Word Count: 1103
Summary: Continuation of S12E17.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Big Bang Theory or the characters.

Leonard is on the floor, and scattered around him are a few pictures and random papers. When Penny arrives, she finds her husband curled up in a little ball, and she can't help but smile at how cute he looks.

Why is he lying on the floor when there's a perfectly comfortable couch near him is something she doesn't understand, but Penny decides to ignore it for the time being.

She kneels down next to him, but doesn't wake him up. She stares at the pictures, noticing that they are all from his childhood. There are pictures of him, with lots of people such as his siblings and parents. In some, he looks happy, a radiant smile in his face. In others, it's clear that he's not in the mood for pictures. It's clear that he was in one of those days where he wanted to stay under a blanket forever. Those days were nothing cheers him up.

Those days make her wonder when it all started. And why no one ever helped like she tries to.

She picks one of her favorite picture from the bunch. It's one where he looks straight to the camera with one of the biggest smiles. One of those smiles that make her smile back.

His hair is noticeably curly in that picture, and his cheeks make her want to squeeze them. She takes a picture of that photo, just so that she has a copy of it on her phone.

To make sure that he doesn't sleep on the floor the entire night and wake up the next day with back pain, she gently shakes him a little bit, which makes him open his eyes.

At first, he looks around, trying to understand where he is. It takes him a moment to adjust to the setting and lights. When that happens, Leonard looks to his wife.

"Hey." He says, with a raspy voice, since he just woke up. He takes a sitting position, still on the floor, and moves the papers and pictures away from him so that he doesn't destroy them.

"Hey, you." She smiles at his face, marked since he fell asleep on top of his hand. "What's up with all the pictures?"

He looks at her, in total loss of words. He opens his mouth several times, but no words come out. Finally, he lets out a sigh.

"I realized that my entire childhood has been an experiment. I mean, I knew that I was used as a test subject, but it never hit me of how bad it was, you know?"

Penny stared at him, now being her turn to be at loss of words. She can only grab his hand tight and give him a smile, no words being able to come out of her mouth. Unlike her husband, she doesn't even try to get them out, since she doesn't know what she can say to make him feel better.

He explains to her everything, the conversation he had with his mother, the constant experiments he realized he was a guinea pig in, everything.

In the end, tears are forming in her eyes, but they don't fall. Leonard looks so empty when he finishes his speech, it's almost as if those experiments were normal to him. And maybe that was because they were normal. Being experimented in was his normal, while her normal was ride horses and sneak out of the house.

Her hand is still holding his tight. It's comforting, for either of them. Knowing that he was still an experience makes Penny pissed at the entire world. Why would anyone experiment on such an amazing person such as her husband?

It makes no sense for her.

He lets go of her hand and gets up, so quickly that it doesn't give her any time to think. He walks the corridor to their bedroom, and Penny takes a few moments to get up and go after him, the pictures and random papers forgotten in the ground for the time being.

Once she arrives to their bedroom, she finds her husband wearing his pajamas, the white shirt and green shorts.

He's on top of the covers, probably fell asleep so fast that he didn't have time to get under them.

He's clearly emotionally drained from the day he had and for the conversation – more of a monologue, actually – that he had with his wife.

She once again kneels beside him, and this time instead of looking pictures, she looks at him. She takes his glasses away from his face, and puts a little curl that was in his forehead back where it belonged. Penny caresses his face a little bit, remembering the photo she now had on her phone. Those were the same curls, the same cheeks, he had the same smile. But now, he was older, even wiser, but more broken. The years broke the little kid in him. Because playing video games and read comic books doesn't make him be a child.

Makes it look like he's trying to get his childhood back. The one he didn't have.

And that only makes her heart break. And makes her understand even more the reason why he wants to be a father. He wants to make sure that there's at least one Hofstadter who had a childhood.

She was terrified of the thought of having children, she was, and that was never going to change. But she felt that with the amazing partner that she had, that child would grow up to be an amazing person. As amazing as its father.

Passing her hand through her belly, she imagined what it would be like to be pregnant, the gigantic smile that would be stuck on Leonard's face for eternity, she imagined the little child running through the house the curls that would be inherited from the father jumping lightly on top of the little kids head.

How amazing would it be to love someone that little?

But what if she screwed everything up? What something happened that made her lose that child, or that child turned more like her than like Leonard?

That was what she was most scared of. What if that screwed up child didn't find a partner like hers, one that supported her no matter what?

What would happen then?

Those questions kept bouncing in her head for the entire night. At least until her eyes laid on her sleeping husband, and the picture of the little kid that looked like them both appeared in her head once again.

Maybe having a kid wouldn't be such a bad idea…

The End

I watched a part of the latest episode (S12E17). That part was Leonard freaking out because of his childhood and how similar it was to the experiments they were doing on the kids and his talk with Beverly. I regret watching it because I had to write this.

So I hope everyone enjoys it!