"Leonard?"
He didn't even have to turn his head to know it was Penny at the door. "Penny-"
"Please," Penny begged, and he could hear the tears in her voice. When he didn't respond further, Penny stepped into his room and closed the door softly behind her. Heart beating wildly, she stood there for a few minutes in silence as she willed herself not to burst into tears right there at the sight of Leonard curled up on his bed. He didn't even move, or turn his head to look at her. He simply lay there, crushing at her heart even more. Her mouth opened to speak and she felt her voice catch before she even got past the first syllable. "Will you look at me?"
Almost indecipherably, Leonard shook his head.
"Oh. Okay. Can I talk?"
In response, he simply shrugged his shoulders. He wasn't sure if he wanted or could listen to her talk, but he also wanted and needed to hear what she had to say.
Taking a shaky breath, Penny stepped forward until she stood at his bed, her knees just touching the edge. It was probably better that he wasn't looking at her. He needed to know the truth and she wanted to tell him without sobbing uncontrollably like she had been doing earlier.
"I'm not telling you this because I want you to forgive me... I just want you to know the truth, because... because you deserve to know. So please, just... just listen because I don't know if I can talk for too long before I... I'm just going to talk, okay?"
Biting her lip, Penny brushed her fingers over Leonard's comforter lightly, and she closed her eyes. Leonard could feel her presence, but in his heart he only felt emptiness. Not even anger or hurt, just emptiness. But he was going to let her talk, if only to feel something other than... this.
"I... Sheldon told me you had moved in with... with Priya. That... I didn't know how to react, nobody was there who would understand, but it just... it shot me and then I was numb and I just needed to... to not think about it." Penny gulped as she felt tears come to her eyes, but she kept them closed. "You already know... when I'm upset, really upset I lose control and I drink, I drink and I want to drink so I can stop thinking. That's my device and I hate... I hate being so weak and now I just-"
The words were getting caught sooner than she expected, and tears fell through her closed eyes as her body shook without her realizing.
"There aren't many times I've done this but I just kept on drinking because I just wanted to forget everything and pass out. That was easier than the idea of having to try get to sleep by myself that night, knowing you weren't across the hall from me. After I told Raj that I regret breaking up with you I just... I wanted to, I needed to get away from myself. So I did. After I opened that bottle of white wine in the back of your fridge I honestly, truthfully don't know what happened. That's what I wanted but now... now I wish I hadn't been so God damn stupid."
He could hear her voice and feel her body tremble, and almost turned around, but he couldn't. He wanted to hear the rest of it. Suddenly, her voice was soft, and he felt something in his heart.
"When I woke up in your bed I thought I was... I thought I was with you, Leonard. For a moment I was actually smiling because I don't even need to open my eyes to know I'm under your sheets, that my head is on your pillow or that I'm in your room. I just know these things and I thought I was with you. I thought it was you and I, lying in bed together, and I could feel my name on your lips as though I had been saying it all night. I thought I was with you again and that made me smile. Because..."
Her voice trembled for a moment, and she stopped, taking a long, deep breath before she continued.
"You have no idea how completely awful and terrible I felt at that moment. I hated myself with every single part of my being. I just needed to get out of there and... and then I saw you and I..."
She couldn't hold it in any longer. Penny knelt to the ground, sobbing, and leaned her forehead against the edge of his bed. He still didn't turn around, but the emotion in his heart grew stronger with each sob that escaped her. After a while, she seemed to stop, and sniffed before she spoke again.
"I couldn't even go to work. I spent the entire morning just crying helplessly in the shower, hating myself, until I physically couldn't cry anymore. So I got out and... and I got changed and I put my make-up on because I couldn't look at myself. Then Amy came over and I just... I tried to be the Penny she knew. But then I saw you and I..."
Here, she took another long, shaky breath. Compose yourself, she thought angrily, this is the part he needs to know, this is the part you need to tell him.
"Leonard." Penny cleared her throat. "When I was at Amy's, Raj came to visit. He, umm... wanted to start something... but I said no. And then he... he told me what happened."
His body tensed, and the next words flew from Penny's mouth quickly amongst a flurry of tears.
"Raj and I didn't have sex, Leonard. We didn't do it. We tried and he couldn't get the condom on then I tried to help but that's all it took for him, and... and that is all that happened. I'm not asking you to forgive me or to suddenly understand just because we didn't actually have sex but I just wanted you to know, Leonard, that nothing happened, and that even if it had none of it was on purpose. I was so desperate to get away from the pain, I had no idea what I was doing, and I don't hate myself any less for what I did. So please, please, Leonard... I don't want you to forgive me, but I want you to believe me. I would never, ever hurt you on purpose. The last thing I would ever want to do is upset you and..."
Suddenly there was silence, broken by deep, gasping breaths every few seconds. Leonard finally turned around, slowly, face blank but holding back a torrent of tears. He found Penny kneeling on the floor, forehead resting against his bed, her hands clasped under her chin, body shaking with each breath. The emotion in his heart threatened to burst then and there, and he closed his own eyes for a few seconds before opening them again.
"Penny."
"You can hate me if you want to."
"I don't hate you, Penny."
Looking up at him with a tear-stained face and completely smudged make-up, she blinked at him. He could see in that moment, behind the tears, all the pain in her eyes, and that she truly feared he wouldn't believe her and that she regretted her actions. If her speech hadn't told him that already, every inch of her showed him right then, incredibly clearly, just how she felt.
"How can you not hate me for something like this?"
"Because... because I can't. No matter how much I hate what happened, I can't hate you, Penny."
Gulping down his tears and willing himself to stay strong, Leonard looked down at his hands as Penny simply watched him.
"If anything, it's Raj I'm mad at... he always knew how much... and he still tried to sleep with you." Leonard shook his head. "Maybe this is some cruel payback for the fact that I'm sleeping with his sister."
At the mention of this, Penny dropped her head back down involuntarily to lean against the edge of the bed again.
"I just... I can't wrap my head around what happened - what almost happened." Leonard continued. "And I believe you, that you wouldn't do something like that on purpose. But it's just... you know."
A heavy silence fell upon them, and Leonard used the time to try thinking straight. His mind was arguing that he should feel angrier, but his heart wouldn't let him. He knew Penny wasn't lying to him, and he honestly believed her that she didn't want to hurt him. Besides, he had no logical argument in his mind: even though he knew Raj disapproved of him dating Priya, he had just gone ahead and done it anyway, without considering that maybe Raj did have a reason to feel protective over his sister. And while Raj knew just how much Penny meant to him, he had been drunk too, and Leonard supposed that his dating Priya might seem like he had completely let go of Penny. But in truth he hadn't, not in the slightest. He felt like he almost had the same protectiveness over Penny as Raj did over Priya.
Glancing over at Penny, he sighed sadly. "Penny... you don't have to sit on the floor, you know." She looked up at him, and his voice softened even more. "You can sit here with me if you want."
Tentatively, Penny's eyes met his. She looked at him for a moment, as though giving him the option to take back his offer. Considering what had happened, she was practically waiting for him to shout and her to get out of him room because she'd already done enough harm here, that he didn't want her on his bed after the last time she'd been in here was with Raj.
When he didn't say anything and simply held her gaze, Penny slowly got up and perched herself carefully on the edge of his bed. She desperately wanted to scoot over and just lie down with her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her, as though nothing had gone wrong whatsoever. Leonard considered telling her she could move closer, but he wasn't sure if right now that would be a comfortable move for either of them.
They stayed quiet for a while longer, staring into space and occasionally stealing a glance at each other, deep in thought. Eventually, Penny folded her legs beneath her and turned slightly so she was facing Leonard properly.
"Penny... can I ask you something?" Leonard asked after a few minutes, heart beating wildly.
"Yeah."
"Umm, you said..." Come on, Leonard. Just ask her. Leonard took a deep breath and looked up at her. "You said that you regret breaking up with me."
"Uh," Penny felt her heart skip a beat and her throat dry up. "Yeah."
He hesitated now; the confidence he thought he had was faltering. "Is that... I mean, what-"
"Leonard." Penny said quickly, out of need to stop him from asking the question she didn't want to hear but knew she had to answer. She sighed, biting down on her lip with a pained expression on her face, before looking back down at her hands again as they drew patterns on his comforter. She knew she had to answer him, and right now, she actually wanted to answer him. She could feel his eyes on her, not pushing her but waiting. He had waited patiently for a long time, and she could feel her heart pounding through her chest, pushing a fearful adrenaline through her, but at the same time calming her from her earlier emotional outburst.
"I regret breaking up with you, Leonard." Penny said finally, looking up at him with an even face. She shrugged and took a shaky breath. "There, I said it. Sober. I regret it; I regret breaking up with you."
Leonard stared at her, shocked, but somehow spoke anyway. "I regret letting you go so easily."
Looking at him through glassy eyes, Penny sighed. "Guess you never let yourself admit these things until it's too late."
"I don't know." Leonard said, perhaps too quickly, but not caring.
"What do you mean?" Penny raised her brows slightly at him.
He gave her a sad smile. "Priya's moving back to India."
"Oh my God." Instantly, Penny's hand moved automatically to cover his. "I'm so sorry, Leonard."
"Yeah." Leonard brought his free hand up to rub his forehead. "I found out while I was hiding in Raj's bedroom, from her parents who were talking to her on Skype."
"Wow."
"I can't believe she didn't even tell me."
Looking at him sympathetically, Penny frowned and squeezed his hand gently. "Maybe she just didn't want to hurt you and needed to find the right way and the right moment to tell you."
"She just got up and said she doesn't want to talk about it." Leonard shrugged. "I don't know. It's been a weird twenty-four hours."
"Ugh, it's been the worst twenty-four hours."
"And yet... here we are." Leonard offered her a small, supportive smile.
"Yeah." Penny nodded, reciprocating the smile. "Thank you, Leonard."
A few minutes passed in which they sat silently, holding hands, mulling over their latest confessions in a substantially calmer manner than earlier. Leonard wasn't entirely sure what to say or do now; he had gone through everything from complete anger over everything that had happened, to feeling comforted by Penny's mere presence. He had not expected her to explain what had happened, or tell him that she regretted breaking up with him, or even to see her today. And while her confession and her telling him that hearing he was practically living with Priya did bring up a whole new level of confusion over what her feelings really were, things felt... clearer. And that was probably because, even from this morning, he didn't believe that she would have gotten into bed with Raj without something clouding her judgment, and he knew in his heart that she wouldn't have done it with the intent of hurting him. He wished that it hadn't happened, and it still hurt him, and he'd had to buy entirely new sheets, but he was grateful, touched even, that she had given him an explanation from her own heart.
Looking down, Penny saw that her fingers had intertwined neatly with his. She smiled, and let her body relax. He doesn't hate me. While she usually feared sharing too much of her own feelings for somebody, she had realized that in this instance, she had feared Leonard not knowing how she felt about him. It wasn't quite telling him 'I miss you as my boyfriend and one day I'd like to try a relationship again' or any stronger feelings that she tried to hide completely, but in her eyes what she had given him was still a lot, and it was her way of letting him know that she did still have those feelings for him.
"You know you have make-up smudged... all over your face." Leonard pointed out meekly after a while.
"Oh, God," Penny frowned. "I should probably go back and sort my face out."
"Hold on." Leonard shuffled, then slowly let go of her hand, before getting out of bed. Opening the top drawer of his chest of drawers, he shuffled through the random collection of belts and cufflink boxes and various other objects until he pulled out a packet of make-up wipes. "Here."
"My make-up wipes!" Penny got off the bed to take them from him.
"Yeah, you left them here and I just never threw them out." Leonard shrugged.
"Aw." Penny smiled quickly at him. "Alright, I'm going to the bathroom to sort my make-up out."
Practically skipping down the hall with a much lighter heart than she had had all day, she headed into the bathroom. Closing the door she went straight to the mirror, recoiling slightly at just how much her make-up had run across her face and spread from where she had been rubbing her eyes. Shaking her head, she pulled out two make-up wipes and began to remove it all from her face. Leonard had seen her without it on plenty of times, and she decided that no make-up was definitely a thousand times better than the mess on her face or borrowing Priya's make-up, or leaving him alone right now. She used a third wipe to make sure it had all gone completely, then felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Binning the wipes, she took her phone out and felt her heart race as she read the preview of the message she had just received from her agent.
Hi Penny, give me a call me when you're free.
With a suddenly shaky hand, Penny scrolled up slightly and clicked the 'Call Contact' button and placed the phone to her ear.
"Hello? Hi, it's Penny, I just got your text?" Penny bit her lip as her agent told her she was glad she had called back so soon, the look of dread on her face quickly turning to one of shock and joy. "Oh my God! No way! You're serious? Shut up! No, keep talking." Pacing around the bathroom and running her hands over Leonard's small collection of aftershave and colognes, Penny listened intently. "Wow, well, that's amazing. Thank you so much! I'm so excited! Okay, I'll keep an eye on my email. Oh, thank you! Okay, bye!"
Jumping up and down on the spot for a second, Penny squealed before all but running back into Leonard's bedroom with a grin so wide it was as though their previous conversation hadn't happened at all.
"Leonard, you will never guess what!"
"What?" Leonard walked over to her, just inside the room with the door closed.
"Remember I told you I had that audition and I thought it went well, for the commercial, but I wasn't sure yet and I hadn't heard anything?"
"Yeah?"
"I got the part!" Penny squealed, eyes lit up, bouncing up and down again. "I got it, Leonard! I got the commercial!"
"Oh my God!" Leonard grinned, pulling her in for a tight hug. "That's amazing, well done - I'm so proud of you!"
Pulling back, Penny grinned excitedly at him, gripping his arms. "Thank you, Leonard. Oh my God, I can't believe it!"
"I knew you'd get it. What's the commercial for?"
"Uh, hemorrhoids." Penny mumbled, before the excitement kicked back in. "But I get to ride on a horse, and it's just me and this other woman who's going to be my mom. I haven't been on a horse in so long, like, since I left Nebraska! And now I get to do it again for a commercial! On television! They actually picked me!"
"See, you just had to wait for the right part. You had an edge, already knowing how to ride, and you were the best one out of all the girls who auditioned. You're going to be on TV!"
"Oh God, I can't believe it, Leonard. I mean I know it's hemorrhoids but still... people are actually going to see this." Penny hugged Leonard again, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to cry again, overwhelmed by the fact that in the past twenty-four hours both the worst and then the most amazing thing had happened. She wondered if he somehow knew this, because at that moment he held her just that bit closer, gently rubbing her back the way he would to always comfort her. "Leonard, thank you for believing in me, and... and for believing me."
"Of course." Leonard smiled gently as Penny nuzzled her head into his shoulder.
This was far better, he decided. This feeling of closeness and comfort was far better than the emptiness, hurt and anger he had felt earlier. Anything was better than that. He had thought that things would be strained and weird between them, but they weren't. It just felt right for her to be in his arms, even if he'd though just looking at her would be painful, it wasn't. She had come to him and as unexpected as that was, he was incredibly grateful that she had because he wouldn't have had the courage to try talk to her about it himself. It did not change the fact that he hated what had happened, but it made all the difference for somebody to truthfully explain and admit to what they had done.
"You're the best." Penny smiled at him as she pulled back, tears glazing her eyes, but not crying.
Leonard shrugged. "Hmm. I try."
Penny giggled at this. "We're still friends, right?"
"Yes." Leonard nodded, smiling now. "Of course."
"Good." Penny patted his arm. "Good."
"Uh..." Leonard took a deep breath and began fidgeting with his hands. "As a friend... can I ask you something?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Okay." Leonard cleared his throat, and gestured to the end of his bed, where the both of them sat down. "Umm, this might be... I don't really know who else to ask, but you... it's relationship stuff, is that weird?"
"Leonard." Penny put her hand on his knee. "It's fine. You listened to me when I told you about... about what happened... you can talk to me about that kind of stuff, it's okay."
"Oh, yeah, okay." Leonard nodded. "Okay. If... if you were in my position... if you found out your boyfriend, or whatever, was moving back home half way across the world... what would you do?"
Penny frowned as she observed Leonard for a moment. "I would do something stupid to avoid dealing with it and then regret it." She shook her head. "But... if you're asking for my advice? Just... talk. Even if you don't know what to say, or you're terrified of what will come from that talk... just do it." Clearing her throat and looking down at her knees as she willed herself not to get emotional again, she bit her lip. "I mean, you don't want her to leave, right? So talk to her. Even if she says she doesn't want to, she'll have to eventually."
"That's the thing." Leonard hesitated for a moment.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not sure." Leonard sighed.
"About what?" Penny asked, prompting him to continue.
"I just don't feel sure about the whole relationship." Leonard admitted. "I don't have that feeling of wanting her to stay here with me - I mean, obviously I want her to stay, but I don't feel that with every part of me. And in my mind I'm overthinking everything, I always do... why she's talking to Sanjay, why I had to change to normal 'adult' shampoo, why it's such a crime to hang out with you, why she didn't bother mentioning that it was a possibility for her to return to India so soon... I don't know, Penny. I just have no idea what to do. Should it feel... different?" Like it did with you? Like when every single cell in my body wanted you to come back to me?
"Leonard, sweetie, that's not something I can figure out for you." Penny gave him a sympathetic smile. "Priya is as different from me as possible so I can't even begin to guess and give you a reason for what she did. Talk to her and go with what makes you happy because I guarantee, if you know the decision will upset you in the long run, no matter how easy it is to believe it's the better option at the time, it's not. Talk. Just do what makes you happy."
"But I don't know what would make me happy."
"Well then figure it out."
"It's not that simple."
"I know."
Leonard sighed heavily, dropping his head and rubbing his temples. Penny brought her hand to his back and gently rubbed up and down his spine soothingly. As much as she wanted to influence his decision and point him in the direction of 'let Priya go back to India alone', she knew that would be completely wrong and unfair. It was something he needed to figure out on his own, without the biased opinion of his ex-girlfriend. Leonard stared at his feet as he tried to form some form of decision in his mind, but it was more a half-hearted, tired debate. He knew Penny was right though; amongst the argument in his head, Penny's voice kept repeating 'talk to her'.
"You're right." Leonard said eventually, standing up slowly. He paced the room as Penny watched him patiently; he pulled his inhaler from his jacket pocket and took a puff before continuing his anxious pacing again. "I have to talk to her. Maybe I'll know then. She can't just be moving back to India without telling me anything." Stopping suddenly, he took a deep, calming breath, and patted his pockets. "Okay. I'm going."
"Good luck, Leonard." Penny stood up, patting his chest reassuringly, refraining herself from kissing him on the cheek in case it clouded his current judgment.
"Thanks." He gave her a weak nod, before heading straight out his room and closing the door behind him before he could tell himself this was a bad idea or talk himself out of it.
Penny sighed worriedly as she heard him leave the apartment, sitting back down on his bed. She felt herself fall back onto the bed, hands pressed over her eyes, scared and nervous over a conversation she wasn't even going to be a part of. "Please make the right decision. Whatever it is, please let it be right so you can be happy, Leonard."
A/N - And there it is... that was tough to write. On another sad note, there are only six chapters left of this story! Sad times. Massive thanks for all the reviews and feedback. Considering this is solely a Leonard & Penny story, I am amazed at all the reviews and follows and favourites I get, even now! You guys are awesome. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, I will be back on Monday (obviously!) Until then, let me know what you think of this chapter. I believe I am happy with what I have done, given what the topic was. It wasn't easy. Oh, and how amazing was the Season 7 premiere?!
