The Pint-Sized Prodigy Perplexity

Sheldon Lee Cooper rapidly filled his whiteboard with equations, feeling her observant gaze upon his back and struggling not to allow it to daunt him to distraction. In the end, she triumphed, and he paused in his writing to turn and look at her.

Inquisitive, intensely blue eyes stared up at him: she appeared to be the perfect picture of innocence, but he knew better. "Yes, Helena?" he prompted. "Was there something you wished to say?"

The six year-old shook her head, glossy brown pigtails swinging, and tucked her legs beneath her. Sheldon pressed his lips in a tight line as he watched her make herself comfortable on Raj's Brobdingnagian desk; her little black Mary Janes scraped on the table surface and random scattered documents—he imagined a few of them were drafts of the proofs for their latest paper. He would have to talk to Raj about being more careful about the filing of intellectual products, now that they had a child, much too young to appreciate the importance of such research, running about their office.

"None right now, Dr. Cooper. Please, carry on."

He cocked an eyebrow. "I will carry on, out of my own volition, not because your words require me to." Marker poised upon the board, he started to write—only to squeak a black line across the board when he was startled by the loud crackling of foil. He turned around again to find her with one arm elbow-deep in a bag of nacho chips. He frowned, even as she merely stared back, innocently and unblinkingly.

"She's an astounding prodigy—even more than you were," President Siebert had declared. Before he could protest, the President of the university continued, "She's displaying incredible potential in mathematics and physics, and even at the tender age of six has determined theoretical physics to be her field of choice. Her mother is a PhD, but since she's not in physics, sought guidance for her child. You will provide that guidance, Dr. Cooper. After all, who better to mentor her than one who knows her situation best, a former wunderkind himself?"

With those words, Sheldon had been forced to allow little Helena into his office every Thursday. He allowed her access to his reading materials and simulations, she would ask him questions which he would answer, and sometimes, though not often, he would even sit down with her to teach her something. But mostly, she simply watched him work and commented on it, sometimes even daring to correct his work, only she wasn't correcting his work so much as making it wrong.

"It's negative," the little voice behind him piped up. She pointed one cheesy finger at the sign before one of his variables.

"I beg your pardon?" he demanded. "Are you presuming to tell me that I have marked the wrong sign in the equation?"

"It's not a presumption, but a fact," she said. "You got the wrong sign."

He crossed his arms. "Look here young lady, you may be very smart for your age, but I have been working in the field of theoretical physics for several multiples of your current lifetime. My equations are correct."

She licked her cheese-stained hands—Sheldon resisted the urge to swat at them and scold her—and told him: "I'm smart for any age. The President Mister Siebert said so. My IQ is higher than your IQ."

He gave her a stern look. "Unless you take that back, I will forbid you from returning to my office for the succeeding Thursdays."

Before he could realize it, she jumped off the desk, grabbed a spare marker, and rubbed at his equation with a tiny fist. "Hey!" he cried. She changed the sign and started to tweak the related equations, when he snatched the marker out of her hand. "I did not give your permission to alter my work, and it was very rude of you to interfere, and now you made my equation…" his words trailed off when his eyes flicked over the changed equation. It was perfectly balanced.

"So…?" Helena rocked on her feet, wearing a beguiling smile from ear-to-ear.

"You caught a minor scribal error," he said nonchalantly, and began the alterations to the derivative equations.

"I was right and you were wrong," she chirped in singsong, drumming an appropriate rhythm on Raj's desk.

Howard had suggested bringing the little girl to Mr. D'Onofrio to get a haircut identical to Sheldon's, since she would be the closest thing that he would have as a 'mini-me.' Sheldon had objected—the child was an obnoxious, demanding, know-it-all who never ceased talking. "Now you know how we feel in your company," Leonard had smirked.

She skipped away, leaving him alone with his equations while she busied herself trying to pull a book from the middle shelf of the bookcase. She was short for her age, and even on tiptoe, her fingertips barely brushed the spine.

Sheldon sighed, grabbed his Purell en route to the bookcase, and retrieved the book for her. "Hold out your hands first," he instructed her. She complied and he squirted some sanitizer on her palms. "Now, rub carefully." After some hasty rubbing, she took the book from his hands.

"Thank you!" she ran to his seat and clambered in it. No matter how many times he had lectured her about the state of eternal dibs upon his spot, she insisted on sitting in it because it was the best spot. She was really, really smart, alright.

He shifted on his feet, gaze locked upon the sight of the child turning pages of the too-big book, and started when she suddenly glanced up at him. Sometimes, it was like facing a mirror, only to have his reflection move independently because it wasn't his reflection after all, but someone else.

There was a knock on the door. Of course. That would be Helena's mother, finally coming to discuss the case of her child with him. The meeting was long overdue, but they both had had engagements and errands that had interfered with setting aside a common time. He opened the door: "Good afternoon—"

Sheldon hadn't known what to expect, but it was somewhat closer to a woman who was at least ten years older, with a PhD in some irrelevant humanities discipline. At the very least, he didn't expect this lady, who seemed to have the same as his thirty-five years, with brilliant green eyes and disconcertingly shiny long brown hair and that smile.

"Good afternoon… Dr. Cooper?" she inquired. She wore a button-down shirt and a plaid skirt, though lab goggles were still perched upon her head, and if his eidetic memory served him right—which it always did—she had the most attractive appearance he had ever seen.

Her hand was outstretched and he took it, before remembering that he should've told her that he didn't shake hands with strangers… or anyone. "Yes." He quickly pulled away his hand. "And you must be Dr. Fowler. Please, have a seat."

"Mommy!" Helena pealed, exuberantly kissing her mother when she bent down, before running away, still with the book, and hiding under Raj's desk. His chair had been vacated, and for a split-second, Sheldon feared that Dr. Fowler would take it. But she mercifully took the chair on the other side of his desk, allowing him to take his rightful position.

"Dr. Cooper, President Siebert tells me that you have outlined a suitable curriculum and education track for Helena," she said.

"I'm afraid President Siebert has deceived you," he admitted. "Even a genius of my caliber can't be expected to produce those plans in such a short span of time, especially since I'm also occupied with research of extreme importance. His first priority is to keep Helena affiliated with Caltech, in hopes that she would enter the university as a student, and eventually, remain as a faculty member. Her actual education is a secondary concern, at least for now."

"Oh?" she raised her eyebrows. "Thank you for your frank disclosure. With that in mind, would you be able to suggest my next course of action regarding my daughter?"

"Continue things as they are," he said. "Among everything President Siebert said, nothing is truer than the fact that the one most qualified to advise your daughter would be me, being a former child prodigy myself."

Dr. Fowler's face brightened as her ebullient smile reappeared. "Does that mean that you'll be able to create Helena's educational plan and assist the realization of the same?"

"Of course." As soon as he said it, he wanted to kick himself. He had basically tied himself to overseeing the academic progress of the child for the next ten years at least, should she prove to be able to complete her PhD at sixteen as he did. But his displeasure dissipated at the sustained radiance of Dr. Fowler's smile. That smile. "Dr. Fowler—"

"Amy," she interjected. "My name's Amy Farrah Fowler. Please, call me Amy."

"Very well." He inhaled, and exhaled. "I'm Sheldon… Lee Cooper."

"Sheldon." His name rolled off her pink lips languidly, as if she was tasting it. He couldn't help a small shiver.

"Amy, as I'm currently busy, Helena spends her time here reading the available literature and observing me at work. Although, I do believe that sitting by the feet of a master at work is most definitely beneficial to any pupil, and any piece she reads here would enhance her knowledge—I suffer no mediocre, much less erroneous, research documents here." He stood up and walked to the whiteboard, though his gaze lingered on her. As he had hoped, she followed him and perused his equations. "Helena does have… a certain aptitude for theoretical physics. It's fortunate that she's being allowed to pursue her interest at this age and that her mother fully understands her capabilities. While my own mother and father encouraged my intellect, they never truly understood—" he abruptly straightened up, remembering something. "I trust that Mr. or the other Dr. Fowler also supports his young daughter's impending scientific career?"

Amy gaped, but recovered admirably. "There is no Mr. or other Dr. Fowler. Fowler is my own name."

"Oh!" he gasped, squirming uncomfortably. His mother had told him about such women and they were to be admired, yet he always caught a certain hint of pity and condescension in her voice. "I-I…" he stuttered, wondering if he should say sorry.

She shook her head slowly. "Helena's biological father is an anonymous donor to a high-IQ sperm bank. That kind of relationship with a man… was just not something that I particularly desired at that point, not with the ones I have encountered, at least."

For some curious reason, he was relieved. Then, he realized: "An anonymous donor? That means she has never met her father."

"Not yet. I think that she would gain much from such a reunion, and have repeatedly sent requests to the facility to arrange the event," her expression remained calm, but the slightest hitch in her voice betrayed her distress, "yet it would appear that her biological father has no present need to meet her."

He bristled. Any man should be proud to be the father of such a precocious, trying and yet strangely endearing, little girl. With her big blue eyes, Cupid's bow mouth, and large forehead, she was also the very definition of cute. Never desired to meet her..?

Unbidden, Sheldon recalled the stack of unopened correspondence and unanswered messages from the local high-IQ sperm bank he had visited with Leonard ten years ago. But it couldn't be...

They both jumped at the rhythmic banging from the other side of the room. "Doc-tor-Coop-er, I-real-ly-like-your-bon-gos! Hey-I-did-n't-know, that-you-had-bon-gos!" Helena grinned cheekily at them as she pounded at the pair of drums.

"Helena!" Amy admonished. "You're in the workspace of a scientist, you won't cause a disturbance nor touch his personal belongings while you're here."

The child stuck out her tongue. "He said that everything here makes the mind grow brighter."

His cheeks burned and he felt the need to explain himself. "Richard Feynman was a noted physicist who worked here in Caltech and played the bongos. I'm simply continuing tradition."

Amy nodded. "I see."

A small, soft, and rather sticky hand clasped Sheldon's, and he looked down to see Helena in between them, each of her hands in one of theirs. "Mommy, I'm hungry." she said, yet she also gazed beseechingly at him.

Looking into her blue eyes was like looking into a mirror, he sought to nurture her even as she exasperated him, he tolerated her presence and even her sticky, still cheese-stained hands… everything was suddenly very clear to him.

"Alright Kitten, we shall procure some nourishment immediately." Amy's eyes met his above the child's head, and he was certain that she was thinking the same thing as he was. "Dr. Cooper… would you like to join us?"

"Yes," he replied. Helena started walking, so the two adults followed her lead, Sheldon opening the door for the three of them.

"Can we pick up Boo-Boo from the conservatory?" she pleaded.

"Of course," Amy said.

"Who's Boo-Boo?" he asked.

Amy watched his face intently as she said: "Her twin brother, that's her nickname for him."

"Oh good Lord, there's another one," he croaked.

She chuckled. "He's an extraordinary musician, excelling in the piano, the violin, and his specialty, the harp. Helena attempted to learn the piano, but appears to only have the skill for percussion instruments."

"I'm so hungggggry, my stomach's eating itself!" Helena growled.

"That's anatomically impossible and I doubt you are starving as you make yourself appear, considering that you just ate nacho chips." She eyed the tell-tale stains around the child's mouth then Sheldon. "I must tell you, that I don't allow my children to eat junk food on a normal basis."

"I assure you that I most heartily object to such a practice myself," he retorted.

"It's okay," the little girl chirped. "The nice Indian man gave them to me, he said he's on a diet."

"Kitten," Amy said gently. "We don't say that."

"It's fine," he said. "He's Indian, a man from India. Not, as my mother would say, one of our Indians."

She smiled coyly up at him. "Your mother sounds like an interesting person."

"Not very much, nonetheless she's extremely pleasant—I'm sure you'd love to meet her."

Author's Notes: I needed a break from my two fanfics. This is what happens when one works on a fanfic like "The Star-Crossed Glitch," one's shipper mind does funny things to one. This is based on my unshakeable belief that the Shamy belong together in every single universe—yes, I'm utterly convinced that if Sheldon had gone ahead with his and Leonard's plan in the pilot, his DNA would've ended up within Amy, and the resulting little superior benign overlords would somehow bring their parents together. I think most Shamy readers don't really like one-shots, but nonetheless, I hope this at least amused you a little.