Penny blew an exasperated breath through her lips. Sheldon had demanded that she take him to the comic book store as Leonard had 'inconsiderately' gone out for a date. It didn't appear to matter to Sheldon that she had just finished what felt like the longest shift in the history of the world, filled with awkward customers rivalling even the good doctor himself. Not only that, but the tips that she had been given were absolutely pitiful in comparison to the level of effort that she had expended.
She had agreed to take him to the comic book store reluctantly, acquiescing only when she could see his agitation levels beginning to head towards the red zone. She knew Leonard had been neglecting him recently, throwing himself into dating since she had ended their relationship. So Penny felt a tiny bit guilty. Only a tiny bit, but the tug on her conscience was just enough for her feet to stop aching.
Doing the quickest outfit change that she could into jeans and a comfortable but close fitting brightly patterned teeshirt, listening to Sheldon cleaning her apartment while he waited for her, Penny shook her head. She had started to get closer to Sheldon recently than she thought possible.
It seemed that the end of her relationship with Leonard had stirred up feelings of friendship and loyalty to her within the tall physicist. That made her annoyance at his demanding ways disappear and a soft smile graced her features.
She slipped on a pair of flip flops, retrieved her friend and they trotted down the stairs to her car. They both got in and she watched Sheldon's face tic as he looked pointedly at the 'check engine' light. She had threatened to punch him in the throat if he mentioned it again and he seemed to be just about keeping himself in check.
They pulled out into traffic in silence and started on the familiar route to the comic book store.
"Penny," Sheldon began a little hesitantly, breaking the silence in the car. "I wish to ask-"
He was interrupted by the loudest bang that he had ever heard. The car went light as it began to spin across the road, the metal screeching in protest. The analytical part of his brain, the one that spoke in the maddeningly calm voice despite whatever was happening to the rest of him, told him that they had been struck by a large jeep which had jumped a red light. It also told him that they would be pinned between the jeep and the wall in a little over six seconds.
The other parts of Sheldon's impressively large brain were trying to calculate ways to get out of the potentially fatal situation. Theory after theory poured through his synapses, calculated and dismissed over and over at a speed of which The Flash would be envious. He looked over at Penny's petrified face as she wrestled with the wheel, pumping the brakes and trying to get their vehicle into a more favourable position.
He felt a stab of admiration pass through the only part of his brain that wasn't working through calculations of variables. She was very resourceful and he had always respected that about her.
With a thud that reverberated through the car and their bodies, they struck the wall hard. Sheldon had relaxed his body to minimize injuries and was remarkably lucky to be on the wall side of the collision, rather than getting the other vehicle impacting into his door. As he realized that Penny would have been on that side, his face dropped and his head whipped up.
Sheldon was bruised and battered. Penny, on the other hand, was far worse.
With a chill running down his spine, he noted that her head lolled in semi-consciousness. Her beautiful face was already showing signs of bruising and blood poured out of a deep laceration on her forehead. As his eyes ran down her body, he could see her arm was at a strange angle, which told him that her collar bone was definitely broken. He looked down and saw that her legs were crushed by the collapsed steering column. She probably had broken femurs.
He felt his heart thudding in his chest. The force that it would take to break femurs would most certainly cause internal injuries. His eyes flicked up and his face gave a small tic that belied the sheer panic about to take hold. He was trapped and Penny was in extremely critical condition. The jeep had them pinned in place. He couldn't do anything, he thought bleakly.
He could see and hear people rushing around outside in the periphery of his attention, but his eyes were fixed on Penny. He gently took her wrist and felt for her pulse. It was thready and weak. He frowned and bit his lip as he gently lowered her hand back to her leg, being careful not to move her any more than was necessary to avoid the broken bones being aggravated further than they needed to.
Before he could allow himself to feel the panic that was building within him and before he could allow the thought that Penny may not in fact be ok and may indeed not survive this he saw flashing lights and heard sirens.
Time finally sped up to normal, instead of the painfully laboured, surreal slow motion bubble that they had been in since the jeep had struck them. Paramedics tried to extract Sheldon first, seeing his distress until he virtually screamed that Penny was in a far worse state and that was, in fact, the cause of his distress.
They couldn't get to either of the pair in the car easily. The fire crew started to move the ruined jeep, taking the driver out on a stretcher. Sheldon's eyes were on Penny, blazing with concern, as the highly trained rescue crew cut the side of her crumpled red car off to get to her.
Without moving a muscle or taking his eyes off his friend, he answered every question that was fired at him by the paramedics. He gave sufficient detail in his responses, no more, no less. He felt as though his brain was on pause and his mouth was moving of its own accord. He felt scraped bare and hollow inside.
After what felt like years, they managed to move Penny on to a stretcher on the ground and started to work on her. Sheldon couldn't see her anymore and could feel the hot burn of panic in his chest. He knew it wasn't logical, but he felt that if he could keep his eyes on her he could keep her in the land of the living with sheer willpower.
With popping and screeching, the metal of the car that held Sheldon in place was cut and removed. He hauled himself out, brushing past the paramedics and ignoring their warnings to get to Penny. The team working on his friend didn't even look up as he came over, wringing his hands worriedly.
Blood pressure and pulse readings were read out between the trained medics. Their faces drew grim lines and Sheldon knew that things were deteriorating for Penny. They injected her with a variety of drugs and quickly hung an IV bag, but the readings on the equipment connected to her on the floor around her were worsening with every moment that passed.
As another injection was fed into the tiny, pale looking woman on the ground, her eyes fluttered open. Sheldon could see agony etched on her features. This seemed to send the medics into overdrive, exchanging frantic words and even more frantic actions.
Sheldon's eyes met Penny's. He saw tears in his friend's eyes and tried to show her how much he cared about her. He felt his stomach lurch as her eyes lost their sparkle and rolled up into her head.
He heard the long beep of her heart giving up.
He heard a failed attempt at resuscitation.
He heard another.
He heard the report that she was dead.
Something long pushed away within Sheldon pulled itself out.
Something new snapped. He felt his heart break.
Disconnected from his body, Sheldon saw himself lean down and push the paramedics out of the way. He pulled the IV out of Penny and threw it to the side. He picked her up gently and tenderly, ignoring the pulling of the fire crew and paramedics. With a speed he didn't know he possessed, Sheldon rose and sprinted away as though Penny weighed nothing.
He watched himself run the couple of blocks back to his apartment, kick the doors nearly hard enough to wrench them off their hinges and sprint up the stairs, two at a time. He kicked the door to Penny's apartment until the lock gave up and allowed him entry. He strode to her bedroom and laid her on the bed gently.
Sheldon's mind reconnected with his body as he knelt on the floor and put one hand on Penny's chest and the other under her shirt on her stomach. He closed his eyes and called up the strange instinct within him that he had suppressed for most of his life.
In his mind, he felt Penny fighting to stay with her body. He knew that she wasn't truly gone. She was just... broken...
Sheldon's hands began to heat up to the point of being uncomfortable. He channelled everything that he had within him, every scrap of love, hope and his formidable intelligence, into the ball of energy that he called up inside himself. With a deep breath, he pushed it towards Penny, visualising the light within him coursing through his veins and out of the tips of his fingers.
He steeled himself for the onslaught of pain as he connected with Penny in a way that he hadn't connected with anyone since he was a small child. He had spent years putting up layers and layers of tough barriers to stop this from happening. But he needed to keep Penny in his life, so he had exploded those barriers without so much as a thought.
He pulled her injuries into himself, starting with her heart. He felt a blossom of pain in his chest as he felt her pulse restart. As the pain started to recede, Sheldon began pulling the lacerations and damage of her internal organs into himself. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he willed himself not to pass out. He couldn't do it too quickly as she would end up... how she was... if he didn't finish helping her and he would probably be in pretty bad shape too.
He let a few long seconds pass as his body healed her injuries within him. He was impatient to carry on and make sure that she would be ok as that was all that he wanted in the world at that moment. However, his logical mind allowed him to wait and gave him the burst of patience that he needed.
Broken bones were what he had always feared as a child. Transferring a broken bone was so much more painful than anything else as he could literally feel the bones within him splintering and grinding against each other. This time, he had no fear and no trepidation. He dragged every last bit of pain and injury into himself. As his collar bone broke, a scream ripped from his throat, but he didn't move his hands away a millimetre.
After that had healed, he hauled himself up on to the bed, not removing his hands from her and not opening his eyes. The femurs would be next and he couldn't be kneeling for that. His eyes fluttered open and he watched with grim fascination as his legs shattered, looking every bit like a time lapse movie of an explosion within his thighs.
He felt a whimper in his throat turn into a grunt of pain as it blossomed, dark and sinister within him. Tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed on Penny's shirt, joining the blood and dirt that was smudged there. He was dangerously close to fainting with the sheer exertion of doing what he was doing.
He used the last of his strength and considerable will power to push the glow within him to his legs to heal their injuries. As the ragged edges of bone pushed against each other on their voyage to reunite, he gave a hiss of pain.
That was the major items dealt with, so Sheldon pulled the last of Penny's pain and injury into himself and felt the last bright sparks dancing around his body. With that, he passed out on the bed, his head falling unceremoniously on Penny's feet.