Chapter Text
There's dust in his mouth, in his lungs. It tastes bitter and burnt, but he keeps himself pressed close against the ground, desperate for any kind of cover from the chaos. A bullet hits the ground just a few feet from him—he flinches as the loud crack violently rings in his ears. There's so much noise. Bullets hitting metal, bullets hitting rocks, the repeating cacophony of the gunshots themselves. There's something that might be a scream.
He closes his eyes and keeps them that way, squeezed shut against everything. The sounds still crash over him in the darkness, so loud that they shudder in his chest like they're trying to shake him apart without even touching him. The brutality of it is inescapable; it keeps going and going, never stops.
Except it does, at some point. He's not sure how long it takes for him to actually notice, but eventually the fact that he can now hear his own breathing fades into awareness. No more gunshots drowning it out.
He tries to calm down. Breathe slower, quieter. He opens his eyes again, tries to carefully spit out the taste of dirt in his mouth.
Suddenly, there's a voice that sounds way too close to where he is. And then that voice says his name.
Todd. “He was right here before,” he says. The measured breaths Jesse had been attempting stutter in his chest. They're looking for him. Is that—god, is that what this is? That's why they're here, it was for me, it was to kill me—
Jesse hears men get sent to go searching for him. They're going in the wrong direction—no one seems to have even thought about looking more closely around the place they just saw him. As two sets of heavy footsteps go past him, his heart sinks into his stomach anyway. The high of just a few minutes ago, the vindication, seems like a distant, shimmery fantasy, something that didn't really happen.
It doesn't matter if they look in the wrong places first, because he has nowhere to go. He's fucked.
He's trapped under here, a shallow grave he dove headfirst into.
There's shouting now, further away from him, so he pushes down how sick he feels with a swallow and slowly lifts himself up on his elbows to peer out from the shadows. He half expected to be shot as soon as he made himself more visible, but he wasn't, and so he lets his eyes adjust to the sudden brightness and tries to see what's happening. Not much of a view, at this angle. Almost all he can see is dirt, shell casings, tires, shoes. But it's enough, because there's bodies on the ground too and he can see them in full.
Schrader's partner is lying still and unmoving, blood on him that Jesse can see shining wet in the sun even from this distance. He looks away quickly, to where Schrader himself is on the ground, but it seems like he's still alive, held up by an elbow and moving in a way that implies pain. There's dark blood staining everything around his knee, the denim nearly black from how soaked it is. It drips onto the ground in viscous droplets.
The voices and what they're saying clarify in his mind. Mr. White. It almost sounds like he's begging for Schrader's life, frantic desperation seeping more and more into the words. Jesse observes what little he can as the conversation goes on, the tension in every one of his muscles locking him in place.
He keeps talking, offering, trying to salvage the situation. The devil doing his best to make an impossible deal.
And then there's the gunshot. Schrader's body slumps limply onto the dirt and Mr. White's doing the same, falling to his knees and collapsing on his side. Jesse starts to duck back down as much as he can, before he stops. Mr. White is facing towards him but doesn't see him, sobbing with eyes closed and glasses askew.
It's possible that this is the worst thing that's ever happened to Mr. White.
Jesse stares. Time blurs and shifts, light strobing as clouds pass in front of the sun. Sounds drift in and out, a shovel clinking, laughter. The tang of blood and gunpowder lies thick and heavy on his tongue.
He's still staring when he realizes that Mr. White has opened his eyes. His heart stops beating when he also realizes that he's looking right at him.
- - -
“I'm sorry for your loss,” Jack says, and the handcuffs rattle as they fall to the ground.
He keeps talking, but Walt is barely listening. Snippets of words reach his brain like voices through a wall: my nephew here, he respects you-
if things had gone a different way,
one hell of a good mood,
here's what's gonna happen-
He starts to pay more attention to the words, but he doesn't look at the man as he speaks. The shadow under his car looks normal and unassuming from this angle, crisp, hard edges in the afternoon sun.
Jack is telling him to get in his car and leave. Don't look back, no hard feelings.
“-We square? Hey man, I gotta know we're square.”
There's a short pause where he could say something in response. “Or we're gonna have to go that other way,” Jack says when he doesn't.
Walt keeps his eyes trained on the shadow. A couple of men are over there now, loading the one remaining barrel into his back seat. The weight of it as they shove it in makes the car bounce, just a little, and he watches as filthy boots dip in and out of the shade. The name falls out of his mouth before he even has time to think about it. “Pinkman.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack is staring at him, eyebrows raised. Waiting for him to elaborate. The answer is on the tip of his tongue and he's about to say the name again, vocal chords tensing in anticipation, when he stops himself. The words die in his throat.
Jack sighs in the silence and raises his hands in offering. “If you can find him, we'll kill him,” he says. There's maybe an undercurrent of impatience, but his tone mostly just sounds genuine, generous. It's only fair. It's the reason he and his crew came out here, anyway. That was the deal.
The phantom sound of dirt being shoveled on top of bodies is deafening.
Walt thinks about it, saying that he found him. Saying that he's right over there, tucked into a foxhole and watching us. Tests the flavor of it in his mind.
Men would march over there and pull him out, hold him still as he struggled against their grips. Someone would put a gun to his head. The trigger would be pulled. It'd be over, with his blood and brains draining out of the fresh void in his skull to cool on the earth. Maybe it would be a mercy, putting him down like that.
The words are still waiting at the ready, but he clenches his teeth and his jaw tight and he doesn't say them. He shakes his head.
It'd be too easy. Too simple, not good enough, not anymore. Too impersonal, from this near stranger. Even if Walt's standing right there to call the shot.
“I'll just deal with it myself,” he says, finally looking over at Jack. “I'll find him.”
Jack holds his gaze, neutral and evaluating. He can't tell if Jack doesn't believe he'll be able to find him, or if he just doesn't think he'll go through with it in the end. “You sure?”
Walt nods, a slight movement of his head which feels like it weighs 2 tons. Jack is still staring at him though, so he speaks.
“This is between him and me,” and the recent familiarity of the phrase almost makes it catch in his throat, but he pushes through and forces it out because he wants him to hear it.
This is between us.
Walt looks away again, and Jack follows his gaze to the car. He looks at it for a moment, curiously, before glancing back over at him. Walt can't tell if he's figured it out or not. But then the man nods, shrugs. “Okay,” he says, and he starts to walk past him to the cluster of vehicles. He puts out a hand to stop him.
“I need a gun.”
He had one, just a bit ago. But Hank had taken it, and who knows where it's ended up since then. Could be in the ground, could be in Hank's car—which is now hooked up to be towed away. He doesn't want to attempt to find it.
Jack slowly nods again. “Fair enough,” he says, and he gestures to someone in his crew as if to say, You heard the man. Get him a gun.
It's sure as hell not fair, but it's the least they could do after robbing him blind of everything he had, knowing he couldn't stop them. Almost all of it, anyway. God. The reminder that his 70 million dollars is sitting on that truck over there is agony.
One of the men hand him a gun, some extra bullets. He's honestly surprised they have any left to spare after the shootout. They had come prepared for anything, it seems.
After that, they leave without another word; taking Hank's gunfight thrashed car and the rest of the barrels with them. Nearly opaque clouds of dust are stirred up and left in their wake as they drive back to whatever hole they came out of for this. He turns his back to the road and listens until the sound of the engines fades into nothing.
Walt had made sure to only look away for twenty five seconds at a time, if he had to. No longer than that. He wouldn't be able to get anywhere in that amount of time.
The gun is heavy in his hand, and as he looks down to inspect the piece of metal, a glint on the ground catches his eye. The handcuffs he'd been wearing. Jack and his men had just left them there, forgotten.
He shoves the box of bullets in one of his pockets, picks up the handcuffs. One cuff dangles from the connecting chain as he holds its twin. They're scuffed, well worn, now dusty. Still fully functional, he knows. He puts them in another pocket. The key is nearby, and he picks that up too.
Walt takes a deep breath. It's just them again, out here.
“You can come out now, Jesse,” he says, and tightens his grip on the gun.
He waits. There's a small breeze passing through now, like it's trying to blow away the evidence of what happened here, cleanse the land of the gory vestiges. It's cool, detached, and he can feel it on his face and through his clothes. He watches as the frail desert brush dotted around the area shiver from it. As far as clearing the air goes, it's not working yet. He can still smell blood, a thick and metallic tang that always coats you even if you can't see it anymore. Echoes of bullets and gunshots are still ricocheting off of the orange faces of rocks across the valley.
Walt looks over at the freshly disturbed dirt where the barrels had been. Unnatural grooves go over it in spots, where a shovel had been passed over in a poor attempt to even out the surface. Hank and Gomez are buried under there now. Their desolate, unmarked grave in the desert.
He wonders how long it will take for the wind to make it all truly disappear.
Grief curls painfully around him and he tears his gaze away from the dirt to focus back on the task at hand. The sun is blinding where it shines on his car, a corner of metal converted into a bright starburst, shimmering for attention.
Still no movement. No sound, no response of any kind. He would almost think he imagined what he saw earlier, some panic induced hallucination, a confused trick of the light. But the moment had lasted too long. The shape of eyes in the shadows too clear and familiar; the wide panicked flash of them before they suddenly vanished, too vivid. Prey under a bush realizing it's been seen.
"Jesse."
The moment drags on. It might have been a couple of minutes at this point, but it feels like hours. Feels like a single second.
Walt's curious about how he'll come out. Whether he'll slip out the far side, try to sneak as far as he can before running. He might've already done that, when I wasn't looking, he thinks, and a flicker of worry sets in before he promptly dismisses the possibility. No. He's still there.
Maybe he'll come crawling out on his hands and knees towards him instead. Stand up and face him like a man.
Walt kicks a pebble he'd been standing on.
He wonders if he'll have to drag Jesse out himself. If he'll stay frozen down there, either from indecision or some attempt to feign invisibility. A naive, childlike tactic. If you don't move, no one can see you. He'd have to go over there, grab him and yank him out into the open by force. Thrashing, kicking, screaming. Probably biting.
The glare on the car is as bright as ever, and he tries to avoid looking directly at it, blinking and focusing on the shadow between the wheels, but the light still burns in his periphery.
He takes a step forward and is poised for another when, finally, there's movement.
A hand peeks out, presses flat on the dirt. It moves until there's an arm following it, and then a leg, and then the rest of Jesse is slowly sliding out as he emerges fully. A fleeting image of black and white movies flashes in Walt's mind, zombies pulling themselves out of graves.
Jesse's face had been cast down at the ground during this process, but as he shakily pushes himself up to stand, he at last turns his head up and meets his eyes.
It's a maelstrom of an expression that he's wearing, emotions etched into every pore, struggling for space with each other on a finite canvas. Walt tries to make sense of it, decipher what exactly he's seeing—a twist of anguish, seething anger, raw fear. All screaming at him from wide blue eyes.
Always such colorful emotion. Wears his heart on his sleeve.
He looks absolutely devastated. Hard edges are digging at Walt's hand from how tightly he's holding the gun, but he doesn't let up. Jesse is fully upright now, and he glances down at the weapon, gaze hitching and lingering there. The fear gets a little brighter, but then he looks back up at him and the vitriol almost manages to overpower it. It's fascinating to watch, even under these circumstances. Maybe especially under these circumstances. Soon enough, no one will get to see that anymore.
Unbidden, Walt's heart clenches at the thought. He shouldn't care at this point, not at all, should only be feeling the righteous anger that's burning deep in every one of his nerves, the hot betrayal. But a little sliver gets through and he does care, because somehow—it's hard to believe how much of a disaster this has all been. How much of a shame it is, that he couldn't see this coming. All that potential going to waste. A small part of him thinks it must be his own fault to some degree, for not trying harder. But he had done so much. He'd thought he was doing enough.
There were so many things he hadn't needed to do.
Jesse seems to steel himself after a long silent moment of their standoff, opens his mouth to speak.
"Go ahead," he says. His voice is low, defiant despite the tremor running through it.
Walt doesn't move. Jesse glances at the gun again, pointedly this time. He looks like he wants to say more but something's stopping him.
The gun sits patient in Walt's hand. He's put so much time and energy into this young man. Very valuable time and energy.
He starts to walk the short distance to him, slowly. Jesse tenses up, clenches his fists. Bracing himself. Waiting.
“Get it over with,” he grits out. “I know this is what you wanted,” and the more he talks, the more the words waver, desperation seeping into his voice. The nerve he had found must weaken as Walt gets close enough and stops walking, because he takes a step back to lean against the car. But Jesse keeps going, tells him to, “Just do it.”
It's starting to occur to Walt that maybe he needs to take a little more time to think about this. To consider what exactly Jesse deserves. Because suddenly, this is starting to seem a bit abrupt. After everything he dedicated to their partnership, to end it like this, in one second with a single shot? It's just... impulsive. And maybe, he thinks, it's still too easy. A mercy.
He's holding the gun, but he thinks, I need more time. I need to do this right. There's more than one way to handle this. And so he lifts the gun up, aims it at center mass. Sees the way Jesse flinches, eyes instantly darting down to it. Hears the way his distressed breathing catches and stops in his throat. It's almost like he actually pulled the trigger.
Walt keeps the gun pointed steady at his chest and says, “Hold out your wrists.” He reaches into his pocket with his free hand.
The effect isn't quite immediate. Jesse's focus stays trained on the gun for a couple of seconds before he snaps out of it, realizes he's still standing and hasn't been shot yet. He looks up at him, confused. There might be a tinge of hope in his eyes. And then the words finally seem to register for him when he notices what Walt's holding in his other hand. Cuffs.
“No,” and he's shaking his head, breath coming faster. His face falls, further than before somehow. “No, you can't-”, he swallows, breathes out, “You can't make me do anything. No”
Jesse quickly looks around at their surroundings, obviously searching for some kind of an escape route. He has to know he'll get shot if he tries. But Walt can tell that he's really considering it, that maybe he doesn't care if he gets a bullet in his back as he makes a run for it. So he speaks again, needing to solidify his hold on this situation before it gets out of control.
“Stay still. If you move anything besides what I tell you to, if you try anything at all, I will shoot you in the foot. In the leg, maybe. But I will make sure that it's somewhere you won't bleed out from, not anytime soon. And then we'll either be right back here where we started, or you can die a slow, painful death out here.”
The look Jesse is giving him at this point is worse than the ones from before. It hurts, pries under his skin with little poisonous needles. He can't tell what it is about it.
“Do you really want to take that risk?” he says.
Jesse stays still. “Hold out your wrists,” Walt says again. “Slowly.”
Nothing happens at first. The wind is still blowing, now stronger than it was, brushing past them in little gusts. The air whistling past rocks is the only sound besides their breathing.
Despair. That's what it is, Walt realizes. That's what's on Jesse's face, all encompassing.
He knows it's over. He's lost.
“Why?” Jesse asks. He doesn't get a response. Walt doesn't know exactly, himself.
When he eventually lifts his wrists up and holds them out in front of him, Walt knows this is him surrendering. It looks like it's killing him, but he flicks his eyes away and waits.
It's frankly more than a little difficult to put the cuffs on Jesse with a gun still in his hand, but it's not like he can take the risk of setting it down. He's still careful to hold the weapon in a way where he hopefully won't accidentally discharge it, though if it does go off- well. That'd be a sign, he supposes. Jesse doesn't acknowledge the struggle.
Stainless steel curves cinch tight around trembling wrists. The metal clicks when it scrunches into place, a gavel signaling a fate being sealed.
His expression hasn't changed, though it looks like it's clouding over by the second, shuttering closed.
Walt really contemplates telling him to get into the trunk. The space is more or less empty, and it would keep things simple. It worked for Tuco. He considers Jesse, thinking. Decides it doesn't feel necessary, so he just tells him, “Get in the car,” and points in the vague direction of the passenger side.
Jesse hesitates, but soon he's walking around the car with an empty resignation in his steps. He opens the door without too much trouble, slinks into the seat. The door closes with a slam. Walt tucks the gun away and gets in the driver's seat.
-
The barrel must be just barely brushing up against something in the backseat, because there's this sound that keeps happening that was definitely not there before. It's this tiny squeak, every ten seconds, lifting above the noise of the road. Quiet and consistent, but gradually getting more and more obnoxious in spite of that. Walt tries to crush the steering wheel under his hands for a minute before loosening his grip again.
He's not sure how long it is until he hears another sound, how many miles he's driven. It occurs to him that he's operating on auto pilot, but it doesn't really matter. He knows where he's going.
The new sound is coming from his right. A weak, shuddering breathy sound, hitching in stops and starts. Jesse. He must be crying.
“You always win.”
Walt glances over at that, and is surprised to see that he isn't crying. Jesse isn't looking at him, slumped back in the seat and focused blankly on the horizon. He makes that noise again, and it clicks for Walt. It's a laugh, or at least something like it, little huffs tinged with hysteria. He does it once more, a curve on his lips that could be mistaken for a smile but without a single speck of it in the eyes.
“Yeah,” Jesse says quietly, and the almost smile fades away into nothing.
He looks listless and drained, almost like the way that he was the last few times Walt saw him before all of this. The day he gave him his bag of cash, or the day that he was supposed to leave. I can't believe that was just a couple of days ago. But it feels different this time, when he looks at him.
Walt turns his eyes back to the road.
This doesn't feel like winning. Hank is dead, along with Gomez. The DEA probably has a full confession on him courtesy of Jesse, or they will soon enough; even if Hank hadn't told them what he was doing, Marie will. Walt is sure that they'll have plenty of information, enough that it can't be ignored despite the probable lack of evidence. And then there's those bastards that snatched almost all of his goddamn money. Nearly everything he'd worked for.
His chest hurts. He lost, too.
- - -
Orange desert flickers by in Jesse's peripheral vision. The view in front of him is uniform: horizon, rocks, road. It's hard to really focus on what he's seeing when it's all the same like that, and so he doesn't bother. He keeps his eyes open but it all just keeps moving past in a blank screen of color, and he lets it.
It feels like his hands might be shaking, but maybe they're just going numb. Pins and needles are vibrating up his fingers, past his wrists, leaving gray fuzz in their wake. He thinks that feeling might consume him in a wave, a lukewarm wash of acid finally dissolving him completely—almost nothing left untouched. Just a suggestion of someone who used to exist.
You won't even have to worry about getting rid of my body. You can just pour me out on the side of road, let me soak into the dirt. No one will notice.
No one comes out here.
Maybe all of him is shaking, now that he thinks about it.
He slouches down some more and presses back further into the head rest. Trying to anchor himself with the pressure against his skull. It hurts a little, informs him that he has a headache and this is making it worse, so he reluctantly eases up on it and zones back out. Watches nothing.
Jesse blinks, catches a searing glimpse of desert out the windshield like he's waking up from a dream. He thinks he might be in shock.
Time has been passing. When he takes a second to process visual input, he notices a few more clouds in the sky than there were earlier. They've also made it to cracked asphalt instead of dirt at this point, and it's bumpy, been jostling him in a way that he's only noticing now.
It's less uncomfortable than he'd expect, and almost a relief. Now he really can't tell if he's shaking.
There's still dust in his mouth, he's pretty sure. He couldn't get rid of the taste and now it's lingering, drying him out from the inside. He absently licks at his lips and wonders when he'll get water again. If he'll even get water again. He has no idea what Mr. White's plan is.
The road nudges persistently at him, and somehow he almost feels like he could drift off despite how sick he feels. Like a baby being rocked to sleep.
Jesse is doing his best to avoid thinking about anything that just happened, but then there'll be a particularly bad pothole and the metal on his wrists will move and he'll feel it. And just like that, he's reminded. He's starting to wish he'd just left when he was supposed to, just gone so he'd never have to think about any of it again. It would have felt like he was killing himself, letting go of everything that Mr. White did, but at least he wouldn't be in this situation. This is probably the last place he wants to be.
This shit did not work out.
He hates himself for thinking like this. Tells himself it was worth it, that he wouldn't change anything. Even if people died. That wasn't my fault.
Except it was, in a way. Like always. They had come to kill Jesse, not anyone else.
His breathing is starting to get uneven and difficult, so he makes an effort to look out the window again instead of at his wrists. Blue sky, barren earth with scattered bushes, big rocks. There's some pale desert grass through this section.
He thinks he remembers this area, actually. Obviously he's seen it all before, though right now it mostly just feels vague and similar to his memory, not actually familiar, not the same. But this part, he recognizes. There's a rock formation to the right, which on its own definitely isn't anything to take note of, but this specific one is different—not by a lot, but enough that it stuck in his mind. Large natural alcoves are carved at the base of the giant stone, like caves that didn't want to commit to going any deeper.
He remembers thinking it looked like someone had taken scoops out of it with a spoon, the curves were so perfect.
And then Jesse suddenly realizes why the way the road is bumpy as hell through here isn't as annoying as it should be. The way it was almost nice. He closes his eyes and grimaces, pained. Muscle memory of this place. Guess it doesn't matter if the memories of a time gone by are good, or whether they're bitter and tainted; you still miss them if they weren't fucking terrible. Compared to now.
He starts trying to pay attention to the weeds on the ground, but the memories still move by slowly outside the windows, itch in his bones.
Eventually, they turn onto a somewhat maintained road and then soon enough they're pulling onto the freeway. He's tired of the weeds, and those are too far away now anyway, so his attention drifts down again and he picks at his jeans instead.
-
Jesse hadn't been sure where they were actually heading, had figured he'd find out when they got there and made a decision to not think about it. But when they end up in the city and turn into a familiar neighborhood, he knows: they're going to Mr. White's house.
There's a cold pit in his stomach, slowly growing with every turn taken too quickly past sidewalks and driveways. He doesn't know what this means, exactly. Doesn't know how he feels about it, besides not good.
He glances at Mr. White out of the corner of his eye for the first time since getting in the car, looking for answers that he doesn't find. The man is focused straight ahead, his expression blank and inaccessible in single minded determination. Jesse is starting to question whether or not he actually has a plan at all.
There's cloud cover in the sky now, just little peeks of blue behind it remaining here and there. The gray of it hangs over everything, muting the world in a way that reminds him of fog in a horror movie. He wonders if it'll rain.
Too soon, Mr. White is pulling onto his street and then Jesse is almost falling out of the passenger seat as they swerve into the driveway and come to an abrupt, jarring stop. The house looms in front of them; he notes that there's no other car here. No one seems to be home. Mr. White barely glances at him before throwing open the driver's side door and hastily stumbling outside. Jesse almost expects him to leave the door wide open, but then it slams shut and he's rushing to the house, heading in.
Jesse stares after him, the muffled sound of the front door closing still clunking in his ears. It feels like everything is delayed, like it's all happening at a speed his brain can't comprehend and he can only process it seconds later. Confused images and their paired audio not cooperating.
He thinks he sees a single drop of rain darken the concrete, but no more follow. His gaze lingers on the spot.
A flash of red appears in his vision, rapidly overtaking everything else. He jumps, startled. The hum of an engine he hadn't heard coming suddenly cuts.
Mrs. White's car is next to him in the driveway now, on the driver's side, and she and her son are stepping out. Jesse's heart jolts in his chest. He doesn't know what to do. This is—an opportunity? For something? He honestly isn't sure what, but he—
He wants someone to look over, see him, do something, he doesn't know and he's frozen, and then they are looking over, they look so confused, concerned—
They've been distracted by the front door flying open. His pulse is pounding in his throat.
Mr. White is standing there, urging the two of them to go inside. They seem unsure, hesitant, his wife more so than his son. She looks shell shocked, actually, but he successfully ushers his family into their home and Jesse is alone again.
No one had looked back at him.
The reality of it clarifies in his mind. They didn't see him. They had made eye contact with the car, not Jesse, and only for about half a second before their attention was redirected. Both of their gazes had skittered right past him, unseeing.
He calms down, heart rate slowing to a more reasonable level. What the hell he was even thinking? It probably wouldn't have made any difference, if they'd seen him. How would they help him, anyway? Why would they? They have it just as bad as he does. They might have even assumed he was there voluntarily, and the thought makes him want to laugh even though it's not funny at all.
Jesse shifts a little, cuffs pressing against his thighs. He does laugh, now. Definitely not voluntary.
A bird flies past the windshield, and he watches as it flits away.
Wait.
His mind clears a bit, just the thinnest layer of clouds blowing away for a revelation: he's alone. He knew that already, but until just this second he hadn't been paying attention to what it seriously meant. His heart starts to pound again. His mouth goes dry.
Jesse's eyes dart to the front door, the windows. Still closed, and the curtains are drawn. You can't see into the house. Or out.
His door is locked, but it would take no effort at all to pull up the lock mechanism, disengage it. He could just open the door and run away, doesn't matter that he's handcuffed. He could start screaming or something if he really wanted to. Jesse lifts his shaky hands up to the knob. It takes a couple of tries, his fingertips are sweating and they keep slipping—but eventually there's a quiet clunk when it lifts. Unlocked. Hands move to rest on the door handle.
He looks back at the house. Noises are leaking out now, a muffled commotion that he can't make any sense of. Someone must be shouting, though he can only imagine what.
Jesse wonders if it still smells like gasoline in there or if they managed to clean it up. It probably soaked in deep. He feels dizzy, like those fumes are in here with him, seeping into his pores and replacing the oxygen.
His hands are still on the handle, unmoving. Paralyzed. He desperately wants to pull on the handle, jump out and escape. But—
God. Where could he even go? To the cops? He seriously doubts he could manage much else. And yeah, it's not like they don't already have his confession, or they will soon at least, but he has a feeling things might be different for him now with two DEA agents in the ground. Regardless of his own actual involvement in that.
Even if he could find a better option, lay low somewhere, he knows. It wouldn't last. He can feel it in his bones, that if it's not the cops, Mr. White would just find him again instead. It wouldn't even make sense for him to do, probably too risky, way too much effort to hunt Jesse down, even if he's paying someone else to do it. But Jesse can still see it happening, crystal clear.
What would be the point, he thinks.
He brings his bound hands up, leans down to meet them with his forehead. Presses hard. He feels like he might cry. It seems like no matter what he does at this point, he can't change anything. Why was he even left here in this position, why didn't Mr. White just force him into the trunk and lock him in there, why is he being given this choice? He doesn't trust it, doesn't want it.
Well. Jesse takes a deep breath, moves back to touching the handle. He wraps his fingers around it. He can just suck it up, run to a neighbor's house down the street. Call the cops. Maybe turning himself in, willingly this time, would count for something.
He's going to do it, he thinks. Really. I am.
I am.
But the moment of hesitation drags on too long, the front door is opening again, and he knows deep down that he was probably never going to do it, that he was trying to convince himself and he was failing.
Fingertips drag against the cool metal of the handle as they fall back down to his lap.
Jesse can see through the window that Mr. White is carrying a black bag, and when he tears open the driver's side door he tosses it to the back. The man falls into the seat, shutting the door violently enough that Jesse imagines he can feel it rock the car despite the weight of the barrel behind them. No time is wasted before the car starts and reverses, peeling out down the street.
Mr. White isn't saying anything, which isn't surprising, but Jesse still wants to know what just happened. He can guess that he wasn't able to convince his family to do whatever it was they were yelling about. Nobody else in chains, he notes.
Just me.
He inspects him; can only infer that he's way more manic than he was earlier, which really says something, and this is pretty alarming on its own. Then Jesse's eyes flick down, and he sees the hand.
His gaze catches there in surprise. He's taken aback by the sight of blood, stark and smeared red on Mr. White's hand. It's flowing down his wrist and soaking into the cuff of his sleeve, a vivid bloom of color. The source seems to be a gash on the side of his hand, maybe wrapping around his palm, but it's kind of hard to tell from this angle. The hand is kept tight around the steering wheel despite all of this.
What the actual fuck happened? Did someone try to stab him?
Mr. White doesn't appear to be paying any mind to the injury. Apparently it's not a priority right now. He moves his hand and Jesse can see that there's blood slicked on the steering wheel, glistening on the black leather. Some of it drips off, blots dark on his thigh.
Jesse's throat feels tight. He swallows. A wobbly sheen of nausea is hovering over him, but he ignores it, used to it by now. He knows he won't get sick.
He wants to say something, badly, but he keeps his mouth shut and turns away, shifts his arms a bit. The cuffs dig into his wrists, hard edged and painful. He grinds his teeth and digs them in harder. A bruised ache steadily grows, warm against the unyielding steel, and he focuses on the way it feels for awhile. Bright and sharp. Cold and harsh.
Jesse doesn't say anything.
It's fine. Nothing really matters anyway.
Slowly, he relaxes his wrists and shoulders, sinking into the seat. If he didn't know where they were going before that whole detour, then he sure as hell doesn't know now. Mr. White isn't speeding as much anymore, far enough away from whatever it was that took place back there—buildings and trees are going by the windows at a normal pace now. The car pauses at a stoplight, then turns right.
Mr. White pulls into a parking lot and tucks into a somewhat secluded corner. Jesse looks around. The road is visible out the windshield still, cars going by in intermittent bursts. Not a lot of traffic through here. He peers into the mirror on his door at the establishments behind them.
Strip mall. Pretty generic, nothing fancy.
A hand appears in front of him, and he just barely manages to stop himself from flinching back. The hand wasn't going for him though, instead opening the glove box and rooting around. There's an irritated grumble, and then a more irritated sigh as the panel is slammed shut. Mr. White couldn't find whatever he was looking for.
Jesse directs his attention back to the window, continues to quietly survey the outside world. There's a few less clouds than there were earlier.
A ripping noise makes him glance over to his left, and he sees that Mr. White has torn off a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. He's wrapping it around his hand, which seems like it wouldn't be very effective if he's trying to staunch the blood flow or something. He turns his hand at an angle where Jesse can see that—yes, the cut extends to the palm. It looks like the wound is oozing a bit, but not as bad as it was when he first noticed it. Pale blue cotton is still soaked crimson after half a minute. Another strip is ripped off.
This time, the stain is slower to bleed through. It still does, but in smaller splotches that probably align with where the wound is deeper.
Jesse doesn't know why he's still staring at this point, hadn't realized he even was staring until now. He turns his head back to look at the road, and he doesn't have to wait long before something happens; the second makeshift bandage must be good enough for Mr. White, because the engine starts soon after it's been applied, and then they're moving back out into the mild traffic.
The road roars gently in Jesse's ears and he closes his eyes, leans his head against the window. Lets himself settle into a dark, empty limbo. He doesn't even mind the sound the barrel is making, a timid squeak every so often on the back of his chair. It's just a noise.
What does it say about him, he wonders—that they were able to fight back but he wasn't. Wasn't able to open a door.
He doesn't fucking know.
The only thing he knows at all is that he already tried, and it didn't work. It's never worked, not one time.
-
He didn't fall asleep or anything, but Jesse is still a little startled by the slow lurch of the car stopping, along with the engine shutting off. He opens his eyes, squinting.
The sun is at a point in the sky now where it's shining orange and warm through the windows, and it happens to also be shining right in his face. He could see it before, red through his eyelids, but it's a lot brighter on open eyes. He blinks away from it and tries to get a grip on his surroundings.
The first thing he sees is a decently sized sign, large enough to be seen clearly from the road. It's tilted away from him and he has a hard time making out any of the words, but he can make out one, emanating from neon letters in the sunset: vacancy. The accompanying 'no' in front of the word isn't lit up. Looking at where they are, this doesn't surprise him. He doesn't even know where they are. It feels like they've been driving for hours, though it probably wasn't longer than one or two. That's still pretty long, he guesses.
There's not much around. Out in front of them is a wall of dirty stucco and doors with numbers on them. The motel with vacancies, apparently. Besides that, he can see maybe two or three buildings from where he's sitting, and those aren't that close. Only one car drives by in the time that he's looking at the road.
As far as nature goes, there's dry dirt and not a lot else, which. Yeah. They haven't driven that far.
They must be on the outskirts of town though, if they're even still in Albuquerque at all. Jesse would think it'd be a bad idea to hang around at this point, if he was going to care about it. He's not sure he does. And he's not sure Mr. White really does either, since they're stopping at all instead of just driving forever. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
He sighs through his nose and watches a beetle crawl on stucco instead of thinking about where the hell this is going.
- - -
Cholla Motel.
That's what the sign by the road says, when Walt glances back at it midstep. He hadn't really read it before pulling into the parking lot, had been dialed in on the part of the sign that said 'vacancy'. That was all that he'd needed to know.
He feels like he's been driving aimlessly around in circles trying to find a place that might work. It's not like there weren't other places he could have stopped at, vacancies everywhere, but those places just weren't right. He needed somewhere out of the way, ideally with a parking lot somewhat concealed from the road, and this motel has both. It's on the edge of town, but not too obviously so, and there's a wall connected to the office that partially hides the parking lot from the road.
What he really needs is a place with discretion; where the people working there might not call the cops, just so someone is at least paying for a room. This particular detail is still to be determined but he has a feeling this place fits the bill.
And Walt never heard any sirens while he was driving, so. That's a good sign.
His hand hurts a little, now. The makeshift bandages are nearly soaked again, but at least they aren't dripping—the blood flow has probably slowed significantly at this point, if not stopped entirely. Walt's hoping the person running the motel desk doesn't notice, period, but at least he maybe looks less unhinged with the patch job, even if it's messy.
He couldn't feel the cut at all for the longest time.
Walt reaches the door to the motel office and pushes it open, a bell jingling above him. He tries to hold his arm in a way to hide the injury without making it obvious that he's trying to hide something. Casual. The office is cramped and cluttered, and the floorboards creak under his shoes.
Turns out he didn't have to worry, because he makes all four steps to the desk before the woman working there looks up at him. She had been engrossed in some reality show playing on a tv behind the desk, and she picks up a remote now. The sound of a badly scripted catfight goes away, a vacuum of silence left in its place. Walt can hear a clock now.
“I need a room,” Walt says after a moment. The woman nods, jostling the bun of her hair, and swivels in her chair to glance at the keys on the wall behind her. Maybe sixty percent of the hooks have keys on them, little blue plastic tags with numbers attached to each key. “How many nights?” she asks. “One bed?”
Walt hesitates for a split second before responding, “One night, two beds.” He needs to have somewhere to put Jesse and he doesn't really want to lock him in the bathroom. The extra space should be good anyway.
The woman nods again and plucks a key from its tarnished hook. She moves to place it on the counter between them, but leaves her hand resting on top of it—a clipboard with a short list of names is slid over to him along with a pen. “Twenty dollars. Sign here,” the woman tells him. Walt can see that she surreptitiously glances back at the tv despite the fact that it's still muted.
Walt signs with his left hand, carefully. He doesn't use his real name, though he's not sure how much of a difference it would make either way. The clock ticks sharp and resounding behind him, ominous. He grabs his wallet after setting down the pen, pulls out a bill. When he moves to hand it over, his movements stutter before setting the bill down.
The woman is looking at his right hand, which is holding the wallet. Shit. Walt does his best to keep his face neutral, tries to figure out how to handle this, predict what questions she'll ask. Her expression isn't giving much away, no clear indications on how she'll react, but it's soured a little from what it was before.
She nods down at the injury. “You alright?” It's casual, and it sounds practiced. Almost bored, actually. Like this isn't anything out of the ordinary. And maybe it isn't, maybe he really did find the best place for this... situation of his.
A sliver of awareness pokes at him. The best thing, the only thing to do, would have been to call Saul's disappearer. To be headed far, far away from here before anyone has a chance to stop him. But he just... needs more time. He needs to think. About the right thing to do here.
No reason to be rash, make commitments. Or admit defeat.
Walt glances down at his hand, then back up at the woman, sheepish. “Just had a bit of an accident,” he says. He moves the hand a little for emphasis.
The woman's expression doesn't change, unaffected and unsympathetic. Walt doubts she believes him. He watches as the woman pulls the keys off the counter and down onto her lap, as she opens a drawer under the tv and starts rustling through it. She pauses for a moment to take the cash from the counter and inspects the clipboard before moving that aside too; no questions about id. Then it's back to the drawer. Walt looks down at the messy desk, impatient, and sees a dull plaque with a name carved into it: Carla.
Eventually Carla pulls out an off-white roll of gauze and places it none too gently on the counter, along with the key.
“Please avoid getting blood on the carpet. Eleven am is check-out time,” the woman says. She stares at him and waits until he grabs the key and the gauze with his good hand, before turning in her chair back to the tv. A clear dismissal. Walt turns to leave, glancing at the number on his blue key tag. Room number 14. He puts it in his pocket.
The tv is unmuted before he even makes it to the glass door, tinny arguing and clock ticks following him out. It fades away as he steps onto asphalt and disappears when the door closes behind him.
Sunset is still blooming peach and lilac on the clouds in the sky, a smidge darker than it was when he got here. Dusk is starting to creep in.
This is a horrible idea.
Walt makes his way to the car while searching for room 14, and quickly finds it in the sea of doors, shaded from the sunset. The room looks like it's located in the part of the lot that's mostly concealed from the road, so he can move the car over there without worrying about it. He reaches where the car is tucked into a corner and he gets in after a last look back at the office, tossing the roll of gauze on the floor.
Jesse is unmoving and silent next to him. Walt can't tell if he's relieved or disappointed by this.
He moves the car and parks in the designated space in front of the room, cuts the engine. He looks at Jesse. "I don't have to tell you that I can make this a lot worse for you if you try to get anyone's attention," Walt says.
No reaction, which is what he more or less expected.
Walt gets out and walks to the passenger side, opens the door. He takes a step back for Jesse to exit, but he doesn't move a muscle.
“Get out,” Walt says. Still no movement, but Jesse's eyes do flick over in his direction for a second before moving back to their neutral position. Walt inspects him, tries to figure out what he could possibly be thinking right now. Jesse is still slumped in the seat in the same way he was earlier, cuffed hands resting limp between his thighs. Walt attempts to interpret the vacant stare that's being directed towards the glove box. It looks like he's either completely lost in his thoughts, or there's nothing in his head at all. Walt can't tell.
A wind had begun blowing through the parking lot after Walt left the office, and now it's growing and fluttering through everything. There's a specific quality to it; like it came all the way from the deep desert just so it could end up here, chilling him to his bones. And all of a sudden, everything feels brittle, fragile. He clenches his fists and is surprised anew by the stab of pain this elicits.
He doesn't bother asking again, leans forward and grabs Jesse by the arm. Tugs. Walt hauls him out from there, before any kind of protest is made. If it's a little aggressive, then that's just how it is. He should have gotten up.
Maybe he's not relieved or disappointed by this type of spaciness. Maybe it's just annoying.
Walt thinks that Jesse's shoe got hooked in the car for a second, but he manages to make it to a standing position, and so Walt moves him out of the way, closes the door. Then he tightens his grip on an arm and starts pulling him towards the motel room. It's not a long walk, just a few short steps, but Jesse's sort of stumbling along and he trips on the curb, falling hard to one of his knees. Walt quickly pulls him back up to his feet. Jesse hadn't made much of a sound, just a little surprised grunt from the impact, but Walt still looks around for prying eyes. He hopes no one saw that—or anything that happened before for that matter. It's only just now occurring to him that he's making a bit of a scene here.
Well. They're to the door now anyway, so he retrieves the room key from his pocket with his bloody hand and only barely fumbles with the lock before the door swings open. He moves Jesse inside and follows after him, taking care to gently close the door behind them. Walt doesn't want to slam doors here if he can help it.
When he turns away from the door, he's a little surprised despite himself to see that Jesse isn't standing right next to him anymore. Instead he sees him trudging through the room, past the beds.
“Where are you going?” Walt asks. He honestly doesn't expect a response, thinks his question will fall on deaf ears like usual, but he can just make out a quiet mumble about needing to piss.
There's no real reason to be too concerned about this, but he still has a prickle of worry that Jesse's going to try to do...something. Lock himself in the bathroom, maybe, and there's some kind of protest on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say it Jesse is already in the bathroom and he doesn't even close the door. A light flicks on to shine from the doorway.
Walt might have offered to unlock one of the cuffs to make it easier, if he'd thought about it and decided it was safe, but Jesse hadn't asked and it's too late now.
Walt sighs and starts a full assessment of the small room. He's not entirely sure if he'd consider the motel office more or less cramped than this. This room doesn't have all the miscellaneous clutter strewn around it but it might be smaller than the office was, the walls closing in tight. Almost as if you're in a cave. The sunlight coming from behind the curtains on the window breaks this illusion somewhat, but soon enough it'll be dark and appropriately subterranean. A brief look at the ceiling reveals an expanse of empty plaster. No bulbs up there. The only light source—besides the bathroom—appears to be the one lamp on the shared nightstand between beds.
There's an air conditioning unit tucked under the window, but it's not running right now and Walt doubts its capability to do so in the future. Broken AC is standard motel fare, from his experience.
Opposite the beds and against the wall to his right is a squat shelf of some sort. It's empty save for a single book, but sitting on top of it is a television, just a tiny little box, battered and bruised. Scratches and scuffs decorate the majority of its vaguely gray surface, snaking cords peek out from behind it, there's a noticeable dent on the upper left corner, and it has knobs, one of which is missing. He'd be shocked if the thing actually turned on.
Walt looks back to the beds. They seem to be pretty standard motel beds, if a little small to match everything else. Better than a couch would be. Tacky wallpaper patterned duvets, flat and austere headboards. He takes a single step closer to the one nearest the door and pulls up the sheets to peer underneath. The bed frames have legs. Walt considers this information for a moment. Then he rests the corner of the sheet he was holding on top of the bed, pushes the mattress to the side a little and sees that it moves, revealing pale wooden slats. The bed frame is made for a slightly bigger mattress, this one thin and loose in its confines.
He touches one of the slats, getting a feel for the dimensions. The planks are dusty on his fingertips, despite presumably being completely hidden under a mattress most of the time. This will do, he decides. He pulls the rest of the top sheets up to expose the entire side of the mattress adjacent to the nightstand, folds them over.
Jesse is coming out from the bathroom now. Walt stops fussing with the sheets and straightens up.
Things are calmer now, less chaotic, and Walt doesn't intend to make the same mistake he did earlier. He goes over to where Jesse is, then directs him to sit on the bed he'd prepared. This is primarily accomplished by moving him to it manually, by hand, rather than actually trying to tell him to do anything. That has been shown to not be very efficient.
Once he's in the right spot, Walt digs around in a pocket until he finds what he's looking for, a tiny piece of toothed metal. The key to the handcuffs. He starts to pull Jesse's wrists up to better deal with this and encounters a touch of resistance, but that quickly melts away and he's able to put the key into its hole, turn the lock. He leaves one of the cuffs on Jesse and moves the newly freed cuff towards the exposed slats of the bed frame.
Walt knows now that he presented Jesse with what must have been a golden opportunity earlier, had left it wide open in the heat of the moment when he'd left him in the car at the house; yet Jesse hadn't taken it. And he'd had the chance again, just a few minutes ago, when Walt had left him in the motel parking lot by himself. The second time had been more of a calculated risk on Walt's part, but still. Jesse didn't open the door.
Walt isn't going to let this change anything. Just because Jesse didn't try anything earlier doesn't mean he won't try now, not by a long shot. There's always a phone nearby, and Walt suspects that whatever kind of distracted haze of ennui Jesse is in right now, it'll wear off soon enough. He isn't going to be dealing with the consequences of that again.
Jesse's not putting up much of a fight at the moment, though. The zombie comparison pops back into Walt's head. The living dead. This behavior seems a little melodramatic to him, but that's just how Jesse is. He knows that by now.
Sometimes it's annoying. Sometimes it's convenient.
Walt places the cuff around his chosen slat. The mattress is thin enough that it looks like Jesse can still more or less sit up if he wants to, despite being chained to the frame with only a couple inches of slack. His arm and shoulder aren't being pulled down much. This is generous.
Jesse isn't looking at him, and Walt cinches the metal band around the slat as tight as it goes, wants to do the same with the cuff that Jesse still has around his wrist until it's more than uncomfortably snug, just for the hell of it, but he doesn't. Too much trouble.
He leaves Jesse there and goes to the window, pulls back the wispy curtain. Like he thought, the road isn't visible from here at all, the view consisting almost entirely of asphalt and sand colored walls with their numbered doors. But the wrong person could just turn into the parking lot and it'll all be over. He can still see most of the motel's sign, and it glows unexpectedly bright and inviting in the twilight. Only a couple of its letters are partially burnt out; the bottom half of an 'L', the 'O' in 'motel'.
I shouldn't be here. There are so many reasons why I shouldn't be here.
When Walt lets the curtain fall back to its original position, he notices a speckle of red where his hand had been. He sighs. The gauze is still on the floor of the car.
-
After retrieving the roll of gauze, he takes it straight to the bathroom and sets it on the old laminate countertop. Jesse had left the light on and it buzzes from its place on the ceiling, the dim yellow tint making everything look grimier than it probably is. It's plenty bright enough to see by though, so Walt gets to work on peeling the strips of ruined shirt from his hand. They feel stiff and crunchy and still a little damp in spots, somehow. The cut would have stopped bleeding ages ago, it isn't that bad. Is it? Maybe he just keeps reopening it.
He sets aside the outside piece of fabric after removing it, but the one that was actually against his skin sticks painfully when he pulls it away. He hisses at the sharp sting. Speaking of reopening the wound. Some part of it must have been scabbed to the fabric and now blood is welling up again, slowly seeping into the lines on his already blood crusted palm. Feathery streams of crimson.
Against his will, memories of earlier are surfacing along with the blood. Thoughts and images from when he got this injury. He's been doing as much as he can to avoid thinking about it, and it's just as jarring every time those moments manage to get through the barriers, new and painful.
A knife flashes in his mind and he blinks away from it, shoves it away into fuzzy black obscurity.
He turns the knobs on the sink and moves his hand under the stream. It's ice cold, though a burst of tepid warmth does appear for a couple of seconds before going away. Red spatters on ceramic before sliding down the drain. There's a small chip in the sink's surface, and it lingers there.
A knife is flashing, and there's shouting, and there's blood. The water is running mostly clear past his hand now. He makes sure the wound looks clean, as well as he can without inspecting it too closely.
There's no real disinfectant around, which he learns after a cursory search of the bathroom cabinets. He really hadn't expected any, but you never know. Tap water and motel hand soap will just have to be good enough for now. If it gets infected—well. He'll cross that bridge when he gets to it. This is enough. He carefully cleans around the cut with the soap.
His chest is starting to feel tight, hot with anger and hurt frustration, rising bitter as bile in his throat. All those shouted words from his family just keep bouncing around in his head. What they meant, too. It feels as though he's missing a lot more than this little slice of flesh, like there's this hole inside him with pieces getting torn off, each chunk bigger and bigger than the last. Pieces he thought were his, ones that he believed wouldn't be taken.
Why are you here?
Walt grabs the gauze. He notices that the towel he'd used to dry his hands with is stained, a pinprick or two of blood on white fibers.
He knows he can't bring everything back under control at this point, can't come back from all of this, as much as it's nearly impossible for him to accept; he hates the desperation that he can feel growing under his skin. It's all been out of control for a long time, really, and it's just that today happens to be the day that things have truly crossed the point of no return.
But—
--there are degrees. There's always something that can be done, however miniscule. He just needs to figure out what that something is.
The gauze stretches neat and crisp across his palm. Much better than his shirt was, though the fact that he's not fighting against the bleeding probably helps. He tucks in the corner once he's satisfied with it. The white bandages look out of place next to his stained sleeve.
And I have unfinished business, Walt tells himself. That's why I'm here.
The previous makeshift bandages sit dark and curled on the counter, almost disturbing in their sordid way. He looks around for a trashcan to get rid of them, finds one stashed under the sink. He'll still know they're there, but at least he won't be able to see them, and so he disposes of the bloodied scraps. He'll forget about them at some point.
-
Walt leaves the bathroom, turning the light off this time. The first thing he notes is that Jesse has moved his feet onto the bed and is sitting back against the pillows now. The light from the lampshade glows on his face from its spot barely a couple feet away; he must have turned it on when Walt was gone. Jesse's looking down at the cuff on his wrist and pulling at it halfheartedly, like he's only just now realizing it's there.
He glares when he notices Walt, actually meets his eyes. Look who's alive after all, Walt thinks.
Jesse doesn't say anything though, just stops moving his arm and leans his head against the headboard to look away, up at the ceiling. Walt walks past him to peek out the window again. It's still not dark yet, enough light left to see by in the room even if the lamp was off. The parking lot looks fine, the exact same as a few minutes ago.
He can sense the cold tension behind him in a way that he hadn't since the desert.
Jesse. He's a problem that Walt hasn't found the solution to yet. He's not sure what to do with him, really. He thought that the answer would have come to him by now, but all of Walt's thoughts about him are jumbled and contradictory, multiple potential courses of action developing independently from one another. The paths are all over the place.
He wants Jesse to suffer for his betrayal, wants to somehow get him to feel the severity of what he's done, but then he also wants to get him back to how he was, not too long ago, at heel and in his place. And then Walt will think, he needs to hurt, and the cycle repeats itself.
Walt glances back at Jesse. He's filthy. A film of dirt coats his whole body from when he was under the car, clinging worse in some spots than others. There's a faint impression of Walt's blood on his once black sleeve where Walt had grabbed him to bring him in here, soaked into the dust laden fabric. He looks remarkably like a ragdoll that a child dropped outside and then carelessly left there in the dirt.
As Walt looks at him, he considers that he could simply take everything out on him. There's a far off glimmer of clarity that murmurs, that's what he's here for, anyway. Don't you know that?
His fingers go to where the gun is tucked in his waistband, brush against the solid metal. He'd almost forgotten it was there. Walt doesn't have any specific plans that involve using it, he'd really rather avoid that, but the security of it is gratifying.
Too many options.
And then Walt notices the block of a tv sitting in the corner of his vision, the same one he had noticed earlier and since forgotten. He turns his head and looks at it like he's seeing it for the first time.
There's a goddamn television in here. Why has he not tried to turn it on yet? Christ, he might be on the news, what do they know, what has the DEA told them, if anything—
He rushes over to the box and sees a little remote that he'd missed earlier, sitting innocently next to it. Trying to change the channel might have been difficult with the missing knob, so this is a relief. He would've found a way regardless, but. Not ideal.
He hits the power on the remote and stares intently, waiting for the screen to light up. It doesn't. The pane of glass remains dark gray and dusty. He presses the button again. Nothing, again. Fuck. It takes every ounce of his willpower to not throw the piece of plastic and risk breaking it.
Walt had suspected this might happen considering the state of the tv, but the disappointment still hits him hard, exacerbated by a growing sense of restlessness. He can't believe he hadn't even thought about there being a way to watch the news, that he was just taking his chances with being clueless, and now he'll still probably be stuck with that despite the opportunity for more, so close. But—hope blooms and he moves closer to the box, starts to investigate it more closely—there is a possibility that the tv might still work.
Theoretically. There could be a simple problem, maybe something isn't plugged in properly, maybe a wire is messed up, maybe it's just the remote. Something he could deal with.
He's trying to be optimistic.
Walt tries to turn the tv on manually with a knob that's still attached, but it still doesn't do anything. The remote probably isn't the issue, then. That would have been too easy, he thinks. Can't have that. He then checks behind the tv to look at the satellite box hiding back there with the cables and—there it is. The various color coded cables look more or less fine, just scratched and scuffed in spots, but the power lead appears to be right on the edge of what one might consider 'destroyed'. Black vinyl coating is peeling from it in strips and an alarmingly sized section of copper wire is exposed, shiny as a newly minted penny. A rat might have gotten to it and didn't commit, he guesses. Who knows. Some of the wire looks like it could be frayed, but it's difficult to tell.
Alright. He's not sure he can fix this, but he can damn well try. Hopefully he doesn't die in the process.
Distantly, Walt knows that this diversion has the added bonus of being an excuse to put off dealing with Jesse. Indecision remedied with distraction.
Walt leaves the motel room and opens the trunk of his car. It takes a second, but he soon finds what he's looking for and grabs it. He couldn't remember if the item was still in the car, but here it is in his hand: duct tape. And as he's closing the trunk he realizes: he could have just used this to patch up his hand earlier instead of having to tear his shirt to shreds. He shakes his head. This is irritating, but he concedes to himself that it was probably for the best. Doesn't matter now, in any case.
He also acknowledges that the duct tape isn't technically electrical tape and is considerably dangerous for this purpose as a result, but it's sure as shit good enough. He doubts it'll catch fire in the time that they'll be here.
The thought of 'they' snags in his mind and he stops in his tracks. Walt sighs. He supposes he could multitask—by the time he gets the tv fixed he should ideally have already figured out how to approach the Jesse issue. Letting that sit for too long does seem like it would be a bad idea, even if he can't exactly put his finger on why.
The clouds in the sky are still purple and pink and they tint the earth below them as he gazes out at the motel's office. A light is on and shining through the window, and he imagines that he can see the silhouette of Carla, even though all he can really see are shadowed boxes. He thinks for a moment.
He wants to get Jesse under control. That's nothing new, and that's more or less what the plan was just a day or two ago, but the thing is that it doesn't feel like enough now. Why couldn't he have just left when he was supposed to? It would have been a lot better for Jesse himself, not to mention everyone else. God. Walt had been letting him leave, and sure, Walt figured it'd be convenient, as a bonus, but is that really even relevant? Clearly he was right.
Unfortunately, the chance for tidying up loose ends has come and gone and instead, they're here. Now, Walt has to do something, a desire for retribution itching at him every time he sees Jesse. But—and this is a fascinating thought, one with its own special kind of allure that's the only reason he keeps coming back to it—if Walt could get him to come around, even after everything, even after what Jesse did, even with the hatred in his eyes—wouldn't that be the most incredible thing? That might be something like winning.
Walt just doesn't know if it would be satisfying enough. If it's worth it. If he even wants to. If he'd rather just get blood on his hands.
Still staring at the office window, its light subtly flickering from the television he saw in there earlier, he realizes that he might not get a chance to do anything. For all he knows, sirens will be here any minute. Walt squeezes the duct tape in his hand and turns away.
He reenters the room, remembers to lock the door behind him. Jesse isn't looking at the ceiling anymore when he turns back, and is instead warily eyeing the duct tape in Walt's hand. Oh. Walt can guess what Jesse might be assuming. And, well. That's not a bad idea either, though it doesn't seem like it'd make much of a difference right now, what with the silent treatment.
He approaches the tv. Back to priority number one.
-
Walt doesn't know how long he's been screwing around with the wires before Jesse finally speaks.
The duct tape has been doing its job as well as it can and there haven't been any fires, but whenever he tried to turn the tv on, it would remain dead. He thinks this might be a situation where the cable has to be at a very particular angle to keep all the threads of it aligned and perfect. Or that would be the best case scenario, anyway. He's contemplated the prospect of something being wrong elsewhere, but multiple rechecks of everything haven't revealed any other glaring issues, nothing like this one cable.
He desperately needs this cable to be the only problem.
He'd looked up from his work a couple of times. While Jesse had mostly gone back to observing the plaster above them, Walt did catch him once, watching what Walt was doing—before his eyes flitted up and away again. Jesse has probably been hoping he'll electrocute himself.
That hasn't happened yet either. One of the few saving graces of this situation.
Suffice to say, Walt has been focused, so it takes him a moment to process it when he hears Jesse say, exasperated, “What are you doing?”
His voice sounds disproportionately loud in the relative silence. Walt looks up from the cable he's still holding and is surprised to see that the room is dimmer than he'd thought, no light coming from the window anymore. He hadn't even noticed, too dialed in on copper wires and black vinyl and duct tape. Jesse is glowering at him.
Walt has a feeling that he's not only asking about the tv.
“What does it look like I'm doing? I'm fixing this,” Walt says.
Jesse rolls his eyes and there's this scant moment where Walt thinks he'll say more, but it passes. Walt looks at the cable in his hand, then back at Jesse.
He's been waffling back and forth between options this whole time, and Walt still hasn't come to a decision. Jesse sitting there like a statue hasn't helped him in this either, hasn't pushed him in any particular direction. He sets the cable down. I'll get back to it, he thinks. In a moment of clarity, he remembers the gun again and he decides to take it out and set it next to where he was working, on top of the shelf. Better to leave it over here.
“There's something I'm curious about,” Walt says, watching for a reaction.
Jesse's cold eyes are boring into him now, unflinching, and Walt thinks, Good. He's paying attention.
Maybe he could give me the answer himself.
“Just yesterday, I thought you'd changed your mind when you tried to burn my house down. Saul tipped me off about you—after you attacked him—and I went home, expecting to see you there, and just saw the can of gasoline instead. No one there. I really thought you'd had a change of heart,” Walt tells him. “But that's not what happened, is it?”
The expression on Jesse's face hasn't changed but it looks slightly more tense, perhaps. Now that Walt's actually talking to him. “I realize now, how blindly optimistic that was. It just wasn't enough, was it? Help me put the pieces together—what exactly made you decide to go to my brother-in-law? There must have been something, to stop so abruptly—“
Walt is ready to say more, but then Jesse's mouth is opening and Walt lets him speak. He wants to hear this.
“What made me decide to go to that asshole was him showing up at your house and pointing a gun at me. Wasn't much of a choice,” Jesse says, sneering. Walt suspects that he's offended at the accusation of being a rat, despite everything.
The revelation that Hank had actually shown up to stop Jesse is a little surprising, though it does make more sense than the alternatives. Still. What are the odds? Except—he must have followed Saul's car, Walt realizes. Of course. It's almost embarrassing how obvious it seems now, how had he not thought of that before—
You know why, a voice tries to tell him. But the truth is, he doesn't. He doesn't.
- - -
Mr. White is clearly having trouble processing the information that Jesse just gave him. Like it's that much of a stretch. Like it's possible that ratting was actually higher on his list of priorities than arson when he was right in the middle of pouring gasoline all over the guy's living room. And actually, Jesse is still bummed that he was interrupted during that, that he wasn't able to finish the job. It would have been so satisfying.
He has a tiny inkling that maybe he would have felt bad about it eventually, but he squashes it down; that would have been a problem for the future that isn't happening anymore.
Since entering this room, feeling has been tingling—in slow, gradual waves—back into his body, his mind. It sped up when Mr. White actually started speaking to him and now he feels—oversensitive, almost disoriented with the rush of it. Like he's been sleepwalking and someone tapped him on the shoulder to wake him up and everything is too bright and loud, sharp. It's not an entirely unfamiliar sensation, though some variety of substance was always involved the other times he's experienced it.
Jesse rolls his left wrist in the cuff. He's still not used to the feel of it rubbing against his skin, and both of his wrists seem a little tender from his treatment of them earlier. At least he has one hand free now.
Mr. White is shaking his head, speaking under his breath. He's standing now too, pacing in front of the beds instead of hunched over by the tv. “You tried to burn my house down,” he says, and then his voice gets louder and he stops pacing, “What if my family had been there? Did you even bother to check, at all, or would they have just been collateral?”
It looks like he's about to say more, maybe go into a full on rant, so Jesse cuts him off. “They weren't there. And you tried to have someone kill me, so I'd say we're even.”
There's no response to this and Jesse knew this already, it's not like he was holding out hope for it to all be some big misunderstanding, but his blood curdles anyway in the silence. It's uncomfortable, heavy, pressing him down. For once, he wants him to just— “Say something,” Jesse says. He's caught off guard for a split second by the severe tone of his own voice, imploring and heated, before he focuses back in on the silence. Just admit it.
Mr. White hadn't been looking at him anymore, but at last he tilts his head and suddenly he is again, suddenly time is moving again. Jesse clenches his jaw at the intense gaze and thinks, admit it.
“They were right,” Mr. White says. This isn't what Jesse wanted to hear and he blinks at the strange pivot. He almost thinks he misheard him, but no, it's so quiet in here outside of their voices and he was speaking pretty clearly. Who's 'they'?, Jesse wonders.
Jesse scoffs after a brief moment, a bitter sound. “What are we even doing here?” he asks.
“My wife told me I needed to 'deal with' you,” Mr. White says, ignoring the question. Jesse wasn't really looking for an answer anyway. He continues, “Saul compared you to Old Yeller, basically said you were like a rabid dog that needs to be put down.”
So that's 'they', then. Not too surprising. Jesse feels a little insulted twinge at the phrasing Saul used, how he'll always use those stupid, cheeky metaphors when suggesting murdering someone. Jesse, in this case. It probably wasn't even the first time, he thinks, and the twinge repeats.
Mr. White keeps going, “Everyone told me that I shouldn't keep you around, and I didn't listen. Completely refused, actually, many times,” he tosses up his hands in disbelief and says, “Who knows why. It was only after you threatened me—because attempting to burn my house down wasn't enough, Jesse— it was only after that, that I finally did anything. You—I thought you were threatening to hurt my family, I wouldn't have put it past you in that state at all—”
Jesse is hearing this and he thinks he knows what Mr. White's referring to, but the words aren't adding up. Jesse's blood runs hot.
“Threatened you—I was there,” he interrupts. “At the plaza, don't act like there wasn't a fucking hitman for me there already, I saw him.”
There's another infuriatingly long pause after this, and then Mr. White looks so, so confused as he says, “What?”
He sounds baffled, and of course he's going to fucking deny it, he had no idea Jesse was there and now he's been caught in another lie and he—are you fucking kidding me, Jesse thinks. On instinct, he tries to bring his hands up to his face—either to cover it or to just hold his head like he can keep everything in place that way, he doesn't know—and the forgotten cuff chokes at his wrist, jabbing straight to the bone.
“You were there?” Same tone, and there's this strange expression layered over the confusion on his face, one Jesse can't really read at all.
“Yeah, I was,” Jesse says, “but only because they forced me. I had to go. I fucking wouldn't have if I'd had a choice.” He thinks about mentioning the wire too before deciding against it. “And I saw your guy standing around, waiting for me to show up. Not the most subtle shit. Was he supposed to shoot me right there in public, or what?”
“Jesse, what are you talking about? There wasn't anybody there except for me,” Mr. White says. “You must have—seen a stranger and just completely misinterpreted what you were seeing, I don't know,” and these words aren't convincing to Jesse at all, he must not be trying very hard, these are low stakes for him—
--and yet. Jesse still gets the tiniest trickle of doubt when Mr. White tells him, “It was just me there. I just wanted to talk.”
Because... it does sort of seem like he's telling the truth. This is stupid, Jesse is aware, and a large part of him is pissed at himself for even entertaining the thought, but. Over time, Jesse's gotten better at catching the inconsistencies when Mr. White's actually lying—really?, that large part of him thinks—and he isn't seeing them right now. The vocal undertone is there, the one that he'll use when he's trying to convince Jesse of something—which, jesus, is he familiar with that by now—but it seems like it could be less to cover something up and more to clear up a genuine misunderstanding. Jesse can't tell for sure, knows now that he never actually could anyway. A blind spot for him, he guesses.
Mr. White is looking at him like he's hoping Jesse will nod and agree that he was completely wrong about all of this, maybe apologize for thinking otherwise, beg for forgiveness. Like last time, he thinks, and the memory of crying on the floor with his hands smelling of tobacco violently jolts through him.
but his expression is different this time
Or maybe he's just hoping that Jesse will understand. Won't hold this against him, too. As if it matters.
Why would he bother lying about this, anyway? He just told Jesse that he did hire someone to kill him—he might not've admitted it cleanly, but he more or less said it. It's not like he's denying all of it, just this detail of the timing.
He really just wanted to talk to me?
“If you say so,” Jesse finally says. Noncommittal, cold; that's the best he's going to get.
Mr. White sighs, and then: “I didn't want to do it.”
A flicker of something sad passes over his expression as he looks at Jesse, and the traitorous doubt inside of him grows a little. He...only hired someone because he was scared? Because he felt like he didn't have a choice—and he wonders, was what happened in the desert my fault, because I saw things that weren't there? Because I was paranoid? But then why—
No, he thinks. It still doesn't make sense, not perfectly; by the time they got to the desert, Mr. White had already known what he'd really been threatening to destroy. But it does ring in a way that unsettles him, uncomfortably closer to the truth than he would expect.
Whatever. Who cares if the hit was called in a little later than he'd thought, who cares about the implications. Jesse doesn't respond.
Eventually Mr. White speaks again. “So it was Hank's idea for you to come meet me?”
Jesse looks up. “Uh, yeah,” he says. He doesn't know where this is going.
“Were you wearing a wire?” Mr. White asks and Jesse responds, “Yes,” a bit reluctantly, though he's not sure why. It's pretty obvious that's why they would put him there. Bait. Mr. White nods at this.
“I bet he wasn't happy when you didn't get close enough to feed any information to him,” he says, and yeah. He's right about that. Jesse remembers that Mr. White barely said a sentence on the phone call there—definitely nothing incriminating—and the call wasn't recorded anyway. Schrader and his partner only got Jesse's side of the conversation.
He wonders what would have happened if he hadn't seen that man in the plaza, if he'd actually found it in himself to go up to Mr. White. If he had actually gotten him to incriminate himself.
Would everything still have gone horribly wrong, somehow?
Yes, always.
“What did they know?” Mr. White is asking, and, “Did they say anything to the rest of the DEA, anyone?”
“There's a tape,” Jesse says. He gets a vengeful little kick out of the way Mr. White's expression shifts at this, almost imperceptible, though he must have expected something like this. As if Schrader would just hand him a piece of paper for his statement.
“What exactly is on the tape?” asks Mr. White, and so Jesse stares into him and tells him, slow and deliberate, “Everything. I told them everything.” Again, he had to have been expecting this answer, but there's a twitch in Mr. White's jaw as it tenses.
“Where is it?”
Jesse doesn't want to tell him. He doesn't know what Mr. White will do with this information—if he'll try to get the tape and destroy it, whether anyone else will get hurt—but then he asks again, harsher this time, and Jesse begrudgingly says the words.
“It's in Schrader's house. No one knew about it except for the three of us, not even his wife.” Mr. White is still looking at him expectantly and he adds, “The DEA probably doesn't have the tape yet. Happy?”
Mr. White shakes his head and says, “They'll get it eventually.”
Yeah, they will.
There's a lull in the conversation after that, and Mr. White goes back to his pacing. He's probably plotting however he's going to get his hands on that tape, but if he is, then he isn't saying anything about it. Jesse looks to the window but the curtain is in the same position as all the other times he's looked, a blank sheet completely concealing anything that might be out there. There's only this room.
Jesse is thirsty, can't even remember the last time he drank something. His tongue keeps sticking to the roof of his mouth from how dry it is, and he tries to move his saliva around to moisten things but there just isn't that much.
Mr. White glances over at him once or twice before looking away again, lost in thought.
-
It's a nice, quiet spell until Mr. White takes a step closer to the beds, now right at the foot at them. He's not pacing anymore, and for some reason that Jesse isn't privy to, he looks absolutely pissed. Just all of a sudden, though Jesse admittedly wasn't paying too much attention to him before. Maybe this had been building up in his expression, if Jesse had bothered to look.
“Jesse,” he says, and Jesse can just tell by his tone that he's gearing up for a serious rant. “Do you have any idea how much I've dedicated to keeping you alive? Time,” and he starts count on his fingers as he hisses, “money, sanity—” One, two, three.
“How is that my problem?” and this is probably stupid to even ask; Jesse knows. It's his problem because Mr. White does everything he can to make it his problem.
“—and this is what I got out of that 'investment'. Hank was already onto me, you knew that, but things might have been different. The situation wasn't completely catastrophic yet, there were options. If anything, I was handling it.” Mr. White pauses.
“Hank is dead now. You—gave them every little detail of what we did, I'm sure, and the DEA will have those soon enough, and Hank is dead.” Jesse can see movement out of the corner of his eye—Mr. White clenching his fists, maybe taking another step—and he brings up his knees defensively. But Mr. White doesn't come any closer.
“Do you know why, Jesse?” and no, he doesn't, doesn't know what he's even talking about— “Do you know why Hank and his partner are dead? Why I did all of that, just for you?”
“Because I trusted you,” he says.
Jesse feels the slap of it even though Mr. White didn't touch him and he swallows while acid burns his throat. He thinks, I trusted you too, you fucking bastard, and only realizes that he's also said it out loud when the last syllable echoes in his ears.
“Jesse,” Mr. White sighs. He sounds frustrated, a step down from the venom of a moment ago. “This is what you don't understand, and apparently I have to spell it out for you: you were like—like family to me. I think I actually might have spent more time with you than my actual family, this past year.” There's something in the way he says this and Jesse leans his head back against the headboard, closes his eyes. He shakes his head, rolling it on the wood. No. No. No.
Jesse can tell what he's doing, can feel the way he's trying to pry at Jesse, wear him down, and no. Jesse doesn't want to let it happen ever again, he wants it to stop. There was this iron barrier he had, just a bit ago, but it unhinged and washed away without him noticing and now he's drowning without it; can feel the hate and the rage in his chest starting to slip and he holds onto them as tightly as he can because he knows they're really his, they weren't placed there.
The hook is in, though. He can feel it, under his heart, scraping on the inside of his ribs. The same spot as always.
Why? He doesn't understand.
Mr. White keeps going: “I saw potential in you, Jesse. Wasted potential that I failed to salvage.”
And then he keeps talking. About what he supposedly did for him, though Jesse's doing his best to tune it out, each word a fresh, sick jab. It doesn't sound like he's listing times he kept Jesse from sure death; it sounds more like he's listing things he's done just to keep Jesse around, close, and Jesse can't help but think about what Schrader said to him before. About how he must care. Why does everyone keep trying to tell me this? It's not true.
But this kind of obsession—deep down and slithering, Jesse can feel the truth of it. That it's real, to some degree.
It's scarier if it's true.
And if he allowed himself to be honest, then maybe he'd admit to himself that he'd believed it was true anyway, off and on, for a long time. He might even admit that he'd accepted it, easily.
It'd be harder to admit that it had been sort of intoxicating, but the knowledge would be lurking.
The lamp next to him flickers once, as Mr. White talks at him—and Jesse starts to really wonder, in earnest, where he fits in here. When Mr. White's going to get rid of him. Maybe it'll happen tonight. Maybe it'll never happen, and god he doesn't want that. He desperately clings to the thought: I don't want that. I don't want it.
“Stop,” he says, but the word gets caught in his throat and comes out quieter than he intended, so he tries again, “Stop! Just shut up.” Please, he thinks.
“—ungrateful,” Mr. White was saying, but he trails off after Jesse speaks.
Jesse's palms are a little scuffed from scrabbling to hide in the desert earlier, scraped on rocks he hadn't felt, and they itch when he closes his fists. He digs his nails in, and they burn.
“Look,” he says. “It's over—”
“Jesse, you don't—,” Mr. White tries to cut in, but Jesse speaks over him and the rest of sentence is lost to remain a mystery. You don't understand, he might have said. You don't get it. You don't know what's happening here.
You don't have any control over this.
“It's over. Everything,” Jesse says. He's making a serious effort to sound confident despite the fact that he's literally being held against his will; he knows he doesn't have much control here—less than ever, probably. He laughs, “I guess you failed, you know, with whatever the hell you were trying to do with me. Guess you didn't try hard enough, huh?”
Mr. White gives him a hard look, icy. “You're damn right it's over,” he says after a moment, and—
and what does that mean?
Jesse has a hunch and it makes his mouth go impossibly dry, scares him, but in his desperation he latches onto it anyway. This is good. He throws up his free hand, gestures to himself. “Go on. Put me out of my misery,” Jesse says, and the words stumble out uncoordinated and unsteady, he's regretting them immediately, but if he can just convince himself—
Mr. White has turned away, appears to be focusing his attention back on that stupid broken tv. Ignoring Jesse.
And Jesse thinks, was I wrong?
He reflects on earlier. Why didn't he just run when he had the chance, who cares if he got shot, that's what he was expecting anyway. It was supposed to happen.
Shit. How am I so pathetic?
“What's your plan, Walt?” he bites out, pushing through his reluctance. Mr. White looks over at him. “Do you even have one? I mean, I don't know what you think you can really do besides leave forever after everything that just happened, but usually you have some crazy idea, right?” He holds his breath.
“Like, what exactly are you gonna do about me?”
- - -
Jesse is asking what his plans are. He's asking what Walt is planning to do about him, specifically.
Jesse says, “I know you've thought about it.”
Yes, Walt has thought about it. Extensively. Jesse is looking at him with wide eyes, nervous and antsy as much as he tries to hide it. Crazed, almost, and Walt imagines that he's a cornered animal with his leg caught in a trap. Do you choose to show mercy to this poor creature?
But what is mercy? He isn't sure.
Walt is still stuck on what Jesse said a second ago. What can you really do besides leave forever, he said, and the stark reality of it has struck Walt. Because the thing is—Walt doesn't have a plan, not in the grand scheme of things. Nothing that would actually have more than a negligible chance of working. He's just biding his time, for now.
He'll figure it out though. He has to.
Jesse's tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. “Come on,” he urges, an undercurrent of a plea bleeding through. “You've thought about it.”
Walt holds his gaze. “That's not important,” he says. You're on a need to know basis, he really means, and based off of the impatient groan Jesse gives him, the message was received.
“Yes, it is!” Jesse kicks out a leg in a fit of apparent frustration and Walt distractedly realizes, he's still wearing his shoes. Those sheets are going to be filthy. This sticks with him despite how irrelevant it is, this mundane little anecdote pulling his focus. Jesse keeps talking, “Seriously, where are we going? Belize?” he spits the word out.
Really, he's acting as if he wants Walt to—
Well, now that Walt thinks about it, ruminates on recent events, maybe that does line up. Jesse is clearly afraid of death, but he can toe the line; maybe push someone else into making the choice for him. Walt wonders why Jesse didn't just do this earlier—though maybe he can sense that it might not work anyway here, and it's giving him courage. Like russian roulette.
Walt shakes his head and turns back to the defunct television. If he can just get this cable at the correct angle, the screen should hopefully turn on—
After a minute, he can hear Jesse as he huffs a few quick breaths—similar to those almost laughs he'd had back in the car. “Oh my god,” Walt hears him say. Incredulous. “You really don't have a plan. You don't have a fucking clue what you're doing.”
Walt glances at him and wonders what the tell was, but it doesn't matter. Of course he doesn't know what the hell he's doing here—these circumstances are unprecedented in terms of sheer severity. He doesn't say anything, just stares down at the cable in his hands; resists the urge to damage it further so as to sate the sudden rage he can feel shivering through his veins.
Jesse laughs again, a more typical—mocking—sound this time. “I can't believe this. We're seriously only here because you panicked and couldn't think of anywhere else to go. Right? What happened to the other hiding places?” he asks, “You know, like Saul's laser tag dungeon?”
“Those could be compromised,” Walt tells him, and really, he shouldn't be indulging this at all, he needs to just ignore him, but—
“Right,” Jesse says. “'Compromised'. Of course.” Walt doesn't see the sarcastic face palm that accompanies this, but he hears the smack of it. Jesse sighs.
“I mean, dude, what about your family?”
Walt finally drops the cable in his hand and fully looks at him, straightens up. He moves to stand between the beds.
Jesse brings his knees back up towards his chest when he sees this happening, but Walt also notices something in his face shift, ever so slightly. His eyes have lit up, though not in a happy way; Walt can't put his finger on it, can't figure out what precisely caused it, but—it's almost as though Jesse has seen a door open, just for a second. And now, he knows it's unlocked. He can just go over and open it if he wants to.
Or maybe Walt's imagining things.
“Don't talk about my family,” Walt tells him. Jesse's jaw sets with a stubborn tension.
And then he opens his mouth, the little shit.
“Why not? You're always talking about your family, you've done everything for them, right? So where are they?” Jesse looks around the room, overly theatrical and exaggerated. It makes Walt's blood boil. “Huh? Why aren't they here, too?”
“Jesse, you don't have any idea what you're talking about—”
“You gonna leave them to take the fall for you? Is that it? I doubt the cops will believe for a second that your wife didn't know anything. You guys bought a whole goddamn business just to clean your money.”
“And your son,” Jesse says, “that poor kid—”
“Shut up,” Walt grits out.
“You really fucked it all up for them, didn't you?”
“Jesse.”
Jesse tuts and tilts his head as if he's had a thought. “You know, there's something I'm curious about. What happened in there, earlier? At your house?” He holds up his free hand, wiggles it. “Hey, what happened to your hand, huh? Someone actually fight back?” He laughs again, that sick sound tainted with acidic vitriol. “Why am I here, instead of them?”
Walt hears, Why do you have this traitorous little bastard with you, instead of the people you really love?
“You know what I think?” Jesse asks after a moment, almost breathless. His voice shakes with just the barest tremor; Walt can't tell what it is. Anger. Fear, maybe. Something else? “I think everyone's done with you and your shit. Completely. Too bad you were already using your one and only pair of handcuffs, or you might've been able to drag one of them with you—”
Walt hits him.
For a split second, he had considered an alternative—weighed the possibility of telling him something terrible, dark and secret. Something that might break him at this point. He'd shut up, then. Walt was so, so close to saying, I watched Jane die. I could have saved her. But then his feet were moving and his gauze wrapped knuckles were slamming into Jesse's face, and he thought, this is better.
This will feel better.
Deep down, he knows there are some things that you truly can't come back from.
So he hits Jesse again, doesn't care that one of Jesse's hands is chained down and he can barely fight back, doesn't give a shit about how unfair this is. He'd practically begged for this, knew exactly what he was doing. He did everything he could to provoke Walt.
Walt's hand doesn't hurt at all. He can't even feel it.
Jesse had flinched away at first—seemingly stunned and reeling for a moment—but then a fist is hitting Walt in the face and the impact reverberates through his skull, flesh and bones aching. And that does hurt, though not enough to stop him.
“Fuck off!” Jesse yells after Walt punches him again, only a grazing blow this time. But there's blood smeared on his face now, maybe from his nose or his mouth, it's hard to say. Jesse kicks out towards him in retaliation and he successfully gets a knee jabbed hard and painfully into Walt's side. The metal on his wrist clinks as he keeps squirming around, limbs searching for targets.
This isn't the greatest angle, Walt realizes—too open—so he moves, pins Jesse down to the bed. Jesse tries to kick him again but it's impotent now, useless flailing. He thinks Jesse might shout another protest at him, but he's not listening.
Clink! Clink!
Jesse grunts as Walt hits him again, open handed this time—and yes, this angle is much better, Walt thinks. Allows for a straight shot. For just a millisecond, a drive by flicker of thought passes through Walt's mind: I could cause serious damage like this. Then, it disappears. He closes his fist once more, feels the brunt of the shock up his arm as he makes contact.
Fingers are scrabbling at his jaw all of a sudden, blunt nails digging in. Jesse can't do too much at this angle, but he can reach Walt's face enough to scratch at it in small, stinging passes. Walt moves his head back before Jesse actually gets to his eyes.
Then he moves his hands to Jesse's neck. Wraps them around his throat and squeezes.
Jesse makes a noise at this, like he's trying to say something, but perhaps it wasn't supposed to be words at all; merely a startled sound driven by base instinct. It was panicked, Walt thinks. Walt holds him there, pressed into the motel sheets, as Jesse claws at his face ineffectually—he can't quite manage it now that Walt is out of range, so he quickly resorts to trying to pry Walt's hands off of him instead. The cuffed wrist is unsuccessfully straining to reach in this endeavor and Walt can hear how the metal band is scraping against the wood, causing a low fraught sound as it pulls. Less clinking.
Walt's hold loosens for a moment as Jesse manages to briefly pull one hand out of alignment.
There's a choked off gasp of a sound when Walt retightens his grip, fingertips digging into hot skin. Another noise from his throat gets through before Walt presses harder, and then that one gets cut off too.
Crimson is streaked across Jesse's cheek, his lips. There's some on the pillow behind his head.
Walt can feel the way Jesse's pulse is rabbiting under his thumb, the fast, frantic quiver of it. Jesse begins to grasp at his arm with a renewed fire, the cuff making its ringing little noises once again as Jesse jerks at it and struggles. The insolence that had been in his eyes just a minute ago is now almost entirely gone, replaced by a watery mixture of everything he has to offer—every anxious, desperate tint of emotion, all of what's swimming around in his head. Please, the look says, though it seems unsure.
Walt hears this silent prayer and contemplates it, yet he can't tell what it's asking for.
Please.
Show mercy.
He could end it all right here—as the nails that had been digging gouges into his wrist start to lose their grip, their fervor fading; as eyes shut tight and hide; as golden and shadowed lamplight flickers over a drop of unrefined saline.
A heartbeat thrums beneath his hands.
And then Walt doesn't get a chance to do much else—because out of nowhere, he feels like he's been stabbed with a knife to his chest. He lets go of Jesse and pushes off of him as he breaks down coughing, stumbles over to the other bed. His chest burns like it's collapsing in on itself and pain lances from his lungs, to his ribs, to his throat, to everything else as his diaphragm seizes completely.
He hadn't felt it coming this time.
High wheezing gasps are coming from the other bed, Jesse trying to catch his breath. There's a sudden hitch to the sound that might be a sob. It soon happens again, and again. He's definitely crying.
Walt wouldn't expect the sound to be heart wrenching, but it is—it worms sneaking, nauseous tendrils all around him as his vision briefly goes black around the edges, surrounds him with a chill. A gag convulses through him between coughs, but nothing comes up.
He coughs a few more times, painful and breathless, but the intensity of the attack is already dissipating quickly after only a minute or so. He sinks down into the duvet, which is neatly spread and tucked across this bed compared to the rucked up sheets of the other one. Jesse is still making that horrible sound over there. In fact, it seems like he's full on bawling, albeit quietly; the sound is anguished and inconsistent, stopping for seconds at a time and then starting up again with a stifled noise like he's choking on it, pitch and tone fluctuating. Walt knows this sound, it's nothing new by any means. He shivers anyway.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Walt furrows his brow. Jesse's still messing with the cuffs? He sits up to look.
Jesse is curled up with an arm hiding his face and the other pulling at the cuff; repeatedly, with aggressive, sharp tugs. And—it must hurt, must be causing some kind of damage from how brutally he's yanking his arm, though Walt can't see blood yet. The relatively thin wood of the slat is protesting from this assault—there's even something that sounds like a crack, and for a fraction of a second Walt actually thinks that a bone is snapping—but it holds steady. It must be stronger than it looks.
Still. Walt has some doubt that Jesse's wrist is also stronger than it looks, so he moves without thought and puts a hand on Jesse's forearm, attempting to stymie the movement. “Jesse, stop,” he tries, but then the arm jerks underneath his hand again and a fist is being thrown at him. It catches him in the shoulder before he moves away where Jesse can't reach him—and Jesse is trying to reach him—so he can avoid any more strikes heading in his direction. Jesse gives up when he realizes he's hitting nothing but air, slumps back down and turns away.
The sound of sobbing had stuttered for a moment in the commotion but it continues now, unimpeded. Walt thinks it might be a little louder than before.
The thought floats to him—the one that tells him he should unlock the cuffs, who cares anymore, this is pathetic—and he almost does it on pure impulse, already reaching towards Jesse again. He stops himself halfway there.
No. Not right now. Not when he's like this. Who knows what he'd do.
Jesse's stopped moving his wrist, anyway. He now has his body twisted away from Walt as much as he can get it, arm limp and awkwardly stretched out behind him to accommodate for the handcuffs. His back shakes as he cries.
It's difficult to really even blame him when Walt sees him like this: pitiful and broken. Wretched. He's just—so completely controlled by his emotions, by passionate instinct. Like there's a central core of him in there that shines through, this pearl that dictates his personality and his actions and his thoughts, but it's at the mercy of whatever he's feeling—as much as everyone else is also at the mercy of whatever Jesse is feeling at any given moment. It must be worse for him though, to constantly have any kind of layered, rational thought smothered before it has time to form. A slave to his own impulses.
Walt injured hand twinges—he'd forgotten about it with the fresh new aches on his face and body—and he looks down at it. The gauze is red in spots and smudges. He can't tell for sure how much of it came from Jesse and how much came from himself.
He sighs. It's not like he hasn't been here before, with blood on his hands, though he didn't go all the way this time. It's not even like he hasn't strangled someone before, because he has. That time was...bad, but he was able to go through with it and subsequently get over it. This though—this is different. It feels a lot different.
Because of who it is.
The bloodlust and adrenaline have been sucked out of the room, it seems, and taking their place is something dour and gray. It hangs over Walt. It's concealed in a haze by what still remains—the agonies of betrayal, loss, failure—but it's there, sobering.
Walt had pushed him so far.
Jesse's face is still visible despite how he's trying to hide it and Walt leans closer to see it better. His eyes are closed and so he doesn't know that he's being observed, doesn't try to turn further into the pillows and cover himself—if he'd even bother. Walt suspects him turning away like this has less to do with shame and more to do with putting as much distance between them as possible.
He looks like an absolute mess: face flushed red and swollen, wet with tears and snot and blood, all while contorted into a sorrowful cringe. There's also probably actual dirt on his skin if Walt looked hard enough, though it's a little too dim to see it with the way Jesse's turned away from the light of the lamp.
It's been several minutes since the altercation and he's much quieter now, though still crying; probably exhausted. Like a child, Walt thinks, and god. He has no idea what the hell he's supposed to feel about that, can't even begin to guess.
Wretched.
Walt reaches out hesitantly and his fingers make contact with Jesse's shoulder, barely resting against it. As though Jesse might break with anything besides the most featherlight touch. Or as though Jesse will turn around and bite him, which—well, that is a real concern. But there's no reaction. This is surprising, especially after what happened the last time Walt had touched him. He'd expected something, some kind of noise at least—though honestly, he doesn't even know what he's doing, what he expects to happen here at all—but there's just the same muted sniffling. Maybe Jesse didn't even feel it.
So Walt presses a little more firmly; his hand lightly sinks into the dark fabric. His fingertips are tingling.
He thinks he just wants him to stop crying.
Jesse still doesn't react much to the added pressure but his shoulder does twitch ever so slightly, up towards his chin. He shudders at a light squeeze. Doesn't move otherwise, so Walt gets bold and moves the hand up to Jesse's head, gently rests it there on close cropped hair.
Warm, fuzzy, and soft, and Walt feels hollow. The only sound in the room is Jesse's uneven breathing.
Walt knows he shouldn't say anything, that surely there's nothing he can say that would be received well, but his mouth is dry and his tongue itches. “It's okay,” he murmurs.
There's an extended, quiet moment where he almost believes that maybe everything is okay—Jesse's eyes don't open but his expression shifts slightly, appears to relax a tiny bit—and then it's broken as a loud, wounded jolt of a sob startles him, as Jesse shrinks away and pushes at Walt's hand. There was a word hidden in the yell, Walt thinks. He might have said no.
Walt swallows and takes his hand back as Jesse starts up again, small and incoherent protests tumbling out alongside the tears, slim shoulders curled forward protectively.
Who did this?
Walt finally moves away, back over to the tv.
Not for the first time, he wonders how thin these walls are.
-
Jesse is silent now, though Walt hasn't looked back at him in awhile. Not since he redirected his attention.
The television's screen remains dark and dusty. Dead. Any amount of finagling with the wires has done nothing, and he seems to be running out of new things to try; the tried and true method of hitting the box—not hard enough to break it—hasn't worked either. This thing could be fried from the inside out, for all he knows. He could try to take it apart, but anything he'd do at that point would probably be futile.
Walt glances around the area, looking yet again for anything he could have missed. In the corner of his workspace sits the gun, right where he'd placed it earlier. Its presence has been felt since he came back over here, and he finally just reaches towards it and shoves it further away—probably a lot more recklessly than he should with a loaded weapon, but it doesn't go off and he leaves it where it stops, safe on the edge of the shelf.
Maybe he was being too optimistic, thinking that he could repair this. He supposes he'll just have to hope for the best; that he doesn't need to see the news anyway...
Still. Just one last try couldn't hurt.
Not long after he picks the shredded cable back up and continues working at it, there's a shift of light—he hears a nearly inaudible click. He freezes. The screen has turned on. Holy shit. It flickers for just a moment until a washed out picture crystallizes, and then the whole thing goes dark again. But it doesn't matter, he barely even cares that it's dark and doing nothing, because it was actually on in the first place, and he tries to keep the cable locked in its current position as well as he can. Now he just has to make it happen again. That's all.
-
“You know,” Jesse says, "your uh...your brother in-law made me lay on the floor and pretend to be dead next to a pile of cow brains or something. It was really gross.”
His voice is hoarse, Walt notes once he recovers from the initial shock of hearing it. The rough scratch of it is probably what causes Todd's voice, of all things, to pop into his head: I'm surprised you didn't strangle him.
Turns out it's not as easy as it sounds.
He looks over at Jesse to see him gazing in the direction of the window and grimacing, as though remembering this event that he's talking about in gory detail. Walt thinks that's it, that he has no more to say, but after a moment he keeps going. “Like, seriously gross. He took pictures. He wanted Saul's guy—uh, Huell to think you shot me and he showed them to him. That's how he found out about the money in the barrels. Huell thought he was next, I guess.”
Walt doesn't know why he's saying this to him; what Jesse's trying to communicate, if anything. He wonders if Jesse even knows.
He doesn't respond and Jesse doesn't say another word.
The tv is almost there, Walt thinks. He feels good about the progress. It's started again a couple of times, and once he looks back at what he's doing, it flickers on once more. He holds his breath. At this point, he's mostly just been trying to get the cable into a stable enough spot so that he doesn't have to keep holding it steady every time it actually works.
There's only static on the screen right now, though at least he doesn't have to hear it—the volume is turned all the way down, courtesy of whoever it was that used this thing last. He'd taken the one lonely book from its shelf and is now using it as a way to hopefully prop up and support the cable. The book does happen to be a bible, and he does happen to be duct taping a cable to it, though this fact only really occurs to him after the tape is already on. Huh, he thinks.
It seems to be working, anyway. The static is still going when he carefully lets go and stands up, and some experimental steps around the shelf don't jostle anything out of place. Thank god.
Walt just stands there for a minute to stare at the monochrome buzzing in the glass, almost not daring to believe that it's functioning now. That he was able to actually sort of fix it. Eventually he shakes his head, smiles—though as he moves to adjust the channel and volume, the reason of why he even bothered with this creeps back in along with the nerves. This good mood could turn sour very fast if things have escalated already.
When he turns to a news channel—and he supposes he should be relieved that this works too, that it isn't all just static—there's nothing out of the ordinary. Something about a wreck on the freeway, right now. He watches and waits.
After several minutes of this he sits down on the edge of the bed behind him, but nothing has changed. They've moved onto a report about hikers getting lost.
...three college students were reported missing yesterday when they didn't return from what was supposed to be a short hike two days ago...
...searched by rangers and a search party, but there has been no sign of them yet. Authorities have posited that the hikers may have gone off trail, and that the range of the search will be expanded tomorrow. No foul play seems to be suspected at this time...
...strongly advise against going off of established trails if you do not know the area well, and even then, they stress the risk...
“You did it,” Jesse rasps, quiet to match the volume of the tv. His voice clashes with the smooth, practiced tones of the news reporters.
At first, Walt isn't sure how to respond to this. Isn't even sure what he's referring to, exactly—that the tv is working? The fact that their faces aren't plastered on the news right this second? Some other unexplainable thing he'd never guess?
He settles on a shrug and glances at Jesse. “For now,” he says, hedging.
“They're not looking for you.”
Walt suspects Jesse knows that isn't true. Why would he even say that? “I'm pretty sure they are.” But it is true that all that really matters right now is that the people here at this motel haven't gotten the memo, and that looks to be the case unless he missed something important.
He doesn't think he has.
Walt clears his throat. Since that front is under control at the moment, he gets up and heads to the bathroom to look for something he'd seen earlier. He finds them immediately: tiny, flimsy plastic cups, stashed under the sink. They were tucked behind the pipes, which is admittedly a really strange spot to put cups and he's almost hesitant to use them for this reason. Who knows how long those have been down there. However, thirst wins out, so he rinses a couple of them thoroughly and tells himself that this is more convenient than having to stick his head in the sink to drink from the tap.
Two cups of water in hand, he comes back out; sets one down next to the tv and walks between the beds with the other. Jesse looks at the cup as Walt holds it out—his gaze flicks up for a second before going back to the water.
Walt's realizing now that he should have just set the cup down on the nightstand and been done with it, but he's already holding it out and he feels like he's committed, doesn't want to give in, and so the offer stays extended in his hand. He waits; doesn't look too closely at Jesse's marred skin, the slowly developing bruises; nor the dark blood from a cut on his cheek. He doesn't think about how his voice sounds now.
The water is cold through the plastic and it seems inadequate, such a small amount. Barely four sips.
Jesse's hand doesn't shake when he accepts the cup. Steady. And he doesn't wince when he drinks from it, though Walt expects him to. He hands the cup back after quickly drinking the whole thing and Walt refills it for him, setting it on the nightstand this time.
Walt drinks some water himself, and it tastes metallic and bloody.
The tv screen flickers sometimes, but he thinks that's just what it does, doesn't have anything to do with how he's rigged the power cord. He watches as the news goes on, subjects switching and moving on and never involving him in any way, never alarming. There's nothing. He doesn't know what he expected.
A full tidal wave of exhaustion starts to really set in as a commercial plays, a tiredness that goes past bone and marrow and all the way into individual atoms. All of his injuries and their pains have decided to reveal themselves by this point, noticeable in ways that they weren't earlier, but even those are becoming numbed by the fatigue. Or he's just distracted enough. He sets the empty cup aside and goes between the beds again. The lamp clicks off.
It's still bright enough to see by with the tv on, and it's not like he was going to attempt to turn it off anyway, not after he worked so hard on it, so it stays on. He does grab the remote though, mutes it. You can still more or less tell what's happening on the news even with no sound.
He almost tells Jesse to let him know if anything changes but opts not to; it wouldn't matter either way. Jesse will say something if he wants to, and he won't if he doesn't.
Walt lays down. It seems like it should be impossible to sleep after this day, under these circumstances, and yet by the time he closes his eyes he's already nearly forgotten why this could be a bad idea. The aches fade away. He hears something soft from a few feet away, from the other bed, but the noise is already dissolving, muffled and drowned out by a warm darkness.