One particularly late night, after hours spent perfecting the transition from a dying star to a nascent nebula, Louis slumped onto a beanbag chair, rubbing his temples. The projector hummed softly, casting a gentle, swirling blue light across the room.

“It’s strange,” he began, his voice low, almost a whisper. 

“To build something so vast, so beautiful… and to know how fragile it all is. How easily it can be undone.”

Cheryl sat beside him, the scent of the “Nebula Bloom” she wore a subtle comfort in the air. “Is that what draws you to the cosmos, Louis? Its impermanence, its constant cycle of destruction and rebirth?”

He was silent for a long moment, staring into the projected nebula. “Partly. But also… the idea of a grand design. Even in chaos, there’s a pattern. A purpose. I used to believe in that, in a shared purpose. With someone.”

Cheryl’s heart gave a little lurch. She knew, from Dennis’s earlier revelation and her own research, that he was speaking of Joyce. 

But this was different. This wasn’t a historical fact; it was a raw, current feeling.

“It’s hard,” she said softly, choosing her words with care. 

“To find someone who truly sees your vision. Who can walk beside you, not just in the light, but in the dark, uncertain spaces too.”

He turned his head, his dark eyes meeting hers, and in their depths, she saw a flicker of something profoundly vulnerable. 

“I had a vision once,” he confessed, his voice barely audible, “a grand, sprawling tapestry of light and sound. We worked on it for years. It was… everything. And then, one day, it was just… gone. Not just the project, but the belief in it. In us.”

He paused, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “The hardest part wasn’t losing the work. It was realizing that the person I thought understood me completely… didn’t. Or chose not to. They took the threads and wove their own story, leaving mine to unravel in the void.”

It was a small detail, a fragment of a much larger, more painful history, but it resonated with a profound weight. It wasn’t a dramatic recounting of betrayal, but a quiet, aching admission of lost trust, of a shared dream shattered. 

Cheryl felt a surge of empathy so strong it almost brought tears to her eyes. She understood, then, the depth of his guardedness, the chasm he had built around himself. 

It wasn’t just about professional credit; it was about the desecration of a sacred, shared creative space.