fic: The Future Uncertainty; part 1/2
Title: The Future Uncertainty
Pairing(s): Leonard/Penny
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory and Flashforward (the novel), but only containing characters from TBBT
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some spoilers for Flashforward
Word Count: 15,001
Summary: Disaster strikes when an experiment at at CERN causes everyone in the world to blackout for two minutes. But during that time, everyone has a vision of their lives 6 months in the future. A wrench is thrown into Leonard and Penny's attempts to fix their post-breakup friendship when their visions show them together once again. Now they must decide whether or not they believe the visions to be the definite future, or just a possibility. Can Penny overcome her fear of being hurt? And will Leonard be willing to give her another chance if she does?
Author's Note: This was written for the bigbangbigbang, and is by far my longest completed fanfic. Huge thanks to robothor1111 for reading my drafts and offering suggestions along the way! And much love to aydean and Juniperlane for each making some fantastic stuff to go along with my fic.
aydean's music video is on youtube here.
Juniperlane's art and fanmix can be found here.
Part 2 here
*****
Penny was in her apartment when it happened. She had overslept and was running late for work. Buttoning up her vest, she pulled open her fridge to grab a quick breakfast - and remembered that she needed to go shopping.
Back in simpler times, she could have simply ran across the hall to sneak something from Leonard and Sheldon’s fridge, maybe even a cup of coffee if she was lucky and they had it ready. But ever since the breakup with Leonard, she felt like she would be intruding to go over unnecessarily. Even though they were trying to repair their friendship (a project that had taken quite a few steps back after she’d drunkenly gone over that one night), she knew they still had a long way to go before she could enter their apartment as casually and carefree as she had before.
If only she’d woken up on time, she could have stopped somewhere along the way for a quick bite, but now she’d have to hope she could sneak something from the kitchen at the restaurant.
She slammed the fridge and turned around to grab her purse - then everything changed.
She was still in her apartment, but the lights were dimmed. She was on her couch, a glass of wine in her hand, leaning against a warm body behind her.
Instinctively she knew it was Leonard. She couldn’t see him, but it didn’t matter. It was in the way his fingers were drawing soft patterns on her arms, and how her head fit just right against his shoulder.
Was she dreaming? She must be, because this wasn’t possible - but it sure didn’t feel like a dream. And while she’d head of lucid dreaming, she’d never experienced one herself; was this what it was like?
Penny tried to move, to jump up from the couch, to just turn and see who was behind her, but her body was out of her control. Weren’t lucid dreams supposed to give you more control, not take it away from you? Her TV in front of the couch looked like it was playing some movie she didn’t recognize, but after a minute she vaguely remembered seeing trailers for it recently.
She longed to look around, to try to figure out what was going on, but her eyes remained glued to the TV screen, despite her attempts to will them to look elsewhere. How long would this last, would she be stuck like this? But even though she had no idea what was going on, she felt oddly safe from knowing that Leonard was there with her, his arms wrapped around her waist.
Then suddenly she was moving, placing her glass of wine on the coffee table and turning to look at Leonard behind her.
He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and while Penny’s mind reeled as she tried to figure things out, she found words suddenly coming out of her mouth. She had no more control of her words than she did any of the rest of her actions, and she didn’t know what she was going to say until she heard her own voice.
“I love you,” she said, feeling a smile spreading across her face.
“I know,” Leonard said, a smile forming on his face as well. “I love you, too.”
Penny leaned closer, her eyes fluttered shut, and she was surprised to realize that she actually wanted this kiss, that maybe this could be a good thing. Her hand reached up to cup his face, she could feel his breath on her skin, and their lips were about to finally touch -
And then it was over just as quickly as it had began. She was lying on the floor in her kitchen, dressed in her work uniform, with a splitting headache.
She tried to sit up, but the pain intensified, and she lowered herself back to the ground. Feeling something drip down her forehead, she raised her left hand to touch it, and gasped when she saw the blood on her fingers.
What the hell just happened?
Penny closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, willing her racing heart to slow down. She tried to think back to the last thing she remembered, hoping to be able to piece together what had just happened. There wasn’t any food in the fridge, so she closed it, picked up her purse and - nothing. She on the kitchen floor, bleeding from the head.
Well, not exactly nothing, she thought, her mind fleeting to that dream (was it only a dream?) of her and Leonard. But that didn’t help explain what happened.
She snapped open her eyes, deciding the first thing she needed to do was get up off the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, that was a task that was now easier said than done. She managed to sit up and lean against the fridge, which was a far cry from her goal of standing, but she was afraid she’d be sick if she tried to move any further. Dully she noticed that the pain in her head was actually coming from two places - above her forehead where she’d deduced she was bleeding from, and somewhere in the back where she suspected she was already growing a bump.
She wondered how long she was out for, but her phone and purse had fallen out of reach.
There was a sudden knock at the door.
“Penny!” Leonard called through the door, sounding worried. “Are you in there?”
“Yes!” she yelled back, wincing at her headache. “I can’t get to the door.”
She heard Leonard fumble with the lock (thank goodness he still had her spare key), and then finally swing the door open.
His eyes scanned the apartment, quickly zeroing in on Penny, and he rushed to her side.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he said, grabbing a nearby hand towel and gently dabbing at the cut on her forehead.
“Okay?” Penny asked, thinking it wasn’t quite the word she’d used to describe her current situation. “How did you know I was even hurt?”
“I didn’t, I’d just hoped you were here - it happened everywhere. Everyone passed out, for two minutes they think. It’s on the news, the accidents, the deaths…” His voice hitched, and in his silence Penny became aware of the wailing of sirens and car alarms outside.
“You must have hit your head on the counter on the way down,” Leonard said, regaining his focus. “I hope you don’t have a concussion.”
“Everywhere?” she asked, the full implications of the word sinking in.
Leonard nodded.
He lifted the towel gently from her head, then quickly replaced it.
“You should probably get that cleaned up. Do you have a first aid kit?”
Penny started to shake her head, then quickly stopped from the pain.
“No. I think I might have some Hello Kitty Band-Aids somewhere…”
Leonard shook his head.
“We need to disinfect it first, and then cover it with a larger bandage… We’ve got supplies at my apartment, I could run over there and get them -”
Penny reached out to grab his arm, preventing him from leaving.
“Wait. I’ll go over there with you.” Even though she was sure that Leonard wouldn’t take long, she still didn’t feel like being left alone. “Just give me a minute.”
Leonard patiently waited until Penny felt she could stand, then supported her as she rose to her feet.
Sheldon was watching the news Penny entered the apartment with Leonard.
“Anything new?” Leonard asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Sheldon shook his head silently, eyes glued to the screen.
“What could have caused this?” Penny asked, staring at the devastating images.
For the first time since she’d known them, neither Leonard nor Sheldon had an answer for her.
“The first-aid kit’s in the bathroom,” Leonard told Penny, leading the way.
“Thanks.” She tore her eyes away from the scenes of destruction on the TV - it was too soon to try to deal.
In the bathroom Leonard guided Penny to sit on the toilet while he pulled a small white box marked with a red cross out of a cabinet.
“For once it’s a good thing that Sheldon is always so prepared,” Leonard said, sorting through the bandages and medicines. “Here’s some aspirin,” he added, holding out two pills. “They should help with your headache.” He also grabbed a disposable paper cup and filled it with water, handing it to her as well.
Penny swallowed the pills together, still clutching the towel to her head with one hand, afraid to let go.
Leonard finally found what he was looking for, and opened an antiseptic wipe.
“I’m gonna try to clean the cut first,” he explained, gently prying the towel away.
“How bad is it?” Penny asked, eyeing the blood on the towel.
“I don’t think it’s too bad. Head wounds always bleed more than cuts elsewhere, just because there’s so much blood there for the brain, so it’s a little hard to tell until we clean it up.”
Penny winced as he touched the wipe to her forehead, and he immediately drew his hand back.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “It’ll probably sting a little.”
Penny shook her head.
“No, it’s fine, keep going.”
It did sting, but Leonard was being extra careful to be as gentle as possible. Penny looked up at this face, so focused and full of tenderness, and then immediately dropped her eyes back to her lap, feeling unworthy of this care and attention. She’d broken his heart, drunkenly given him false hope, and then smashed it again to pieces, and still he was here, taking care of her.
Her thoughts drifted to the dream she’d had while she was out, the one that felt so real. She’d said she loved him, and the words came easily, naturally. If only it was that easy in real life.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Leonard joked, a small smirk on his face.
She felt her face grow warm, and wished he wasn’t so close because he was sure to notice.
“First, don’t ever say that to me again,” she said, with a smile of her own to show that she wasn’t really mad. “Second, a penny’s definitely not enough.”
Leonard reached back into the box for a bandage.
“Under normal circumstances you’d probably want to get this checked out at a hospital, just to be safe,” he said. “But all things considered, it should still be fine to heal on its own. At least it’s fairly close to your hairline, so a scar wouldn’t be too noticeable.”
A strange expression came over his face, as if he’d come to a sudden realization, but it was gone within moments.
Penny bit her lip. A scar was the least of her worries right now. Was her family okay? Where were Howard and Raj? And her friends at work… If she hadn’t been running late, she probably would have been driving during the blackout, and then…
“You’re all patched up,” Leonard said, backing up.
Penny stood and looked at herself in the mirror. Most of the blood was thankfully gone, though some was still dried in her hair and on her uniform shirt. For a second she worried about the cost of replacing it, before realizing that it really didn’t matter right now.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, looking at Leonard in the mirror. But that somehow cheapened it, so she turned to face him. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course I did,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, and looking down at the ground. “It’s nothing, anyway.”
“No, really,” Penny insisted, placing her hand on his arm. “Thanks.”
Leonard looked back up, and Penny thought he was going to say something, but Sheldon yelled from the living room.
“You should probably see this!”
They quickly stepped apart and went back to the living room.
“The President has declared the country is in a state of emergency,” the newscaster said gravely. “The death toll is still rising, and it will likely be weeks before the full number can be determined.
“We have yet to hear of an individual who remained conscious during the event. Around the world, at precisely 10 am Pacific Coast Time, every single person fell unconscious. Government leaders and scientists are already posing their theories regarding what causes this tragedy, but a definite explanation has yet to be found.”
Penny reached for her cell phone in her pocket, and had halfway dialed her family’s home phone number before Sheldon noticed what she was doing.
“The phone lines are all jammed,” he told her. “I already tried our landline and mine and Leonard’s cells.”
Penny ignored him, dialing the rest of the numbers and holding the phone to her ear. All she heard was a busy signal. She tried again, with the same results.
“Damn it,” she muttered, feeling powerless. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away. Now was not the time for weakness. She needed to be strong.
But Leonard placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she broke down. He wrapped his arms around her, whispering in her ear; she couldn’t make out the words, but it was comforting just the same. She buried her face in his shoulder, not seeing the others wipe away stray tears of their own.
*****
Penny hated feeling helpless. She hated not knowing what to do, and having to depend on someone else. Like when she broke her leg in the third grade, or dislocated her shoulder last fall - it wasn’t the pain that bothered her most, but rather her wounded pride that she hadn’t been able to take care of herself.
Only this was worse, because no one knew what to do.
She wished someone would step forward, and give a magical explanation to fix everything. More than that, she wished this was a dream that she could just wake up from.
Although the phone lines were still jammed, e-mails had been sent to friends and family to check in on their wellbeing. Howard and Raj were the first to reply - they’d been at the comic book store when it happened, and were shaken but otherwise fine.
She tried not to think of her family, knowing that worrying wouldn’t accomplish anything. There was nothing she could do until she heard back - and even then there was little she could do from so far away.
Penny sat in silence, curled up on Leonard’s armchair. He and Sheldon were on the couch, discussing different theories for what could have caused the blackout. CNN was still on the TV in the background, but they’d lowered the volume once it became clear that they still had no idea what had happened either.
She was only half-listening to their conversation (Sheldon had lost her when he started going on about electromagnetic fields), but something Sheldon said now caught her attention.
“You know, while unconscious I had a dream where I was working with an unfamiliar set of formulas. Upon waking I dismissed it as nothing more than an overactive subconscious, as I do all my dreams, but now I think the formulas might actually have some relevance to the problem at hand.”
“Wait a second - you had a dream when you were knocked out?” Penny asked.
“Perhaps dream isn’t the correct word,” Sheldon said, looking thoughtful. “It felt much more realistic than a regular dream, and I was clearly aware of the fact that I had suddenly moved from the couch to my desk, with no explanation of how.”
Penny glanced at Leonard, her stomach twisting as she wondered if he’d had a dream as well, but he was distracted by something on the TV.
“Hey, look at this,” he said, grabbing the remote and turning up the volume.
“Paul, what about the hallucinations?” the CNN newscaster asked. “Are those being reported down under, as well?”
A second newscaster, one in Australia, responded after a moment’s pause.
“Bernie, people are buzzing about that, yes. We don’t know what percentage of the population experienced hallucinations, but it seems to be a lot. I myself had quite a vivid one.”
“Hallucinations?” Penny asked. “Like, we’re all going crazy?”
“So you saw something as well?” Sheldon asked.
“Well I - I don’t know what you’d call it, but I saw something, yeah.” She couldn’t help but glance at Leonard again, but he seemed suddenly very interested in his hands.
Thankfully, Sheldon didn’t press for any further details.
“Fascinating,” he simply said, before standing up and heading towards his desk.
“What are you doing?” Leonard asked, finally looking up.
“I need to recreate the formulas I was working with in my vision,” Sheldon said, picking up his laptop from his desk and heading towards his room. “They might provide a clue to figuring out what caused this. Now that I think about it, they did contain striking similarities to what we were discussing.”
He disappeared into his bedroom, leaving Leonard and Penny alone in the living room.
Penny fidgeted, remembering the last time they were alone there, and what it led to. She wondered if Leonard was thinking of the same thing.
“So…” she said, needing the break the silence, but drawing a blank when it came to thinking of something to say.
“Yeah,” Leonard said in response.
Penny caught his eye, and suddenly they were both smiling. Sure, it was awkward, but she knew they’d get through this. Just like they got through everything else.
Leonard’s computer beeped to alert him that he had a new e-mail, and they both jumped up to see who had responded.
“Looks like it’s your family,” he said, taking a step back to allow her to open and read the message. Penny’s hand shook as she reached for the mouse, suddenly very afraid of what she might find.
Taking a deep breath, she click it open, surprised at how short the message was.
Everyone’s okay. Shaken and bruised, but no serious injuries. Take care of yourself, Slugger.
- Dad
She wasn’t aware of how worried she’d been until now, when she felt all the tension escape from her body.
“They’re fine,” she said, turning back around to face Leonard.
Penny sunk into the couch, feeling exhausted. It was only late afternoon, but she felt like it was nearing midnight. She supposed that worrying and anxiety must take a lot out of you. She closed her eyes, but Leonard spoke up.
“You really shouldn’t sleep,” he said. “Just in case you do have a concussion. How’s your head feeling?”
Penny groaned, but opened her eyes.
“A little better. I think the Advil helped.”
With nothing else to do, they watched more news broadcasts, though Penny found it difficult to concentrate. There wasn’t anything new worth noting, anyway. Expert after expert was interviewed for their opinions on what caused the blackout, yet no one had a conclusive explanation.
“This just in from the BBC World Service - many individuals who were apart while unconscious have reported visions that correlate with one another. This suggests that the visions the vast majority of the population experienced are more than random hallucinations, but rather a glimpse of the future.”
Penny froze, her mind reeling with the implications. It had been easy enough to shrug off the vision when she thought it was like any of the other dreams she’d had about Leonard since they broke up - more realistic, sure, but ultimately it didn’t mean anything.
But if this really was a glimpse of the future… That meant that Leonard saw the same thing. And their situation just got a whole lot more complicated.
Any doubts she might have had about what Leonard’s vision was eliminated when she saw how he was looking at her, hope glimmering in his eyes. She forced her face to remain blank, acting as though the news had meant nothing to her.
“This is just depressing,” Penny said, when the broadcast had gone on to give another updated death toll. “Clearly they’re no closer to figuring things out than they were this morning. Is there anything else we can watch?”
Leonard flipped through the channels, but every station was devoted to the news coverage. Defeated, he turned it off, but now the silence filled the apartment. It was almost worse than the news.
Leonard looked at his watch.
“Is it really five already?”
Penny shrugged.
“I just realized I never had lunch,” Leonard said, thinking through the day.
“I didn’t even have breakfast,” Penny said. “I’m still not hungry, though.”
“I’m really not either,” he said, but he stood up and to the kitchen anyway. Penny guessed he was just restless for something to do, looking for a way he could be even halfway productive.
She watched him in silence for a minute before standing and crossing the room to join him.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“You don’t have to do anything, I’ll get it,” he told her.
“No, please, what can I do?” She looked him in the eye, hoping he would see that she needed a distraction just as much as he did.
“Here, uh, you can rinse this lettuce,” he said, pulling the head out of the fridge and handing it to her. “Then tear off some pieces for sandwiches. I’ll get the tomatoes.”
They worked in silence in the kitchen, side by side, only occasionally muttering a “sorry,” or “excuse me,” as they navigated around each other. It felt familiar, and Penny remembered back to when they were dating, often making a simple lunch or dinner together. Only those times had been filled with much more laughter, not silence and tension.
Once the ingredients were all prepared, Leonard assembled his sandwich, Penny’s, and one for Sheldon, while Penny returned to the fridge to pour drinks. When everything was set, Leonard took Sheldon’s share down the hall.
“Sheldon?” he called gently through the door. “We made dinner.”
“I’m working.”
“It’s a turkey, tomato, and cheese sandwich, just how you like it.”
“Just leave it by the door.”
Leonard rolled his eyes, but did as Sheldon requested.
Back in the kitchen, Penny was standing at the island counter, picking at her sandwich.
“How’re you doing?” Leonard asked tentatively.
She shrugged.
“Okay, I guess. Confused. Grateful.”
Leonard nodded. He understood the feeling.
“In your vision -” he started, but Penny shook her head.
“Please, not now?” she asked. “Just, it’s too much to deal with.”
He nodded again.
“Yeah, sure. Later.”
They took their meals to the couch. The news station was currently covering the damage that had occurred in downtown LA, making Penny very grateful that she was still in Pasadena and hadn’t yet broken into Hollywood.
“Can we watch something else?” she asked. “I just, I need a break from all of this.”
“Yeah, sure,” Leonard said. He got up and began to shuffle through his and Sheldon’s DVD collection. “Do you have anything particular in mind? Want to grab something from your apartment?”
“I really don’t care,” Penny said. “Just anything but more news coverage.”
Leonard ended up grabbing his Star Trek Original Series DVDs, and searched through them to find the disc where he’d last left off.
Penny noticed he was holding the season three set, but she’d still been somewhere in the first season when she was slowly making her way through the episodes with him when they were still together. It made her feel a little sad to think that Leonard had been continuing to watch the episodes by himself.
Still, this was just what she needed right now. Something different and out of this world to distract her. Everything always worked out on the Enterprise. No matter what they faced, they’d continue to explore the universe for another day.
*****
Penny woke up on Leonard’s couch in the middle of the night, initially confused as to why she was there. For a moment she was afraid she was having another weird vision, but she was relieved to quickly realize she had full control of her actions.
She must have fallen asleep on their couch. She remembered curling up on it after she was done picking at her sandwich, only intending to close her eyes for a minute, but clearly she had been out for much longer than that. A pillow was carefully placed under her head, a warm blanket covered her, and she felt another surge of affection towards Leonard.
She knew she’d have to probably talk to him tomorrow about their visions, assuming he saw the same thing that she did… And considering both the news reports, and how he’d wanted to talk to her earlier, it was almost a given that he did.
Shouldn’t a glimpse of the future have made things easier? But now Penny just felt more confused than ever. She’d convinced herself that she’d made the right decision when she broke up with Leonard, it was just easier and less painful in the long run to remain friends. Now she was supposedly telling him she loved him just months from now? What happened?
And did she get any say in this? Penny didn’t like the idea that the future was fixed, that she had no say in what she did. She needed to have control, to know that her decisions shaped her future. What if she was destined to be in a relationship with Leonard again? And then what if they broke up again later, and there was nothing she could do about it?
Sure, she went to her psychic, and read her horoscope… But those were hints, small guesses. Seeing a solid, clear glimpse of the future scared her. Did anything she do matter? Or was she just a puppet in the grand scheme of things?
Eventually she dosed back off to a fretful sleep, dreading the morning.
*****
She woke up to the smell and sound of eggs frying and sizzling in the kitchen. Groaning, she stretched as much as she could on the couch, then opened her eyes a crack to see Leonard, already dressed, making breakfast.
With a yawn she slowly sat up, gratefully noticing that though still tender, her head felt much better than it had the day before. She was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, which were now wrinkled after an uneasy night’s sleep, but she really didn’t care. Leonard heard her movement, and turned around.
“You’re up,” he stated. “Do you want some eggs?”
To her surprise, Penny’s stomach grumbled. She supposed that her body was finally catching up from the very little that she’d eaten the day before.
“Actually, yeah,” she said. “Where’s Sheldon?”
“Still working with his equations. I thought it was pointless at first for him to be focusing on them, but after the news report last night -”
“Last night?” Penny asked, trying to think back to which report he could be referring to. But the last thing she remembered was Star Trek.
“Remember how they were saying that people’s visions matched up?” Leonard asked. Penny nodded, and he continued. “Well, last night after you fell asleep, they figured out the date that the visions are apparently a glimpse of - January 21, next year.”
Penny’s stomach flipped. January was hardly six months away.
“How’d they figure that out?” she asked, hoping to keep the conversation topic away from their own visions.
“People who were reading the newspaper, or looked at a calendar. Not everyone matched up exactly, but assuming that some people were looking at older material…” he shrugged. “It seems to fit. They’re calling it the Flashforward.”
He scooped some eggs onto a plate and handed it to Penny, but now she could do no more than push them around with her fork, her appetite suddenly gone.
Leonard had gotten better at cooking them, she noticed. Some of the pieces looked like they were cooked a little too much for her liking, but they were much better than the runny mess from when he’d first tried to make her breakfast.
“Something wrong?” he asked nervously, noticing she wasn’t eating.
She shook her head and quickly took a bite, hoping to avoid further questions. They ate in a strained silence. The relative normality they’d managed to achieve in their interactions the previous day was gone now, replaced by the oh-too-familiar awkwardness that had followed them around for months now.
Penny reached up to brush her hair out of her face, her fingers snagging on the bandage on her forehead as she did so. She gently pressed on the wound, wondering how it was healing.
“You’ll end up with a scar,” Leonard said suddenly, noticing what she was doing. “But it’s a small one. Right along your hairline.”
“How do you -” Penny started to ask, before the answer came to her. Of course. “Oh.” She dropped her hand and went back to picking at her eggs.
“Don’t you think we should talk about it?” Leonard asked, once it became clear that Penny wasn’t going to say anything else.
“My scar?” she asked. “I didn’t think there was anything else to say. Unless it turns out to be lightening shaped, like Harry Potter or something.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Leonard said, narrowing his eyes. “The visions, you said - we were together.”
“Aren’t you guys always going on about alternate universes and timelines and stuff? How do we even know that what we saw will come true?”
“And aren’t you the one always checking with your horoscopes and psychic to try to figure out the future?”
Penny rolled her eyes.
“Sure, now you’ll buy into predicting the future, when a few months ago it was all a big joke?”
“I saw you and your scar,” Leonard said calmly, “Sheldon saw some formulas that somehow tie into all of this, the news keeps reporting on other visions that all tie together -”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything!” Penny argued. “So what if in six months we’re together again. Maybe in ten or seven we break up again. And we can’t control it, because it’s already destined. Is that really what you want?”
“I just want to be with you.”
His answer’s openness caught Penny by surprise, and she felt the anger go out of her, replaced by the guilt and gnawing pain in her stomach.
“I can’t believe that the future is fixed. I need to have some sort of control over things, the knowledge that my choices matter.”
“So choose me.”
She closed her eyes, wishing it could be that simple. Or was it that simple?
Before she could collect her thoughts, there was a knock at the door. Leonard reluctantly got up to answer, finding Raj and Howard on the other side.
“Since the university’s closed today, we thought we’d hang out here,” Howard said, before noticing Penny inside. “Uh, we weren’t, interrupting anything, were we?”
Penny shook her head, and stood up to leave.
“I was just about to head out,” she lied, grateful for the chance to escape. “Actually, ah, I should probably call the restaurant to check in. I just realized I never did that yesterday. I’m glad you two are okay,” she added to Raj and Howard, surprising them as she paused to give them each a quick hug before leaving. She didn’t look back at Leonard, not wanting to see his disappointment as she walked out one more time.
*****
There was no answer at the restaurant when she called, which didn’t surprise her, but Penny left a quick message, letting them know she was fine and available to work whenever they reopened.
That out the way, Penny stripped out of her dirty clothes, carefully removed the bandage from her forehead, and took a shower. She stood under the hot water until it turned cold, wishing it could somehow wash away the past 24 hours.
After drying off she leaned close to the mirror, examining her injury. Thankfully it wasn’t very large, and she knew she was lucky it hadn’t been much worse. Still, it would probably result in a small scar, just like Leonard had said. And if he’d really seen her with a scar in the vision…
No. She couldn’t afford to think like that. Maybe he’d lied when he said he saw her with a scar, though Penny knew she couldn’t really believe that. But he could be remembering wrong. Or these visions just showed one possibility, something that maybe, in an alternate universe, could happen, but not necessarily here.
She’d been spending far too much time with the guys, she thought with a dry laugh, if she was now seriously considering alternate universes.
Trying to push all those thoughts out of her head for now, Penny quickly got dressed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. It wasn’t until she pulled her hair back in a ponytail that she realized she should probably cover up her cut again, and her Hello Kitty Band-Aids weren’t going to make the cut.
Leonard still had more in his first aid kit, she knew, and even after she’d left like she did she was fairly certain he’d let her have another. But her pride kept her from going back, and instead she searched through her bathroom cabinets, relieved when she finally found a stray Band-Aid that was large enough to do the trick. She made a mental note to pick up more when she was out later.
Once she was fully cleaned and dressed, Penny didn’t know what to do with herself. Though she was scheduled to work that afternoon, she highly doubted the restaurant would be open. She felt restless, somehow full of energy and nerves, and knew that staying in her apartment wasn’t an option unless she wanted to go crazy.
Spotting her tennis shoes by the door, Penny decided to go for a run. She’d never been one for jogging in the past, but had started since the breakup, finding it gave her something to do without making her think about anything. It was cathartic, and the added bonus of actually getting some exercise certainly wasn’t bad either.
Unfortunately, this time the run had a less desirable outcome. The first thing she saw when she left the apartment was her car, still parked on the curb where she’d left it, but in far from the same condition. The whole front end was crushed, and the car that had hit it (presumably while the driver fell unconscious) was still pressed against it.
She had only a moment to be upset about her care before she realized how lucky she truly was to not have been in it during the Flashforward. If she’d woken up on time, she probably would have been on her way to work when it happened, and then… She shuddered, not caring to continue the thought.
The car did have somewhat of a sentimental value (she remembered packing every nook and cranny of it when she’d left Nebraska, young and excited and ready to experience the great state of California), but it could be replaced. She wasn’t sure yet how she’d afford it, but she was grateful that it wasn’t a larger, more permanent, loss.
After one last look at her poor car, she took off an at easy jog down the sidewalk. Everywhere she looked, though, there was more evidence of the disaster from the day before. Broken windows, more crashed cars, abandoned where they’d come to rest. She’d seen hours upon hours of news footage, but to actually see this in person, in her own neighborhood, really drove home the full impact of what had happened.
As soon as she could she turned off the main street into a small park, but even here there were reminders. Though lacking any signs of damage, it also lacked people in general. There were no children running around on the playground, no parents talking on benches, no sounds of shrieks and laughter. Apparently Penny was in the minority in needing to get outside.
Despite the fact that her run was by no means helping her forget her problems, but rather reinforcing them with each step she took, she didn’t turn around to go home. She just pressed harder, faster, wishing she could run fast enough to turn the world into a blur around her, to just leave everything behind and forget.
But she was no Flash. She was hardly fast by normal standards. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget.
*****
Part 2 here
Pairing(s): Leonard/Penny
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory and Flashforward (the novel), but only containing characters from TBBT
Rating: PG
Warnings: Some spoilers for Flashforward
Word Count: 15,001
Summary: Disaster strikes when an experiment at at CERN causes everyone in the world to blackout for two minutes. But during that time, everyone has a vision of their lives 6 months in the future. A wrench is thrown into Leonard and Penny's attempts to fix their post-breakup friendship when their visions show them together once again. Now they must decide whether or not they believe the visions to be the definite future, or just a possibility. Can Penny overcome her fear of being hurt? And will Leonard be willing to give her another chance if she does?
Author's Note: This was written for the bigbangbigbang, and is by far my longest completed fanfic. Huge thanks to robothor1111 for reading my drafts and offering suggestions along the way! And much love to aydean and Juniperlane for each making some fantastic stuff to go along with my fic.
aydean's music video is on youtube here.
Juniperlane's art and fanmix can be found here.
Part 2 here
*****
Penny was in her apartment when it happened. She had overslept and was running late for work. Buttoning up her vest, she pulled open her fridge to grab a quick breakfast - and remembered that she needed to go shopping.
Back in simpler times, she could have simply ran across the hall to sneak something from Leonard and Sheldon’s fridge, maybe even a cup of coffee if she was lucky and they had it ready. But ever since the breakup with Leonard, she felt like she would be intruding to go over unnecessarily. Even though they were trying to repair their friendship (a project that had taken quite a few steps back after she’d drunkenly gone over that one night), she knew they still had a long way to go before she could enter their apartment as casually and carefree as she had before.
If only she’d woken up on time, she could have stopped somewhere along the way for a quick bite, but now she’d have to hope she could sneak something from the kitchen at the restaurant.
She slammed the fridge and turned around to grab her purse - then everything changed.
She was still in her apartment, but the lights were dimmed. She was on her couch, a glass of wine in her hand, leaning against a warm body behind her.
Instinctively she knew it was Leonard. She couldn’t see him, but it didn’t matter. It was in the way his fingers were drawing soft patterns on her arms, and how her head fit just right against his shoulder.
Was she dreaming? She must be, because this wasn’t possible - but it sure didn’t feel like a dream. And while she’d head of lucid dreaming, she’d never experienced one herself; was this what it was like?
Penny tried to move, to jump up from the couch, to just turn and see who was behind her, but her body was out of her control. Weren’t lucid dreams supposed to give you more control, not take it away from you? Her TV in front of the couch looked like it was playing some movie she didn’t recognize, but after a minute she vaguely remembered seeing trailers for it recently.
She longed to look around, to try to figure out what was going on, but her eyes remained glued to the TV screen, despite her attempts to will them to look elsewhere. How long would this last, would she be stuck like this? But even though she had no idea what was going on, she felt oddly safe from knowing that Leonard was there with her, his arms wrapped around her waist.
Then suddenly she was moving, placing her glass of wine on the coffee table and turning to look at Leonard behind her.
He raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and while Penny’s mind reeled as she tried to figure things out, she found words suddenly coming out of her mouth. She had no more control of her words than she did any of the rest of her actions, and she didn’t know what she was going to say until she heard her own voice.
“I love you,” she said, feeling a smile spreading across her face.
“I know,” Leonard said, a smile forming on his face as well. “I love you, too.”
Penny leaned closer, her eyes fluttered shut, and she was surprised to realize that she actually wanted this kiss, that maybe this could be a good thing. Her hand reached up to cup his face, she could feel his breath on her skin, and their lips were about to finally touch -
And then it was over just as quickly as it had began. She was lying on the floor in her kitchen, dressed in her work uniform, with a splitting headache.
She tried to sit up, but the pain intensified, and she lowered herself back to the ground. Feeling something drip down her forehead, she raised her left hand to touch it, and gasped when she saw the blood on her fingers.
What the hell just happened?
Penny closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, willing her racing heart to slow down. She tried to think back to the last thing she remembered, hoping to be able to piece together what had just happened. There wasn’t any food in the fridge, so she closed it, picked up her purse and - nothing. She on the kitchen floor, bleeding from the head.
Well, not exactly nothing, she thought, her mind fleeting to that dream (was it only a dream?) of her and Leonard. But that didn’t help explain what happened.
She snapped open her eyes, deciding the first thing she needed to do was get up off the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, that was a task that was now easier said than done. She managed to sit up and lean against the fridge, which was a far cry from her goal of standing, but she was afraid she’d be sick if she tried to move any further. Dully she noticed that the pain in her head was actually coming from two places - above her forehead where she’d deduced she was bleeding from, and somewhere in the back where she suspected she was already growing a bump.
She wondered how long she was out for, but her phone and purse had fallen out of reach.
There was a sudden knock at the door.
“Penny!” Leonard called through the door, sounding worried. “Are you in there?”
“Yes!” she yelled back, wincing at her headache. “I can’t get to the door.”
She heard Leonard fumble with the lock (thank goodness he still had her spare key), and then finally swing the door open.
His eyes scanned the apartment, quickly zeroing in on Penny, and he rushed to her side.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he said, grabbing a nearby hand towel and gently dabbing at the cut on her forehead.
“Okay?” Penny asked, thinking it wasn’t quite the word she’d used to describe her current situation. “How did you know I was even hurt?”
“I didn’t, I’d just hoped you were here - it happened everywhere. Everyone passed out, for two minutes they think. It’s on the news, the accidents, the deaths…” His voice hitched, and in his silence Penny became aware of the wailing of sirens and car alarms outside.
“You must have hit your head on the counter on the way down,” Leonard said, regaining his focus. “I hope you don’t have a concussion.”
“Everywhere?” she asked, the full implications of the word sinking in.
Leonard nodded.
He lifted the towel gently from her head, then quickly replaced it.
“You should probably get that cleaned up. Do you have a first aid kit?”
Penny started to shake her head, then quickly stopped from the pain.
“No. I think I might have some Hello Kitty Band-Aids somewhere…”
Leonard shook his head.
“We need to disinfect it first, and then cover it with a larger bandage… We’ve got supplies at my apartment, I could run over there and get them -”
Penny reached out to grab his arm, preventing him from leaving.
“Wait. I’ll go over there with you.” Even though she was sure that Leonard wouldn’t take long, she still didn’t feel like being left alone. “Just give me a minute.”
Leonard patiently waited until Penny felt she could stand, then supported her as she rose to her feet.
Sheldon was watching the news Penny entered the apartment with Leonard.
“Anything new?” Leonard asked, almost afraid of the answer.
Sheldon shook his head silently, eyes glued to the screen.
“What could have caused this?” Penny asked, staring at the devastating images.
For the first time since she’d known them, neither Leonard nor Sheldon had an answer for her.
“The first-aid kit’s in the bathroom,” Leonard told Penny, leading the way.
“Thanks.” She tore her eyes away from the scenes of destruction on the TV - it was too soon to try to deal.
In the bathroom Leonard guided Penny to sit on the toilet while he pulled a small white box marked with a red cross out of a cabinet.
“For once it’s a good thing that Sheldon is always so prepared,” Leonard said, sorting through the bandages and medicines. “Here’s some aspirin,” he added, holding out two pills. “They should help with your headache.” He also grabbed a disposable paper cup and filled it with water, handing it to her as well.
Penny swallowed the pills together, still clutching the towel to her head with one hand, afraid to let go.
Leonard finally found what he was looking for, and opened an antiseptic wipe.
“I’m gonna try to clean the cut first,” he explained, gently prying the towel away.
“How bad is it?” Penny asked, eyeing the blood on the towel.
“I don’t think it’s too bad. Head wounds always bleed more than cuts elsewhere, just because there’s so much blood there for the brain, so it’s a little hard to tell until we clean it up.”
Penny winced as he touched the wipe to her forehead, and he immediately drew his hand back.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “It’ll probably sting a little.”
Penny shook her head.
“No, it’s fine, keep going.”
It did sting, but Leonard was being extra careful to be as gentle as possible. Penny looked up at this face, so focused and full of tenderness, and then immediately dropped her eyes back to her lap, feeling unworthy of this care and attention. She’d broken his heart, drunkenly given him false hope, and then smashed it again to pieces, and still he was here, taking care of her.
Her thoughts drifted to the dream she’d had while she was out, the one that felt so real. She’d said she loved him, and the words came easily, naturally. If only it was that easy in real life.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Leonard joked, a small smirk on his face.
She felt her face grow warm, and wished he wasn’t so close because he was sure to notice.
“First, don’t ever say that to me again,” she said, with a smile of her own to show that she wasn’t really mad. “Second, a penny’s definitely not enough.”
Leonard reached back into the box for a bandage.
“Under normal circumstances you’d probably want to get this checked out at a hospital, just to be safe,” he said. “But all things considered, it should still be fine to heal on its own. At least it’s fairly close to your hairline, so a scar wouldn’t be too noticeable.”
A strange expression came over his face, as if he’d come to a sudden realization, but it was gone within moments.
Penny bit her lip. A scar was the least of her worries right now. Was her family okay? Where were Howard and Raj? And her friends at work… If she hadn’t been running late, she probably would have been driving during the blackout, and then…
“You’re all patched up,” Leonard said, backing up.
Penny stood and looked at herself in the mirror. Most of the blood was thankfully gone, though some was still dried in her hair and on her uniform shirt. For a second she worried about the cost of replacing it, before realizing that it really didn’t matter right now.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, looking at Leonard in the mirror. But that somehow cheapened it, so she turned to face him. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course I did,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, and looking down at the ground. “It’s nothing, anyway.”
“No, really,” Penny insisted, placing her hand on his arm. “Thanks.”
Leonard looked back up, and Penny thought he was going to say something, but Sheldon yelled from the living room.
“You should probably see this!”
They quickly stepped apart and went back to the living room.
“The President has declared the country is in a state of emergency,” the newscaster said gravely. “The death toll is still rising, and it will likely be weeks before the full number can be determined.
“We have yet to hear of an individual who remained conscious during the event. Around the world, at precisely 10 am Pacific Coast Time, every single person fell unconscious. Government leaders and scientists are already posing their theories regarding what causes this tragedy, but a definite explanation has yet to be found.”
Penny reached for her cell phone in her pocket, and had halfway dialed her family’s home phone number before Sheldon noticed what she was doing.
“The phone lines are all jammed,” he told her. “I already tried our landline and mine and Leonard’s cells.”
Penny ignored him, dialing the rest of the numbers and holding the phone to her ear. All she heard was a busy signal. She tried again, with the same results.
“Damn it,” she muttered, feeling powerless. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away. Now was not the time for weakness. She needed to be strong.
But Leonard placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she broke down. He wrapped his arms around her, whispering in her ear; she couldn’t make out the words, but it was comforting just the same. She buried her face in his shoulder, not seeing the others wipe away stray tears of their own.
*****
Penny hated feeling helpless. She hated not knowing what to do, and having to depend on someone else. Like when she broke her leg in the third grade, or dislocated her shoulder last fall - it wasn’t the pain that bothered her most, but rather her wounded pride that she hadn’t been able to take care of herself.
Only this was worse, because no one knew what to do.
She wished someone would step forward, and give a magical explanation to fix everything. More than that, she wished this was a dream that she could just wake up from.
Although the phone lines were still jammed, e-mails had been sent to friends and family to check in on their wellbeing. Howard and Raj were the first to reply - they’d been at the comic book store when it happened, and were shaken but otherwise fine.
She tried not to think of her family, knowing that worrying wouldn’t accomplish anything. There was nothing she could do until she heard back - and even then there was little she could do from so far away.
Penny sat in silence, curled up on Leonard’s armchair. He and Sheldon were on the couch, discussing different theories for what could have caused the blackout. CNN was still on the TV in the background, but they’d lowered the volume once it became clear that they still had no idea what had happened either.
She was only half-listening to their conversation (Sheldon had lost her when he started going on about electromagnetic fields), but something Sheldon said now caught her attention.
“You know, while unconscious I had a dream where I was working with an unfamiliar set of formulas. Upon waking I dismissed it as nothing more than an overactive subconscious, as I do all my dreams, but now I think the formulas might actually have some relevance to the problem at hand.”
“Wait a second - you had a dream when you were knocked out?” Penny asked.
“Perhaps dream isn’t the correct word,” Sheldon said, looking thoughtful. “It felt much more realistic than a regular dream, and I was clearly aware of the fact that I had suddenly moved from the couch to my desk, with no explanation of how.”
Penny glanced at Leonard, her stomach twisting as she wondered if he’d had a dream as well, but he was distracted by something on the TV.
“Hey, look at this,” he said, grabbing the remote and turning up the volume.
“Paul, what about the hallucinations?” the CNN newscaster asked. “Are those being reported down under, as well?”
A second newscaster, one in Australia, responded after a moment’s pause.
“Bernie, people are buzzing about that, yes. We don’t know what percentage of the population experienced hallucinations, but it seems to be a lot. I myself had quite a vivid one.”
“Hallucinations?” Penny asked. “Like, we’re all going crazy?”
“So you saw something as well?” Sheldon asked.
“Well I - I don’t know what you’d call it, but I saw something, yeah.” She couldn’t help but glance at Leonard again, but he seemed suddenly very interested in his hands.
Thankfully, Sheldon didn’t press for any further details.
“Fascinating,” he simply said, before standing up and heading towards his desk.
“What are you doing?” Leonard asked, finally looking up.
“I need to recreate the formulas I was working with in my vision,” Sheldon said, picking up his laptop from his desk and heading towards his room. “They might provide a clue to figuring out what caused this. Now that I think about it, they did contain striking similarities to what we were discussing.”
He disappeared into his bedroom, leaving Leonard and Penny alone in the living room.
Penny fidgeted, remembering the last time they were alone there, and what it led to. She wondered if Leonard was thinking of the same thing.
“So…” she said, needing the break the silence, but drawing a blank when it came to thinking of something to say.
“Yeah,” Leonard said in response.
Penny caught his eye, and suddenly they were both smiling. Sure, it was awkward, but she knew they’d get through this. Just like they got through everything else.
Leonard’s computer beeped to alert him that he had a new e-mail, and they both jumped up to see who had responded.
“Looks like it’s your family,” he said, taking a step back to allow her to open and read the message. Penny’s hand shook as she reached for the mouse, suddenly very afraid of what she might find.
Taking a deep breath, she click it open, surprised at how short the message was.
Everyone’s okay. Shaken and bruised, but no serious injuries. Take care of yourself, Slugger.
- Dad
She wasn’t aware of how worried she’d been until now, when she felt all the tension escape from her body.
“They’re fine,” she said, turning back around to face Leonard.
Penny sunk into the couch, feeling exhausted. It was only late afternoon, but she felt like it was nearing midnight. She supposed that worrying and anxiety must take a lot out of you. She closed her eyes, but Leonard spoke up.
“You really shouldn’t sleep,” he said. “Just in case you do have a concussion. How’s your head feeling?”
Penny groaned, but opened her eyes.
“A little better. I think the Advil helped.”
With nothing else to do, they watched more news broadcasts, though Penny found it difficult to concentrate. There wasn’t anything new worth noting, anyway. Expert after expert was interviewed for their opinions on what caused the blackout, yet no one had a conclusive explanation.
“This just in from the BBC World Service - many individuals who were apart while unconscious have reported visions that correlate with one another. This suggests that the visions the vast majority of the population experienced are more than random hallucinations, but rather a glimpse of the future.”
Penny froze, her mind reeling with the implications. It had been easy enough to shrug off the vision when she thought it was like any of the other dreams she’d had about Leonard since they broke up - more realistic, sure, but ultimately it didn’t mean anything.
But if this really was a glimpse of the future… That meant that Leonard saw the same thing. And their situation just got a whole lot more complicated.
Any doubts she might have had about what Leonard’s vision was eliminated when she saw how he was looking at her, hope glimmering in his eyes. She forced her face to remain blank, acting as though the news had meant nothing to her.
“This is just depressing,” Penny said, when the broadcast had gone on to give another updated death toll. “Clearly they’re no closer to figuring things out than they were this morning. Is there anything else we can watch?”
Leonard flipped through the channels, but every station was devoted to the news coverage. Defeated, he turned it off, but now the silence filled the apartment. It was almost worse than the news.
Leonard looked at his watch.
“Is it really five already?”
Penny shrugged.
“I just realized I never had lunch,” Leonard said, thinking through the day.
“I didn’t even have breakfast,” Penny said. “I’m still not hungry, though.”
“I’m really not either,” he said, but he stood up and to the kitchen anyway. Penny guessed he was just restless for something to do, looking for a way he could be even halfway productive.
She watched him in silence for a minute before standing and crossing the room to join him.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“You don’t have to do anything, I’ll get it,” he told her.
“No, please, what can I do?” She looked him in the eye, hoping he would see that she needed a distraction just as much as he did.
“Here, uh, you can rinse this lettuce,” he said, pulling the head out of the fridge and handing it to her. “Then tear off some pieces for sandwiches. I’ll get the tomatoes.”
They worked in silence in the kitchen, side by side, only occasionally muttering a “sorry,” or “excuse me,” as they navigated around each other. It felt familiar, and Penny remembered back to when they were dating, often making a simple lunch or dinner together. Only those times had been filled with much more laughter, not silence and tension.
Once the ingredients were all prepared, Leonard assembled his sandwich, Penny’s, and one for Sheldon, while Penny returned to the fridge to pour drinks. When everything was set, Leonard took Sheldon’s share down the hall.
“Sheldon?” he called gently through the door. “We made dinner.”
“I’m working.”
“It’s a turkey, tomato, and cheese sandwich, just how you like it.”
“Just leave it by the door.”
Leonard rolled his eyes, but did as Sheldon requested.
Back in the kitchen, Penny was standing at the island counter, picking at her sandwich.
“How’re you doing?” Leonard asked tentatively.
She shrugged.
“Okay, I guess. Confused. Grateful.”
Leonard nodded. He understood the feeling.
“In your vision -” he started, but Penny shook her head.
“Please, not now?” she asked. “Just, it’s too much to deal with.”
He nodded again.
“Yeah, sure. Later.”
They took their meals to the couch. The news station was currently covering the damage that had occurred in downtown LA, making Penny very grateful that she was still in Pasadena and hadn’t yet broken into Hollywood.
“Can we watch something else?” she asked. “I just, I need a break from all of this.”
“Yeah, sure,” Leonard said. He got up and began to shuffle through his and Sheldon’s DVD collection. “Do you have anything particular in mind? Want to grab something from your apartment?”
“I really don’t care,” Penny said. “Just anything but more news coverage.”
Leonard ended up grabbing his Star Trek Original Series DVDs, and searched through them to find the disc where he’d last left off.
Penny noticed he was holding the season three set, but she’d still been somewhere in the first season when she was slowly making her way through the episodes with him when they were still together. It made her feel a little sad to think that Leonard had been continuing to watch the episodes by himself.
Still, this was just what she needed right now. Something different and out of this world to distract her. Everything always worked out on the Enterprise. No matter what they faced, they’d continue to explore the universe for another day.
*****
Penny woke up on Leonard’s couch in the middle of the night, initially confused as to why she was there. For a moment she was afraid she was having another weird vision, but she was relieved to quickly realize she had full control of her actions.
She must have fallen asleep on their couch. She remembered curling up on it after she was done picking at her sandwich, only intending to close her eyes for a minute, but clearly she had been out for much longer than that. A pillow was carefully placed under her head, a warm blanket covered her, and she felt another surge of affection towards Leonard.
She knew she’d have to probably talk to him tomorrow about their visions, assuming he saw the same thing that she did… And considering both the news reports, and how he’d wanted to talk to her earlier, it was almost a given that he did.
Shouldn’t a glimpse of the future have made things easier? But now Penny just felt more confused than ever. She’d convinced herself that she’d made the right decision when she broke up with Leonard, it was just easier and less painful in the long run to remain friends. Now she was supposedly telling him she loved him just months from now? What happened?
And did she get any say in this? Penny didn’t like the idea that the future was fixed, that she had no say in what she did. She needed to have control, to know that her decisions shaped her future. What if she was destined to be in a relationship with Leonard again? And then what if they broke up again later, and there was nothing she could do about it?
Sure, she went to her psychic, and read her horoscope… But those were hints, small guesses. Seeing a solid, clear glimpse of the future scared her. Did anything she do matter? Or was she just a puppet in the grand scheme of things?
Eventually she dosed back off to a fretful sleep, dreading the morning.
*****
She woke up to the smell and sound of eggs frying and sizzling in the kitchen. Groaning, she stretched as much as she could on the couch, then opened her eyes a crack to see Leonard, already dressed, making breakfast.
With a yawn she slowly sat up, gratefully noticing that though still tender, her head felt much better than it had the day before. She was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, which were now wrinkled after an uneasy night’s sleep, but she really didn’t care. Leonard heard her movement, and turned around.
“You’re up,” he stated. “Do you want some eggs?”
To her surprise, Penny’s stomach grumbled. She supposed that her body was finally catching up from the very little that she’d eaten the day before.
“Actually, yeah,” she said. “Where’s Sheldon?”
“Still working with his equations. I thought it was pointless at first for him to be focusing on them, but after the news report last night -”
“Last night?” Penny asked, trying to think back to which report he could be referring to. But the last thing she remembered was Star Trek.
“Remember how they were saying that people’s visions matched up?” Leonard asked. Penny nodded, and he continued. “Well, last night after you fell asleep, they figured out the date that the visions are apparently a glimpse of - January 21, next year.”
Penny’s stomach flipped. January was hardly six months away.
“How’d they figure that out?” she asked, hoping to keep the conversation topic away from their own visions.
“People who were reading the newspaper, or looked at a calendar. Not everyone matched up exactly, but assuming that some people were looking at older material…” he shrugged. “It seems to fit. They’re calling it the Flashforward.”
He scooped some eggs onto a plate and handed it to Penny, but now she could do no more than push them around with her fork, her appetite suddenly gone.
Leonard had gotten better at cooking them, she noticed. Some of the pieces looked like they were cooked a little too much for her liking, but they were much better than the runny mess from when he’d first tried to make her breakfast.
“Something wrong?” he asked nervously, noticing she wasn’t eating.
She shook her head and quickly took a bite, hoping to avoid further questions. They ate in a strained silence. The relative normality they’d managed to achieve in their interactions the previous day was gone now, replaced by the oh-too-familiar awkwardness that had followed them around for months now.
Penny reached up to brush her hair out of her face, her fingers snagging on the bandage on her forehead as she did so. She gently pressed on the wound, wondering how it was healing.
“You’ll end up with a scar,” Leonard said suddenly, noticing what she was doing. “But it’s a small one. Right along your hairline.”
“How do you -” Penny started to ask, before the answer came to her. Of course. “Oh.” She dropped her hand and went back to picking at her eggs.
“Don’t you think we should talk about it?” Leonard asked, once it became clear that Penny wasn’t going to say anything else.
“My scar?” she asked. “I didn’t think there was anything else to say. Unless it turns out to be lightening shaped, like Harry Potter or something.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Leonard said, narrowing his eyes. “The visions, you said - we were together.”
“Aren’t you guys always going on about alternate universes and timelines and stuff? How do we even know that what we saw will come true?”
“And aren’t you the one always checking with your horoscopes and psychic to try to figure out the future?”
Penny rolled her eyes.
“Sure, now you’ll buy into predicting the future, when a few months ago it was all a big joke?”
“I saw you and your scar,” Leonard said calmly, “Sheldon saw some formulas that somehow tie into all of this, the news keeps reporting on other visions that all tie together -”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything!” Penny argued. “So what if in six months we’re together again. Maybe in ten or seven we break up again. And we can’t control it, because it’s already destined. Is that really what you want?”
“I just want to be with you.”
His answer’s openness caught Penny by surprise, and she felt the anger go out of her, replaced by the guilt and gnawing pain in her stomach.
“I can’t believe that the future is fixed. I need to have some sort of control over things, the knowledge that my choices matter.”
“So choose me.”
She closed her eyes, wishing it could be that simple. Or was it that simple?
Before she could collect her thoughts, there was a knock at the door. Leonard reluctantly got up to answer, finding Raj and Howard on the other side.
“Since the university’s closed today, we thought we’d hang out here,” Howard said, before noticing Penny inside. “Uh, we weren’t, interrupting anything, were we?”
Penny shook her head, and stood up to leave.
“I was just about to head out,” she lied, grateful for the chance to escape. “Actually, ah, I should probably call the restaurant to check in. I just realized I never did that yesterday. I’m glad you two are okay,” she added to Raj and Howard, surprising them as she paused to give them each a quick hug before leaving. She didn’t look back at Leonard, not wanting to see his disappointment as she walked out one more time.
*****
There was no answer at the restaurant when she called, which didn’t surprise her, but Penny left a quick message, letting them know she was fine and available to work whenever they reopened.
That out the way, Penny stripped out of her dirty clothes, carefully removed the bandage from her forehead, and took a shower. She stood under the hot water until it turned cold, wishing it could somehow wash away the past 24 hours.
After drying off she leaned close to the mirror, examining her injury. Thankfully it wasn’t very large, and she knew she was lucky it hadn’t been much worse. Still, it would probably result in a small scar, just like Leonard had said. And if he’d really seen her with a scar in the vision…
No. She couldn’t afford to think like that. Maybe he’d lied when he said he saw her with a scar, though Penny knew she couldn’t really believe that. But he could be remembering wrong. Or these visions just showed one possibility, something that maybe, in an alternate universe, could happen, but not necessarily here.
She’d been spending far too much time with the guys, she thought with a dry laugh, if she was now seriously considering alternate universes.
Trying to push all those thoughts out of her head for now, Penny quickly got dressed in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. It wasn’t until she pulled her hair back in a ponytail that she realized she should probably cover up her cut again, and her Hello Kitty Band-Aids weren’t going to make the cut.
Leonard still had more in his first aid kit, she knew, and even after she’d left like she did she was fairly certain he’d let her have another. But her pride kept her from going back, and instead she searched through her bathroom cabinets, relieved when she finally found a stray Band-Aid that was large enough to do the trick. She made a mental note to pick up more when she was out later.
Once she was fully cleaned and dressed, Penny didn’t know what to do with herself. Though she was scheduled to work that afternoon, she highly doubted the restaurant would be open. She felt restless, somehow full of energy and nerves, and knew that staying in her apartment wasn’t an option unless she wanted to go crazy.
Spotting her tennis shoes by the door, Penny decided to go for a run. She’d never been one for jogging in the past, but had started since the breakup, finding it gave her something to do without making her think about anything. It was cathartic, and the added bonus of actually getting some exercise certainly wasn’t bad either.
Unfortunately, this time the run had a less desirable outcome. The first thing she saw when she left the apartment was her car, still parked on the curb where she’d left it, but in far from the same condition. The whole front end was crushed, and the car that had hit it (presumably while the driver fell unconscious) was still pressed against it.
She had only a moment to be upset about her care before she realized how lucky she truly was to not have been in it during the Flashforward. If she’d woken up on time, she probably would have been on her way to work when it happened, and then… She shuddered, not caring to continue the thought.
The car did have somewhat of a sentimental value (she remembered packing every nook and cranny of it when she’d left Nebraska, young and excited and ready to experience the great state of California), but it could be replaced. She wasn’t sure yet how she’d afford it, but she was grateful that it wasn’t a larger, more permanent, loss.
After one last look at her poor car, she took off an at easy jog down the sidewalk. Everywhere she looked, though, there was more evidence of the disaster from the day before. Broken windows, more crashed cars, abandoned where they’d come to rest. She’d seen hours upon hours of news footage, but to actually see this in person, in her own neighborhood, really drove home the full impact of what had happened.
As soon as she could she turned off the main street into a small park, but even here there were reminders. Though lacking any signs of damage, it also lacked people in general. There were no children running around on the playground, no parents talking on benches, no sounds of shrieks and laughter. Apparently Penny was in the minority in needing to get outside.
Despite the fact that her run was by no means helping her forget her problems, but rather reinforcing them with each step she took, she didn’t turn around to go home. She just pressed harder, faster, wishing she could run fast enough to turn the world into a blur around her, to just leave everything behind and forget.
But she was no Flash. She was hardly fast by normal standards. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget.
*****
Part 2 here