a/n – The opinions expressed within this fic are very definitely those of the author. This is as near as I am willing to come to the utterly toxic crapfest that is canon without protective clothing. Frankly, I think 'Lorro' and 'Bilpo' deserve far worse than being beaten around the head with an iron bar.
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Penny steps out of the staff entrance, and pulls her jacket a bit tighter. It's cold out here this evening. She walks briskly down the alley, a little wary. It looks like some moron has lit a firecracker in one of the dumpsters, little drifts of charred garbage and a splash of metal up the wall. She hopes that doesn't mean they've done anything in the parking lot – she really can't afford a car bill. Heck, she's skating by on her car insurance. And her health insurance. And her rent.
Everything has just been such a wretched mess over the last year or so. Her acting career, such as it was, has basically disappeared. Her old friends have all pretty much disappeared, too. She likes Bernadette and even Amy well enough, but it isn't quite the same. She couldn't even hold onto Leonard - she's not proud to realise that a lot of her pissy behaviour towards him and Priya is because it damn well shouldn't have been so easy for him to move on and trade up, and leave her with the same round of dumbass dipshits. The smarter guys never seem to want to talk to her – heck, no guy she knows ever seems to want to just talk to her. She amends that thought – one guy did. But even that has changed. There's always a third wheel around now, and it seems increasingly to be her.
She can't seem to get a grip on any of it. She makes stupid impulsive decisions, that leave her with yet another pair of shoes she doesn't need, or another guy who gives her a dud phone number. Sometimes, it feels like she's stuck recycling scenes from some tired old script, a dreary round of the crappy job and the crappy men, with nothing to look forward to but years of the same. Like she's been reduced to a bit part in her own life, the dumb blonde who doesn't even rate a surname in the credits...
Something drops down off the fire escape in a dramatic swirl of black cloak. Penny screams, and is already reflexively drawing her Mace before she registers the face.
"Jeez, Sheldon, you nearly gave me a heart-attack."
He's dressed like something off that 'Game of Thrones' thing the guys have been fanboying over, all black leather and metal. The look works for him, actually. That's a nicer outfit than some of the superhero stuff, more badass bad-boy than primary-coloured playworker.
"What are you doing here? Did they dump you at the comic store and take off again?"
For a moment, his face has a slightly lost, desolate look, then he tilts his head, a familiar gesture.
"Ah, I see. And I too have a counterpart in this world? That should simplify matters. Take me to him."
"If you want a lift home, you could just say. And a 'please' might be nice."
He blinks at her, then suddenly gives a stiff but elegant bow.
"My apologies. Please. It would be helpful for me to speak to this Sheldon."
Penny gets a little prickle up her spine. Not exactly fear, but... It's Sheldon's face, and Sheldon's voice, and he still moves a bit like him, even dressed like a Tolkien reject, but somehow this Sheldon looks...dangerous. Quite apart from the crazy talk.
"So, you're not Sheldon this evening?"
"No, I am Sheldor."
Oh, crap.
She'd been worried when he ran off to Texas, and concerned when he started collecting cats, but if he's run off somewhere inside his head, it's gonna take more than a half-assed apology from the guys to bring him back.
She's not supposed to call Leonard, interfere with his new and perfect life with his new and perfect girlfriend, but this constitutes some kind of emergency. She doesn't take her eyes off him, easing her phone out of her pocket.
"Hi, Leonard, it's me...yeah, it's Penny...what, no, I've been at work all evening...look, I dunno what's going on, but I think Sheldon's taking a long walk off the short sanity plank again ..." Her face goes utterly blank for a second. "No, I'm wearing my goddam uniform, Leonard. I've had a long day slinging hash to fat, sweaty businessmen, screaming kids and grabby fratboy assholes, I don't need this crap, okay? I'm sorry I bust in on your cosy evening in with Priya, but I thought you might be just a bit concerned that your friend might be having some kind of a breakdown."
She ends the call, and wonders what the heck to do now. She can't leave him wandering round dressed like that. If he plays Batman at someone who doesn't know him, she's gonna be bailing him out of a jail cell. Again.
Sheldor watches her out of the corner of his eye. His darling's face, but worn, tired, an unhappy droop to her mouth and shoulders. He growls inside, and hopes that his counterpart is not responsible for that. Obviously, there is something badly amiss in this world.
"Quit staring. Have I got dirt on my face or something?"
"I find you somewhat disconcerting." He admits. "You have her face, and something of her manner, but you are clearly not my Queen."
That stings a lot more than it should, somehow.
"Oh, yeah?" Belligerent. "So you think I'm not good enough to be a Queen, huh?"
But he simply gives a little huff.
"I merely stated that you are a different person. Obviously, this world operates on somewhat different social parameters."
"Well, I don't get to go running about stealing stuff and fighting monsters." Considers her shift manager. "Or turn people into icky puddles of goo."
"Would you like to?"
"The day I've had..." She tails off, rummaging in her bag, looks up to find him staring at her little car with more than his usual expression of disdain.
"This is your method of transportation?"
She seems to spend a lot of her life humouring this nutcase.
"Yeah, now get in it, 'cos the magical chariot is gonna take us home."
He gives her a withering look.
"This is clearly a mechanical device." Then he blinks, suddenly alert. "Then thaumaturgy is not generally practised here?"
"What?"
"The power of influencing events by the use of a rigidly defined sequence of symbols and rituals designed to interact with the natural forces of the universe in order to manifest aspects of the will." He looks at her face, sighs. "Magic."
"Oh, sweetie, is Howard still pulling that dumb card stunt?" Sure, it had been funny for an evening, but they do like to keep prodding at Sheldon, and he's so helpless. "You know we were just messing with you, I'm sorry."
No obvious magic, no obvious weaponry, the stink of machinery around him. But he has followed his Queen to this place, and his powers still work.
Clearly, this Penelope...Penny, she calls herself, has a different relationship to his counterpart. And she still persists in thinking that he is this Sheldon. Thoughtfully, he opens the door of the contraption, takes a moment to fold his cloak to his satisfaction, manoeuvre his sword, copy her use of the restraining belt.
Penny debates whether to go via Euclid, but decides that annoying the crazy guy might not be a good plan.
She'd often wondered what Sheldon would be like if he was little more, well, normal. There are moments, when he winds the weirdness down, when there are glimpses of something halfway human about him. But normally, he's more highly strung than a violin up Mount Everest, a jittery mass of neurosis and obsession.
This brisk, purposeful Sheldon is new. Well, new-ish. The set jaw and the hooded eyes are not completely unfamiliar, and when he measures his words, his voice always deepens slightly. He sits as he always does, upright, but he is too quiet...
"Should that internal lantern be glowing like that?"
Penny relaxes slightly. Some things are still the same, then.
00000000
Sheldon had always hoped for proof of parallel dimensions. That it should come in the form of a doppelganger of his neighbour is just a cruel cosmic joke.
(Grammar, syntax and vocabulary are consistent with the Penny he knows. No good asking her to explain the technology or otherwise of her place of origin – his Penny can barely operate her computer, after all. She is far too violent to be an Eloi, and her appearance suggests a more physical lifestyle, her dress indicates a quasi-Classical or medieval environment, but somehow, he doesn't think she comes from either future or past.)
He is still bewildered as to the sequence of events. Plainly, there has been some kind of space-time anomaly at the JPL (and he missed it, a lifetime's worth of planning and protocols wasted, dammit) and those incompetents, instead of documenting events, thought only of escape.
(Relief, too, that this was not Penny seeking some form of cosplay coitus with Leonard, a bilious thought.)
Penny...Penelope seems quite as bewildered.
"It's all kinda fuzzy, until you put this cold thingy on me." Winces, and shifts the coldpack. "Urgh, my head hurts."
Assuming identical biology is perhaps a dangerous move, but Sheldon supplies some aspirin. The way she trustingly takes them from him confuses him, after her initial attack, until he remembers her next action.
She had recognised, or thought she recognised, him.
"You seem to know me."
"You look just like Sheldor." She looks him up and down, grins. "Except I can never get him to wear anything but black. But big glowy holes are his sort of thing." She takes another incredulous look around her. "Whereas you...collect effigies of the goddess Ursa Mater?"
Sheldon eyes the Care Bears.
"This is my Penny's apartment." He says, without thinking. His eyes go wide. "Oh, dear lord. She will no doubt be returning from work soon. Perhaps it would be best to move across the hall to my apartment."
For now, he can't think any further ahead than that. What does one do with a random barbarian woman?
"Okay." Penelope stretches, wincing. "Oooh, if either of those runty little bastards are involved this time, it's gonna be worse than a iron bar to the skull when we catch up to them. I hate being yanked through portals."
"This has happened before?" Sheldon is aghast.
She lifts a shoulder, unconcerned.
"I've been abducted once or twice, some hero who thinks he's gonna make a name for himself. Usually I beat the crap out of 'em before Sheldor arrives." A dazzling and familiar smile. "So don't get any ideas, mister."
Sheldon swallows hard.
00000000
Leonard fumbles for his keys, wonders what the heck is going on. That had been a really strange call from Penny.
Maybe she really doesn't remember what she was doing? Having Sheldon freaking out at her can't be helping. He supposes he better go see about putting that fire out, if he needs to take her to the E.R after all. After the last time, he doesn't suppose Penny would willingly get in a car with Sheldon driving, or that Sheldon would even attempt to drive her.
Priya hadn't been too happy about him turning tail, but Raj, half-satisfied that Leonard was as confused about events as he was, offered to mollify her.
"But I'll be over as soon as I find out how Howard is doing." He warns.
"Good idea." Leonard sighs. "If Sheldon's having one of his tantrums, you might have to divert him with the Dirty Sock Protocol again."
But it is a Penny in her waitress uniform who opens his own apartment door to him, and yanks him in by the elbow.
"Thank god you're here. Look, he's gone really...weird this evening. Even for, y'know, him."
"He's gone weird? He wasn't the one... you've been at work all evening? And not, um, up at the JPL? Dressed in leath..." He tails off.
"You've both gone crazy." Penny throws up her hands. "I'm done. I brought him home, you deal with him now."
Leonard wonders where Sheldon got that outfit from. That looks like authentic hand-crafted plate mail. He has a moment of envy at the way the taller man gets the cape to billow behind him as he stalks across the room.
"Ah. You. I might have guessed."
"Ah, c'mon, I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have taken the cards..."
Then, Sheldon draws a sword. An actual, honest-to-God fricking sword.
And this is the point where it stops being funny, because this sword is not a pretty toy, or a stage prop. It is simply a very heavy, very sharp length of metal in the hand of someone who clearly wishes to use it in the singular purpose for which it was made.
"You ripped open a transdimensional portal and took my Queen." Sheldon's face, Sheldon's voice, but Sheldon had never, ever actually looked like he might kill someone before. "If any harm has come to her, then should you believe in a hypothetical all-powerful personification of fate, constructed to uphold a system of social and ethical norms and stand as a source of moral authority, this might be a good time to request an intercession."
"Whu...?"
Leonard looks up the length of steel, into cold blue eyes that hold no mercy.
"Pray."
They joke about Sheldon being that one lab accident away, but it has always been a joke, because he's so ineffectual, a harmless buffoon. There is nothing remotely amusing now. Something has snapped in that gigantic brain, and he's bigger and stronger than the rest of them even without a damn sword, and oh god, has he had that stored in his closet along with his crossbow all this time?
Leonard's life is flashing before his eyes, and he wishes it was more interesting, or happier, and above all much, much longer...
"Sheldor!" It is a glad cry, and it makes everyone jump.
Penny sees herself, dressed in a leather mini-dress, and some killer boots. And a wide-eyed Sheldon, in his usual mismatched tees and khakis.
Sheldor takes two long strides across the room, and Penelope meets him halfway. She yanks his head down and attacks his mouth, his arm folds jerkily but determinedly around her, crushes her to him in a clash of armour.
Penny can feel her own toes curling just watching. Sheldon gives a small startled bleat. They meet each other's eyes, look away hastily, faces flaming.
Leonard's legs give way, and he sprawls onto the floor, blinking in utter disbelief.
"Am I the only one who doesn't know what the hell is going on here?" Penny demands.
"Yes." Sheldon supplies. "But the basic situation is obvious – we have doubles from another world."
"Yeah, I got that bit. They are making out in the middle of the fricking living-room." And that is just creepy to watch. "What did you do? How did this happen?"
"That, I have not yet ascertained. But Penelope entered our world somewhere in or near the JPL. Leonard brought her back earlier."
No wonder he was so odd on the phone. Leonard. Leonard and Raj and Howard, pulling some 'Weird Science' crap, and then leaving Sheldon to cope.
And, oh sweet Jesus, she just gave a ride home to a complete stranger. A scary, scary stranger armed with a sword.
But Sheldon – Sheldon is his usual t-shirt clad self, and not any crazier than he normally is. Something unclenches in her chest.