"It's a Reasonably Bearable Existence..."
Summary: The Powers That Be have had it with Sheldon...And have decided he needs a little Xmas...
Disclaimer: It's all Chuck's...But nothing for Joss Whedon on this one.
(Just a note...To learn more about Amy's rather bipolar, beautiful, and somewhat tragic sister and her Sheldon Cooper obsession, you'll want to read "Gran Mag")
Part IV...
("Ok, we've seen the friends, I've looked over the notes...What's next?...I'd like to wrap this up and get dinner on the table for Clarence and the boys...Not that Claire doesn't help around the house but, frankly as a cook...What?..." Penelope, innocent look...
"I see you've overcome your uncertainty about modern fashion..." Joseph, curt tone...
"I figured I'd have to learn to dress the part..." she noted... "It's the same blouse my descendant was wearin'...And trousers of respectworthy length..."
"Knocked a few years from your calendar as well..."
"Don't want to frighten my client or her fellow..." the now Penny-aged Penelope noted... "Sort of seamlessly fitting into their world view as someone they're familiar with, ya know?..."
Pause, clearly suggestive of a hard if invisible stare...
"Uh-huh...I thought you'd decided Cooper was an insensitive lout..."
"I'm trying to display thoughtfulness and patience, Joseph...That's why I was assigned this one, right?..."
"Something tells me you're eager to display something else for ole Clarence...Well, must admit I'd not thought the old fellow could provoke such 'eagerness'..."
Smile... "We're a rather unusual twosome...Always have been...And very well matched, whatever some may think...Perhaps we should get on with things?..." high-minded, if low-cut bloused look...
"Well, we'd best have a look at your client again...Give you background there..."
"Amy?...Certainly...Hmmn...Is this still California?..."
"With this much snow, it's certainly not southern California..." grousing response...)
Snowy farm field stretching across a wide view to a wooden fence to the left, to the right and directly, far to side and in the distance, clumps of trees stretching to solid evergreen and bare-limbed forest...Behind, the field running to a modest, but good-sized farmhouse with the seacoast beyond...Clear blue sky, deep blue to green sea...
"Why this looks to be more like home...New England..."
"Maine...The farm Amy and her sister mostly grew up on...That's Amy's grandmother, Margaret..." They observed a tall, lanky, well past middle-age steel-grey haired woman of determined jaw in heavy overcoat and gloves sweeping the steps of the farmhouse porch...
"Where I have seen her?..." Penelope stared...
"Their great aunt likewise Margaret and spitting image of this one was the Wicked Witch of the Oz movie in '39...The Fowler-Hamilton girls all take great pride in the family history and all bearing some resemblance..."
"Yes, I see it now...That chin...Oh, there's Amy, right?..." Penelope eyed the small, bespectacled figure in red snowsuit emerging from the house onto the porch... "And...Oooh..."
"That's her older sister...Charlotte..."
"Dear God...The poor...Creature..."
"Neurofibromatosis...Possibly Proteus Syndrome as well...Ever hear of the Elephant Man...?"
"No, but I get the intended image...Poor thing...And so Amy learned patience here?...Developed that loving heart that could even tolerate a Sheldon Cooper?..." she fumbled in trousers' pockets...
"Something like that...What are you doing?..."
"Looking for my quill pen...I should be writing this down...Claire suggested it as he nearly forgot some things when you took him to see Mr. Bailey's childhood..." She looked about...Darn, no inkwell...Hafta scratch it...)
"Gran..." Amy called... "We're going to continue our experiment on the effects of cold on Charlotte's lumps..."
Charlotte waving notebook in good hand...Amy adjusting extra-extra-large coat and blanket about her...
"That's fine, girls...But not too long...Charlotte shouldn't catch cold in her lungs...Keep her bundled up, Amy...Just expose one skin area..."
"We'll stick to protocol, Gran...C'mon Charley..." she helped Charlotte down the stairs...
"Do you have the clippings...?" Charlotte hissed...Brushing long hair back...
"In my pocket..." Amy nodded...The two toddling off down the shoveled driveway, arm-in-arm...Gran Margaret watching...A downcast look which she immediately dropped as Amy looked back to her...Resuming sweeping after a hasty wave...
How does one of the world's leading physiological psychologists deal with a broken heart when it's one's own...And one's own being lost...?
No better than anyone else, clearly...
"Picture?..." Charlotte, urgently...
"Two...His high school valedictorian address...Though he never made it, he passed out..."
"Oh, no..." Anxious stare... "He's very thin...Does he have...Something?..."
"Nerves...He was ok...He's only 11, it's clearly stress-related...And there's a photo of him winning a science award last year..."
(Penelope stared...
No...
"Yeah...They met him on a train coming up for this visit...He and his grandmother, Meemaw...")
The girls heading along a road leading to the sea...Charlotte struggling along...Gran watching them carefully, sadly from the porch...
"We'll try it here, ok?..." Amy urged...
"I can go further...Gotta build up my resistance...Father won't send me away if I'm better..." Charlotte insisted...
"Charley..."
"I won't let Gran know we heard her on the phone..."
"Anyway, we shouldn't go further, we still have to get back...Come on, we have a set protocol...Lets have your arm..."
"First...?"
"Ok..." Amy pulled out a batch of newspaper clippings...
"Oh...There's our angel boy..." Charlotte beamed at the photo in her hand... "He called me an angel, Am...An angel...And he didn't run away or stare at me...Oh, when I'm dead and you've married him ask him to let you call one of your girls Charlotte..."
"You won't die, Charley..." Amy firmly...
"Statistics, Am...And I'd rather be dead than go away..."
"'Lies, damned lies, statistics'..." Amy shook her head... "And don't be a quitter...We'll find something, somebody...Say?...Maybe Sheldon will invent something?..." eager look...
"That would be nice..." Charlotte nodded..."But if not...He's yours Amy...You've got to bless him with a Fowler girl...He's the one for you...No one else deserves my Amy...Ok, I'm ready...Apply treatment #10..."
"Let me get the size down...Lets see, 'Mr. Fuggles'..."writing in notebook...Pulling ruler out... "Ten mms, by six...By four...Ok, applying snow cover...Time, one minute..."
"He's a growing boy is Fuggles..." Charlotte, grinning...
"Not since treatment #6...Excellent..." Amy closed the notebook... "He's yours, Charley...I may have seen him first...But he went up to you..."
"Am...Don't you want him?..."
"God, yeah..." Amy sighed... "He's beautiful...But you'll be as outside beautiful as in one day and..."
"Well...No one else...Promise...He gotta have nothing less than a Fowler...He deserves it, I'm sure of it...You could tell..."
"Of course no one else..." Amy, insistent... "Even if you have to resort to Gran's way with Grandpa...Time!..." she brushed off the snow from 'Mr. Fuggles'..."
"Well, Gramps did always say kidnapping was the best thing that ever happened to him...But don't let him go, Am...You deserve the best...An angel...And he's the sort who needs a Fowler to protect him, it's easy to see..." sigh at photo...
"He's for you, sis...Soon as you're better...We'll get him, I promise..."
"Come, you want him..." Charlotte smiled... "Don't play innocent...Like Gran says...Fowlers don't waste our or people's time with nonsense...And we're always straight to it..."
"He'll never want me..." Amy shook snow-suited head...
"Of course he will...You're my beautiful and brilliant, with a shining soul, Am...He's got a brain and he's an angel...How could he not, once you do a little convincing...Promise me, you'll give it your all?...He belongs with one of us, no one else...After all, we can't leave an angel to get in with some idiot...And when I'm ashes..."
"Charley...Eh...Now who's playing innocent...?" Frown... "And, what if you're not?..."
"Hmmn...Well, then...Maybe..." grin... "We'll have to duke it out..."
"Well, you promise?...And you'll give it your all...?"
"Promise...If I'm still here...After all, if it goes that way, we can always try to clone him..."
Both looking at eleven-year old Sheldon's image...Arms round...
Sigh...
("This was their last year together..." Joseph noted... "Their father sent Charlotte off, frankly expecting her to die, to France at a boarding school, well-known for disposing of 'burdensome' children... Though she refused to do him that service, things were never the same again for the girls..."
"Sheldon?..."
"Sheldon...And a world that couldn't just let them be happy...")