It was Christmas Eve, and the wheels touched down. Sheldon felt a slight sense of relief at finally landing back in California. He wondered if she would be there to greet him this time, if she ever heard him when he spoke to her. His hopes always rose slightly when he would land back here in this city. He spoke to her at the end of every speech... always told her he was sorry. Whether the words and sound waves ever reached her ears, was unknown, but it kept him going. Kept him moving forward.
As he walked to the baggage claim, he caught himself expectantly looking around, searching his peripheral vision for her so he wouldn't look desperate should she be near. He watched as his one lonely bag kept appearing and disappearing around the luggage carousel, hoping against hope she was only running late...but she never showed. How pathetic he had become. He hailed a cab, allowing himself to think momentarily that she might be at the apartment waiting for him. She never was, but there was a chance this time would be different. The cab came to a stop at 2311 N. Los Robles and Sheldon looked with sadness at the building he once called home. She was nowhere to be seen. The anger at himself welled up as he foolishly thought she would make an exception for this night of all nights.
He moved with a slow purpose, like there were imaginary stones strapped to his limbs. Somewhat glad to be done with the travelling, yet hesitant to return to where it all began. He paid the driver, got his bags, and stood at the doorway for a moment lost in thought. His mind wasn't as sharp as it used to be a few years ago. Half fogged from the drinks he consumed on the flight, half dazed from thoughts of her he could not push out of his mind. He was a man on top of the world. His career at an all time high, he was respected and in high demand all over the globe...and Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, BS, MS, Ma, PhD, ScD and Nobel Prize recipient had never felt lower than he did in this moment.
Finally he moved into the lobby noticing the elevator doors opening and a young couple emerging. A smirk presented itself across his face as he saw the contraption working, but he just turned and faced the stairs and began his ascent. "Some things should never change" he mused. He forced back the tears stinging his eyes as he recalled the many conversations he had on those stairs with her. The times she would find him there, and always offer kind words. He would always use the stairs, the elevator held no memories of her.
With each step upward his heart sank ever further downward. Gone were the friends that had once come to gather and socialize or scheme...one by one they left him and had moved on. Even the one woman whom Sheldon ever called his girlfriend, ironically chose science over him. Sheldon shook his head back and forth as he recalled her moving to the Middle East. Amy didn't have to think long on her options: staying in the states with no funding and a boyfriend that she had to manipulate, or move to an exotic country, research to her heart's content, and be wed to a prince. Well Amy was no fool. And then she was gone.
"It was for the best Amy Farrah Fowler", he spoke aloud. "I could never have given you what you deserved".
For my heart has always only belonged to one woman, and always will.
That left only Penny. Sheldon's heart sank even lower than he thought possible. It's as if the imaginary stones bound to his limbs had suddenly shifted their position to wrap around his heart and lungs and prevent him from breathing. He made it to the landing of the fourth floor and out of habit (he couldn't stop if he tried) he glanced over to 4B half out of his mind thinking that maybe, just maybe she will step through the door, like a time portal that takes you back to better, happier times. But she never does, having left months and months earlier, to where, he did not know.
His best friend. His neighbor. His confidant. His mentor. When everyone else had moved on to other positions in other parts of the world, she stepped in and filled the void in Sheldon's life. Ever true and ever loyal, she drove him to and from work. She took care of him when he was sick. They did everything together, and where one was lacking, the other compensated so that together, they worked like a well oiled machine. They became truly the best of friends. Sometimes she would cook his favorite meals, and sometimes he would actually take her out to a nice restaurant. They were opposite poles, but always met in the middle, balanced perfectly by their union. He was her shining knight "Sheldor the Conqueror", and she his warrior "Queen Penelope". They would laugh at themselves sometimes as they pretended to be those characters in real life as they argued about nothing and everything. He in turn continued to challenge her at every turn, and he respected her more than he admitted. Sheldon had long ago determined that she was a master at the game of life, and he would forever wonder at her in awe how she moved gracefully through it, like a bird in flight.
Sheldon opened the door to his apartment and was greeted with an eerie darkness, the only light coming from the small bulb over the stove and the blinking signals coming from a forgotten stereo. He dropped his bags at the door, not even bothering to close it and moved towards the cabinet above the refrigerator in five long strides. He quickly mixed a drink and downed half of it, letting the hot liquid burn his insides as if it could burn away the hurt and the pain and the regret, as if it could make him feel alive. He knew it was pointless, but he did it anyway. He took up drinking to get his mind off Penny. Sometimes it would work. Sometimes when he was busy travelling around the globe it would work. But tonight it would take all the liquor in all the world to force that woman out of his mind. Gone was his youth, his obsessions, his compulsions, his madness some would say. Only to be replaced by another type of madness. Sheldon just stood at the counter with a slight sway while he closed his eyes and his mind drifted off to that dreadful day...
He plays over and over in his mind what they were to each other, he had never opened up or been that close with anyone in his life. He remembers what he said, what he could never undo... she had needed him...just once... for she received bad news from home. But he had proved string theory, and the words he said to her...he cringed at how easily he had fallen back to his rhetoric of arrogance and superiority. His cursed eidetic memory would never let him forget her words. Would never let him forget the look of pain in her eyes. She had said she loved him. But Sheldon was merciless with his verbal abuse.
He walked around the bar and threw the glass across the room and watched as it shattered against the wall seemingly in slow motion. "You stupid, egomaniacal, selfish, bastard!" he shouted to only himself. He could have been there for her, for just a few weeks. His formulas were not going anywhere. It wouldn't have mattered when he published them. He slid down to the floor and finally gave in to his emotions and lay his head on his knees. "God please give me another chance"...he whispered to himself through tears. "Please, if you exist, hear me and give me just one more chance..."
Her final words played over in his mind:
"All these years I spent loving you and never being able to have you. All the times I wanted to put my arms around you and hold you and make you realize you will always have me, you can always depend on me. That you will never be alone. All this time I was trying to get through to you, slowly, on your terms, but it looks like it was all in vain."
the tears streamed down her face and she choked back one last sob and dropped her head.
"God how I love you" she whispered. "I've loved you from the start. I would have waited for you forever...
And with that she was down the stairs and gone. And Sheldon had watched her go.
There were times he thought he would die from holding his breath while surrounded by her beauty, or that his heart would burst with pride whenever she smiled at him for something he said or did. But he never once thought she reciprocated those feelings. To hear her say it through her tears as she walked out of his life, filled Sheldon with a pain, a regret of wasted time and wasted moments. She should have been beside him while he travelled the world. She should always be beside him.
The tears were streaming down his face now as he sat on the floor, drunk and disheveled and alone. He had let her slip away. He had been the arrogant selfish ass everyone always told him he was. He hadn't been there for her when she needed him, Penny, the one person who he could count on for anything, who didn't leave when everyone else had moved on. He had been a weak man, falling victim to the accolades and admiration he was receiving from total strangers, rather than trying to be the man he should have been for the best thing that ever happened to him. Sheldon looked around his apartment and visibly shook from the sobbing. All the memories were floating around him like ghosts come to taunt him at his weakest hour. The years and years he spent here with friends, the discussions, the games, the dinners, the happiest times of his youth...and the moment Penny walked through the door and called him a beautiful mind. She had ended up being his companion through it all. God how he loved her. "Oh Penny, I'm so sorry" he cried as the tears fell and soaked his shirt. " I'm so, so sorry Penny...please God, please. If I never see her again, just let her know how sorry I am."
After having sat on the floor, for how long, he didn't know, he managed to get himself up and turned the TV on for some noise to stop playing the scene over and over again in his head. He walked over to the window and opened it for some fresh air. He gave a somewhat drunken chuckle to himself as he remembered Penny throwing in Ipod out that very window. "What a spit fire that woman is" he thought, choking back the emotions rising once again. He fumbled around for his cigarettes and found his pack all crumpled in his inside jacket pocket. There were two left that weren't broken in half. He lit one and took a deep drag and held it in, exhaling only after he felt he had done himself the most damage with the toxic vapor. He didn't know how to right the wrong. He didn't know how to move on. He didn't know what to do other than sit here and smoke and drink and cry until he died...
Sheldon sat and stared off into nothing as the television droned on. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to get through this one night and make it till morning without losing his sanity. He turned the napkin over and over again in his hands, the one he took with him everywhere... the gift that started it all... He couldn't get the memories of Penny out of his head, the way they would watch movies together, eat and play games, talk, share things about their day. She was so much a part of everything in his life, and this apartment was bringing it all back like a wave crashing against the shore.
He glanced at his watch and noticed it was nearing 2 a.m. He wondered where Penny was, who she was with, if she was asleep and what she was dreaming right this minute...He couldn't bear the thought of her moving on and being with a man and not ever thinking of him. His heart started beating faster, his chest constricted, a knot formed in the center of his gut. He knew the beginnings of a panic attack and he welcomed it to come. After a few minutes the pain and anxiety would subside and perhaps he could finally get some sleep, but the minutes droned on and 30 minutes later he still felt like he would expire there on the couch, but death would not come.
He sank to his knees and sat on his heels and rocked back and forth. He put his elbows on the table and prayed again to the deity he knew not whether heard him. "God please, please help me." His head was bowed, he just spoke over and over to no one "Penny, please forgive me, God please tell her how sorry I am. I am so, so sorry. Please tell her how much... how much I love her."
His head was bowed down and the tears were falling and he was a wreck, he wiped his face on his sleeve. And just as he thought he could not stand one more moment of anguish, he heard an angel's voice, as if he had finally left the world of the physical and was gliding towards an existence faced after death. He froze completely, straining to hear it and wanted to know what was beckoning him...
"It's OK sweetie, I'm here, it's OK. Sheldon... Sheldon sweetie..." it echoed... He thought that an odd thing for an angel to say so he lifted his head ever so slowly and turned it to see the angel sitting on the floor next to him through blurry tears, he tried to focus, she looked just like Penny, maybe there really was a heaven...and then the angel tentatively moved her hand to brush away the tears from his face, to smooth back his hair, and her hands framed his face and held him and she looked into his eyes.
Sheldon's pain departed him, just as words in the sand fade as the waves draw them back into the ocean. His heart beat so hard he thought surely it would burst, this time from elation rather than of longing. He inhaled sharply as he had been holding his breath. He stared at her not wanting to move, fearing that he had finally fallen asleep and this was a dream. He wanted to stay in this dream forever, gazing into her eyes. She moved towards him and rested her forehead to his, and said "It's OK , I'm here. It's OK now. I'm not going anywhere. Not tonight of all nights" and the tears fell even harder, but now they were mixed with hers, and he wrapped his arms around her and drew her into him, never wanting to let go, holding on to her like life itself. "Penny, oh God Penny. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me... please... I love you...I love you so much."
He didn't care about the words. He would say them over and over. He was not going to live with regret another moment. "please don't leave me. Please, please forgive me" and he pulled away and he looked at her and she was crying and he was crying and he could hear all the words she couldn't say in her look, and it was permission for him to finally give himself over, he put his hands on her face, and kissed her tears, kissed her eyes, kissed the corners of her mouth, slowly, slowly then her lips, at first, as though she would break, then with more urgency. And for the first time in his entire life, all thoughts ceased to be. His mind was a blank, and all that mattered was his physical need for her like air to breath and he let his body overtake his actions and they rose together while still in an embrace, and he kissed her fervently, like a hunger, he could not get her close enough to him. He lifted her off her feet, and carried her down the hall to the bedroom, as if floating, his steps not felt as the fire burned between their lips. They became as one there, speaking to each other through their kisses, the way they touched, the way they gazed, saying everything they should have said to each other all these years, but without words.
They made love, and it was desperate, as if they had only one night left on earth, as if a clock were ticking down the moments they had with each other, forcing as much passion in as they could. Sheldon tried desperately to show her what she meant to him. He knew the mechanics and his heart was guiding his efforts. Everything with Penny came naturally to him... The tears falling now from exhaustion and of release, of pent up need and longing finally coming to fruition.
Afterwards, he held her in his arms and kissed her gently, tenderly, everywhere, and continued again, slower this time, and they made love through the night, exploring and experimenting and becoming less than two people, but one entity to where Sheldon almost couldn't tell where Penny ended, and he began. It was that beautiful...Sheldon never wanted to let her go. And to ensure he would never lose her, he swore to make her his wife. And his wife she became, and at his side she always stayed.
And so on that one lone Christmas Eve night, Sheldon had prayed, and his prayers had been heard, and they had also been answered. And Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper did not try to solve the mystery of that one unknown, but allowed himself to believe on faith...and in miracles. How could he not, for he re-lived one, each time he looked deeply into his wife's beautiful green eyes.