Chapter 22 - Few Answers
It was almost an hour later when Leonard re-emerged to the living room, and Penny had do use all of her acting skills to not let her feelings come to the surface, as she saw him. Leonard was wearing jeans and her husbands periodic table T-shirt, it reminded her again of the first years they were married and the feelings it caused to well up in her were almost unbearable. The immediate attraction she felt towards him bothered her, she had to force herself to remember this man was still somewhat a stranger to her and not her husband.
"I see you found something to wear." She said softly almost a whisper, as she continue stared at him, now noticing his muscles under the shirt, his light tan and his flat stomach. Her husband had looked sickly the last time she saw him, and she had wanted so badly for him to go to a doctor, she had become so worried about him. To now see this Leonard like this was a little strange to her, and only made it seem more that he was not her husband, but some specter of a Leonard past.
"Yeah, this is okay isn't it?" Leonard responded.
"Yes, it is fine." Penny had put on a designer pair of lounging clothes that looked like a chic track suit, but made of much more expensive material.
"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
"No, ask all you want." Penny actually wanted to talk to him, to find out more about everything that was happening and find out more about him.
"Our friends, does everyone still hang out together, do we meet for dinner still and where do we meet?" Leonard wondered about their friends, things had changed and he wondered if anything changed with them. Also he wanted to talk to Howard about the machine.
"You mean Sheldon and Amy?" Penny was a little confused at what he wanted.
"Yes, and Howard, Bernadette, Raj, Alex and maybe Cheryl now." Leonard explained.
"I know Howard and Raj, if Cheryl is my old friend from the CheeseCake Factory, I know her too, but who are Bernadette and Alex?" Again Leonard had her confused.
Leonard stared at her, not even wanting to think about what changes could have occurred. "Bernadette is Howard's wife." This change worried him the most.
"Sweetie, Howard has never been married, and we haven't been around him for years. After we got married, we sort of drifted apart from him and Raj. You told me Howard has sort of gotten a little eccentric after his mother died and had become a loner. Raj went back to India and got married, but the last we heard that wasn't working out. He had an arranged marriage and his parents set him up with a real gold-digger, even they want him to get a divorce now." Penny explained.
"So Raj never met Cheryl, you never introduced Bernadette to Howard and Alex was never Sheldon's assistant." Leonard shook his head, he was really disliking this timeline, his friends had miserable lives, Penny and her husband's marriage seemed to have some problems, and the only one who seemed to be doing any good was Sheldon.
"What do you mean I never introduced Bernadette to Howard?" Penny questioned.
"Bernadette worked with you at the Cheesecake Factory and you introduced her to Howard, they fell in love and married. She was perfect for him." Leonard explained, a hint of sadness in his voice.
"Bernadette?" Penny thought for a moment, "Was she a short blonde girl, who wore glasses, with an ample chest?" Penny responded.
Leonard nodded, "That sounds like her."
"I didn't know her too well, but she seemed nice as I remember. I fixed her up with Howard?"
Leonard nodded, "Yeah, you were sort of a matchmaker for all the guys."
"When did I do that?" Penny couldn't help but be interested in what he was telling her. It was her life that had been changed by the time travel and she wanted to know about her previous life.
"You had been in the apartment, across from ours, for almost three years and we had been boyfriend and girlfriend for a few months….You did live in the apartment across from me and Sheldon, didn't you?"
Penny nodded, "Yes, I lived across from you, but you and I were in a serious relationship about a year after I moved in. I didn't work at the CheeseCake Factory three years after I moved in, you changed all that."
"You said that before, how did I change that?" Leonard looked at her confused.
"About a year after we started our relationship, the university was doing a commercial to promote the school and you were in it, because of your recent awarding of the Nobel Prize. Cal Tech was trilled at getting you to stay and would do anything for you then, so you made them put me in as the narrator and main character for the commercial. The commercial came out really great and was shown on TV a lot, so it got me a lot of exposure, then came more small jobs, a movie, then another, and now I am a regular in a popular SitCom, because of the break you got me." She explained.
"I'm sure you being a good actress had nothing to do with it." Leonard joked with her and she gave him a small smile. "I actually won a Nobel Prize?" then Leonard thought a second, "I mean your husband won a Nobel Prize."
Penny nodded, "Sweetie, I'm surprised you haven't won another. You are the foremost authority on lasers in the freaking world. Your proof of match phasing light, in lasers, was world shaking, you actually made the Phasers of Star Trek exist." Penny looked at him, it was so easy to talk to him, it was just like before when she could just talk to her husband for hours on end, she forgot how much she missed that.
Leonard shook his head in thought, "I thought about that theory but didn't have time to work on it." Then Leonard thought a little more, and again reminded himself that it wasn't him that won the Nobel but her husband. "Your husband must really be something."
Penny nodded and looked at him again, his comment about her husband making her realize again she had been acting like he was her husband, it was so easy to do and it was scary, "Yes, when I met him, he was a workaholic. I was in my apartment for a week before I even saw him at the mailboxes, he had the most adorable frown on his face while he went through his mail. I almost died when he finally looked at me, smiling and said 'Hi', I was crushing on him that very moment. However he seemed to work so much, I didn't get to see him at first except when passing each other or when we happened to use the elevator together." Penny explained.
"The elevator worked." Leonard chuckled, "So how did you get together, if he didn't seem to have time to do things together?"
"I got all the guys to come to my first Halloween party, so he made time since his friends were going and I like to think because I personally practically begged him to come. My ex-boyfriend being there and my drinking my inhibitions away only made me want him more, so…." Penny now blushed. "I followed him to his apartment when he left the party."
"You kissed and then separated for the night right?" Leonard didn't seem to think this was what happened, but he hoped he didn't take advantage of her.
Penny got dreamy eyed, "Oh boy did we kiss. It was after that first kiss, I knew I couldn't let him go, that crush I had, now turned into a need for him." Penny now looked guilty. "I never told you…Leonard…about this before, the fainting I faked was just to get him to let me get in his bedroom and me in your, I mean his bed."
"Wait a minute, are you telling me you kissed then you wanted more to happen, so you faked being faint so you could get in the bedroom with him?" Leonard asked incredulously
Penny nodded like a small child who got caught with her hand in the cookie jar, "I just wanted to be with him and make love to you….him." she whispered, suddenly embarrassed, she kept saying you instead of him, she was loosing the battle of differentiating between him and her husband, he seemed so much like her husband.
"So I took advantage of a girl who I thought was sick and in my bed?" Leonard felt sick, that was not like him, then shook his head, it wasn't him, it was another guy.
"No Sweetie, you put me to bed and closed up my party, seeing everybody leave before you locked up…..I mean my husband did. Then he came back to his room and just slept with me all night while he held me, because he was worried about me." Penny quietly said, "I sort of fell in love with you….I mean him that night. The way he held me and how kind he was."
Leonard nodded, glad that this timeline Leonard wasn't an ass. "What happened next?"
"The next morning we woke up and talked, then ended up spending the whole day together, it was like a day long date, and I found out he liked me as much as I liked him, too. He still worked a lot, on his laser research, but we found time to date more and by the end of my first year there, we were in a regular relationship and we moved into the apartment above Sheldon. It was so new and exciting, I thought I would bust sometimes, and being together, if even for just the night sometimes made up for all the work he did and the time we spent apart. He took me to his Nobel Prize ceremony and then a little week long trip in Europe, it felt like a honeymoon, and I knew then I wanted to be with you forever." Penny stared at Leonard for a minute, her mind now thinking about the early times with him, it was so hard to look at him and not want to kiss him.
Leonard noticed Penny had zoned out a little, "Penny?"
The trance was broken, "Sorry." Penny took a second to compose herself, "After we got back from Europe, there was the Cal Tech commercial, a month later, then a few months after that, another commercial and I was starting to become a working actor, while I was still being a waitress, until one day my acting became my main job." Penny continued to explain.
"So you got married to Leonard soon after that?" Leonard was now curious about what happened.
Penny nodded, "On our one year anniversary of moving together, we went to a fancy restaurant to celebrate and talked a lot. We got pretty serious, we were already in love so we got talking about our future and before the night was over we both decided we wanted to get married. The next week we got rings and started planning it, it was probably one of the happiest times in my life….." Penny had a far away stare again and a little smile on her face for a few moments.
Leonard didn't say a thing just watched her, she was so beautiful, exactly like when she was his wife, and he suppressed the urge to just go to her and kiss her. He sat their a little while before he spoke again, "So what happened a year ago?" He asked quietly
Suddenly Penny looked at him like she was going to cry. "Its personal, I'm sorry I don't want to talk about it."
Leonard felt like an ass, obviously it was something that bothered her and he shouldn't have asked because after all he was an outsider. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
Penny nodded, seeming to get a hold of herself, "I'm going to sleep now, I'm tired after everything. I'll see you tomorrow." Penny got up and went to her room leaving Leonard sitting there.
Leonard watched her go, sad because he really wanted to talk to her more. He felt stupid like when he first dated her, always saying the wrong things. He slowly shook his head and then stood up to go to his room, thinking he might as well try and go to sleep too.
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Sheldon laid in the guest room after convincing Amy they needed to sleep apart, remembering her sad expression when they parted. He hated to do it but he never slept with her before and especially never had coitus with anyone before, so he really needed to do this so he could figure things out. He didn't know if he could sleep with her even, the thought of someone in bed with him still sent shivers down his spine, so just trying to jump into it seemed impossible to him.
Sheldon also needed time to try and come up with some answers, but none would come and he immediately started to wonder how Leonard was doing. He hadn't seen Leonard since they separated in the hall and Penny never came back after she left, so for all he knew Leonard could still be sitting in the machine room. The more he thought about it he knew he needed to get to Leonard and talk to him, so assuming that Leonard was Cal Tech he needed to get to Cal Tech tomorrow. Suddenly actually having a plan made Sheldon relax, the tiredness finally taking over his mind allowing him to sleep.
Amy wasn't so lucky, she was still awake, she was so use to sleeping with her husband, not having him in bed with her to cuddle against, especially in her condition, had made her very tense. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew something was, Sheldon was acting strangely all night, even more than he should have been that night. The whole situation kept rattling around in her mind, as she rolled over again in bed, knowing she would probably not sleep that night.
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Penny laid awake in bed, she had been rolling around since she laid down, her mind working in overtime, unable to sleep. Her mind was torn between thinking about her husband and thinking about the man down the hall in her guestroom. It scared her how easy it was to be around him and how comfortable she was starting to feel in his presence, but she couldn't understand why, he was just a duplicate Leonard, wasn't he. Penny now thought about the talks she had with her husband about time and how it impacted the time traveler and the world around them. Basically it was bad, her husband had specifically said that and the only time he felt it was even marginally safe to go back was the time before the big extinction event, the asteroid, because he said it was a reset of earth so the chances of accidentally screwing up things were at their lowest. At no time was it good to go back when man was on the earth, the chances of changing history were too great, you could even make yourself not exist which would be a huge time paradox.
Penny thought, so what does that make the man in the guest room, he said that Sheldon and him went back in time and changed it from the time they knew. Also he said that, now, she was married to her husband instead of him and she didn't have their baby in her anymore. Penny thought, if she went back in time and came back to find another Penny with her husband she would really be upset, because he was hers, she was the original. Penny shot up to a sitting position in bed wide eyed, as the realization hit her, the man down the hall was the original Leonard, her husband was the doppelganger, who now had her, effectively taking her from him and their baby just ceased to exist. 'Oh My God', Penny thought, what does this all mean, her world now seemed crazy, and the more she thought of it the more disturbing it all seemed to her.
Penny sat on the edge of her bed, she now couldn't sleep if she tried, even though she was physically tired, her mind couldn't stop going over everything over and over. She always thought that when people married they belonged to each other, not physically, like a prisoner, but in mind and soul. What bothered her was who did she belong to, the more she thought about it the more screwed up it seemed, she was an original, she never time traveled, the changes just changed the path her life went. She then trembled, the man down the hall was the original Leonard, she had been married to him and they had a baby, the time change, changed that. Tears started to come down her cheeks, that was suppose to be her life, she was suppose to be happy and pregnant with the man down the hall, not a cheating slut that destroyed her husband. Penny was having trouble dealing with it all and she knew only one thing she could do, she walked out of her bedroom to the living room, opening the door to the bar cabinet, pulling out a bottle.
A/N: I have been trying to update this every other day, so the next update would be Monday, 22 Sept, which is also season premiere. I will be watching the show and probably on the forums that night, so I will probably not have an update that night. Just wanted to let you know.