"Us and Them"
Dated: Sometime this month
Title: Us and Them
Rating: Uh, PG? Some description of violence, nothing serious
Summary: Introspective look at the closing events of "Half Measures" and "Full Measure" (Tons of spoilers for those who have not watched!)
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Walt sits down in a daze. At first he is only baffled at what he has heard, and he knows the role he has played in yet another heinous tragedy, but before he can even really explore that something else hits him like a hammer and when it does everything else becomes insignificant. He bolts from dinner without trying for a real excuse. Normally he would be more conscientious of his behavior with his family but there is no time for formalities and facades now, he has to do something that is inestimably more important and there's no guarantee he'll make it even though he triples the speed limit and slams through every light no matter the color. And the entire time he roars down that dark street, his speedometer ticking up higher and higher, there is one image of Jesse that keeps coming back to him. Through all the impacting, significant, relevant things he has experienced with Jesse there is a completely unmemorable moment that will just not leave him as he races against time to that fateful street corner.
It was an ordinary afternoon down in the lab, during one of their rare and brief breaks. Jesse had been spinning around in one of the chairs, eating raisins. Walt always brought a bag lunch in but Jesse always only had something like raisins or a candy bar, and again Walt would wonder how he survived on eating habits that were so scattered (and infrequent) that it couldn't even be called a diet. It hadn't been long after Jesse was first brought into the lab because there were still cuts healing on his face and the fading but still noticeable traces of black-purple bruises around his eye. He had not said anything profound or done anything remarkable but in that second when Walt had looked at him sitting there, looking so small in the lab and so frail with those leftover wounds, popping little wrinkled raisins into his mouth from a paper box, he had felt a sudden surge of protectiveness go through him, one that decreased only a little when Walt had quickly looked aside and now seems to have toppled his logic and reason altogether. He thinks at first it is a sense of obligation that moves him forward but he is immediately confused as to where that obligation even came from. It can't just be the death of the girl because if it was wouldn't it be immensely easier - for everyone - if Walt just turned his car around and went home? Jesse wants to die, and Gus wants him dead. All the problems are about to solve themselves and all Walt has to do is turn the car around and forget about it.
But he won't, he can't, he doesn't even want to. His knuckles go white and he realizes he's been crushing the steering wheel and that his palms are sweating. Seconds tick by like hours as he flies down the road; there is a very high chance he will be too late but every cell in him forces its way in the direction of that corner, everything in him tells him he has to try. With that image of Jesse spinning in the chair on repeat in his brain Walt nearly enters a state of zen. He goes completely on autopilot. All he can see is the barely-lighted street stretching on in front of him and all he can think is that he has to go faster, faster, that he has to get there in time, because nothing can happen to Jesse, he can't let anything happen to Jesse.
The faces of men enter his view. The faces of the enemies, the ones to be destroyed. Walt sees their guns and he doesn't know if they've fired them yet or not, but he doesn't slow down, he speeds up. He goes blank and then explodes back into full-consciousness, smashing his car into two bodies, feeling one become crushed under his wheels, and he knows that the other has flown over and has lived. He is operating on pure adrenaline now as he bursts from the vehicle with a single objective - kill - and there is Jesse, dear God thank you, there is Jesse, still standing, still breathing, shock painted across his face illuminated in that sickly orange light from the street lamp. Walt dashes in the direction of the other man, who is badly wounded but still lucid enough to go for his gun, but he is not quick enough and Walt gets there first and sweeps the weapon up. He has killed before although never like this but he pauses for only a second. The man looks up and Walt locks eyes with him and he is briefly astonished to realize he doesn't feel any pity, not even a shred of basic human sympathy. It's all blocked out by the simple fact that the man on the pavement in front of him has to die, deserves to die, to save Jesse Walt would kill him a thousand times over. He thinks of Jesse eating the raisins. He pulls the trigger.
Jesse doesn't scream. He doesn't move or do anything. He's frozen, rooted to the spot, and Walt regrets having to do that right in front of him but there was no time for anything else. He raises his head and Jesse stares back at him, eyes wide and huge, he's completely stunned and doesn't know what to do. So Walt tells him:
"Run."
He doesn't just mean from this place, although Jesse does have to get away from this corner as fast as possible. Jesse has to hide, he needs to go right now, because on the run is the only place he'll be safe. Walt only speaks a single word but he knows that Jesse will understand. And the significance of what has just happened will not be lost on him either, but Walt will not think too far ahead yet, because right now there is a lot more that he needs to do, and all he knows for sure is that this time he has done the right thing, he has saved that life, he has not made the same mistake twice. He closes his eyes and sees Jesse spinning in that chair like he could just do that for all eternity, with a little paper box in which the supply of raisins seem to be infinite. He opens his eyes and Jesse is gone.
x
Jesse hangs up the phone in a panic. He heard the other guys yelling and taking the phone away so the newly cynical part of his brain doesn't have to wonder if Mr. White is actually at the laundry with a gun to his head or not, and besides that he could hear the desperation in Mr. White's voice, the raw edge of panic Jesse is feeling now, and that's the kind of thing you just can't fake. He knows he's got to go as fast as possible because he can't afford to be too late, not this time. While he gets his crappy little wagon to roar to Juan Tabo boulevard as fast as it can go, he examines his options, or at least what his options would be if he had any. He had wanted to go to the cops, but now there's no time for that. Apparently he only has a twenty minute lead on Gus' guys, so he has to do this, do it now, he has to get in and get out. It's a good thing the roads are mostly empty because with the way Jesse is driving it'll be a miracle if he doesn't crash into somebody and blow the entire thing.
He's still a little high and that doesn't make it easier. He knows he's going to cry when he gets there, he knows it and doesn't try to prepare for it. When it was those two scumbags who ordered the hit on Combo, he was ready for it, the gun didn't feel so horrible and alien in his hand. He was almost cool with it then. He could have handled killing them, and dying right after. He wouldn't have had to think about it then.
But now as the apartments come into view he feels cold all over and his parents pop suddenly into his mind. He remembers how keen they were on that illustrious "RIGHT THING" Jesse never seemed to be capable of doing, he remembers feeling frustrated and suffocated by their attempts to influence and change him, feeling adolescent hatred towards them more than once and deliberately defying every one of their endeavors to keep him from doing something they didn't approve of. Now, though, there is literally nothing he wouldn't give to have them magically appear and take his gun away from him and tell him he's grounded and not allowed to leave the house for a week. They were always so big on morals and worked so hard to raise Jesse to be big on them too, and even if Jesse isn't particularly religious, he still believes in sin after all this time. He's a criminal but he still thinks there are certain lines people just shouldn't cross, isn't that funny? He has avoided getting blood on his hands for so long but tonight he knows it's really going to happen, and he swallows a lump in his throat and tries to block that word out and forget about it. Sin? What's a sin?
There's so much going on inside his head right now that if he can't have anything else he just wants a few more seconds to digest it but he has to be fast, he doesn't have a choice. He shoves the gun into the waistband of his jeans and is propelled forward by the way Mr. White had sounded on the phone, yelling for Jesse to do it, do it, do it, they were going to kill him if Jesse didn't do it. Jesse owes the man his life, he doesn't deny this but in these moments he hates it, he wishes he had just died on that street corner, he would so much rather have died instead of having to do this. For one more second he has that image of some authority figure magically appearing to stop him but the only thing that magically appears is the door with the six on it. He reaches out and raps his numb knuckles against the wood and he tries to shut himself off but it doesn't work, of course it doesn't work.
"Hi. How can I help you?" The guy appears when the door opens, his voice polite but sort of worried, probably by Jesse's appearance and the way he's not saying anything, not even 'sorry'. He grabs the gun and points it forward, trying hard to hold it steady and keep himself quiet, because he's seconds away from breaking into complete hysterics. He wants to do this quick, like pulling off a band-aid, but his finger is frozen and the gun shakes and he gives the guy time to beg when he hadn't even wanted to give him time to speak. Now he has to listen to him plead for his life, beg for Jesse not to do it, tell him he doesn't have to do it, and how Jesse wishes that was true, more than anything he wishes it was true, so much that he almost drops the gun and gives up forever.
Him or Mr. White, He thinks, and the thought gets stuck. Him or Mr. White, him or Mr. White, him or Mr. White-
Weighing lives doesn't make him feel better, not at all. If anything it makes him feel worse but that thought, and the truth in it, is at least enough to make the bones in his finger work and he tries to shut his eyes but his body won't let him, it's forcing him to watch the whole thing and see the guy's face before Jesse kills him, to see that terror that Jesse himself has felt in the past. The shot resounds through the apartment and gets lodged in Jesse's ears the way the thought had been in his brain, and it's only after the guy's dead that Jesse lets go of his throat and starts to sob. He drops his gun and fumbles to pick it back up, shoving it into his waistband again and he's slightly surprised to find that he's made it back to his car. He's made it out but the cold feeling doesn't go away, it intensifies, and even the thought that now Mr. White will live doesn't comfort him, because all he can think about now is blood because blood doesn't wash off. Jesse knows what sin is. He wishes he didn't, but he does.