Well, I've got plenty of one-shot ideas (and a hiatus to fill them with) but I just wanted to start with a short fic about what Paige and Walter are thinking after her breakup with Tim (which, finally). How adorable was Walter in this episode? Sigh.
He doesn't want this.
Yes, he's secretly thrilled, because he's always felt a little ill thinking about Tim and Paige together, touching, murmuring words he's held himself back from saying for so long. He's relieved that the interloper won't be stepping in as Ralph's new father figure, stepping into a role Walter stupidly denied himself.
But he doesn't want this, the tears, the distress on Paige's face. Even if it was a mutual decision—Walter has no way of knowing if that's true—she's struggling with a broken heart and it hurts him to watch. It makes him feel guilty, a repeat of Lake Tahoe, because he doesn't want Paige to move on, but what right does he have to stop her? How selfish is he to root against her happiness with someone else, when he himself still might not be what Paige wants or needs?
Seeing her cry affects him in unpleasant ways and he asks for Ralph's help on the virtual reality headset, hoping to solve a problem that he doesn't really want to solve. But he wants to be a good friend even if he has to follow advice from magazines that also feature biologically impossible sex tips and quizzes about what type of shoe he is. Walter doesn't know how to do this, but Paige, even in the midst of her own turmoil, understands that he's doing the best he can, which makes him want to keep trying. Keep making life easier for her in any small way.
He only states facts—most of the time, anyway—so he stops short of saying that he's sorry Paige and Tim broke up, because…well, he's not. But he is sincerely sorry to see her upset, and more than a little angry that she has been abandoned again. Whatever his issues with Tim, part of Walter had hoped the trainee would be a better man than him. The kind of man who would recognize everything Paige and Ralph had to offer and resolve never to give them up. It's what someone as loyal, honest, and strong as the liaison deserves.
He still wants to be the one to do all those things. But she chose Tim. Paige waited on him long enough and it's entirely possible that whatever was between them has passed, that she's figured out what's right for her and it isn't him. He'll have to accept that.
But for now, things are okay. They're partners, closer in some ways than they've ever been, now that he's not so busy distancing himself from her. They're a team—him, Paige, and Ralph—and Walter will do whatever it takes to preserve that.
And someday soon, when Paige isn't quite so raw and she's ready to hear it, Walter will tell her the truth.
She wants this.
But it still hurts. On the surface, it's clearly a mutual decision, but part of Paige wonders if she left Tim no choice. She's been skipping out on Skype calls, giving vague answers about the team, hedging when the trainee tries to make plans to celebrate his return. She never means to discourage him, it's just…easier. Not to confront the future. Not to question where her heart really is.
Tim is the first to broach it, but Paige accepts the breakup without much of a fight. That makes her feel guilty. What was the point? Why has she held on to this so tightly for so many months, only to let it slip through her fingers at the first sign of trouble? Why isn't she in love with him?
It's illogical, to be upset because she isn't more upset. She's frustrated. Alone. A little angsty. But it also feels like her head is clear, like she's been desperately trying to keep an object in the air all this time and she can find relief now in just letting it fall. Paige has been in love before. She knows it's not supposed to feel like this—it's always work, but not this kind of work. Not the kind that constantly makes her fret that she's making a mistake.
And it wasn't just the distance. If she was rational, if she could keep her emotions out of it, Tim would obviously be the right man. He checks off all the boxes in the neat little list she keeps in her mind, of all the things that she's learned over the years she is supposed to look for in a partner. But love is not rational, or logical, or sane. Perhaps that's what's bothering her most, that she deluded herself into thinking she could force it to make sense. Force some order into her chaotic feelings. She's cared about Tim since the beginning and never purposefully deceived him. But her mother is right. Paige has been deceiving herself for so long she's not even sure what the truth is anymore.
She almost wishes—not seriously, but it crosses her mind—that the wall between her and Walter was still standing. That they'd never faced death together and decided to devote themselves to each other again. Because she's vulnerable and when the genius is standing in front of her at the garage, making an earnest effort to help her lost cause of a relationship, saying all the right things that she's not ready to hear, she has to walk away. She'll burst into tears if she stays and she doesn't want Walter to see her like that, any more than he wants to watch her cry over Tim. Because, despite his best efforts to appear neutral, Paige knows how he feels. How he must feel. And it scares her. Without Tim, what is there to keep her from falling right back into old habits? From craving something again that she swore off a long time ago?
Tim doesn't even want to stay friends. Paige can't blame him. They both know, although neither of them can say it out loud, that she's been running away from a problem much more than she's been running toward him. Trying to create the life for herself that she wants to want. But it's not reality. Reality is a horrible, jumbled, confusing mess and the person at the center of it, the person she becomes more terrified of losing the more insane he makes her, is not Tim. It doesn't hurt her to lose Tim, not much. It hurts her to realize that she doesn't know how to do this, stop hiding and start moving on.
She doesn't know how to figure out what she wants and commit to it without ruining her life and everyone else's around her, because it seems like she's constantly hurting someone.
She doesn't know how to stop feeling like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, tell herself that she'll bounce back even if she makes the wrong decision.
She doesn't know how to avoid replaying the past over and over in her head, while she wonders what's so wrong with her that she can't just choose the path of least resistance. If the universe is sabotaging her or if she's sabotaging herself. If Tim will be the last rejection in a long line of rejections that makes her finally give up.
Maybe she's taking herself too seriously, and the world won't end if she lets herself off the hook. But right now, it feels like everything is ending. She's lost and it's all she can do not to drift to the one person who pushed her toward all this in the first place and now keeps looking at her with a sincerity and empathy in his eyes that guts her.
But she doesn't know if she can help it.