Chapter Text
Sheldon and Penny walked out of the alley next to 2311 N Los Robles and into the front lobby of his building. ‘Two days should have everything cleaned up from the Time Displacement business so make up a good story for your friends, Moonpie.’ Penny winked at Sheldon.
Sheldon rolled his eyes at the thoughts that must be going through their minds after the way Penny made their exit. ‘Yeah, I’ll tell them all about the vindaloo and the Venusian pickpocket. And only Meemaw calls me Moonpie, Penny.'
‘Come on, they have five arms to keep busy. I told you to leave the comics in the TARDIS, besides he just wanted to complete his collection of Green Lantern. You’ve gotta have some sympathy for that.’
‘Yeah, I suppose, and he did swap me for his extra Detective Comics #27.’
‘There you go. Are you sure you packed all your comics?’ Penny was sure he did but she didn’t want to say good bye any more than Sheldon.
‘Yes, I got them all, and-‘
‘Holy smokes!’
Penny and Sheldon turned to the doorway where they saw a young woman in a familiar blue shirt, shorts, and Ugg boots carrying a large box filled with shoes. She was staring at them, especially at Penny.
‘Woah!’ Both time travelers looked at each other and then back at the girl. They were perplexed since nothing indicated any kind of time rupture on the TARDIS scanners when they landed. Penny took a few steps towards her doppelganger. She cautiously took a sniff of her hair. She smelt human which was a relief.
‘Hi, I’m Penny and this is my friend, Sheldon.’
‘Freaky, I’m Penny, Penny Queen but I don’t know Sheldon. Hey, Sheldon.’ The new Penny waved at the tall man but she couldn’t take her eyes off a woman she would swear could be a twin sister if she had one.
‘Call me Penny Lord, then, are you moving in?’
‘Yeah, I signed the papers on 4B upstairs a little while ago. I'm moving stuff up there but this place doesn’t have a working elevator, can you believe it? I’ve gotta carry everything up from the garage.’
‘I live in 4A, Penny. I’d be glad to help.’ Sheldon offered readily.
‘Yea, we both would,' Penny smiled and nodded eagerly. 'I’d love to hear more about you, where are you from, Penny?’
'Omaha, Nebraska, but I moved out here to try acting...'
+++
Leonard, Howard, and Raj came up the stairs to 4A after dinner at the Cheese Cake Factory. They were still arguing about what Sheldon and Penny could be up to after two days.
Howard was in the firm no camp. ‘Come on, Sheldon is too much of a robot to be having sex with any girl. He could never do anything with a girl that looked like Penny.’
Leonard was in the maybe camp. ‘You didn’t see the kiss she planted on him when we first ran into her. That girl could melt cold steel.’
Raj jumped firmly into the kill me before I ever forget this sight camp. ‘Look!’ He pointed to the open doorway of 4B where Sheldon was caught between two Pennys that had him sandwiched between them in a kiss for a camera set up on a tripod. The guys got out their smart phones to take pictures of Sheldon with the incredibly hot identical twins.
‘Creeps!’ Penny pulled out her sonic. She pressed a button. The sonic made a high pitched whine which was followed by the batteries of the smartphones exploding. The three filming peeping toms jumped and yelped in pain.
‘Serves you right, jerks. Take pictures of me again, and I’ll hogtie you and castrate you!’ Penny slammed her door shut and locked it. She had no idea how those phones all blew up at the same time but she was happy she got to see some karma get dished out.
The guys stared in awe at the door of 4B. They couldn’t imagine the world Sheldon had wandered into but they knew they’d only ever see something like that in their dreams.
Meanwhile, Omaha Penny was still fuming because of the guys outside. ‘God, guys like that piss me off. Do they live in the building, Sheldon?’
‘Unfortunately, the one with the glasses is my roommate, Leonard, and the other two are our equally socially maladjusted friends Howard and Raj.’ Sheldon nodded apologetically with a long suffering sigh.
‘Well, tell them to stay out of my hair. Jeeze, I was starting to like this place. I just broke up with my boyfriend Kurt because he was cheating on me, now I got creeps here filming me.’ Penny dropped down on the couch in a huff. Her good mood had evaporated.
Penny sat next to her new friend and hugged her. ‘Don’t worry, Sheldon will talk with them, he’s pretty good at handling ex-boyfriends and creepy guys. He took out my creepy ex a while back.
‘Oh yeah?’ Penny looked up at the tall physicist. He didn’t look like a superhero. ‘Can you get my money and TV back from my creep ex-boyfriend?’
‘He may be open to negotiation.’ Sheldon gave some thought to how to do this.
‘How about we drive over together, Sheldon, and then we can bring back some take out afterwards?’ Penny got up. She pressed a button on her sonic signaling her TARDIS to deploy the vehicle she wanted.
‘What is that thing you keep using? It looks familiar.’ Penny was sure she’d seen it in some TV show.
‘This? It’s a little toy from Doctor Who. We’re fans but watch out for Sheldon. He’ll try telling you all kinds of stories about how it’s real or something.’ Penny laughed at Sheldon’s eye roll.
Penny recognized the show and giggled on the couch at the idea of a time traveling police box.
A couple of hours later Penny Queen opened her apartment door to find her new friends with her TV, money, and several other things Kurt had claimed like her music collection. Sheldon shrugged. ‘We can be very convincing.’
The time travelers helped set up Penny’s TV. After the TV and computer were taken care of Penny Lord wanted to make her goodbyes. The Nebraska girl said she wanted to finish setting up her Care Bears so she left the friends to some privacy.
‘It will be like I never left, Moonpie.’ Penny giggled at the funny universe.
‘I don’t think she has a TARDIS but she sounds like she needs a friend. How about you, are you OK?’ Sheldon knew how big the galaxy was, several actually, and he knew it could get lonely out there.
‘I’m a ‘Time Lord’.’ Penny emphasized the title with deep resonance and then they both started laughing. They hugged each other warmly. ‘I’m good but if you ever get bored.’ Penny pulled a new sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. ‘Not as many features as a deluxe model but it can hook up with a laptop so you can make a call to a friend.’ She hugged Sheldon and walked to the front door. ‘Hey, Sheldon, I thought only your Meemaw called you Moonpie?’
‘I need some way to tell you and QueenP apart and I like hearing you say it.’ He waved to the woman that turned his life into the best mess he’d ever known and watched that door shut for now. Time Travel was too funny to talk about forever.
+++
Penny came out of her bedroom after having set up the last of her Care Bears. She found Sheldon reading through her ‘Secrets of the Tarot’ with a smile.
‘Do you use the Tarot, Sheldon?’
‘Me, no, but Penny takes an interest in it, and I’ve seen more than a few odd things being with her to just laugh at it.’ Sheldon put the book back with care.
‘My psychic says I should practice more but I want to get more into acting. The Tarot and stuff is a fun hobby, though. I wouldn’t expect a brainy physicist to care about stuff like that.’ Penny acted almost shy about her books while Sheldon perused her small collection.
‘It’s a big universe; you never know what might come in handy.’ Sheldon looked further along among the romances and historical fictions. He found an old favorite series of books from his own childhood. He pulled out a very dog eared copy of the ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ from Penny’s series collection. They all looked equally dog eared from being read and reread. ‘Looks like you’re quite the Baum fan.’
‘I love them; I’ve reread them I don’t know how many times since I was eight.’ Penny was surprised Sheldon seemed to like so many of the same books she did.
‘Did you know he had more in mind than just a fantasy story?’ Sheldon thought back on meeting the writer of Dorothy's adventures back in Nebraska.
‘Yeah, I read about the political ideas back in high school. It was pretty dull history but the connections to the characters were interesting. That’s kind of what made me think acting and theater would be a fun job.’
‘Yeah, there’s that, but Baum had more than politics in mind when he wrote it, Penny.’
‘Yeah, what was that?’
‘Funny enough, it started in Omaha in 1894 with Kelly’s Army attacking the Union Rail Yards. Those homeless guys were helping stop a giant alien cockroach queen from a place in the Rigel star system turning the homeless folks around there into hosts for her larval army. She was the basis for the Wicked Witch.’ Sheldon smirked and nodded earnestly at Penny’s guffawed snort. ‘True story.’
‘You gotta tell me more. Do you like spaghetti, Sheldon? I was going to make some.’ Penny thought Sheldon’s kooky stories today were pretty funny. They sure helped take her mind off Kurt.
‘With Mama Italiana Marinara sauce and little hotdogs added?’
‘Yeah, I love that sauce and I can add the hotdogs. Did they kill the cockroach? Is this a gross out guy story, Sheldon?
‘Oh, no, she turned out to be the sweetest thing. She needed an army to fight the Sontarans since they were invading her home world.’
Penny looked at Sheldon with a scrunched up glare. ‘I know them; they’re from that Doctor Who show. Penny said you’d try to bullshit me with that.’
‘You got me.’ Sheldon chuckled at Penny’s glare.
‘I still want to hear the story, though. Have you ever tried writing far out fiction like Robert E Howard? He was from Texas, I liked his Dark Agnes and his cowboy stuff back when I was in rodeo competitions.’
‘No, I’m not the artistic type you are, but I did meet Bob, once. We ended up having to get ourselves out of a Turkish prison because Suleiman the Great thought Bob was trying to sweet talk his wife Roxelana.’ Sheldon leaned against the sink recalling that trip to the 16th century. He still thought Red Sonya should have been blonde, and Penny was amazing with a sword.
Penny started laughing in fits, ‘Oh, god, Sheldon, where do you come up with this stuff?’ Penny leaned against Sheldon to catch her breath. She didn’t want Sheldon to stop talking, he was too wonderful a story teller.
Sheldon felt the familiar weight against him and he threaded his hand into Penny’s. ‘From finally learning to get out of my apartment and out of my head once in a while. There are scary places out there, but fun ones, too.’
Penny felt like that when she was leaving Nebraska. She looked at Sheldon’s hand and hers together and smiled in gladness she’d found this apartment. She looked at the tall story telling Texan blushingly. ‘I guess you never know what you’ll find when you go somewhere, will you?’