Sometimes it's hard to let go.
:Resurrection:
Sheldon wiped the sweat from his brow and placed the last stitch carefully. With a sigh he moved back to look over his work. Meticulous stitches, 3,645 of them to be exact, criss-crossed over her body. Sheldon gently ran his fingers through her golden hair. He leaned down and placed a soft kiss to her forehead. "Soon."
The group was pretty lifeless. Leonard spent most of his time looking off in the distance. Howard had retreated inside himself, rarely speaking to anyone. Raj was apt to burst into tears at the slightest thing. Sheldon picked at his food and wondered once again if he should say something to them. If he should bring them into the secret.
No. Better to be sure, first. There was no sense in getting their hopes up if he failed. He felt sickened by that thought. He would not fail. He could not fail. It was too important. She was too important to them. He had to bring Penny back. There was no other option.
She had been on her way to get him. He had worked late, and Leonard was on a blind date. She had stopped at a red light and some joy riding teens had slammed into her. She lingered, broken and bruised, for 18 days in intensive care. Sheldon had argued, pleaded and threatened, but her parents chose to not resuscitate.
That night he had broken into the morgue and stolen her body. Overworked hospital staff never even noticed him. Her parents were distraught at her body's disappearance, but Sheldon had little compassion. They had killed her just as surely as those teens had.
The storage room at Cal-Tech wasn't Sheldon's only secret retreat. He had another. One he rarely visited. Now he had put it to good use. It had been almost midnight before he was able to sneak away from the apartment. It was close to 1am now. He attached the conductors securely and picked her up gently. Slowly he lowered her into the vat of gel that keep the high levels of electricity from scorching her skin. Sheldon caressed her cheek and then hurried to the controls. He said a silent prayer to a god he didn't believe in and began pumping electricity through her body.
The news spread all over the world. A modern day Frankenstein they said. There were no security camera in the basement of Cal-Tech, so it was all speculation. However, the story itself was weird enough not to need much embellishment. A fire alarm sounded when smoke from under the basement door was noticed by the cleaning crew. Firemen found them first. Police were called in, and then the F.B.I. The university tried to keep it quiet at first, fearing scandal, but too many had seen it. Dr. Sheldon Cooper laying on the floor, his body badly burned. In a large glass aquarium lay the missing body of Penny Queen. Sheldon had tried to resurrect her. A computer chip in the control panel had failed. The overload of electricity had caused the panel to spark and catch fire. From his positioning, it was obvious that instead of immediately getting to safety, Sheldon had tried to get her out first.
His official cause of death was smoke inhalation. The burns had been postmortem. Among their friends the cause of death was love. He had loved Penny too much to let her go.