Going Where We've Never Gone Before | BBT big bang fic
Title: Going Where We've Never Gone Before
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some language that wouldn't make it on basic cable, magic people making judgmental statements about HP fans
Word Count: ~15k
Summary: Urban fantasy AU. Penny steps through a crack in the wall, and then things get complicated. (Or: studying magic, working in a magic bookshop, going to auditions, playing match-maker, saving the world(s), and trying to make it big is all Quite Enough without also falling in love with one Sheldon Cooper, thankyouverymuch.)
A/N: much move love to El for turning sentences into things which are actually readable, Lauren for putting up with my scatter-brained ways and making a fantastic mix, and everyone else for dealing with my yearly BBBB-related meltdown! =D
MIX, WHICH IS THE BESTEST, AND CREATED BY notalwaysweak WHO IS, GENERALLY AND UNBIASEDLY SPEAKING, KIND OF THE BEST:
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MIX
Going Where We've Never Gone Before
Penny Williams has been in LA for two days when she sees the crack in the wall. It's a big crack, and at first she thinks it's from an earthquake. So she's from Nebraska, and doesn't know much about earthquakes or Los Angeles or hell, even California. She's not the first girl to end up here and she sure as hell won't be the last.
She mentions it at dinner with the friends she's staying with in a converted warehouse. (She's not entirely positive that they aren't actually squatting, but she's still looking for interviews for jobs to pay the bills, let alone going to auditions. She's not going to ask too many questions.) When she asks if they've recently had an earthquake, they all look at her blankly for a moment, and then tell her yeah, duh, small earthquakes aren't at all out of the norm.
She tells them about the crack, though, and then they just look confused. They haven't had a major earthquake in forever, certainly nothing that would do that sort of damage. Besides, even if they had, it should already be repaired, or at least the damage shored up. Even though it doesn't rain a ton in southern California, they still get morning dew, and frankly the insides of buildings need to be protected from the elements.
The second time she sees the crack in the wall, she's been in Los Angeles for twelve days, and already caught her (now ex-) boyfriend cheating on her. She is not, one might say, in the best of moods.
She walks past the huge crack in the wall, pauses, and goes back. She peers through it.
It's weird, though, because on the other side it looks...wrong. Or rather, different. Different than it should look. She looks away, blinks, and looks back, but same problem. A passing Los Angelean bumps into her and keeps going, not even looking back, and her hand lands on the wall as she tries to keep her balance.
I hate this place, she thinks almost desperately, because this isn't what she had in mind when she packed her car and set off to LA with Kurt. I wish I was anywhere else.
And then the wall glows an alarming blue beneath her palm.
She bites back a scream and jumps back, but no one else appears to notice the blue wall. The blue wall with the rapidly increasing crack. Curious despite herself, she leans forward a little, and looks through. The other side is slightly out of focus, but the people look, well. They look off. Oddly distorted, and just-
“Goddamn tourists,” a man mutters as he shoves past her, and she-
Well.
Penny Williams steps through the wall.
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The sky on the other side is tinged pink, and she thinks that should be worrying. Thinks it should, but really she's much more worried about the man with the completely black eyes walking past her.
The cobblestones (and why the hell are there cobblestones in the middle of LA?) beneath her feet catch on her professional black heels (she's been dropping applications off all day), and she almost trips over herself.
A man with green fur over all the non-clothed parts of his body kindly catches her by her elbow and saves her from a nasty fall.
“Careful, lass,” he says, smiling at her, and she thanks him before she even realizes that he's not speaking English but she somehow understood him anyway.
This is just a very weird dream, she tells herself sternly, but there's a cool sea breeze on her cheeks and the sun is warm on her skin, and a man with a top hat and long old-fashioned coat nods politely to her.
And this is probably not a dream, after all.
“Looks like we've got a newcomer,” a tall, thin man says. His friend-short, nerdy, glasses-looks over at her. The first man keeps walking, but the second practically faceplants as he pulls up short.
“Sheldon!” he yells, “we can't just leave her like this!” Sheldon looks annoyed.
“She got through the crack,” he says. “I'm sure she can figure the rest out, Leonard.”
“The rest?” Penny asks. “What rest? What the hell is this place?” Sheldon and Leonard exchange extremely concerned looks.
“Wait, you're not just new in town, you're new to everything?” Leonard asks, vaguely flabbergasted.
“Everything what?” she asks, realizing she's starting to sound more than a little hysterical.
“Well this is...unexpected,” Sheldon says. He shoots Leonard a put-upon look. “Let me guess,” he says, giving her a clinical once over. “She's pretty, completely out of your league, and now you want us to adopt her.”
“I wasn't-I don't think she's pretty!” Leonard says, flushing. “I mean-I mean, of course you're pretty, I just-I mean. I'm not trying to hit on you! Not that I wouldn't-uhm-”
She cuts in, taking pity on him, since his friend is just watching the proceedings with an amused smirk.
“It's fine,” she says. “I know what you mean. And I don't need to be adopted or whatever, I just. Who are these people? What are these people?”
“She's actually keeping her calm remarkably well,” Sheldon says, glancing back at Leonard. “This is the Second World. It's a terrible name, I'll be the first to say that, but it's the magic world that occupies the same space as your traditional Earth. Very few people can see it, and of those, fewer actually cross over. There are entrances all across the world, and most Second People have inherited their abilities from their parents, so the secrets and skills tend to be passed down hereditarily. Clearly that wasn't your case. It's quite rare for someone to cross for the first time after they've turned eighteen.”
“You've got to be fucking with me,” she says.
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It turns out they aren't fucking with her.
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Penny takes to magic like a fish to water, or some other overblown analogy. Or at least, she takes to it as soon as she stops threatening to punch Sheldon in the face for kidnapping and lying to her.
Theirs is a rocky beginning.
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The first thing they do is take her to what's evidently the magic equivalent of a shooting range.
“This is a-well, basically it's the most basic, useless wand that exists. The only thing it's good for is gauging a Second Person's power.”
“Second Person is seriously the worst name. If we're magic, shouldn't we be witches or wizards or something?” she asks. Sheldon and Leonard exchange glances.
“One of the Harry Potter crowd,” Leonard says with dismay.
“I might have known,” Sheldon says.
“What's wrong with Harry Potter?” Penny asks, a little annoyed. So she's not up on all the cool magic Second World stuff, whatever. At least she has a sense of fashion.
“We don't talk about Harry Potter,” Sheldon says. And that's the end of that.
They go out on the range, and Penny holds the weird not-quite-a-wand thing that Leonard tells her is a Styx.
“You don't need to know any spells or anything,” he says. “Just point and concentrate.”
“All this does is measure a SecPer's potential. Or lack thereof,” Sheldon adds in what she has to think is a catty tone.
Or lack thereof, she mocks in her head, biting back a scowl.
And then the target on the other side bursts into flames.
And explodes.
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“We're not going to run tests on her,” Leonard says, shooting an apologetic glance at Penny. Sheldon's rushing, keeping a hold of her arm and practically dragging her along. If she really wanted to get away, a quick kick to the knee would do it, but there was an awful lot of shouting about her setting things on fire, and she's pretty sure these two aren't serial killers, so she figures she'll see it through.
“There's never been a non-hereditary SecPer with such high potential,” Sheldon says.
“Except you, you mean,” Leonard says. He looks braced for the dark look Sheldon turns on him.
“I've told you, I must have been adopted. Or switched at birth.” There's honest-to-God a soft sound of thunder above them, and then the faint smell of rain surrounds Sheldon. Respect.
“How'd you find the crack, then?” Penny asks. Sheldon looks at her, looks away.
“I spent time in Germany. A professor with an aura-reading ability brought me to a crack to confirm what he already suspected.”
“He's spent most of his time since on this side of the crack,” Leonard cuts in. Penny looks between the two of them.
“And that's unusual,” she says.
“For landborn SecPers?” Leonard asks. “Very.”
“Wait, landborn?”
“Landborn refers to those that were born on the other side of the crack,” he says. “Unless they have a non-human appearance that they would prefer not to put a glamor over, they tend to reside on the Earth side of the crack, even though many of them work on this side.” Sheldon yanks her around a small group of people holding brooms. She almost jerks herself free, because brooms.
“Where are you taking me?” she finally snaps, because seriously, her roommates-okay, no, her roommates are totally not going to notice she's missing. Probably won't notice she's missing for another week, and then they'll probably just steal her stuff. They aren't exactly close-knit, just really really desperate. (Look, it was better than living in her car, okay.)
“We're going to the Academy,” Sheldon says. “I need a better idea of your full potential.”
“Is this going to involve blowing more things up? Because they really didn't seem to like that,” she says. He shoots her a dismissive look.
“What sort of scientist do you think I am?” he asks. She blinks.
“Well, one that believes in magic, so I guess I kind of didn't think you were a scientist at all?” Leonard buries his face in hand, and then almost runs into a unicorn because they're still barreling down the road at break-neck speed.
“Don't get him started,” he says.
“I study the intersection of magic and science. While the rules of Second World are different from the rules of Earth, there are still rules, and magic can have an affect on Earth. The two realities bleed into each other, and what happens in one world affects the other.”
Penny wrinkles her nose, not wanting to admit that she has no idea what the hell he's talking about.
“Okay,” she says. “Well, these tests or whatever aren't going to hurt, are they?”
“Of course not,” Leonard says, as the same time Sheldon says,
“Nothing you can't handle.”
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Sheldon straps her up to some wires and things, and she spends the new few minutes eyeing up the weird stuff on the walls. She's watched a lot of tv and movies (what else is a would-be actress to do), and none of this stuff has ever shown up on any science or even science fiction shows.
There a blue DNA-like chain floating in midair, and a green blob that appears to be beating like a heart. There are maps on the walls of a city, but some of the roads curve in on themselves, and and some of the roads break apart and reattach, and some of the roads seem to hover in midair. Across the top of them, there are lines in yellow string, criss-crossing over the carefully drawn city.
“Ley lines,” Sheldon says after a moment, noticing her staring. “I'm trying to find where the energy converges.”
“He's trying to find where magic comes from,” Leonard says flatly, shooting a disapproving look at Sheldon. “He could do anything in the world, and all he wants to do is find out what makes all this possible.”
“We don't have time for that argument right now,” Sheldon says. “Look at these readings.”
Leonard goes around the other side of the probably-not-actually-a-computer screen, and the two of them confer quietly for the next few minutes.
“Well?” she asks when she gets sick of waiting. “Am I going to live, doc?”
“Get her somewhere to stay,” Sheldon says.
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So evidently she has really awesome magic potential or something. Leonard keeps saying that Sheldon does too, and Sheldon keeps ignoring him, so she's not actually getting all the information she wants.
Evidently most SecPers (seriously, the worst name) have to perform magic before they turn eighteen in order to reach their full potential, though. Which is why so few cross after that-their magic starts fading or something. Neither of them are too clear on that, and it's evidently not a common enough phenomenon to have been properly studied.
Penny is twenty-two years old.
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Leonard gets her an apartment in the same building as theirs, right across the hall from theirs, in fact. She says she can't afford it (and then asks how money even works over here, and gets an hour lecture for her trouble), so Sheldon walks down to the bookstore he frequents and tells the owner to take the “Now Hiring” sign down.
Leonard crosses back with her, and helps her sell her car and get her stuff from the warehouse. She tells everyone that she's moving in with a guy. Most of them are too high to remember, probably, but then they also probably won't even miss her. In the little time she was there, people just tended to drift in and out.
Most of her stuff is still packed in her two suitcases, so it doesn't take long.
Sheldon's waiting for them on the other side of the crack.
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Sheldon buys her ten different books. Five of them are clearly children's introductory magic books, and she's not sure if she be annoyed or thankful for them.
She tells him she wants a wand, but he tells her to read the books first. She's a grown-up, and she knows she could go out and find a wand shop on her own.
She goes across the hall in her evenings, instead, sitting on the couch as Sheldon and Leonard explain things to her. She meets Raj, the astronomer who's trying to break the curse that binds his tongue. She meets Howard, the engineer, who works to create things that work in tandem with magic. (They hacked satellites and internet cables, and bound them with magic, giving this section of SecWorld signal and wifi. Evidently every major sector of SecWorld has done the same, binding their two worlds closer together.)
Sometimes, on her days off, Sheldon takes her with him to the Academy. He'll ask her to repeat various spells, and monitors the way her magic flares.
Sometimes, on her days off, she walks through the crack and goes to auditions. She came to LA to be an actress, after all. That doesn't change just because now she sees fairytale creatures on a daily basis.
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Three weeks after she moves into the apartment across the hall, Sheldon knocks three times on her door. She answers it, and is taken aback: he looks ridiculously excited.
“Are you free today?” he asks. She mentally skims her plans for the day-mostly it's catching up on housework and taking a three hour nap.
“I've got a little time,” she says warily, ready to rescind the statement if he so much as mentions tests.
“Would you like to get a wand?” he asks.
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The wand shop is not like Ollivanders'.
The wand does not choose her.
She has to meditate a little, and take what she's pretty sure would be an illegal substance on the other side of the crack, but then she's standing and walking over to a drawer in the row of satin-lined wardrobes in the back of the store, pulled by something low in her stomach that she can't quite place.
She pulls out a Sage wand, eight inches long. It tingles against her skin.
“What does sage mean?” she asks, looking between Sheldon and the shop-owner.
“Harry Potter crowd?” the shop-owner asks, looking gently amused. Sheldon sighs and nods.
“A wand is a wand,” he says. “The meaning imbued in it is from the person that wields it, not the wood it's made of.”
“...oh,” she says, feeling kind of stupid. She's read most of the books, but no one had bothered to tell her that. Sheldon looks sideways at her.
“In your case,” he says, “I'd say that's a very good wand indeed.”
She looks up at him, surprised to speechlessness. Sheldon is rare with compliments, rarer still with compliments that are actually meaningful. His eyes are unexpectedly kind as he looks down at her, and she wonders, with a start, how it must have been for him, getting a wand in Germany with only a professor as a guide.
“Sheldon,” she says, but his face gets that pinched look, as if he can already tell that she's going to say something that even vaguely brushes Feelings.
“Let's go practice,” he says, cutting her off. She lets herself be persuaded. He's not going to talk if he doesn't want to talk, and she really wants to learn how to make things fly.
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Penny kind of likes working in a magic bookstore. Besides being able to levitate books off the top shelves, and dust with magic, the books themselves are amazing. They still have all the regular books (Stuart, the manager, has the warehouses over there send them to an empty shopfront on that side of the crack. It's a common enough thing, and he actually shares the empty shopfront with fourteen other SecWorld shops.), but they also have books about old magick, and histories of SecWorld, and biographies of famous SecPers (witches, she thinks defiantly. Wizards.).
Stuart's a nice enough guy. Penny thinks he might have a bit of a crush on her, but he doesn't make it an issue so she doesn't bring it. She does try to (politely, subtlety) steer him on a different track, though.
Like towards the girl that with the glasses and the barrette in her hair that holds the strap of her bookbag as she walks around. She comes in every Tuesday and Thursday after she gets off work, and drinks a cup of coffee and buy the new Scientific SecWorld Journal on Tuesdays and an apparently random book on Thursdays.
She kind of reminds her of Sheldon, except Amy smiles more often, and sometimes her gaze stutters on the shirtless guys posing on magazine covers. (Penny understands the attraction; she's spent a lot of time “reorganizing” the magazines when business is slow.)
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The first time she and Sheldon run into Wil Wheaton, she doesn't know what's going on. One minute they're walking down the street, the next Sheldon's got a death grip on her arm and is trying to drag her into Feathers and Fins, a magical properties store that he absolutely hates.
“What're you-” she gets out, and then a voice from to their left cuts over her.
“Well well well,” he says, “Sheldon Cooper. And who's this beautiful lady?”
“Leave her alone,” Sheldon hisses.
“I'm Penny,” she says, shooting a confused look at Sheldon. “And you are...?”
“Why, I'm Wil Wheaton!” he declares. She keeps staring at him blankly, and the wind starts to go a little out of his sails. “The actor? And inventor of spells? None of that's ringing a bell?”
“Wait...” she says, frowning. “Are you that kid from Star Trek that my brother hated?”
Next to her, Sheldon's looking happier and happier. Wheaton snarls out something that sounds more than a little profanity-laden and storms past them, posse en tow.
“What was that all about?” she asks. Sheldon shakes his head.
“Let's go to that terrible smoothie place you like,” he says. Which is his way of saying “thanks.” Learning Sheldon has almost been as difficult as learning magic.
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The first time Penny meets Leslie, she wants to punch her.
(Maybe make out with her.
Mostly punch her.)
There's something brave and awesome about her, something that Penny really likes. But then she's also rude and obnoxious to her and Sheldon in the first minute of their meeting. She figures Leslie and Sheldon have a history, but really, what the hell's Penny done to her?
Absolutely nothing, that's what.
“So you're the non-hered witch on steroids? Really, Shelly, blond Barbie is your diamond in the rough? I'd say I thought you were smarter than that, but really, who'd I be kidding?”
Penny doesn't punch her or make out with her, but she does accidentally break most of the glass in the room. At least Leslie starts respecting her a little after that.
Sheldon's not too happy about the cost of it, though.
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Penny gets a role in a production of Anne Frank that's taking place over a bowling alley. The thing is, she knows how lame that sounds. She knows how shitty the production values on this are, and she knows the only people that are probably going to see it are friends of friends.
But she loves acting. It's all she's ever wanted to do, so she'll take what she can get.
She starts spending more of her time on the other side of the crack. Sheldon doesn't like it, that much is clear, even though he won't come out and say it. Instead, he glowers every time she grabs her bag and runs for the door.
She tells him he can come and hang out at rehearsals, if he wants. They can grab coffee afterward. Leonard keeps her company a few times, but Sheldon always refuses. She tells herself it doesn't matter. She listens to the iPod that Howard and Bernadette gave her, the one that works on both sides of the crack, and has a suspiciously long battery life and downright impossibly large memory. She takes the bus, since she hasn't mastered cross-wall teleportation. (To be honest, the thought of it is kind of terrifying, and she's never minded public transportation.)
Stuart was great with her rearranging her availability, and he's got her taking on a few more tasks around the store. While he's got a good business sense, Penny's great at merchandising, and the new window displays and tables have driven a lot more through traffic. Penny doesn't know why Stuart's surprised and Sheldon's weirdly pleased-she's always had an eye for beauty and a good sense of detail. It's their fault if they didn't notice.
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“So why does it matter how much power you have, anyway?” Penny asks, leaning against the couch. Sheldon pauses as he takes the dishes out of the dishwasher. “I mean, as long as you can do stuff, the rest's just bragging rights, right?”
“Penny,” he says, sounding a little uncertain. Frankly it's unnerving. “Has no one told you about dark magic?” She snorts.
“Everyone knows there's dark magic,” she says. “I mean-”
“Please don't mention Harry Potter. Or Voldemort,” he says, looking physically pained. She rolls her eyes.
“Okay, fine. But look, with great power comes great responsibility, blah blah blah. There's bound to be people that use it for bad stuff, right?”
“What a moving treatise on the human experience,” Sheldon says wryly. She sticks her tongue out at him. “Anyway, every once and awhile...”
“Seriously, just spit it out,” she grins. He sets the dishes down, frowning a little, and his serious expression takes her aback.
“I know how this sounds. It's not something we usually discuss. Every once and awhile a dark SecPer oversteps their boundaries. As you know by now, the one unflexible rule of SecWorld is no one infringes on any other persons rights, including people on Earth. There are other rules and laws, of course, but that is the one which you cannot break. But people rise up and try to break it. Most of the time the police can manage it, but sometimes these people use dubious means to increase their power. And very rarely, citizens must defend themselves.”
“It sounds like you're talking about war,” Penny says. Sheldon taps his fingers on the kitchen island, and then turns back to the dishwasher.
“Power is, as you said, a great responsibility,” he says.
Penny pauses, perks her ears up at that. There's something he's not saying, and she shifts until she's sitting on the armrest, leaning towards him.
“Have you had to do that?” she asks. Sheldon keeps putting the dishes away as if he hadn't heard. “Defend yourself, I mean.”
Leonard chooses that very unfortunate moment to come home.
“Hey guys,” he says brightly, “what's up?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Sheldon says.
Penny scowls, but let's him have his lie.
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Amy runs lines with her sometimes when she stops by the bookshop when they're closing. She's not very good at it, but what she lacks in any sort of skill she makes up for with enthusiasm.
Stuart seems to like it, anyway. He'll usually close the main store, and Penny closes the side cafe, setting the dishwasher and wiping off the counter and the two small tables. Amy likes to perch dramatically on the staircase. Stuart's told Penny he thinks it's cute.
All Penny knows for sure is that a) she could definitely write a better script than this, and b) if Stuart and Amy don't kiss soon she's going to murder both of them. For their own good, of course.
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It's fall in LA. Fall is a lot like summer. Summer was a lot like spring.
The temperature's dropped a little, but it's still warm and sunny almost every day. The traffic is horrifying, but luckily the bowling alley isn't that far from the bus stop. She studies a lot on the bus-she got weird looks, sometimes, before Sheldon transfigured the covers into English textbooks.
Sometimes college-age boys try to strike up a conversation with her. One in particular-Zack-is sweet, if a little dull.
But then she can't even tell him where her apartment is, so nothing comes of it. Dating across the crack is harder than she was expecting. Besides, she's not looking to date anyone right now-she's got a lot of things on her plate at the moment. Sometimes they keep each other company, though. She puts her textbooks back in her messenger bag and they shoot the shit and make up ridiculous stories about the other riders.
Zack's interested in modeling, and he certainly has the bone structure for it. More than anything, though, he reminds her of the kids she used to hang out with at school.
It's not that she regrets finding the crack and meeting Sheldon and Leonard, because she doesn't. She gets a little homesick, though. Gets a little tired of always playing catch up, of always being the newest person in any room, and never getting all the jokes.
She misses belonging.
It's just so easy to hang out with Zack. She doesn't have to pretend to be anyone she's not.
(Except she is, isn't she? She's pretending to be normal, and she isn't anymore.)
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Raj comes over for movie night and game nights. Howard, too, although not as often. Howard and Bernadette are right in the thick of the honeymoon phase, and while they're an adorable couple, their adorableness is on the verge of disgusting levels, so everyone's fairly okay with Howard coming around less often until the pet names start to leave their systems.
Leonard's on a date tonight, though, and Sheldon's white-boarding like a crazy person, so for the next few minutes at least it's just Raj and Penny. Penny takes that as the opening she needs for something that's been bothering her.
“Serious question,” Penny says, tilting her head a little as she looks at Raj. “Have you tried the whole kiss thing? I mean, that's what breaks the curses in fairy tales, right?”
Raj scrunches up his nose, and then writes something down on his notepad. Kinda hard to kiss people when you can't even talk to them.
Penny purses her lips thoughtfully. “Well, that's the thing about curses,” she says. “They're not supposed to be easy to break. Although if it is the kiss thing, then it's more a matter of finding the right person than talking to them.”
You know you're the only one for me, he writes, and then winks broadly at her when she finishes reading and looks up at him. She laughs despite herself. I'm open to suggestions, he adds.
“Mistletoe,” she says. “Or a kissing booth. You can be the prince from Cinderella, except with your lips instead of a shoe!”
Sheldon chooses that moment to pop his head around the corner. “Penny,” he says severely, “stop filling his head with nonsense. There's a reasonable, scientific solution to his curse. I just need to find it.”
“I'm just saying he could be more proactive!” Penny says. “Proactive with his lips! That's not a bad thing.”
“It's a terrible thing!” Sheldon yelps.
“Sheldon,” Penny says. “Look in the mirror. Are you Raj? Because if you aren't-and trust me, you aren't-then you're only talking for yourself. And if you don't like kissing, that's fine, but maybe Raj likes kissing. And if he does, that's fine, too.”
I like kissing, Raj writes, a dull blush creeping up his neck and cheeks, and Penny has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Sheldon looks between the two of them darkly.
“I didn't say I didn't like kissing,” he says. “I'm just saying that a kissing booth sounds like the most horrifyingly unsanitary way to ever partake in such an activity. If you insist on such an event, Rajesh, I will be forced to create some sort of field that will cleanse germs from the lips undetected in order to keep you safe, and I can assure you that there are far more valuable ways for me to be spending my time.”
I told you he loves me, Raj writes, smirking at Penny. Sheldon looks between their grinning faces and narrows his eyes suspiciously.
“What did you write?” he asks, imperious, and Raj shakes his head. Penny shrugs innocently, and Sheldon stalks forward, his hand out for it. Raj tries to duck away, but Sheldon's arms are long, and they're both kind of clumsy. It really is inevitable when they end up in a pile of limbs on the floor. Sheldon manages a look at the paper, and glowers at Raj's face from the inches away it is. “Don't spread lies,” he snaps.
Raj lifts up and lays a quick peck on him. Sheldon pulls back, but it looks like it's mostly instinct because he looks completely gobsmacked. Penny just about loses it, and Raj tries to say something, but nothing comes out.
He shrugs, and lets out a sigh.
Worth a try, he writes.
Penny's laughing so hard tears are streaming down her face, even though she knows if Sheldon's going to blame anyone for this, it's going to be her.
It doesn't matter, this is worth it.
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The cast hang out at a small hipster cafe after the first dress rehearsal. They're two weeks from opening night, and nerves are running high, especially since everyone knows but no one's saying just how bad the script really is.
James and Drew sprawl next to Penny on one of the small couches, and Stan and Jan are laughing over near the counter. Jan's still wearing her stage make-up, and Stan had to take a fortifying slug of whiskey from his flask before he even attempted trying on his truly horrifying costume, and maybe the play's going to be a complete and utter train wreck, but at least they're having fun.
There's something about the way a cast pulls together that she's always loved-something desperate and adrenaline-driven and built on wary trust and too much character bleed.
Sheldon's taken to telling her how-with her potential-she should just give up acting entirely and devote her life to something more meaningful. Worse, Leonard has agreement written all over his face, even if he won't say it out loud. Maybe it's petulant and childish, but she doesn't want to. She doesn't care about meaning, she cares about the way nothing else has ever felt as right as standing up on stage.
She thinks maybe that should count for something.
(She thinks Sheldon's opinion should count for a helluva lot less.)
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She asks Stuart about it one day. It's a slow morning, and she's alphabetizing the history books while he unpacks a few new boxes.
“Have there been any big dark SecPers recently?” she asks, trying to think of a way to frame it. “I mean, most of these books are from World War II at the latest, so has everything been fine since then?”
Stuart looks over at her curiously; she doesn't usually take her questions to him. “Are you worried about some of the rumors?” he asks. “Because there's almost always rumors, and these probably aren't any different.”
“...rumors?” she asks. She'd just wanted information about Sheldon, what the heck is he talking about? “What sort of rumors?”
Stuart pauses where he's standing, looking uncertain. “You don't know about the rumors?”
“I don't know about the rumors.”
“Oh they're just-I just assumed Sheldon or Leonard would've mentioned them, but they're not anything important, just some stuff happening up near Portland, no one's really sure what's going on, but there's always rumors, after '99 the general consensus was that the more preparation and information the better-”
“Stuart!” Penny interrupts, “you're rambling. What are you talking about? What happened in '99? More information about what?”
“You don't know what happened in '99?” Stuart asks, aghast. “But Sheldon-” he starts, and then breaks off. Penny's skin starts itching.
“What about Sheldon,” she says. Says, not asks. Demands, really, to be most accurate.
“You should probably talk to him,” he says. “He must have had a reason for not telling you.”
“The day that Sheldon has a good reason for something is the day I'll marry him,” she hisses. “What. About. Him.”
“Someone-tried-to-take-over-the-world-and-Sheldon-stopped-him,” Stuart blurts out, his eyes wide and terrified.
Penny spares half a moment to high-five herself for still having skills, and then freezes as she actually unravels his high-speed ramble.
“WHAT.”
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So evidently Sheldon helped save the free world or something.
Whatever whatever, clearly it wasn't important enough to tell her about it.
Otherwise known as: this is the day Sheldon was disintegrated by the sheer heat of Penny's rage.
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Stuart calls Sheldon, though, and warns him, the double-crossing bastard.
Sheldon doesn't answer the door, or his phone, or his email, or skype. She sits on the floor in the hallway in front of his door, because her dad used to like to take her fishing, and she's had to out-wait her prey before. Savior of the free world he might be, but he's got no idea what he's going against when it comes to her.
(She briefly contemplates trying to magic the door lock open, but that sort of breaking-and-entering stuff is illegal magic, and knowing her luck she'll be carted off to Azkaban or wherever the hell and Sheldon will never admit to the Large Part of His Life He Conveniently Left Out, The Rat Bastard.)
It's not like Sheldon's not brave enough to come out, either. He certainly had enough courage to fight a war for all intents and purposes. She crosses her arms tightly in front of her, trying to ignore the fact that her anger's doing little to disguise the other large, flashing-neon feeling that's been running through her since she found out. Something suspiciously like fear.
Uncle Jim was a cop. He's retired now, has been since Penny was ten years old. He has been since he was shot on the job and was in surgery for hours and no one would tell Penny why everyone was quiet and sad and why her mom kept burying her face in her dad's shoulder. He hadn't been able to be a cop after the surgery. Her dad had looked sad when he told her, but Penny'd been fiercely glad, because being a cop was dangerous, and she didn't want Uncle Jim to be hurt again.
Ten's a lot different than twenty-two, except when it's not.
That same surge of fierce protectiveness is running just beneath her skin, and an unfamiliar need to see Sheldon, to make sure he's okay, is spinning madly through her. She knows it's illogical, knows whatever happened happened a long time ago, but emotions are rarely logical.
She knocks on the door again, but this time her voice is soft and weary when she calls his name.
“Sheldon,” she says, “please. I just need to know you're okay. We don't have to talk right now-don't get me wrong, we are talking about this-but it doesn't have to be now. I just need to know you're okay.”
There's a long silence, and then she hears the lock turn near her head. The door swings open, and she has to slam a palm on the ground to stop herself from falling as her backrest moves away. Sheldon stands behind her, and she tilts her chin back until she can see him upside down.
He looks older, or maybe that's just in her head.
She twists until she finds her feet and shoves herself up, a little unsteady after sitting in place for so long, pins-and-needles making themselves known. She braces a hand on the door frame, and watches Sheldon avoid her eyes.
“Hey,” she says. “I'm sorry you had to go through that.”
He does look at her, then. He looks surprised.
“No one's ever said that,” he says, his jaw shifting. “Why are you sorry? I saved people.”
“You had to fight someone,” she says. There's a strange itch in her fingertips, as if they want to brush against the slopes of Sheldon's face, so she tightens her grip on the door frame instead.
Penny daydreams a lot. Always has done. She always has the right things to say, the right thing to do, when she daydreams. Life isn't like that, of course, but it's disappointing every time she's reminded of that.
There's no one to feed her a line, no one to hand her a script to memorize.
It's just her and Sheldon standing there, silence stretching between them. She thinks, if she had the right combination of words and gestures, she could crack him open, get him to open up to her. She's known a lot of girls that fell for guys they thought they could fix, though. Not that she's falling for Sheldon, or even in that neighborhood. It's just she understands what that pull is low in her stomach, that need to heal and touch and fix. She's just not that girl.
“I tell you what,” she says, breaking the silence and stepping towards and then past him. “I'll make cookies and try not to set your kitchen on fire, and you put Captain Tightpants in.”
“I should never have told you that nickname,” Sheldon huffs. He watches her sashay into the kitchen, and then he shuts the door and starts over to the dvd player, though, so she figures it's all right.
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Raj comes in for a book. Stuart is in the back with Amy, and Penny's got her fingers crossed that they're making out like high schoolers because their snail-paced romance is literally sucking the life out of her. She feels like one of those Nazi's that opened the Ark and got melted, that's what her life is like right now.
Luckily, Raj is always the best distraction one could ask for.
“Whatcha looking for?” she asks. Raj looks shifty, but it's not like theirs is the only bookstore. Clearly he actually wants to dish, or he wouldn't be here at all. “Raj?” she presses.
Kama sutra, he writes, blushing a little.
Her eyes widen, and it's with sheer glee that she says, “Is this for a group activity? Raj? Is there someone?”
I don't kiss and tell, Raj writes, lowering his eyes demurely, but as if. He is such an utter faker. She grabs him and pulls him into a hug anyway, lying liar that he is. It's a good thing she adores him as much as she does, or she'd never put up with his drama.
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Penny runs into Leslie in the hallway as she stops in to say hi to Sheldon. She tries to step past, but Leslie moves to block her, grabbing her arm.
“Here's the thing,” Leslie says. “I'm sure you're a decent person. You're pretty and you're not painfully stupid and you've got a lot of raw talent. You pick crappy people to work with-”
“If you think I'm just going to stand here while you talk shit about Sheldon,” Penny smiles sharply, “you've got another thing coming. And spoiler alert, it's a violent sort of thing.”
“Jesus, don't blow it out of proportion, that's just how Sheldon and I are. My point is, I might have been a bit rude when we first met, and that didn't have anything to do with you.”
“Just with Sheldon.”
“If you know him at all,” Leslie says, turning a little sharp herself, “you know he's no angel. I'm not apologizing for anything between us, just that I shouldn't have dragged you into the cross-hairs. Capiche?”
“If you promise never to call me any variation of Barbie again, yeah sure,” Penny nods. Leslie grins at that.
“Come on,” she says, “that was meant affectionately. Barbie can be anything, remember, and she's always hot while doing it.”
“Never. Again.”
“Fair enough,” Leslie laughs. “Anyway, I've got to say it's nice to see another woman around. Most of the time this place is a total sausage-fest.”
“Speaking of,” Penny says, and then immediately scrunches up her face in abject disgust, “not of sausages, not speaking of sausages, oh god that was the worst conversation transition I've ever heard in my entire life. Speaking of men. Jesus, I just ruined this entire day.”
Leslie's a little too busy cackling to be of much help, so Penny tries to pull it together.
“Speaking of guys, you and Leonard, dish right now because every time I've tried to get him to he clams up entirely.”
Leslie just about chokes on air, which is alarming but at least stops the cackling. Once she finishes coughing and manages to pull in a full breath, though, she looks more shifty than Penny's ever seen her, and that's including the time she'd just set up five different pranks in Sheldon's office and then ran into them in the hall.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Leslie says.
“You aren't using contractions,” Penny says. “Means you're lying. I watch Lie to Me, I know what I'm talking about.”
“I take back anything I just said about us starting over,” Leslie scowls.
“Oh my god, I was joking! Were you really lying? Are you two in love or something?”
“If you'll excuse me,” Leslie says with quiet dignity, “I'm going to go murder myself. Tell my family I loved them.”
“We were getting along so well!” Penny calls. Leslie waves a hand but keeps walking away down the hallway, not looking back. “That might not have been the best way to start off,” Penny hums thoughtfully.
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Part Two
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some language that wouldn't make it on basic cable, magic people making judgmental statements about HP fans
Word Count: ~15k
Summary: Urban fantasy AU. Penny steps through a crack in the wall, and then things get complicated. (Or: studying magic, working in a magic bookshop, going to auditions, playing match-maker, saving the world(s), and trying to make it big is all Quite Enough without also falling in love with one Sheldon Cooper, thankyouverymuch.)
A/N: much move love to El for turning sentences into things which are actually readable, Lauren for putting up with my scatter-brained ways and making a fantastic mix, and everyone else for dealing with my yearly BBBB-related meltdown! =D
MIX, WHICH IS THE BESTEST, AND CREATED BY notalwaysweak WHO IS, GENERALLY AND UNBIASEDLY SPEAKING, KIND OF THE BEST:
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MIX
Going Where We've Never Gone Before
Penny Williams has been in LA for two days when she sees the crack in the wall. It's a big crack, and at first she thinks it's from an earthquake. So she's from Nebraska, and doesn't know much about earthquakes or Los Angeles or hell, even California. She's not the first girl to end up here and she sure as hell won't be the last.
She mentions it at dinner with the friends she's staying with in a converted warehouse. (She's not entirely positive that they aren't actually squatting, but she's still looking for interviews for jobs to pay the bills, let alone going to auditions. She's not going to ask too many questions.) When she asks if they've recently had an earthquake, they all look at her blankly for a moment, and then tell her yeah, duh, small earthquakes aren't at all out of the norm.
She tells them about the crack, though, and then they just look confused. They haven't had a major earthquake in forever, certainly nothing that would do that sort of damage. Besides, even if they had, it should already be repaired, or at least the damage shored up. Even though it doesn't rain a ton in southern California, they still get morning dew, and frankly the insides of buildings need to be protected from the elements.
The second time she sees the crack in the wall, she's been in Los Angeles for twelve days, and already caught her (now ex-) boyfriend cheating on her. She is not, one might say, in the best of moods.
She walks past the huge crack in the wall, pauses, and goes back. She peers through it.
It's weird, though, because on the other side it looks...wrong. Or rather, different. Different than it should look. She looks away, blinks, and looks back, but same problem. A passing Los Angelean bumps into her and keeps going, not even looking back, and her hand lands on the wall as she tries to keep her balance.
I hate this place, she thinks almost desperately, because this isn't what she had in mind when she packed her car and set off to LA with Kurt. I wish I was anywhere else.
And then the wall glows an alarming blue beneath her palm.
She bites back a scream and jumps back, but no one else appears to notice the blue wall. The blue wall with the rapidly increasing crack. Curious despite herself, she leans forward a little, and looks through. The other side is slightly out of focus, but the people look, well. They look off. Oddly distorted, and just-
“Goddamn tourists,” a man mutters as he shoves past her, and she-
Well.
Penny Williams steps through the wall.
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The sky on the other side is tinged pink, and she thinks that should be worrying. Thinks it should, but really she's much more worried about the man with the completely black eyes walking past her.
The cobblestones (and why the hell are there cobblestones in the middle of LA?) beneath her feet catch on her professional black heels (she's been dropping applications off all day), and she almost trips over herself.
A man with green fur over all the non-clothed parts of his body kindly catches her by her elbow and saves her from a nasty fall.
“Careful, lass,” he says, smiling at her, and she thanks him before she even realizes that he's not speaking English but she somehow understood him anyway.
This is just a very weird dream, she tells herself sternly, but there's a cool sea breeze on her cheeks and the sun is warm on her skin, and a man with a top hat and long old-fashioned coat nods politely to her.
And this is probably not a dream, after all.
“Looks like we've got a newcomer,” a tall, thin man says. His friend-short, nerdy, glasses-looks over at her. The first man keeps walking, but the second practically faceplants as he pulls up short.
“Sheldon!” he yells, “we can't just leave her like this!” Sheldon looks annoyed.
“She got through the crack,” he says. “I'm sure she can figure the rest out, Leonard.”
“The rest?” Penny asks. “What rest? What the hell is this place?” Sheldon and Leonard exchange extremely concerned looks.
“Wait, you're not just new in town, you're new to everything?” Leonard asks, vaguely flabbergasted.
“Everything what?” she asks, realizing she's starting to sound more than a little hysterical.
“Well this is...unexpected,” Sheldon says. He shoots Leonard a put-upon look. “Let me guess,” he says, giving her a clinical once over. “She's pretty, completely out of your league, and now you want us to adopt her.”
“I wasn't-I don't think she's pretty!” Leonard says, flushing. “I mean-I mean, of course you're pretty, I just-I mean. I'm not trying to hit on you! Not that I wouldn't-uhm-”
She cuts in, taking pity on him, since his friend is just watching the proceedings with an amused smirk.
“It's fine,” she says. “I know what you mean. And I don't need to be adopted or whatever, I just. Who are these people? What are these people?”
“She's actually keeping her calm remarkably well,” Sheldon says, glancing back at Leonard. “This is the Second World. It's a terrible name, I'll be the first to say that, but it's the magic world that occupies the same space as your traditional Earth. Very few people can see it, and of those, fewer actually cross over. There are entrances all across the world, and most Second People have inherited their abilities from their parents, so the secrets and skills tend to be passed down hereditarily. Clearly that wasn't your case. It's quite rare for someone to cross for the first time after they've turned eighteen.”
“You've got to be fucking with me,” she says.
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It turns out they aren't fucking with her.
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Penny takes to magic like a fish to water, or some other overblown analogy. Or at least, she takes to it as soon as she stops threatening to punch Sheldon in the face for kidnapping and lying to her.
Theirs is a rocky beginning.
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The first thing they do is take her to what's evidently the magic equivalent of a shooting range.
“This is a-well, basically it's the most basic, useless wand that exists. The only thing it's good for is gauging a Second Person's power.”
“Second Person is seriously the worst name. If we're magic, shouldn't we be witches or wizards or something?” she asks. Sheldon and Leonard exchange glances.
“One of the Harry Potter crowd,” Leonard says with dismay.
“I might have known,” Sheldon says.
“What's wrong with Harry Potter?” Penny asks, a little annoyed. So she's not up on all the cool magic Second World stuff, whatever. At least she has a sense of fashion.
“We don't talk about Harry Potter,” Sheldon says. And that's the end of that.
They go out on the range, and Penny holds the weird not-quite-a-wand thing that Leonard tells her is a Styx.
“You don't need to know any spells or anything,” he says. “Just point and concentrate.”
“All this does is measure a SecPer's potential. Or lack thereof,” Sheldon adds in what she has to think is a catty tone.
Or lack thereof, she mocks in her head, biting back a scowl.
And then the target on the other side bursts into flames.
And explodes.
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“We're not going to run tests on her,” Leonard says, shooting an apologetic glance at Penny. Sheldon's rushing, keeping a hold of her arm and practically dragging her along. If she really wanted to get away, a quick kick to the knee would do it, but there was an awful lot of shouting about her setting things on fire, and she's pretty sure these two aren't serial killers, so she figures she'll see it through.
“There's never been a non-hereditary SecPer with such high potential,” Sheldon says.
“Except you, you mean,” Leonard says. He looks braced for the dark look Sheldon turns on him.
“I've told you, I must have been adopted. Or switched at birth.” There's honest-to-God a soft sound of thunder above them, and then the faint smell of rain surrounds Sheldon. Respect.
“How'd you find the crack, then?” Penny asks. Sheldon looks at her, looks away.
“I spent time in Germany. A professor with an aura-reading ability brought me to a crack to confirm what he already suspected.”
“He's spent most of his time since on this side of the crack,” Leonard cuts in. Penny looks between the two of them.
“And that's unusual,” she says.
“For landborn SecPers?” Leonard asks. “Very.”
“Wait, landborn?”
“Landborn refers to those that were born on the other side of the crack,” he says. “Unless they have a non-human appearance that they would prefer not to put a glamor over, they tend to reside on the Earth side of the crack, even though many of them work on this side.” Sheldon yanks her around a small group of people holding brooms. She almost jerks herself free, because brooms.
“Where are you taking me?” she finally snaps, because seriously, her roommates-okay, no, her roommates are totally not going to notice she's missing. Probably won't notice she's missing for another week, and then they'll probably just steal her stuff. They aren't exactly close-knit, just really really desperate. (Look, it was better than living in her car, okay.)
“We're going to the Academy,” Sheldon says. “I need a better idea of your full potential.”
“Is this going to involve blowing more things up? Because they really didn't seem to like that,” she says. He shoots her a dismissive look.
“What sort of scientist do you think I am?” he asks. She blinks.
“Well, one that believes in magic, so I guess I kind of didn't think you were a scientist at all?” Leonard buries his face in hand, and then almost runs into a unicorn because they're still barreling down the road at break-neck speed.
“Don't get him started,” he says.
“I study the intersection of magic and science. While the rules of Second World are different from the rules of Earth, there are still rules, and magic can have an affect on Earth. The two realities bleed into each other, and what happens in one world affects the other.”
Penny wrinkles her nose, not wanting to admit that she has no idea what the hell he's talking about.
“Okay,” she says. “Well, these tests or whatever aren't going to hurt, are they?”
“Of course not,” Leonard says, as the same time Sheldon says,
“Nothing you can't handle.”
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Sheldon straps her up to some wires and things, and she spends the new few minutes eyeing up the weird stuff on the walls. She's watched a lot of tv and movies (what else is a would-be actress to do), and none of this stuff has ever shown up on any science or even science fiction shows.
There a blue DNA-like chain floating in midair, and a green blob that appears to be beating like a heart. There are maps on the walls of a city, but some of the roads curve in on themselves, and and some of the roads break apart and reattach, and some of the roads seem to hover in midair. Across the top of them, there are lines in yellow string, criss-crossing over the carefully drawn city.
“Ley lines,” Sheldon says after a moment, noticing her staring. “I'm trying to find where the energy converges.”
“He's trying to find where magic comes from,” Leonard says flatly, shooting a disapproving look at Sheldon. “He could do anything in the world, and all he wants to do is find out what makes all this possible.”
“We don't have time for that argument right now,” Sheldon says. “Look at these readings.”
Leonard goes around the other side of the probably-not-actually-a-computer screen, and the two of them confer quietly for the next few minutes.
“Well?” she asks when she gets sick of waiting. “Am I going to live, doc?”
“Get her somewhere to stay,” Sheldon says.
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So evidently she has really awesome magic potential or something. Leonard keeps saying that Sheldon does too, and Sheldon keeps ignoring him, so she's not actually getting all the information she wants.
Evidently most SecPers (seriously, the worst name) have to perform magic before they turn eighteen in order to reach their full potential, though. Which is why so few cross after that-their magic starts fading or something. Neither of them are too clear on that, and it's evidently not a common enough phenomenon to have been properly studied.
Penny is twenty-two years old.
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Leonard gets her an apartment in the same building as theirs, right across the hall from theirs, in fact. She says she can't afford it (and then asks how money even works over here, and gets an hour lecture for her trouble), so Sheldon walks down to the bookstore he frequents and tells the owner to take the “Now Hiring” sign down.
Leonard crosses back with her, and helps her sell her car and get her stuff from the warehouse. She tells everyone that she's moving in with a guy. Most of them are too high to remember, probably, but then they also probably won't even miss her. In the little time she was there, people just tended to drift in and out.
Most of her stuff is still packed in her two suitcases, so it doesn't take long.
Sheldon's waiting for them on the other side of the crack.
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Sheldon buys her ten different books. Five of them are clearly children's introductory magic books, and she's not sure if she be annoyed or thankful for them.
She tells him she wants a wand, but he tells her to read the books first. She's a grown-up, and she knows she could go out and find a wand shop on her own.
She goes across the hall in her evenings, instead, sitting on the couch as Sheldon and Leonard explain things to her. She meets Raj, the astronomer who's trying to break the curse that binds his tongue. She meets Howard, the engineer, who works to create things that work in tandem with magic. (They hacked satellites and internet cables, and bound them with magic, giving this section of SecWorld signal and wifi. Evidently every major sector of SecWorld has done the same, binding their two worlds closer together.)
Sometimes, on her days off, Sheldon takes her with him to the Academy. He'll ask her to repeat various spells, and monitors the way her magic flares.
Sometimes, on her days off, she walks through the crack and goes to auditions. She came to LA to be an actress, after all. That doesn't change just because now she sees fairytale creatures on a daily basis.
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Three weeks after she moves into the apartment across the hall, Sheldon knocks three times on her door. She answers it, and is taken aback: he looks ridiculously excited.
“Are you free today?” he asks. She mentally skims her plans for the day-mostly it's catching up on housework and taking a three hour nap.
“I've got a little time,” she says warily, ready to rescind the statement if he so much as mentions tests.
“Would you like to get a wand?” he asks.
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The wand shop is not like Ollivanders'.
The wand does not choose her.
She has to meditate a little, and take what she's pretty sure would be an illegal substance on the other side of the crack, but then she's standing and walking over to a drawer in the row of satin-lined wardrobes in the back of the store, pulled by something low in her stomach that she can't quite place.
She pulls out a Sage wand, eight inches long. It tingles against her skin.
“What does sage mean?” she asks, looking between Sheldon and the shop-owner.
“Harry Potter crowd?” the shop-owner asks, looking gently amused. Sheldon sighs and nods.
“A wand is a wand,” he says. “The meaning imbued in it is from the person that wields it, not the wood it's made of.”
“...oh,” she says, feeling kind of stupid. She's read most of the books, but no one had bothered to tell her that. Sheldon looks sideways at her.
“In your case,” he says, “I'd say that's a very good wand indeed.”
She looks up at him, surprised to speechlessness. Sheldon is rare with compliments, rarer still with compliments that are actually meaningful. His eyes are unexpectedly kind as he looks down at her, and she wonders, with a start, how it must have been for him, getting a wand in Germany with only a professor as a guide.
“Sheldon,” she says, but his face gets that pinched look, as if he can already tell that she's going to say something that even vaguely brushes Feelings.
“Let's go practice,” he says, cutting her off. She lets herself be persuaded. He's not going to talk if he doesn't want to talk, and she really wants to learn how to make things fly.
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Penny kind of likes working in a magic bookstore. Besides being able to levitate books off the top shelves, and dust with magic, the books themselves are amazing. They still have all the regular books (Stuart, the manager, has the warehouses over there send them to an empty shopfront on that side of the crack. It's a common enough thing, and he actually shares the empty shopfront with fourteen other SecWorld shops.), but they also have books about old magick, and histories of SecWorld, and biographies of famous SecPers (witches, she thinks defiantly. Wizards.).
Stuart's a nice enough guy. Penny thinks he might have a bit of a crush on her, but he doesn't make it an issue so she doesn't bring it. She does try to (politely, subtlety) steer him on a different track, though.
Like towards the girl that with the glasses and the barrette in her hair that holds the strap of her bookbag as she walks around. She comes in every Tuesday and Thursday after she gets off work, and drinks a cup of coffee and buy the new Scientific SecWorld Journal on Tuesdays and an apparently random book on Thursdays.
She kind of reminds her of Sheldon, except Amy smiles more often, and sometimes her gaze stutters on the shirtless guys posing on magazine covers. (Penny understands the attraction; she's spent a lot of time “reorganizing” the magazines when business is slow.)
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The first time she and Sheldon run into Wil Wheaton, she doesn't know what's going on. One minute they're walking down the street, the next Sheldon's got a death grip on her arm and is trying to drag her into Feathers and Fins, a magical properties store that he absolutely hates.
“What're you-” she gets out, and then a voice from to their left cuts over her.
“Well well well,” he says, “Sheldon Cooper. And who's this beautiful lady?”
“Leave her alone,” Sheldon hisses.
“I'm Penny,” she says, shooting a confused look at Sheldon. “And you are...?”
“Why, I'm Wil Wheaton!” he declares. She keeps staring at him blankly, and the wind starts to go a little out of his sails. “The actor? And inventor of spells? None of that's ringing a bell?”
“Wait...” she says, frowning. “Are you that kid from Star Trek that my brother hated?”
Next to her, Sheldon's looking happier and happier. Wheaton snarls out something that sounds more than a little profanity-laden and storms past them, posse en tow.
“What was that all about?” she asks. Sheldon shakes his head.
“Let's go to that terrible smoothie place you like,” he says. Which is his way of saying “thanks.” Learning Sheldon has almost been as difficult as learning magic.
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The first time Penny meets Leslie, she wants to punch her.
(Maybe make out with her.
Mostly punch her.)
There's something brave and awesome about her, something that Penny really likes. But then she's also rude and obnoxious to her and Sheldon in the first minute of their meeting. She figures Leslie and Sheldon have a history, but really, what the hell's Penny done to her?
Absolutely nothing, that's what.
“So you're the non-hered witch on steroids? Really, Shelly, blond Barbie is your diamond in the rough? I'd say I thought you were smarter than that, but really, who'd I be kidding?”
Penny doesn't punch her or make out with her, but she does accidentally break most of the glass in the room. At least Leslie starts respecting her a little after that.
Sheldon's not too happy about the cost of it, though.
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Penny gets a role in a production of Anne Frank that's taking place over a bowling alley. The thing is, she knows how lame that sounds. She knows how shitty the production values on this are, and she knows the only people that are probably going to see it are friends of friends.
But she loves acting. It's all she's ever wanted to do, so she'll take what she can get.
She starts spending more of her time on the other side of the crack. Sheldon doesn't like it, that much is clear, even though he won't come out and say it. Instead, he glowers every time she grabs her bag and runs for the door.
She tells him he can come and hang out at rehearsals, if he wants. They can grab coffee afterward. Leonard keeps her company a few times, but Sheldon always refuses. She tells herself it doesn't matter. She listens to the iPod that Howard and Bernadette gave her, the one that works on both sides of the crack, and has a suspiciously long battery life and downright impossibly large memory. She takes the bus, since she hasn't mastered cross-wall teleportation. (To be honest, the thought of it is kind of terrifying, and she's never minded public transportation.)
Stuart was great with her rearranging her availability, and he's got her taking on a few more tasks around the store. While he's got a good business sense, Penny's great at merchandising, and the new window displays and tables have driven a lot more through traffic. Penny doesn't know why Stuart's surprised and Sheldon's weirdly pleased-she's always had an eye for beauty and a good sense of detail. It's their fault if they didn't notice.
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“So why does it matter how much power you have, anyway?” Penny asks, leaning against the couch. Sheldon pauses as he takes the dishes out of the dishwasher. “I mean, as long as you can do stuff, the rest's just bragging rights, right?”
“Penny,” he says, sounding a little uncertain. Frankly it's unnerving. “Has no one told you about dark magic?” She snorts.
“Everyone knows there's dark magic,” she says. “I mean-”
“Please don't mention Harry Potter. Or Voldemort,” he says, looking physically pained. She rolls her eyes.
“Okay, fine. But look, with great power comes great responsibility, blah blah blah. There's bound to be people that use it for bad stuff, right?”
“What a moving treatise on the human experience,” Sheldon says wryly. She sticks her tongue out at him. “Anyway, every once and awhile...”
“Seriously, just spit it out,” she grins. He sets the dishes down, frowning a little, and his serious expression takes her aback.
“I know how this sounds. It's not something we usually discuss. Every once and awhile a dark SecPer oversteps their boundaries. As you know by now, the one unflexible rule of SecWorld is no one infringes on any other persons rights, including people on Earth. There are other rules and laws, of course, but that is the one which you cannot break. But people rise up and try to break it. Most of the time the police can manage it, but sometimes these people use dubious means to increase their power. And very rarely, citizens must defend themselves.”
“It sounds like you're talking about war,” Penny says. Sheldon taps his fingers on the kitchen island, and then turns back to the dishwasher.
“Power is, as you said, a great responsibility,” he says.
Penny pauses, perks her ears up at that. There's something he's not saying, and she shifts until she's sitting on the armrest, leaning towards him.
“Have you had to do that?” she asks. Sheldon keeps putting the dishes away as if he hadn't heard. “Defend yourself, I mean.”
Leonard chooses that very unfortunate moment to come home.
“Hey guys,” he says brightly, “what's up?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Sheldon says.
Penny scowls, but let's him have his lie.
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Amy runs lines with her sometimes when she stops by the bookshop when they're closing. She's not very good at it, but what she lacks in any sort of skill she makes up for with enthusiasm.
Stuart seems to like it, anyway. He'll usually close the main store, and Penny closes the side cafe, setting the dishwasher and wiping off the counter and the two small tables. Amy likes to perch dramatically on the staircase. Stuart's told Penny he thinks it's cute.
All Penny knows for sure is that a) she could definitely write a better script than this, and b) if Stuart and Amy don't kiss soon she's going to murder both of them. For their own good, of course.
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It's fall in LA. Fall is a lot like summer. Summer was a lot like spring.
The temperature's dropped a little, but it's still warm and sunny almost every day. The traffic is horrifying, but luckily the bowling alley isn't that far from the bus stop. She studies a lot on the bus-she got weird looks, sometimes, before Sheldon transfigured the covers into English textbooks.
Sometimes college-age boys try to strike up a conversation with her. One in particular-Zack-is sweet, if a little dull.
But then she can't even tell him where her apartment is, so nothing comes of it. Dating across the crack is harder than she was expecting. Besides, she's not looking to date anyone right now-she's got a lot of things on her plate at the moment. Sometimes they keep each other company, though. She puts her textbooks back in her messenger bag and they shoot the shit and make up ridiculous stories about the other riders.
Zack's interested in modeling, and he certainly has the bone structure for it. More than anything, though, he reminds her of the kids she used to hang out with at school.
It's not that she regrets finding the crack and meeting Sheldon and Leonard, because she doesn't. She gets a little homesick, though. Gets a little tired of always playing catch up, of always being the newest person in any room, and never getting all the jokes.
She misses belonging.
It's just so easy to hang out with Zack. She doesn't have to pretend to be anyone she's not.
(Except she is, isn't she? She's pretending to be normal, and she isn't anymore.)
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Raj comes over for movie night and game nights. Howard, too, although not as often. Howard and Bernadette are right in the thick of the honeymoon phase, and while they're an adorable couple, their adorableness is on the verge of disgusting levels, so everyone's fairly okay with Howard coming around less often until the pet names start to leave their systems.
Leonard's on a date tonight, though, and Sheldon's white-boarding like a crazy person, so for the next few minutes at least it's just Raj and Penny. Penny takes that as the opening she needs for something that's been bothering her.
“Serious question,” Penny says, tilting her head a little as she looks at Raj. “Have you tried the whole kiss thing? I mean, that's what breaks the curses in fairy tales, right?”
Raj scrunches up his nose, and then writes something down on his notepad. Kinda hard to kiss people when you can't even talk to them.
Penny purses her lips thoughtfully. “Well, that's the thing about curses,” she says. “They're not supposed to be easy to break. Although if it is the kiss thing, then it's more a matter of finding the right person than talking to them.”
You know you're the only one for me, he writes, and then winks broadly at her when she finishes reading and looks up at him. She laughs despite herself. I'm open to suggestions, he adds.
“Mistletoe,” she says. “Or a kissing booth. You can be the prince from Cinderella, except with your lips instead of a shoe!”
Sheldon chooses that moment to pop his head around the corner. “Penny,” he says severely, “stop filling his head with nonsense. There's a reasonable, scientific solution to his curse. I just need to find it.”
“I'm just saying he could be more proactive!” Penny says. “Proactive with his lips! That's not a bad thing.”
“It's a terrible thing!” Sheldon yelps.
“Sheldon,” Penny says. “Look in the mirror. Are you Raj? Because if you aren't-and trust me, you aren't-then you're only talking for yourself. And if you don't like kissing, that's fine, but maybe Raj likes kissing. And if he does, that's fine, too.”
I like kissing, Raj writes, a dull blush creeping up his neck and cheeks, and Penny has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Sheldon looks between the two of them darkly.
“I didn't say I didn't like kissing,” he says. “I'm just saying that a kissing booth sounds like the most horrifyingly unsanitary way to ever partake in such an activity. If you insist on such an event, Rajesh, I will be forced to create some sort of field that will cleanse germs from the lips undetected in order to keep you safe, and I can assure you that there are far more valuable ways for me to be spending my time.”
I told you he loves me, Raj writes, smirking at Penny. Sheldon looks between their grinning faces and narrows his eyes suspiciously.
“What did you write?” he asks, imperious, and Raj shakes his head. Penny shrugs innocently, and Sheldon stalks forward, his hand out for it. Raj tries to duck away, but Sheldon's arms are long, and they're both kind of clumsy. It really is inevitable when they end up in a pile of limbs on the floor. Sheldon manages a look at the paper, and glowers at Raj's face from the inches away it is. “Don't spread lies,” he snaps.
Raj lifts up and lays a quick peck on him. Sheldon pulls back, but it looks like it's mostly instinct because he looks completely gobsmacked. Penny just about loses it, and Raj tries to say something, but nothing comes out.
He shrugs, and lets out a sigh.
Worth a try, he writes.
Penny's laughing so hard tears are streaming down her face, even though she knows if Sheldon's going to blame anyone for this, it's going to be her.
It doesn't matter, this is worth it.
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The cast hang out at a small hipster cafe after the first dress rehearsal. They're two weeks from opening night, and nerves are running high, especially since everyone knows but no one's saying just how bad the script really is.
James and Drew sprawl next to Penny on one of the small couches, and Stan and Jan are laughing over near the counter. Jan's still wearing her stage make-up, and Stan had to take a fortifying slug of whiskey from his flask before he even attempted trying on his truly horrifying costume, and maybe the play's going to be a complete and utter train wreck, but at least they're having fun.
There's something about the way a cast pulls together that she's always loved-something desperate and adrenaline-driven and built on wary trust and too much character bleed.
Sheldon's taken to telling her how-with her potential-she should just give up acting entirely and devote her life to something more meaningful. Worse, Leonard has agreement written all over his face, even if he won't say it out loud. Maybe it's petulant and childish, but she doesn't want to. She doesn't care about meaning, she cares about the way nothing else has ever felt as right as standing up on stage.
She thinks maybe that should count for something.
(She thinks Sheldon's opinion should count for a helluva lot less.)
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She asks Stuart about it one day. It's a slow morning, and she's alphabetizing the history books while he unpacks a few new boxes.
“Have there been any big dark SecPers recently?” she asks, trying to think of a way to frame it. “I mean, most of these books are from World War II at the latest, so has everything been fine since then?”
Stuart looks over at her curiously; she doesn't usually take her questions to him. “Are you worried about some of the rumors?” he asks. “Because there's almost always rumors, and these probably aren't any different.”
“...rumors?” she asks. She'd just wanted information about Sheldon, what the heck is he talking about? “What sort of rumors?”
Stuart pauses where he's standing, looking uncertain. “You don't know about the rumors?”
“I don't know about the rumors.”
“Oh they're just-I just assumed Sheldon or Leonard would've mentioned them, but they're not anything important, just some stuff happening up near Portland, no one's really sure what's going on, but there's always rumors, after '99 the general consensus was that the more preparation and information the better-”
“Stuart!” Penny interrupts, “you're rambling. What are you talking about? What happened in '99? More information about what?”
“You don't know what happened in '99?” Stuart asks, aghast. “But Sheldon-” he starts, and then breaks off. Penny's skin starts itching.
“What about Sheldon,” she says. Says, not asks. Demands, really, to be most accurate.
“You should probably talk to him,” he says. “He must have had a reason for not telling you.”
“The day that Sheldon has a good reason for something is the day I'll marry him,” she hisses. “What. About. Him.”
“Someone-tried-to-take-over-the-world-and-Sheldon-stopped-him,” Stuart blurts out, his eyes wide and terrified.
Penny spares half a moment to high-five herself for still having skills, and then freezes as she actually unravels his high-speed ramble.
“WHAT.”
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So evidently Sheldon helped save the free world or something.
Whatever whatever, clearly it wasn't important enough to tell her about it.
Otherwise known as: this is the day Sheldon was disintegrated by the sheer heat of Penny's rage.
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Stuart calls Sheldon, though, and warns him, the double-crossing bastard.
Sheldon doesn't answer the door, or his phone, or his email, or skype. She sits on the floor in the hallway in front of his door, because her dad used to like to take her fishing, and she's had to out-wait her prey before. Savior of the free world he might be, but he's got no idea what he's going against when it comes to her.
(She briefly contemplates trying to magic the door lock open, but that sort of breaking-and-entering stuff is illegal magic, and knowing her luck she'll be carted off to Azkaban or wherever the hell and Sheldon will never admit to the Large Part of His Life He Conveniently Left Out, The Rat Bastard.)
It's not like Sheldon's not brave enough to come out, either. He certainly had enough courage to fight a war for all intents and purposes. She crosses her arms tightly in front of her, trying to ignore the fact that her anger's doing little to disguise the other large, flashing-neon feeling that's been running through her since she found out. Something suspiciously like fear.
Uncle Jim was a cop. He's retired now, has been since Penny was ten years old. He has been since he was shot on the job and was in surgery for hours and no one would tell Penny why everyone was quiet and sad and why her mom kept burying her face in her dad's shoulder. He hadn't been able to be a cop after the surgery. Her dad had looked sad when he told her, but Penny'd been fiercely glad, because being a cop was dangerous, and she didn't want Uncle Jim to be hurt again.
Ten's a lot different than twenty-two, except when it's not.
That same surge of fierce protectiveness is running just beneath her skin, and an unfamiliar need to see Sheldon, to make sure he's okay, is spinning madly through her. She knows it's illogical, knows whatever happened happened a long time ago, but emotions are rarely logical.
She knocks on the door again, but this time her voice is soft and weary when she calls his name.
“Sheldon,” she says, “please. I just need to know you're okay. We don't have to talk right now-don't get me wrong, we are talking about this-but it doesn't have to be now. I just need to know you're okay.”
There's a long silence, and then she hears the lock turn near her head. The door swings open, and she has to slam a palm on the ground to stop herself from falling as her backrest moves away. Sheldon stands behind her, and she tilts her chin back until she can see him upside down.
He looks older, or maybe that's just in her head.
She twists until she finds her feet and shoves herself up, a little unsteady after sitting in place for so long, pins-and-needles making themselves known. She braces a hand on the door frame, and watches Sheldon avoid her eyes.
“Hey,” she says. “I'm sorry you had to go through that.”
He does look at her, then. He looks surprised.
“No one's ever said that,” he says, his jaw shifting. “Why are you sorry? I saved people.”
“You had to fight someone,” she says. There's a strange itch in her fingertips, as if they want to brush against the slopes of Sheldon's face, so she tightens her grip on the door frame instead.
Penny daydreams a lot. Always has done. She always has the right things to say, the right thing to do, when she daydreams. Life isn't like that, of course, but it's disappointing every time she's reminded of that.
There's no one to feed her a line, no one to hand her a script to memorize.
It's just her and Sheldon standing there, silence stretching between them. She thinks, if she had the right combination of words and gestures, she could crack him open, get him to open up to her. She's known a lot of girls that fell for guys they thought they could fix, though. Not that she's falling for Sheldon, or even in that neighborhood. It's just she understands what that pull is low in her stomach, that need to heal and touch and fix. She's just not that girl.
“I tell you what,” she says, breaking the silence and stepping towards and then past him. “I'll make cookies and try not to set your kitchen on fire, and you put Captain Tightpants in.”
“I should never have told you that nickname,” Sheldon huffs. He watches her sashay into the kitchen, and then he shuts the door and starts over to the dvd player, though, so she figures it's all right.
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Raj comes in for a book. Stuart is in the back with Amy, and Penny's got her fingers crossed that they're making out like high schoolers because their snail-paced romance is literally sucking the life out of her. She feels like one of those Nazi's that opened the Ark and got melted, that's what her life is like right now.
Luckily, Raj is always the best distraction one could ask for.
“Whatcha looking for?” she asks. Raj looks shifty, but it's not like theirs is the only bookstore. Clearly he actually wants to dish, or he wouldn't be here at all. “Raj?” she presses.
Kama sutra, he writes, blushing a little.
Her eyes widen, and it's with sheer glee that she says, “Is this for a group activity? Raj? Is there someone?”
I don't kiss and tell, Raj writes, lowering his eyes demurely, but as if. He is such an utter faker. She grabs him and pulls him into a hug anyway, lying liar that he is. It's a good thing she adores him as much as she does, or she'd never put up with his drama.
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Penny runs into Leslie in the hallway as she stops in to say hi to Sheldon. She tries to step past, but Leslie moves to block her, grabbing her arm.
“Here's the thing,” Leslie says. “I'm sure you're a decent person. You're pretty and you're not painfully stupid and you've got a lot of raw talent. You pick crappy people to work with-”
“If you think I'm just going to stand here while you talk shit about Sheldon,” Penny smiles sharply, “you've got another thing coming. And spoiler alert, it's a violent sort of thing.”
“Jesus, don't blow it out of proportion, that's just how Sheldon and I are. My point is, I might have been a bit rude when we first met, and that didn't have anything to do with you.”
“Just with Sheldon.”
“If you know him at all,” Leslie says, turning a little sharp herself, “you know he's no angel. I'm not apologizing for anything between us, just that I shouldn't have dragged you into the cross-hairs. Capiche?”
“If you promise never to call me any variation of Barbie again, yeah sure,” Penny nods. Leslie grins at that.
“Come on,” she says, “that was meant affectionately. Barbie can be anything, remember, and she's always hot while doing it.”
“Never. Again.”
“Fair enough,” Leslie laughs. “Anyway, I've got to say it's nice to see another woman around. Most of the time this place is a total sausage-fest.”
“Speaking of,” Penny says, and then immediately scrunches up her face in abject disgust, “not of sausages, not speaking of sausages, oh god that was the worst conversation transition I've ever heard in my entire life. Speaking of men. Jesus, I just ruined this entire day.”
Leslie's a little too busy cackling to be of much help, so Penny tries to pull it together.
“Speaking of guys, you and Leonard, dish right now because every time I've tried to get him to he clams up entirely.”
Leslie just about chokes on air, which is alarming but at least stops the cackling. Once she finishes coughing and manages to pull in a full breath, though, she looks more shifty than Penny's ever seen her, and that's including the time she'd just set up five different pranks in Sheldon's office and then ran into them in the hall.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Leslie says.
“You aren't using contractions,” Penny says. “Means you're lying. I watch Lie to Me, I know what I'm talking about.”
“I take back anything I just said about us starting over,” Leslie scowls.
“Oh my god, I was joking! Were you really lying? Are you two in love or something?”
“If you'll excuse me,” Leslie says with quiet dignity, “I'm going to go murder myself. Tell my family I loved them.”
“We were getting along so well!” Penny calls. Leslie waves a hand but keeps walking away down the hallway, not looking back. “That might not have been the best way to start off,” Penny hums thoughtfully.
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Part Two