A/N: Sorry for the story neglect, but the holidays have been busy for me. The story will be moving a little faster from now on, and thanks to all that have been following it. This chapter is mostly about Penny.

Chapter 42 - Slipping Away

Sheldon loaded their laundry into the washer, looking at every piece of Amy's clothes and committing them to memory. The night before he didn't let himself be carried away like what happened before dinner, and let it happen again after dinner. That night, after they ate, he concentrated on watching the TV, as Amy laid against him watching TV with him, till she fell asleep on him. It allowed him to take her directly to bed that night, after he woke her, with no questions or anything more expected of him, since she immediately fell asleep after her head hit the pillow. It actually had been a relief for Sheldon and he got a good night's sleep that night, the pressure taken off him.

Sheldon had gotten up early this morning, it the same position he was now getting use to, Amy's back pulled tight against his chest, his arm around her, holding her breasts. However, this morning he was able to untangle himself carefully and ate breakfast while he watched Dr Who, letting Amy sleep longer, that he found out later, was longer than she wanted to. The rest of the day he managed to keep casual with her, and not start something where he would loose control again, and had been successful up through this point in his routine.

It was getting harder and harder to be the way he was in his past timeline around her any more, he kept finding himself acting more like a hippy…husband with her every day he was around her. He now found that the only way he could now think of other things besides Amy was to be physically away from her, and even then he couldn't get her completely out of his mind. Being around her was addicting and he could spend the day just watching her moving around the apartment and be content. There was also the other stuff, her being around all the time caused his desire for her to increase as his time with her increased, like now when he put a pair of her leopard spotted panties and bra in the washer, as he couldn't get the thought of how she would look in them out of his mind.

Sheldon shook his head, trying to force the divergent thoughts out of his mind physically, because he really needed to think about his problem with Leonard. Sheldon was never really good at waiting, when he wanted something, so he needed to change the game and be proactive with Leonard. However to do that he needed to know what Leonard was up too, and that was now a bigger problem, because now that they were in different departments he had no reason to see him. The roadblocks that kept coming up for Sheldon were driving him nuts, how could he be so much smarter than Leonard, and yet Leonard was frustrating him at everything. So for one of the first times in his life Sheldon Cooper was totally at a loss for what to do, as he stood their in the laundry room, the sound of the washing machines his only companion.

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Leonard only stayed at Howard's for about an hour, since Bernadette showed up soon after his arrival, for a date with Howard, to take her son to a small fair with kid's rides. But even in that short time Leonard was surprised how far Howard had come with the power module design, so far in fact that he was actually ready to start building it on Monday morning. Leonard's goal now was keep Howard supplied in the parts he needed so he could finish quickly, and Leonard could get the machine working again. Leonard's recent thoughts of staying were now being questioned by his belief that he needed to leave, again the reoccurring thought that he didn't belong here coming to the forefront of his mind.

What made these thoughts worse was that riding the bus back to the university was giving Leonard a lot of time to think, and the more he thought of it the more he felt things were wrong. This last week had been bizarre to him, the people were all the same but everybody's life was so much different, it felt like they were almost different people. He had tried to fix a few things, but it seemed he was just trying to put a bandage on a wound that was already infected. It then dawned on him, his trying to fix things was just trying to reconfigure this timeline to resemble his old timeline, he now wondered if he was really helping anyone. Maybe Raj should stay in India and Howard should not meet Bernadette or maybe even Penny should divorce him and go on to have her own life. It was obvious to Leonard that they would be all going that if he didn't show up, so maybe the thing that was wrong in this timeline was him. Leonard sighed and nodded to himself, he was the one incompatibility in this timeline, and it only confirmed to him that it was time for him to go.

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Penny woke up and it was now dark outside, she had been asleep off an on for over 20 hours and for the first time during that period, she actually felt like moving around. She still had a low level headache and her throat felt like sandpaper, but at least she wasn't dizzy anymore and could move around without wanting to throw up. There was another reason she wanted to get up and walk around, since she had woke up this time, it became painfully evident to her that Leonard wasn't with her. As she sat on the edge of the bed, thoughts of what first happened that night slowly came back to her, at least the thoughts before she started drinking rum and cokes in her bedroom that night. She had been angry and upset, she felt betrayed by the people she worked with and even the man she was married to. Somehow she rationalized, last night, that although the Leonard in front of her, had only helped her, she still wanted to blame him, since he was the man who would eventually be her husband. She knew she was wrong, but deep in her heart she was disappointed in him, and she wasn't sure how much time it would take to heal that wound. However, whatever had happened, she knew she had to talk to him, so she slowly got up, got her robe and went looking for Leonard.

It only took her five minutes to realize he wasn't there, and what concerned her were the clothes on his bed and that his car was still in the garage. Trying to understand it all, the sudden feeling of loss overcame all the feelings she had before, last night included, and she opened her cell phone to hit one on her contact list, while staring at the clothes on the bed, he had wore the night before. The next thing that happened made Penny think her heart stopped beating when she hear the ringing sound under the clothes and as she slowly pulled them up she saw the phone and wallet that were hidden by them. The shock of it was so upsetting, it made her whole body seem suddenly weak, her fingers barely having the strength to end the call, that made Leonard's phone ringing seem like it was taunting her.

Penny tried to breath, Leonard was really gone and the realization of it hit Penny like a hard slap against her face, she was alone, she had driven this Leonard away, too. She stood there for a few moments in a daze, all her fame and fortune couldn't fix that she was now so very alone and had no one, the emptiness of it all was overwhelming to her. The tears then came, followed by the body wracking sobs, as she fell to the bed clutching Leonard's discarded clothes while she wept her heart out. She kept crying, her body trembling, his clothes held to her chest and her face buried in them, till her already wore out body couldn't take it anymore and mercifully let her fall asleep.

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Penny woke up the next morning at dawn, she was so thirsty it drove her to the kitchen to get a bottle of water out of the refrigerator first thing. The first bottle led to a second as her mind now started to think about things other than her thirst, and she looked around her dark house, the emptiness of it making her tremble. She couldn't help that she felt like the last person on earth, the loneliness she felt now and in her whole life, weighed heavily on her as she looked around. Penny walked over and sat on her couch, her legs pulled up against her chest, while she just thought about her life, time becoming meaningless to her as she didn't become alert to it until the dark shadows formed in her living room from the late afternoon sun.

Penny had never been alone like this before, at home in Nebraska she had her friends and family, then when she first came to Pasadena she had Kurt, and finally she quickly met Leonard soon after getting to her new apartment and married him shortly after, so now having no one tore at her soul. Leonard had been wrong in thinking this timeline's Penny was as strong as she was in his past timeline, everything had been different for her, when she got to 2311 Los Robles, she was much more dependent on Leonard than he ever imagined. This dependency now making Penny feel like her life was over, everything that made her happy was gone, and her life didn't seem to be worth living anymore.

She just wanted the terrible crippling feeling of loneliness to go away, but somehow she knew this time it wouldn't and she never would be happy again. All day, as she sat, she had tried to handle the pain in her heart and all day she failed, she wanted to blame someone for her pain and slowly that person to blame formed in her mind, Arthur Langston. Once Penny found the person to blame she finally got up and walked to her bedroom, opening the bottom drawer to her dresser, moving the clothes aside till she found the thing she had hid there over half a year before. Penny picked up the Smith & Wesson 38 caliber revolver, it was small, the kind police detectives use to carry hidden away under their coats, but it was still deadly. She had originally got it to use on herself, but never the one to welcome pain she had decided to eventually use pills instead when the time came. Now she had another use for it and she put it into her purse, before she went to the bathroom to get dressed to leave, to see the man who raped her and ruined her life.