I know we all have our own ideas on what happened and what might happen in the future, but this is my 'fix-it' fic. I hope you enjoy it, all comments welcome - thank you kindly!
CHAPTER 1.
"Doc? Is that you? Thank goodness you're back, I'm way outta my depth here!"
"What's wrong, Lovebug?" asked Toby as he walked into the offices of Team Centipede and put the bags of groceries he was carrying down on the nearest desk. Then he suddenly realised what he'd walked into and his cheery manner faded. "Oh hell, not again…"
"Can't breathe!" Sylvester gasped. He was sitting on the couch clutching Happy's hand tightly as she sat next to him. "Can't… breathe!"
Toby ran over to them and dropped to one knee in front of his friend. "It's OK, pal," he said. "You're gonna be fine, just slow your breathing." He checked the pulse in Sylvester's wrist and calculated a hundred and forty two beats per minute.
"This one's worse than yesterday," Happy muttered in her husband's ear.
Toby nodded, but his concentration was on Sylvester. The younger genius had been having panic attacks almost every day since they'd walked out on Scorpion almost a month ago and they were getting worse. "Breathe in," Toby encouraged. "And hold it… and breathe out."
Sylvester did his best to comply as Toby rubbed his arm soothingly, but he was visibly shaking with the effort. "I… I…" he tried to talk, but it was no good.
Toby shook his head. "Don't do anything except breathe," he said. "It's gonna be OK," he paused and glanced at Happy. Neither of them were at all sure if his words of encouragement were for Sly or themselves. "Everything's gonna be OK."
Sylvester wanted to believe him, but every minute of every day his eidetic memory replayed the events that had unfolded back at the garage the day Team Scorpion had imploded. Over and over. And each time was just as painful as the first. And as if things weren't bad enough already his anxieties and OCD had come back with a vengeance. Maybe Walter had been right? He was just a stupid baby who couldn't even get through a day without a panic attack just because a door slammed, or he broke a pencil, or he accidentally brushed against something that someone else had touched.
"That's good, Sly," said Toby as Sylvester's breathing started to slow. "You're doing great. In… and hold… and out. We're right here with you, pal."
Happy let out the breath she'd been holding too. She hated seeing Sylvester in this state, not only because it was hard to see the anguish in her friend's eyes, but because it served as a vivid reminder of exactly how she was feeling herself. She and Toby hadn't done anything yet to make their dream of adopting a child a reality. She wanted a family. With Toby. Now. But she couldn't even think of bringing a child into their lives now that everything around them had fallen apart.
"If you're OK now, Sly, I might just… um… go for a ride," Happy muttered. She glanced apologetically at Toby as she got to her feet. She knew he'd understand why she needed to get some air.
"I… I don't mean to… to freak her out when this… happens," said Sylvester as the door closed behind Happy. His breathing had slowed, but it was still coming in gasps.
"Hey, you know Hap," replied Toby with a small smile. "She doesn't cope with emotional situations too well. She doesn't like seeing you suffer, pal."
Sylvester nodded. "Is… is this going to happen every… every day now?" he asked with fear in his eyes? "I can't go back to… to being this person, Toby. When I was… this bad as a kid I… I wouldn't go out for… for days." The words were coming out between uneven breaths.
"It's not going to be like that again, Sly," replied Toby. "I won't let that happen. I've got your back, OK?"
"Thanks," Sylvester answered. "I'm worried about Paige," he added. "I just wish Walter hadn't lied to her. I thought he knew her better than that? She reacted so… badly."
"I'd say 'badly' was the understatement of the decade," noted Toby, dryly. "Paige is doing… as well as can be expected," he added, unable to avoid the old doctor's cliché. "I'm doing a little work with her – of course she hasn't figured that out yet, she thinks all the silly games I'm playing are just for fun, but it's been very interesting. I'm seeing progress. Not much, but some. Enough to give me hope. She's aware of the part she played in what happened and she knows she needs to make changes."
"Does she want to get back together with Walter?" asked Sylvester.
Toby let out a long, slow breath before answering. "She's not ready to even contemplate that," he replied. "I know he didn't mean to hurt her, but he did. And she's carrying a lot of guilt for the way she lashed out. It's not gonna be easy for Paige to get past all of that, not any time soon anyway."
"I miss Cabe and despite everything I miss Walter," said Sylvester quietly. "I miss him. If Megan was still here…" he trailed off and looked sadly down at the wedding ring he wore every day.
"Megan would have given her brother a stern talking to," said Toby and Sylvester smiled at the image his words conjured up. "And he would probably have listened to her."
Sylvester's smile faded. "I've let her down," he said. "Things would never have gone this far if she was still alive. I should be… taking better care of Walter now that she's… not here to do it herself."
"You haven't let anyone down," insisted Toby.
"But I… I attacked him, Toby," said Sylvester, his voice barely more than a whisper.
His breathing was almost back to normal now and the tightness in his chest had eased, but his heart still ached. He stared straight ahead as the memories of that terrible day came crashing back into his mind again. "I've never attacked anyone before in my life… well, apart from that big, hairy inmate I punched in prison, but that was different."
Toby couldn't help but smile at Sylvester's choice of words. He certainly wouldn't have described the shove Sly had given Walter that day as an attack, but it had definitely been shocking, out-of-character behaviour for the normally gentle genius. Toby wondered how far things might have gone if Cabe hadn't intervened. He couldn't really imagine Sly slugging Walter in the jaw, but who knows? Tempers had been raging out of control all round that day and people had said and done things they would never normally have said or done. Things that they now all regretted. If only Paige hadn't tried to push Walter to places he wasn't ready for… if only Walter hadn't deceived Paige about that lecture… if only…
"Walter was being a jerk," Toby said. "He shouldn't have lashed out at you. I know how humiliating the whole Flo thing was for you."
"If by 'the Flo thing' you mean me standing there holding a stupid bunch of flowers and declaring my love for her in front of everyone, only to have her announce her feelings for Walter, then I guess it doesn't take a genius behaviourist to figure out how I felt." Sylvester had tears in his eyes as he spoke. "That was by far the most humiliated I've felt since Perry Drago pulled down my pants in front of the whole school."
"We need to talk about Perry Drago one day," said Toby, raising his eyebrows.
"How could he do that to me?"
"Perry?"
Walter!"
"Oh, OK, but think about it, Sly," continued Toby. "I know Walter needs to shoulder his portion of the blame, but it's not really his fault that Flo wants to lick his brain, is it?"
"That's a disgusting thought!" exclaimed Sylvester, turning up his noise.
"Figuratively speaking," Toby clarified.
Sylvester sighed deeply. "OK, maybe not… but he could have made his position clearer when he took her to that lecture."
"Hey, Flo, wanna come to a lecture as my platonic companion because I have no romantic feelings of any kind towards you and that dream I told you about meant nothing so don't get any ideas, but don't tell Paige because she'll wrongly assume I'm taking you because she doesn't stimulate me intellectually like you do and then she'll get mad and break up with me," Toby rattled off without taking a breath. "Yeah, he should totally have said that."
Sylvester frowned at him. "You know what I mean." He pressed two fingers to his neck to check his pulse. "One ten," he announced. "It's coming down."
"Do you want me to drive you home?" Toby asked, his sarcastic tone replaced now by empathy.
"No," Sylvester answered. "I mean, thanks, but Paige wants those numbers crunched ready for our meeting with Richard Elia tomorrow… and Paige is a scary boss."
Toby couldn't help but agree. Paige had been channelling all her energy into her new company, but she was refusing to deal with everything that had happened with Walter and Scorpion and her new team were taking the brunt of her tension. If only he could persuade her to sit down with him for some serious therapy, Toby thought to himself. A friendly chat by the coffee machine now and again was one thing, but Toby knew Paige's issues were buried so deeply that she needed far more than a quick chat. He could help her, he was sure of that, but first she needed to let him in and that was proving a challenge, even for Toby.
Just then Paige strode into the office. She had her laptop under her arm and a pile of paperwork in her hand with her car keys dangling from her forefinger. "Hey," she said breezily. "Are those calculations done yet, Sly?"
"Um… almost," replied Sylvester, swallowing hard.
"Well jump to it!" exclaimed Paige. Then she glanced at Toby and rolled her eyes. "Oh wait, don't tell me, Sly's just had his daily panic attack."
Sylvester blushed with embarrassment and turned away from Paige. Paige's expression softened a little, but she made no attempt at an apology.
"Give him a break, boss," urged Toby with a frown.
"We can all have a break once we've secured this contract," retorted Paige. "Come on, Sly, get your head in the game! I need those numbers!"
"Maybe doing some math will clear my head?" Sylvester mumbled and he scurried across to his desk.
Toby considered following Paige to the small kitchen area in their new office space where she had begun to make coffee, but decided that now wasn't the time for another covert attempt at therapy. Instead he walked over to Sylvester's desk and perched on the corner. "She doesn't mean to be so snippy all the time," he said.
"I know," replied Sylvester. "I get it. It's just how she gets through the day. She snaps at everyone and I freak out. Can I ask you something, Toby?"
"Anything," replied Toby. "As long as it's not the passcode to Happy's phone… because she'd kill me."
"Happy told you her passcode?" exclaimed Sylvester in surprise.
"Yeah," grinned Toby. "I teased it out of her… in bed… just after we'd…"
"Enough!" yelped Sylvester, throwing his hands over his ears and closing his eyes.
"I'm kidding," grinned Toby. "I just figured it out, I can read her like a book. Anyway, what did you want to ask?"
Sylvester sat back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. "Do you think Paige would have quit if I hadn't done it first? I mean, she quit Walter, but I was the first one to leave Scorpion. Maybe she was planning to stay? Just because she and Walter broke up, doesn't mean she wanted to quit her job."
"Don't even think about blaming yourself, Sly," insisted Toby. "This is all Paige and Walter's doing. We all just got caught in the crossfire. Can you imagine the atmosphere at the garage if she hadn't left? If we'd all just tried to carry on? It would have been more toxic than any chemical spill we've ever had to clean up."
"Do… do you ever think about going back?" asked Sylvester, nervously.
"All the time, pal," admitted Toby. It was the first thing he thought about every day and he knew it was the same for Happy. They hadn't really talked about it, but he knew. "Hap and I didn't officially quit Scorpion," he pointed out. "We just had to get out of that place for a while. We needed a break. It wasn't good for us to be there with Walter in that frame of mind. I guess I never saw it as a permanent arrangement at the time, despite everything. But now we're working for Paige so I guess Walter might not want us back any time soon."
"We're… we're still a family, though," Sylvester half-whispered. "He's… he's my brother. I always felt safe with Scorpion, even when the world was literally about to blow up around us, as dumb as that sounds."
Toby shook his head and smiled. "Doesn't sound dumb," he assured him. "We are a family, we always will be no matter what happens. Walt found us all, saved us from ourselves and brought us together. Trouble is, he didn't always know what to do with the family he'd created so he messed up sometimes, but we all did the same now and again so it didn't really matter. Paige changed things. Paige showed him how much better he could be, but he wasn't ready, so he messed up again. Big time. Paige expected too much too soon and then when Walter couldn't deliver she couldn't handle the fallout."
Sylvester nodded slowly. "Florence… the way she feels about him… it's not his fault really, is it."
Toby shook his head. "Nope," he agreed. "Walter may have the ego the size of a small country, but he really hasn't done anything to make Flo think he was interested in her. He should have realised how hanging out with her might have looked to her though and what Paige would think about it. He only has himself to blame for that part."
Sylvester felt his pulse start to quicken again. "I should apologise to Walter."
"He should apologise to you too," Toby pointed out. "But he's way too arrogant to do that."
"Maybe," admitted Sylvester. "So I'll have to go first. He shouldn't have said those things to me, but I shouldn't have just walked out like that."
"I know you want to talk to him, Sly, but only do it when you're ready," replied Toby, in a calming voice. He knew he and Happy owed Walter an apology too, but he would let Walter sweat for a little while longer. Besides, their own conversation with his old friend wasn't going to be nearly as difficult as Sylvester's. "Don't rush into it, or you'll say something you might regret," he advised. "You need to be absolutely sure you can cope with opening that particular dialogue. It ain't gonna be an easy one."
"I can't cope with anything right now," admitted Sylvester sadly. "If I saw Walter in the street, I'd probably run and hide."
"Hey, we're all coping in our own ways," admitted Toby. "And the more I think it over, the calmer I feel and the closer I think we are to getting the band back together."
"Do you really think so?" asked Sylvester in surprise. "Paige too?"
Sylvester really hoped Toby was right. Team Centipede had been kind of fun for a few weeks. Snatching contracts from under Walter's nose had felt very satisfying, but now the novelty had started to wear off and he was ready to go home.
Toby pursed his lips. "I dunno about Paige," he admitted. "She has a long way to go, much further than the rest of us. But who knows? We all need to take it one day at a time."
"I'd just like one day where I don't feel quite as anxious as the day before," sighed Sylvester.
"And that day will be tomorrow!" announced Toby.
Sylvester suddenly leapt to his feet and punched the air in a gesture of determination. "Yes!" he exclaimed. "We can do this!"
Toby grinned at the younger genius' enthusiasm. But a voice from the kitchen soon put paid to their admittedly premature celebration.
"Sly! Numbers!"
Sylvester and Toby exchanged a worried glance at the angry voice of their new boss… before they suddenly found themselves fighting a mutual fit of nervous giggling.
"You have to fix her," said Sylvester in a low voice, biting hard on his lower lip as his giggles quickly faded. "And soon! I can't take much more of Emotional-Mess Paige." He took another deep breath, following the in-hold-out pattern he had been clutching onto to get through his earlier panic attack.
"Steady, pal," urged Toby. "Take it easy."
Toby watched as Sylvester composed himself and took a moment to think about their conversation. He mulled over a few ideas he'd been having on how to get through to Paige and decided he would put his theories into practice at the earliest opportunity. Once he could get her to understand that her insecurities had led to her outburst Toby was confident that he could guide her back to the right path. He had an uneasy feeling that Mark Collins was involved somehow, but he hadn't quite figured out that part yet. Either way he wasn't sure how much longer Sylvester could cope with the ongoing strain of their broken family. The sooner Team Scorpion were back together the better.
