I absolutely love this chapter, written by my dearest co-writer and am in love with it...

Prompt please? We're both really unimaginative :l

Disclaimer: Dno't own Scloehrk...udrtenasnd?

Chapter 12: Stars

Seb woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the front door slamming loudly. His first thought was of Jim - who was asleep (or at least suspiciously quiet) in the next room, for the first time in a week. Jim had been extremely temperamental for the last few days, shutting himself into his room and sometimes disappearing for hours at a time. Tonight Jim had returned early, announced that he was tired and promptly went to bed, much to Seb's relief.

Now it was pitch black, and the shadows of the night were cast over the furniture in Seb's room. He reached for the plastic light switch, only to find that the light wouldn't turn on. There must have been a power cut, and Seb sighed in annoyance before fetching a torch out of his bedside table (he was always prepared) and turning it on. He walked into Jim's room, after decoding the secret message and finding today's keys.

Jim's room had been ransacked. Important documents lay all over the floor, the curtains had been ripped from the rails and the four poster bed had been virtually destroyed. The sheets were torn to shreds and the duvet looked as if it had been set on fire. It was still smoking slightly.

Most worryingly of all - Jim wasn't there.

Seb raced outside, fetching his rifle from the gun room and holding the torch in one hand. He noticed that the power cut seemed to have extended throughout the building- none of the lights in the hallway were on. He suddenly saw a light which was on, above the stairs that led to the roof like an invitation. He obeyed and walked quickly up the spiral staircase.

Jim was lying on his stomach on the roof, writing frantically on a piece of paper. He had a pen in one hand and covering the ground before him were pieces of paper covered in his neat handwriting, graphs showing the position of the surrounding galaxies, tables matching the distance of stars with their brightness and colour and pages of mathematical formulae. A large telescope stood before him, pointing at the jet black sky which was filled with glowing balls of gas. He continued writing as Seb stared at him in shock.

"It took you a week to work this out. Frankly, Sebastian, I'd expect someone this important in my organisation to be more observant."

Seb looked around him. Now he was on the roof he could see most of Central London, and realised that all of the street lamps and other artificial light sources were off.

"I assume the power cuts are your work?"

"Light pollution. Gets in the way, you can't see the stars properly. No one is awake at this time, and those who are assume it's a power cut. It is ever so easy to hack into the electrical supply."

Seb squinted at the papers. "What are these?"

Jim smiled a genuinely happy grin: "My magnum opus. I call it The Dynamics of an Asteroid. Basically, everything you know about astronomy is wrong; this book proves it and then gloats for several hundred pages."

"And why did you destroy your room?"

"Inspiration finally struck. I couldn't find a pen."

Seb examined the telescope. "I thought you liked maths..."

"But astronomy and maths are so closely linked! The orbits of the moons and planets, even the alignment of the stars and the placement of the Sun! It's all there! Don't you see?" Jim leapt to his feet and stared into Seb's confused face for several seconds. His expression changed from manic glee to crushing disappointment in the space of a second.

"Of course you don't," he muttered, and sank back to the ground, turning his back on Seb and continuing to write.

There was an awkward silence. Seb sat down next to Jim, who didn't look up.

"I can navigate by the stars," Seb said "Once, when I was in India, our map blew away and we had to get to our checkpoint by morning. I found the Pole Star so we could travel north, and we found our way from there."

Seb lay on the cold concrete of the roof, feeling sharp stones stab between his shoulder blades.

"It's there," he pointed into one of the small lights in the infinite blackness and closed his eyes.

He froze as he felt Jim recline next to him.

"That one is the Dog Star, or Sirius. You see how it aligns with the Pole Star? I won't explain the equation which says how, but it is fascinating..."

"I'll take your word for it."

"The Dog Star is the brightest star in the sky, and is in a prominent position in the constellation Canis Major..."

Jim spoke for hours, giving Seb a complicated narrative on the state of the night sky. Seb didn't know when he fell asleep, but for once he wasn't plagued by nightmares. He dreamt of rings around Saturn and moons around Jupiter, and supernovas and other celestial wonders whose secrets were known only to Jim.

Sebastian Moran woke up the next day on an empty rooftop, with a stiff back and a mind full of stars.