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[big bang theory] through the looking glass - pg-13
Title: Through the Looking Glass
Rating: up to PG-13 for language
Length: ~6000 words
Fandom: Big Bang Theory
Prompt: I used the first fifteen prompts in order from the Paradox-o-rama Fiction Friday thing.
A/N: No beta; would really appreciate any feedback or concrit. If only I could read rules the way they're written and not the way I think they're written.
Trigger warning for violence/abuse on #11.
#14 is for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_wanlorn with the hugest thanks ever for the cheerleading. YOU'RE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE TEAM BB ♥!
SEQUEL: If It Was So
There's a theory that goes a little something like this:
There exist a mind-boggling number of universes. Some would say it's an infinite number but no one can prove anything. Typical, right?
We live in one, or maybe all of them. Maybe we only live in a few. At any rate, everything that has ever happened, or could have happened, or might have happened - in short, everything that has ever, will ever, and never could possibly have happened will happen or has happened or could someday happen in one or several or all of these.
That's not a very good explanation but it will do. But you already know this, don't you?
Somewhere in all of that happening, there are constants. At least, we assume there are. Up is up, no one understands how everything began — some think they do but they don't, not really — and the Star Wars prequels were a textbook example of man's inhumanity to man.
But for everything that happens in this universe, it goes just slightly off-course in another one.
Like this:
a. the one that some people know
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl takes weeks and months and years to figure out she picked the wrong one.
It's a tale as old as any you've ever heard, full of laughter and crying and pretty much wall-to-wall sex at certain points. There may have been some robots. There are definitely way too many references to Star Trek.
Sure, there aren't any swordfights or daring galactic battles but it seems plenty dramatic at the time. And you can't go wrong with happily-ever-after.
But maybe, it goes like this:
b. the one that you don't know
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl doesn't let herself get distracted by nice and friendly but goes straight for prickly and weird.
After all, girls like a challenge, don't they? That's what Cosmo tells you anyway.
Soon, the girl starts throwing warp speed and transporter range and the Prime Directive into daily conversation. There are definitely robots in this one. Slightly less wall-to-wall sex, but maybe not.
This one's way less dramatic, but it ends the same way.
That seems a little too pat, though, doesn't it? Perhaps it was neither of these. Maybe it's like this:
c. the one that no one wants
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl moves back in with her ex-boyfriend two months later.
Or this:
d. the one that the robots like
Girl lives out her days in perfect ignorance of the world around her.
Boy dreams of girls, but not this girl.
Other boy never existed.
But that's not why we're here.
The building blocks of life are the same as those that make up the rest of the universe. Men and women with brains that run better than any you've ever known have figured that out, and most of the rest of us are just along for the ride.
Once upon a time— isn't that the way these things are supposed to start?
Once upon a time, there was nothing. And then, suddenly, there was everything, or something on its way to everything at the very least. Here in this universe, there was expansion and swirling matter and maybe a lightning strike that got lucky. We are all made of star stuff, as the saying goes. But we're more than that, somehow. Or we think we are.
We come from brown-black sludge, from the absolute dregs of the primordial world. But somehow in all that has happened and never could happen between then and now, that spark, that tiny infinitesimal moment of chance, brought forth everything that we are. Everything you can think of and everything you can't, all of it has been.
You can call it a miracle, or a series of lucky breaks. You can call it whatever you like, but the heart of the matter is that we are. We are here, our entire world only the tiniest speck of reflected light in the vast emptiness.
When you put it like that, well. Everything gains a different perspective, doesn't it? We see only slivers of the universe in which we exist, just days at a time.
Or maybe it's just moments. Different moments from the same day all across the universes, as though someone has lifted a veil between the worlds and beckoned you forward.
You want a glimpse? Just a little one?
Or have you seen it all before?
i. the day with the roller coasters
It wasn't likely to help but Penny went for it anyway, interrupting Shelly before she could really get going. "Can't this crazydoodle reminder wait until everybody gets back in the car?"
Shelly frowned. "They've heard it plenty of times. You have only heard it once, and there are additional guidelines that didn't apply to Disneyland." She cleared her throat and started again from the top.
"No water rides before lunch or after three in the afternoon; otherwise we won't have sufficient sunlight, heat, or time to dry off properly. No food that we can't see for ourselves how, when, and with what degree of hygiene it is being prepared. No locker rentals — if you can't carry it all day, leave it in your hotel room. We don't have time for lollygaggers. No roller coasters for at least an hour after lunch—"
"Oh, come on, even I know that's an old wives' tale—"
"No, that's Raj's gag reflex."
Raj made a face like it was embarrassment that kept him from protesting and not that he knew no one would believe him.
"—and the first, and I use this term very lightly, attraction that we will visit is located directly to the east of the entrance."
Penny and Raj rolled their eyes in unison when Shelly passed back to them two of the maps she'd stayed up late the night before to mark.
"Since none of the designers of the park bothered to contemplate the proper efficency traffic flows between the rides and the shopping areas, we'll have to double-back at some points in order to stick to the evacuation schedule that will accommodate everyone. Now, if you'll turn over your maps, we can discuss the itinerary for days two and three—"
Evacuation? Penny mouthed at Raj, who didn't bother to try to mime it for her. Instead he opened his map and buried his head in it like it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything.
Was Shelly starting in on her disaster planning kick again? Penny unfolded her copy of the map to see the precise red circles drawn around the restrooms scattered around the park. "Oh, you're talking about the Magic Potty! Honey, everybody knows that's always the first ride. Those Big Gulps always seem like a good idea until you get about five miles down the road."
Leah had opened the driver's side door while Penny was talking. She settled into her seat, forehead wrinkled above the thick frame of her glasses as she sucked at the straw of her super-sized slushy drink. "What are you talking about?"
Shelly ignored her to twist around to look at Penny, her face scrunched up in the kind of suspicious look she hadn't leveled since she thought someone was emptying her energy drinks whenever she turned her back. "Are you sure you haven't talked to my mother?"
"As if," Penny scoffed, crossing her arms and sitting back with a sour expression that would give her a headache if she kept it up too long.
Hannah's head suddenly popped up in the window next to Penny. She shoved the giant, dripping plastic cup at the back of Shelly's head, keeping her narrowed eyes trained on Penny the whole time.
"Since when do you talk to her mom?"
"I don't!" Penny protested. Not since Mary Cooper told her to knock it off with the energy drinks, that was.
ii. the day with the parade
Penny shifted in her folding chair and looked around for somewhere to set her bottle of water down. Every square inch of space around her was covered in either feet or someone else's blankets or children who couldn't sit still with the prospect of free candy raining down on them on the immediate horizon. In front of her was the curb, and then the faded asphalt of the road. She couldn't lean forward far enough to reach either anyway.
"I told you to let me fix your chair for you," Cooper said smugly, taking a long drink from his own bottle and slotting it back into the holder dangling from the end of his arm rest. The plastic cording creaked as he shifted to avoid touching the woman crowding in on his other side.
The marching band came into view around the corner, just a few seconds after the pounding drums started reverberating off the buildings lining Main Street.
"I'm not going to have you waste that much time on something I'm already too big to sit in comfortably," she said before the enthusiastic but not particularly skilled music drowned out her voice.
Cooper looked down at the huge curve of her belly, his smug expression softening into the familiar and only occasionally infuriating look of pride. As if his body was the one doing any of the work.
The bottle was cold through the fabric of her sundress and the baby shifted restlessly as the band marched in sloppy formation in front of them and down out of site around the next corner. Cooper thumbed through the bicentennial booklet he'd picked up at the historical society booth.
"Why can't they put the parade order in here? How much longer do we have to wait for Missy and—"
"Shhh!" Penny hissed and knocked the booklet out of his hands. "Here they come!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, they're marching in place and waving pom-poms. It hardly requires me to be silent!"
But he let the argument drop there, too busy leaning forward and trying to see around her bulk. He pushed up out of his chair a few inches, and a huge goofy smile. "Here she comes!"
Penny whooped, beaming and clapping her hands in time with the girls' cheers as they paused in the middle of the street to do the routine all four squads had been practicing for weeks. Missy caught her eye and smiled. When the routine was over, she stepped up to nudge the shoulder of one of the pee-wees in front. The girl's tiny face nearly split in two with a gap-toothed grin to rival her dad's when she spotted Penny and Cooper on the curb. She stepped out of line with the rest of her squad, blonde pigtails bouncing as she waved with her whole body, nearly taking off the nearest girl's head with her baton.
"Looking good, baby!" Penny shouted. "Keep your knees up!"
Cooper kept clapping until the girls disappeared the same way the band had, then sat back to play back what he'd recorded on the video camera attached to the gorillapod on the other arm of his folding chair.
Penny wiped her forehead and finished off the bottle of water even though the baby was just centimeters away from tap-dancing on her bladder. "You ready to go?"
"I suppose we could stay for the clowns," Cooper said, his eyes bright and excited now that he'd forgotten to pretend he didn't want to be there.
iii. the day with the collision
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry!" Penny yanked her cart away, crashing it into the shelves on the other side of the aisle. A cascade of cans tumbled to the floor and she carefully picked her way over to the man she'd knocked down. "Are you okay? I totally didn't even see you there!"
"No, you wouldn't have," he agreed, surprisingly happy for a guy who'd just been flattened by a cart full of frozen pizzas and margarita mix. He ignored the hand she held out to help him to his feet and played with the black and silver device in his hands.
He ignored her for so long she felt stupid for still standing there with her hand outstretched. "Uh, can I help you up or something? Should I call a manager? Are you hurt?"
"No, thank you. This is precisely what I anticipated would happen." He pressed another button, and vanished.
Penny stumbled backwards. "What the hell?"
"May I have your name?" the man's voice asked from somewhere. "You won't be named in my acceptance speech of course, but—"
"Jesus, I have got to quit drinking," Penny muttered.
iv. the day with the shift change
Saturdays definitely weren't her favorite, especially not as the last bits of what passed for summer rushed headlong into the grey, dreary, ashen autumn.
It seemed like whole lifetimes ago when loved ones brought flowers, and sat at bedsides, and cradled limp hands in their own. Now, all there was was Penny and Jorge and the doctors Khan, and row after row of beds that never stayed empty long.
As they started the hand-off briefing, Jorge passed her a cup of coffee and the log. "We had another six brought in last night from the front. Two didn't make it, and the rest probably won't last the day."
Like Penny, Jorge wasn't a nurse or a doctor or even a medical technician. He'd been brought in by another soldier and left to bleed on the front desk one morning. When he'd recovered from his wounds, he'd taken one look at Amitabh and Hillary struggling to keep the clinic running. Struggling to keep men and women like him alive for just one more goddamn day. He'd shuffled out into the alley at the back, and burned his enlistment papers under a sky streaked purple and black. In the year and a half since, he'd become a master at stitches and setting broken bones, and his were the only hands that stayed steady enough to clean the grit and dirt out of ragged burns.
Penny drank the coffee like a shot and put the mug down on counter as she flipped through the log. They both knew what she was looking for — what she was always looking for — but it had been months since she'd stopped asking out loud. Back in that other lifetime, when not blowing a line at audition was the hardest thing in her world, she always wished she'd had the knack for instant memorization.
Now she wanted it so she could be that someone somewhere that she prayed would find her one day, with a name on the tip of his or her tongue and hands to steady her when this soap-bubble world of not-knowing finally collapsed around her.
She drilled him on what had been done through the night, what shape the dispensary was in, whether Amitabh or Hillary would make it out of the surgical bay any time soon. Her ring flashed under the fluorescent lights as she doled out the ever dwindling supply of painkillers and antibiotics into sturdy little paper cups.
Jorge squeezed her elbow and turned away.
v. the day with the party
Sheldon felt a tug on the leg of his costume and looked down. Two very small children dressed in not altogether terrible mass-produced Flash costumes were staring up at him.
"Who are you supposed to be?" the boy demanded. The mask obscured most of his face, and Sheldon didn't recognize the chin or jawline.
Granted, he wouldn't have been able to place it even if he had. The only person he knew in the entire state was his roommate, who definitely did not have any offspring, let alone any this forthright.
"Danny," the girl whispered. "Mommy said don't be rude!"
"That wasn't rude! Jill, don't be such a baby."
Sheldon cut in before their disagreement, or Jill sneaking a hand up behind the boy's head, could escalate into anything involving shrieking, indian burns, or tears.
"I'm the Doppler effect," he said. He wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to explain to them what the Doppler effect was or if he should do what his sister recommended and just shut the hell up once in a while.
"Oh, like on the weather," Danny said, nodding like it was all very familiar.
"That's not exactly—"
Jill interrupted breathlessly to explain, "Daddy used to say the bad words at the weather all the time afore he got deaded."
"You're not supposed to talk about that," Danny yelped. "I'm telling Mom!"
"You're telling me what?"
Sheldon whirled around to find a blonde around his age standing with arms akimbo. She mock-glared at her children, then turned a soft smile on him.
"They aren't bothering you, are they?"
"Not yet," Sheldon admitted.
He'd meant for it to be dismissive; brusque, even. But the bright-haired woman only ratcheted up her smile and laid a hand on each of her childrens' heads.
vi. the day with more than one ending
It was chilly that morning, at least a dozen degrees cooler than normal and the skies as colorless as mid-winter. She almost wondered if she were somehow controlling the weather.
Penny watched her breath fog in the early light and stamped her feet on the ground to warm them up. She'd been out walking since before the sun rose. Unable — unwilling to stay in bed any longer, she'd pulled on her clothes in the dark, tiptoed downstairs and through the silent kitchen. Went out into the pre-dawn gloom but couldn't make herself go into the barn, the paddocks, the garden.... She couldn't make herself set foot in any of the places that belonged to her parents, filled with memories of her childhood.
Places that belonged to her now. To her and her alone.
She wrapped her arms around her aching stomach. She knew she should head back to the house soon; her aunts would worry if she didn't turn up for the breakfast they would be in the middle of preparing already.
As if all she needed was a good meal and all her cares and troubles would melt away.
What would Sheldon say when she went back inside, she wondered. When she went back up to the room where he had slept while she lay awake and stared at the ceiling, until the sound of his calm, even breathing drove her from their bed and out into the cold. Would he keep pretending not to understand her upset, or would their now-shared grief be enough to bridge the gap that had grown between them?
vii. the day with the accidental date
After a long day of rude, pushy customers and temperatures better suited to the face of the sun, Penny stepped off the elevator juggling two bags of groceries, a huge stack of mail-order catalogs, and what had to be the world's heaviest purse. It was no wonder she didn't notice the crowd blocking the hallway until it was too late.
"Well, now, who's this pretty lady?" bellowed the giant of a man whose chest she'd barreled right into as soon as she stepped off the elevator. He winked down at her, but let go of her arm as soon as it looked like she was steady again.
"George, leave the poor girl alone. She looks like she's had a rough day" A much smaller woman elbowed him out of the way and started pulling bags and catalogs right out of Penny's hands. "Here, Sheldon, take these."
Someone reached out to take the groceries, and the woman took Penny by the wrist. Before Penny could protest any of it, she was being swept along in the middle of the group: down the hall and through the open door of the formerly empty apartment directly across from her own. All around her, people insisted she do this and that and of course she didn't want to cook for herself after whatever kind of day she'd had.
"Really, it's very sweet of you but I really just want to go home. No, thanks, I don't want any barbecue—"
"Oh honey, of course you do!" A tiny, white-haired lady materialized as if out of thin air and pressed an icy-cold bottle of beer into Penny's hand.
"I don't—"
Sheldon, the man who'd taken her groceries into the kitchen, made a face at her over the old woman's head. "It's easier if you just let them think you agree, then sneak out when the fighting starts."
A shout exploded from the far side of the room. "For God's sake, Mary!"
A muscle in Sheldon's jaw jumped. "That would be now," he said.
"But you've got all my food," Penny said, at a loss for anything less idiotic to say. This time she didn't bother trying to fight when he started herding her toward the door, nor when he followed her out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, blocking most of the shouting.
"I'm not buying you dinner," he said, crossing his arms and staring her down like she might try something funny if he looked away for a second.
"Uh, I wasn't asking?"
He dropped his arms to his sides. "Good. How do you feel about dumplings?"
viii. the day with the blockbuster
"Sweetie, maybe you should, um..."
It was taking everything Penny had to keep the giggles from escaping. She didn't know what it was about Leonard that made Gilda's brain short out, but it rarely produced anything this out of left field. But whatever it was: friends don't let friends go to the movies wearing leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos.
Especially not when the leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos make one friend want to throw the other one down on the bed and go to town.
Gilda ran a hand over her hip and grimaced. "It's a bit much for a matinee, isn't it?"
"Yeah, just a little. Plus, the leather creaks and if you ruin Sheldon's acoustics he might put acid in your Coke."
ix. the day with the game
The main dining room was completely empty and probably would be for a while. The real crazy rush wouldn't start until almost three; there were some advantages to living in a university town, and working in a restaurant that didn't show any sports channels on game day was definitely one of them.
Penny finished rolling silverware and heaved the bin up on one hip with her good hand after flipping the stack of unused napkins onto the top. She'd made it three-quarters of the way back to her station when the front doors opened, setting the bells to jingling.
"Welcome to Mac's," she called over her shoulder. "Go ahead and sit anywhere. I'll be with you in a second."
She started to fill a glass of ice water, then snuck a glance at the person settling in at the table in the corner. It was the doctor, rolling his chair back against the wall so he had a view of the whole room — the same table he always took. She ducked back into the alcove before he caught her looking.
Penny dumped out the water and dropped two cherries in the glass instead, floating them with fizzing soda all the way to the rim.
x. the day with the sunscreen
He refused to remove either of his shirts. Loudly, and at great length. In fact, his only concessions to the whole beach-going experience were to switch his usual crazy-colored socks for a pair of soft white athletic ones, and a surprisingly well-worn pair of khaki cargo shorts.
"Missy," he offered in explanation when he noticed her staring as he finished checking the things packed in his bag. "My choices were to buy these, or be pushed off the end of the pier. Can we go?"
"Sure, yeah," she said. "Katie's pulling the car around. Did you pack your backup sunscreen?"
Lee thanked her for the reminder and bent over the table to double-check.
Luckily, Penny thought, he obviously didn't know exactly what had caught her attention or he would have stepped back in his room to change.
xi. the day with the last straw
Trigger warning for violence/abuse
It wasn't her worst idea ever, throwing everything she owned in the world into the trunk of her car and not looking back until she hit the state line.
The problem was, it wasn't exactly her best either. She should have waited until she had more cash. Or until she could trade her car for one that was less unreliable. She could have gone to the neighbors for help, the way they'd been hinting every time they caught her alone in the hallway. Or she could have— Or, or, or. There were a thousand stupid reasons pounding through her head, making her vision blur every time she caught a glimpse of the bruises on her arms.
Somewhere near Denver she pulled off the highway and checked into the least seedy-looking motel she could find before she passed out at the wheel.
The clerk didn't hand back her driver's license right away, taking a few extra minutes to check out her wrists where they poked out the oversized sleeves of her sweatshirt.
"Just the one night then?" he asked, sucking on his teeth and peering at her face. "Or you gonna need more than that?"
Penny tried not to get angry, to tell him to mind his own goddamn business. She took a deep, shaky breath and smiled instead, the muscles in her face feeling clumsy and out of practice. She concentrated on pulling her hand back from the counter, nice and slow so it didn't look like she was trying to hide anything.
"Oh, no," she said, "we'll be moving on in the morning. My- uh, my husband has a job interview in Kansas City on Monday. He's waiting in the car," she added in a rush. She could hear the lie in her voice as it fell out of her mouth.
The clerk smiled, like he didn't notice the hesitation, and gave back her license, along with the keys to the room and a handful of brochures. "There's some stuff in there might interest you, if you're looking for a place to stay longer someday."
Penny choked out a thank you and ran back to her car, pulling around to her room at the back of the motel. She stripped the grungy comforter off the bed and kicked it into a pile on the floor. Cranking the air conditioner up as far as it would go, she wrapped herself in the blankets and fell asleep facing the door.
It wasn't until the next morning, when she reached for the toothpaste and knocked over the stack of brochures, that she got the message the clerk had been trying to send.
In between two identical glossy printouts for competing family-style restaurants was a faded, black and white copy of a flyer for the local women's shelter, with a number hand-written in red across the bottom edge.
She crumpled it up and threw it in the can under the sink. It took another hour before she felt in control enough to brave the front counter to check out; she needed the security deposit back or she wouldn't have bothered. But for once she was lucky: the clerk at the counter was a young woman, with bags under her eyes and dirt under her nails. She didn't look up from the computer keyboard once.
It wasn't much of a victory, if it even qualified as one to begin with, but Penny guarded it jealously all the same.
xii. the day with the trial run
Leonard's sigh was loud enough to wake the metaphorical dead. Sheldon ignored the noise, plainly meant to get a rise out of him, and kept scooping.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Apparently ignoring Leonard was out of the question. Sheldon put down the plastic spoon and wiped his hands with the wet rag he kept next to the cutting board.
"I'm practicing my jack-o-lantern carving skills. We won't be shown up by the children in 2-A this year, I promise you that."
"Now? Sheldon, come on."
"Am I encroaching on your personal space?"
"...no." Leonard furrowed his brow further and settled his shoulders like he was about to defend his doctoral thesis (a waste of breath, naturally).
"Are you allergic to the scent of pumpkins?"
"No."
"Am I in any way disturbing you or impeding your ability to carry on with your day?"
"No."
"Is this, as Howard says, more of your 'bitching and moaning because you can't keep a girlfriend'?"
Leonard didn't say anything, just turned on his heel and stomped back to his bedroom. He punctuated the action by slamming his door.
"Oh, I was right!" Sheldon tried to commit Leonard's exact expression to memory for the next time it inevitably surfaced.
xiii. the day with only one ending
Where it started, no one ever knew for sure. The president told the country not to worry, that the nation's top minds were working on a cure and all would be well in this God-blessed-America in no time, but he couldn't hold back a tiny cough in the last second before the camera cut away.
As for the nation's top minds, Penny knew at least six of them, and five were all out of their minds with fever. She prayed for the first time in years, hands clasped so tight that it hurt to pull them apart again. Her throat was raw with unshed tears. At least, she hoped that was why.
On the third day, she closed the guys' door one last time, then covered over the cracks with duct tape. Bernadette, Kripke, and Howard were still inside but there wasn't any point in trying to take care of them anymore. It was a kindness to just let them slip away. It was the only kindness left.
Leonard had never come back from the university that first night. She had begged him not to go, to stay inside with everyone else while they waited and watched. Now, she tried not to think about what must have happened to him.
Sheldon was as limp as a sack of grain and twice as heavy as she helped him across the hall to her door. Raj and Leslie were already sprawled on the floor inside, near the windows, their grayed faces turned up toward the breeze.
Penny bent over double as the coughing gripped her lungs and choked all the air out of the room. She dropped to her knees and thought about the wide-open fields at home, lying under the hot summer sun and listening to the cool, sweet wind through the trees.
She wondered what the world would look like when they were all gone.
xiv. the day with the team
Penny leaned back against the windshield and stretched, then clasped her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. The sunlight was golden-red through her eyelids, but the heat of the semi-trucks still burning on the other side of the road far outstripped its warmth.
Static crackled in her ear, followed by whooping and excited shouts.
"We did it!" Howard yelled. "Holy shit, it actually worked!"
"Of course it did," came Sheldon's artificially amplified voice, the rotors of the chopper muted in the background. "There was only a seven percent chance of any individual component failing."
Howard yelled something back but it was swallowed up by Raj's, "We're heading back to base now, Captain. We have the package." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And Leslie brought Leonard."
Kripke was still standing in the middle of the road holding the traffic sign. He shouted over the roar of the flames. "Shouldn't we clear out before the cops get here?"
On the heels of his question, a rumbling sound rolled toward them from the sparks flying up into the air at the end of the block as poles crashed to the ground and power lines criss-crossed the intersection.
"Never mind!"
Penny fished a cigar out of the pocket of her reflective vest. She held it up in a mock salute at the police cruisers now idling on the far side of the latest mess they'd wreaked on the streets of Los Angeles.
"Ah," she sighed. "I love it when a plan comes together."
xv. the day with the audition
"Um, why don't you start at the top of page seven?"
Penny nodded at the short man who'd called her onto the stage. He turned his back on her and walked back a few rows to sit with a bunch of other people she couldn't see very well through the glare of the footlights.
"Do you want me to—"
"Just do Marian," another man's voice called. "We've already got a Catherine."
Her heart sank. Catherine's were the lines she'd been practicing. She knew Catherine. She could live inside Catherine, or at least pretend long enough to maybe get the job and then work her ass off in the few short weeks between the auditions and opening night.
Marian, though. Marian was just about everything she couldn't be. She tried her best, trying to find some way to take the sour, bitter lines and make them her own.
She wasn't even to the bottom of the page when the short man popped up out of his seat and scurried toward the stage. "Thank you, thank you!" he called. "That's all we need. You'll hear from us in a few days."
Penny thanked him, then the shadowy people in the audience, and walked offstage. She hoped her disappointment wasn't as obvious as it felt.
Sheldon was waiting outside the theater. He was standing under a skinny tree that cast even less of a shadow than he did. "How did it go?" he asked when she got close.
"Not great. Shock." She hoped this wasn't going to be one of those times he tried to comfort her. He was so terrible at it that he usually ended up hurting her feelings more than whatever had gotten her down in the first place.
He was quiet as they made their way down the block to where she'd left the car. When she pulled out her keys and beeped the locks, he turned toward her and reached out.
Penny caught his hand in hers and brought it to her cheek. Sheldon looked as serious as always, his milky-white eyes creasing at the corners and his gaze aimed somewhere over her head.
"Maybe we should talk about going—"
"Sheldon," she interrupted, "if you know what's good for you, you won't finish that sentence."
You have seen it all before, haven't you? Don't worry; you'll see it all again. That's the way this goes, the way it always goes.
We just need to wait a little while for the rest.
Rating: up to PG-13 for language
Length: ~6000 words
Fandom: Big Bang Theory
Prompt: I used the first fifteen prompts in order from the Paradox-o-rama Fiction Friday thing.
A/N: No beta; would really appreciate any feedback or concrit. If only I could read rules the way they're written and not the way I think they're written.
Trigger warning for violence/abuse on #11.
#14 is for
the_wanlorn with the hugest thanks ever for the cheerleading. YOU'RE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE TEAM BB ♥!SEQUEL: If It Was So
There's a theory that goes a little something like this:
There exist a mind-boggling number of universes. Some would say it's an infinite number but no one can prove anything. Typical, right?
We live in one, or maybe all of them. Maybe we only live in a few. At any rate, everything that has ever happened, or could have happened, or might have happened - in short, everything that has ever, will ever, and never could possibly have happened will happen or has happened or could someday happen in one or several or all of these.
That's not a very good explanation but it will do. But you already know this, don't you?
Somewhere in all of that happening, there are constants. At least, we assume there are. Up is up, no one understands how everything began — some think they do but they don't, not really — and the Star Wars prequels were a textbook example of man's inhumanity to man.
But for everything that happens in this universe, it goes just slightly off-course in another one.
Like this:
a. the one that some people know
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl takes weeks and months and years to figure out she picked the wrong one.
It's a tale as old as any you've ever heard, full of laughter and crying and pretty much wall-to-wall sex at certain points. There may have been some robots. There are definitely way too many references to Star Trek.
Sure, there aren't any swordfights or daring galactic battles but it seems plenty dramatic at the time. And you can't go wrong with happily-ever-after.
But maybe, it goes like this:
b. the one that you don't know
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl doesn't let herself get distracted by nice and friendly but goes straight for prickly and weird.
After all, girls like a challenge, don't they? That's what Cosmo tells you anyway.
Soon, the girl starts throwing warp speed and transporter range and the Prime Directive into daily conversation. There are definitely robots in this one. Slightly less wall-to-wall sex, but maybe not.
This one's way less dramatic, but it ends the same way.
That seems a little too pat, though, doesn't it? Perhaps it was neither of these. Maybe it's like this:
c. the one that no one wants
Girl meets boy. Girl meets other boy.
Girl moves back in with her ex-boyfriend two months later.
Or this:
d. the one that the robots like
Girl lives out her days in perfect ignorance of the world around her.
Boy dreams of girls, but not this girl.
Other boy never existed.
But that's not why we're here.
The building blocks of life are the same as those that make up the rest of the universe. Men and women with brains that run better than any you've ever known have figured that out, and most of the rest of us are just along for the ride.
Once upon a time— isn't that the way these things are supposed to start?
Once upon a time, there was nothing. And then, suddenly, there was everything, or something on its way to everything at the very least. Here in this universe, there was expansion and swirling matter and maybe a lightning strike that got lucky. We are all made of star stuff, as the saying goes. But we're more than that, somehow. Or we think we are.
We come from brown-black sludge, from the absolute dregs of the primordial world. But somehow in all that has happened and never could happen between then and now, that spark, that tiny infinitesimal moment of chance, brought forth everything that we are. Everything you can think of and everything you can't, all of it has been.
You can call it a miracle, or a series of lucky breaks. You can call it whatever you like, but the heart of the matter is that we are. We are here, our entire world only the tiniest speck of reflected light in the vast emptiness.
When you put it like that, well. Everything gains a different perspective, doesn't it? We see only slivers of the universe in which we exist, just days at a time.
Or maybe it's just moments. Different moments from the same day all across the universes, as though someone has lifted a veil between the worlds and beckoned you forward.
You want a glimpse? Just a little one?
Or have you seen it all before?
i. the day with the roller coasters
It wasn't likely to help but Penny went for it anyway, interrupting Shelly before she could really get going. "Can't this crazydoodle reminder wait until everybody gets back in the car?"
Shelly frowned. "They've heard it plenty of times. You have only heard it once, and there are additional guidelines that didn't apply to Disneyland." She cleared her throat and started again from the top.
"No water rides before lunch or after three in the afternoon; otherwise we won't have sufficient sunlight, heat, or time to dry off properly. No food that we can't see for ourselves how, when, and with what degree of hygiene it is being prepared. No locker rentals — if you can't carry it all day, leave it in your hotel room. We don't have time for lollygaggers. No roller coasters for at least an hour after lunch—"
"Oh, come on, even I know that's an old wives' tale—"
"No, that's Raj's gag reflex."
Raj made a face like it was embarrassment that kept him from protesting and not that he knew no one would believe him.
"—and the first, and I use this term very lightly, attraction that we will visit is located directly to the east of the entrance."
Penny and Raj rolled their eyes in unison when Shelly passed back to them two of the maps she'd stayed up late the night before to mark.
"Since none of the designers of the park bothered to contemplate the proper efficency traffic flows between the rides and the shopping areas, we'll have to double-back at some points in order to stick to the evacuation schedule that will accommodate everyone. Now, if you'll turn over your maps, we can discuss the itinerary for days two and three—"
Evacuation? Penny mouthed at Raj, who didn't bother to try to mime it for her. Instead he opened his map and buried his head in it like it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything.
Was Shelly starting in on her disaster planning kick again? Penny unfolded her copy of the map to see the precise red circles drawn around the restrooms scattered around the park. "Oh, you're talking about the Magic Potty! Honey, everybody knows that's always the first ride. Those Big Gulps always seem like a good idea until you get about five miles down the road."
Leah had opened the driver's side door while Penny was talking. She settled into her seat, forehead wrinkled above the thick frame of her glasses as she sucked at the straw of her super-sized slushy drink. "What are you talking about?"
Shelly ignored her to twist around to look at Penny, her face scrunched up in the kind of suspicious look she hadn't leveled since she thought someone was emptying her energy drinks whenever she turned her back. "Are you sure you haven't talked to my mother?"
"As if," Penny scoffed, crossing her arms and sitting back with a sour expression that would give her a headache if she kept it up too long.
Hannah's head suddenly popped up in the window next to Penny. She shoved the giant, dripping plastic cup at the back of Shelly's head, keeping her narrowed eyes trained on Penny the whole time.
"Since when do you talk to her mom?"
"I don't!" Penny protested. Not since Mary Cooper told her to knock it off with the energy drinks, that was.
ii. the day with the parade
Penny shifted in her folding chair and looked around for somewhere to set her bottle of water down. Every square inch of space around her was covered in either feet or someone else's blankets or children who couldn't sit still with the prospect of free candy raining down on them on the immediate horizon. In front of her was the curb, and then the faded asphalt of the road. She couldn't lean forward far enough to reach either anyway.
"I told you to let me fix your chair for you," Cooper said smugly, taking a long drink from his own bottle and slotting it back into the holder dangling from the end of his arm rest. The plastic cording creaked as he shifted to avoid touching the woman crowding in on his other side.
The marching band came into view around the corner, just a few seconds after the pounding drums started reverberating off the buildings lining Main Street.
"I'm not going to have you waste that much time on something I'm already too big to sit in comfortably," she said before the enthusiastic but not particularly skilled music drowned out her voice.
Cooper looked down at the huge curve of her belly, his smug expression softening into the familiar and only occasionally infuriating look of pride. As if his body was the one doing any of the work.
The bottle was cold through the fabric of her sundress and the baby shifted restlessly as the band marched in sloppy formation in front of them and down out of site around the next corner. Cooper thumbed through the bicentennial booklet he'd picked up at the historical society booth.
"Why can't they put the parade order in here? How much longer do we have to wait for Missy and—"
"Shhh!" Penny hissed and knocked the booklet out of his hands. "Here they come!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, they're marching in place and waving pom-poms. It hardly requires me to be silent!"
But he let the argument drop there, too busy leaning forward and trying to see around her bulk. He pushed up out of his chair a few inches, and a huge goofy smile. "Here she comes!"
Penny whooped, beaming and clapping her hands in time with the girls' cheers as they paused in the middle of the street to do the routine all four squads had been practicing for weeks. Missy caught her eye and smiled. When the routine was over, she stepped up to nudge the shoulder of one of the pee-wees in front. The girl's tiny face nearly split in two with a gap-toothed grin to rival her dad's when she spotted Penny and Cooper on the curb. She stepped out of line with the rest of her squad, blonde pigtails bouncing as she waved with her whole body, nearly taking off the nearest girl's head with her baton.
"Looking good, baby!" Penny shouted. "Keep your knees up!"
Cooper kept clapping until the girls disappeared the same way the band had, then sat back to play back what he'd recorded on the video camera attached to the gorillapod on the other arm of his folding chair.
Penny wiped her forehead and finished off the bottle of water even though the baby was just centimeters away from tap-dancing on her bladder. "You ready to go?"
"I suppose we could stay for the clowns," Cooper said, his eyes bright and excited now that he'd forgotten to pretend he didn't want to be there.
iii. the day with the collision
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry!" Penny yanked her cart away, crashing it into the shelves on the other side of the aisle. A cascade of cans tumbled to the floor and she carefully picked her way over to the man she'd knocked down. "Are you okay? I totally didn't even see you there!"
"No, you wouldn't have," he agreed, surprisingly happy for a guy who'd just been flattened by a cart full of frozen pizzas and margarita mix. He ignored the hand she held out to help him to his feet and played with the black and silver device in his hands.
He ignored her for so long she felt stupid for still standing there with her hand outstretched. "Uh, can I help you up or something? Should I call a manager? Are you hurt?"
"No, thank you. This is precisely what I anticipated would happen." He pressed another button, and vanished.
Penny stumbled backwards. "What the hell?"
"May I have your name?" the man's voice asked from somewhere. "You won't be named in my acceptance speech of course, but—"
"Jesus, I have got to quit drinking," Penny muttered.
iv. the day with the shift change
Saturdays definitely weren't her favorite, especially not as the last bits of what passed for summer rushed headlong into the grey, dreary, ashen autumn.
It seemed like whole lifetimes ago when loved ones brought flowers, and sat at bedsides, and cradled limp hands in their own. Now, all there was was Penny and Jorge and the doctors Khan, and row after row of beds that never stayed empty long.
As they started the hand-off briefing, Jorge passed her a cup of coffee and the log. "We had another six brought in last night from the front. Two didn't make it, and the rest probably won't last the day."
Like Penny, Jorge wasn't a nurse or a doctor or even a medical technician. He'd been brought in by another soldier and left to bleed on the front desk one morning. When he'd recovered from his wounds, he'd taken one look at Amitabh and Hillary struggling to keep the clinic running. Struggling to keep men and women like him alive for just one more goddamn day. He'd shuffled out into the alley at the back, and burned his enlistment papers under a sky streaked purple and black. In the year and a half since, he'd become a master at stitches and setting broken bones, and his were the only hands that stayed steady enough to clean the grit and dirt out of ragged burns.
Penny drank the coffee like a shot and put the mug down on counter as she flipped through the log. They both knew what she was looking for — what she was always looking for — but it had been months since she'd stopped asking out loud. Back in that other lifetime, when not blowing a line at audition was the hardest thing in her world, she always wished she'd had the knack for instant memorization.
Now she wanted it so she could be that someone somewhere that she prayed would find her one day, with a name on the tip of his or her tongue and hands to steady her when this soap-bubble world of not-knowing finally collapsed around her.
She drilled him on what had been done through the night, what shape the dispensary was in, whether Amitabh or Hillary would make it out of the surgical bay any time soon. Her ring flashed under the fluorescent lights as she doled out the ever dwindling supply of painkillers and antibiotics into sturdy little paper cups.
Jorge squeezed her elbow and turned away.
v. the day with the party
Sheldon felt a tug on the leg of his costume and looked down. Two very small children dressed in not altogether terrible mass-produced Flash costumes were staring up at him.
"Who are you supposed to be?" the boy demanded. The mask obscured most of his face, and Sheldon didn't recognize the chin or jawline.
Granted, he wouldn't have been able to place it even if he had. The only person he knew in the entire state was his roommate, who definitely did not have any offspring, let alone any this forthright.
"Danny," the girl whispered. "Mommy said don't be rude!"
"That wasn't rude! Jill, don't be such a baby."
Sheldon cut in before their disagreement, or Jill sneaking a hand up behind the boy's head, could escalate into anything involving shrieking, indian burns, or tears.
"I'm the Doppler effect," he said. He wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to explain to them what the Doppler effect was or if he should do what his sister recommended and just shut the hell up once in a while.
"Oh, like on the weather," Danny said, nodding like it was all very familiar.
"That's not exactly—"
Jill interrupted breathlessly to explain, "Daddy used to say the bad words at the weather all the time afore he got deaded."
"You're not supposed to talk about that," Danny yelped. "I'm telling Mom!"
"You're telling me what?"
Sheldon whirled around to find a blonde around his age standing with arms akimbo. She mock-glared at her children, then turned a soft smile on him.
"They aren't bothering you, are they?"
"Not yet," Sheldon admitted.
He'd meant for it to be dismissive; brusque, even. But the bright-haired woman only ratcheted up her smile and laid a hand on each of her childrens' heads.
vi. the day with more than one ending
It was chilly that morning, at least a dozen degrees cooler than normal and the skies as colorless as mid-winter. She almost wondered if she were somehow controlling the weather.
Penny watched her breath fog in the early light and stamped her feet on the ground to warm them up. She'd been out walking since before the sun rose. Unable — unwilling to stay in bed any longer, she'd pulled on her clothes in the dark, tiptoed downstairs and through the silent kitchen. Went out into the pre-dawn gloom but couldn't make herself go into the barn, the paddocks, the garden.... She couldn't make herself set foot in any of the places that belonged to her parents, filled with memories of her childhood.
Places that belonged to her now. To her and her alone.
She wrapped her arms around her aching stomach. She knew she should head back to the house soon; her aunts would worry if she didn't turn up for the breakfast they would be in the middle of preparing already.
As if all she needed was a good meal and all her cares and troubles would melt away.
What would Sheldon say when she went back inside, she wondered. When she went back up to the room where he had slept while she lay awake and stared at the ceiling, until the sound of his calm, even breathing drove her from their bed and out into the cold. Would he keep pretending not to understand her upset, or would their now-shared grief be enough to bridge the gap that had grown between them?
vii. the day with the accidental date
After a long day of rude, pushy customers and temperatures better suited to the face of the sun, Penny stepped off the elevator juggling two bags of groceries, a huge stack of mail-order catalogs, and what had to be the world's heaviest purse. It was no wonder she didn't notice the crowd blocking the hallway until it was too late.
"Well, now, who's this pretty lady?" bellowed the giant of a man whose chest she'd barreled right into as soon as she stepped off the elevator. He winked down at her, but let go of her arm as soon as it looked like she was steady again.
"George, leave the poor girl alone. She looks like she's had a rough day" A much smaller woman elbowed him out of the way and started pulling bags and catalogs right out of Penny's hands. "Here, Sheldon, take these."
Someone reached out to take the groceries, and the woman took Penny by the wrist. Before Penny could protest any of it, she was being swept along in the middle of the group: down the hall and through the open door of the formerly empty apartment directly across from her own. All around her, people insisted she do this and that and of course she didn't want to cook for herself after whatever kind of day she'd had.
"Really, it's very sweet of you but I really just want to go home. No, thanks, I don't want any barbecue—"
"Oh honey, of course you do!" A tiny, white-haired lady materialized as if out of thin air and pressed an icy-cold bottle of beer into Penny's hand.
"I don't—"
Sheldon, the man who'd taken her groceries into the kitchen, made a face at her over the old woman's head. "It's easier if you just let them think you agree, then sneak out when the fighting starts."
A shout exploded from the far side of the room. "For God's sake, Mary!"
A muscle in Sheldon's jaw jumped. "That would be now," he said.
"But you've got all my food," Penny said, at a loss for anything less idiotic to say. This time she didn't bother trying to fight when he started herding her toward the door, nor when he followed her out into the hallway and closed the door behind him, blocking most of the shouting.
"I'm not buying you dinner," he said, crossing his arms and staring her down like she might try something funny if he looked away for a second.
"Uh, I wasn't asking?"
He dropped his arms to his sides. "Good. How do you feel about dumplings?"
viii. the day with the blockbuster
"Sweetie, maybe you should, um..."
It was taking everything Penny had to keep the giggles from escaping. She didn't know what it was about Leonard that made Gilda's brain short out, but it rarely produced anything this out of left field. But whatever it was: friends don't let friends go to the movies wearing leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos.
Especially not when the leather miniskirts and gladiator stilettos make one friend want to throw the other one down on the bed and go to town.
Gilda ran a hand over her hip and grimaced. "It's a bit much for a matinee, isn't it?"
"Yeah, just a little. Plus, the leather creaks and if you ruin Sheldon's acoustics he might put acid in your Coke."
ix. the day with the game
The main dining room was completely empty and probably would be for a while. The real crazy rush wouldn't start until almost three; there were some advantages to living in a university town, and working in a restaurant that didn't show any sports channels on game day was definitely one of them.
Penny finished rolling silverware and heaved the bin up on one hip with her good hand after flipping the stack of unused napkins onto the top. She'd made it three-quarters of the way back to her station when the front doors opened, setting the bells to jingling.
"Welcome to Mac's," she called over her shoulder. "Go ahead and sit anywhere. I'll be with you in a second."
She started to fill a glass of ice water, then snuck a glance at the person settling in at the table in the corner. It was the doctor, rolling his chair back against the wall so he had a view of the whole room — the same table he always took. She ducked back into the alcove before he caught her looking.
Penny dumped out the water and dropped two cherries in the glass instead, floating them with fizzing soda all the way to the rim.
x. the day with the sunscreen
He refused to remove either of his shirts. Loudly, and at great length. In fact, his only concessions to the whole beach-going experience were to switch his usual crazy-colored socks for a pair of soft white athletic ones, and a surprisingly well-worn pair of khaki cargo shorts.
"Missy," he offered in explanation when he noticed her staring as he finished checking the things packed in his bag. "My choices were to buy these, or be pushed off the end of the pier. Can we go?"
"Sure, yeah," she said. "Katie's pulling the car around. Did you pack your backup sunscreen?"
Lee thanked her for the reminder and bent over the table to double-check.
Luckily, Penny thought, he obviously didn't know exactly what had caught her attention or he would have stepped back in his room to change.
xi. the day with the last straw
Trigger warning for violence/abuse
It wasn't her worst idea ever, throwing everything she owned in the world into the trunk of her car and not looking back until she hit the state line.
The problem was, it wasn't exactly her best either. She should have waited until she had more cash. Or until she could trade her car for one that was less unreliable. She could have gone to the neighbors for help, the way they'd been hinting every time they caught her alone in the hallway. Or she could have— Or, or, or. There were a thousand stupid reasons pounding through her head, making her vision blur every time she caught a glimpse of the bruises on her arms.
Somewhere near Denver she pulled off the highway and checked into the least seedy-looking motel she could find before she passed out at the wheel.
The clerk didn't hand back her driver's license right away, taking a few extra minutes to check out her wrists where they poked out the oversized sleeves of her sweatshirt.
"Just the one night then?" he asked, sucking on his teeth and peering at her face. "Or you gonna need more than that?"
Penny tried not to get angry, to tell him to mind his own goddamn business. She took a deep, shaky breath and smiled instead, the muscles in her face feeling clumsy and out of practice. She concentrated on pulling her hand back from the counter, nice and slow so it didn't look like she was trying to hide anything.
"Oh, no," she said, "we'll be moving on in the morning. My- uh, my husband has a job interview in Kansas City on Monday. He's waiting in the car," she added in a rush. She could hear the lie in her voice as it fell out of her mouth.
The clerk smiled, like he didn't notice the hesitation, and gave back her license, along with the keys to the room and a handful of brochures. "There's some stuff in there might interest you, if you're looking for a place to stay longer someday."
Penny choked out a thank you and ran back to her car, pulling around to her room at the back of the motel. She stripped the grungy comforter off the bed and kicked it into a pile on the floor. Cranking the air conditioner up as far as it would go, she wrapped herself in the blankets and fell asleep facing the door.
It wasn't until the next morning, when she reached for the toothpaste and knocked over the stack of brochures, that she got the message the clerk had been trying to send.
In between two identical glossy printouts for competing family-style restaurants was a faded, black and white copy of a flyer for the local women's shelter, with a number hand-written in red across the bottom edge.
She crumpled it up and threw it in the can under the sink. It took another hour before she felt in control enough to brave the front counter to check out; she needed the security deposit back or she wouldn't have bothered. But for once she was lucky: the clerk at the counter was a young woman, with bags under her eyes and dirt under her nails. She didn't look up from the computer keyboard once.
It wasn't much of a victory, if it even qualified as one to begin with, but Penny guarded it jealously all the same.
xii. the day with the trial run
Leonard's sigh was loud enough to wake the metaphorical dead. Sheldon ignored the noise, plainly meant to get a rise out of him, and kept scooping.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Apparently ignoring Leonard was out of the question. Sheldon put down the plastic spoon and wiped his hands with the wet rag he kept next to the cutting board.
"I'm practicing my jack-o-lantern carving skills. We won't be shown up by the children in 2-A this year, I promise you that."
"Now? Sheldon, come on."
"Am I encroaching on your personal space?"
"...no." Leonard furrowed his brow further and settled his shoulders like he was about to defend his doctoral thesis (a waste of breath, naturally).
"Are you allergic to the scent of pumpkins?"
"No."
"Am I in any way disturbing you or impeding your ability to carry on with your day?"
"No."
"Is this, as Howard says, more of your 'bitching and moaning because you can't keep a girlfriend'?"
Leonard didn't say anything, just turned on his heel and stomped back to his bedroom. He punctuated the action by slamming his door.
"Oh, I was right!" Sheldon tried to commit Leonard's exact expression to memory for the next time it inevitably surfaced.
xiii. the day with only one ending
Where it started, no one ever knew for sure. The president told the country not to worry, that the nation's top minds were working on a cure and all would be well in this God-blessed-America in no time, but he couldn't hold back a tiny cough in the last second before the camera cut away.
As for the nation's top minds, Penny knew at least six of them, and five were all out of their minds with fever. She prayed for the first time in years, hands clasped so tight that it hurt to pull them apart again. Her throat was raw with unshed tears. At least, she hoped that was why.
On the third day, she closed the guys' door one last time, then covered over the cracks with duct tape. Bernadette, Kripke, and Howard were still inside but there wasn't any point in trying to take care of them anymore. It was a kindness to just let them slip away. It was the only kindness left.
Leonard had never come back from the university that first night. She had begged him not to go, to stay inside with everyone else while they waited and watched. Now, she tried not to think about what must have happened to him.
Sheldon was as limp as a sack of grain and twice as heavy as she helped him across the hall to her door. Raj and Leslie were already sprawled on the floor inside, near the windows, their grayed faces turned up toward the breeze.
Penny bent over double as the coughing gripped her lungs and choked all the air out of the room. She dropped to her knees and thought about the wide-open fields at home, lying under the hot summer sun and listening to the cool, sweet wind through the trees.
She wondered what the world would look like when they were all gone.
xiv. the day with the team
Penny leaned back against the windshield and stretched, then clasped her hands behind her head and closed her eyes. The sunlight was golden-red through her eyelids, but the heat of the semi-trucks still burning on the other side of the road far outstripped its warmth.
Static crackled in her ear, followed by whooping and excited shouts.
"We did it!" Howard yelled. "Holy shit, it actually worked!"
"Of course it did," came Sheldon's artificially amplified voice, the rotors of the chopper muted in the background. "There was only a seven percent chance of any individual component failing."
Howard yelled something back but it was swallowed up by Raj's, "We're heading back to base now, Captain. We have the package." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And Leslie brought Leonard."
Kripke was still standing in the middle of the road holding the traffic sign. He shouted over the roar of the flames. "Shouldn't we clear out before the cops get here?"
On the heels of his question, a rumbling sound rolled toward them from the sparks flying up into the air at the end of the block as poles crashed to the ground and power lines criss-crossed the intersection.
"Never mind!"
Penny fished a cigar out of the pocket of her reflective vest. She held it up in a mock salute at the police cruisers now idling on the far side of the latest mess they'd wreaked on the streets of Los Angeles.
"Ah," she sighed. "I love it when a plan comes together."
xv. the day with the audition
"Um, why don't you start at the top of page seven?"
Penny nodded at the short man who'd called her onto the stage. He turned his back on her and walked back a few rows to sit with a bunch of other people she couldn't see very well through the glare of the footlights.
"Do you want me to—"
"Just do Marian," another man's voice called. "We've already got a Catherine."
Her heart sank. Catherine's were the lines she'd been practicing. She knew Catherine. She could live inside Catherine, or at least pretend long enough to maybe get the job and then work her ass off in the few short weeks between the auditions and opening night.
Marian, though. Marian was just about everything she couldn't be. She tried her best, trying to find some way to take the sour, bitter lines and make them her own.
She wasn't even to the bottom of the page when the short man popped up out of his seat and scurried toward the stage. "Thank you, thank you!" he called. "That's all we need. You'll hear from us in a few days."
Penny thanked him, then the shadowy people in the audience, and walked offstage. She hoped her disappointment wasn't as obvious as it felt.
Sheldon was waiting outside the theater. He was standing under a skinny tree that cast even less of a shadow than he did. "How did it go?" he asked when she got close.
"Not great. Shock." She hoped this wasn't going to be one of those times he tried to comfort her. He was so terrible at it that he usually ended up hurting her feelings more than whatever had gotten her down in the first place.
He was quiet as they made their way down the block to where she'd left the car. When she pulled out her keys and beeped the locks, he turned toward her and reached out.
Penny caught his hand in hers and brought it to her cheek. Sheldon looked as serious as always, his milky-white eyes creasing at the corners and his gaze aimed somewhere over her head.
"Maybe we should talk about going—"
"Sheldon," she interrupted, "if you know what's good for you, you won't finish that sentence."
You have seen it all before, haven't you? Don't worry; you'll see it all again. That's the way this goes, the way it always goes.
We just need to wait a little while for the rest.
Started: 18 June 2010
Finished: 20 June 2010
Finished: 20 June 2010