TheDarkestShinobi: I saw this poem and was hit with inspiration for a little BBT fic with a lot of characters. It's RajxLucy, Lenny, Howard and Bernadette, Shamy and a little one sided LesliexSheldon.
Each chapter is a line in the poem.
Chapter 1: "I am growing out my hair to teach myself patience. I'm going to cut it to teach myself loss."
Leslie doesn't feel, not for them; that's the problem.
She remembers being the bright eyed eager new face at the university, and she remembers that she thought the dorks were funny and that the tall one should be hers. He was handsome and quirky and broken in the ways that she thought could fix her. She remembered feeling then. He rejected her without her having to ask. He took one, maybe two looks at her and decided she wasn't worth it.
She waited a bit, until their first conference together before approaching him again. She was being published and honored and maybe, she hoped, it would have been enough for a second look without a scalding remark. It wasn't, he had listened to her practiced speech and locked eyes with her with a flat mouth.
"It's about time, isn't it?"
She should have expected it. She heard lots of things about it. She pulled back from him then and hated him. She called him dumbass because he had to be not to see her, brilliant and wonderful and wanting. She insulted him, because one day she might hurt him back. She worked and worked because she didn't need him to recognize her.
She doesn't.
She's been over him for a while. At least she thinks so; it's hard to tell with boys.
Amy came around and Leslie felt sympathetic, because Sheldon didn't do relationships. Then, Sheldon did and Leslie discovered her problem had been a lack of patience. It had always been a weakness. She jumped to Leonard, to Howard. She had tried to make him hurt, get him jealous but she never thought to be patient and get him interested. In hindsight, it might have worked wonderfully, but slow and patient? Bending to someone else's will wasn't her style, it would never be.
She could do with some patience. She had learned some when she grew out her hair. It was nice and long. It took a long time and some awkward phases before she found comfort. It took longer to wash, to brush. It had to be carefully kept in her lab. She learned about braids and higher ponytails. She leaned that if she tilted her head in just the right way it would fall over her shoulders or bounce when she danced. She had grown to love it.
Unfortunately, today was about loss.
She lost Leonard all on her own, blamed Penny and it faded from her mind. She lost Howard on her own. She pushed him away. Then she blamed him. Then she blamed Bernadette. Still, she never felt their loss, never cried over them, any of them. It made her feel like she lacked something basic, something human.
She grabs the scissors as she looked at the mirror.
She never had Sheldon. She let Leonard go. She pushed Howard away. Yet, none of them gave her the sinking feeling she has right now. It's apprehension. It's fear. She doesn't want to lose her hair. She runs her fingers through it one last time knowing she shouldn't. It'll just be worse on her. She feels like crying and it's such an odd feeling that she laughs. She looks to the mirror again and wonders if she's already learned the lesion, but she hasn't. She needs to lose something to learn it. She closes her eyes and breathes out.
"Well, it was fun." She speaks to herself in the mirror, "but it wasn't going to last. I knew that from the start." She cuts; she cuts and cuts until she doesn't recognize herself. She thinks of Sheldon. She thinks of Leonard. She thinks of Howard. She tries to tie the sadness to them. It looks a bit like a pixie cut, and she could rock it. Still, it's not the same. She drops the scissors as she let herself cry.
She knows loss now, and she wishes she didn't.
TDS: Thoughts?