A/N: I have this mostly mapped out, and aboir 3/4 written. Posting the first chapters to keep me and my need for perfection going back and changing things!

AU. Set somewhere in that angsty S3 time period where Walter and Paige were constantly fiesty, and she was nearing the end with Tim.


Hour One

"I'm sorry, okay! I'm sorry! I know it's all my fault! I shouldn't have said it! I shouldn't have felt it! I have tried for three years not to feel it! I know that I shouldn't love you, but I do!" His voice was so harsh, pained, dripping with hurt and brokenness. His face was dirty, but it made the single tear stroke that appeared even more obvious. "At least if we're going to die, I'll die with the truth being told."

She sat there, stunned. Silent, as he tightened the strip of fabric around her leg, painfully. She tried not to wince. Didn't want to give him the satisfaction. This was not at all what she expected for the day. Things had been so tense between them lately, she expected that. Tension. She had expected them to both have cold shoulders of indifference toward each other as they performed the geological survey of the rocky terrain. But how the day turned to this hell was not on her bingo card.

Once upon a time, she longed to work side by side with him, just them, the rest of the team back at the garage doing their own part of a mission leaving them together with the freedom of stolen glances and forbidden touches. Once upon a time, just knowing that could happen would keep her up at night in excitement. But lately, being alone with him just felt... cold and hostile, making her want to curl into herself and disappear.

She was angry. So angry. All the time. She had blamed him for Tim leaving, for being that wedge that was always between her forming a lasting relationship with him. But she knew the truth, which just made her angrier. He was the wedge because she had put him there. She had wanted a relationship with Tim, without letting go of the hope and fantasy of being with him. She wanted her cake, and to eat it too. That wedge only growing upon Tim's departure to Jordan. As such, Tim and she spent more time fighting over Skype than talking, and they both knew it was ending, each unwilling to say it. She surmised that they both had similar reasons to avoid saying it, and they both had to do with the dirt covered man yelling in front of her, and angrily trying to stop the bleeding from her leg. Ending things with Tim meant no obstacles between them, which meant actually having to face her feelings for him. And she imagined that was why Tim was reluctant as well, knowing that would be what would happen, seeing that he had been right all along.

She hated that she knew he was right. Didn't matter how much breath she wasted telling him otherwise, making excuses, denying her feelings. He had been right.

She was in love with another man. This dirty, angry man.

And it made her angry... with him. Rationally it made no sense. He hadn't done anything besides be the object of her affection, but he was there, and she needed someone to be angry at.

While still reeling from yet another argument with Tim, Walter had insisted they work together for the geological survey. Alone. It had confused her, which in turn, had angered her already volatile mental state even further. They could barely hold a conversation lately, but to work together, alone, in the middle of nowhere for a full day of surverying, it had pushed her patience to her breaking point and she had snapped.

Thus, when they had gotten into yet another spat while mapping a particularly unstable area, she had been entirely unprepared for his admission.


"I may have no EQ, but I do know that you have been absolutely intolerable lately! I don't know what your problem is, but your attitude is becoming a real issue, Paige!" He was adjusting his equipment, but his voice was loathing and impatient at how she had been egging him on, picking a fight.

"Well if you're so sick of my attitude, Walter, then why the hell do you keep me around! Huh? You are the boss after all! Why not just fire me! Put us both out of our misery!!" He was steppi g toward her, and she continued to back away, but puffed put her chest, arms out stretched gearing up for more of a battle.

When he turned around and irately ran his hands through his hair before whipping back around and practically screaming at her.

"BECAUSE I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU DAMNIT!!!"

And just like that, the ledge she was standing on gave out, though at first she thought it was just her legs going weak, and as he reached for her, they both went tumbling down a revene, followed by hundreds of giant boulders. Reaching the bottom, Paige had screamed out in pain, a broken rock having stabbed her thigh. Walter had looked up to see another section of the cliff breaking off, scooped her up with her hopping on one foot, and they managed to take immediate shelter from the second wave of falling cliffside in a small cave, which was then quickly entombed by the large boulders descending the steep terrain. Despite the rage clearly present, Walter had gone straight to work ripping scraps of fabric from his over shirt to tie a tourniquet around her leg in an effort to stop the bleeding. Being a bit more forceful than he needed to.

She didn't even need to see it to know how bad it was. The broken off rock had gone to the bone. She could feel it. And the bleeding was excessive. The looks cruising his face, despite his attempts to mask them, told her that the appearance matched what she felt.

"I cannot believe this is happening! We are trapped in a cave, buried alive, unable to even call for help, in the middle of nowhere, all because we, we... and you... you had to say things... Ahhhh!" She yelled out in pure frustration, anger, pain, desperation... fear. Fear of their situation, but more than anything, fear of what he had said.

She had always, on some level, wanted Walter to say those words to her when he wasn't hallucinating, but him screaming it at her during a fight, to win a fight, wasn't exactly how her fantasy had gone. Revealing her feelings for him during a dire situation, trapped for dead in a mountain side didn't seem right either.

And him telling her like... that... just made her angrier. Using it like a weapon during a fight.

She just felt so angry. All the time. But right now, she was pissed off.

And now, she was going to die in a cave, never to see her son again, trapped with the man that she loved so deeply and frustrated her so much.


"At least if we're going to die, I'll die with the truth being told."

"Walter, I am not discussing this. We are not having this conversation in a damn cave while I'm bleeding and we're left for dead! We need to focus on figuring out a way out of here! I refuse to die in a damn cave!" She snapped at him after his second admission, desperately searching the cave walls for anything to help, hobbling along on her bleeding leg. Her body language made it clear that she was not interested in being told to get off her leg at she frantically searched for something, anything. There were a few rays of sunlight coming in through cracks in the rubble, but otherwise there was little light. Enough to see each other, but not much else. It was dusty from the impact of the falling debris, coating them both in a mist of dirt, tickling her lungs as she breathed in. The space was cold and damp, and what she pictured as being the start of a horrible nightmare.

She could tell he didn't appreciate her ignoring his confession of love, seeing him stiffen and his features tighten, his hands ball up. When he spoke, it was equally as angered and hostile.

"Paige, what do you want me to do? Manifest a backhoe to clear the way? There's at least ten feet of rubble blocking us in! Boulders bigger than you and I put together! Plus, I estimate we fell at least seventy feet from that cliff. You are seriously injured. Our comm signal went dead before we even got to that ledge. No one even knows where we are! We don't have comms. My phone must have fallen during the fall. Our last check in with Sly was two miles from where we fell!" She was fighting back tears, knowing just how bleak their odds were, but hearing it from him, the one that always had solutions, felt like a punch to the throat. He must have noticed her plight, and softened his tone. "I don't see a way out of this. The only solace in this is that there are gaps in the rubble, allowing light, but also air, so we'll last longer than if we were fully sealed off. I'm sorry, I just don't have a viable solution."

The cave wasn't big, about ten feet deep, 8 feet wide, and standing at full height, Walter's hair grazed the top. She knew it was not a good scenario.

"We have our packs. Some water. Snacks. You've gotten us out of worse! That's got to count for something, Walter!" She knew she was begging him to give her hope, when she knew she had just crushed his hope for everything. It was not a fair request.

"We have managed worse because we had resourses, our team, communications. We're in a cave, Paige. It's not like I can build a radio tower out of protein bars! If we ration, and I mean to the extremes, we will have at most two days of water. With the openings in the rubble providing outside air, although limited, we have maybe five days before we asphyxiate. But without another water source, if we aren't found by day three, we will die of dehydration. Assuming you don't develop an infection first, or bleed out."

She didn't like this Walter.

This Walter was an ass.

"What is wrong with you Walter! You are the person that finds possibilities in the impossible! Get your head on straight!" She was being contentious, she knew it, but well, now was not the time for pleasantries..

"Well, I'm so sorry, Paige, that I don't exactly feel like the impossible is very possible right now!" The double meaning sutured every so painfully into his words was enough to make her wish for sutures of her own to close thegaping hole he had blasted through her chest.

She wondered briefly when the last time they had had a conversation that wasn't so laden with tension was, thebair so thick they each carried knives at the ready. They had been so close, once. Before Tim. Before Linda. Before they worked so hard to deny their feelings they couldn't stop hurting each other. Closer than close. He was the person she could talk to about anything, her best friend, and now they couldn't even carry on a simple conversation, couldn't work together cohesively.

She wasn't blind to how hurt he was by her, or the significance of his words. That was on her, she had caused that turmoil in him. He had, albeit angrily, expressed his love for her and she refused to speak further about it. Better than anyone, she understood how his mind processed emotional information. She knew he was seeing black and white only. That he saw rejection. She knew all of this was her fault, at least mostly. Her hostility, their recent tension, the constant fighting and cold shoulders.

Even their arguing today before the rock slide, if she were being honest, she had been pushing his buttons, eager for a fight. She had been fighting with Tim before work, and as always, rather than try to sort it out, he had taken the coward's way out and disconnected the call. It has set her blood boiling, feeling so disrespected. So, she had taken it out on the next best thing. Walter. She had needed to feel the satisfaction of the fight she had been denied, release that adrenaline. Walter never failed her. He always fought her, matching her wit for wit, never disappeared like Tim. But, he didn't deserve the wrath she kept throwing at him, Tim did. Deep down she knew that. She was ashamed to admit that she had been using him as her punching bag, taking out all of her frustrations on him, that she was doing so simply because he let her. It was easy. And part of her, deep down, wanted to see if she'd push him away. Everyone always left eventually. Why would Walter be any different?

She was well aware of what a self fulfilling prophecy was, but she wasn't prepared to be that self away just yet.

But she was Walter-aware enough to know that when someone displayed being upset or angry with him, he automatically would resolve himself to having done something wrong, offensive, hurtful, and, usually, was just oblivious to it. In fact, he would usually come to her when he had these encounters. Unfortunately for him, his assumptiom was, in most cases, right on the money. But not in this one. In this one, it was all her, and she was letting him believe it was him. For all the punches she was throwing at him, the realization of what she'd done came with one more thing - that he was easily throwing twice as many punches at himself.

Put simply, Paige had royally messed up, and screwed with her best fri-- best Walter, had twisted his heart and his mind.

She needed to fix it.

"Look...Walter..." Cautiously, pushed through the tension between them as though they were drowning in peanut butter and she, painfully clutching her leg tightly, stepped forward, softening her tone, placing her hand on his tightly folded forearm.

She needed to apologize, explain. He deserved that much. At the bare minimum, he deserved to understand why she was being so awful, to relieve the burden of guilt from his shoulders.

Treating him like garbage and he still told her he loves her.

She didn't deserve him.

"I need to think." He brashly pushed past her, coming to sit in the far dark corner of the cave. His desire to be as physically distant from her as possible was not lost on her.

The temperature dropped under his icy stare.

At least it wasn't a disconnected call.

Technically, he hadn't left. (She would not be entertaining logic at the moment, such as he didn't have a possibility of leaving. She was taking what she could get.)

"Yeah... right. Okay, um. You, uh, think. I'll just...uh, be... here..." She felt foolish even saying it. Where else would she be. They were trapped. Doing her best to respect his need for space, she very carefully lowered herself down to sit by the boulders blocking their only exit, admiring how a beam of sunlight was quite literally dividing them with how it cut across the reaches of their stone prison.

Even the sunlight was mocking their turmoil.

She could feel him watching her, like daggers into her flesh, as she moved, and it did not feel pleasant.

She could tell him. Tell him that she loved him, too. But, what would that do? He had made it abundantly clear more times than she could count that a relationship between them was out of the question for him. Setting herself up for disappointment and heartbreak again seemed ill-advised at best. It's best just to let it lie. Allowing herself to once again invest in hope for something more with him would only hurt her... again. She was running out of bandaids for her heart.

He was Walter. Of course he loved her, she had known that for probably longer than he had. And she loved him, more than she had ever loved a man. Loved him so much it terrified her. The kind of love you only read about, or see on film. The kind of love that has an intensity so strong it forms its own language, and only they could speak it. A connection so profound she was sure if something happened to him and she wasn't there she would feel it in her bones. The kind of love that made it hard to sleep and eat and breathe. It was terrifying and wonderful, and she knew without a doubt she would never find another love that could ever come close. But at the end of the day, acknowledging any of that to him came with so much risk. Loving him openly and ultimately losing him would not only break her heart, it would destroy her soul, her ability to love and it would hurt Ralph. It was just... easier and safer to pretend. Easier to stay friends.

At least that's what she told herself.

And then there was Tim. Sure they hadn't had a civil conversation in weeks, but she still was technically in a relationship with him. Telling anything to Walter about her feelings now would be inappropriate at best.

But, if they died in this cave, it's not like she'd be able to end things with Tim beforehand, anyway.

She was getting a headache.

And feeling dizzy.

Just barely could she see his face, hidden in the shadows. She couldn't make out everything in his features, but she could tell his eyes were fixed on her, intense, steely.

If looks could kill.

Maybe she wouldn't need to worry about bleeding out, dehydration or asphyxiation afterall. At the rate she was going, maybe Walter would kill her first.

Laying her head back against the rock wall, she closed her eyes, praying this was all just a bad dream, willing the agony in her leg and her heart to seize. Praying for comfort in the darkening silence.