Raj hadn't thought about them years. He'd selectively just assumed that this, this was all just a prolonged dream that existed outside the realm of space and time, that he was a new being moving at the pace of his own heartbeat and nothing else. He just trusted that she wouldn't let any harm come to him, that this was just his fantasy, his safe haven. He bathed in the cool waters of contentment and rose to the gentle heat of assurance. His appearance never changed and neither did hers; they existed in a steady state of giving and taking only of each other and never of time. They were happy as they were.
Raj liked to lie beside the River and watch the world spin. He could see flashes of colors and snippets of the life people lived on without him. He saw smiles and tears, smoke and clouds, sunshine and darkness. He saw an infant take its first breath and a soldier take his last. He saw an arching back and a nervous smile. He watched these strangers with an abject fascination, an almost guilty voyeuristic twinge hidden in the back of his mind. He grew golden in the sunshine and he listlessly let his fingers dip into the water. It was then that he saw it, Howard's face laughing as Penny rolled her eyes at him, an amused smirk on her lips anyway. He jumped up, following that bit of water as it bubbled down the brook. Leonard and Sheldon, sitting on the couch like any other night, smiling at each other over commercials and shared decisions. He saw Leonard and Penny kiss and kiss again, a white dress, Howard in a yarmulke and the distant sound of Mrs. Wolowitz shouting 'Mazel Tov'. He had to run now to keep up with the pace of their lives. He saw Leonard and Penny moving into a house, Sheldon smiling as he complained, Howard marrying a young girl Raj had never met. There were children and grey hair and prom and weddings. Sheldon and Missy burying their mother almost made Raj stop but he couldn't lose them now, now that he'd found their place in history. He ran faster, watching as the little rivulets broke off around rocks as children grew up and moved on, making their own little space in the world.
Raj had always assumed the River had no end and no beginning, that it just flowed on and on and would never stop. He kept running, breath hot and sharp in his chest, the sun waning and growing dim the farther along he got. First Leonard faded, content and silently from the water. Raj pounded onward, watching the lines sink deeper into Penny's skin and Howard's hair fall out more and more. Howard went next, a rickety little pervert who liked to pinch his grandson's girlfriend's cheek and talk about "the good old days." Penny went next, in a hospital bed, with Sheldon by her side, equally as old and as tired but not ready to quit yet.
The River was so much shallower here, to a point where Raj could almost see the brown mud bed beneath the clear water. He looked up, sweat pouring down his face and dripping from the ends of his hair. Ahead of him was a hut, small and unassuming, and the River ended just before the hut, drying up to nothing more than earth and stone. Raj could feel Karma inside the hut and he walked forward, unsure and yet unafraid.
"Raj," Karma said, turning to see her lover in the doorway. "You have seen things today I never intended for you to see." Raj nodded solemnly, wanting to speak up and ask her but she only nodded back, understanding.
"Sheldon's time has come, Raj," she intoned quietly. "But he will not go easily." Raj stood back, knowing that Sheldon would never go easy, knowing that Sheldon would hold onto this life with every fiber within him, knowing that Sheldon still had so many unfinished things, so many mysteries of the universe to uncover. "They missed you, Rajesh," she assured him.
Raj felt the pang of their absence for the first time. He wondered, with the passing curiosity of a child, how time worked here, but he knew he would never understand it. He missed them and their crazy lives. He'd missed seeing Leonard and Penny's wedding, missed seeing Howard's first child born, missed all of Sheldon's achievements and awards. He mourned not for his own life but for the lives he had missed, the ones he should have been there for. Karma must have sensed his discomfort, the sky outside the hut waning of its color and the clouds drooping to cover the light.
"Do you regret it, my love?" Raj looked at his darling's blue eyes, the smooth planes of his face, the frighteningly powerful slant of her eyes. She was glorious, even in her despair, and he grasped onto her wrists and tugged her closer. No, he'd never regretted it, he tried to say with his hands, his lips. Because she was worth this, the unanswered questions, the scary future and bleak past. They left the hut and moved back, to the place that was their home now, and he caught a glimpse of Sheldon's body being lowered into the ground with only Missy there to stand vigil. His breath caught for just a second, uncertainty leeching in and asking him if he wasn't suppose to be there to hold Missy's hand and maybe put her in the ground beside her brother someday, but Karma took his hand and he felt his fear leave him. He looked into her eyes and saw that his past, present, and future were mixed together as one and he had always been where he was meant to be: by her side.