#2x10 Arrivals and Departures | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

schrijverr · 2 years

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The Cracks

A look into Walter and his relations with emotions, especially regarding Megan and her death. Because I felt like Walter was very valid in his breakdown in 2x12 ‘Dam Breakthrough’ and deserved to cry more.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: grief, isolating oneself and crying (don’t worry, it’s h/c)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walter has emotions. Of course he has, just because he has always struggled with understanding them in himself and others, doesn’t mean they’re not there. Thinking otherwise is foolish.

However, Walter could follow the reason that lead people to the assumption that he does not have any emotions, seeing as he actively encourages that notion in an attempt to keep people away from trying to pry into his business, while simultaneously creating an excuse for his social slip ups and misunderstandings.

So, yeah, he has emotions. Sadly.

It’s not that he would like to not have emotions, since it is a natural process and it is a central part of a functioning brain. And he must admit the positives are nice. It is just that the negatives happen more frequently in his life.

Looking back at his childhood, his parents tried, but never connected. His classmates and teachers hated him and didn’t understand, bullying him where possible. Only Megan liked him and got what was happening in his brain, but she couldn’t always be there for him and got sick.

There was also Cabe, of course, but the positives he brought were helped into the ground by Baghdad, a negative that often makes him wish he doesn’t have emotions.

All in all, emotions are confusing and complicated. It’s a hypothesis that has been proven over and over in Walter’s life. They only bring conflict, which in turn gives more negative emotions and that makes every ineffective. Logic dictates that no emotions is more productive.

Thus, Walter swears off emotions, in a sense. He knows he has them, he just chooses not to engage in them. It makes life easier for everyone. Well, except him maybe, but not often enough to cause problems that need rectifying.

He deliberately stunts his own emotional growth, until he can believe in the robot-like personality he presents. He grows into himself, into the person he needs to be if he wants to cope with all the negative that comes his way. All the taunts. All the looks. All the times he is ignored.

So, Walter moves to the US, goes to college and tries to built a career wherein his social skills aren’t an issue.

At first, he tries a few normal careers like forensic analyst, but that doesn’t work out exactly. It does, however, lead him to the people that will someday form his family. He finds Happy, Sylvester and Toby. They’re like him. He gets them and they get him.

It doesn’t matter that he is terrible socially, because the people that matter are also terrible socially and together they figure it out.

And for a long time, life is good like that.

He tries for his friends and it works. He is able to see to it that they are happy, content, in a place that is effective to their health and well being. His sister is in decline, but they can still hike together and laugh. She still gets him and that is enough.

They build Scorpion, their cyclone. It might not be the most successful business out there, but they make it work.

Enter Paige.

Paige is everything Scorpion is not. Everything Walter is not. Everything to Ralph that they didn’t get from their parents. And Paige is also a giant mirror reflecting all the skills they lack.

While Walter knows he is the one that brought her on for that exact reason, the continuous confrontation with his own inabilities is concerning and uncomfortable. Walter doesn’t like feeling like he’s incapable, which is ironic, because the whole thing is about him not feeling.

He just hadn’t taken into account the emotional distress that would come with encountering years of burying anything that came close to being a feeling.

It’s upsetting. It’s upsetting and his defense mechanism to feelings is ignoring said feeling, which is unproductive to Paige’s purpose; making them more comfortable with emotions and human interactions.

So, yeah, it has been a struggle.

It is a struggle.

Walter is struggling.

He isn’t used to struggling and that is also not helping. Because he can see how everyone around him is improving and how he is lagging behind. Lagging behind is also not something he is used to, but every attempt to catch up, blows up in his face.

The fact that he has trained himself into being a robot is proving difficult to unlearn. He is pretty sure Toby would have a field day with that. Also pretty sure the Doc already figured it out and is letting him be out of nicety (it doesn’t escape his attention that a few years ago, Toby wouldn’t have had that foresight, nor the fact that none of the team would have considered his feelings back then, since they only got to know him after he had built up his defenses successfully).

It is odd, but not unpleasant to be considered like that, though it is also terrifying. When he tells Megan about it, she laughs at him, before saying: “This is good, Walter. Being considered it good, it’s what friends do.”

“No, it is not good,” he says. “It means my systems are failing and I cannot keep the distance I desire.”

“You don’t want distance, you idiot,” she smiles, pulling him into a hug that he subconsciously melts into, unable to stop it. “This Paige girl is good for all of you, trust me.”

“How can you know?” he asks, still doubting his own decision despite the visual improvements in Scorpion since she has been hired.

“Want the facts?”

“Always.”

“You telling everyone you don’t feel makes you vulnerable to being a doormat, since they walk all over you without regard for your emotions, since they think you don’t have them, which makes work more difficult and less effective,” she answers bluntly. “The fact that they are all becoming aware that you do have them, is positive. It’s a strength, not a weakness. And you feeling in return makes them feel more safe, trust breeds productivity.”

Walter regards her for a second, then says: “I hate it when you use logic against me,” making her laugh again. He likes that she is happy.

Despite the fact that he meant that comment, her words do push him to try harder. He tells himself that it is because logic dictates that she is right and he follows logic. However, a small part of him knows that he just wants to make her proud.

He doesn’t claim it is a 100% successful, but he is finally making progress and that counts for something. Doing something right socially feels more like a victory than all the awards he has won ever had.

They save the world – well, not the world-world, but enough people that the hyperbole is warranted – and grow closer. They have always been a cyclone, but now they’re a family.

Walter has Cabe back, the father figure he never had. They have Paige, who guides, who is patient, who doesn’t mock, but holds their hand instead. They have Ralph, someone like them, who will never have to go through what they did.

It’s good. Almost too good. On a logical level Walter knows that statistically the level of goodness life is, doesn’t effect things that happen to them. But with their life, he can’t help but think that maybe it will all come crashing down, like it has to at some point. Nothing keeps rising, some things get stuck, but most things fall.

Maybe that’s why he introduces Megan to the team. Lets her close to the family he built separately from her, because he was afraid the open child he used to be would slip through with her around to prod and push him in that direction.

Though he has become quite good in keeping up his front and combining that with the progress the team made, he feels more at ease with showing his more caring side.

He even makes another friend, Ray. He might be a bit odd, but Walter is used to odd. Odd is safer than normal, odd usually understands, odd is less likely to judge.

Scorpion is expanding, becoming home. A place of safety where emotions have a bigger place than before. It takes him a while to warm up to it, but Sylvester and Megan make a good couple and it does Walter good to see both so happy.

Naturally it has to fall apart. The ‘naturally’ might not be a logical assumption, but it still feels like it to Walter, because nothing good has ever lasted for him.

Megan is declining. Fast.

He has always known that at some point her health would take a turn for the worse, but he had always hoped that he would be able to stop it, or at least slow it down. Instead, he has to stand there helplessly as she fades, throwing himself into research that is only failing.

Maybe that’s the best description for him, a runner who fails. He has been making progress with Paige and he knows how proud Megan is, but when faced with the emotional monster that is the impending loss of his sister, he shuts down and revers to old habits, none of which are working like he wants them to.

Sylvester is spending more time with Megan than he is. And while he can’t stand to be cooped up not doing anything, a small part hates himself for leaving her behind like that.

He tries to tell himself that he just needs to focus on his research, because then this avoidance won’t matter, because he’ll still have time. Yet, he knows that he just isn’t at a point where he is emotionally equipped to handle this sort of thing. That he hasn’t learned enough. That he isn’t good enough. That he’ll regret what he’s doing now, even if he can’t make himself stop.

What’s worse, is that everyone at Scorpion notices, they all know. He gets looks and talks and he can’t ignore it all, though he is trying.

Walter hates it.

He just hates it.

He hates how Sylvester can accept the empathy and he can’t, how the others dance around him, how the science isn’t good enough, how he can’t hide now that the feelings have been shaken loose, how his parents will react when they get here. How they all look at him.

And it only goes downhill from there. His parents are coming, because they all know Megan is nearing the end.

His research is nowhere near finished and there is nothing he can do to speed it up. To help her. He tries, by all that is logical in this world, he tries. It’s his way of dealing with the waiting, even if he knows it should be him by her side, not just Sylvester.

Their parents serve as yet another reminder that he isn’t there yet, that he doesn’t know how to interact with people, who don’t get it. They rightfully call him out on the fact that he is not there, but all his brain can do is lead his feet away from that hospital, as if working until he drops will change the outcome.

As if he isn’t trying hard enough and if he just did, then it would all be okay, even though it is never going to be okay.

Scorpion might get why he is running, but they don’t understand and he can’t explain. He can only listen as they try to reason him out of an emotional response, thinking that it is his logical brain that is keeping him away from the room where his sister is slowly dying. Where her life, her beautiful lively life, that she has always lived to the fullest, is draining out of her.

Walter will deny this under threat of death, however, he is too emotional to listen to their arguments and sound logic.

And he knows it is going to haunt him for the rest of his life that he wasn’t there for her until the very end. That she didn’t get to finish that sentence, because he was too late. That she knew he wouldn’t be there for her in that moment and had recorded it.

That she still gets him, even from beyond the grave.

That he is alone now.

He watches his parents leave with Sylvester and for a second Megan’s words are strong enough that he reaches out.

The memory is still fresh and his emotions are a tangled mess that he is still unraveling. It leaves him vulnerable enough to override his fear of showing emotion. And he is pretty sure Megan knew that when she left him that video.

So, he has comfort. From his parents and the team.

His family.

Even if it is just for that night.

That first night in a world without Megan.

That first night alone.

It’s the worst night of his life. The comfort is nice, but people leave and soon Walter is alone again and it hits him all again. He is glad everyone is gone and he is alone, however. He doesn’t want anyone to see him cry, doesn’t want others to hear as he sobs to himself on the bed, doesn’t want them to know that he is hugging one of her pillows that he had stolen a bit earlier. One that still smells like her.

And in that night he lets out what he can, before he starts to work through it. Though he has never learned how to do that, meaning he reverts to the toolbox he does have. The one that is full of things he has yet to unlearn.

Walter digs up his oldest safe space. His favorite mask. The face that has served him well through all the years. The one thing he has perfected.

That first night, alone on his bed, cheeks wet from tears he will deny having shed, he sits there and painstakingly puts all his grief, all his hurt, all his sadness and all his guilt, into a little box in his brain, next to the switch he flips as the emotions that bog him down leave.

There is nothing safer to Walter (except Megan) than his metal shield of robotics behind which he has hidden for most of his life. He knows it isn’t healthy, yet it is all he has known, the thing he is certain that works.

It hasn’t failed him before.

Walter is aware that the team is worried by that decision, though they don’t realize he has less control over it than he would have liked. He finds himself mumbling, cradling Ferret Bueller, like the little guy can give him the comfort of a sister.

He just can’t stop it, his brain has subconsciously replaced protecting and saving Megan with keeping Ferret Bueller safe. As if he can make up for failing Megan if he can make sure Ferret Bueller is alright.

But the robot mask that was supposed to be his friend isn’t working like it used to. He starts to mutter to himself. He keeps Megan’s ashes in his car, because he couldn’t stand that dark, cold urn that kept staring at him, though not seeing it constantly also makes him upset.

The whole thing is a confusing mess that throws him off his game – not literally of course, though he isn’t above admitting he is not functioning at a 100% – he wouldn’t put his team in danger over his own emotional turmoil.

Though, he might be more reckless. But why wouldn’t he be? It’s not like anyone depends on him, he has nothing left. Scorpion got better, they can handle themselves. They evolved, while he is getting sucked into a black hole.

Still, it’s concerning how close to the edge he has been walking without noticing, until he falls in face first with nothing to hold the tide.

They have just returned from the dam and he listens to the voice mail. He has won the money. The money that should have saved Megan’s life and is too late instead. He never has enough money for his research and this is life changing as Cabe is saying. But he can’t bring himself to be happy about it, not when she isn’t there with him.

And at that moment he sees the open cage with Ferret Bueller missing. It is just a ferret. For a long time it had just been a ferret to Walter, but not anymore. Not now.

So, he panics and breaks down.

He tears the garage apart looking for the little guy as the team helps with apprehension and concern obvious in their faces. Which he ignores.

When he finds the ferret, he is relieved. He holds the little guy close to him, gently bringing him to the cage until his relief turns to anger. With Ferret Bueller safe, he realizes how he could have failed again. Lost again.

So, he snaps at his teammates. His family. He accuses them, unable to hear it might have been him, who failed to lock the cage. He can’t bear to hear Paige’s placating: “Okay. It’s okay, now, Walt, because the ferret is safe.”

In that moment he hates her. He hates her for telling him that, like it’s that easy after she has dismantled his last hiding place. His comforting unfeelingness. How she doesn’t get it, doesn’t get him. Not like Megan used to.

“Well, I could have lost her,” he hears himself saying, finally piecing together what he had projected onto Ferret Bueller. “Don’t any of you comprehend that? I don’t want that!”

It’s silent after his outburst, everyone just looking at him again with that pity. He can feel his hackles rising, the unease at the emotional display that he had tried so hard to hide from.

“I don’t want to loose her,” he repeats, the tears welling up, despite himself. The tidal wave is too strong to stop now and all he can do is ride it out.

He can only stand there. In his mind all he can hear is Megan’s voice, her message to him. And in that moment he wants to reach out to that comfort he had felt on that first night. He just doesn’t know how.

The tears are in his eyes and throat, choking him, his finger twitch uncertainly and all he can bring himself to do, is stand there, trying not to break completely.

His team obviously doesn’t know what to do either. They just stare back, though he can only see them from far away, like he’s not fully there. He knows that this was stupid, weakness is not good in a leadership position.

However, Scorpion is not just a business, but a family and Walter is proven right in taking Paige on to help them.

Where the others stand helplessly, she takes action. She strides towards him and while he doesn’t dare to reach out, she does as he hoped and embraces him.

“I don’t want to loose her,” he repeats. He buries his head in her shoulder and says: “I didn’t want to loose my sister.”

Paige doesn’t hug like Megan does, but she holds him and that’s enough. Still, he tries to justify his need for the hug, what Megan means to him. “She was…” he begins, trailing of without finding the words. “I miss her so much.”

The he realizes the other are still looking without reacting. He untangles himself from Paige’s embrace, missing the contact the moment it is gone.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “This is unprofessional,” but he can’t keep it all at bay. Like the dam, there is now a crack and the pressure can’t keep building up without release, so it is zeroing in on the weak spot.

Before he can try and figure out how to stem the flow, Sylvester hugs him. For a second, he tenses, then the physical effect of the hug hits him and his body reacts instead of his brain. He slumps down in his arms and the tears truly start to fall.

Loud and ugly sobs rake through his body as his cyclone, his little home, hugs him tight. He clutches to the arms that surround him, feeling love in the exception to physical contact his friends make, because he needs it.

Walter cries for the first time in years.

He cries for Megan, for the only person who has ever fully gotten him. For the haven he has lost with her. For all the guilt that has been pushing down on him. For the little bit of childhood, the good bit, he still had and now lost. He cries for himself, for all the times he let emotions pass him by and bottled them up.

In the end, he isn’t sure how long he cries for, but it must be a long while. When he finds himself again, he’s on the floor, leaning against Sylvester’s side, Toby’s arm slung around him, sandwiching him. His eyes are sore and his throat hoarse.

However, for the first time since Megan’s death, he feels mildly okay. The darkness is a shade lighter and he doesn’t feel so alone anymore.

Happy is at his back, while Cabe a hand on his knee and Paige is squatted in front of him, hand in his as she studies his face and therefore the first to notice him coming back. She gives him a gentle smile and asks: “How are you doing, Walter?”

He takes a moment to think about it, before answering honestly: “Better.”

“That’s good,” Paige’s smile widens. “Anything we can do? Glass of water?”

“Glass of water would be nice,” Walter replies, his voice hoarse. “But-” he hesitates for a moment, before deciding it is what will bring him closure, what Megan would have wanted, “but there is another thing.”

Scorpion listens closely as he tells them what he wants to do. He is still a bit uncertain about his idea, however, the whole team is aboard once he has explained.

They work together smoothly as they set up the rocket, everyone staying close to Walter, ensuring he isn’t alone for a moment. He remembers Megan telling him it was good they considered his feelings and again realizes how right she had been in that observation.

Paige may be their translator for the world, but before her there was Megan and Walter knows that it won’t be the same. That isn’t a bad thing, it will just take time to get used to.

So, they stand on Megan’s favourite beach and watch the rocket launch. His insides swirl with emotion, but for once they aren’t all negative. Reaching out has been good for him and the scientific part of his brain notes down the positive experience and a reminder to do a repeat experiment. Still, for the moment he just lets it be.

Walter has emotions and that might not be as bad of a thing as he thought.

A/N:

I have written the words ‘Ferret Bueller’ too many times for the emotional piece that this is, but I feel justified bc I cry so hard every time that scene comes. Like that episode is my jam.

Me *shaking Walter*: come on little man, show me your inner workings. Cry!