The Other Side: No Place I'd Rather Be

Walter squeezed her hand. Suddenly he jolted as if hit with a thousand volts of electricity. He squeezed her hand harder, panting. Even in the gloom that surrounded them, Paige could see his eyes roll into the back of his head. And she couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Paige screamed in fear and frustration, "Walter? Walter, are you all right? Talk to me! Walter!"

Walter opened his eyes in a darkness he wasn't expecting. There was an immense pressure on his chest that made breathing almost impossible. His entire body was in excruciating pain, except for his left arm and hand, which had no sensation at all. He longed to scream, but the only sound that passed his lips was a low moan of agony.

Walter heard a sharp intake of breath and someone squeezed his hand, his right hand, the hand that still existed. His hand being held by a woman's hand. His hair being gently stroked. His head pillowed on something that felt suspiciously like a lap. His attention was immediately drawn away from the pain to these new and dizzying sensations.

Where was he? What had happened to him? The last thing Walter remembered was Erin kissing his cheek, telling him she loved him, telling him goodbye. Goodbye? But where could he have gone? He hadn't been able to move out of his bed on his own in days. As he had lay propped up on multiple pillows, he could feel himself weakening and drowning in his own fluid-filled lungs. Somehow, no matter how improbable or unlikely, something had changed. Despite his obvious injuries, Walter felt young, healthy, strong; something he hadn't felt in years.

Walter's mind continued to process his surroundings. Without knowing how he knew it, he knew who his companion was. It was her. He felt her. It was her hand holding his. It was her scent of lavender permeating the very air he breathed. He opened his eyes once again, this time searching for an achingly familiar and yet completely unknown face. It was her, Paige Dineen, looking so much like she did in his dream, like she hadn't aged a day in fifty years, unlike him.

Before Walter could compose a coherent thought and speak to her, he felt a pressure against his mind, almost like a tap on the shoulder. He turned and it was like looking through The Window, without the window. It was him, his other self. Slowly realization dawned, Erin and Noah must have sent him to the Other Side, and against all odds, he made it. He had successfully crossed over. He must not have had much time left if they had made this decision. It did not appear that he had that much time in this reality either based on his current assessment of the situation.

Walter looked into his other self's eyes. A younger version of him looked back. They didn't need words between them. Walter felt the memories of the past three years of his alternate self flood into his mind. Memories of his time with Paige. Memories of Team Scorpion: Toby, Happy, Cabe, Sly, as well as Paige, and all the good they had done, all the lives they had saved. Even time with his beloved sister, Megan… Walter's heart broke a little bit more over all he had lost in his life, not just his relationship with Paige.

It took the alternate version of himself longer to catch up. Walter had more than fifty years of memories to share with the man. Almost none of them good, just these past months with Erin and Noah. Walter felt a pang of regret when he thought of his cousin. Did she know how much she meant to him? How important she had become to him? He'd lost the chance to tell her. All he could hope for now was that she had understood how difficult it was for him to process and express emotion, but that somehow she had known that she had become the most important person in his life, probably the most important person of his entire life.

Walter's younger self absorbed the memories. He saw the older man's anguish as he reviewed Walter's life. That his path had been full of heartache and loneliness. That he had lived his entire life without her, without Paige, and it had broken him, buoyed only by one logic-defying night of conversation with her.

More than anything, Walter wanted to speak to Paige through this other version of himself. But his alternate stopped him.

'Let me explain it to her first. I know how much you want this. Let me make it as easy as possible.'

Walter agreed. There was nothing he wanted less than to frighten or hurt Paige, he loved her. 'I don't have long.' Walter thought toward his double, 'We don't have long.'

'I know, I'll be quick.'

"Paige," her Walter spoke to her.

Paige squeezed her Walter's hand even harder. "Walter, you're alive! I thought you had… When you seized like that and then you couldn't speak to me. You moaned and then went silent. Nothing I did or said roused you. I thought you had-had left me here alone. I-I was so afraid…" Paige's voice trailed off, as she sensed the shift in Walter's mood, in Walter, even through the gloom of their geological prison and the thickening smoke from the wildfire raging outside.

"Paige, my love, do you trust me to always tell you the truth even if it sounds crazy?" her Walter wondered how Paige would react to what he was about to say.

"Of course, I trust you, Walter, you are the most honest person I know."

"Do you remember when I told you about the time, in my early twenties, when I was recruited by the US military to work on a top-secret project, code-named, 'Bubble Gum'?"

"Yes, I remember. I remember how we laughed at such a silly name for a project focused on national security." Paige paused and wondered if the lack of oxygen had gotten to Walter's brain and was taking his IQ down a few points. "Why bring this up now?"

Her Walter struggled with his thoughts. Breathing was difficult and it was getting harder and harder to string coherent sentences together. He ignored her question, he needed to prepare her, needed to make her understand, and he didn't have much time. "Years before I was recruited, scientists discovered so-called 'soft spots' in the fabric of reality that gave them a glimpse into an alternate universe. Sort of a 'what if' version of reality. A world much like our own, peopled by individuals similar to but not the same as ourselves, but also quite different with different choices being made, causing the inhabitants of that universe to travel down a different path from our own." Walter saw Paige's confusion, but he wasn't sure if it was over his words or the fact that she was inhaling more and more smoke from the wildfire burning around them. "Do you understand what I am telling you?"

"Alternate universe exists. Alternate Paige… Walternate…" Paige wheezed as she laughed at the play on words that was Walter's name. "Maybe in the alternate reality I was a professional singer and actress like I dreamed of when I was a little girl."

Walter squeezed Paige's hand, trying to get her focus. "I need you to listen to me, this is important."

Paige shook her head as if to clear out the cobwebs and focused all of her attention on Walter's face and voice. She continued to stroke his hair as he spoke. "I'm listening."

Satisfied, her Walter continued. "'Bubble Gum' was the code name for that project. I spent three years with the project studying the alternate universe and its inhabitants, trying to understand them, trying to learn why the two universes were connected, and if there was a way to move between them before it was eventually terminated and marked as a failure." Paige nodded to show that she was understanding her Walter's words, even if she still couldn't quite believe that what he was saying was real, but she knew that it was the truth. "We always assumed that the other side would be studying us as well." He paused. "We were right."

Paige suddenly felt more alert than she had since the entire ordeal began. "What do you mean? Walter, why are you bringing this us now? What possible relevance could it have on our situation?" Paige felt a bit panicked.

Her Walter drew in a deep and shuddering breath, holding back a body-wracking cough as he did so. He had no idea how to prepare Paige for his next words. "He's here, the Walter from the other side is here, both of our consciousnesses sharing my body." Paige attempted to pull her hand away from his, but he held her hand in place with a strength he hadn't known he still possessed. "I need you to listen to me, and believe me. I know this is a lot to process." Paige relaxed her hand and squeezed his fingers gently, letting him know without words that she was still listening. "He's here and he wants to speak to you. He didn't meet you in his reality. He spent more than fifty years in love with a dream. Your dream, it seems. Somehow your two consciousnesses bridged the gap between the two universes three years ago for you, more than fifty for him. Your dream the night after we met wasn't a dream. Somehow, in a way even I can't explain, the two of you met."

Paige felt her heart thump painfully in her chest, her breath coming in quick shallow wheezes. "That wasn't a dream? That-that was real? That wasn't you? It was someone else?" As improbable as her Walter's words were, it somehow made a strange kind of sense. It hadn't been a dream after all. It never really had seemed the right word for the experience, but she'd had no other vocabulary for it. It wasn't her Walter, it wasn't the man she was falling in love with when she met him that day, saving those planes and their passengers. But it somehow had felt so real and she had half fallen in love with the man she had 'met' that night. "I always felt there was something different about that dream, but I just couldn't figure out what. Eventually, I chalked it up to kismet or déjà vu or something."

Walter continued explaining. "I think that Nemos' must be some kind of soft spot, the boundaries between the two realities are thinner there. He missed meeting his Paige at the same diner on his side that day. Somehow that must have caused a ripple effect strong enough to affect both sides. You spoke to me… him… whatever… across realities. After that night, the night you two had together, he dreamed of you every night, somehow reliving the echo of the memory over and over. It was his only lifeline in a lifetime of loneliness. He's lived more than fifty years since that night. Fifty years without you, without love." Walter's breath hitched and Paige ran her fingers quickly over his chest to determine if he was still able to breathe, then she realized it was a sob. Walter O'Brien was crying. "Please speak to him. He wants to speak to you, but only if you agree. Please, Love, I've seen what life is like for him without you."

Paige felt her eyes fill with tears at the thought of her Walter living such a long and lonely lifetime without her. She knew her life would have been mundane and colorless without him, but she would have been fine, she had Ralph and Elizabeth, her job at Galaxy Toys, and a circle of friends she could count on. Paige could barely bring herself to contemplate Walter without her. Walter, whom she loved more deeply than she had ever thought possible, but she knew that with his high IQ, his ability to love and need for love was even deeper and more pronounced than her own. A Walter who had never known the love they had shared these past three years seemed nearly impossible that he could have survived decades alone. "Of course, Love. He's a part of you." She hesitated, remembering her dream conversation with Walter O'Brien after she met her Walter. "He's a part of me."

Paige knew the moment her Walter relinquished control of his body to let the other Walter's consciousness speak.

Walter's eyes opened, searching for hers in the gloom. "Paige?" his voice cracked.

He wanted to say more, tell her how she'd been his lifeline, how he'd searched fruitlessly for her, how he'd given up, how he'd found the will to search for her again, how lost he'd been, but he couldn't speak, he just let the heartache well up and the tears flow freely.

Paige longed to pull this man, not her Walter, but still somehow hers all the same, into her arms and hold him, comfort him, but she couldn't. She cursed fate that had brought him to her, but only like this. She held his hand as he clung to hers like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver in the middle of the ocean. She stroked his hair and wiped away the tears that fell.

At last, Walter was able to say the words he had waited a lifetime to utter. "I love you."

"I love you, too." Paige had expected his words, but she hadn't expected to say them back to him. It had been an automatic reaction. But as the words passed her lips, she realized that she did love him. She had fallen in love with him that night three years ago. He was so much like her Walter, the Walter that she had come to know and love, but also completely different, and somehow, even then, her heart had known it. With the clarity that comes only from the most extreme of circumstances, Paige realized that there must be dozens, hundreds, thousands, maybe more Walter O'Briens in innumerable alternate realities and there was something inside of her that knew she would love every version of him and hoped that he would love every version of her. Paige shifted awkwardly to bring her face closer to his without jostling him. She pressed her lips lightly to his forehead. "I love you, Walter."

He sighed as her words fell like rain on his parched soul.

Older Walter looked at his younger self. 'Thank you, thank you for sharing her with me even for these few moments.'

His younger self looked back with obvious sadness in his expression. 'Now that I've seen what it's like to live without her I could never consign anyone to that fate.' He paused as a realization dawned on him. 'You can't cross back to the other side, can you?'

'No, the technology crossing to your side never worked well enough, no one ever had to figure out how.' Older Walter mentally shrugged.

'I guess you're stuck here for not very long then.'

'I didn't have that long left on my side. I think that's why I'm here.'

Younger Walter nodded his understanding of both of their situations.

'Do you think we could…?' Older Walter asked.

'That way we can both be with her? Yes.'

The two versions of Walter O'Brien moved toward each other, crossing the barrier between them. Walter's battered body shuddered and Paige cried out once again.

His eyes opened. The way he looked at her, it felt like that first day in the diner as he fixed the wifi, it felt like that night in her dream that wasn't a dream, it felt like the first time they made love, it felt like everything they had ever had together all wrapped up at once. It felt like something indescribable and overwhelmingly wonderful. "Walter?" she asked.

"It's me, Love, or it's us. We're me now. I don't know how else to explain it." Walter's eyes clouded, his breathing even shallower than before.

Paige coughed as the smoke continued to fill the small area they occupied, her heart felt as if it was being squeezed in a vise and every heartbeat made her feel as if it was going to explode. Ignoring the agony of each contraction of her heart, Paige gripped his hand. "Walter, my love…" she breathed.

Walter's eyes cleared for the last time, and he spoke just above a whisper, each word a herculean effort. "I love you, Paige. I love you across every reality, across time and space, without logic, without end." He reveled in the feeling of her fingers gently squeezing his. "You are the love of all my lifetimes." He lost his grip on Paige's hand because hers had already gone slack as he released his final breath.

Author's Note:

'Walternate' is a term from Fox TV's Fringe to differentiate the character Walter Bishop from our side from the Walter Bishop from their side. I wish I could take credit for it, but alas, I cannot.