February 09, 2011

She wasn't an easy person to impress, her life through different foster homes and orphanages had shown her a very cruel part of life and the world, her superior intelligence had also contributed to losing her astonishment ability, everything had an explanation, if something didn't work she just had to find the fault and fix it and then it worked again.

She was five years old when she designed and created her first robot, seven years when she repaired a motorcycle engine for the first time, and only twelve when she won her first competition for new technologies for vehicles. All her life she had created objects from practically nothing, scrap transformed it into functional objects; She had found her current motorcycle in the trash, took months to repair it, she looked for spare parts all over the country and even outside it, the result had been beautiful - in her opinion – she was proud of it and until now she considered her most beautiful creation.

However now, his precious bike seemed insignificant before the small human being in front of her. The incubator looked giant for the little baby who habited it; To enter there her first reaction was to check the machine, it's cables, it's connections, the many tubes that are connected here and there and make sure that everything was in order, her mechanical brain had acted by inertia and as always her attention had focused first on the machines, had consciously avoided looking at the little girl. But when her gaze had focused on her, she couldn't push it away, for the first time in a long time she gasped and the perfection of that little being surprised her and she could not believe that that precious baby had been born of her and had since passed and for a couple of hours, she was there standing in front of the incubator, just watching.

"Have you thought of a name yet?" She had not heard the nurse approaching and she was startled, the woman was inches from her and watching her disapprovingly.

"Elizabeth," she answered quickly, she had not thought of a name until a few minutes ago, when the nurse had told him to choose the girl's name. She had looked closely at the rest of the incubators and read the names of the babies and had stopped when she read the name Elizabeth, she liked it and she decided that it would call it, there was no meaning, there was no related memory, only a name she had liked.

Nowadays...

It had been three months since Toby's abduction, the cyclone was almost in order again, the news of Happy's marriage had left them all dismayed; the Monday after the news, Sylvester had tried to find information about Happy's marriage, however seconds after the search began, the woman had appeared in front of him, leaned on his desk and told him that if he returned to try, something very ugly would happen to him; The young genius didn't doubt that it would be and stopped trying, he had said it before, Happy frightened him and now more than ever. The group leader had also tried, but this time it wasn't a threat from Happy that stopped him, the discussion that began between them was so loud that Sylvester stayed at his desk while covering his ears and repeated over and over again that he didn't like that. Paige tried to come in to intervene, but Toby stopped her, assuring her that it was best to just leave them, minutes later and fed up with them. Cabe threatened them with his weapon so they would stop arguing. After this discussion the relationship of Happy and Walter had become tense, a person outside Scorpion wouldn't have noticed, but the team was aware of it; after a couple of weeks from that, Paige was willing to impose couples therapy again, but she was afraid of Happy's reaction, afraid of her physical and mental state.

Happy and Toby's relationship had suffered a setback, there were no such small jokes or comments out of place of the psychologist, not with her, had re-boxed and there were days when his face was almost completely swollen, Whole nights working and every day he expected her to take the first step, to come and try to recover the lost, but that did not happen - neither the first, nor the second, nor the third week - after seven weeks he began to lose the hope that it would be so; sometimes he spent hours watching her work, wishing she were as good with her emotions as with her tools. But he didn't give up, he remained firm in his conviction that if she wanted them to be together, she was the one to look for him, fought against her addiction to her as she had struggled with her gambling addiction, and knowing that everything depended on her now was almost 50% sure he would die alone. Days ago she had asked him to help her with some details of the doll house, it was insignificant thing, and as he had thought on another occasion, for her it was only a repair, a job, but for him, it was to be an alcoholic leaning his lips on a bottle of beer , He savored the hope, enjoyed every second that worked side by side and I wish that those twenty minutes were eternal.

"Who wants coffee?" The woman's voice echoed in the garage, drawing Sylvester and Paige out of her reverie, and made Toby's hangover intensify.

"If you had not noticed, the garage is small enough for us to listen to you without screaming." Happy grumbled from his work space, he still did not understand why Walter had received a practitioner, well -she knew it - the woman was a friend of Paige, they knew about the fraternity in college and after a failed marriage she had decided to resume her university career and when she needed to do her internship, Paige had the great idea that she could do it in Scorpion and help her with the administrative area . And at this moment Happy hated that woman for being so noisy, hated the way she smiled, hated the way she dressed, hated her giant heels that made a constant noise every time he stepped and hated the way in That she was looking at Sylvester, she was the typical pretty and popular girl at school, the one who smiled at the nerd boy to do his homework and then mocked behind him. And of course, he hated Paige for bringing that woman to her beloved garage and hated Walter because he let himself be convinced by Paige.

"Karla, do I get a package for me?" Walter calmly walked down the stairs with several papers in his hands, looking as hyperactive as ever. "Yes, there it is." The girl pointed to a box on her desk. "Happy, we have a job," Walter said when he reached his own table, took his backpack with his work tools, and when I noticed that Sylvester and Toby were getting up too, "No, just Happy and me, it's a simple job, we just need to install security cameras in some offices, I need Happy to install them and I'll program them" that was the type of cases they used to have before Cabe arrived, simple jobs where they didn't risk their lives.

"Why can you do it alone? You just have to install and then go to program, you don't need to do both simultaneously" Happy said, one of his hands had a screwdriver and the other a clamp and pressed them so hard that it began to leave marks in his hands.

"Of course I can," he seemed offended by the idea. "But it's more efficient if we both go, we'll be done in half the time."

Happy threw something very close to a low grunt, but finally she released her tools with a dry noise on the table and looked for her purse before the attentive look of Paige, who had a very bad feeling about this, the relationship between Happy and Walter was Tense and the fact that they were alone on a mission could make things worse. They chose to go together in the company car, there was no point in traveling with two cars, Walter immediately went to the driver's side, he thought that if Toby had been there, he would have made some comment about his desire to live. The trip was quiet, until Happy noticed that Walter was not heading towards the center of the city, rather seemed to be coming out of it, but did not want to say anything, just let him drive.

"I saw you in the garage last night," Walter said when they had been in the car for seventy minutes.

"Maybe it's because I work there." The sarcasm in his voice was palpable.

"How long have you been asleep?" -Walter was a person very little perceptive to body language, but even he felt the woman next to him tensed.

"It's none of your business, O'Brien," she said through clenched teeth, keeping her eyes on the car window.

"I saw you last night, and the night before and the night before, exactly eighteen nights." Walter said, his gaze fixed on the road.

"I'm having trouble sleeping ... it's still none of your business." Just to check, she pulled the lever to open the door and it was locked, Walter had all the doors and windows locked; then Happy realized what Walter had done, there was no case, he wanted to talk to her, he had driven the car far enough away from the city, with the doors locked she couldn't get out of the car, and although she would try She would have to walk hours to get to a place where she could take a vehicle to take her back to the garage, another option was to make Walter unconscious and take control of the car, but even she considered it extreme. "I have not slept well these days, but that doesn't affect my effectiveness in cases, don't worry boss, it will not be a problem for Scorpion".

"The first few days you were calm and then fell asleep because of the fatigue, sometimes at the table, sometimes on the couch, but every day …"

"Did you see me sleeping for several days?" Happy interrupted. "And just when I thought Toby saw me working was creepy."It's not the same," he excused, "I was just studying your sleeping habits."Do you want to study my period as well?" The annoyance in her voice was evident, but the sarcasm went unnoticed by the genius.

"Why would I do that?" The fact is that every day you slept less and days ago you stopped doing it completely, I thought that maybe you slept when you went to your apartment. "He recognized the tapping of Happy's fingers at the door and continued to explain his point of view. But then you began to murmur..."

"Stop there." She knew perfectly well what course this conversation was taking, and it was not something she wanted to talk about at that moment. "You also mutter occasionally, many times".

"And we both know what it's like on that occasion." Walter parked the car in something that looked like an elegant hotel on the highway, away from everything. "You're not eating either, I don't remember seeing you leave the garage to eat or eat anything there in at least four days, even Paige realized that. He waited to see if Happy had anything to say, but she was tense and just stared straight ahead. "You're falling into the rabbit hole," he finally said.

"I am not"," she denied immediately.

"You are in the phase of mental hyperactivity your brain goes faster than your body, you forget to eat and sleep and you know that what comes is not nice" fractions of some memories came to his own mind, Happy forcing him to eat, Happy asking him To stay with them, Sylvester looking at him frightened

"Why did you bring me here?"

"You have to sleep, if you can't do it in the garage or in your apartment it may be because they have too many stimuli for your brain". Walter started looking for something in the glove compartment of his vehicle, quietly remembering what had happened just over five years ago "Mark and I fell more than once, you saved me every one of them".

"I should have left Collins there the first time he fell," Happy said, the first time, she had taken them both out, it had been easy to take them back, to bring them back to reality, she just needed to make them sleep; But the last time was the strongest, she hadn't been there to stop the beginning, Toby hadn't been there and Sylvester was so caught up in his equations that he didn't notice the two men who didn't stop talking and whispering during days, by the time she noticed it was too late and Walter's mind was somewhere far from the garage; Happy managed to bring Walter back, but this time it had not been easy, and she had sacrificed a lot on the way. She didn't regret leaving Collins there, she only left him there for Walter to see in what they were converted and how far they had gone this time, two days later Collins disappeared and it took some time for Happy to know where he had gone .

"Take it." Walter handed her two pills and a bottle of water. "I figure, these should start to work in half an hour."I'm not going to take that," she refused, in the past the situation was reversed; it was she who put the pills in Walter's hands. "You have to do it," he thought a way to convince her without a confrontation. "Or I'll tell Paige that you've been sleepless for days because you miss Toby and she will want to talk to you about your emotions and all that." He tried not to smile when Happy took the pills and swallowed them up with some water "I made a reservation, let's go" Walter got out of the car and Happy thought of the idea of just taking the wheel and getting out of there leaving his boss abandoned "Don't think about escaping" Walter said while he walked to the hotel "You don't have to be afraid" he shouted at her

"You really are a bum in the ass, Walt," she whispered upset before getting out of the car and walking into the hotel, not before whipping the car door.

Fifteen minutes later they were already walking towards a room, Happy's eyes began to close, but she refused to fall asleep, Walter made a comment about how accurate her calculations were and if she started to fall asleep earlier it was because she had lost a Couple of pounds. The room was spacious, not as fancy as the one they used during their casino work, but beautiful enough, there was a king size bed and a desk, Walter sat on a bed edge with his laptop between his legs.

"I won't leave, I'll be here when you wake up," he said, not looking away from the screen, remembering the irrational fear he felt every time he fell asleep thanks to those pills.

"That doesn't worry me." She was standing in front of the window, growing tired, but she refused to fall asleep, she didn't want to sleep, in her dreams she couldn't save him, in her dreams she was a three years old girl who watching from the window the red van of his father left; She couldn't control her dreams, in her dreams she couldn't be rational and everything that she felt in her dreams overwhelmed her, it was easier to be awake, where she could control the situation, where she could think clearly, she knew that the increase of nightmares when sleeping was another sign that she was falling into the rabbit hole.

"You want to talk?" Walter asked, thinking what Paige would do or say, but he didn't really know what it would be like to talk at the moment. "Do you want to talk about your nightmares?" He had also gone through that, they had begun after interning Collins, that last time almost completely lost, one of the first things he remembers seeing when he recovered, was Happy asleep in a chair next to him, she had a part of the cheek and a black eye, cowardly he didn't ask what had happened and she didn't tell him, then came the nightmares with Toby, in his nightmares he died, his attempts to break the glass did not work, then the nightmares with Megan , And had been about to fall into the rabbit hole again during Christmas, this time because of his contained emotions, but again Scorpion had been his support, especially Paige and although he would never admit it, he felt like he freed himself from a weight when he cries and admitted that he didn't want to lose his sister. "Do you miss Toby?" Walter asked her

"No," she added, "I see Toby every day in the garage.

"I don't mean that"

"This has nothing to do with the Doc" Happy remained static looking out "I… I like machines" Walter smiled to himself, that was not exactly a secret "I understand them, I can create them, I can repair them, I can do them work, people are different" she sat on a couch and her eyes began to close "People are complex, with their feelings and all those things" with their eyes already closed and her calm breathing added "They should have an instruction manual."

Meanwhile in the garage Karla had returned from the coffee house and had brought her chair closer to Sylvester's desk, saying that coffee would taste better if he drank in good company, the young man had replied that that was impossible, that the geographical position wouldn't change the taste of a drink. "Idiot, he's flirting with you," said the message he had received from Toby. As he looked at his desk, he saw him waving his hands with eyes wide open.

"They just called us from Travex companies, Paige yelled at the guys, they need someone to set up their Wifi, they think someone has hacked their servers and surfed the Wifi ... or something like that," Paige said. "Sylvester, Toby, can you go there?

"Ok Walter girl," Toby said, standing up. "You're replacing Walter when he's not here, so you're Walter in a female version," he explained as he saw the interrogation on the faces of the two women. "That doesn't make sense," Sylvester said. As he put away his implements and left quickly, Karla made him nervous.

Both men left, leaving only Karla and Paige in the garage, the first one immediately ran to sit at her friend's desk, at last they had time to talk, with four geniuses walking around they couldn't talk much, when she arrived to the garage the first thing Paige said was that there was no privacy, the walls were listening and they always had an opinion about everything and generally these could be a bit uncomfortable.

"Well?" Walter and you are dating, don`t you?"

"No, it's complicated ... it's just different." Paige said, She could not help smiling, remembering that weekend when Walter had told her that he loved her, he had smiled more those two days than the two years they had worked together, But at the end of the weekend they had agreed that they would let things take their time, they didn't want to force anything, for the sake of their work and mainly for Ralph's sake, they had gone out together a couple of times, they were going to eat ice cream and enjoyed long conversations, Paige even thought that Walter was being a little more funny, although he clarified that it was a product of the release of endorphins.

"He's so different from Drew" before Paige could say anything, Karla added. "It's no better or worse, he's just different; I just hope he makes you you know if Sylvester has a girlfriend? I've been here for almost a month and I've never seen him with a woman".

"Sylvester is a widower." Paige smiled remembering Sylvester's discomfort the day Karla arrived, he even spent most of the day around Happy, and the next day, by the third day he had organized all the tools and the work table of the engineer, he had disinfected everything until Happy, sick of that sent it back to his desk. For Toby and Walter Karla's presence was indifferent, while Happy bothered her, and it wasn't necessary to be a genius to realize that.

"So young, it's a shame." But she could not continue because Paige's phone started ringing.

"It was Walter," Paige explained when she hung up. "He says he and Happy won't be back until tomorrow."

"Really?, tomorrow? And they're both alone. "Karla's tone didn't go unnoticed by Paige.

The next morning Walter woke up on the couch, the day before he had taken Happy to bed and he had sat there doing some projects on his laptop, he planned to invite Paige to a talk about computer security that would take place in New York, and was reserving two hotel rooms and passages, after all if Paige could not go anyway he could invite Sylvester or Toby or even Happy. He was looking for a suitable hotel when they knocked on the door to bring the breakfast he had ordered, he had ordered lots of liquid and a lot of food, Happy had slept for almost twenty-four hours and he knew when she woke up, she would wake up hungry.

"Good morning, Mr. O'Brien, I hope your wife and you have had a good night." The young waitress was smiling too much like Walter. "Oh, she's not my wife, she's a friend," Walter said as she entered the trays of food and sought the tip for the girl, oblivious to her discomfort. "Oh, I'm ... Thank you." The young woman received the tip and left, leaving Walter with the two trays of food, he ordered juice, tea, bread, fruit, cakes and cookies, he didn't know what Happy ate at breakfast. Happy´s phone started ringing again, it was an unknown number, it had called seven times the day before but he didn't want to wake Happy for that and now in the morning it had five more calls from that number and two more calls from the garage. He thought that if there was so much insistence it was because something important was happening, so he decided that if they called her again he would answer the phone and if it's necessary he would wake her, if she still didn't. It had not been in his calculations that she slept that much, he thought they would have been back in the garage by the start of the day, but it was two hours from that.

"Doc?", He heard Happy's whisper, drowned under the sheet above her, finally she was beginning to wake up and looked in his direction, and apparently her vision was not clear yet.

"Are you okay?" Walter said, but he couldn't get close when Happy had turned quickly to the toilet. After a few minutes he approached her with a bottle of water.

"Luckily she didn't have much in her stomach." She took a long sip of water and then went to the bathroom. Looking at herself in the mirror, she looked pale and her eyes probably swollen because the excessive hours of sleep. She physically felt better. A little stunned. She was without shoes and without her jacket, she supposed that Walter had taken them away, and remembered how when seeing its silhouette when she was waking up, she instinctively thought about Toby.

"Happy" Walter rushed into the bathroom and had her phone in his hand -"Paige just called, says someone is waiting for you in the garage".

"Me?" Who?" She couldn't think of anyone outside the garage who was going to look for her at that hour.

"She says… she says he is your husband".