PICKING UP THE PEACE-S
AN: I'm working through the stages of grief over this whole cancellation crap. You'll be able to tell by the story, I'm in between anger and sadness at the moment. So, heavy angst warnings.
I've been out of pocket for a few weeks and this little story is my attempt to jump back in. Apologies! I'm trying to get to all the reading and reviewing I owe the other authors in the fandom, but my typing fingers were twitching.
I've got a couple of ideas for longer stories percolating. Actually, what I'd really like to do is rewrite the whole 4th season and end it the way I want! But that's probably not very practical and would be a little boring to read.
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'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a 197 IQ, must be in want of a woman to intellectually stimulate him.'
Wait.
What?
Paige's eyes darted back to the start of the sentence. She frantically reread it, making sure Jane Austen hadn't, in fact, rewritten the first line of Pride and Prejudice posthumously.
Nope.
Paige was evidently losing her mind.
Stupid book club.
Who was the idiot who thought it was a great idea to join the neighbors one night a week to discuss classic literature? Oh, yeah. It was her. She was the idiot.
Because these days there were way too many long, quiet hours to fill and she'd felt almost compelled to find something to make the clock run faster in any way possible. She found if she ran herself ragged with busyness, she didn't have time to think about…
With a sigh, Paige dog-earred the page of the tatty, beat up paperback she'd found in a used book shop and dropped the hand holding it into her lap. She pushed her toes into the sand and stared out at the rolling surf.
'Did you know around 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans? The Pacific is the largest one making up about 30%...'
'Roughly 94% of all life forms on the planet are aquatic.'
'Ocean water is approximately 3% salt.'
Paige was definitely cracking up. She couldn't even enjoy a rare afternoon off at the beach without hearing Walter's voice in her head. And she was finding out, to her deep regret, that she really, really missed that voice.
Once again illustrating the reasons why she had trouble enjoying her leisure time.
Her mind would automatically jump to questions like it was now.
For example, how was Walter's constant litany of scientific facts any different from Drew yakking ad nauseum about baseball teams and his own brilliant plays, or Tim going on and on about his Navy SEAL buddies and their escapades? Or heaven help her, his love of free form jazz?
Just thinking about Tim's musical taste gave Paige a thumping headache. At least Walter spoke the same language as her son which was more than she could say for the other two men she'd allowed into Ralph's life.
She picked up her to-go coffee cup and took a sip. Blech! It had long ago grown cold. The bitter bite wasn't lessened by the cinnamon flavor.
He had always added cinnamon to her morning coffee no matter where they woke up. Walter was really good with the little details.
Was she harder on him than the others? Did she expect more from him? Or worse, did she expect him to change and fit into her mold of the perfect man? Did she give him impossible standards guaranteeing he would eventually screw up and disappoint her?
It grieved her to think that might've been the case.
Everything was such a mess now. Paige wanted to reach out. She was ready to listen. But she had no idea how to go about it. What could she say in the face of all that had happened?
More than ever, she realized it was dreadfully spiteful of her to start a company to compete with Scorpion for jobs. She could have gone back to work for Elia. Hell, she could've gone back to waitressing.
At the time she told herself Sylvester needed somewhere safe to work. That little bit of rationalization brought both companies to the brink of foreclosure. Her sales pitches and customer service were better, but Centipede lacked the quick thinking, leadership and rapid coding skills of Scorpion. Scorpion was efficient, but it lacked quality engineering and people skills. Currently both companies were floundering. And now every member of the whole fractured team was heading for unemployment.
Someone needed to extend an olive branch.
Paige slipped her phone out of her purse. She scrolled through her contacts and let her finger hover over the smiling picture of Walter. The image was a sad reminder of happier times.
oooooooooo
'Tell me what you're feeling
I can take the pain
Tell me that you mean it
That you won't leave again
Tell me what your heart wants
Such a simple thing
My heart is like paper
Yours is like a flame
I can't make you see
If you don't by now
I'll get through these chains
Some how, some how
Take it if you want it
I'm so tired I just don't care
Can't you see how much you hurt me?
It's like I wasn't there…'
"Please turn down that noise," Walter barked irritably before he remembered it was a Saturday afternoon and he was all alone in the garage.
It wasn't that he was identifying a little too closely with the lyrics or anything like that. He just didn't appreciate the distraction. Period.
He'd never cared for popular music. Currently, he had even less of an interest because the songs often reminded him of her. She loved music. Which was all the more reason to relish the quiet.
Florence must have left her Spotify playing again. The chemist insisted she needed background noise to work, especially when performing tedious or repetitive tasks. It drove Walter crazy. Plainly, her 'background noise' caused him to work less efficiently.
The Scorpion 2.0 leader shot up from his desk and stalked over to Flo's workstation. It was beside the point she hated the shortened version of her name. He was only thinking it. Most of the time. And besides, the abbreviation used fewer syllables and less time.
He easily bypassed her security and brought up the offending program. He briefly considered blocking the site from her computer to prevent future annoyance, but he caught himself just in time.
No, he couldn't afford to alienate another person right now. He had few enough friends left.
For a good, long while Walter thought he'd found the perfect niche. A place to belong where people would accept him and always stick by him. It was incredible to finally fit in, a concept he couldn't even conceive of when he was an isolated boy growing up in Ireland.
But it turned out those 'friends' were just like everybody else. When Walter made the mistake of opening up and letting other people in, they'd all bailed and tried to destroy his life's work in the process.
Yes, he'd fouled up in just about every discernable way. But they weren't exactly innocent either. And weren't real friends supposed to care about each other no matter what?
Enough of that.
Walter couldn't afford to allow the stupid, maudlin thoughts in. He must don his tough outer armor and throw himself into his work if he had any hope of saving his company. It was about the only meaningful thing he had left in his life.
He'd made a few casual overtures in the days following the demise of his relationship with Paige. Without exception, they'd been rebuffed. Thinking back, he probably shouldn't have led with the list of reasons why she was being ridiculous about the whole thing.
He'd simply been in shock. It had been his attempt to gloss over the issues and find a quick fix to repair his damaged 'family'.
Later, as all the details soaked in, Walter's fear and anger slowly died and left a howling, hollow agony deep inside when he realized Paige never really loved him for who and what he was. He was even more alone than he'd ever been.
Well, with the notable exception of Cabe. He was so grateful for Cabe's support. Without it, he might've lost himself entirely.
Other than the Homeland Agent, there was nothing left except Scorpion. Or the remnants of it. He had to salvage what he could.
Some days he was still tempted to try to reach out to Paige, however. Or at least Sylvester. Or maybe Toby and Happy.
His silent phone sat on the edge of his desk day after day and taunted him mercilessly.
Walter jumped when it suddenly rang with Paige's unmistakable ringtone.
AN: I blatantly plagiarized the opening line of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' (that book is apt because it's all about mistaken impressions and misjudgement) and I ripped off the opening lines of Ray LaMontagne's 'Such a Simple Thing' in this story. Every time I hear that song it reminds me of Walter.