your fonder heart, half-lit in the half-light (2/2)
It is done! Thank you, everyone, for the warm and encouraging reviews!
Disclaimers out of the way first: the book Sheldon references is a Discworld novel, The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, and the graphic novel series Sandman is by Neil Gaiman. As with Another Earth, I suggest that you check these titles out. They are stunning.
On to part two and conclusion!
Fandom(s): The Big Bang Theory / Another Earth
Title: your fonder heart, half-lit in the half-light (2/2)
Ship(s): Sheldon/Penny, Sheldon/Amy
Rating/Warnings: T / none
Word Count: 3, 914
Summary: What would you do if you met the other you? In which there is a free ticket to space and a fine line between what is and what should have been.
chapter two: opportunity and mystery (what else, what new, what now)
A lot of the other winners grew up in the big cities. They profess themselves bewildered by the vastness of the Mojave, by its sprawling sands and craggy mountain ranges and windswept Joshua trees. They turn to Penny, Pasadena girl, as if she, too, will understand.
“I like it,” she says with a shrug. “A little bit.”
What she doesn’t tell them is that something about this rugged and desolate terrain makes her think of home. She bolted the first chance she got, but she still dreams about Nebraska almost every night; there are mornings when she wakes up in cramped, messy 4B and her eyes fill with illogical tears because she’d been expecting the sweet scent of hay and the sunrise breaking out over the plains, mist-laced in the cold dawn.
She’s never once considered going back. Her parents’ farm, wide and open as it is, is not big enough to hold her dreams.
But the Mojave is. The dry landscape is dotted by sporadic kaleidoscopes of color, by wildflowers and cacti and mineral veins. Penny flies over it in training. The plane cuts through the air in parabolic arcs and swooping dives, and, for thirty seconds, she is floating, she is weightless in this arid desert with its surprising bursts of beauty and life.
“I dunno,” she once blurts out to Bernadette, over the phone, “this whole experience--- this whole place--- it kinda reminds me of Sheldon.”
And Bernadette, who has always been razor-sharp perceptive under that sweet exterior, clucks her tongue.
“Oh, Penny,” she sighs.
*
Seriously, though, zero-g? It’s a bitch. No wonder they call that stupid plane the vomit comet.
*
Sheldon visits, which is weird.
Penny shakes her head at the crew members mouthing “Boyfriend?” and she takes him to her favorite place, a spot on the cliffs that provides a spectacular view. It’s sunset and the Mojave is all sand dunes and rocky outcrops in the red-gold light. Earth 2 crests above the horizon, filling the dusty pink sky, a huge blue-and-white globe surrounded by the first faint stars that have emerged.
“What’s up, Sheldon?” she asks.
He wastes no time on preliminaries. “I believe that Amy and I have terminated our relationship.”
Her pulse shouldn’t flutter with trepidation and what suspiciously feels like hope, but it does, anyway. “Um, why?”
“She informed me that she requires ‘space.’”
Penny can practically hear the quotation marks curling around that last word. “That means she just needs some time to think about things. It’s not officially over.”
“Oh. I see.” But he doesn’t. She can tell that he doesn’t. Most of the vagaries of the human experience are still beyond the reach of Homo novus. He dismisses the matter as quickly as he does things that stump him, like Radiohead. “She asked for space. I thought of you.”
Jesus Christ. What can a girl say to that?
Fortunately, he doesn’t let her respond. Instead, he keeps his eyes--- almost sapphire now, in the sun’s dying rays--- fixed on the other Earth. Penny thinks about the staggering amount of desert they’re standing on, and then about its twin up there, beyond this sky, her sky. She feels very small all of a sudden.
“I read a book once,” says Sheldon, voice hinting at gravel and his native Texas, “about a group of heroes who attempted to slay the gods. When the gods asked them why, one of the heroes answered that it was because somewhere, someone must have gotten to the edge of the world and seen all the other worlds out there, and that aforementioned someone must have wept because there was only one lifetime. ‘So much universe, and so little time…’”
“No one should live forever, Sheldon,” she tells him quietly.
He raises his chin in defiance. “And why not?”
“If you know you’re going to die one day, then…” She gestures at the panorama of land and color and drifting satellites. She is not a poet or a scientist. She doesn’t have the words. But she tries, anyway; she’s been trying her whole life. “Then this moment will never be as beautiful as it is now. And that’s something, isn’t it?”
She steels herself for scholarly derision. It doesn’t come. She glances at him, wondering what has brought on this uncharacteristic silence.
He is staring at her, wide-eyed and statue-still, with the same intensity that he aims at his equation-ridden whiteboards. It’s like he’s trying to decode the enigma of her. And Penny wonders why out of all the boys it has to be this one who sees her as more than a ditzy blonde or a sex object or a potential conquest, but as a person, as an annoyance, as a friend. She wonders why it has to be him, here and now, in the swirling sands of the Mojave, in the shadow of the other Earth.
“The hero was mistaken, anyway,” Sheldon drawls--- and, yes, it is a drawl. The flat terrain and the forever horizon is calling out to them both, reminding them that for all their California affectations they are still children of the Great Plains. “That planet up there in the sky proves it. There are mirrors of you and me. You get another life.”
Is it better than this one? Penny muses. How many duplicate Earths until you can get a happy ending? But out loud she says, “God, I need a drink.”
“You drink too much, Penny,” he remarks.
You made me an alcoholic, Sheldon. The thought sears across her mind, white-hot as a solar flare. She could burn with the grief of it.
*
And then there is launch, and orbit, and shudders biting into the mechanism as the stars slip away from under her feet. Clicks and hisses resound throughout the vast depths of space. The globe spins before her, looking exactly the same as the one she just left. The ship slices into the atmosphere, and Penny grips the edges of her seat as they make planetfall.
*
But prior to that, though, there is a phone call to Amy.
“You have to give him a chance,” Penny tells her. “I know neither of you has done this before, but, yeah, relationships are hard. I’ve been there. You have to, like, know the difference between what’s worth fighting about and what’s worth fighting for.”
“Why didn’t you fight for Leonard?” Amy asks, cutting as quick to the heart of the matter as if Penny’s life were a lab brain ripe for dissection.
And Penny can’t tell Amy that she’s been holding out for something else. Not Sheldon. Not even sex that’s more than just awkward fumbles and apologies and a man touching her like he can’t believe she’s real--- worship gets tiring, after a while. She still doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s definitely not this. Something else. Something more.
Amy won’t understand. Amy is successful and happy in her career, following the path that she’s mapped out. Amy has never marched at high school graduation with back straight and head held high even though her brother’s face was all over the news after the cops busted him for dealing meth the night before. Amy has never accepted a diploma in front of a whispering crowd and thought, I’m getting out of here.
So Penny answers, “There were just too many things to fight about.”
*
On the day of take-off, she receives text messages from both Sheldon and Amy, thanking her for the role she played in helping them fix their relationship. Amy’s text is warm; she even calls Penny “bestie” again.
Sheldon’s gratitude is terser. Perfunctory, even. But, like Amy, he wishes her luck on her voyage. He says, May you sail a gentle sea.
He says, May the other me recognize all that you are and all that you have accomplished. You, and all versions of you.
*
“Whoa,” breathes Penny.
“Whoa,” breathes the other Penny.
“This is---”
“--- weird.”
*
Other Penny is neither waitress nor actress. She cleaned up her manuscript and it’s now being developed as a movie in this California.
“A coming-of-age chick flick,” she says. “A bit sappy. My next one will be more serious. I have some ideas.”
Penny nods, half-expecting the girl in front of her to nod as well. Seriously, it’s like looking into a mirror. And it is, in a way.
Except that there’s a ring on Other Penny’s finger. It’s not a typical-looking engagement band; the stone is white diamond, true enough, but it’s cut in a strange flowy pattern and set in gold so pale that it almost resembles silver. It curls around Other Penny’s fourth digit like a flower, or perhaps sea-foam.
Penny gulps, staring, afraid to ask who it is.
Other Penny follows her gaze. “Oh.” She laughs self-consciously, wagging her hand so that the diamond catches the light. “Nenya. One of the Three. The Ring---”
“--- of Water,” Penny finishes, because you don’t hang around geeks for the better part of seven years without picking up a geek-fact or two.
“Yeah,” says Other Penny. She bites her lip. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on in the other planet, but it’s obvious that some things are different because you’re not wearing one, but I think you should know that here---”
Three knocks, on the door of this 4B. “Penny.”
Time seems to freeze.
*
On this world, they call Penny’s Earth Earth 2.
“It just shows,” says Other Leonard, “how egocentric human beings are, in all possible dimensions.”
“For the last time, Leonard,” snaps Other Sheldon, “Earth 2 is not a separate dimension. It is a mirror planet.”
And it’s just--- it’s just really bizarre, okay. Penny still can’t get over the fact that she’s sitting in the living room of another 4A with identical versions of her and her friends. She can’t get over the fact that a few hours ago the door was opened and, here, on a different planet, she was looking straight at the guy she never wanted to fall in love with.
Other Penny and Other Sheldon are sitting on the couch (Other Couch?), knees touching. Other Sheldon makes no effort to move away. Every once in a while, Other Penny catches her gaze and grimaces as if slightly embarrassed, slightly apologetic.
“Are you staying for dinner?” Other Howard asks. He’s leaning forward eagerly, his eyes darting back and forth from her to her twin as if his wildest fantasies have come true.
Yep, Howard is a sleazeball in all possible dimensions--- on all mirror planets, sorry, both Sheldons.
“They’re expecting me back at the SETI Institute,” says Penny. “My ride should be along in a while. There’s a big welcome party, or whatever. I’d have loved to see how this Szechuan Palace compares to mine, though.”
“I believe that the difference would be in all probability negligible,” Other Sheldon pipes up. “Calculations would suggest that---”
“Don’t start about broken mirrors again,” both Pennys warn, voices identical and in sync.
Other Leonard and Other Howard burst into laughter, while Other Raj grins.
“This is so freaky,” says Other Leonard, shaking his head in smiling disbelief.
Other Sheldon huffs, affronted as Sheldon Cooper will always be when his intellect is the butt of jokes. “While I disapprove of the slang, I must agree that I find Mirror Penny’s presence here disturbing. I am still half-convinced that it will rupture the space-time continuum.”
“You’ve been watching too much Doctor Who,” Other Penny tells him, rolling her eyes. But there is fondness there.
That’s what strikes Penny the most. As Other Leonard and Other Howard quiz her on their mirror selves, she does her best to answer, but she keeps glancing over at Other Sheldon and Other Penny. She notices the way they lean in close as they converse in low voices, shoulders pressed up together, hands brushing. She notices the way Other Penny scrunches her nose before teasingly nipping Other Sheldon’s ear, the way Other Sheldon’s eyes flutter at the contact even as he twitches in indignation.
I wish you could see what I see now, she thinks, sending the message through stars and atmosphere to her own Sheldon, the Sheldon that isn’t hers. This is what we could have had. This is what we could have been.
*
She gets a glass of orange juice from the fridge (Other Fridge?). She almost drops it when she realizes the mirror version of Sheldon has snuck up behind her.
He even smells the same. Whiteboard marker ink and fabric softener and soap. The same combination of scent that fills her with longing, that she sometimes catches phantom whiffs of even when he isn’t around.
Other Sheldon clears his throat. “If I may inquire…”
“Yes?” Penny arches an eyebrow.
“What is our paradigm--- that is--- on your planet--- are you and the other me--- are we---” He falters, facial muscles doing that spasming thing they do when he’s out of his element. Sheldon Cooper, always awkward. Always dear to her, on all possible Earths.
She shakes her head. “In the life I know, sweetie, you’re still with Amy.”
He pales, like it’s not what he wanted to hear. But he gives a sharp, jerky nod. “I see. All right.”
“Is it?” says Penny, because he seems like he’s about to explode. “Is it really all right?”
“It is certainly feasible, from a scientific point of view,” he mumbles. His fists have clenched. “But I have learned to separate myself from science, on occasion. She--- you--- she taught me that.” He darts a fleeting look at Other Penny, his Penny, who’s yelling at the TV through a mouthful of chips, a controller in her hands as the Other Guys egg her on. “And I--- well---” He inhales, as if gathering strength, as if gathering the words from somewhere deep inside him. “I cannot conceive of a universe where I do not love you. Have always loved you. I refuse to believe in a world where this does not happen.”
*
But how did it happen? She asks Other Penny this, when her mirror self escorts her to the waiting SETI Institute vehicle.
“When I first saw your Earth, I was with Sheldon,” Other Penny replies slowly. “I had a wicked hangover. We were arguing because I didn’t drive him to his date with Amy the night before.”
“Yeah,” Penny murmurs. “I remember that day.”
“I was shouting at him when I looked up and saw it. And I thought, holy shit. It was early, so there weren’t a lot of people around. The street was quiet. We just stood there staring at your Earth--- the same way you were probably staring at ours, right at that exact moment. And then… I don’t know…”
They’ve stopped outside the apartment. The chauffeur from the Institute is standing by the car, holding the door open. But Penny ignores him. She’s hanging on to every word.
“I remember thinking, it looks the same. Am I up there, too?” continues Other Penny. “I thought about the life I had, if it was better on a different planet. And I realized that, no, I wanted to have the better life. And I---”
*
There is a world where Sheldon turns to Penny in the newfound shadow of another Earth. There is a world where Penny lets the moment pass, lets Sheldon come back to his senses and rush inside to check the news.
But there is also a world where Penny decides to become a writer, decides to find new dreams and claim them, and, before that, Sheldon’s eyes are as blue as the ocean and deep and dark with the things he cannot say. There is a world where Penny thinks, To hell with it, and kisses him.
*
“Anyway,” says Other Penny, grinning, shy yet somehow looking prouder and more fierce and real than Penny has ever seen herself look, “that’s what happened. What about you? What did you do?”
Penny shakes her head. Smiles sadly. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
*
When she’s back on her own planet, the first friend she sees is Amy, who drops in at lunch as Penny’s sprawled out on the couch exhausted and wondering if space jetlag’s an actual thing and what the cure for it is.
“Did you meet the other me?” Amy asks.
“I visited all the other yous,” says Penny. “The whole gang. Up there, you’re breaking new ground in--- zombies or whatever.”
Amy’s eyes gleam behind her thick lenses. “Are you by any chance referring to the effects of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii on the human neurological system?”
“Um, yeah?” That sounds about right, anyway. “You and Bernadette are working together.”
“I had considered going into that line of research,” Amy murmurs, excited and animated and--- pretty. That’s the thing about Amy Farrah Fowler. She’s beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty that sort of sneaks up before making itself known. “But there was never enough time to start, what with my current workload--- but maybe---” She stops as another thought occurs to her. “Am I still with Sheldon?”
This is the part Penny’s been dreading. She shakes her head.
Amy deflates. She visibly deflates. The vibrancy goes out of her and her shoulders sag and she draws further into herself.
And it sucks that on another Earth Penny violated, like, every single rule of friendship--- well, that wasn’t her her, but she’s eaten alive by guilt, anyway. “Amy…”
“Maybe it’s for the best.” Amy pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Her face is a mass of conflicting emotions, like she’s struggling to make some difficult inner choice. “Maybe the other Earth has the right idea.”
“Sweetie, you don’t mean that---”
“I do, Penny. I think.” She raises her chin, stubborn and determined, eerily similar to Sheldon in the Mojave sunset when he was told that he couldn’t live forever. The world is full of reflections; everyone in it is a mirror of everyone else. “When I was fifteen years old, I was a laughingstock. I will not be a laughingstock again.”
Penny’s brow creases. “I don’t understand.”
“It is futile to hold on to a relationship with someone who has other matters on his mind. Other people, in fact.” Amy nods to herself, as if she has reached a decision. She folds her hands on her lap, gives Penny a level stare, every inch wounded yet unassailable. A queen without a kingdom. “I will not elaborate on how he acted while you were gone. Suffice it to say, the apocalypse would have been preferable. Do you understand now?”
And Penny can’t help but shake her head and exhale a weak laugh at the absurdity of it all. That Amy Farrah Fowler grew up and found her grace way before Penny, homecoming queen, ever could.
*
There’s this one time, see, when Sheldon confronts Penny in the laundry room. It’s a few weeks after she gave up “their” laundry night for good, and at first he’s indignant at the disruption in his routine, then condescending as he lectures her on why Saturday night is the optimal time to wash clothes.
And she can’t tell him now, can she, that this is about more than laundry, this is about this weird inexplicable thing between them and Amy’s slow-boiling resentment and---
“Sheldon,” Penny grits out, “my world does not revolve around what’s convenient for you.”
He ignores her. He continues talking about the importance of schedules in a voice that grows progressively louder as if he’s trying to drown out her words with his. But under the scientific bravado he looks bewildered and confused and… young. Blue-eyed and pale-skinned and sharp-jawed amidst the washing machines.
I kind of love you, Penny thinks, staring at him.
His hands flutter at his sides in agitation. “Penny,” he says, “have I offended you without my knowledge? Have I committed some unforgivable breach of social protocol?”
She knows that what he really means is: Why don’t you play Halo with us anymore? What did I do wrong? Because over the years Sheldon Cooper has grown up and realized that the world is made up of more than just atoms, and he might not really get it, but he’s willing to try.
Penny fights the urge to tackle him in a tight hug. I’m so proud of you, sweetie. “Relax, Sheldon,” she tells him. “It’s not you. This is all me.”
“I don’t understand.” He sounds frustrated.
“I know,” she sighs, turning away to retrieve her wet clothes. “I know you don’t. It’s okay.” She is almost thirty years old and going nowhere, and she is tired and she has had her heart broken too many times to count. She will understand enough for both of them.
*
And in another laundry room on another planet, different yet somehow still the same---
“This tour is an exercise in futility,” says a long-suffering Other Sheldon.
“Shut up.” Penny grins. “This is great.”
It’s just the two of them because Other Penny was called in for a last-minute meeting with her film producers. Her fiancé stands stiffly by the washing machines as Penny looks around. She turns and sees him, and the scene is so familiar that it kind of hits her like a punch to the gut. This could almost be any other laundry night. He could almost be the Sheldon she knows.
“I came here for you, a long time ago,” she quips with Best Actress panache. “Well, it wasn’t here and that wasn’t you. But I did anyway.”
His blue eyes flicker. The corners of his mouth tilt upwards in a slight smile. “Issue number 70. The first in the Wake arc,” he says. “My other self has taught you well.”
*
Two years ago, Sheldon appears at Penny’s door with a stack of what suspiciously look like comic books.
“This,” he announces, “is the start of your graphic novel education.” He’s almost childlike in his excitement. He’s beaming.
Penny catches a glimpse of the title. Sandman. “What’s it about?” she asks, dubious.
“Dreams,” Sheldon replies, uncharacteristically succinct.
It’s all he needs to say. He knows her too well.
*
A week after she returns from Earth 2, Penny starts to write.
It’s not a screenplay. When all’s said and done, she’s not her mirror self. She thinks it might be the beginning of a book. She’s got countless stories inside her.
Sheldon and Leonard’s living room becomes sort of like her base, because it’s neat and organized and conducive to working. One weekend afternoon she’s typing away on the couch, when the front door creaks open and Sheldon comes in. She’s so engrossed in the scene that’s unfolding from her fingers that she gives only the barest of nods as an acknowledgement, and she’s only vaguely aware of him setting down his things and then coming towards her with slow, methodical precision.
“Penny.”
She looks up.
His eyes are piercing blue in the sunlight, and he is tense and determined and it’s like, Eat your heart out, Galveston, because this is the moment Sheldon Cooper becomes master of the universe.
“I have something to tell you,” he says.
Penny’s never been the type of girl who bursts into tears of relief. But she totally does, anyway.
Disclaimers out of the way first: the book Sheldon references is a Discworld novel, The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, and the graphic novel series Sandman is by Neil Gaiman. As with Another Earth, I suggest that you check these titles out. They are stunning.
On to part two and conclusion!
Fandom(s): The Big Bang Theory / Another Earth
Title: your fonder heart, half-lit in the half-light (2/2)
Ship(s): Sheldon/Penny, Sheldon/Amy
Rating/Warnings: T / none
Word Count: 3, 914
Summary: What would you do if you met the other you? In which there is a free ticket to space and a fine line between what is and what should have been.
chapter two: opportunity and mystery (what else, what new, what now)
A lot of the other winners grew up in the big cities. They profess themselves bewildered by the vastness of the Mojave, by its sprawling sands and craggy mountain ranges and windswept Joshua trees. They turn to Penny, Pasadena girl, as if she, too, will understand.
“I like it,” she says with a shrug. “A little bit.”
What she doesn’t tell them is that something about this rugged and desolate terrain makes her think of home. She bolted the first chance she got, but she still dreams about Nebraska almost every night; there are mornings when she wakes up in cramped, messy 4B and her eyes fill with illogical tears because she’d been expecting the sweet scent of hay and the sunrise breaking out over the plains, mist-laced in the cold dawn.
She’s never once considered going back. Her parents’ farm, wide and open as it is, is not big enough to hold her dreams.
But the Mojave is. The dry landscape is dotted by sporadic kaleidoscopes of color, by wildflowers and cacti and mineral veins. Penny flies over it in training. The plane cuts through the air in parabolic arcs and swooping dives, and, for thirty seconds, she is floating, she is weightless in this arid desert with its surprising bursts of beauty and life.
“I dunno,” she once blurts out to Bernadette, over the phone, “this whole experience--- this whole place--- it kinda reminds me of Sheldon.”
And Bernadette, who has always been razor-sharp perceptive under that sweet exterior, clucks her tongue.
“Oh, Penny,” she sighs.
*
Seriously, though, zero-g? It’s a bitch. No wonder they call that stupid plane the vomit comet.
*
Sheldon visits, which is weird.
Penny shakes her head at the crew members mouthing “Boyfriend?” and she takes him to her favorite place, a spot on the cliffs that provides a spectacular view. It’s sunset and the Mojave is all sand dunes and rocky outcrops in the red-gold light. Earth 2 crests above the horizon, filling the dusty pink sky, a huge blue-and-white globe surrounded by the first faint stars that have emerged.
“What’s up, Sheldon?” she asks.
He wastes no time on preliminaries. “I believe that Amy and I have terminated our relationship.”
Her pulse shouldn’t flutter with trepidation and what suspiciously feels like hope, but it does, anyway. “Um, why?”
“She informed me that she requires ‘space.’”
Penny can practically hear the quotation marks curling around that last word. “That means she just needs some time to think about things. It’s not officially over.”
“Oh. I see.” But he doesn’t. She can tell that he doesn’t. Most of the vagaries of the human experience are still beyond the reach of Homo novus. He dismisses the matter as quickly as he does things that stump him, like Radiohead. “She asked for space. I thought of you.”
Jesus Christ. What can a girl say to that?
Fortunately, he doesn’t let her respond. Instead, he keeps his eyes--- almost sapphire now, in the sun’s dying rays--- fixed on the other Earth. Penny thinks about the staggering amount of desert they’re standing on, and then about its twin up there, beyond this sky, her sky. She feels very small all of a sudden.
“I read a book once,” says Sheldon, voice hinting at gravel and his native Texas, “about a group of heroes who attempted to slay the gods. When the gods asked them why, one of the heroes answered that it was because somewhere, someone must have gotten to the edge of the world and seen all the other worlds out there, and that aforementioned someone must have wept because there was only one lifetime. ‘So much universe, and so little time…’”
“No one should live forever, Sheldon,” she tells him quietly.
He raises his chin in defiance. “And why not?”
“If you know you’re going to die one day, then…” She gestures at the panorama of land and color and drifting satellites. She is not a poet or a scientist. She doesn’t have the words. But she tries, anyway; she’s been trying her whole life. “Then this moment will never be as beautiful as it is now. And that’s something, isn’t it?”
She steels herself for scholarly derision. It doesn’t come. She glances at him, wondering what has brought on this uncharacteristic silence.
He is staring at her, wide-eyed and statue-still, with the same intensity that he aims at his equation-ridden whiteboards. It’s like he’s trying to decode the enigma of her. And Penny wonders why out of all the boys it has to be this one who sees her as more than a ditzy blonde or a sex object or a potential conquest, but as a person, as an annoyance, as a friend. She wonders why it has to be him, here and now, in the swirling sands of the Mojave, in the shadow of the other Earth.
“The hero was mistaken, anyway,” Sheldon drawls--- and, yes, it is a drawl. The flat terrain and the forever horizon is calling out to them both, reminding them that for all their California affectations they are still children of the Great Plains. “That planet up there in the sky proves it. There are mirrors of you and me. You get another life.”
Is it better than this one? Penny muses. How many duplicate Earths until you can get a happy ending? But out loud she says, “God, I need a drink.”
“You drink too much, Penny,” he remarks.
You made me an alcoholic, Sheldon. The thought sears across her mind, white-hot as a solar flare. She could burn with the grief of it.
*
And then there is launch, and orbit, and shudders biting into the mechanism as the stars slip away from under her feet. Clicks and hisses resound throughout the vast depths of space. The globe spins before her, looking exactly the same as the one she just left. The ship slices into the atmosphere, and Penny grips the edges of her seat as they make planetfall.
*
But prior to that, though, there is a phone call to Amy.
“You have to give him a chance,” Penny tells her. “I know neither of you has done this before, but, yeah, relationships are hard. I’ve been there. You have to, like, know the difference between what’s worth fighting about and what’s worth fighting for.”
“Why didn’t you fight for Leonard?” Amy asks, cutting as quick to the heart of the matter as if Penny’s life were a lab brain ripe for dissection.
And Penny can’t tell Amy that she’s been holding out for something else. Not Sheldon. Not even sex that’s more than just awkward fumbles and apologies and a man touching her like he can’t believe she’s real--- worship gets tiring, after a while. She still doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s definitely not this. Something else. Something more.
Amy won’t understand. Amy is successful and happy in her career, following the path that she’s mapped out. Amy has never marched at high school graduation with back straight and head held high even though her brother’s face was all over the news after the cops busted him for dealing meth the night before. Amy has never accepted a diploma in front of a whispering crowd and thought, I’m getting out of here.
So Penny answers, “There were just too many things to fight about.”
*
On the day of take-off, she receives text messages from both Sheldon and Amy, thanking her for the role she played in helping them fix their relationship. Amy’s text is warm; she even calls Penny “bestie” again.
Sheldon’s gratitude is terser. Perfunctory, even. But, like Amy, he wishes her luck on her voyage. He says, May you sail a gentle sea.
He says, May the other me recognize all that you are and all that you have accomplished. You, and all versions of you.
*
“Whoa,” breathes Penny.
“Whoa,” breathes the other Penny.
“This is---”
“--- weird.”
*
Other Penny is neither waitress nor actress. She cleaned up her manuscript and it’s now being developed as a movie in this California.
“A coming-of-age chick flick,” she says. “A bit sappy. My next one will be more serious. I have some ideas.”
Penny nods, half-expecting the girl in front of her to nod as well. Seriously, it’s like looking into a mirror. And it is, in a way.
Except that there’s a ring on Other Penny’s finger. It’s not a typical-looking engagement band; the stone is white diamond, true enough, but it’s cut in a strange flowy pattern and set in gold so pale that it almost resembles silver. It curls around Other Penny’s fourth digit like a flower, or perhaps sea-foam.
Penny gulps, staring, afraid to ask who it is.
Other Penny follows her gaze. “Oh.” She laughs self-consciously, wagging her hand so that the diamond catches the light. “Nenya. One of the Three. The Ring---”
“--- of Water,” Penny finishes, because you don’t hang around geeks for the better part of seven years without picking up a geek-fact or two.
“Yeah,” says Other Penny. She bites her lip. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on in the other planet, but it’s obvious that some things are different because you’re not wearing one, but I think you should know that here---”
Three knocks, on the door of this 4B. “Penny.”
Time seems to freeze.
*
On this world, they call Penny’s Earth Earth 2.
“It just shows,” says Other Leonard, “how egocentric human beings are, in all possible dimensions.”
“For the last time, Leonard,” snaps Other Sheldon, “Earth 2 is not a separate dimension. It is a mirror planet.”
And it’s just--- it’s just really bizarre, okay. Penny still can’t get over the fact that she’s sitting in the living room of another 4A with identical versions of her and her friends. She can’t get over the fact that a few hours ago the door was opened and, here, on a different planet, she was looking straight at the guy she never wanted to fall in love with.
Other Penny and Other Sheldon are sitting on the couch (Other Couch?), knees touching. Other Sheldon makes no effort to move away. Every once in a while, Other Penny catches her gaze and grimaces as if slightly embarrassed, slightly apologetic.
“Are you staying for dinner?” Other Howard asks. He’s leaning forward eagerly, his eyes darting back and forth from her to her twin as if his wildest fantasies have come true.
Yep, Howard is a sleazeball in all possible dimensions--- on all mirror planets, sorry, both Sheldons.
“They’re expecting me back at the SETI Institute,” says Penny. “My ride should be along in a while. There’s a big welcome party, or whatever. I’d have loved to see how this Szechuan Palace compares to mine, though.”
“I believe that the difference would be in all probability negligible,” Other Sheldon pipes up. “Calculations would suggest that---”
“Don’t start about broken mirrors again,” both Pennys warn, voices identical and in sync.
Other Leonard and Other Howard burst into laughter, while Other Raj grins.
“This is so freaky,” says Other Leonard, shaking his head in smiling disbelief.
Other Sheldon huffs, affronted as Sheldon Cooper will always be when his intellect is the butt of jokes. “While I disapprove of the slang, I must agree that I find Mirror Penny’s presence here disturbing. I am still half-convinced that it will rupture the space-time continuum.”
“You’ve been watching too much Doctor Who,” Other Penny tells him, rolling her eyes. But there is fondness there.
That’s what strikes Penny the most. As Other Leonard and Other Howard quiz her on their mirror selves, she does her best to answer, but she keeps glancing over at Other Sheldon and Other Penny. She notices the way they lean in close as they converse in low voices, shoulders pressed up together, hands brushing. She notices the way Other Penny scrunches her nose before teasingly nipping Other Sheldon’s ear, the way Other Sheldon’s eyes flutter at the contact even as he twitches in indignation.
I wish you could see what I see now, she thinks, sending the message through stars and atmosphere to her own Sheldon, the Sheldon that isn’t hers. This is what we could have had. This is what we could have been.
*
She gets a glass of orange juice from the fridge (Other Fridge?). She almost drops it when she realizes the mirror version of Sheldon has snuck up behind her.
He even smells the same. Whiteboard marker ink and fabric softener and soap. The same combination of scent that fills her with longing, that she sometimes catches phantom whiffs of even when he isn’t around.
Other Sheldon clears his throat. “If I may inquire…”
“Yes?” Penny arches an eyebrow.
“What is our paradigm--- that is--- on your planet--- are you and the other me--- are we---” He falters, facial muscles doing that spasming thing they do when he’s out of his element. Sheldon Cooper, always awkward. Always dear to her, on all possible Earths.
She shakes her head. “In the life I know, sweetie, you’re still with Amy.”
He pales, like it’s not what he wanted to hear. But he gives a sharp, jerky nod. “I see. All right.”
“Is it?” says Penny, because he seems like he’s about to explode. “Is it really all right?”
“It is certainly feasible, from a scientific point of view,” he mumbles. His fists have clenched. “But I have learned to separate myself from science, on occasion. She--- you--- she taught me that.” He darts a fleeting look at Other Penny, his Penny, who’s yelling at the TV through a mouthful of chips, a controller in her hands as the Other Guys egg her on. “And I--- well---” He inhales, as if gathering strength, as if gathering the words from somewhere deep inside him. “I cannot conceive of a universe where I do not love you. Have always loved you. I refuse to believe in a world where this does not happen.”
*
But how did it happen? She asks Other Penny this, when her mirror self escorts her to the waiting SETI Institute vehicle.
“When I first saw your Earth, I was with Sheldon,” Other Penny replies slowly. “I had a wicked hangover. We were arguing because I didn’t drive him to his date with Amy the night before.”
“Yeah,” Penny murmurs. “I remember that day.”
“I was shouting at him when I looked up and saw it. And I thought, holy shit. It was early, so there weren’t a lot of people around. The street was quiet. We just stood there staring at your Earth--- the same way you were probably staring at ours, right at that exact moment. And then… I don’t know…”
They’ve stopped outside the apartment. The chauffeur from the Institute is standing by the car, holding the door open. But Penny ignores him. She’s hanging on to every word.
“I remember thinking, it looks the same. Am I up there, too?” continues Other Penny. “I thought about the life I had, if it was better on a different planet. And I realized that, no, I wanted to have the better life. And I---”
*
There is a world where Sheldon turns to Penny in the newfound shadow of another Earth. There is a world where Penny lets the moment pass, lets Sheldon come back to his senses and rush inside to check the news.
But there is also a world where Penny decides to become a writer, decides to find new dreams and claim them, and, before that, Sheldon’s eyes are as blue as the ocean and deep and dark with the things he cannot say. There is a world where Penny thinks, To hell with it, and kisses him.
*
“Anyway,” says Other Penny, grinning, shy yet somehow looking prouder and more fierce and real than Penny has ever seen herself look, “that’s what happened. What about you? What did you do?”
Penny shakes her head. Smiles sadly. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
*
When she’s back on her own planet, the first friend she sees is Amy, who drops in at lunch as Penny’s sprawled out on the couch exhausted and wondering if space jetlag’s an actual thing and what the cure for it is.
“Did you meet the other me?” Amy asks.
“I visited all the other yous,” says Penny. “The whole gang. Up there, you’re breaking new ground in--- zombies or whatever.”
Amy’s eyes gleam behind her thick lenses. “Are you by any chance referring to the effects of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii on the human neurological system?”
“Um, yeah?” That sounds about right, anyway. “You and Bernadette are working together.”
“I had considered going into that line of research,” Amy murmurs, excited and animated and--- pretty. That’s the thing about Amy Farrah Fowler. She’s beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty that sort of sneaks up before making itself known. “But there was never enough time to start, what with my current workload--- but maybe---” She stops as another thought occurs to her. “Am I still with Sheldon?”
This is the part Penny’s been dreading. She shakes her head.
Amy deflates. She visibly deflates. The vibrancy goes out of her and her shoulders sag and she draws further into herself.
And it sucks that on another Earth Penny violated, like, every single rule of friendship--- well, that wasn’t her her, but she’s eaten alive by guilt, anyway. “Amy…”
“Maybe it’s for the best.” Amy pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Her face is a mass of conflicting emotions, like she’s struggling to make some difficult inner choice. “Maybe the other Earth has the right idea.”
“Sweetie, you don’t mean that---”
“I do, Penny. I think.” She raises her chin, stubborn and determined, eerily similar to Sheldon in the Mojave sunset when he was told that he couldn’t live forever. The world is full of reflections; everyone in it is a mirror of everyone else. “When I was fifteen years old, I was a laughingstock. I will not be a laughingstock again.”
Penny’s brow creases. “I don’t understand.”
“It is futile to hold on to a relationship with someone who has other matters on his mind. Other people, in fact.” Amy nods to herself, as if she has reached a decision. She folds her hands on her lap, gives Penny a level stare, every inch wounded yet unassailable. A queen without a kingdom. “I will not elaborate on how he acted while you were gone. Suffice it to say, the apocalypse would have been preferable. Do you understand now?”
And Penny can’t help but shake her head and exhale a weak laugh at the absurdity of it all. That Amy Farrah Fowler grew up and found her grace way before Penny, homecoming queen, ever could.
*
There’s this one time, see, when Sheldon confronts Penny in the laundry room. It’s a few weeks after she gave up “their” laundry night for good, and at first he’s indignant at the disruption in his routine, then condescending as he lectures her on why Saturday night is the optimal time to wash clothes.
And she can’t tell him now, can she, that this is about more than laundry, this is about this weird inexplicable thing between them and Amy’s slow-boiling resentment and---
“Sheldon,” Penny grits out, “my world does not revolve around what’s convenient for you.”
He ignores her. He continues talking about the importance of schedules in a voice that grows progressively louder as if he’s trying to drown out her words with his. But under the scientific bravado he looks bewildered and confused and… young. Blue-eyed and pale-skinned and sharp-jawed amidst the washing machines.
I kind of love you, Penny thinks, staring at him.
His hands flutter at his sides in agitation. “Penny,” he says, “have I offended you without my knowledge? Have I committed some unforgivable breach of social protocol?”
She knows that what he really means is: Why don’t you play Halo with us anymore? What did I do wrong? Because over the years Sheldon Cooper has grown up and realized that the world is made up of more than just atoms, and he might not really get it, but he’s willing to try.
Penny fights the urge to tackle him in a tight hug. I’m so proud of you, sweetie. “Relax, Sheldon,” she tells him. “It’s not you. This is all me.”
“I don’t understand.” He sounds frustrated.
“I know,” she sighs, turning away to retrieve her wet clothes. “I know you don’t. It’s okay.” She is almost thirty years old and going nowhere, and she is tired and she has had her heart broken too many times to count. She will understand enough for both of them.
*
And in another laundry room on another planet, different yet somehow still the same---
“This tour is an exercise in futility,” says a long-suffering Other Sheldon.
“Shut up.” Penny grins. “This is great.”
It’s just the two of them because Other Penny was called in for a last-minute meeting with her film producers. Her fiancé stands stiffly by the washing machines as Penny looks around. She turns and sees him, and the scene is so familiar that it kind of hits her like a punch to the gut. This could almost be any other laundry night. He could almost be the Sheldon she knows.
“I came here for you, a long time ago,” she quips with Best Actress panache. “Well, it wasn’t here and that wasn’t you. But I did anyway.”
His blue eyes flicker. The corners of his mouth tilt upwards in a slight smile. “Issue number 70. The first in the Wake arc,” he says. “My other self has taught you well.”
*
Two years ago, Sheldon appears at Penny’s door with a stack of what suspiciously look like comic books.
“This,” he announces, “is the start of your graphic novel education.” He’s almost childlike in his excitement. He’s beaming.
Penny catches a glimpse of the title. Sandman. “What’s it about?” she asks, dubious.
“Dreams,” Sheldon replies, uncharacteristically succinct.
It’s all he needs to say. He knows her too well.
*
A week after she returns from Earth 2, Penny starts to write.
It’s not a screenplay. When all’s said and done, she’s not her mirror self. She thinks it might be the beginning of a book. She’s got countless stories inside her.
Sheldon and Leonard’s living room becomes sort of like her base, because it’s neat and organized and conducive to working. One weekend afternoon she’s typing away on the couch, when the front door creaks open and Sheldon comes in. She’s so engrossed in the scene that’s unfolding from her fingers that she gives only the barest of nods as an acknowledgement, and she’s only vaguely aware of him setting down his things and then coming towards her with slow, methodical precision.
“Penny.”
She looks up.
His eyes are piercing blue in the sunlight, and he is tense and determined and it’s like, Eat your heart out, Galveston, because this is the moment Sheldon Cooper becomes master of the universe.
“I have something to tell you,” he says.
Penny’s never been the type of girl who bursts into tears of relief. But she totally does, anyway.