A/N: The characters aren't mine, but the mistakes are.

The kitchen smells like his mother-in-law's tonight. Heavy Italian spices cling to the heat radiating from the industrial ovens and billowing from large pots bubbling on the stove top. Robin breathes deep, his hand resting on the marble counter near the tray of meatballs he's to take out to the party, and shifts through the different scents in the air. Oregano, basil, thyme, and something with more heat. Chili power, perhaps?

"Do you need a moment alone with the food or are you ready to do what I'm paying you for, boy?"

Granny's sharp comment brings him out of his moment. She's standing in front of him, glaring at him over her square, silver framed glasses, meaty arms folded across her chest.

The older woman isn't his grandmother, but a family friend on Marian's side. He'd met her for the first time when his son Roland was still in the NICU. She'd bustled into Marian's hospital room and pried him from the chair next to her bed, saying he was to go home, shower, eat, and then return with Marian's mother, Isolde. Robin had protested, but Granny, as she'd insisted being called, had none of it and set about spreading an olive green knit blanket over a sleeping Marian and settling into his vacated chair.

Since Marian's death he's been temping as a server for her catering business, an arrangement he's thankful will be coming to an end with the start of his job as a park ranger next month. He's not sure he deserves the intensity of her stare right now, but it would behoove him to not agitate her further.

"Are you using chili powder in the sauce tonight?" he asks. He slides the tray off the edge of the counter and perches it near his shoulder.

"Red pepper flakes. Why?"

Robin shakes his head. "Reminds me of Isolde's sauce."

Her stern expression clears, replaced with a smile. "I've been trying to get her to spill her secret for this recipe for twenty years."

"And you've been successful?" he asks.

Granny huffs and uncrosses her arms. "It's still missing something. This is the closest I've come to reproducing it, but it's always a big hit at these fancy shindigs."

"For good reason. It smells and tastes fantastic." Robin squeezes Granny's shoulder with his free hand and smiles. "I'll see if I can't butter her up with Roland next time we visit."

The older woman laughs and shoos him out of the kitchen. He dodges other servers returning with empty trays in the large hallway leading to the ballroom and stops before entering, schooling his features into something between pleasant and vacant. Two double door entrances open to the ballroom where the main event is taking place. He waits by the southern doors, watching shadows of people dancing flick across the column of light spilling into the hallway.

This masquerade is the most opulent affair he's attended in his time as a server with Granny; he's wearing a rented a tuxedo. Roland had gawped at him when he came out of his room all fancified, and his babysitter, Belle, had fussed over his bow tie for a full three minutes before allowing him out of the apartment.

The comforting aroma of home wafts over him from his tray, and for a blissful moment he's sitting in his mother-in-law's kitchen with Marian, giggling as they hold hands under the table while they're supposed to be folding napkins under Isolde's watchful eye, but the matriarch has turned her focus more toward the stove and less toward them, allowing a few chaste kisses to slip through her watch.

God, he still misses Marian like a phantom limb, but he can't afford to be lost in his memories if he's going to accomplish his goal tonight.

Robin steps inside the ballroom, the kinetic energy in the room buoying him as he slips into the stream of people walking around the edge of the dance floor. He stops every few feet and offers the hors d'oeuvres to seated guests, taking care to not dump the soused bites into anyone's lap as they reach for the meatballs. He's never considered himself a clumsy person, but carrying red sauce through a room filled with people dressed like they walked off a runway in Paris feels a bit like trying to smuggle a nuclear warhead beneath his coat.

His tray is empty before he reaches the front of the room and he switches to retrieving abandoned glassware from empty tables. He follows the current of people as they move through the room, never straying too close to the dancing. A large orchestra occupies most of the forward section of the room. Not a full one, he thinks, but at least half, maybe a third if he had to guess. An older fellow with wiry gray hair at the temples and a flute in his lap has a crossword puzzle propped on his music stand, and each time Robin makes the circuit he glances at his progress. He's started a new puzzle this time, "Celebrity Bingo."

Once he's reached the back of the room again, the bartender flags him down. Ruby is Granny's actual granddaughter, a tall, willowy sort of girl with long brown hair styled in an elaborate updo tonight. She's dressed in a tuxedo tailored for her slim figure with a bright red bow tie around her neck that matches the colored stripes streaking through her hair. "Robin, Granny needs you in the kitchen."

"I'm already on my way there," he says, holding up his tray of empty champagne flutes and wine glasses.

She tosses a shaker in the air and catches it behind her back to a smattering of applause from the guests leaning on the bar. "Good, because I think you're about to get your dinner break, and I can't take mine until you've had yours."

"I'll make haste, then." He flips her a smile, and she winks at him as she pours two martinis. It's a little earlier than he'd planned for a dinner break, but if can get a whole half hour to himself the shift in his private schedule will be worth the timing issue.

In the kitchen Granny confirms that yes, he can take his dinner break now, and it will be a whole thirty minutes because they need time to finish preparing the dessert for the big reveal.

Robin grabs a paper plate and throws a few morsels together, snagging a few of the fancy toothpicks they've been using to skewer the finger foods and making a face at the tiny white masks glued to their ends. The effect comes off somewhat like a discount Phantom of the Opera party favor, and he'd said as much when he'd unpacked the box containing them. Granny had rolled her eyes muttered something about the folly of allowing teenagers to choose decorations. Seems they'd been a request from Mr. King's daughter, Mary Margaret, and Granny hadn't been able to talk her out of the notion.

Robin wolfs down his food in the back stairwell leading from the kitchen to upstairs and then disposes his plate in the trash, checking his watch.

Twenty minutes left. He'll have to move quickly.

He ducks out of the kitchen and walks down the hallway, past both sets of doors to the ballroom until he reaches the first floor powder room. The catering staff is supposed to be using another lavatory further down the other direction, away from the guests, but he's caught a lull in the crowds of people venturing from the ballroom to other areas of the house to mingle away from the frenetic heat of dancing and drinking. He slips inside unnoticed and locks the door behind him.

The powder room is spacious for a two piece set, but wallpapered with a burgundy pattern overlaid with a gold filigree reeking of good taste and mild claustrophobia. The vanity is large, marble topped, and gifted with generous cabinet space below the sink. He crouches and pulls the doors open to retrieve his previously stowed gym bag from behind the spare hand towels and three ply toilet paper rolls stacked four deep.

Robin unzips the bag and pushes aside his (clean) gym clothes to uncover a large square box. He whistles low as he lifts the lid. John's gone all out with this one, he thinks as he lifts the mask from the box with his fingertips, careful to not displace any of the sparkly bits.

The half mask is fashioned after a lion, fitting since most of the guests are dressed as animals and he's seen quite a few lions among the pride during his rounds. Less chance of sticking out. Robin fastens the mask around the back of his head, applying gentle pressure to the bridge of the nose to align the dark sockets with his eyes, and then zips the gym bag, replacing it underneath the vanity.

Betraying Granny's trust like this after she's given him work for the past few months turns his stomach, but the money isn't enough, not nearly enough. He can't be late with the rent again, Roland will lose his place in preschool if his tuition isn't paid, and all the medical bills from Marian's stay in the hospital are still in an unopened stack wedged between the toaster and the refrigerator waiting for litigation to come through.

John had tried to talk him out of his plan when he'd gone to pick up the mask yesterday. He was an old friend from Robin's days of nicking smokes and dirty magazines from gas stations. These days he works as a costume designer for Avington Theater downtown and had agreed to let Robin borrow a prop from an old production.

"Robin, be careful," John had warned him, setting the box on the kitchen table at his downtown apartment. "Leopold King is no one to trifle with."

"I know what I'm doing."

"If you're hurting for money enough to consider this, let me help you."

"I can provide for my own family. There's no honor in asking for money."

"And there is in stealing? When you met Marian you promised her you were leaving that all behind."

"Yes, I did, John, and then she died!" Robin pushed himself from this chair, feeling the cords in his neck tighten as he raised his voice. "It's my fault that Roland has no mother and I'll be damned if I don't do everything in my power to make it up to him however I can. King's lawyers have tied up our case in court with so much red tape my son will be in middle school before it's resolved. I'm going to steal from Leopold King as he has stolen from me, though I promise you his loss will be uncomparable to mine."

John sighed, but offered up no further argument. "You can't blame both yourself and King for her death. You got Roland out of the car first, which is what she would have wanted. This is not the way," he'd said, sliding the box across the table.

Maybe John was right, though.

Maybe this disgraces Marian's memory, stealing when help is available elsewhere. Regressing to who he was before she came into his life, will it sully every happy memory of the three of them together?

Marian sitting at the top of the yellow plastic slide at the park, Roland anchored to her chest with her arm secure around his belly as she whispers reassurances in his ear, and the sweetness of tears turned to delighted shrieks as they slide over the humps in the slide.

Her smile as he holds Roland up to the blue monkey bars, paint flaking off under his son's tiny grip as he swings him from bar to bar.

Their mutual wide eyed joy as Roland toddles toward him for the first time on shivery legs. Their miracle who almost wasn't. He remembers glancing up and seeing her hands lifted to her mouth, but this time her face contorts into a silent scream as she throws her arm out in front of him from the driver's seat as the black pickup truck crosses the median, crumpling into their compact sedan, and all he can hear is Roland's screams from the backseat when he comes to in the wreckage.

He blinks the image away, leans on the vanity to steady himself. Two years later and the memory is stronger than ever. Maybe Marian would consider this wrong (there's no maybe, he knows she would), but he has to move forward. As King has taken from him, so he will take from King.

A chatty group of people move down the hallway, the women's shoes clacking against the Brazilian cherry wood floor. Robin slips out of the powder room and trails behind them until he reaches the staircase to the upper floor. What he's looking for won't be on the lower level. He needs small things, items easily slipped into pockets or concealed in a shirtsleeve, and for those he needs the family's bedrooms. He's not interested in a heist, wants nothing ostentatious enough that he won't be able to fence it through his old connections.

The stairs dead end into the middle of a massive hallway wallpapered in deep blues and reds with the same gold filigree overlay. Mirrors line the walls, each hanging over a small table with tasteful brickabrack arranged on polished wood. He curses under his breath. Anyone walking down the hallway will have a chance of catching a glimpse of his reflection in the mirrors despite the deep alcoves around the doors.

Left or right, Locksley? He glances both directions, decides, Left. If he's correct, the last door should be the top of the back staircase leading into the kitchen.

The first two doors are locked and so is the third. His old lockpicking kit rests heavy in his coat pocket. Habit keeps it on him at all times now after he'd locked himself out of the apartment when he was signing for a package. He'd spent the next hour singing Sesame Street songs to Roland through the door until maintenance arrived with a spare key.

He pulls out the leather case and tells Marian to look away if she's watching him from heaven. His mask slides against a light sheen of sweat dappling his brow as he manipulates the pins. He's out of practice, but gains access without too much fuss. He closes the door behind him and surveys the room.

This is King's daughter's room from the decor. Pink framed nursery rhymes jammed up against posters of female musicians with their tongues hanging out and Audubon charts of the Birds of North America coat the walls. He zeroes in on the white lacquered dresser against the far wall.

The top is dripping with glittery jewelry. He can picture her standing in front of the mirror propped against the wall, trying on and rejecting necklace after necklace until finding one that satisfies her vanity. Marian's voice chides him in his mind, scowling at him for assuming he knows what this girl's life has been like from the state of her bedroom. That he's broken into, no less.

He selects a plain platinum bracelet first, poking through the mess of jewelry, trying not to disturb the mess she's made, but upon closer inspection most of it looks to be sentimental pieces. Several have inscriptions. Not much he can take without escaping notice. He'll have to try one of the other bedrooms.

A quick look around on the floor reveals a pair of diamond studs wedged behind the dresser, pressed into the seam between the carpet and the baseboard. One of the earrings has a dust bunny snagged on a prong. He picks it off and slides the spoils into his right pocket, his mood a little brighter. The earrings look to be at least half a carat and if they're set in gold should fetch him close to a grand. He takes a moment to admire the Audubon posters before exiting, taking care to re-lock the room from the inside before the door closes.

By his watch he has about twelve minutes before he's due back. He'd prefer to find King's room and take something from there, but Ruby is waiting on him to return for her dinner break. He's always been one to push his luck, though, and walks toward the second doorway he'd passed until a high, cheerful voice freezes Robin between two mirrors. The King girl and some kind of suitor from the deep voice accompanying her. He backtracks and prays he's correct about the last door leading to the kitchen stairs. The knob turns freely, thank goodness, and he ducks into the stairwell.

Only it's not a stairwell, it's another bedroom, and it's not unoccupied.