Paige had been fast asleep on the upstairs couch for hours.
Walter didn't blame her. The day's case had been like so many of their recent jobs – something that had appeared so simple on the surface that had quickly grown serious. As Toby had said earlier in the day – a phrase that he often used – well, that escalated quickly. Walter didn't know why he always phrased it like that, but it certainly fit. In this case, the situation that developed had required knowledge of the building they were in – specific knowledge that none of their genius skills could conjure up. If it hadn't been for the third shift custodian, dozens of people would have died. It unnerved everyone on Team Scorpion that for once, they wouldn't have been enough.
"Thinking about how Weasley saved our asses today?"
"Huh?" Walter frowned as he looked up at Toby. "Are you talking about Alexa?"
"Well, yeah," Toby said.
"Isn't her last name Wright?"
"Yes." Toby was looking at him as if his head was as dense as molasses. "It's a reference to her hair."
"What?"
"Weasleys are all...they have...never mind." Toby shook his head. "You know, there's nothing shameful about a normal helping us. Paige and Cabe are essential pieces to this puzzle. You know that."
Walter knew Toby was assuming that he felt uncomfortable that a normal had essentially saved the day. But that wasn't it – not at all. Everyone was valuable. That was one of the few lessons that he hadn't needed to be taught.
What terrified him was that Alexa was almost not there at all. The building was supposed to be empty. She hadn't checked her email or messages before coming in to work that day and didn't know she wasn't supposed to show up. They had been so close to failing and had succeeded only because of her arrival. Something that wasn't meant to happen. Something that so easily could have not happened at all. And that absolutely terrified Walter.
"I'm fine," he said, realizing he hadn't responded to the behaviorist. "I was just thinking about how so much of our lives is left to chance, no matter how hard we work to control our own circumstances."
Toby nodded. "Yep. You know, there are studies that said that geniuses are more likely to be anxious, depressed, because we're almost too aware of circumstances." He cleared his throat quietly. "I don't know how true that is. But I do think about it."
Walter nodded, standing up. "I'm going to go check on Paige."
"Is she still here?"
"Yeah. She was tired. She had to stare at that LCD for a long time while I was with Alexa. And remember that coding stuff that she only learned once. I told her she could rest upstairs before driving home."
"You just wanted her to stay longer."
Walter cocked his head. "I don't follow. She's asleep. It's not like we're spending time together."
"No, but she's here. And you always hate when she leaves."
"I'm not forcing her to be here against her will."
"I didn't say that," Toby said. "I was just making an observation."
"Yeah, well, I'm going to see how she is," Walter said. "She's seemed stressed lately. She hasn't been sleeping."
"You know that?"
"She told me." Walter turned from Toby, taking the stairs carefully. If she was sleeping peacefully, he didn't want to wake her up.
He changed his mind about that as soon as he saw her. She was curled up on the couch, a blanket her mother had made for her covering her from feet to shoulders, but she was anything but peaceful. Her foot was twitching, and while the blanket wasn't particularly well crafted nor incredibly warm, she appeared to be sweating. As Walter approached, he saw that damp tendrils clung to her cheeks and neck. "Paige?" He asked, cautiously.
"I love you," she said in a quiet voice that sounded terrified and desperate. "Walter, I love you."
Walter froze, staring down at her. She wasn't awake. She didn't know he was there. She...
He cocked his head, his thoughts racing. Maybe he'd heard her wrong? That had to be it. She had to have said something else, she was dating Tim Armstrong, if she loved anyone, it would have to be...
"Walter," she whimpered again, her breathing loud and labored.
"What?" Walter asked, the word escaping him before he could stop himself.
"I love you," she said again, her body shaking as she started to cry.
"Paige!" Walter dropped to his knees next to her and grabbed her hand. She was distressed, she was shaking, she... "Paige, it's okay, it's okay..."
She started to shake, her jaw clenched, her breath coming in hisses.
"Walt? Paige?"
Walter jumped, letting go of Paige's hand and standing up quickly as Toby appeared at the top of the stairs. "She's..." he looked back at Paige in alarm as she started gagging. "Paige!"
"Hey, hey," Toby said, jogging up. He surveyed the situation – taking what Walter thought was an excruciatingly long time. "What's wrong with her?" He asked.
Toby shook his head. "She's been under a lot of stress, we all have."
"Toby."
"Sleep paralysis," he said. "She can't move or speak, but she'll come out of it in seconds or minutes. It happens when people aren't moving smoothly and easily between stages of sleep."
"So we should wake her up?"
"No," Toby said. "We shouldn't interrupt an episode. That can make it worse."
"But she...can she breathe?" Walter's heart was racing and he felt slightly dizzy. He hoped he wouldn't stagger backward.
"Yes," Toby said. "She's not comfortable right now. She will be a little freaked out when she wakes up but she's not in danger." He put a hand on Walter's arm. "Let's go downstairs. She'll be really embarrassed if she wakes up and sees we witnessed this."
Walter hesitated. Leave her alone? She's distressed.
"Walt. Come on." The tugging at his arm was insistent. Walter turned and followed Toby. Knowing what was happening with Paige, even knowing she wasn't in danger, wasn't stopping his head from spinning.
"She was crying," Walter said.
"People cry in their sleep fairly often," Toby said. "If they're having trouble expressing emotions in their conscious state, their brain releases those emotions in sleep as a sort of release. I'm sure you cry in your sleep, even if you don't realize it."
"She was talking in her sleep," he added as they reached the ground floor.
"Also normal, if you're not shifting in and out of sleep stages naturally." Walter hoped his face wouldn't give away that there was more – as soon as he'd mentioned that she'd been talking, he regretted it – but Toby stopped and stared at him. "She wasn't just mumbling, said something you could understand, didn't she? What did she say?"
Walter hesitated. "Uh..." Toby raised his eyebrows, and Walter shifted his weight. "Uh...things."
Toby's face changed in a way that Walter couldn't decipher. It alarmed him. "What?"
"What...what sort of things?"
Walter dropped down into his chair. "Nothing." He frowned, his eyes searching the desk for his laptop, then he realized he wasn't sitting in his chair at all. "This is Paige's desk."
"Glad we have your I.Q. to figure this sort of thing out," Toby said sarcastically.
"She said that she loved me," Walter blurted. He'd been fooling himself if he thought he could keep that to himself. "She said...she said she loved me."
Toby walked over, sinking down on the edge of the desk, looking down at Walter with what the younger man recognized as genuine concern in his eyes. "Walt...are you sure?"
Walter nodded.
"I mean, she didn't know you were up there with her. Are you sure she meant you?"
He nodded again. "She said m – my name. And she said she loved me. Me."
"Walter, she's with Tim right now. You know that. He may be thousands of miles away, but..."
"But I heard her. I'm not making this up, Toby. I heard her. She said..."
"I believe you, Walt, I do," Toby said. "But she said that while dreaming. She may not even remember it when she wakes up, and even if she is in love with you – and I'm not saying she's not – if you confront her about this, she's going to be really frazzled. She might not even realize how she feels, consciously, I mean."
"But I..." Walter bit his lip. Toby already knew how he felt about Paige. He lowered his forehead to her desk, frustrated, almost wishing he hadn't heard anything at all.
"He's not going to make it," Sly said, his eyes wide with shock, his face pale. "There's so much blood he's...he's not going to make it."
"We've failed." Toby's eyes were rapidly welling up. "We've failed. I can't believe it." He bent over his friend. "Walter, buddy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Paige's hand was pressed so tightly against her mouth she could hardly breathe, the word 'no' pounding rhythmically in her head. They always survived. They always survived. She'd survived. Happy had survived. Sly had survived and Cabe had survived and Walter had survived more times than any of them could count. But...not this time? Why not this time? Why couldn't Toby save him?
"Paige," came Cabe's gentle voice. "It's your turn."
She realized that Happy and Toby, clinging to each other, had backed away from where Walter lay. Biting her lip, Paige dropped beside him.
Last words were important. She'd lectured Walter on last words, once. Oftentimes, people passed on without their loved ones having a chance to say goodbye. She knew she should be grateful, considering the circumstances, that she had that chance. But while she knew what she had to say, she hated – hated – that it had to be under these circumstances. She didn't want to tell him like this.
"Walter," she said, dropping next to him, running her hand along the side of his face. "Walter, look at me, can you look at me."
He did. She knew he would, if he was still strong enough to, he would. He'd do anything for her. He loved her, and he didn't know that she knew. "I love you," she said, her voice laden with emotion. "Walter, I love you." She couldn't believe this was it. He was dying. "Walter," she managed, biting her lip, almost unable to see him through her tears.
She could tell by the way his face changed as he looked at her that he believed it, and she dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, the words acted as a brief reprieve from the pain. "I love you," she whispered again. She wished she had a lifetime to tell him. To show him.
Her mother's blanket balled up between her hands as Paige sat up and gathered it to her chest, blind spots disrupting her vision as she stared straight ahead, struggling to breathe. She could feel her heart pounding and for some reason, she felt panicked. She wracked her brain, trying to figure out why.
She'd had a bad dream. Something happened to Walter. Something bad. It was a dream, wasn't it? She thought she could hear him talking downstairs. Yes, it had to be a dream, she wouldn't be napping up here if something had really happened.
But the terrible dread, the feeling that accompanied her as she unconsciously watched him die, felt too real. "Oh God," Paige whispered, putting a hand on her forehead. "Why couldn't this be one I don't remember?" Walter had told her once that the human brain was good at helping block out unpleasant dreams as a sort of defense mechanism. Either she had somehow lost that ability, or this one was too strong to block out.
She felt a chill. She'd been sweating, and now she was too cold. She stood up shakily, wrapping the blanket around her, oddly relieved at her ability to move. It wasn't particularly warm, and it was oddly shaped, but Paige was incredibly grateful she had it to wrap around herself. She couldn't go downstairs and let them see the sweat stains on her top. She couldn't let them see how distraught she was.
She walked into the area of the loft that served as Walter's bedroom and studied herself in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair. She looked tired, but...maybe if she didn't stand right under one of the lights, they wouldn't know the state she'd been in when she'd woken up.
Wrapping the blanket more tightly around herself, Paige descended the stairs, being careful not to trip. Her eyes darted around the room, needing to know where anyone still there was located. Walter was sitting at her desk, and a rush of relief overcame her at tangible proof that he was still alive. Toby was putting on his jacket, and he glanced up, noticing her. "Hey Paige," he said. "I was just telling Walt that I was going to take off. It's getting late. You haven't gone to pick up Ralph?"
"He's spending the night at Daniel's. I told you that." Paige honestly couldn't remember if she'd told him that.
"Alright. Did you want to go to Kovelsky's?"
I have pit stains and I can't take this blanket into Kovelsky's. "I'm alright," she said with a smile. "Thank you, though."
"Alright." Toby smiled. "You feeling okay, Paige? You look a little...frazzled."
You just love pointing that out, don't you? "I'm fine. I'm fine. Just...you know, sometimes you sleep and it throws you off. I woke up and wasn't sure where I was, that's all." She walked toward her desk, searching for her purse. She wanted to tell Walter she was glad he was alive. But that wouldn't make sense. He didn't know that she'd dreamed about losing him.
I've been thinking a lot about how Paige knows Walter loves her, but he doesn't know that he's told her. And I thought, wouldn't it be fun to have them in a situation where that's the case both ways? Where she somehow tells him that she loves him, but she also doesn't know that she told him, so they both know how the other feels, but neither knows that the other knows how they feel. There's going to be some angst in here, but don't worry, I almost always do happy endings and this will not deviate from the norm.