The Planetarium looked desolate from the outside. There was no buzz of activity, no broken windows, no busted doors, no tall shadows. We were ostensibly chasing a criminal mastermind, so I was certain he wouldn't have to resort to destruction of property to gain entrance anywhere, unless he wanted to for dramatic effect, which seemed more his speed anyways. Sherlock tried a steel side door that didn't budge, and then tried once again more violently. I could have sworn he was reaching for the pistol to shoot at the handle when I conveniently opened the front door without any grief.

"Come on, brilliant one." John sighed as Holmes shoved past him and entered behind me. The building was dark in an eery, closed way, not in just a planetarium way.

"I hear music." I observed, the hum of something just audible over the sound of my pulse, heavy in my ears. Sherlock exhaled and spun around slowly before placing a hand on my back and pulling me towards a hallway across the lobby. It didn't seem to be an intimate gesture, more so thoughtless or habitual, but John made it very clear to me with a brisk throat clear that he had caught it too. Our footsteps ominously echoed off the floors and walls and hard, modern furniture, though we tread with the lightest feet we could muster. I halted Sherlock at the cinema's door, my turn to place a hand on his stomach and stand in front of him to guarantee a break in his purposeful stride.

"Tell me you're certain we should go in this door. What about the projection room? We'll be like sitting ducks out here, unless you want that." My dark irises searched his light ones while he internally played through different scenarios. The hand I had spread flat against his middle slipped a few good centimetres upward as he stepped even closer in order to hear what was happening inside. When he glanced downward I could tell he had been made fully aware of my touch. I felt his breath catch before I pulled the innocent hand away and his unsure pupils swivelled - he looked… flustered? It was a first, and it was brief, but unmistakable.

"Projection room." He muttered before continuing further down the hallway.

"What is with you two?" John whispered urgently.

"Not the time." I returned.

"So there's something?"

"I never said that."

"But you implied there's enough content that it deserves a proper run down later?"

"Now that's reaching."

"I'm not the one that's been doing the reaching!" John taunted adamantly, dramatically placing a hand on my back.

"Okay," I mouthed, swatting him away silently but aggressively in jest, "I can't explain that."

"Sure. Sure! Sure." He repeated, each "sure" more drawn out and sarcastic than the last. We filed in through a door that looked far more utilitarian than the others, clearly meant for staff. I tried not to appear as hesitant as I felt as we ascended the steps behind it, familiar music sending a chill down my spine.

"Holst." I stated, letting myself edge as close to the projection room windows as I dared. Was it a coincidence? The ever familiar orchestral suite played over the speakers as a screen down below allowed me a moment of planetary escapism.

"I wonder if this means he knows we're going." Sherlock was now flush against the glass in front of me, so I felt comfortable joining him.

"You know the advantage of multiple eyes and ears." I remarked.

"Secret cabbie network… Bit more ostentatious than mine, but it could do the trick."

"He's good, but I don't think he's that good. I could start believing in coincidences."

Professor Cairns was below us, blissfully ignorant to our presence, perhaps just as we were to a certain someone else's. She began monkeying with the movie, adjusting the volume and fast forwarding and pausing and rewinding.

"What's she looking for…" John pondered aloud what we were all wondering.

I felt a thud beneath us before it registered that I had heard a door slam. Sherlock's posture became threateningly straight, as he raised a hand to his chin.

"Okay, we all heard that? Let's go." John said impatiently, his eyes wide as the professor called out to the room behind her. I wiped the fog of my breath off of the window, my heart racing with fear and empathy. I was with John, but I could understand why Sherlock wanted to wait. "Why aren't we helping her?" John pressed.

The room was dark, but the celestial screen illuminated enough of the room to make out that a startlingly tall figure was creeping towards Professor Cairns. I could hear her muffled pleas through the glass, my palms sweating with helplessness and rage. This man had caused insurmountable grief, and maybe my own, but I wasn't sure how he fit into this whole scheme.

"Is he the mastermind?"

"No, no. Just his hitman… That being said, run." Sherlock commanded just as the tall man reached out to the professor, her scream echoing behind us as we thundered downstairs.

We crashed through a main theatre door, Sherlock and John shouting things that I couldn't consciously register, the woman unable to convey more than a desperate glance with the tall man's hand covering her mouth and nose. He showed no mercy when he grabbed the back of her head and cranked it to the side, not breaking eye contact with us and the pistol that John had pointed at him. I gasped at the deafening crack, my stomach churning and knees weak as her lifeless hands caught on the movie's control panel and the windowless room fell into pitch black darkness. Discombobulated wasn't a strong enough word. I could have sworn I was hovering, my mouth dry and hands trembling as I squinted my eyes in an effort to see movement or spots of even deeper shadow. I knew Sherlock was to my left, so I didn't startle when I felt him press into my side and urge dubiously, "Try not to do anything stupid."

"I can't see him anywhere." John groaned, just in time for the screen to flicker on again. It continued to provide us with moments of illumination before intermittent darkness.

"Tell us who you're working for this time!" Sherlock thundered.

I ran to the control panel Dr. Cairns had been tending to, my face feeling hot when I remembered she had in fact been murdered in front of us, her body sprawled across the floor. This was all real. Footsteps clomped menacingly behind me so I spun around, the hitman swiftly putting Sherlock in the same deadly hold the professor had been in.

"No!" I cried, my mind and body instantly aching at the possibility of losing him.

"Let him go." John threatened, "Or I will kill you."

I didn't think John could safely shoot with Sherlock's positioning. I hoped he wouldn't try. There was nothing in the room I could see that would double as a weapon, and I couldn't effectively do much damage to the tall man thanks to his size, unless… It was to my advantage that his attention was rightly turned towards John and the gun and away from the petrified woman, so I heaved myself onto the control panel and stood, fingers tensing as I prepared to do exactly what I wasn't supposed to; something stupid. I cleared the space between him and I more quickly than I was prepared to, my arms wrapping around his neck and pulling him roughly backwards. He yelped and gargled in surprise as I applied my whole weight in pressure to his throat, his grip slackening just enough for Sherlock to shimmy out of it.

He whirled around, eyes glinting with rage as he all too easily wrapped both large hands around my waist and hurled me square against a wall. The wind had been so intensely knocked out of me that I thought something inside of me had ruptured, the back of my head numb from the impact and shock. For a pathetic moment I considered playing dead until this was all over, but I swallowed my fear and got a grip after a few moments of making sure my lungs and diaphragm still functioned. Nothing was broken, and that's all that mattered.

I heard a metallic clang, reminding me of Sherlock's can in the alleyway, which could only mean the gun had been dropped or slid. My torso seared as I sat up, but the feeling was dissipating, now at the level of breathlessness akin to when I was younger and landed on my back after a failed cartwheel or doomed flip. The tall man was wrestling with someone, and defensiveness overtook any lingering pain. I ran over again, discovering it was John this time, who seemed to be putting up a fair fight. Sherlock swung at the hitman nobly, though it did nothing but annoy him. John was able to duck under his legs and make a short getaway before the man retaliated for the punch by extending a heavy fist that sent Sherlock tumbling to the ground. John was scouring the floor for a gun, so I sprinted and jumped, both of my feet hitting the crooks behind the hitman's knees, knowing very well he'd have no choice but to land on me with his fall.

I grimaced at his weight, at least turning my head to the side so his back wouldn't break my nose. He flipped over to face me, and I was resolute and calm when his expression twisted with anger and he raised a fist. I closed my eyes and waited for the impact, but it never came. Sherlock had wrapped both arms around the tall man's elbow and wrestled it back, though his free arm swung around and decked a stunned Sherlock in the chest. The man let out a roaring cry of aggravation and pushed Sherlock into John, who I thought was scrambling to avoid the collision, but had finally located the pistol. I laughed incredulously as Sherlock raised the firearm from his place on the ground, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeved upper arm. The man was finally cornered.

"Who are you working for?" Holmes repeated for the second time that night.

He looked as if was going to answer before ducking down and bolting towards the exit, tailed by a few of Sherlock's bullets for good but useless measure. John got up, prepared to run, but Sherlock stuck an arm out.

"No." He huffed. "No point."

I caught my breath as I finally paid attention to the flickering scenes of the movie, my ribs aching and head pounding with every heartbeat, but I didn't care. It was invigorating, to tell you the truth. John extended a clammy hand towards me and hoisted me up and then walked over to extend the same courtesy to Sherlock.

"Is everyone in tact?" I asked.

"Physically." John replied dazedly.

I frowned as I stepped towards the professor. Eyes open, face frozen in what looked like horror to me, but perhaps that was my imagination. What was this all for? I was sick of following this blood trail and ill over what could lie at its terminus. Maybe it spelled the end for one or two or all three of us. Nothing was up to chance, but so was everything at the same time. I knelt down and sighed, thinking about her possible family, her childhood, her parents, her friends, the food in her fridge, the plants in her living room windowsill.

Sherlock called Lestrade and gave him a rundown of everything that had happened, not bothering to stick around until they showed. We hailed a cab and rode stealthily past the police vans flashing en route, relief and disappointment coursing through us.

"Night cap?" John asked as we pushed through the front door of 221 Baker.

"Only if it's strong."

"I should have a bottle of whiskey, now that you mention it."

"That should do it."

I tended to starting a fire, something I was deft at at this point in our windowless existence, while John cleaned himself up and scrounged for the bottle in his room. The evening was quiet and introspective, and I felt relief in knowing I wasn't alone in what had played out.

"He would have snapped your neck if his back wasn't to us. He almost did anyway. Changed his mind at the last minute." I froze with the long match stick for a second before busying myself again.

"He was about to snap yours, Sherlock." He exhaled, for some reason uncomfortable about the fact that John and I took risks for his benefit. He took plenty for ours too, but I don't think he gave that much thought. I quirked a hollow grin, "It wasn't stupid."

"You don't regret it?"

"Sherlock, I can't even begin to explain the dread I felt when he grabbed you. At that point I wasn't thinking, just desperately doing. A greater number of people are relying on your existence than I could hypothesise, and I have to pathetically tell you I'm one of them."

"That's stupid." He laughed properly.

"Very." I smiled widely.

The fire crackled to life and I closed my eyes as little flames danced in the dim room, trying to focus on their warm unpredictability through my eyelids as opposed to images and sounds of the professor that flickered through my mind like the planetarium film.

"Do you have a subconscious?"

Sherlock clicked his tongue from his knelt position next to me, likely not expecting the question, "I have a vast amount of storage, and I don't intentionally control what comes forward. I suppose you could consider my subconscious to be the in-between."

"You don't have distractions? No intrusive thoughts?"

He paused, staring deep into the fire himself, "No."

"No?" I was envious. Mine were incessant.

"It's not difficult to fend them off."

"So you do have thoughts you fend off?" Finally, something humanising.

"Whiskey on the rocks?" John interjected, popping through the door, "Finally going to cut loose with us, Sherlock?"

"Absolutely not."

"We'll get you one of these days."

We cheers-ed to being dumb and brave and sipped in quiet reflection. John pounded back an amount that I didn't quite think he would regret in the morning, and Sherlock undoubtedly devised a plan for the next day if he hadn't already. It didn't feel like much later when I awoke on their sofa, not remembering falling asleep. John and Sherlock were gone, but the small fire still somehow looked tended to. The floorboards creaked under the low heels of my loafers, but I successfully slipped out without waking the two men that I knew needed sleep. Or so I thought.

"What are you doing?" I asked from the top step. Sherlock took a bite from an apple as he paced around our building's main corridor.

"Alex Woodbridge has a clear-cut connection to the Lost Vermeer, that murder I can justify, but why Professor Cairns? What did she know?"

I ran a tired hand over my face, constantly amazed by his stamina and curiosity as I descended and joined him in his strides.

"I've been thinking about how Woodbridge specifically would know the painting's fake." I mused.

"And?"

"Why would Alex of all people be drawn to it in the first place? He's not an art man. If he questioned its credibility it wasn't through doubt of its technique or process that would only be found through lab work or close examination, something that he wouldn't have had stock in or access to in the first place. For him, his curiosity and our red flag would solely lie in its-"

"Content." He finished, his eyes widening as a grin crept across his face.

"Safe to say something in the sky." I nodded, just feeling grateful I could contribute.

He laughed incredulously and threw his apple across the room, "Oh, that's excellent! God, this is fun. He and Cairns spotted a telling inconsistency..."

"Well, what was she scrubbing the video for?"

He scrunched his eyes and rubbed both palms over them, conjuring up a memory that I surely couldn't. It was difficult to resist feeding off of his energy as he tapped a restless foot, the excitement of this breakthrough surging through him. Everything clicked into place and he beamed widely, removing both hands from his face and placing them around mine. My eyes widened as he leaned in, his fingers curling around my jaw as he chastely pulled my lips to his. It lasted no more than a couple of seconds, but the flush on my cheeks and fluttering in my stomach persisted for far longer.

"Supernovas." He exclaimed, dropping me from his manic and celebratory grasp and jogging up the stairs to dive into research or sleep on it, smacking the banister on his way for good measure, "We're leagues ahead of them now."

I was rooted in place, my lips tingling with the tartness of apple and heart racing. What was that?