Epilogue

Penny and Sheldon spent a lot of time holding hands and kissing at first; like they just needed to make sure they weren't figments of each other's imaginations; that they were unencumbered by anyone or anything.

A month into their second chance, they found themselves hiding from a torrential downpour in Penny's apartment. Elena was on a date and they had the place all to themselves. They hadn't yet made love because it had been mutually agreed that they were trying to make the relationship more than just sex. But it had been long enough, and soon they were in Penny's bedroom, slowly undressing each other, dying to know what it felt like to connect so intimately and nakedly once again.

Sheldon still knew all the ways to make her scream. His fingers, his tongue, his warmth…she needed it. It made her feel alive. How could she live without this? She never wanted to again.

That day, something again changed between them; but it was a good change. An important change. Penny finally decided to completely place her trust in Sheldon and let go of her past in order to make way for the future.

It wasn't always easy. Penny found herself sometimes wanting to withdraw from the intense feelings she had for Sheldon. It had always been her first instinct to want to run and hide, sometimes hiding inside herself. Locking everyone out had always sounded better than letting everyone in. Penny didn't ever want to feel the pain of two years ago again. The emptiness, the depression, it was all-consuming. Every time Penny felt that urge she reminded herself that faith and trust are things that grow over time. So even though she was terrified he was going to break her heart, even if he had given her no indication that would ever happen again, she let the relationship take its intended course.

Sheldon also had a little trouble adjusting to life in NYC. The germs and the people and the attitude didn't mesh well with his Texas upbringing. But he found a routine at NYU and with Penny and with his roommates and eventually he was thriving. His book about the Higgs boson was a critical success and now he was writing another book. It was about Star Trek, and he was collaborating with Wil Wheaton. See, Sheldon really was capable of change.

Tusk went onto bigger stages and Penny finally sat down and rewrote the story she started so many years ago about a girl from Nebraska. She found it greatly satisfying to finally accomplish the goal she set out for herself from the start. She was also in the beginning stages of writing a play based on Pandora. Now that she had opened the box (and found a way to deal with the contents), she felt a certain kind of kinship with the mythological character.

It shouldn't have been very surprising when Sheldon got down on one knee a year after he arrived in New York and proposed to her at the theater in Queens. But it shocked the hell out of Penny, and she cried. A lot. And said yes. And cried some more. Because this is what she wanted from the beginning. Not to be some soulless actress in Los Angeles, dating a dumb, pretty jock and driving a car with a perpetually blinking check engine light. She wanted Sheldon, the love of her life, along with her best friend, her plays, and her adopted city.

It might not have started out as a love story, but it turned into one along the way. It was messy and complicated and a lot of people got hurt in the process, but now everyone was where they were meant to be. And Sheldon and Penny's story would continue until the sun stopped setting and the stars stopped making compositions in the sky.

A/N - It's over! And I am sad. I would like to say that I took some of the idea for this story from one of my most favorite books in the world, Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. I know there's lots of ambiguous and controversial morals and themes in this story and thank you for keeping an open mind. I just wanted a story where people fuck up and do the wrong thing and betray each other and then they have to figure out how to grow and move on.

Again, thank you all for reading and rock on.