every time someone suggests robbing the Parisian mafia's wine cellar."

"The problem with you and James is that both of you are pushing. Someone's got to pull sometime or you'll end up pushing yourselves off a cliff."

"Too late," Natalie smirked.

"I was like that when I was young too. Never knowing when to pull back. Reckless, dangerous."

"What changed?"

"The one thing that changed everything, James was born. I had something to hold onto. Something more important then pulling the next big heist."

"Is it true you took James on a heist when he was only two weeks old?"

She smiled at the memory, "The Henley."

"Isn't that where you also left your husband for the police?"

"He wasn't my husband then, but yes it's something of an important place for our family." She laughed, "He still complains about that, even though we were your age when it happened. Younger even. In fact it was the reason I really got to know Nick."

"So what your saying is the best method for finding a husband is to strand men in museums with no air supply and let the police find them?"

"Well, that's the way to find the best ones."

When the supply of ice cream was depleted Kat slipped back upstairs, leaving Natalie to her thoughts. She sat at the now empty kitchen table, tracing the grains of wood with her fingers. What would it have been like to grow up here? To eat breakfast at the same table every morning. To walk through that red door knowing that there was no single place in the world where you belonged more then this one. There was no denying that Natalie had lived a charmed life. But charm alone could not sustain a lonely soul.

Natalie climbed the stairs several minutes after Kat had gone back to sleep. She still wasn't tired, but she thought she should at least lie down. At the top of the stairs a figure of shadows was sitting on the wide windowsill, gazing out at the first signs of sunrise.

James hair was slightly matted to one side from a night of sleep. Everyone in the crew knew Jay slept very little but Natalie still hadn't expected to see him awake. She creaked up the stairs and wordlessly moved to sit across from him on the sill. He heard her approach but didn't look away from the stray rays of light that were finding their way over the city's skyscrapers.

The pair sat in silence with their backs against the cool wood frame of the window; their bare toes only inches apart. Natalie studied his toes. James' feet were worn and calloused. He was always running is some way or another. She had never thought of the soles that carried him through life. Natalie hadn't noticed until that moment that the skin of her own feet had thickened.

"Its cold," Natalie muttered, drawing her knees up to her chest. The chill of the morning had overtaken her skin, raising goose bumps on her bare legs.

"It scarred." At first she was unsure what he meant, but then James reached forward to take hold of her forearm and she knew what he referred to.

A silver line etched its way down the lower half of Natalie's forearm. A scar from an old job. Her first job. While trying to find an entrance to an underwater cave, Natalie had been stolen by the tide and thrashed against the cave walls. Her body had been littered with scrapes and bruises but only this particular cut had scarred.

"I didn't realize it was that deep." James traced the jagged line to her palm.

"It wasn't, really."

"I hate to say it, but it won't be the last scar you'll get from a heist."

James still traced the silver line. They were sitting forward now, toes touching. "How many scars do you have?" She asked.

He shook his head. "Lost count."

"Do people ever ask about them?"

"You mean besides nosy British girls?" He teased. "Sometimes."

"I suppose they add to your mystery."

"Mystery? Hardly."

"What's this? The infamous James Edward Bishop doesn't think he's mysterious?"

"I hope not. Mysteries make people curious and curiosity is bad for business."

"What would you be if you weren't a thief?" She asked on impulse.

"I guess I would be a regular teenager."

Natalie rolled her eyes. "I meant as an occupation."

"I don't know."

"Oh, come on. Think about it."

"That's just it. I can't think about it. I'm not like you, Natalie." He looked over at long hall of doors that hid the sleeping crew from sight. "None of us are. I don't know what I would be if I weren't a thief. It's all I've ever known. All I ever will."

"But haven't you ever wondered what it would be like, if you hadn't been raised by criminal masterminds?"

"Of course I have, but not about what job I would have. I think about what might have happened if I had met you on the Tube, or on a busy street instead of the Louvre. If I would ever have gotten to know you. We could even have been classmates."

"I go to an all girls school." Natalie teased. "You would have to wear a little plaid skirt."

"So maybe not classmates. But you know boys from other schools don't you?"

They both fell silent at that. Natalie knew he was thinking of Eric.

"You know I'm not dating him, right?" She asked.

"Why does it matter that I know?"

"It doesn't." Natalie leaned back against the window frame, suddenly defensive

"Don't," James reached for her hand to pull her back to him. "I don't want you to shut me out. I just want to talk to you."

"But you're right. Why would my love life matter to you? It doesn't. It shouldn't."

"No. It does matter. I'm tired of putting business first. You're my friend and if someone is important to you then I want to hear about them."

"And you would tell me if you met a girl?" Natalie was skeptical.

"Would you want me to?"

"Of course." Natalie smiled to herself at the thought, "Jay Bishop in love. I can't even imagine such a thing."

James let his eyes wander across the skyline, "I don't know, maybe its not such a ridiculous thought."

The pair looked out the window as the sun rose and the long night receded into long shadows. Rays of light slid over the skyline, wrapping them in morning's embrace. The sun rose from the horizon and set the skyscrapers ablaze with light. The pair of thieves watched as the last whispers of darkness slipped past them to the west and once more day broke into this world.