This is the last chapter. Things have been quite hectic lately so I wanted to wrap this up and give Waige some closure haha. As much as I enjoy writing for Walter, I kept this all in Paige's POV because most of the post-finale fics didn't focus as much on her thoughts. Thank you, as always, for reading, and please review if you get a chance. :)

This time was going to be different.

It might all go up in flames, but it would be different. Because Toby was right—Paige deserved some of the blame for the stalemate she and Walter had settled into. Perhaps she had been afraid that if she pushed him, he'd retreat from her for good. Or that if she asked him for the truth, she wouldn't like the answer she received.

But she was so tired. The idea of spending one more day like this—especially after everything Toby had let slip—seemed unbearable.

If Walter wasn't going to come to her, then she was finally prepared to burn it all to the ground.

The genius stopped abruptly when he pushed through the door to the loft, noticing her seated in the same rolling chair he'd occupied during their conversation that morning. Paige had been distracted by her thoughts and jumped too. He was returning from his lecture well after eleven p.m., but she barely noticed the time. She wasn't even entirely sure how long she had been sitting there.

"What are you doing here?" he asked bluntly. Paige raised her eyebrow and Walter backtracked, shaking his head. "I meant, uh, sorry. Is everything okay?"

"Yes." The liaison took a deep breath. It was now or never. "And…no? There's something I really need to say."

Walter looked uneasy, but he nodded for her to continue. He remained standing by the doorway, still clutching his laptop case in his hands, and Paige couldn't relax when it seemed like he was seconds away from bolting back out the door. She gripped the armrests of the chair and pushed herself up, taking a solitary step forward but maintaining most of the distance between them. At least it felt more like they were on even ground now.

"You told me not to ask why you came to Tahoe, and I won't," Paige said evenly, inhaling deep breaths surreptitiously to keep her voice from giving out on her. "But I will tell you why I went to Tahoe. After this, I'm…I'm done. But if I don't say it, it's always going to weigh on me."

Walter didn't respond, but he also didn't move or interrupt her. The intensity in his eyes had the strange, simultaneous effect of terrifying her and giving her confidence in her next words.

"I've been frustrated with you for not accepting your feelings, Walter, but the truth is that I haven't really been owning mine either."

He shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced down at the floor. "Paige, you don't have to—."

"I love you," Paige blurted out, gasping quietly as all of the oxygen in her body rushed out at once. She noticed, in her peripheral vision, that Walter's eyes had widened substantially, but she purposefully avoided studying his expression, knowing that she would never be able to get through this without doing something stupid, like running out of the loft or running toward Walter and kissing him. "Oh god, okay. I've said a lot of things to you about what I want, and I accept now that maybe not all of those were the truth. I want Scorpion to work. I want to save the world, and I want a safe place where my son can be himself and do amazing things. But along with all of that, Walter, I want you. I know that thought is scary. And yeah, there would be times when I would be mad at you, and times when it would be hard and we wouldn't know to do, and I don't care." She sucked in another breath to keep herself from fainting as the words she'd suppressed for years barreled out of her mouth full force. "I might really regret saying all of this in the morning, but it's the truth and I needed to tell you. No matter what happens, Walter, I'm still your friend. My job here and your relationship with Ralph will be unaffected. But everything else…the looks, and the jealousy, getting close to me and then disappearing…that will all end here. Today."

With the entire bloody truth finally out, Paige decided to brave it and lifted her eyes to meet his. She'd been in more life-or-death situations than most people could ever dream of encountering, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins right now was unlike anything she had ever experienced. The smallest movement from him, the lightest touch, was liable to make her unravel completely.

But Walter didn't move. He stared at her, dumbstruck, and it occurred to Paige that she hadn't thought this part out. This was a significant amount of information to process for him…for her too, she found, as the full import of her confession washed over her and she realized just how much she'd been lying to herself.

There were many things Paige was tempted to do in that moment, and none of them involved leaving that loft. But Walter was who he was, and part of respecting that meant she needed to allow him to deal with this in his own way.

"I'll leave you alone to think," she said before circling around an unresponsive Walter and exiting his office. Part of her wished that he would stop her, but even when he didn't, Paige was astonished at the sense of relief that flooded her.

Paige stared blankly at the stack of papers in her "incoming" pile. She'd managed to sleep a few hours last night, after half-successfully distracting herself with a dozen recipes, books, crossword puzzles, and movies. With Ralph at a sleepover, her apartment was far too quiet, and she had finally given up, showered, and returned to the garage somewhere around seven in the morning. Scorpion's files often required her full attention and Paige was eager to find something to throw herself into. She had expected to see Toby on her arrival, but he and his hat were nowhere to be found, and the liaison felt a spark of hope that he might have at least felt capable of going back to his apartment. Paige wondered if a certain mechanic would find her way there, too.

She was three cups of coffee and forty lines into another damage assessment for the Chernobyl site when a voice she hadn't expected to hear for several more hours came from the bottom of the stairs.

"Thank you," was the first thing Walter said, and Paige fought the inappropriate urge to laugh because even when he did remember to say thank you, it was typically as an afterthought and certainly not a priority in the conversation. "For, uh, giving me time to think."

The genius was still standing behind her, and Paige nodded in acknowledgement but couldn't quite bring herself to turn around yet. She took another sip from her mug, grateful to have something to do with her hands.

"Cabe called me about a case," Walter offered next, after a moment of quiet. Paige scrunched her forehead. She certainly hadn't gotten enough sleep to manage another off-the-rails adventure, which was what far too many of Scorpion's "mundane" cases transformed into.

"Already? It's barely light out," she grumbled.

"What? No." The voice was much closer now, and Paige glanced up from her desk to see Walter standing over her. His dark circles from yesterday were even more pronounced, and she had a hunch he'd rested about as much, if not less, than she had. "I meant…that night. Cabe called me about a case. That's why I only drove eighty miles."

A bolt of electricity shot through Paige, making her feel about a hundred times more awake. She knew the likelihood that Walter was going to pretend their conversation from last night had never happened, and that would have been her answer. But the genius settled to a stop in front of her desk, his fingertips tapping nervously on the dark wood as he alternated between looking at her and down at his hands, and she knew this time really was going to be different.

"It was a simple job. Any computer geek could have managed it, probably. But I, uh…I went anyway." Walter pressed his lips together, contemplating his next words. "It seemed like…well, maybe you would call it a sign. A reminder of my, um, my responsibility to Scorpion. A confirmation of what I've always believed."

"Which is?" she prompted when he trailed off.

"That I can't give you what you need while also operating Scorpion."

He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly that it took a minute to sink in, but when it did, Paige's breath caught in her throat. "No one's asking you to choose," she managed finally.

Walter exhaled loudly and gripped the edge of her desk with both palms. "How can I not, Paige? I've given everything that I have to make this company successful. It's been my sole focus for years, and without Megan…" She heard the hitch in his voice as the mention of his sister's name sent a painful rush through both of them. "It's all I have left. When the team is needed, I'm always going to respond. I don't know how not to."

This was the beginning and end of a conversation they'd had many times. Paige didn't really care to hear the last part again—the part in which she was reminded that the needs of the team made any relationship between them an impossibility.

"But you deserve that same level of commitment." Her attention snapped back to him, her desk shifting slightly as he leaned his weight into it. His eyes were fully on her now, a current of seriousness in them that sent a shiver down her spine. That part was new. "And I want to give that to you. I just don't know if it's possible."

Paige's mouth was dry. She wanted to respond, to encourage him, to question him, but she was practically immobile and had an inkling as to what Walter had been feeling the night before.

"I don't prioritize the team over you, Paige," he said earnestly, his furrowed eyebrows hinting at the depth of his concentration. "I know it may appear that way, but…I want both. And I'm well aware of how selfish that is. The popular notion of 'having it all' is, at its core, unsustainable. A person can devote the majority of their time to their career, or to their relationships. But one or the either will suffer. And I don't intend to put you through that kind of stress just because of…because of how I feel."

Paige's legs were numb as she pushed back in her chair and stood up. Her body was on overload with the need to touch him, but she was sure she would lose all control if she did and they needed to sort things out before she could let herself go like that.

"There's just one thing that you're forgetting," she offered, leaning forward until she was squarely across from Walter. There was something challenging about the way they were looking at each other, but neither backed down. "I'm a part of Scorpion. And it can never mean as much to anyone as it does to you, but I do care about this team. You act like I would be…sitting at home, waiting for you to come back from a mission, and that's absurd, Walter. I'm always right there with you. And it could be like that in every aspect of the company. You said that you couldn't jeopardize the goals that you'd set." A twinge of guilt colored his features as she recalled the conversation they'd had shortly before she left for Lake Tahoe. "But you and I could be working toward those goals together. If that was what you wanted. Because…it's what I want."

It felt good to tell the truth. To reveal everything she felt, without reservation. Paige could see that Walter was engrossed in thought, but his face betrayed nothing about what was going on in his mind. It could have been a minute or ten minutes or an hour, she had no idea, until Walter reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.

Paige blinked as she took the note, holding it up with her fingers and staring at it. "What is this?"

Walter cleared his throat. "I wrote it at a rest stop. In case I, um, got to Tahoe and lost my nerve." When she continued to stare at him blankly, he motioned with his hand and said, "Read it and you'll understand."

She opened the paper and nearly dropped it when she saw the writing inside. I love you.

"You wrote this on your way to Tahoe?" Paige breathed, her voice not quite strong enough for anything else. If he'd said it now, she might have worried that he thought it was the expected response to her declaration. But she read in his expression that he was telling the truth about this.

Walter nodded. "Yeah. That's…that's why I went after you. And I'm assuming that based on what you told me last night, you and Tim are not together?" He sounded cautiously optimistic, and the liaison couldn't help but crack a small smile.

She shook her head. "No. We're not."

"Okay." The genius swallowed, the darkness in his eyes beginning to lighten. "Are you sure this is what you want? Because, Paige, I need you to be sure. I want you in every part of my life, but you have to understand that if you leave, then everything I care about will be affected. If there's a significant chance of that happening, then…it's better than we don't…"

"I don't want that any more than you do," Paige assured him, finally feeling steady enough on her feet to cross around the desk and close the distance between them. He turned to the side to face her, his eyes trailing her as she approached. "I love you, Walter. And I didn't plan for that to happen. Which means all the things you think are going to drive me away are the same things that made me love you. The only way you'll lose me is if you keep acting like you don't feel anything."

Paige could still see the uncertainty in his eyes, and knew that he wanted to believe her. But they'd each been rejected enough to understand that only time would prove they were both going to stick around. "I'm sure," she said again, leaning closer to him until she could feel the heat from his skin. Her fingers snaked around his arms, pulling his body against her. She could feel his heart racing, or maybe it was hers—the lines weren't so clear anymore.

Walter took his cue and tangled one hand in her hair, tilting her head up and capturing her lips. The focus and intensity he poured into the kiss shouldn't have surprised her, but she was glad his other arm was supporting her waist because Paige wasn't all that confident in her ability to stand.

This was going to be messy. But it felt real in a way that very few things in her life ever had.

Everything was about to change.