The reviews mean so much! Thank you! I'm especially happy that I seem to be hitting the emotional notes I'm aiming for. Fair warning- to follow is some more very intentional feels. I hope you like it!
Chapter 29:
I'll Die If I Want To
In typical Scorpion fashion, the final hours with Megan were hindered by an infectious fungal outbreak in the hospital, of all things. Walter and Megan's parents had arrived from Ireland to say goodbye to their daughter, and the whole team had been there to support them. Walter never felt close to his parents, since they understood him as well as most humans, but he was glad they were there as a family.
Megan was fading. Sylvester, Paige, and his parents were with her, but Walter was trapped as he helped the rest of Scorpion with the rest of the outbreak.
They solved the outbreak just in time, and Walter's focus was getting to his sister in time.
He ran into the room. Sylvester was sitting by Megan's side and his parents were standing over her.
He had made it. He sat down next to her and took her hand. It was colder than even his.
"I'm here, Megan."
She looked at him, struggling to take her last breaths.
"Don't….don't…be afraid…of who…you are."
She conveyed her last words to him before she closed her eyes, and let out her last breath.
Time seemed to slow as the monitor next to her went from beeping to a consistent tone. He heard his mother crying, he saw the pain in his father's eyes. He saw the sorrow in Sylvester's. He saw the sadness and sympathy in Paige's.
And himself…
Suddenly, he was no longer sitting in that hospital room. He found himself standing in the middle of a different room. This room was a construct within his mind. There were four walls around him, and Walter immediately knew they were somehow the walls that he used to compartmentalize his emotions. They were constructed long ago by his genius mind since it often didn't know how to process and convey emotion, so he would often lock it away.
Now, they looked like they had gone through a war zone. They were battered and cracked, seized upon from the other side. They were like a dam that was being overwhelmed from all the pressure.
A loud deafening noise invaded the room he was protected in. It was a loud, piercing whine. He tried covering his ears, but it had no effect.
It became so loud, he dropped to his knees. The sound. It was the relentless sound of the heart monitor that had flatlined, indicating she was gone.
Megan was gone.
His sister was gone.
His own scream of despair joined the piercing, persistent noise.
Suddenly the walls started vibrating with both his screaming and the sound of the screeching monitor. The walls started breaking apart, not able to withstand the forces against them any longer. As they cracked, a dark, red, liquid started to seep from them, and once it did, the walls completely collapsed. Soon the room he stood in was being flooded by the torrent.
He was quickly forced under the current. He was drowning. He couldn't escape. He was being crushed. He tried to scream again but the blood-like fluid, the emotions, forced themselves down his throat, further burying him. He felt like he was dying. He couldn't take it anymore. He had to make it stop. He couldn't breath. He was going to die. He had to make it stop.
So he did.
The next instant he was sitting back in the hospital room. The whine he was perceiving had returned to a normal volume. Everyone looked so sad still. Not more than a moment in real time had passed it seemed.
And he felt…he felt…
Nothing.
He felt nothing at all.
Which was…interesting.
"Oh. Okay." Those two emotionless words were the only ones he spoke before he stood up and calmly left the room.
Megan was dead.
There was no point in staying there any longer.
****SVD****
Paige watched Megan's last moment with her family around her. Walter had arrived in time to be with her, thank God. He sat next to her and took her hand. She listened to Megan's last message to her brother before she took her last breath, and passed away.
Her own tears made their way down her face, but she was here to support her friends. Mostly she was here for Walter.
As the steady tone of the monitor started, proving Megan's passing, she moved her eyes to him, waiting to be there for him, whatever he needed.
She watched as he seemed to freeze. He was inhumanly still for several moments. Nothing moved. Not a muscle. Not his eyes. Nothing. He didn't even seem to be breathing.
Then he blinked several times suddenly, as if coming out of a trance. His gaze moved through each person in the room before settling back on his sister.
He squinted his eyes at her and leaned forward slightly, as if studying her. The action looked wrong to Paige. She kept watching.
He sat back up straight and tilted his head to the side. He spoke two words that were so calm and mundane, yet they chilled her to the bone.
"Oh. Okay."
He then calmly stood up and left the room.
She would have accepted a similar response maybe from his normal, low EQ genius brain. She had in fact expected some kind of not-normal response from him to Megan's death, and she tried to tell herself for a moment that was all it was, and he would find a way to express his emotions and deal with them later.
But something in the way he looked, something in the way he moved. The difference in his expression before and after he went into that trance for a moment. She felt it was more than that.
She deeply hoped she was wrong, but part of her knew she wasn't.
He had flipped that switch. He had turned off his emotions.
He had turned off his humanity.
She felt numb. Paige suddenly didn't know what to do. For several minutes, she didn't know what to do, so she just stood there, looking at the door he just left through. She was hoping with all her heart that the Walter she loved hadn't just died with his sister.
So what do you think with what I did here? What's going to happen, I wonder? Is the team going to realize what happened and be able to get through to him?
Sorry for the shorter chapter, but I'll update a little sooner to make up for it. Even sooner with feedback, as always!