SO MUCH SCORPION FANFIC. HELP ME. This is literally the third fic I've written in like three days, I don't know what's happening or how I'm managing to write so much, ACK. But I like this one- I dunno. Hm, warnings...

Warning: Mentions of suicidal thoughts, so much fluff you will choke and die, sort-of-canonically OOC Walter (because emotions, bro) and...Papa Cabe. Beware.

After Paige stayed the night before, Cabe thinks it's only fair if he stays the night after. (Not that he wants to look out for Walter, of course, because that would be frankly ridiculous.) Doctor said he'd be out all night again, but Cabe- he just wants to be here. Just in case. Just in case.

Walter's sleeping after a new bout of morphine, and the genius looks- not peaceful, maybe, but out of pain, and that's all Cabe asks. That's all he asks. That's all he has a right to ask.

But there's something raw in the way Walter sleeps, something still so trusting, and Walter's eyes when he'd looked up and seen Cabe held something that the agent can't quite put his finger on. It doesn't really matter now, anyway, he supposes- they're still them. Cabe and Walter. His kid's okay.

He doesn't have a right...Walter himself said so.

But Walter had also, in his own way, asked for forgiveness. Told Cabe, in his own way, that he loved him.

Cabe hadn't needed Toby to tell him so. He'd learned long ago how to speak Walter's language. Actions, not words. Words lie.

When Cabe had gone down to save Walter, it hadn't just been my-kid's-on-the-line; it had been I'm sorry and I wish I could change what happened and it's not your fault and you have always been so much rolled into one desperate, earnest action, all movement and no words, no meaningless attempts at expression. It had been truth in the purest form Cabe could manage.

The machines hooked up to Walter beep steadily as he breathes, chest rising and falling and hitching every time he pulls on an injury, and Cabe hates how such an automatic action can cause so much hurt. Especially to Walter- who, for all his faults, far from deserves it.

Cabe wishes he could take away all the pain Walter's ever had to experience, wishes so desperately to take back what he's done, how he's made Walter feel. Cabe almost lost Walter today. Cabe almost lost him.

The thought is terrifying.

"Thanks to you, I don't sleep. Recurring nightmares-"

"You think you're the only one who has those dreams?"

It hadn't been sarcastic, or even clipped like Walter's words tended to be. It had been shaky and angry and almost unsure, a vulnerable part of him exposed accidentally, almost as if it were one last hurrah at trust, one last chance for Cabe to prove Walter wrong, prove that he cared-

And Cabe had taken it and practically thrown it straight back into Walter's face.

But he was just so- Christ. Why couldn't the kid just listen to him for once in his life? It wasn't as if Cabe didn't understand. Walter had nightmares- he'd admitted as much. But he didn't seem to understand that Cabe hadn't hurt him on purpose- not like that. He was protecting them; both of them. He couldn't have done anything else. If Walter had stopped making the software, the United States government would've done anything to make him finish it. Anything.

And Cabe...well, if it was between that and Cabe taking the fall, then Cabe would always choose the latter.

It ripped him to pieces, though. His very heart shattered that day, and still had never fully recovered.

He could still hear Walter's shrieking, even now, years and years later. "You lied, Cabe! People are dead! I killed them, and you lied!"

There had been angry trails of tears on Walter's face when he'd screamed that, his hands balled into fists, his body folded over as if it were protecting itself. Walter's eyes were aflame with a hurt Cabe wished he'd never see directed at him. Betrayal.

"Don't ever contact me again," Walter gritted, glaring at his former mentor with such undisguised venom that it ripped at Cabe's heartstrings. "Don't ever come looking, and don't you dare ever come back into my life." A pause. Heaving breaths, Walter's eyes darkening. "I hate you."

And just like that, the son he'd never had walked away, and Cabe wouldn't seem him again for ten years.

It was like his heart had been sucked out of his chest. He felt empty. Hollow. He was divorced. His daughter was dead. And now- now-

And even though it hurt like nothing Cabe had ever felt before, he knew he deserved it. He knew he'd helped give Walter nightmares to last him a lifetime. He knew that he was responsible for all the emotional damage that was to come. He knew.

And by God, did he hate himself, too.

He knew Walter wasn't upset he'd lied- not really. They lied to each other all the time. It was apart of Cabe's job and apart of who Walter thought he had to be. It worked for them. They had their own unspoken language.

But this, this- this was betrayal, plain and simple. Walter felt used. Alone. And Cabe reckoned Walter wondered if it had been real at all- if Cabe had ever truly cared. If it had meant anything to Cabe- meant as much as it did to Walter.

And maybe the fact he wondered hurt worst of all, because Cabe would never stop caring, not for as long he would live. That boy could've killed his daughter himself and Cabe still couldn't stop caring about him. By God, he loved that kid.

"I hate you."

And for years and years, Cabe had nightmares about Walter's anguished shrieking, his grief-stricken face, and his terrified, smoldering eyes, which once held so much love for life. For years he woke up every morning clutching his gun and he'd ask himself, "is this the day? Will Walter get closure if I do it?"

"I hate you."

No. Walter wasn't the only the one with nightmares.

But Cabe did wonder. Why had Walter sounded so shaky when he'd said it, like even mentioning it made him freeze up? Why had there been such an infliction on the words to begin with, as if Walter feared speaking of them would cause them to drown him?

Cabe himself dreamed of families wandering alone in the dark, calling for loved ones, fire and ash and grief slowly suffocating them. Occasionally, he called for Walter.

(But no matter what he did, Walter always ended up dead.)

So Cabe didn't know how much worse nightmares could get. He heard Walter screaming at him every night for ten years.

He'd been horrified when he learned what Homeland was doing.

But he hadn't stop it, and that was all that mattered to Walter.

"I hate you."

He sighs and leans back in his chair, studying his boy closely, searching for any twinges of pain in his expression. Aside from the furrowed brow Walter is still- but Cabe marvels at the fact that, even when he's sleeping, Walter's found problems to ponder.

Walter's good at that, solving problems.

Cabe steps out a few minutes later for more coffee from the cafeteria (which is, miraculously, open all night), and when he returns, he nearly drops his cup.

"C'be?" Dark orbs gaze at him from the bed, glazed and full of anguish. "C'be?"

Even though Walter's drugged to high heaven, he's still somehow alert enough to process what's happening (which, considering the amount of morphine Walter's been given, is frankly amazing).

Cabe doesn't know what to say, doesn't know what will or won't upset the young genius, but he figures the truth would probably be the best in the long run. (Hindsight sure is 20/20.) "Yeah, Walter. 'S me."

Walter grimaces, but it isn't at Cabe- at least, the agent doesn't think it is, watching as Walter struggles to sit up. He would help, but he knows Walter well enough to realize that if he goes to do so, Walter will shut him out faster than Cabe can blink. So the older man just resumes his seat and blows on his coffee, fighting every instinct he has to remain sitting as Walter pants and finally wrangles himself into a semi-upright position, hazel eyes hazy with renewed pain despite the morphine in his veins.

"C'be," Walter says quietly a few minutes later, blinking slowly. "C'be."

"I'm right here, k- Walter," he assures, placing his empty coffee cup on the nightstand next to him. "I'm right here."

Walter swallows, and his eyelids are heavy with sleepiness. The sight makes Cabe soften. "When I said...s'd that I had rec'rring nigh'mares, I didn' mean...I don'..." his brows furrow in dismay and his lips twist as he tries to get them to work correctly. His exhaustion and the morphine are making it impossible for him to say what he wants, and Cabe thinks that Walter's only so dazed because he's not meant to be awake when this effect is happening. "You really had nigh'mares too?" He finally settles on, taking a deep breath.

Cabe wets his lips. "Yeah," he says, and tries not to think about Walter's shrieks (but they're always there, lurking at the back of his mind, ready to attack him when he's at his most vulnerable). "I do."

Walter's lips twist into a what Cabe can only describe as a grimace, but it's much more than that, somehow managing to convey the misery in Walter's heart better than any words ever could. "When it first happened," Walter says, opening and closing his mouth as he looks for words, staring at the ceiling so as to not look at Cabe, "an' Toby an' I were jus' living together...he'd shake me so hard I'd throw up. Y'know- to wake me up."

It isn't said scornfully, or even angrily. It's just a fact.

It makes Cabe's insides ache.

"An' sometimes, when Toby'd leave...I don' know," he says softly, still refusing to meet Cabe's eyes. "I guess I'd panic when I couldn' find him. I'd curl up in th' back of a closet 'till he found me. Prob'ly caused him a lot of panic, too. But he was never angry."

Facts. Just more facts.

Cabe's mouth is dry.

"An'...I'd wake up sometimes an' I wouldn' know where I was, or what I was doing, or what was happening...and Toby always had to stay…" He blinks and finally, finally turns his fractured gaze to Cabe. "I'm not…" he pauses. "'M not mad, 'm jus'..." He blows a frustrated breath out, eyes flickering around the room before settling on the agent once more. Cabe feels almost as if he's been doused in ice, because for as long as he's known the young man, he's never been so wordlessly honest. "I jus'...did you care? Ever?"

All of Cabe's righteous anger simply vanishes right then. Years and years of bitterness evaporate as he sits there and looks at the young man he calls son, who looks so vulnerable and earnest and honest, more honest than Cabe has ever seen him, more honest than even he himself realizes. He isn't a scarred man with a smoldering glare; he's a boy with fractured eyes.

"Oh, Walter," Cabe finally utters, desperate shaking in his voice, "oh, son, of course I care. I've never stopped."

Walter's lower lip trembles minutely before his teeth clamp down on it, and he exhales shakily, and something in him changes. He's softer than Cabe has ever known him. Reassurance is a powerful thing.

But words, they don't mean much to Walter- not anymore. He's still sitting up, still alert, still too aware of Cabe's presence.

And in that moment, Cabe realizes that this has to go both ways.

He thought he'd had to strong for Walter- and maybe that was true, years and years ago. Even when Walter was breaking down with grief and anger and heartbreak Cabe was as stoic as ever, and with a pang that hurts him deep in his chest he realizes that even he had a hand in pushing Walter away. Trust goes both ways- just not the way Cabe thought it did.

And then Walter whispers words that Cabe will never forget.

"I'm sorry I said I hated you." A pause as he takes a deep, quaking breath. "I lied."

Cabe's heart wants to shatter all over again, but for a different reason this time. "Oh, son," he says again. "I know ya did. I know."

It was what Walter needed to hear, had been waiting years to hear. Cabe sees it.

Walter sags a little, like a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders that he hadn't known was so heavy, and his eyes are indescribably soft. He blinks, and it's sleepy, and the drugs are kicking in again because he starts listing to the side, gently swaying where he sits.

Cabe leans forward and wraps one arm around Walter's back, his other hand cupping the back of Walter's head as he lowers the genius back down into a supine position, and the creases of pain around Walter's eyes ease. He blinks again, slower, sleepier, and Cabe says, "it's okay, kid. I'll be here when you wake up."

A smile touches Walter's lips as he drifts off, and Cabe almost misses what he says next. When he does catch it, he can't help his own gentle smile.

"'M still your kid…"

Cabe doesn't sleep that night, devoted to his silent vigil, but he reckons that if he did, it would be free of nightmares.

Alright-y! That's a wrap! I wanted to give some credit to poor Cabe, who has really been beat up these last couple of episodes, and thanks to JennyFromDaBlock for the horrified/suicide idea! Thank you for reading, please leave me a comment/suggestion on your thoughts!