Author's Note:
I have always thought that Megan was a criminally underutilized character on Scorpion, especially in her relationship with Walter. Thank you to the lovely Camille Guaty for bringing Megan to life.
Set several months after the finale, the team is still fractured and Walter is forced to confront his unresolved grief over his sister's death.
A Hole in the World
Walter O'Brien's heart slammed in his chest as the terror created by the all-too-familiar nightmare jerked him toward wakefulness. But in that fraction of a second between sleep and consciousness, he reached toward the warm comfort of the woman who shared his bed. His fingers register the coolness of the empty sheets, and now fully awake he blinked back unwanted tears. He had escaped a sleeping nightmare for a waking one: Paige Dineen was no longer part of his life.
Robotically, Walter showered, shaved, and dressed for the day, unable to purge the details of his nightmare from his mind. It was always the same.
He clicks to open the file of Megan's video on his laptop. A popup gives an error notification that the file is corrupted and unreadable. He attempts to open his backup of the file and his backup of the backup and then his third backup. None of them work! At that moment he realizes that his own mind no longer recalls Megan's face. He can't remember her features or the sound of her voice. The dawning realization that he has truly lost Megan fills him with dread as his heart begins to pound, waking him from the dream.
Pushing past the cold feeling of panic that was lodged behind his sternum, Walter descended the stairs from his loft, intending to sit down at his workstation and start the day's work on his latest coding assignment from Homeland. He was distracted by the sight of his phone on the edge of his desk. Settling himself on his desk chair, he pulled up Paige's contact info on his phone.
Her contact picture was a candid shot that Cabe took of her manning the grill from one of the team's earliest rooftop celebrations. It is Paige in profile, as she looks to the side and laughs at some ridiculous thing that Toby has just said, still managing to expertly flip a burger, even with her attention elsewhere. Walter could still hear her laughter as he examined the photo.
He equally longed to call her, to hear her voice; and to delete her contact information, to purge her from his memory. Even all these months since the breakup of the Scorpion team, he hadn't deleted any of the team from his contacts. There was no point. It's not like he was going to forget Paige's number. A cold thought clutched at his throat. But what if he did?
Unwillingly Walter's thoughts turned to Megan. He had consciously spent these last few months specifically NOT thinking of his sister. And he found to his horror that the details of her face were fuzzy. Did she have one dimple or two? At what angles did her smile make her eyes crinkle? In a panic, he clicked on the only video icon on his desktop and pulled up Megan's video. It began to play as Walter felt his alarm begin to dissipate: Oh, come on, don't you want to see yourself in perfect lighting? Her voice and face were suddenly completely familiar. Walter clicked the video closed, unable to bear to listen to his sister tell him that he is not only his brain. If only that were true.
After a long moment, Walter closed Paige's contact info and instead began typing a message to Cabe.
I know it's the weekend…
Walter deleted his attempt at a message and tried again.
I'm sure you have plans…
"No, no, no…" Walter pressed the key to delete the words on the phone screen.
I need to talk to you…
Walter swiftly deleted the latest attempt at a message.
I'm having this recurring nightmare and I don't know what to do…
Delete. Delete. Delete.
In frustration, Walter threw his phone across the Garage where it skittered to a stop under what used to be Paige's desk. Refusing to allow emotion to overwhelm him, he blinked and drew in a breath. "Okay." He maximized the window with the Homeland coding job's specs and started typing.
Walter was surprised when a hand touched his shoulder, pulling him out of the zone where he'd been typing hundreds of lines of code at almost inhuman speed. His eyes pulled away from the computer screen and focused on Cabe Gallo standing just a few inches away. Cabe's expression was inscrutable as he studied Walter's face. "Thought you could use some company today."
"Why would you think that?" Walter asked the Homeland Security Agent.
"I was just getting ready to text you to invite you to breakfast after I made my weekly visit to Amanda's grave. Imagine my surprise to see your text bubble appear and disappear repeatedly only to never receive a message from you."
Walter dropped his gaze in embarrassment. "It was kind of a rough night," he admitted reluctantly.
"Seems you have had a lot of those lately."
Walter startled at Cabe's words. "What would make you say that?"
"I know you, son. There's not much that goes on with you that I don't see." Cabe paused, "I haven't been by to see Amanda yet. I would really appreciate the company."
"I don't want to intrude on your weekly visit." Walter shifted uncomfortably.
"You won't be, I'm inviting you. Besides, it's not just the weekly visit today. Today is Amanda's 24th birthday. I'm not sure if I'm up to going alone." Cabe's gravelly voice cracked as he spoke his daughter's name. Even after all these years, it was still difficult to think of his little girl.
Walter felt a rush of pride that Cabe was trusting him to be part of something so important to the Homeland agent. "In that case, I'd be honored to visit Amanda with you."
"Thanks, son." Cabe smiled. "Afterward, we'll have breakfast at the Clark Street diner. I hear it's supposed to have great pancakes."
"Sounds good." Walter nodded in agreement. Neither of the two men had been to Kovelski's since the breakup of Scorpion. He'd even lost his taste for fermented fish. Walter stood from his desk, just as an email notification popped up on his computer. He quickly opened the email and scanned its contents.
"Anything vital?" Cabe asked.
"No," Walter replied. Nothing vital ever came Walter's way anymore. No longer rushing off to the four corners of the globe with his team to save the world like an action hero, the biggest obstacle Scorpion 2.0 faced these days was Walter avoiding carpal tunnel syndrome from long hours of coding. It was only logical, the team didn't really exist anymore. His talents were best used in front of a screen.
Walter clicked the monitor off. "It is from Florence, though."
"Oh?" Cabe asked as they moved toward the door to the Garage. "What is Flo up to these days?"
"She just started her new job at that research facility in Zurich. She sounds really excited about her new research laboratory. And her laboratory's lack of neighbors."
"That's great to hear. She always did seem more comfortable in the lab than out in the field." Cabe started the SUV's engine and the two rode to the cemetery in companionable silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
After parking Cabe's SUV a few yards away in the closest parking area, Walter and Cabe approached Amanda's grave. "The grass looks gorgeous, as usual. Thanks, Walter."
Walter quirked up one side of his mouth in a kind of smile of acknowledgment. "I'm glad that the caretakers haven't figured out how to reset the sprinkler system to its default settings."
Cabe moved closer to Amanda's grave and replaced the wilting flower bouquet from its stone receptacle with two dozen fresh roses in a variety of colors. He spent a few moments arranging the flowers. It was a special occasion and he had splurged a bit.
If Cabe was attempting to create an aesthetically pleasing pattern with the flowers, Walter was unable to discern it. Walter walked a few steps away from the Homeland agent as Cabe produced a small stuffed bear from his jacket pocket and placed it on the grass next to Amanda's name. He had no desire to intrude on Cabe's private moment.
Despite his best efforts to turn his mind to anything else, Walter found his thoughts drifting to his sister, Megan. He felt a surprising tug of envy at the thought of Cabe having a place to visit that held his daughter's remains, a physical space in the world to focus his pain and grief and gain some respite from it. Walter knew that Megan was gone and even though he had sent her ashes to space in the CL-460 rocket, she hadn't been pleased by the gesture, she wasn't enjoying her eternal journey through the cosmos.
His favorite person in the world simply no longer existed. But as illogical and unscientific as it was, he wished that she did.
He felt the warmth of the sun on his back and turned to face it. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on his face. On their field trips from the hospital in those last few weeks of her life, his sister had often remarked that one of her favorite things was the feeling of the sun on her face. It was a sign of goodness in the world, she said. A giant ball of flaming gas with infinite powers of destruction was the source of light and life for the entire planet. He remembered how often he had seen her with her eyes closed, a smile on her face as the sun shone down on her, basking in its glow.
Finally, Cabe stepped away from Amanda's grave, wiping away a tear, as he turned his attention to Walter. "Thanks for coming with me. Today is a rough day to be alone with my thoughts."
"I'm uncertain how my presence was helpful, but you are my friend and I am always willing to be of assistance."
"I still miss her every day. I guess I always thought that at a certain point, I would miss her less, that somehow the hole in my heart her death left behind would be filled in by something else. But I have come to the conclusion that that emptiness never disappears, it just gets easier to carry by filling up my heart with more love."
Walter opened his mouth to speak, but Cabe waved him off. "I already know what you're going to say, that the heart is merely a circulatory muscle and has nothing to do with emotions. I don't care what you say, I know that Amanda lives in my heart."
"Actually I was going to agree with you." Cabe raised his eyebrows in surprise, unable to believe Walter's words. "I am grateful that you have that level of comfort with the loss of your daughter. It seems as if lately when it comes to thoughts of Megan, logic and science have very little to do with it. Since her death, I have chosen to think of Megan as rarely as possible. It seemed an efficient course of action. I was able to grieve for her loss and then get on with the business of serving the greater good. But these past few months, that course of action has not seemed to have the same level of efficacy that it once did…" Walter trailed off.
Walter shook his head as if shaking off the emotions that were bubbling up inside of him thinking of Megan. "We came here for you to spend time with Amanda, not for you to listen to me make absolutely no sense talking about my sister."
"No, we came here to remember loved ones gone too soon. That includes Amanda and Megan. Now tell me what's going on with you lately. And don't tell me you're fine. You and I both know that that's not the truth."
Walter knew that Cabe wasn't going to drop the subject, so he reluctantly told Cabe about the nightmares plaguing him. His difficulty recalling Megan's face and memories of their time together. His decision to not think of her. He deliberately chose to make no reference to that instant when he searched for Paige's comforting touch before remembering that she had left him. The way that Cabe's piercing gaze rested on Walter made him feel as if Cabe already knew the part he was omitting.
"I don't understand how this is happening to me. I have an IQ of 197. I have an eidetic memory. I don't forget anything, let alone the details of my sister's life." Walter made a sound of frustration in the back of his throat.
Cabe sighed sympathetically. "I don't pretend to be any kind of professional, but the past 20 years without Amanda have made me an expert of sorts on grief. Son, it seems to me that you haven't actually let yourself grieve for Megan."
"I did, a few weeks after Megan died. I grieved for her. It was done. I mourned her loss. I moved on with my life."
"Oh, Walter, the reality is that you will never not grieve for her. You will not 'get over' the loss of your sister; you'll learn to live with it. But here's the real trick: you have to let yourself really feel it. You can't truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel that loss."
"You know that I don't feel things like other humans. That's where…" Walter trailed off and left the sentence unfinished. That's where Paige helped me.
Cabe knew how that sentence ended as well and chose not to pull at that particular thread today. "Grieving doesn't care how smart you are. In this case, it makes you as human as the rest of us. Remember how once upon a time that was the goal? And you've come so far these last few years. I have really seen you grow your EQ. You're not the same man who helped save all those airplane passengers five years ago. And I don't think you'd want to return to being that version of Walter O'Brien."
Walter shrugged his shoulders. "No, I guess I wouldn't want to be either. I'm just not sure I want to be the version of Walter O'Brien whose sister is dead."
"I don't blame you. I definitely didn't want to be this version of Cabe Gallo who spends every Sunday morning at the cemetery visiting my baby girl. But we don't often get to choose which version of ourselves we grow into. We just have to grow into the best versions of ourselves we can be with the circumstances we find ourselves in."
"But how do I grieve? I don't know what to do."
"Just start. I think as you try different ways of grieving for Megan, you will start to find what works. Since you are worried about forgetting what she looks like, that seems like a good place to start. Why don't we head back to the Garage and hunt up some pictures of her?" Cabe clapped Walter's shoulder encouragingly.
Walter frowned at the idea. "I don't really have any. The ones I did have I gave to Sylvester a long time ago." He paused just a moment, thinking, then his face brightened. "But I do have an idea. One of Megan's favorite nurses from the hospital was forever taking pictures of the patients and visitors with an old Polaroid camera. "Say cheese!" It was always so annoying. We can stop by the hospital and see if she's working today or get her contact information. Maybe she still has some photos of Megan she would share with us."
Cabe grinned behind his mirror sunglasses. "Sounds like an excellent plan. We can stop and get some donuts on the way there to treat the staff."
"No, not donuts. Breakfast burritos. Megan would have brought breakfast burritos to share."
"Excellent, breakfast burritos it is." Cabe bid farewell to Amanda and the two men walked down the path towards Cabe's SUV.
Walter smiled and actually meant it for the first time in recent memory, even as he felt tears well up in the corners of his eyes. He could suddenly picture the sparkle in Megan's eyes and the dimples in her cheeks in perfect detail. The dull ache in his chest that never truly left eased just a bit.
Author's Note part 2:
Walter definitely has unresolved issues over the loss of Paige and the team. I touch on this in the story because I think all of Walter's feelings of loss are tangled up together. For the sake of a story that (hopefully) doesn't go down too many rabbit holes, I chose to focus on Walter's grief at Megan's death. In the future, I would love to write a story where Walter comes to terms with Paige and the team leaving. But for now, let's enjoy a breakfast burrito in Megan's honor.