A/N: Shame on you, tx-fictionqueen! Starting a new story while you've already got one in progress even though you promised yourself that you wouldn't. But as all of you fellow writers know, sometimes we can't help ourselves. This idea, I assure you, has been haunting my dreams for awhile.

It's rated 'T'…for now. And although the characters are going to be OOC (this is an alternate universe, after all, and Amy will be slightly younger than her character in the show), you'll be able to spot some similarities to their canon quirks. ;) This is pretty different, I have to admit, but I really hope you guys bear with me and enjoy it!

*I do not own rights to The Big Bang Theory or any of their characters or likenesses. Everything else is mine.*

Amy unzipped her sleeveless black dress then let it fall to the carpet. She stepped out of the pooled fabric and yanked open her closet to find a pair of sweats and a T-shirt to change into. Her father's funeral had been lovely, albeit slightly over the top. She had been surrounded by a community of famous actors and directors all morning, and she was finally glad to be alone. Now in comfy clothes, she tip-toed around the nearly empty brownstone apartment in the upper east side of Manhattan. It was one of the many homes that her father owned and the first home he had ever given to his daughter to live on her own. But according to the last will and testament of Robert Michael Fowler II, the property, along with all of his other houses and apartments sprinkled around the country, were to be vacated and sold on the competitive market, with all the proceeds promised to the ASPCA, in honor of Amy's love of animals, and to the American Cancer Society, in honor of both of his late parents and the diseases that ultimately killed them.

Except one house. A Victorian-styled two story abode on the other side of the U.S., a place that Amy had never been to in her entire life. Her father's childhood home, tucked into the most secluded areas of the Puget Sound in upstate Washington. This home was now Amy's.

Along with an inheritance that she couldn't hope to blow even if she lived five lifetimes, Amy's father saw to it that the deed to the house in Washington was now in her name. She could have bought the brownstone that she was in now, but she decided to take her father's grand gesture for what it was worth: an escape. She began packing the night her father had succumbed to his heart attack. No tears had since been spilt, but not because she wasn't mourning. It was because the greatest pain for a child of any age to endure was the loss of a parent, and the magnitude of said pain had yet to reach the far recesses of Amy's body. Her very best friend in the world, her Pop, was gone. No longer a presence in this world, in this apartment. And with his last gift waiting for her 2,892 miles away, there was no reason for Amy not to be gone, too.

She would never trust an airline to cargo Shakespeare, her four year-old chocolate Labrador, across the state, let alone across the country. So instead of flying, Amy packed an overnight bag with three days' worth of clothing for her and essential food and treats for Shakespeare into her Volvo and the two of them were off on their cross-country trip to their new home. With no living family or true friends to bid goodbye to, she had made the break from New York, her home, with the understanding that while the fracture still hurt like hell, clean breaks heal faster. Her canine companion preferred the windows down, and Amy willingly complied, enjoying the 80 degree weather blowing through her straight brown hair while it did the same to Shakespeare as his head hung out of the passenger side. He barked into the wind occasionally and slept more often than not. After two overnight stops and frequent pauses to stretch her legs and walk her dog, they had finally arrived in Washington State. Even in late March, the weather was instantly more dreary, more cold and wet than what she was used to. All of her life, Amy was shuttled between California and New York, where seasons came and went in their allotted time frames. But Washington was non-stop rain.

She gently pulled on Shakespeare's leash, guiding him to the ferry that would take them and her car to the house, and frowned slightly as rain fell onto her shoulders. She wore a wool cap and jacket, but had no umbrella. Shakespeare whimpered and scratched on the car door, begging to be let in for the duration of the ferry ride. She obliged, opening the door and let him scurry in, cracking her driver's side window so he could have air. Then she locked the doors and slowly walked to the edge of the ferry. The lenses of her pink-rimmed glasses were foggy and spotted with water, but she felt no urgency to really see anything, so she didn't clean them. Instead, she closed her eyes and breathed in the ominous fog that the ferry was hurtling straight for. Fog not unlike what her life had become, what it had been, for as long as she could remember.

They called it mania, or manic depression. Her moods came and went so quickly, and without so much as a warning for when one mood would wane and the other would wax. Even something subtle to signify the shift would be nice, like how the air tastes a little thick before the clouds roll in, or how a toddler draws in a tiny, sharp breath before they engage in an ear-splitting tantrum. One moment, Amy was content with her life, happy to have lived it for 28 years with the prospect of knowing she had at least 60 more good years ahead of her and pursued hobbies that pleased her to make the best of it. Then in the blink of an eye, she flew into a rage like a witch on a broomstick soaring through lightening-streaked skies to terrorize a village. It had frightened her father, Hollywood's most famous actor and leading man of the 80's and 90's Robbie Fowler, to no end.

But when Amy was young, Robbie insisted to company and relatives that would bear witness to his melodramatic daughter holding her breath until she passed out because he withheld sweets from her that she was just going through 'a phase'. He characterized her episodes as though it was the most normal thing in the world to have to talk his daughter back from her ledge of sanity every time something that she desired was not handed to her on a silver platter. He convinced himself, a single father on the cover of magazines with his emerald eyes, crooked smile and a dimpled chin, that his little munchkin was opportunistic, a performer, just like her old man.

Amy's mother was a tabloid tragedy. Farrah Holt was a brunette Playboy centerfold with an alcohol problem and the most beautiful, doe-like eyes to ever grace the silver screen. Before Robbie Fowler became the most sought after bachelor in all of Hollywood, he was the other half of the Robbie and Farrah love story that captured the hearts of their fans around the world. They were a power couple, never married, but an unstoppable force nonetheless. Drugs were plentiful, sex was explicit, and the fights were infamous. It was a different time, the early 1980's, where such things could be done in the privacy of their realm with little intervention from paparazzi. And then Farrah became pregnant with her and Robbie's first and only child, a baby girl that entered the world wailing endlessly, courageously.

Amy Farrah Fowler. Her cries were the siren song that Robbie would follow into the abyss, would lay down his life for, the sounds that gave his life meaning. But for Farrah, the infant's whimpers and constant need for attention were what ate away at her already limited sanity. The love the couple made had created a life, a life that took the wind out of their sails.

Six months after Amy's birth, Farrah Holt guzzled down two full bottles of red wine before firing up her fully restored 1968 Chevy Camaro, put it in drive, and topped out at 97 MPH, never hitting the breaks and only stopping because she wrapped herself around an oak tree three miles away from her Malibu home.

Robbie never went to identify the corpse, and on the day the memorial was scheduled in Farrah's hometown of Sacramento, he was in New York City, pushing baby Amy's stroller through Central Park, occasionally pausing to admire the new bloom of spring flowers with his infant daughter.

The house was breathtaking, yet intimidating. Save for a strew of beloved house pets growing up, Amy had never cared for anything in her life, and her father knew this. She was a girl of little interpersonal skills, never quite fit the outline for social convention, and was considered an outcast for such. She had maids growing up, therefore never cared to learn how to pick up after herself or cook a meal further than picking up the phone and ordering it. How was she going to maintain this goliath home? Who was going to fill all ten rooms in the house? In her car, she pulled up to the foot of the hill that the house sat on top of. It was enormous, white clapboards with dark, cedar green shutters and a black roof. Two bay windows framed a wide entrance, double doors. A wrap-around porch completed the front end of the house with a swinging bench and two rocking chairs, still propped up like they were being used every day, but the property had been vacant for over twenty years. Shakespeare panted, his heavy tail thumping against the leather seat impatiently as Amy looked down at her printed out maps.

"9996 River Road," she murmured aloud. "This is it, Shakes. Our new home." She shifted the car back into drive and the tires grudgingly made their way up the winding gravel. When she pulled in close, she saw that one of the U-Haul trucks with her furniture was still there. She was cautiously appreciative for the company, no matter that the three men were slightly daunting with their muscles and sun-kissed skin, because it meant she wouldn't be alone when she entered the house for the first time.

Grateful for the short break in the rain, Amy parked the car and hopped out before letting Shakespeare run loose. He headed straight for the lawn right in the front yard and relieved himself in a very ungentlemanly display. She turned away and walked timidly to the back where she saw the three men sitting on the back porch. All three of them jumped up when they saw her, looking slightly guilty.

"Sorry, miss. We were just waiting for the rain to stop so it didn't ruin your stuff," one of them apologized immediately. "We'll get back to work right away."

"No problem," Amy assured them. It wasn't new for people to be timid in her presence. Not only was she the daughter of the late, great Robbie Fowler and Farrah Holt, but she had made a name for herself as well. The media ate up Amy's frequent rehabilitation stints, chocking it up to another Hollywood child gone astray. Amy gave them a meek smile and turned in time to swallow the lump in her throat before it could produce tears. The only person who knew the real reason for Amy's mental problems was fresh in his grave, thousands of miles away from her. "Uh, just let me know when you guys are through," she called over her shoulder, then set off to find Shakespeare. Her Nikes were soaked, just like the bottoms of her jeans as she trudged through the mud and wet grass. She spotted her dog at the bottom of the hill, where she had been just moments earlier as she stared up at her new home. She whistled for him to come closer and then found herself truly taking in the sight before her for the first time.

To the right, she could see the gravel road that they traveled on to get to this place as it twisted and turned down hill into civilization. To the left, she saw an infinite amount of trees. Douglas fir with tall, thick barks tipped with lush green leaves. The immense population of trees was ironically suffocating, and if the sun had been shining it surely would have been blocked out by the crowded huddle surrounding the left side of Amy's property. And dead center between the road and the forest was a vast lake separating her from the little town sitting at the foot of a mountain. She drew in a deep breath, truly moved by the view. Her father had been raised here by his parents, an only child who grew up to be a big movie star. His imagination would have had to been rampant in order to pass the time here in this wilderness with no one but his two parents to entertain. She felt a small tug at the corner of her heart and swallowed. She missed her Pop with every breath she took. She adjusted her glasses, pushing them up her delicate nose as she continued to survey the world in front of her with her father's emerald green eyes.

The movers were gone and Amy wanted wine. She had tea and coffee and plenty of bottled water, but they wouldn't suffice. Now completely alone in her new home, all she could think of was the nosy men from the U-Haul truck that watched her closely, intrusively. Probably wondering if they could get away with asking for an autograph, or maybe they could witness one of the legendary icons of the Hollywood's daughter have one of her famed episodes. She had heard them whispering earlier.

"The little spoiled brat probably drove her father to an early grave. I heard she's loaded now."

"My mom loved the guy. He was like Clooney."

"Better than Clooney."

"Remember how hot her mom was?"

"Aw, man, I beat it to her like three times a day when I was a kid."

"You think she's as loose as the old gal was?"

She found herself on the front porch swing as the drizzle fell and the U-Haul truck drove down the winding road, leaving her behind for good. Shakespeare lied dutifully on his belly at Amy's feet as she swung herself. At first she was put off by the presence of the swing on the porch, but now she relished it. Something about the old squeaks and groans of the old rusty chains supporting her weight while she swung back and forth. Watching the rain fall gave her a sense of peace.

The way watching things catch fire used to bring her peace.

Before she could walk down Memory Lane, Amy shook her head forcefully and rose from her sitting position. "Okay, Shakes, man the fort. I'm headed to town for some booze." She opened the front door to lead her dog inside. "You want anything while I'm out?"

He whimpered lightly, unhappy to be left behind as Amy shut the door behind him, locked it, then walked carefully down the porch steps to her car.

The only chain store in the town of Evergreen Falls was a CVS. Amy said a silent prayer of thanks as she walked in and was embraced by the familiar smell of candy, mixed perfume samples, and bread wafting around in the drug store. She immediately grabbed a basket with wheels and dumped her purse in the front compartment, taking the wool knit cap off of her head and placing it on top of her bag, too. She stood still near the entrance and closed her eyes, running her fingers through her hair to spread the moisture from the rain evenly, and then opened her eyes to see at least four pairs of eyeballs staring right at her. Immediately she shrunk back, realizing that she had been recognized. It was hard hand to be play to be famous for your mental incapacities, but it was the hand she had dealt herself. She stared back at the crowd, all women except for one man, all old and gray and wrapped up in rain-resistant parkas. But their stares weren't of recognition more than they were of confusion and curiosity. Her cheeks suddenly reddening, Amy scolded herself for being so haughty. Of course these mountain folk didn't recognize her—they were only confused about the presence of a new young woman in town. She tightened her lips into a cordial smile, nodded at the old woman closest to her and then pushed her cart forward, in a hurry to be away from the attention. She pulled into an aisle that held the toiletries and she began to fill her cart with essentials.

"Can I help you with anything, sweetheart?"

Amy's eyes snapped up from their downward position and met with frail older woman at least six inches shorter than her. She tried not to look too startled by the woman's small stature. "No, thanks. Just stocking up."

"Okay, let me know if you need help finding anything. I'm Rosey."

"Oh, okay, Rosey. I'm Amy…" but she trailed off for Rosey, bless her heart, was more than likely hard of hearing, as she had already begun to walk away from Amy and her cart. Moving in and out of different aisles, Amy rolled into the one marked 'Office Supplies'. She was joined shortly after by another young woman around her age. They both reached at the same time for the last notebook left on the shelf.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Amy muttered, pulling her hand back to her body.

"My apologies," the blonde woman said at the same time, smiling sheepishly. "You can take it."

"No, that's okay," Amy offered. "Go ahead."

"It's alright, I've got plenty back home. Take it." She pressed her glossy pink lips together and her head tilted to the left, studying Amy closely, who felt herself begin to shrink under the scrutiny again. "You look familiar. You from around here?"

It was the most cliché and common phrase the young woman could have said and Amy found herself smiling at the fact. Of course she wasn't from around here. Her quick-witted, New York upbringing threatened to surface, but she swallowed it down, just like every other emotion inside of her that had been medicated into submission for the last ten years, and produced a friendly smile for the blonde. "No, I'm new to town. I'm Amy."

"Nice to meet you," the blonde said, her voice slightly husky, but not as deep as Amy's own husky tenor. "I'm Penelope." She picked up the notebook of college-ruled paper and extended it to Amy. "Here." When Amy took it, Penelope smiled. "See ya, Amy." And with that, she turned on her heels and walked down the aisle, turning to the left with her own cart and out of Amy's view.

Sighing, she turned her cart around and headed straight for the aisle with the cheap wine bottles.

Within the hour, Amy was drunk. She hadn't unpacked a damn thing except for her store-bought wine, her notebook, and a mechanical pencil, all items she had purchased at the CVS in town. She sat on her favorite arm chair that was crudely placed halfway between the kitchen and the hallway instead of the living room like she had requested of the movers. She had not even walked upstairs yet and could only hope that her mattress was at least in a bedroom and not propped up inside of her bath tub or something. Sighing deeply, she leaned back in her chair and scribbled on the notebook. She wrote the date and her name at the top left corner of the page as if she were taking a test, then stared at the blank paper. She was wholly grateful for Penelope's kind act of surrendering the last notebook on the shelf, because Amy was out of paper to write on.

For as long as she could remember, Amy was a writer. Maybe not an extraordinary one, but an imaginative one. She wrote scripts for her father to read, which he did faithfully. When she was eight, she created a play called The Sonovabitch from Texas, and he had declared it as his favorite, and her best yet. Her main character, Twister Midland, had a twangy accent that was implied, not explained, but Robbie didn't disappoint. He tied a handkerchief around his neck and pretended to throw back shots of whiskey to appease his daughter while engaging in imaginary gun fights with her stuffed animals.

To this day, drunk or sober, sad or happy, Amy wrote plays. She wrote of fairytale endings and mass murders and torrid affairs and life lessons for kids. Crime thrillers and ghost stories and soap opera scripts. But who would read her scripts now? She took a long swig from her nearly empty bottle of white wine and waited for the tears that never arrived, for the lullaby of the alcohol had carried her to darkness long before her emotions could.

When she awoke, her tongue was thick, her breath was sour, and her mind was filled to the brim with murk and mud. But it wasn't morning yet, or at least, the sun had yet to come up. She shivered once; even though she had turned the heat on when she first walked into the house, either it wasn't working properly or the house was just so big that it had yet to warm completely. She sat up slowly, still dizzy from all of the wine, and took in her surroundings. Shakespeare was passed out on his side, snoring deeply beneath his favorite doggy blanket that Amy made sure to bring with them in their road trip to Washington.

The last ten years of Amy's life were a whirlwind of sedation. Years of specialists and psychologists, tranquilizing drugs and rehabilitation. She was accepted into Yale her senior year of high school but Amy never went off to college because of the incident. Instead, she was tutored by teaching assistants hired by her father from New York University, but only to appease her insatiable thirst for knowledge. Never did her coursework go towards a college degree, and she was never graded on any papers she wrote. But she wrote a lot, when she was awarded the privilege of wielding a sharp object, like a pen. Her father and her tutors beseeched her to use her laptop, or a typewriter, but nothing felt better than the scratch of a pen or a pencil on the smooth surface of loose-leaf paper. She couldn't be swayed otherwise.

So in order to get access to her precious pens and paper, she would behave. Take her meds instead of spitting them out, stopped calling her nurse a fat ass through her sloppy tears that she had no idea how they came about in the first place. She stopped trying to light her bedding on fire while she still lied beneath the blankets.

And when those moments of peace lasted longer than a few hours, Amy was able to write. She wrote about characters escaping to faraway lands, places where their fathers didn't hole them up in dungeons because they were ashamed of their crazy daughters.

Robbie Fowler was never ashamed of his daughter, and Amy knew this. But she was crazy. She knew this as well. A lesser man of such rich means would have thrown his daughter in a loony bin and tossed the keys, never to look back. And why shouldn't he? He had an amazing career and more money than he knew what to do with. But instead, he dedicated the last ten years of his life to making Amy comfortable, keeping her head above water so that one day she could become a functioning member of society.

"I'll never blame you, munchkin," he cried softly at her bedside once when he thought she was sleeping. She suffered from great smoke inhalation after starting a fire in Robbie's home in the Hamptons. "You were born this way, and I blame myself. I'm the one who picked your mother. You didn't ask for her genes to be passed down to you."

Amy stood at the mouth of the forest that loomed in her backyard. If she ventured too far in, there would be no guarantee she could make her way back. Having left Shakespeare inside of the house, she would have no sniffing nose to guide her home. That cursed, hollow shell of home with her belongings that barely filled one room. Had her father left this place for her in cruelty? Was this his way of payback after all the pain she had put him through? She couldn't stand another moment alone with her alcohol and writer's block. So dressed in jeans, a black, long-sleeved thermal shirt and her trusty wool cap, she tucked her faithful notebook beneath her arm and pocketed a mechanical pencil then set out. She looked over her shoulder and could still hear her faithful companion's howls of anger and betrayal at being left behind; Shakespeare was always welcome on her adventures. But she couldn't risk his safety if they were to encounter a mountain lion or bear, so she left him plenty of food and water and called her lawyer Valencia Hutchins back in New York to let her know that she was going for a hike, and if she hadn't called by nightfall to check in, send someone for her dog.

"You're so morbid, Amy," Valencia chuckled, but agreed. She knew she was the only person that Amy had come to trust, the only person that wasn't Robbie Fowler. Now that he was gone, Valencia was the only contact Amy had in her cell phone.

She thought of all the horror movies she had seen that started out in the exact situation she was putting herself in, but the pull of the forest, the loveliness of the silence and tranquility that it promised, was enough to convince her to put one foot in front of the other and follow the badly beaten trail. She trekked for a few hundred yards, touching the bark, feeling the moss under her skin but never wiping it away. She brought her fingers to her nose and inhaled. A subtle spray of water coated her face and she imagined it was due to the fact that the sky had torn open and let the rain fall. The lush leaves of the trees above kept the downpour at bay for now as she continued on. It was getting darker, but not colder. There was no wind at all, no sound except for her own ragged breathing.

She began to think maybe she had come too far and it was time to go back. Maybe drinking all day wasn't such a bad idea, hell, it was what she did every day. What she never did, though, was walk into an uncharted forest after arriving in a town she had never been to in her life, with nothing on her but a paper and a pencil. She hadn't even thought to bring her cell phone, sure that the reception would be shitty in the wilderness.

"Stupid!" she cursed aloud, the tears again threatening to fall. Just as she had really thought that maybe this time she would cry, just as the real feelings of abandonment and loneliness and the loss of her father really hit home, Amy stepped into a clearing.

And she wasn't alone anymore.