BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

AN: Happy Scorpion Monday to all! I want to thank everyone who has stayed with me til the end. And I especially want to thank everyone for the comments and reviews.

oxoxoxoxoxo

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time." – Thomas Edison

oxoxoxoxoxo

This certainly wasn't the first time Paige had proven him wrong. Somehow, someway, he was going to make damn sure it didn't take the whole of twenty-one years to tell her so. Walter would need to be extra careful. Everything was so tenuous. What a time to realize he should've stayed in the future with her. In this case, foresight was 20/20.

Everyone on the team was tired from the long flight, but when they returned to the garage, they were all still riding the high of a successful mission. One or two members tried to engage him in conversation, but he wasn't in the mood to discuss Toby and Happy's impending wedding, Cabe's digestive issues or any of the other ordinary subjects occupying their minds.

Instead, Walter trudged slowly toward his work station attempting to remember all the minutiae of his upcoming interaction with Paige.

She was already seated at her desk filling out forms when he plopped down in his chair. His finger was hovering over the 'play' button on the answering machine, when she looked up at him, grinning flirtatiously.

Taking a quick look around, she whispered, "Is everyone gone? Are we alone?"

What?

Paige was off script. She was supposed to hear the message from the dance instructor and tell him pre-marital lectures were a mistake. What was he going to do now?

Bewildered, he decided to stay with the exact words he said the last time, noticing as they came out they didn't make a lot of sense in this context.

Expecting her to toss her pen down and tell him scheduling a dance lesson for Happy and Toby was 'actually sweet', his lips parted and his eyes grew round when she laughed, stood and strolled toward him instead.

Perching on the corner of his desk and wearing a knowing smile on her face, Paige inquired, "That is you, right? You made it back?"

Should he bring up Schrodinger now?

She flashed him a worried frown and leaned toward him, brushing her fingers through the hair over his ear. Then she bent closer and squinted into his face, giving him a thorough once-over. "Are you okay? Maybe you didn't make it back with all your memories intact? I thought I saw you catch up with yourself in Hechnya, but I couldn't say anything with everyone else standing there. You were really quiet on the flight back. I just assumed you were still feeling woozy from the rewind. The process knocks you back pretty good and Ralph told me the second time would probably be worse for side effects."

"Wh-what?" Walter croaked. "I don't understand. Did you come back too?"

"And there's that 197 IQ kicking in! Of course I came back. I wasn't about to let you come back by yourself. I couldn't let you mess this up yet again." Paige shook her head, "You'd be making wrong assumptions and stumbling over words... I'm here to help you. Together you and I are going to set everything right."

A keen sense of peace flowed through him. Paige was here to help him. Of course she would do that. Walter was so glad to have her there, he couldn't even be too upset she'd put herself at risk for his benefit.

But his brain wouldn't stop with the relentless litany of questions. There were so many and they were so jumbled up, he struggled with which to ask first.

"Take your time," she raised her eyebrow and smirked. "We have lots of it now."

"You were so mad at me," Walter blurted.

"Mad is one way to describe the way I felt. Furious, livid, enraged. Yep. All those too. But under that, I was mostly hurt. It felt like you were rejecting me. Again."

He interrupted, "No! It-it's not that I didn't want to be with you then. Quite the opposite, in fact. I wanted to fix my mistakes. Take back the hurt I caused you. Make things better. Be together both then and now. I-I love you. No matter when."

Paige nodded, "I know. Ralph helped me understand and see your perspective a little better. Your journal travelled back with you. You were so out of it when you sent it to Ralph, you forgot the rewinding program was still open on your computer at the same time. So he got the whole download way back here. He let me read it. Well, the parts I could actually understand anyway. Beneath all those facts and equations and your egotistic inability to accept when you're wrong and deal with the consequences in real time, you kept repeating time and time again your true feelings about me. About us. I still don't necessarily agree with your decision. I still believe we could've had a good life together from that point forward. But I also understand how disappointed you were in yourself and how hurt you were. I saw clearly all the mistakes I made as well. The things I should've said and didn't. The things I did say to you and came to regret. The responsibility for the mess isn't all yours. So here I am. I have quite a bit to make up for myself."

"But how? How did you…?"

Paige reached over and picked up his hand, toying with his fingers and tracing a pattern on his palm. It gave him a pleasant, shivery sensation. She twined their fingers together.

"Ralph again. He helped me. He knew what you were determined to do and he explained it to me. He knows the program as well as you do. I convinced him to help me go back too. I think we both owe it to him not to screw it up this time around."

"When? I think I would have noticed one of the pods in use."

"Well, when is a little fluid these days, isn't it?" She teased, "It was while you were so out of it on Christmas Day."

"You were there?" Walter cringed at the thought of Paige seeing him in that condition.

"Yes. A bomb could've exploded and you wouldn't have stirred. You needed me. And…I love you. I pretty much always have."

Their eyes met and held. A wave of emotion washed over him and in that instant love made perfect sense to him.

"Do you think it's necessary to dance to the knee bone song now?" He murmured the question tentatively, feeling unexpectedly diffident.

She shrugged, but her eyes were warm, giving him a tender look. "Sure. I'm game. It's one of my favorite memories of today."

Paige pivoted to face him as Walter stood on wobbly knees and reached for his tablet. He extended his hand as the music started. She took the offered hand and met him halfway as the slow, jazzy music floated around them. They both chuckled a little at the absurd lyrics.

The blue glow from the electronics gave the room a surreal, underwater atmosphere. Swaying and turning in slow circles, the two of them held onto each other more tightly than before. Walter began to feel disoriented like he was in flux between realities. Paige seemed like the only constant in his life, his only anchor in a sea of muddled thoughts and mixed up memories. Pulling her closer, he inhaled her familiar scent.

And it jolted him rudely back to reality. He abruptly stopped dancing and stepped back, looking horrified, his posture rigid.

"We can't do this. We have to stop. You-you need to go," Walter stated emphatically.

"What is it? What's the matter?" Paige reached for him, but he stepped further away.

"What about Avery?!" He exclaimed as if the question was torn from him.

He was shocked when Paige just smiled sympathetically. "Didn't I tell you? This is my first time back, but it's actually your second go. This is your third time to relive this moment, because you keep choosing to return to this point. Your first rewind, you hadn't figured out the memory issue yet, but you must have retained some sense of your purpose or else you were confused enough by the duel timelines, you apparently made quite the move on me. I have two divergent memories for this night too."

The pieces gradually falling into place, Walter stared at Paige and breathed, "That's the reason for the number fluctuation when one or both of us experienced a memory of this night. Not only did I return here originally, but we made some sort of significant alteration, didn't we?"

Stepping into his personal space and taking his slack hands in hers, she replied, "Oh, you bet we did. What do you say we skip the rest of this dance and go make our daughter now?"

FIN

This is dedicated to the all the other crazy, Waige-obsessed ladies on the forum who reeeeaaaally wanted Rock Block to end a different way. This one's for you!