A/N: Hi guys! While this is not my first fanfic, this is my first time writing for Scorpion. I'm still trying to get a hang of these characters, so this is likely very far from perfect, but you can't improve without trial and error, right? I hope you guys enjoy regardless, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

He wishes it was a current, not a shark, that had struck the buoy and tipped them precariously to the side. While this is not a catastrophic problem—he's sure he will find a way for them to keep it at bay—it is entirely less than ideal.

The close proximity he's currently engaging in with Paige is quite the opposite of a problem. She smells of seawater and the scent that is so very distinctive of her, like lavender, and he finds that he doesn't dislike the mix. They huddle together in the middle of the buoy, Walter's arm wrapped around the middle column and Paige's back to keep them steady, and Paige's hands clutched at his biceps. This is the most physical contact they've had in a long time, the tension that's filled the air between them having kept them apart.

Of course, as thrilled as he is to have the air seemingly... not clear, but clearer, these are not perfect conditions.

"From a logical standpoint, odds are pretty slim that things could get any worse," he says.

Logic would dictate that the current situation is already very bad, so odds of something worse happening are slim. He puts his faith in these odds, because the logical answer is more often than not the correct one.

The buoy shifts, rotating from side to side and suddenly it's no longer one lone shark barreling towards them but a group. A frenzy, though Paige doesn't seem to care for the technical term. It must be migration season, which is exciting for scientists researching and marking patterns, but highly unfortunate for the two of them.

Apparently logic can be spiteful and wrong and he's uncomfortable with the notion.

Even still, he's managed to send the SOS. With any luck it's reached people who can respond appropriately and get them the help they need.

The sharks slam against the side of the buoy once again, in tandem this time, the force of the blow more aggressive than the previous few. He posits they're getting agitated at their presence, probably hungry, and that is resulting in the increasing urgency in their attempts to topple them into the ocean.

As they even back out, he blows out a breath. "Okay, Paige, we have to keep the buoy as level as we can. If I can anticipate the shark's next move and calculate where they are most likely to strike, we may be able to spread ourselves across the surface to reduce the degree to which it tips." The silence he receives is less than satisfactory. "I thought we had agreed to quell the silent treatment. Paige."

Pulling his gaze away from the ocean, away from the sharks now circling and awaiting their next move, he finally turns. "Paige," he says again, spinning on the spot.

His heart immediately jumps into his throat, its rhythm kicked into high gear.

Paige isn't on the buoy. She's not—she's not on the buoy. The most recent blow from the sharks must have knocked her off. Into shark infested waters. The thought is too much for him and Walter's across the buoy in a second, crouched onto his knees as he hovers over the edge.

"Paige!" he screams, the sound foreign to his own ears. Her name is rough on his tongue. "Paige!"

She was a lifeguard as a teenager; she knows how to swim. This is a fact. Paige Dineen is a proficient swimmer. Proficient swimmers are able to hold their breaths, to swim beneath the water, to hold their own in waves. Currents like these are decidedly worse than pool waves or ocean tides, but he realizes if he has faith in anyone's ability to handle this, it's hers.

He thought he'd heard a yelp when the sharks hit but assumed it was shock from the force of the attack. He should've turned around right that second, should've checked to make sure she was okay. Precious seconds wasted by his carelessness.

"Paige!"

His entire body freezes for a millisecond when he sees her, a few feet away and just below the surface. She's uncomfortably still, not flailing or showing any signs of motion at all, and he tosses the tablet behind him before diving in.

The sharks will circle first before attacking, which gives him ample time to grab her and return to the buoy.

Spluttering as he comes up, a mouthful of saltwater in his lungs, he tugs her limp body against his side. A boat comes into view as he's paddling, one handed, back to the buoy.

He squints, can't make out too many details but he knows it's Cabe and Toby. They made it. All he has to do is hoist Paige back up and then Toby can tend to her injuries.

Once he gets her lying down, which is more difficult than he'd like to admit considering there is no help on her end, he kneels beside her. He lowers himself so his head is level with her chest, ear placed above her breasts to watch for the rise and fall of her chest.

Panic consumes him when there is none; no staccato of her breath, no shuddering of lungs filled with water, nothing. It's when he moves to start CPR that he notices not only is her face slack, but there's a gash on her forehead, a small puddle of blood mingling with water beneath her.

There's still small fragments of debris floating around; it's possible she hit her head against a harder, rougher piece of scrap metal. It's more likely, however, that she slammed it against the side of the buoy during the fall and that's what knocked her out. The mere image of Paige being jostled, tossed to the side like a rag doll into the metal of the buoy before falling into the ocean makes him nauseous.

Thirty compressions, two breaths.

He's never had to perform CPR before but he knows the logistics of it, knows exactly what to do and how to effectively revive someone.

So why isn't Paige breathing? He doesn't understand why it's not working. He knows for a fact that he's doing everything correctly.

"Paige," he breathes, her name a broken whisper before he finds his voice again. "Come on! You need to—you need to breathe."

He doesn't move from his spot, doesn't relent in his efforts to force air back into Paige's lungs.

Everything else disappears, so violently and completely that he doesn't notice when the boat pulls up as close as it possibly can. His focus remains solely on the motions of his hands, on the aggressive compressions to her chest as if the sheer force of his willpower alone will allow her to breathe.

He vaguely registers Toby's voice but it's fuzzy, distant.

This isn't what he does. High IQ, low EQ. Paige helps (or did, until her recent distancing of herself) him through these kinds of things. Coping with emotions, high stress situations dealing with feelings.

Paige is the one who walks him through it and helps him understand what he's going through, how to effectively deal with the circumstances at hand. Paige is the one he needs to help him through this situation, but she's the one inadvertently causing his distress, his blinding panic.

His hands are physically pried from the fabric of her shirt as Cabe grabs her and brings her onto the boat. He snaps out of his daze, hastily climbing up himself until he's right beside her again.

"CPR isn't working," he rushes, voice loud. "Toby, it's not working! You're the doctor and you're very adamant about pointing out that fact so now is the time to do something!"

Toby hovers on his knees, opposite Walter on Paige's other side, and begins CPR himself. Thirty compressions, two breaths, a number of sets one after the other.

"It's not—it's not doing anything," Walter comments unnecessarily. They can all see that it's not working, that no matter how hard or quickly Toby administers the actions Paige still isn't moving.

When Toby's hands falter before stopping altogether, Walter growls. "What are you doing? Don't stop!"

Toby blanches. "I'm a psychiatrist, Walt! This is it, this is what I can do!"

"Do something else," he yells again, waiting almost no time before shoving Toby's hands to the side and starting on his own again. Nobody else is doing anything, so he has to. "Fine, I'll do it myself."

After some time there's still no sign of a change, and a hand comes to rest on his shoulder. He shakes it off, jerks violently away from the contact and resumes his ministrations.

"Son..." Cabe's voice trails off. "Walter."

"Talking is not helping the situation," he snaps. "You should be steering this boat back to shore so we can get her some help."

"We're hours away from shore and any rescue helicopters or boats are just as far out," Cabe says.

"She doesn't..."

Toby's voice trails off but Walter knows what he's trying to say. And he won't accept it.

"I don't care," he spits. He takes the briefest of seconds to twist his head, to look at the two men standing a few feet away with horrified, saddened looks on their faces. "We try anyway! We can help her. We're scorpion, and scorpion never fails. We can help her."

Ralph had said the same thing once: scorpion never fails. He'll be damned if he lets this be the first time, if he allows Paige to be the victim of their one, disastrous failure.

"Walt, I'm sorry," Toby says, a hint of a break in his voice. "She was submerged for too long. There's—"

"No," Walter cuts him off firmly, "she was under water for three minutes and twenty seven seconds at most."

"Death from submersion often occurs in two minutes or less, depending on physicality." Toby's voice is subdued but clinical, no doubt a mechanism to keep himself together. "Paige is in shape, so let's be generous and say she had an extra minute or so, but Walt, that still leaves her underwater for roughly 30 seconds longer than her organs would be able to handle."

Walter shakes his head. "Owen was submerged for over 7 minutes and he survived with no long term side effects. I didn't give up on him and I'm not giving up on Paige."

"He had that machine that filters oxygen into his blood," Cabe reminds him. "Doc said that's what kept his organs going for the extra few minutes."

His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, lips pursed in frustration. Yes, Owen had the added assist of a machine, but Paige is... Paige.

"Walt..."

"Stop!"

He doesn't need Toby rattling off the facts about drowning—he knows them.

He knows drowning is deemed as one of the most unpleasant ways to die. He knows that in saltwater submersion, the brine in the lungs acts through osmotic pressure to remove large amounts of water from the blood. In an average of three minutes, 40% of the normal water volume in the blood is lost. With that kind of over concentration of blood, heart failure is imminent.

He knows, and the facts that usually bring him great comfort are now dizzying, painful, and completely overwhelming.

"I know you're experiencing some very conflicting emotions right now, a lot of which you're unused to," Toby persists, leveling his voice as best as he can for his friend. "Fear. Sadness. Debilitating despair. I know Paige usually holds your hand through this, and I am sorry."

Now there's no mistaking the hitch in his tone.

"I'm sorry, kid," Cabe says, pain etched into the lines of his face. Walter doesn't slow but he does falter. "We all loved her."

"Stop talking about her in the past tense and make yourselves useful."

It isn't until some color drains from her face right before his eyes, coupled with the distinct lack of motion from her chest, that he stalls and falls back onto his haunches. She's not breathing. She's not moving.

Paige is...

Jumping from his spot, he stalks away from the body (the reality of referring to her as the body sends him stumbling over his own feet), brushing off the touch and words of both Cabe and Toby as they watch him leave. He punches the wall of the boat with as much force as he can muster, knuckles bloodied after the second hit but it's not enough.

Sadness, rage, disgust, guilt.

Emotions he's continuously expressed that he doesn't have, doesn't experience. They all come at once in an overwhelming wave and he doesn't know how to deal with them. He'd felt similar when Megan died, shut himself away for weeks without processing that it'd even happened, but Paige eventually coaxed him into recognizing them and coping with how he felt.

This is a different kind of grief. A kind he cannot handle, not when it comes to the ordinary person and certainly not when it comes to Paige.

Paige.

He leans over the railing, vomiting the meager contents of his stomach.

This is his fault. He pissed off the Department of Energy rep over a pointless discrepancy in the way he'd pronounced a number. If he wasn't so hellbent on being right they wouldn't be here right now. Paige had said as much. They would be on land, working a simple job and getting a decent payout. They would be together, the whole team, finishing up their tasks right around now. Toby would probably be cajoling them into going out for dinner.

So let me ask you, was it worth being right? He'd stubbornly said yes, and he'd meant it in that moment.

But it's not worth it. Nothing is worth this.

If he hadn't changed the job behind Paige's back they wouldn't have been on a boat that exploded, wouldn't have had to fashion a raft from discarded debris. They wouldn't have found themselves clinging to a buoy in shark infested waters.

They wouldn't be here, with Paige lying lifeless on the deck of a boat.

Because of his own preventable actions, he has to tell the team that they've failed. He has to—oh god, he has to tell Ralph. The boy's face embeds itself into his mind and he feels the need to throw up again.

Because of him, Paige is dead.

He'd told her, back when they first met, that he wouldn't let anything happen to her. He's said hundreds of times that he only states facts.

He'd told her he wouldn't let anything happened to her, promised, and yet he did.

"I didn't think that we'd make it," she'd said earlier as they stepped from the raft onto the buoy.

He closes himself off, eyes vacant and stomach in knots because she was right.

Because of him, Paige didn't make it.

Walter wakes drenched in sweat and immediately moves to shove the blankets from his overheated skin. Dropping his head into his hands, he focuses on his breathing, forces himself to take slow, deep breaths to bring his heart rate back down to acceptable levels.

It takes a few seconds but upon taking in his surroundings and the memories flooding easily back into his mind, he realizes it was simply a nightmare. Though uncommon to him, they are not a mystery. Unpleasant dreams that can cause a strong emotional response, typically fear but also despair, anxiety, and great sadness.

The ability to rewind and pause his dreams has aided him greatly many times, allowing him to stop the offending illusions before they begin, but this time he was powerless to control them.

Straightening himself against the headboard, he pauses for a minute before he moves from the bed entirely and pads quickly into the bathroom. His reflection looks distressed; curls wiry and untamed, skin flushed as if he's just been put through a chaotic, perilous situation. In a way, he supposes he has.

But it wasn't real.

It wasn't real—it was simply a figment of his imagination pulling from yesterday's case. Everybody is okay, Paige is alive and to the best of his knowledge well, so why is he experiencing an overwhelming urge to check on her? To make sure she's really and truly breathing, that she hasn't slipped through the cracks while he slept?

"Ridiculous," he mutters to himself.

He is reluctant to accept that it's his... intense feelings for the woman in question that are proving to be most problematic.

Walter prides himself on his general fearlessness, but he was scared yesterday—the prospect of Paige falling into harm's way was too much to process, so much so that he jumped into the ocean to spare her a fate he'd resigned to for himself. He's risked his life for her dozens of times since her inclusion into scorpion, and yesterday was no exception.

It's the greater good; Paige has Ralph to care for, and Walter will not let anything take her away from her son if there's something he can do about it, even if it means he takes her place in dangerous situations.

The mere thought of her being on the buoy when it tipped had sent a jolt of panic throughout his body. Ralph can not lose her, but he... he would be lying if he didn't admit that he would be in great distress if he lost her, too.

His brain, for a reason he cannot quite grasp, has supplied him with one scenario in which Paige could have met her untimely demise. The sheer gravity of the premise, combined with the emotions he has for the liaison, the ones he steadfastly ignores yet is becoming less and less adept at managing, crippled him.

No matter how long he stands in the bathroom, braced against the sink, he can't seem to shake the need to see Paige. To know she's okay.

She'd stayed late last night, assisted him in calling the clients he'd recently offended. They'd all come back to the garage together—Toby, Cabe, Paige, himself. She was beside him on the couch. He knows she's okay.

But he needs to see her.

It's completely and utterly illogical. It makes absolutely no sense.

Walter sighs, turns off the light and carries himself through his bedroom. Calling Paige right now, at 4:27am, would be impractical. She's likely asleep, tucked safely in the confines of her own bed. His own misplaced worries would be soothed by her answering his call, but it would wake her up and has the potential to wake Ralph as well.

It seems unfair to wake both of them for this... this silly reason.

Physically driving himself to their apartment poses the same problem. While he has no obstacles actually getting there, he would be reluctant to bang on the door and wake them, so it would leave him to sit outside until Paige wakes. Loitering outside of someone's home at night by sitting in the car, he's been told at one or more points in his life, is creepy, frowned upon and in some instances illegal.

Shuffling down the stairs, he contemplates possible remedies to the problem. He could potentially wait until Paige arrives for work in the morning, but that does nothing to quell the mixture of emotion currently swelling in his chest regarding her well being.

Despite how insane it is, he will not be able to go back to sleep until this is fixed, until he sees her.

He skids to a stop when he reaches the bottom step, his body frozen and face taut with surprise. Blinking a few times, he wonders briefly if he's still dreaming or if his mind is supplying him with yet another illusion, this time while awake. Lack of sleep can cause hallucinations and his hours of uninterrupted rest per night lately have been inadequate at best.

Once satisfied that this is, in fact, real, he takes a few hesitant steps forward.

It seems as though he is no longer in need of figuring out an acceptable way to check on his friend. Not too far away from him, curled on his couch, lays Paige.

He stands still for an undetermined amount of time before his legs carry him even closer, almost of their own volition, until suddenly he's standing a few feet away from her sleeping form. Her legs are stretched across the couch, head resting on the padded arm. One of her arms is tucked beneath her head, palm cradling her cheek, while the other grips at the edges of the couch cushion.

Walter was certain she left.

After a few hours of apologizing over the phone to various clients, a feat that had taken more time than he initially calculated, he'd made his way into his room and she'd said goodnight, that she would see him in the morning, and made her way downstairs. Logically, that'd have meant she went home.

It's clear now that wasn't the case as she must have stayed a bit longer, possibly working on a few leftover files at her desk, before deciding to crash on the couch. It occurs to him now, forgotten in the midst of his nightmare troubles, that she'd told him Ralph was spending the night with Sylvester at his request. He said spending some time with the boy would ease some of his lingering anxiety over this case, and Paige was happy to allow the boy to sleep over his friend's.

It startles him just how quickly his chest loosens, his heart no longer clambering against the cage of his ribs as he watches the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Hair has fallen to cover her face, a few rogue wisps puffing upward with each breath she takes. He reaches down slowly, gently tucking the hair behind her ear. He assumes the tickle of the strands against her skin is unpleasant.

Turning on his heels, he travels back to the loft for a moment, then comes back downstairs with two blankets. Making his way over to Paige once more, he drapes one (the heavier one, because the body is known to hold onto residual chill after submersion into icy waters and she needs to stay warm) carefully over her body.

Walter drags over a chair, putting it a few feet away from the couch before settling into it with the other blanket he carried with him.

He won't stay. Watching Paige sleep for a while longer is merely to make sure that she's okay and is not experiencing any lasting effects from the cold. Once he's satisfied he'll return to his bed, get a good night's sleep, and pretend this late night excursion never happened.

Wriggling deeper into the chair, Walter tucks the blanket under his arms and lets his head list against the back. Knowing she's close allows him to relax in ways he does not think deeply about but is hyper aware of, lets his body unwind and accept comfort in some much needed rest.

He doesn't mean to stay, but he doesn't fight the fatigue that weighs him down and doesn't move to stand.

The soft hum of her breathing carries easily to his ears, loud in the otherwise noiseless room. It lulls him into a state of tranquility and Walter falls asleep, planted comfortably in the chair a few feet from where Paige lays curled on his living room couch.

It may be illogical, but for once he doesn't let it bother him.

A/N #2: While I know an unconscious body would sink and would not remain so close to the surface, and I do think the team would find some way to revive Paige had this happened, I ask you to please suspend your belief for the sake of this story and remember the first section is a dream. Dreams (and nightmares), in my experience, hardly make the most sense and rarely align with reality.

That said, I do hope you guys enjoyed and that I've done these characters some justice. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated :)