Who else had an irrationally emotional reaction to those sneak peeks? Not just me, right? I swear this show always has me feeling some type of way.
I told myself I would finish this story before season 3 aired so I could chill out and just write one-shots for a while. So there will be one more chapter after this and I'll get it out by the weekend hopefully!
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about anything in this chapter. My Google history definitely makes me look like a psychopath right now, though.
I wanted to extend a special thank you to a few people: guest reviewer Hopeful, who left me an encouraging review when I was feeling a bit insecure about this story; nicoledbishop, who has supported me from my first fic and always makes me laugh; and ScorplinginTraining, who I think might win the award for most dedicated reviewer in this fandom. To all readers who have ever left me feedback, thank you, it's appreciated more than you know.
"We can't come back. You know that, don't you?"
Paige's voice. Her words sounded distant, like they were muffled through a door. Walter could only see the haziest outline of two figures until they grew clearer, Ralph standing by his mother's side in the office. He missed them so much it made his chest hurt.
"You've always put us in danger. You can't fix this, Walter. Just let us go."
No, no, no, he couldn't. Walter tried to verbalize that thought, but his mouth was arid and he wasn't able to force out the words. They were carrying black suitcases, preparing to exit the garage, and somehow Walter knew he was never going to see them again.
"Don't leave." His voice was barely above a whisper, but he had to say something, anything, to keep them from disappearing. He'd made a mistake—so many mistakes—but Paige was wrong, he could fix things, he had to fix things. "Please, I need you. I won't hurt you, I promise. I'm trying to protect you."
Paige shot him a sad look and shook her head. "Hurting people is the only thing you're capable of, Walter." The genius's throat closed up again and his feet felt like lead, too heavy to move as he tried to reach them. All he could do was watch helplessly while Paige took Ralph's hand, stepping out of the garage with him into the almost blindingly bright sun outside.
"Time to wake up, Walt." Another voice, piercing through the fog, sparking a familiar sense of dread and fear, followed by a stinging pain that caused his vision to melt away around him. The ethereal glow in the garage faded, replaced by the reality of gritty brick and hard steel, as a wave of nausea crashed through his abdomen. The soreness concentrated on his cheek as Collins slapped him again, finally bringing him out of his dream state.
Walter bolted up in his chair, head spinning. While he wasn't unhappy about being woken from that particular nightmare, regaining consciousness in front of Mark Collins was not a preferable alternative. "Damnit," he grumbled, "were the sedatives necessary? Didn't think you could subdue me the old-fashioned way?"
Collins backed away and dropped his hand, looking vaguely amused. "I told you, I was working on a tight deadline thanks to the boy wonder. I needed to limit your interference with my project."
"What project?" he asked reflexively, shifting in his seat. His wrists chafed, and a quick glance down confirmed that his hands were secured in front of him with a black cable. Walter tested his ankles, only to find the same restraints blocking his movement. This…wasn't great. "I'm surprised you have any grand plans left."
"Just one," Mark answered with a smirk, returning to the seat across from him. "Unlike you, Walter, I work with a purpose. An ultimate goal toward which all of my actions have been focused. This game of ours could have finished at any stage, but I must say I'm pleased we reached the end. It's been quite interesting this past few months."
The end. Just one. Everything prior to this had been a warm-up. This was what Collins really wanted all along: the two of them back where it all started, their ugliest secrets laid bare. "Destroying me," he muttered, locking his steely eyes onto Mark's. "That's your ultimate goal, isn't it? Stealing my life like I stole yours."
The other genius shrugged. "That's accurate enough," he acknowledged, running one hand over his jaw as he returned Walter's fierce stare. Walter never quite got used to seeing him like this, clean-shaven, hair dyed black and slicked close to his head, but his eyes—dark, condescending, cruel—were one thing he could never change. "Though not the entire story. You see, Walter, killing you is the easy part. Killing everyone you love is even easier. You know the only reason you've saved Paige and Ralph thus far is because I allowed you to. That's why you hid them…because you know I've always been in control."
It was true; he'd told Toby as much. Perhaps with more time, Walter could have found a way to rescue them without assistance, but Mark always knew how to corner them and the team had been forced to play into his hands over and over. Sending Paige and Ralph away was a desperate last resort, and he'd hated every second he was separated from them, but Walter knew his desire to protect them simply wasn't enough anymore. "Why not do it then?" he snapped, enunciating each word sharply. "If you're so powerful, then go ahead. Just take what you want and end this right now."
Collins clicked his tongue scoldingly. "Patience, Walter. You'll get what you want soon enough."
The genius froze. He wasn't exactly expecting Collins to end the night with two beers and a movie, but Mark's true intentions had been fairly obscure to this point. Clearly, Walter wasn't walking out of this garage at seven a.m., as previously agreed. He'd never honestly bought that, he supposed, but he had no reason to assume that Mark planned to kill him either.
He didn't fear death in the traditional sense. Walter and Happy shared the belief that death was more or less a construct, as energy couldn't be destroyed, merely transferred into another form. The genius had risked his life for the greater good dozens of times, secure in the knowledge that his passing was not the end of all things. But to cease living—that scared him. He had everything to live for. Everything to fight for. Maybe he would lose those things, when they all learned the truth about him, but he had no way to guard them if he was gone.
He had to find a way out.
"You may have misunderstood me," Collins continued, tapping his fingers against his knee. "I don't intend to kill you tonight. Don't get me wrong, I want you to die. But I haven't completed my objective, and that concerns me."
Walter raised his eyebrow, dedicating a portion of his mental energy to feigning interest while the majority of his brain was fighting through fogginess from the sedative and lack of sleep to formulate some type of plan. "Your objective?"
"As I said, killing you is the easy part." Too restless to sit, Mark pushed himself up and knocked absentmindedly on the desk before pacing in a circle around Walter, who craned his neck to keep an eye on the man and avoid any more surprises. "But I have no interest in watching you die a martyr. Or at least, thinking of yourself as a martyr. When we worked together, you were appropriately self-loathing. That's the person I need right now." Without warning, Collins stopped in front of him and gripped the arms of his chair, leaning down until they were mere inches apart. "I don't just want to destroy you, Walter. I want you to beg to be destroyed. I want you to think about every single person whose life you've taken—and if you're including Baghdad, and I know you are, that number is a lot higher than mine—and I want to see the look in your eyes when it dawns on you that the world is a safer place without you."
He shoved Walter's seat away, looking at the genius in disgust as he straightened back up. "You thought you could get rid of me and have everything you wanted?" he snarled. "I've already won. Paige, Ralph, the team—I can and will crush them any time I decide to. I will bring down everything you've ever worked for with one word. And when your friends are alone, and scared, and begging for the great Walter O'Brien, their last thoughts will be that you failed them."
Even when he recognized it, Mark's manipulation always managed to creep underneath his armor, worm its way into his mind. He'd resolved not to show any weakness in front of his former partner, but the thought of his team suffering at the hands of Collins was unbearable. Images of Paige and Ralph thousands of miles away, fearing for their lives, feeling abandoned, nearly made him sick again.
"There!" Collins exclaimed, pointing a finger at him. "That powerlessness, that sensation of complete and utter weakness. Focus on it, Walter. Feel it in every part of your body. Accept that all of their pain will be a direct result of your decisions. If you had just left them alone, they'd be living happily now, but you selfishly dragged them into danger and you can't even protect them like you swore you would."
I can't let them down again. Walter never imagined that anyone but him would be paying for his tumultuous history with Collins. He always believed that he'd given Paige and Ralph a chance for a better life, but how could it be better when they were at risk? If she had stayed a waitress, they might have struggled financially for a while, but Paige was intelligent and would've found a way out. She could have built a life for the two of them that was steady, simple, safe—everything he wasn't able to offer. But he told himself that he needed her and destroyed any chance of that.
"And when you're broken," Collins said through gritted teeth, "when you've lost everything, when the world is burning around you, and you finally realize that you're responsible for destroying the lives of everyone you loved, that's when I'll kill you. Provided, of course, that you don't just take care of the job yourself."
If he lost them all at once…Mark was right about that, he'd never survive it. Speaking with confidence he didn't feel, Walter rebutted, "You'll never get to my team. I won't let you touch them."
But instead of being fazed by his defiance, Collins just cracked a smile and observed him with a look of pity that made the genius's jaw clench. "You're a little late for that, Walt. The show starts in ten minutes."
Cabe sighed, glancing back toward the garage for the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes. Paige and Ralph had cleared out of their apartment and would be spending the night in a hotel, just in case Mark's hacker got closer than they anticipated. With their safety assured—as much as it could be—the rest of the team turned their focus toward preparing for whatever they might find in the Scorpion offices. It had been hours since the agent spoke to Walter and every call into the garage's landline since then was met with overwhelming silence. "I don't like being blind in there."
"None of us do," Happy muttered, fiddling with the straps on her bulletproof vest. "Trust me, I built this thing and there's no weak spot for surveillance or entry. That was the point. We've just gotta trust in the kid and wait it out."
Ten more minutes. That was when Ralph's bug was theoretically supposed to disrupt the software and trigger an end to the lockdown protocol. Cabe had the utmost confidence in the young genius's abilities. What he had less faith in was Walter's safety. There was a high probability that Collins was aware of the bug and knew he was about to be cornered, and a wild, cornered animal was capable of just about anything.
He'd tried to mentally prepare himself for the potentiality that Walter was injured—or worse—but the pain of even imagining that was too intense, so he stopped.
Cabe saw how tired, how weak and fragile and miserable Walter was that night and left anyway. Perhaps if he'd stayed at the garage, things would have turned out differently. Or perhaps he would be dead. Regardless, he regretted not fighting the genius harder about taking care of himself so he could handle a worst-case scenario like this.
"We all should have done better," Toby noted, reading the agent's mind. He was frustratingly talented that way. "But we're here now, and Collins has nowhere to go. So let's just handle this once and for all."
Cabe nodded. "Alright, you three better get some space. I don't want you coming near the garage until we've handled Collins, understand?"
Happy rolled her eyes. The geniuses weren't too keen on hanging back—their edge-of-death stories could rival any from the ops team preparing to storm the building—but coming face-to-face with an irate Collins wasn't high on their wish list either, so they'd agreed to stick with their assigned roles. Toby would coordinate with the paramedics to treat Walter and provide a familiar face in case the genius was disoriented or in shock, while Happy and Sylvester would use their begrudging insight into Collins to locate any potential traps he'd left. This was all presuming the best case scenario—that Walter was alive and Mark could be captured without incident—but they couldn't escape the nagging feeling that Scorpion's cases never went that smoothly.
Ten minutes. Collins said Ralph had forced him to accelerate his plans, which meant the young genius had most likely found a way around the lockdown. Walter felt a spark of pride for the boy, despite his frustration that Paige and Ralph had gotten involved when he'd worked so hard to keep them out of this.
As concerned as he was for their safety, though, it seemed he had more pressing issues. Cabe was almost certainly outside, and if he was there, so were the rest of the geniuses, along with a team supplied by Homeland. And Collins wasn't going down quietly. "What happens in ten minutes? What did you do?"
Mark smirked, pressing the tips of his fingers together before pushing them apart. "Kaboom."
The color drained from Walter's face. Explosives. Collins must have set them up while he was sedated. Mostly likely, they were wired around the entrances to trigger as soon as the lockdown ended. Mark made it clear that he wanted Walter to witness Scorpion's destruction, so the blast would be large enough to target the first group into the building but small enough not to take out the entire garage. Even if the other geniuses weren't in the immediate radius, Cabe certainly was, and Collins would surely use that moment of chaos to hit the rest of the team in some way. "Where did you get the materials?" Walter asked to keep Mark engaged while he thought. "You came to the garage empty-handed, and you can't leave any more than I can."
"True," the man answered, pushing his hands into his pockets. "But this garage was my home once too, Walter. I've stored quite a few things here over the years. Just like Paige's antidote."
The antidote had been stored in a temperature-controlled case in the wall. Toby and Cabe had to rip apart the plaster to retrieve it. That meant… "You left a bomb in the garage?" he barked. Collins was trying to eliminate the team, of course, but that was reckless even by Mark's standards. "And what were you going to do if it went off accidentally?"
"Pop a bottle of champagne?" he shrugged. "It wasn't finished, Walter, relax. You know I like to be here for the show. What does it matter to you now, anyway? We're almost done."
Almost done. You need to focus. Walter took inventory. He had gone roughly twelve days without a full night's sleep, eating only about one meal a day in that time. He was weak, exhausted, and bound, but if he could just find a way to take Collins out of the game for thirty seconds, he'd be able to get a message to the team.
That last predicament, at least, he could overcome with the right opportunity, which he received seconds later as Mark grabbed the back of his chair and turned it around to face the door. "Be sure to wave," his former partner said mockingly, letting out a sharp chuckle before Walter heard his steps hitting the floor in the opposite direction. Inhaling a deep breath to brace himself for the discomfort, he popped his left thumb out of its socket, swallowing his hiss of pain. It was just enough leeway to free that hand and discard the cable quietly before turning his attention to his ankles. He didn't quite manage to catch the second restraint before it fell to the floor, alerting the other genius. "Bad idea, Walter," Mark admonished as he turned around, footsteps coming closer. Now or never.
He leapt to his feet and kicked the chair toward Collins, catching the man off guard. Walter was hit by an immediate wave of dizziness, but he didn't have time to dwell on it as the cockiness in Mark's expression dissolved into feral anger. Thirty seconds. That was all he needed; he didn't have to defeat Collins permanently. Whatever happened to him after the team cleared away from the garage was acceptable, as long as he knew they were unharmed. And they, in turn, would keep Paige and Ralph safe even if he couldn't.
Deep down, he'd always known it would end like this. There was a price for his mistakes with Collins, and he was finally prepared to pay it.
Walter charged at Mark just as he shoved the chair away, tackling him to the ground. Collins always had a distaste for physical violence, but that wasn't stopping him now. Each hit he landed blurred Walter's vision, but the genius pushed through it, returning the blows with as much strength as he could scrape together. It was worse than fighting dirty; they fought smart, angling their attacks to inflict maximum damage. Walter could smell the steely odor of blood dripping down his face, making it a struggle to breathe out of his mouth and nose. Collins took advantage of his gasps for air and seized the upper hand, flipping them around until Walter was on the floor, the blood starting to choke him as he laid on his back. He tried in vain to lift his head as Collins shoved him back down by his shoulders. "Give up, Walter," Mark growled. "This is what you deserve. You can't stop it."
In normal circumstances, he was much stronger than Collins, but his muscles were too fatigued to move and he knew he had no reasonable chance of winning this fight. That was why Mark chose tonight, waiting until Walter had already weakened himself, isolated himself, punished himself before swooping in to finish him off. He'd gotten a few solid strikes in, but it wouldn't be enough to overtake Collins, and in seven minutes, everything important to him would be gone forever.
Walter's last thoughts weren't that surprising. Guilt over letting his actions and emotions put his team—his family—in danger. Hope that they might still find a way to survive, even if he didn't. And a rush of what he could now recognize as love, temporarily overshadowing the pain in every inch of his body. Love for Megan, for Cabe, for the geniuses, for Ralph. And for her.
He'd put Paige through so much. So much hurt, so much uncertainty, so much anxiety. Walter hoped that when she thought about him, she wouldn't think about those things. She would just remember the good.
The syringe, Walter. Where is it?
What? The genius blinked as his reminiscing was interrupted by her voice in his head, though logically he knew that he'd simply connected the memory of her sedation, somewhere deep in his mind, with the realization that the syringe Collins used to sedate him had to be somewhere in the garage. Walter was barely able to see through his swimming vision, but he used the last ounce of energy in his body to focus. He was such an idiot. He could just barely make out the shape in the pocket of Mark's blue shirt. His reflexes were too slow to simply grab for it, though; he needed a distraction.
"You were right, Collins," Walter sputtered, the metallic taste repulsive on his tongue. He turned his head to the side and spit out the excess blood, finally regaining some control over his airflow. "I told you I didn't have a choice when I committed you, but I did." There was a flicker of uncertainty on Mark's face as he stared down at Walter, and the genius jumped on it. "It wasn't to save you; it was to save myself. I sacrificed you and got everything I wanted. And you know what?"
Collins eased his grip slightly on Walter's shoulders. That was enough of an opening for Walter to twist his arm out of the man's grasp and throw one more punch, which connected hard, albeit at an awkward angle, with Mark's jaw. "I would do it again. It's what you deserved." Adrenaline burned through his veins as he grabbed the syringe, jamming it into the other genius's chest and pushing the plunger forward with his thumb.
Mark's body stiffened, eyes growing wide. Walter pushed away and stood up, nearly falling as his legs buckled under him. He regained stability and crouched down, trying to think clearly through his disorientation. The syringe was empty, but Collins was at risk of a fatal embolism or hemorrhage if the needle had successfully pierced an artery. He was already losing consciousness and needed emergency medical attention. But the team needed Walter more. "I'm sorry," the genius murmured before fumbling for the landline, hands shaking as he held it to his ear.
Nothing.
No, no, no, no. Cabe's team had cut the line to prevent Mark from calling any of his contractors. Walter dragged his hand over his face, clearing away more evidence of his confrontation as he considered the alternatives. His cell phone was destroyed, and Collins had never brought one in. The signal was likely to be jammed, anyway, preventing any communication from inside the garage to the outside…even if he could remember where the hell he'd left his comm. There was no time to boot up his computer and lifting the lockdown himself would automatically trigger the bomb. Whatever glitch Ralph had introduced into the system would probably make it too difficult to restart the lockdown manually. Which left one highly undesirable option.
Even the fourth…fifth smartest person in the world couldn't be an expert in everything, and bombs certainly fell into that category. He slammed his fist on the desk, grunting at the pain from his dislocated finger. Walter couldn't do this on his own…he needed Happy.
Or maybe he just needed Happy's work.
A hazy idea formed in his mind and Walter stumbled over to the mechanic's workstation, tearing through her desk drawers. He didn't know how long he had until his body gave up and he collapsed, but he prayed it was just a few seconds longer than it would take to save his team. He finally found the metal box on one of her shelves, relieved that it was still lumped in with her discarded projects and hadn't been fixed yet.
Walter flipped up the lid and pulled out the blue cylinder. Happy built it as a powerful external power source that could charge an item without cables, but a glitch in the hardware caused it to fry the circuits of every device she tried it on. He supposed he should thank Toby for distracting her enough with their relationship that she'd never gotten around to making it work. If Collins was smart, he'd wired both the front and back entrances to the garage, so Walter chose to start at the front door, where he knew Cabe would be. He set the defective battery against the explosive, careful not to disrupt any of the wires attached to it, and turned it on. It wasn't long before the device overheated, nearly burning him, and smoke billowed from the core as the circuits shorted out.
Forty seconds left. Walter forced his way to the back door, faltering slightly. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn't hear his own thoughts, but he repeated the motion. The battery was already overheated and Walter's breath caught as his skin started to blister, but he saw the reassuring sparks of the fried circuit and dropped the device, slumping down against the wall.
A deafening sound filled the garage again as the lockdown lifted seconds later, steel plates receding from the doors and windows. Walter was grateful for the darkness outside as agents crashed through the entrances and filled the building, shouting and swarming around him. He smiled. They were safe.
Cabe's voice sounded out distantly before he pushed through the sea of nameless faces, dropping to his knees and scanning the genius for injuries. "I'm okay," Walter muttered, feeling another intense wave of wooziness. He wouldn't be able to stay conscious for very much longer, but fortunately he didn't need to. "Did you get Collins?"
"Yeah," the agent said quietly, but he didn't sound relieved, only solemn. "We did."
Walter let out a rattled sigh and pressed his lips together. "He's dead, isn't he?" The agent didn't answer, but he knew. Somehow he just knew.
"We'll make sure this time," was the last thing Walter heard before he passed out.