It wasn't until 6AM that Walter comes stumbling back into the garage. He wasn't crying anymore. In fact, 197's face showed little emotion at all.
Toby lay awake on the couch, having been awoken by the sound of the door locking. The shrink surveys the stoic man and notices his arm in a sling.
"What happened to you? Get into a fight with a conspiracy theorist?" The shrink yawns and stretches.
"I'm fine, Toby." Is all 197 says, throwing off the sling to reveal a metal hand brace.
"You should keep that elevated." Toby comments, his eyebrow rising in surprise. "When is Paige arriving?"
"She's upstairs." Walter avoids eye contact, and begins making his way towards the staircase. "Did Ralph wake up yet?"
"No. Not that I know of." Toby jumps up and runs in front of 197, blocking his path as he analyzes. "Walter did you even sleep last night?"
"No. I drove myself to the hospital and was there all night, so if you don't mind," Walter pushes the shrink to the side. " I'd like to see if I could rest for a bit before Ralph wakes up."
He takes two steps at a time as he jogs upstairs. Paige is still asleep, along with Ralph. Walter had originally planned on attempting sleep for a bit but he ends up watching Ralph for a few moments, before turning to his miserable mother.
He could still feel her lips on his, as if they were still there. He notes the bags under her eyes.
She was miserable.
Why was she going back?
Why was she taking his boy with her? After all, it takes more than parenting to be a father. Paige seems to believe that being there- in the delivery room, watching her give birth to Ralph- was some kind of fathers' initiation ceremony.
Walter then glances at his laptop beside his bed; Ralph's arm was stretched in its direction though he was still fast asleep.
Walter takes it and moves it to the kitchen. He plugs in his headphones and unlocks it. He finds it difficult to type quickly with only one hand and begins feeling pathetic for having punched a brick wall.
It's only takes him two minutes to hack into the Whitehall hospitals server. In fact, it takes longer for him to find the eleven-year-old security footage than to code his way through the firewalls. But he find it soon enough.
He watches Paige - only around nineteen or twenty years old- her hair was longer but she didn't gain a ton of weight, just a protruding stomach. She was being wheeled into the hospital room. Walter vaguely notices the nurses neglected to close the door. Paige was obviously scared and though the video had no sound, Walter attempts to figure out what the soon to be mother was saying.
As they put her on the bed, the woman clutches the beds sides, must have been a contraction. Her eyes are squeezed shut, she's terrified and in pain. He wants to reach out and comfort her but it's a video, and no one is there.
"Where is Drew?" He mutters, watching her lips move. He's almost positive that she asked the same.
It's then he remembers his voice dubbing software.
He downloads the security footage and uploads it to his voice recognition technology. If Paige's voice hadn't changed much in the last couple years- which he suspects hadn't- he would be able to hear what she says.
It takes two minutes for the program to upload and he rewinds the footage.
"Where's Drew?" Her voice was loud in his ear bud.
He can't see or hear what the nurse responds.
"He's this babies father, Try calling again!" Another contraction comes and she screams in his hear bud.
He wants to reach out to her. He can't.
He calculates the time between the two contractions. Two minutes. He's never been around a birth before but he knew that two minutes was pretty close for contractions.
He stiffens up in anticipation.
Another nurse runs in and tells Paige something.
"I don't care if his game is almost over? Is that a joke? Tell him to get here now." It's a half our later Walter notices how invested he is in the video, his hand occasionally reaching towards the screen as if to comfort her.
Drew doesn't show, but he isn't surprised in the slightest. He was confused of how Paige considered him Ralph's father. If it were him, he would be there. He would be by Paige's side, logically explaining how the woman's body worked.
When he assumes the nurses tell her to push and she starts yelling. Walter sits, stiff as a rock. But when the nurses hand her that baby, her baby, his Ralph, he finds tears rolling down his face with a smile as wide as China.
He wipes them away, embarrassed by his surprising amount of emotional quotient. He continues to re-watch those two seconds of Ralph's birth, and on the forth time, he notices a man by the open door. He was picking something up that had fallen, a girl waiting beside him.
Megan?
He pauses it.
The girl was Megan.
The plays the video again and the man stands up- at this point, Ralph was born and they were cutting his umbilical chord.
It was him.
The video isn't clear enough to show what 197 had been picking up, but Walter has a 197 IQ and a photographic memory.
He remembers now.
When Megan could still walk, she used to love walking through the maternity ward. She knew she probably wouldn't have kids but she loved them. She used to drag him along every time he came to visit.
Usually, he came in on Fridays but something possessed him to go on Wednesday that week, so many years ago. Megan had dropped the charm from her favorite necklace and he had seen it roll into one of the hospital rooms.
Paige's room?
He rewinds the video two minutes and watched carefully. His heart rate began speeding up, he was shocked at what he found.
He was there, in the room, when Ralph was born.
'Is there such thing as fate?' He questions himself.
Maybe Paige was right.
'Destiny?' He wasn't meant to be there that day, at that time, or in that room.
Yet, there he was. At the perfect moment.
'Coincidence.' He decides, 'It must be.'
As he watches the nurses pass Ralph to his mother, and twenty one year old version of him and his sister walk away from the doorframe, just in time for the new mother to tiredly kiss the baby's forehead.
"Ralph." She breathes with a content smile on her lips. Walter smiles again.
In Paige's book, then, maybe he can have some claim to Ralph.
"Walter?" 197 hears a little boy's voice mumble and the man in question pauses the video. He looks passed the sleeping mother towards his bed.
Ralph is sitting up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He should sleep more. Walter minimizes his video and silently makes his way towards Ralph.
"What's up buddy?"
"I don't want to go to Maine." Ralph quietly begins begging and Walter sighs.
"I really fought for you bud." He lies down on the bed beside his boy and shows Ralph his injured harm. "This won't be the last time I see you Ralph."
"How did that happen?" Ralph reaches towards the metal brace surrounding his mentor's hand.
" I did something illogical." Walter chuckles in embarrassment, "I punched a wall."
To Walter's surprise, the boy lowers his hand and lays his head on 197 like a pillow before he cuddles into his mentor's side. Walter kisses Ralph and carefully wraps his good arm around the boy. His boy. His Ralph.
Both begin feeling the pull of sleep, almost immediately closing their eyes.
"Walter?" Ralph yawns.
"Yeah buddy?" Walter also yawns, his mom used to say that if you catch another person's yawn, it means you're an empathetic person. Ridiculous.
"When I get older, can I be apart of Scorpion again?" He mumbles sleepily.
"You never stopped being apart of Scorpion, Ralph." He admits back. "Your always welcome here."
_Scorpion_
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