Natalie choked on her coffee. "The Eliot Ness? You mean like in that movie?"

"Except Costner doesn't look a thing like him," he smirked. "Not enough grit either."

She was quiet for a few moments, almost too quiet. He turned to see her staring at her effects still scattered across the table.

"What happens now?" she asked after a moment.

Natalie still hadn't looked at him since he'd practically thrown death in her face. He couldn't exactly blame her for that. It was a harsh reality and one it would take time for her to become accustomed to.

"As callus as it sounds, life goes on," he replied gently. "The upshot is, the only people who know you died are sitting in this room."

"You call that an upside?" she shot back.

"Try having to explain dying in front of a roomful of people and suddenly 'poof' you're alive," he answered. "That's a tricky mess."

"That's happened?"

"In theory," he replied. "But what I mean is that aside from you and me, no one else knows what happened today."

"What about the shooter?"

"Dead. There were two or three others, but after the lab blew up, I don't think they paid much attention to anything else."

"So, we just go on pretending yesterday didn't happen."

"For the most part, yes," Lance replied, sliding a couple of pieces of toast into the toaster. "We stick to the case. We find the guy who has Sarah and prosecute him to the full extent of the law."

"Business as usual," she griped.

"Pretty much," he sighed. "After breakfast, I'll take you back over to the hotel. You can take a shower, get changed and get over to the station. I'll come back here, do the same, and meet you there. That way you can still get there early enough to make me look bad."

"But I –" she protested hotly. "I went over there early because I couldn't sleep! This whole thing with Sarah as eaten up two years of my life. My fiancee broke up with me over it! I didn't want to believe I was back at square one, all over again."

Now, it was Lance's turn to stare. "Fiancee?"

"Yeah, fiancee," Natalie snarked. "Surprised to think anyone would want to spend the rest of their life with me?"

"No, that's not it," he replied, moving the bacon to a paper-towel-covered plate. "You just seem too... independent for the husband and white picket fence life."

"I guess that's part of why he broke it off," she said thoughtfully. "He was a US Attorney, and he thought his life was too boring for me. But he was a good guy. One of the last few. I guess he realized he wanted kids after all, and I can't have any."

Lance busied himself with scrambling a few eggs before pouring them into another skillet. "No Immortal can."

"What do you mean?" she asked confused. "If... we can't have kids, then where do we come from?"

"Hell if I know," he answered honestly. "No one knows where we come from, only that we're found as infants or young children. How did you find out?"

Natalie tried to hide an embarrassed blush behind her coffee mug. "Mom, er, Trudy took me to the doctor when I was fifteen and hadn't had a period yet. They ran all kinds of tests, took x-rays, the whole shebang. Come to find out, I was missing some very important plumbing. After seeing what some of the girls on my cheerleading squad in high school went through, I was actually glad to be left out of that loop."