Broken Threads

A/N. I will warn everyone upfront, this will not be my typical story. Starting about half way through, there will be much more angst in this one. This story is based on another fan fic, a story that is well known in the Lenny fandom. I've jokingly called this a fan fic of a fan fic. I've talked to the author of the previous story and sent him the outline for it. After reading the outline, and discussing it with me, he has given me his blessing (and seemed enthusiastic).

If you aren't aware of which story this comes from, don't worry, you don't need to know that story to follow this one. Think of this as a prequel of the other story. My story is about the various actions and events that basically lead to the next story.

This story is based on bits and pieces scattered throughout the original story. What I've done, is taken those scattered bits and pieces, pulled them together, then fill in what happened between those references and also go into those references in more depth. If you've read the original story it will be come very apparent, rather quickly, which story I'm writing the prequel to. If you haven't read it, as I said, don't worry, you don't need to have read it, to enjoy this story.

The Prologue starts late in 2012, which is halfway through season six. While the story proper starts in January 2012, which is halfway through season five. However, there are obviously elements of this story that are AU and some of the events of both season five and six are changed or eliminated. Other elements are still there (Howard going to space, for example). I've compressed the early season 5 timeline a bit, Leonard and Penny get back together about four weeks earlier, after Ornithophobia"(in this story "Recombination" doesn't exist and "Beta Test" is moved to just after "Ornithophobia".

I want to thank Hokie3457 and TBBT78 for looking over the first drafts of this story, to keep me centered and for giving me some really worthwhile suggestions. And bfm for doing the copy editing (with some suggestions also). Without them, I'm quite sure I would be so far along with this. Well, that's enough of me, here is the story, I hope you enjoy it.

Prologue

December 25, 2012. JFK International Terminal 7

The man slowly walked along concourse seven, looking for something. He wasn't very tall, dressed in jeans and an open grey hoodie, with black and white sneakers on his feet. His thick, curly brown hair along with his thick black glasses, framed his face. A green shirt, with what appeared to be a triangle on it, was under the hoodie. The strap of his messenger bag was over his left shoulder, the bag laying along his right side.

He noticed a map of the concourse on the opposite wall and walked over to it. He peered at the map, then looked around for a few seconds. Repeating the actions a second time seemed to give him his bearings as he turned and started walking, backtracking toward entrance to the terminal where he came in. After a few seconds he found what he'd been looking for, the entrance to British Airways First Class lounge.

Approaching the entrance, he passed the large ad board near the entrance. It was an ad for Cinderella, a new Broadway show scheduled to open in March. He didn't even bother glancing at the ad, he simply entered the lounge, walked up to the bar, and ordered a Guinness. It was something he had picked up since his decision to apply for the open position at Oxford, figuring if he was going to be living in England, he should drink their beer. Paying for the beer, he took it to the table near the window.

He put his drink on the table, removed his messenger bag, then sat down. He checked his watch, and found he had over four hours before his flight. He sat back and looked out of the window at the runway, and watched the planes taking off and landing. As he had done many times during the last week, he was also thinking, should I call her? His immediate response, as it had been all week was, why bother? She hadn't answered in over a month, why would she now?

Maybe she'd been told he was leaving, or maybe, she would wonder why he was calling after four weeks. No, that can't be it, she already knows I'm leaving, and she hasn't bothered to call since that last phone call with her. Maybe it was because she didn't know my new phone number and email address. Dammit, none of the old gang know my number or email, but she wasn't even sending something to his old email account.

I shouldn't have pushed her. Telling her to go, telling her not to worry, that things would work out. She was willing to stay in Pasadena, why didn't I listen to her? She offered to take me with her, maybe I should have taken a sabbatical and gone with her. Dammit, I should have never let her go by herself.

No, he thought, shaking his head, there is no reason to call her. Besides, what the hell would I say to her? I guess the main thing is, there is simply nothing left to say. She has a new boyfriend, she's at the beginning of what now looks like a successful career. Besides, she probably doesn't want to talk to me. I'm not part of her life anymore, what right do I have to call her?

She has her new life, and I'm heading to England for my new life. I'm getting away from all the memories, because I couldn't live where all those memories were.

Again, he shook his head, How did it ever come to this…from that start, what, five years ago? His mind drifted back, what was the turning point? What was the reason this turned out to be such a disaster?

Before she moved in, it had been, in some ways, an idyllic life he had been living.

Leonard Hofstadter had just gotten his PhD and had been offered a post-doc position at the university. He had two friends, he had met within two weeks of arriving at Cal Tech. Dr Rajesh Koothrapolli, an astrophysicist, and Howard Wolowitz, an aerospace engineer, both of whom also worked at the university and had many of the same interests as Leonard. The three of them had become a small, fairly tight knit group of three.

He had found a flyer on the university bulletin board for an apartment in Pasadena, near enough to the university at 2311 N Los Robles Blvd. The current resident, a Dr Sheldon Cooper, also worked at the university and Leonard quickly found out that Sheldon was rather quirky.

The "Die Sheldon, Die" painted on the bedroom wall gave him pause, but the apartment was rather inexpensive. In addition it was the best one he had seen, and he knew several other academics, who were a bit off center, so he took it. It took a while for him to get used to Sheldon, but his other friends helped to soften the rough edges of living with the peculiar physicist.

The three of them soon found that Sheldon, for all his idiosyncrasies, also had most of the same interests as they did, and while it hadn't been easy, Sheldon had become part of their group and eventually, his best friend.

Mostly at Sheldon's insistence, they had set up a schedule that they followed, almost religiously, it gave a nice structure to their lives. The four of them had, for a couple of years, spent most of their free time together.

Their work at the university; board and computer games; comic books; and science fiction books, TV, and movies were things in which they were all interested. They enjoyed building their lives around all of it, giving them what seemed like a perfect life.

But, for three of them, there was always something missing. All but Sheldon wanted some sort of a relationship with a woman, but there were problems. Raj suffered from selective mutism and couldn't talk to women. Howard acted sleazily toward women, always trying to hit on them, which drove them away. Leonard had had a couple of relationships, but neither of them lasted very long, and he wasn't comfortable in trying to start a relationship.

And then SHE moved in across the hall. He would always be able, in his mind, to see her that first time through her door. Although he liked to say he fell in love with her that day, he knew now, at that point it was more a physical attraction, rather than love. But, even there, he had been attracted to those other women before, but both had taken some time. The attraction to her had been immediate and overwhelming.

Her name was Penny, and she had just broken up with her previous boyfriend. She worked as a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory, and was trying to become an actress. She was very outgoing, friendly and was socially so much more adept than any of the guys were.

For that first year, all he did was pine after her. If she needed something, he was there to help her get it. There were fumbling attempts at asking her out, but nothing really serious. Then, after a particularly bad breakup of hers, he had managed to gather enough courage to ask her out. To his astonishment, she agreed to go out with him.

While the date went well, they each had insecurities which prevented a second. While they remained friends, they went on to date others. Penny dated several different guys, and Leonard had a brief relationship with a medical doctor. That changed when the owner of the comic book store went on a date with her. His friend was very similar to Leonard, and it puzzled him as to why she would go out with his friend.

His friend had explained to Leonard that after their second date, they had started kissing and were making out in his car, when Penny had called out Leonard's name. Leonard was very happy upon hearing this. However, any kind of relationship was put on hold when he left with his other three friends to the arctic, where they would be doing experiments. Before he left, she bought him a blue blanket, with sleeves.

Upon returning, she immediately made her feelings known. He had given her a snowflake preserved in acrylic, which she treasured. They started a relationship that lasted for nine months. Then Leonard told her he loved her, a mistake he regretted almost instantly, as she either wasn't ready or couldn't say it back, resulting in her breaking up with him. After some awkwardness, they had managed to stay friends. And, while they both still had feelings for each other, they kept quiet about it and went back to dating other people.

While Penny had scattered dates, Leonard had a serious relationship with Raj's sister, Priya. Penny kept quiet about her feelings, regretting not saying anything to him, before Leonard and Pryia started their relationship. The other members of the group knew if Penny had wanted, she could have broken Priya and Leonard up, just by telling Leonard she wanted to start dating again.

But Penny didn't want to do that, and tried to keep her feelings for Leonard to herself. While she kept them from Leonard, her friends caught glimpses of her true feelings. Hiding those feelings made her despondent, which led to her to begin to drink, sometimes heavily. One night, after finding out Leonard had moved in with Pryia, she drank to the point of blacking out and woke up the next morning in Leonard's bed, with Raj. That same night Leonard found out Priya was leaving to go back to India and left to spend the night in 4A. This led to Leonard being there the next morning, when Penny and Raj came out to the living room together. Leonard was crushed by this and tried to keep the relationship with Priya going long distance.

While still with Priya, Leonard met a woman and they spent some time at Leonard's apartment making out. Later, Leonard went over to her house to have sex. But he felt guilty and couldn't do it, so he returned home and called Priya to confess. It was then that he found out Priya had begun seeing her previous boyfriend, and had actually had sex with him. This lead to his breaking up with Priya in early October.

Upon hearing this, Penny took a chance and told Leonard the real reason she broke up with him. She didn't want to lead him on, because she wasn't sure she could ever say she loved him. She also told him about how her feelings for him had never gone away. How the last year had been very difficult for her, especially seeing him date Priya. She finally told Leonard the whole story of what had happened that night with Raj. Leonard, although relieved to hear all of this, was a bit hesitant to get back together with her.

A couple of weeks later, Penny had asked Leonard to go to the movies as friends. They spent the night trying to make the other jealous by talking with other people. Luckily, after getting home they talked about it, and as they talked they both realized they wanted to try again, but didn't want to have the relationship fail, as it had previously.

So they discussed some ideas to get their relationship to work. They talked about taking it slow, try to work on their relationship. They even came up with a name for it, they called it a beta test. If one of them thought there was some sort of problem, they would "report" the problem and then talk about it, trying to come to a solution. Taking it slow would also keep them from rushing into sex as they had the first time.

Things went very well, and they quickly started working out problems which had derailed their previous attempt at a relationship. By December, their resolution to keep from having sex had broken down, and they added that additional physical component to their relationship. Fortunately, their work at correcting their problems was well along, and the addition of sex seemed very natural.

It was going so well, that around Christmas Leonard started thinking about them getting married, and a few years after possibly starting a family with her. But, he hesitated saying anything because he knew of Penny's problems with committing. So he kept quiet and bided his time.

Then, in January, Penny got an audition for a new sit-com…

That's where everything changed, thought Leonard. That was the point that led to me being here today…

A/N

I debated waiting to publish this until I was completely finished. I hate having a story hanging. Then I thought, I plan on finishing this, so if there are places where there is a period of time before publishing the next chapter, that was OK. In the end, I decided on a combination approach. I currently have 20 chapters written (well 19 and this prologue. For those counting, that's 50k words in not quite three months), so if something delays me writing, I still have enough written to publish every Monday for about four and a half months. If it comes down to it, I can publish every two weeks, instead of once a week, until I catch up.