Hello there, you lovely people. I've been working on this for a while now, trying to make it awesome. Set early season nine which is, of course, nonexistent. All ready? Okay, now onto the fic!
farewell at dusk (i have your shadow to dance with)
chapter one: sunshine is far to come (so heed my pretty whispers)
It is raining, this early Sunday morning in Pasadena. People are blurry edges, lines veering off course, running and dribbling across the canvas and bound to colour beauty with their gray; things no one cares about no matter what their plight may be.
He is sitting in the car, front seat, as always, and he is pressing his body against the door, smudging erratic equations in the condensation that is building up on the window.
People have tried to talk to him all morning, since this day a week ago, in fact. He will not respond to them—he'll either distract Penny with advanced mathematics, or not answer Leonard at all.
They have learned to accept such behaviour from him; it is even possible that they think he's reverting back into his old self. Even the hyperactive Penny has stopped whispering her drawls of hey, sweetie? in his ear when she thinks he might be not listening; she was harder to dissuade than even Leonard, although the latter does still frown at him underneath sketched eyebrows, forehead bunching into long lines.
Which is what he is doing right now, he observes in his peripheries, but the man's gaze does not wander from the road long enough each time to cause alarm, so he remains exactly as he is and Leonard will most likely never know that he is watching and noting such things.
Perhaps they don't understand. No, he is certain they don't, but that certainty only extends as far as by how much they do and don't understand, which is something he has yet to realise. But nevertheless it doesn't bother him, because it isn't his job to care about these people and not theirs to care about him. Which doesn't stop them, he reminds himself, and maybe a different person, any person other than himself would think that these people who were trying so hard to even look at him before he dodged such stares; perhaps that person would think they need some form of comeuppance, a reward, something as little as a word of greeting as they sit down and eat Chinese food next to him.
But he is not a different person, or even just any other person, and if things like these ever sidle up on his thinking they are shut down and he will remind himself of just how much it is pouring outside, and he will run his latest hypothesis over in his mind, back and forth until any of these thoughts are eradicated beyond ever existing.
But he isn't thinking of these things, not currently. He's thinking of just what things must qualify to receive a fresh cheesecake as opposed to a stale cheesecake from terrible waitress Penny, because apparently being robbed of his very own battle ostrich does not register high enough on the spectrum.
Perhaps there are very few things in this world deserving of a fresh cheesecake from his frustrating neighbour; but she has seemingly deemed this occasion deserving enough, because sure enough there is a cheap artificial strawberry cheesecake, fresh, sitting in his fridge back at 4A.
He likes this silence that surrounds their group, it drapes heavy like a cloak, circulating the atmosphere of the car. No one expects anything from him; no exhausting social conventions to follow, no awkward small talk to be passed out and changed over for the possibility at a real conversation.
He still sighs, and blinks as yet another film of rain coats the window he continues to stare out of. There is only one thing about this silence that bothers him; and he tries to turn car wheels and stones into clickety-clacketing steel wheels on polished rails, but rails remind him of trains and trains remind him of brownie and brownie sends a magnitude of things misfiring around in his brain.
And he is afraid he's found the things he's being silent for.
He wipes away another failed equation with the bottom of his palm. He isn't sure whether his inaccuracy is on purpose, or if his advanced brain is failing him—perhaps, on some level, he's trying to make himself laugh.
He can't tell.
And he tries, but fails, because he's already come upon the topic and he is physically incapable of striking it away from the records of his mind.
Because he can't help himself and because the smallest part of him might possibly like the fact that he is physically incapable of such things, he begins to think of a series of days, events, but he can't decide whether it started two weeks or five years ago.
Five years ago, the first time he sees her is in a coffee shop. She is somewhat short, bespectacled, and has freckles scattered in sporadic places all over her body. Her lips keep curling and ticking up her face, and perhaps underneath her sweatered exterior she has that same brand of social anxiety that he does; this is probably the thought that most drives him to offer her a beverage.
That, and she's already gotten straight to the point and forbidden anything such as touching or more, which is another thing to make him think that perhaps she feels things the way he does when he does feel anything. The only reason he is there is by blackmail of Koothrapali, means of which are a dirty sock.
Perhaps, looking back, a mind such as his should have known this was just the beginning of the storm.
He's learned to separate himself from things such as emotions, has learnt this a long time ago. But some things, he's also learned, can bring out these reckless, primitive feelings in people no matter how much of their life they've spent denying such things ever exist.
There are some things that can bring this out in him; be it a moonlighting waitress moving in next door, a squinting homunculus always by his side no matter what the strife, or a bespectacled woman with many, many sweaters and not a lot of exposed skin.
He's learned to accept such things.
This, of course, does not mean he is obliged to like it, although sometimes his analytical brain will jar on something one of the others has said, and perhaps only then, only when the calculating side of him has shut down momentarily, perhaps it's then that he'll smile, one of those nervous smiles he has and has never been able to change.
But then, this also means admitting there is indeed another side to him; and maybe then admitting that this side has grown larger over the last nine years of his life. Which he has avoided doing, even if it's just something limited to the privacy of his own thoughts. Because he's never been good at letting go, unless he is certain it will be for the better; and this is very unclear territory he is wading through, though he just seems to be going deeper and further into it without any mind of his own, and he cannot stop regardless of whether or not he is fighting it.
Two weeks ago, he wakes up in the middle of the night. Amy's lying curled up on his couch, because he's been running a fever for the last week and she's insisted on looking after him, despite his saying that Leonard could do it.
She threw arguments in his face, the fact that Leonard had a wife now and doesn't even live with him anymore; threw articles of the Relationship Agreement at him, and with her quoting things that he himself had written, he found he couldn't refuse her any longer. And despite his arguments of ancient traditions and protecting oneself from marauders, she has arranged herself on the right side of the couch, her head facing the door.
Her legs curl up and away from his spot, as he moves closer.
He sits down, and hears her murmur things in her sleep; he rests two fingers on her ankle, whispers back things like shh, shh.
She stirs, babbles sleepy utterances again, and that part of him shuts down and he can't help himself; he smiles.
He feels cold seep through his fingers, his palm pressed against the glass.
Howard and Bernadette have a child, Raj has since repaired things with Lucy, Leonard and Penny are married. And he suspects more, because for three weeks straight she has been crashing into his apartment in the early morning, and he hears retching noises from the open bathroom. Afterwards, she always grabs him by the shirt, hisses two or three choice words, and threatens to pummel him to death with his own Star Wars memorabilia if he dare breathe a word of this to Leonard.
These people, revolving around him, bursts of light and air and clarity; they've moved on with their lives, without him. And he's always thought that this was okay, that he was going to be okay, because it's not just the fact that he never used to care about them and so he shouldn't now; it's the fact that as long as he has Amy everything can remain at least partly affixed to its axis.
And it was, every week that went by and Leonard wasn't there, or Penny wasn't stealing his wifi, everything seemed alright, because she would pop her head in almost everyday, and call or text when she couldn't do that. But it was alright, and he was sane, and she was the one who kept him that way.
He blinks, then sighs. He tries to look past the fog cloaking the land, the air, the city, cloaking the people who are just silhouettes to him. He tries to look past it, see truth beyond cloud. He fails.
Five years ago, it is made plain to him that his friends are immature.
He likes Amy; probably more than he's ever liked any woman, aside from his mother, which includes his sister and Penny.
He cannot stress the boy slash friend slash girl slash friend status that exists between him and Amy, he can't stress it enough and his friends still don't seem to be getting the message. In fact, he has only seen her three times in real life; the rest is put down to text and email.
But he does like her, he really does.
The rain is still pattering, the wheels are still turning, and the silence is still in place.
He starts thinking of parallel universes, worlds outside of this mist that coats like ash. He thinks of the theories that surround them, all the different possibilities, all that could be if he were just born into a different dimension.
He sighs. Amy's always said that sighing is his passive-aggressive tell, but then she always points out, with a smile, that there aren't very many passive-aggressive things about him. He's concise; to the point, she says.
Raindrops are spraying down, harsher now, and he's starting to wonder what life without it must sound like. Amy always liked the sound of rain; she says it's soothing, and she's always liked an umbrella, and not the cheap kind either. She says big and grand, or no dice. And he isn't sure when he stopped to learn such trivial things about her, but what he does know is he isn't bothered by such pointless information; it's soothing him, now, just as the rain does for her.
He traces another equation against the window, then rubs it away.
Two weeks ago, her face is like a supernova. Completely alight, happy and excited and beautiful. Because that's the thing about Amy Farrah Fowler—she's beautiful. He's only recently realised this; it's a sneaky beauty, grazing shadows until it has enough courage to show itself. But once it does, there is no not seeing it anymore, and to be honest, you won't want to.
But she is. She is beautiful.
And he can't even remember what she's talking about to make her so happy; all he sees is her smile, her green eyes, and that beauty.
He's still thinking about parallel universes, infinite possibilities, and Amy's still whispering in the back of his head.
Are we better, walking away from this while we can? she had asked him one morning; it was out of the blue, but even beautiful mind, socially inept Sheldon Cooper could see tears sticking in her eyelashes, flush contrasting her pale skin.
He had thought about it, but only for a moment. No, is his answer. No, we are not.
He's not sure how sound that reasoning is, now.
His seatbelt is straining against his skin, he tries to loosen it. He blinks against a sudden burst of wet that coats the window, and he begins to wonder about things he never thought he would be thinking about, ever.
He wonders, if in a parallel world, just in any different world, if he and Amy can love each other in harmony, if there is any version of him that's sure he truly loves her; if there is any version of her that's sure she truly loves him.
Because now, in this car, with these people and none of them are Amy, he thinks he will never be sure, because it's his fault, and he has denied himself such a chance.
His seatbelt is still too tight, and there are miles left to go.