"Saving Heisenberg"
Dated: Finished after 4 hours straight writing today, although it was completed in random fragments over the period of a few weeks
Title: Saving Heisenberg [would gladly change this]
Summary: Walt has lost the good graces of Gus, Gus has lost the good graces of the cartel. After an ambush, it's not hard to tell which is more dangerous. Set after S3 finale.
Rating: hard T for lotsa violence, language, and character death
[[ Normally I write somewhat within the tone of the show but this is really just a collection of visual images of mine turned into a future-fic. Also because I have wanted for the longest time to find a way to write Walt and Jesse into a burning building... Purely for entertainment purposes only. The reader will suspend their disbelief ]]
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Gus was sitting alone in his office when Mike showed up.
He had been thinking about the state of his lab, now so messy and ridiculous it was only a matter of time before he finally began to catch the DEA's eye. He had just lost his competent, scrupulous chemist to an assassination ordered by Walter, a move he now thought, in retrospect, that he should have been prepared for. But Walter had seemed so unstable, almost near-sighted, how could he have caught on to Gustavo's scheme so quickly? Now for the second time he had drawn a precarious truce with Walter, understanding the position he was in and knowing that for the moment Walt was invaluable and held nearly all the cards. Back to cooking, at least until Gus could come up with a quiet, easy way to replace him. Because Walt couldn't be trusted, no, after running down two of Gus' employees it became very apparent where his true loyalties lie. "I know I owe you my life"-What a joke. It didn't matter how much money he could make with Gus, or how much Gus helped him, when it came down to it he was simply ungrateful, over-emotional. And of course when he held enough sway in the situation, he would ask for his pet junkie back. Now it wasn't just the unpredictable loose-cannon down in Gus' lab, it was his thieving, drug-addicted little friend as well.
Mike's appearance didn't do much to ease Gus' bad mood. Not surprisingly, he had been prone to headaches lately. "They're closing in," Was the first thing Mike said, and Gus' headache immediately worsened.
"Where are they now?" He asked, clasping his hands underneath his chin.
Mike shook his head. He didn't know, which was a bad sign. "They're on the move. We thought they'd hit another of our suppliers, but-" Mike's phone began to buzz in his pocket then, also typically a bad sign. He answered, listened, hung up, his face suddenly alert. "That was Richter. He said they're on their way to the laundry."
Good God. And just when Gus thought it couldn't get worse. "Call who you need to call. Get over there," He ordered, and Mike left wiithout hesitation. Even if it became a spectacle, they had to hold down the laundry. Thwarting invasion attempts on their chemical suppliers was one thing, protecting the multi-million dollar laboratory and equally expensive laundry operation was another. As Gus picked up the phone to dial the lab's emergency line, he wondered how the cartel figured out where his operation was, and it occurred to him that if it was possible for him to own one of their members (Richter Naquita, that would be), then it was just as possible for them to own one of his.
Just one more thing he should have seen coming.
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Production was nearly done for the day. Just a few more things to be checked and double-checked, shut the machines down, then they could go. They had already changed back into their plain clothes.
Walt watched Jesse pack the last of the bins; he no longer had to worry about him giving false readings of the scales, and it wasn't because Victor was still doing constant personal surveillance of the lab. He didn't have to worry about Jesse doing much of anything anymore. He showed up on time, worked mechanically, rarely spoke a word that didn't have to do with what they were presently doing. Ordinarily cooking would be interrupted by Jesse regularly harassing Walt to take a break, or by him chattering about some random thing he saw on TV, or by him playing around in some unprofessional fashion. Now he would just work, and not even with his headphones in anymore.
Walt looked away from Jesse, towards Victor, who was leaning in his usual place against the railing of the stairs, watching them. "Really? Do you still need to be here?" Walt snapped, his mood darkened as usual by thinking of the way Jesse had become after the incident with Gale. Mike had worked his magic and it wasn't as if he had to worry about a charge ever catching up to him, but that was far from being the worst part about committing a murder. Walt knew that quite well.
"Who gives a shit if he watches," Jesse grumbled with perfect, hollow clarity. His eyes were still cast down at the counter as he slid the bin aside and shut off the scale.
"That the last of them?" Victor asked, ignoring Walt. Jesse started to nod, then looked towards the landline as it began to ring loudly. Victor and Walt's heads also turned that way and they headed towards it in unison. Victor held out a hand and Walt stopped, his mood soured further by the fact that he was not even supposed to answer the phone anymore.
Victor took the call, then hung up almost right away, speaking only a confirmation of something. He drew a gun out of his waistband and Walt raised his hands automatically, although the weapon was not aimed at him. Jesse's hands stayed at his sides. "We have to go," Victor said, heading towards the stairs. He looked back when he noticed neither of them were following. "Do you need me to point this at you?" Walt and Jesse exchanged a look, then hesitantly followed. Victor stopped to unlock a nondescript little aluminum cabinet near the base of the stairs, his movements quick but calm. He pulled two more guns out of the cabinet - both semi-automatics, safeties off - and shoved them towards Walt and Jesse, unconcerned that they might be stupid enough to turn them on him.
Jesse accepted his confusedly and wordlessly, Walt hesitated on his grasp of the weapon. "What's going on?" He quizzed skeptically.
Victor gave a hard, impatient tug on his arm and forced the gun into his hands. He started his ascent on the stairs, but paused when he heard shots from above, loud and unmistakable. Walt and Jesse froze and Victor began climbing the stairs again, and the door to the lab burst open just as he reached the top.
Fortunately for them, Victor was a quick shot and he got the first guy coming in with a single bullet. Below him, Walt and Jesse sprinted in different directions, ducking behind the machinery. Victor only clipped the second guy in but it gave him time enough to swing over the railing and take cover within the lab as it was stormed in a hail of bullets and deranged shouts, only some of which were in english.
Walt pressed his back against the equipment he was hiding behind hard enough to send a spark of pain through his shoulders, bungling to get a good hold of his gun (although he had used guns before it wasn't as if he were a prodigious or even competent shot), risking a glance at the rest of the lab. He could see Jesse a couple machines down from him, but Victor was out of his sight, disappearing with what could have been practiced ease, only emerging for a second to finish off the guy he had clipped earlier when he got down the stairs. Three men followed him, firing in Victor's direction. Jesse came out around the side and got one in the back of the leg, and he went down with an undignified yelp, his knee buckling in a spray of blood. When the others turned his way Victor reappeared and fired on them, and after another second Walt did the same. Victor finished off the one Jesse had hit and Walt got one in the chest but they missed the third one and another came flying over the rails, narrowly missing Walt with his first shot as he ducked behind the machinery again.
Walt could still hear shots coming from upstairs, shots and shouts and yelling in an endless sequence, and he wondered how likely it was that most if not all of the laundry employees carried weapons or at least kept them nearby. If they didn't, how could he and Jesse hope to make it out? As Saul might have said, did Gus not plan for this contingency? Walt began to ponder their odds in blind terror, a million things racing through his mind the space of seconds.
Then Jesse screamed, a high, agonized sound that Walt wouldn't have even thought him capable of, and he hadn't even noticed how fast his heart had been beating until then, when it gave a particularly hard, sickening pound, seeming to bounce all the way into his throat. He burst out from hiding, finding that only one man was still standing. Walt fired at him, missing from his unfocused vision and unsteady hand, and thankfully Victor covered, scoring an unspeakably gory headshot before dashing for the stairs again. Walt bypassed the stairs, stepping over the second guy who was laid out on the ground but didn't appear to have been shot, unconscious instead of dead. Jesse was a few feet in front of this one, knocked on his ass and favoring one side, pushing himself back with one leg. Walt got down beside him and helped pull him back behind the machine again, only stopping to inspect the damage once they were out of view. One of his pants legs was bright red with blood, flowing out at an alarming rate. In rising panic that Walt desperately tried to bite back, he thought that the bullet might have hit Jesse's femoral artery, he was certain that that's where it had hit, that he needed a tourniquet, that he needed one now or else he would-
"I threw my gun at him," Jesse said suddenly in a small voice delivered through an airway tight with fear. Walt paused to look up at him from his belt, which he had started to remove almost unconsciously. His face had gone strangely still and was white with shock, clammy with sweat. The pupils of his eyes were huge and shiny, not focused on any particular thing. Walt touched his shoulder and Jesse turned his way, although he still didn't seem to be looking right at him. "I threw it at him when he shot me. I should have shot him back but for some reason I threw my gun at him instead. For some reason I-"
"Quiet," Walt shushed, sliding his belt out of the loops and fastening it clumsily around Jesse's thigh, trying to remember various points of the first aid training he had taken eons ago. People going into shock... What did you do for people going into shock? "What's your name?" Walt asked, attempting to simultaneously snap Jesse out of it and comfort himself. If he concentrated on Jesse he felt his own panic less, or at least was able to ignore it briefly.
"I threw my gun," Jesse repeated, still looking through Walt in that disturbing, detached way.
"I know you threw your gun," Walt said, his voice wavering slightly. He swallowed and kept going. "And you were shot. In the leg. But you're going to be okay. What's your name?"
"Jesse." He said his name the way he would say 'sidewalk' or 'toaster', but Walt was still relieved he had gotten him to say it at all.
"Yes, that's right," Walt babbled, deaf and oblivious to the myriad of shots still ringing out above him, and closer by with Victor trying to single-handedly hold down the door to the lab. "Who am I?" He quizzed, and nearly jumped when he felt something squeeze his arm. He glanced down to see that Jesse had been holding his sleeve.
"My chemistry teacher," He answered, and although his voice was dreamy and faraway his eyes had started to look more awake. He kept his hand fisted in the fabric of Walt's shirt, and Walt couldn't tell if blood was still gushing from his leg or not because his jeans were already stained almost completely red on that side.
"What's my name?"
"Mr. White..." Came the soft response, more confidant than the last, the name not spoken like an item as random and insignificant to Jesse as a cowbrush or a unicycle.
"Walter!" Victor's voice cut in. Walt disengaged Jesse's hand from his shirt with some effort, feeling cautious relief by Jesse's returning awareness, and broke away from him reluctantly. He finally poked out from behind the machine to see that Victor had been hit in his shooting arm and had fallen back against the wall, bodies lumped at his feet, but there were two more coming in. Victor attempted a shot at them while Walt was still struggling to at least halfway secure his aim without exposing himself completely, but he missed and was hit again, in the abdomen, and Walt couldn't tell if he was dead or not when he fired up at the men, all he knew was that he had definitely killed one of them.
Then the second man swung halfway across the railing and unloaded on Walt before he had the chance to hide and he felt hot lead fill his chest, his arms, he didn't know how many times he got hit, the pain surged from the wounds up into his head, filling up his skull, drowning him in horrible explosive suffering that mercifully started to darken and float away from him within moments as his sight blurred and he collided with the floor. His head began to swim and the noises surrounding him crashed in and out like waves, strong currents that were indeterminable, moving in patterns he couldn't catch onto. He expected any minute to be shut off entirely, to slip away, but he could still feel that burning pain somewhere and it kept him conscious. He thought the man would come down the stairs and finish him but when that didn't happen he forced his head to move and his eyes to open. He could see a bleary vision of Jesse, a flash of metal, the lights on the roof of the lab.
"It's okay," Jesse's voice fluttered through Walt's ears. He wanted to reach out and catch it but he couldn't move. "It's okay, I got him. I think Victor's dead... It's quiet upstairs... Mr. White can you hear me? Oh God... Can you hear me? Are you okay?"
He wanted to say yes, or nod, or something, but he couldn't, which he supposed would have made a nod - if he had completed one - a lie. His eyes slid all the way shut again and in the darkness behind his lids he envisioned a thunderstorm, harsh and unforgiving, rumbling through a vast desert valley that echoed the storm's rage and resiliently stood against it. The howling fury of the winds and the torrents of rain bounced all across the walls of rockfaces and their lingering presences traveled for miles. Walt pictured himself in the middle of all of this, watching it, awed by it, terrified by it, the blackness of the sky and the heavy, foreboding cover of the clouds pouring rain ceaselessly, punching into the ground and drenching Walter in a fusillade. The image was so clear that when he heard the enormous explosion above his head he at first thought it was a titanic thunderclap rolling through that black valley in a deafening, inspired burst of earthly wrath.
"Holy shit!" Jesse's voice, too, rolled like thunder, lost under the sound of the blast from upstairs. A section of the lab's roof launched into the ground, it didn't just crumble and fall away, it was hurled downward, and a number of burning things from above were carried with it, some of which were probably even bodies. Thick, acrid smoke filled Walt's senses almost immediately and the obliterated remains of the lab came into clearer focus around him, although contradictorily it was obscured by the opaque smoke and the brightness of the flames. Observing this he was vaguely aware that something had covered him, then something was touching him, a hand, fingers, closing around his arm and trying to move him. "Oh my God," Jesse breathed from somewhere very close to him. "Was that a fucking bomb? Come on, Mr. White!" Nails dug into him through his shirt; lifting him obviously took an effort not just because he was weighty but because the person lifting him was trying not to hurt him, which he was sure they were doing anyway, but he could only feel it in a certain part of his brain, a small part he wasn't tapped into fully or much at all.
Smoke filled the room just above his head, every time he opened his eyes they stung, he could hear the place burning up around him. He knew he was going to die. He couldn't even move himself and Jesse was using up time he could spend getting himself out uselessly trying to rescue Walter, who didn't have the strength to make him let go. He pulled and heaved and dragged Walt's heavy, bullet-ridden body across the lab, trying to maneuver the whole thing with one leg, occasionally crying out when he bumped his injured limb or a falling ember from above brushed him.
"Jesse," Walt said into the smoke, his words muted by the sound of the flames and the building crashing down in segments. He took a breath and inhaled smog, breaking into a coughing fit that took up valuable speaking time. Once he got it under control he managed: "Stop, just leave me."
"Fuck you," Was Jesse's breathless reply. Walt could have predicted that, under ordinary circumstances it might even have made him smile a little. Now, though, was not the time to play hero. He tried to say more but his words came apart and tumbled out in an in unintelligible jumble, which added an edge of alarm to Jesse's voice the next time he spoke. "Don't talk anymore, all right? Just try to stay awake. Think about something nice. Your wife, or something."
So Walt did. He shut his eyes and the storm was Skyler, the violent flares of her anger and her betrayal, and her eyes, so full of deception at that moment, looking at a man she no longer recognized as her husband as she realized that really was no longer that man at all. Her confusion and then her understanding, an unwelcome dawn to a night of tempests. Walt wanted to embrace her and make her see all that he had done for her, for them, let her know that the storm couldn't last forever, and that no matter how much he changed he still loved her, still wanted her in his life, still needed her beside him. In his mind he reached for her but a rush of wind carried the petals of those thoughts away and all that was left was the storm, hot and wet and electrical. He knew that he wasn't alone in it, that Jesse had been caught in the same savage tide since the beginning and continued to drown with him, but Walt also knew that for Jesse the storm really was endless, and his stand against it was isolated. He hated to see Jesse get lost in pointless denial in the moment when his usually canny sense of reason would have been its most useful.
"Jesse, I need to tell you something," Walt said, and now he thought that it was not the flames of a building being consumed that overrode his words but the howls of the storms. What he needed to say might finally make Jesse let go of him and leave him the way he should have done right from the start.
"No you don't," Jesse replied immediately. His voice was getting weaker, dimmer, shrouded in the rain and the wind and the thunder. "No you don't, because we're gonna get out of here. We're gonna make it, Mr. White, like we always do."
Why do you have to be the one with the delusions now? Walt wondered, faint and dejected. He wanted to tell Jesse what he had done, what he had failed to do, to finally let that horrible secret out and make Jesse understand that the man he was trying to save was not a man at all but a monster draped in human flesh. But the words were stuck in his throat, refusing to budge. "Jesse, I-"
"Not now, Mr. White," The voice had fallen into a plead. "You can tell me later. Look, we're almost out. There's the door." Walt didn't look but he had the suspicion that no such door was anywhere near their reach. At the most they could hope for a hole to have been blown through the wall somewhere close by and that would be a dangerous escape route at best. And still Jesse was pulling him along, draining what was left of his strength in his futile efforts that made the worst feeling in the world coil up in Walt's stomach. It was something worse than guilt, and in the middle of it was the grinding of pure frustration that he couldn't even move his arms to free himself from Jesse's hold.
"Leave me," Walt said again, half a plea and half a demand. His throat was dry and scorched from the smoke and there was a strange buzzing in his skull that might have been his brain trying to tell him that he was still in pain.
"No," Jesse denied him again, just as stubborn. "You remember what you said? We're partners. You don't go, I don't go."
"Jesse, for the love of God, this isn't a blood pact," Walt reasoned, his voice starting to break. Even when his eyes were open his surroundings were indistinct shapes but he still thought he couldn't see any openings, any means of escape, and the flames were growing huger, roaring louder, the smoke was thickening and darkening. He looked for Jesse, hoping to make some meaningful eye contact and say with an expression what his mouth hadn't been able to. All he could see, though, were Jesse's hands, visible in the bright reds and oranges of the fire, his fingers slicked with blood, that indefinable tattoo standing out stark above this, branding him like some arcane emblem.
"I already got you up the fucking stairs," Jesse shot back, seeing this as some point of no return: why would he go through all the trouble of getting him up the stairs just to leave him and head for the exit solo? But Walt could already feel through Jesse's grip that the boy was fading with him, not as quickly as Walter but fading just the same, that the makeshift tourniquet may have bought him time but the time was short, even if all he had to carry was himself. "And you just spent all your energy being stupid instead of helping me... So just try to stay awake like I told you."
He couldn't tell Jesse what he had meant to and he couldn't convince him to abandon him (which, it seemed to Jesse, would be an unforgivable disloyalty) so all he could do was drift back to his subconscious mind, hoping to keep himself awake that way so Jesse didn't panic and totally eliminate his chances of survival. As it was Walt still tried to come to terms with the fact that they were both going to die in those fleeting moments as he felt his legs dragging along the grates beneath him and flames quickly reaching out to touch his skin, with Jesse's hands linked in a place he couldn't determine for most of him had gone numb. Once he stopped trying to talk it felt as if everything had gone absurdly quiet and he became almost completely disconnected from his body and what it was experiencing. The tides and the winds carried him further and further away. The ship he had so desperately tried to keep afloat on a sea of lies became just one more vessel lost in a tsunami. He could feel himself sinking, disappearing as his head finally dipped below the surface, with phantom voices murmuring from somewhere above him, some he recognized, some he didn't. He remembered flailing out a hand that came into contact with nothing, and that was all.
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The storm had broken. How intense the skies looked after a barbarous rain. The clouds had lightened to their usual white and had dispersed across the blue portrait above Walter's head, and he could hardly believe it had once been black.
He was sitting across the street from what had been his home for a little over fifteen years of his five decade run. It looked exactly as it always did, little and quaint under the Albuquerque sun, an inexpensive but reliable station wagon parked out front, looking lonely without Walt's Aztek beside it. He could see no movement from behind the windows of the house but even at this distance he could feel the life inside it, and knew that beyond those walls was his family, his wife, his son, his daughter, safe and secure in their little home. Walt ran his hand along the bench he was sitting on and knew without looking at it that there was a Better Call Saul ad on its face, that even in furniture form Saul would be watching over Walt's assets. A ridiculous man, his lawyer was, but he knew how to do what was necessary, and as sleazy as he came across as, Walt could trust him. As long he got his cut.
"Yo."
A word so natural and known to him that Walt didn't even look up, not thinking about how strange it was for that voice to be near him in the wide open, and in front of his house of all places. But nothing felt out of the ordinary as Jesse sat down beside him, not speaking at first, only looking across the street with Walt, gazing reflectively at that little one-story home.
"They'll miss you," Jesse said finally. "If that's what you're worried about."
"I don't want to go," Walt told him. "I thought it was how they would remember me that was the worst of this, but it's not. I don't want to leave them."
"I know. But you have to."
Walt tore his eyes away from his house and looked over at Jesse, who looked back at him evenly. His face, now free of bruises or cuts or blood or pain, was as familiar to Walt as his own reflection. He had watched the boy do some fast growing up right before his eyes, and now this person on the bench with him, although still the same Jesse Pinkman who had taken a spill off a roof into the bushes all those months ago, was very different in some significant way. Walt knew this meant an added maturity... but also a loss of innocence. He wasn't exactly sure how he felt about it.
"What about you?" Walt asked.
Jesse looked surprised. "I want you to stay too. But you can't."
There was something about the way he said it that made Walt start to believe it was the truth and that he would have to accept it. He didn't know where he was supposed to go or why he had to go there, but it now began to seem impossible for him to continue to stay here, on this bench, across from his old home. If his family would miss him, well, he had to be content with that, as they would go on living behind the walls of that house, their lives flipped upside down but still in one piece. They would get the money somehow. Skyler and Saul would find a way. They didn't need Walt for that, not anymore.
"What about me?" He found himself asking, his eyes gravitating back towards the house.
"You did what you could," Jesse answered gravely. "We both did," He added.
"What if it wasn't good enough? What if it just wasn't enough?" And worse, what if it wasn't right?
Jesse laughed, uneasy and reassuring at the same time. "Dude, I don't think I'd be stretching it to say that yeah, it was enough."
Walt contemplated this, and he accepted it too after awhile. The things he had given, the damage he had done, when all put together did it mount to success? He didn't even know anymore, but he didn't have the time to wonder. The image of the house in front of him started to seem less real, like he was just looking at a photograph of a place that meant nothing to him. As soon as that happened he knew it was time to go. He brushed his hands across his pants in a useless gesture that was more automatic than anything, and Jesse stood up a moment before Walt did, and the older man lingered a little by the bench, giving the house one more look, out of respect. Then he turned away, a bit surprised but grateful that he no longer felt that sense of overwhelming loss as he followed Jesse down the sidewalk. He thought they would continue on in silence, maybe even after they arrived at wherever they were going, but not too long after they had started walking, above their heads came the heavy, deliberate roll of thunder.
Jesse paused to listen to it. Walt stopped with him and did the same, watching as Jesse's expression furrowed into incomprehension then to reluctant awareness, and when he spoke there was a completely bizarre combination of embarrassment, lamentation, and sullenness in his voice: "Uh, sorry for psyching you out, don't get pissed, but I think you actually don't have to go just yet."
And this, this honestly threw Walt for a loop. He had just come to terms with... Well, he didn't know, but he had accepted something. So why back out of it? "Why not? What's happening?"
Jesse shook his head. "You have to stay here for now," He answered vaguely, taking another step down the street.
"Wait!" Walt caught his arm. "Where are you going? Aren't you going to stay with me?"
Jesse bit his thumb nail guiltily. Obviously he had known the answer to this question the whole time but thought he could get away with keeping it to himself. "No... I'm sorry, I can't."
And after everything they had gone through together! Why this betrayal, why now? "What about what you said?" Walt reminded, feeling like he had been stabbed in the back, figuratively and literally. "'You don't go, I don't go'? Remember? What happened to that, Jesse?"
"I'm sorry," Jesse repeated shamefacedly. "I know I said all that stuff and it's not like I wanna go without you-"
"Then stay here! What are you doing?"
"Mr. White I can't, okay? Jesus, don't make me feel worse about it than I do."
"Don't make you feel bad? What the- What about me?"
"You'll survive," Jesse said, wiggling his sleeve loose from Walt's hand.
Something reoccurred to Walt then, and he quickly snatched up Jesse's sleeve again to keep him from making any sudden moves. "I have to tell you something, though," He said. There was no reason for Jesse not to listen to him now, indeed no reason for Walt to even tell him at all, but if it would make him stay, even for only a few more moments, then Walt would finally go through with his confession.
He thought Jesse would at least be curious but Jesse only looked at him sadly, with some understanding, mostly only speculation. "What ever you're trying to tell me, it's bad," He said. "I can see it on your face. So... Don't do this now, right before I leave, all right? If you really want some closure I can tell you that whatever you're going to say will probably make me hate you, maybe for a long time, maybe forever, but in the end I'd be able to forgive you for it, even if I'd never admit it. But right now I don't have the time it would take to do that. So you don't have to say what it is. Okay? Is that good enough?"
"I don't know," Walt admitted. "I honestly don't know. I don't think it is."
"Well, it's gonna have to be."
"No, wait. You can't. You can't go. I-"
"Stop it, man! I know!" Another sort of doleful pleading had entered his voice. He looked at Walt, then down at the street, groping for some consolation he knew was there but difficult to properly articulate it. "Look, I won't be with you... But I will be. Does that make sense?"
"No. Jesse, please, listen to me-"
"It's got nothing to do with you," Jesse assured him, resuming chewing his thumb, gnawing it down to the quick. He looked behind himself, as if expecting something, acting as though he was late and Walt was holding him up. "I seriously have to go now," He said after a pause he had intentionally allowed, a pause which had not yielded the other thing Walt had wanted to say. Or what Jesse had wanted to say, for that matter. "We're still partners, we just have to do our thing from afar," He opted, offering a more sympathetic look as he tried again to communicate what ever last-ditch pacification he thought he had. "But I'll be all right. So will you. And I... Um, I... Shit, nevermind. I'll see you later, Mr. White."
"Jesse, come on, let's just go back to the bench," Walt reasoned, the logic of what he was saying sliding away from him as he slipped into something more like rambling, a desperate grasping to force Jesse to reconsider his departure. All that made sense to him then was that they had to go back to the bench, because the bus would be coming soon, and they had to get it on it. They both had to get on it. Jesse couldn't stay out here in the rain by himself. Not to mention the thunder, those heavy claps that sounded like giant cannons. Or explosions. "It looks like the storm's starting again," Walt warned him, in case Jesse hadn't noticed it, in case that was all it would take to make him come to his senses.
Jesse looked up at the sky, which had scaled down from its vibrant blue to a melancholy grey that promised showers. He nodded. "It's gonna rain," He agreed. "But it's nothing you can't handle without me... You know, you're supposed to be scared of the lightning, not the thunder. But the thunder is the worst part. If you can make it through the thunder, the lightning's nothing. Weather it, Mr. White. Be a blowfish."
And then insanely, impossibly, Jesse, that crazy nonsensical lunatic, met his eyes and managed something that could have been a smile, at least it certainly looked like one although it was hard to tell with the way that sorrow covered it. Somehow Walt still couldn't believe it, refused to believe it, and there were still plenty of things he had to tell Jesse, things that he should have told him a long time ago, and he tried to tighten his grip on Jesse's arm, only to have his fingers slip through it like water. And water, he realized, is what the entire thing had become. Just a reflection on that ocean he was still drowning under. The storm had returned.
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Pain.
"Holy Christ, I think he's waking up."
Burning.
"Go get some water, or a doctor, or something."
Nausea.
"I can't believe he's still alive."
Where was he?
He cracked open his eyes and immediately regretted it. His corneas instantly stung and began to water. His skin felt dry and singed. There was a bright white light shining into his face, and he felt so hungry at that moment he would have done anything just to get the feeling to go away. It took several moments for his eyes to adjust, and when they finally did, he could vaguely make out the shape of a face. The shape of a smile, uncertain and misplaced.
"Would you look at that," A voice presumably belonging to the face started. "I really didn't think you'd wake up. Good thing I didn't put any money on it."
His eyes wouldn't focus so he couldn't tell if he recognized the face or not. The voice didn't feel familiar. "What happened?" He croaked out.
"You got shot," The voice replied. His mind reeled and he narrowly avoided blacking out again. "Quite a few times," The voice went on. "Wow. I gotta say, they build chemistry teachers a lot tougher than they did in my day."
"Where am I?"
"The best medical center money can afford you. Look, we got a lot of things to talk about before the cops come in and slyly try to get you to screw yourself over, so you might want to-"
"Where's Jesse?" Walt blurted. Briefly he had the image of standing with Jesse on a sidewalk near his house, an event he was certain had never happened, but more importantly he was starting to remember exactly what had transpired between showing up to the lab on Monday and waking some unknown amount of time later to find himself shot up in a hospital bed. Jesse had been with him then, and he wasn't now.
When the voice paused uncomfortably Walt felt a cold feeling in his gut, like he had swallowed a big hunk of ice. "Uh... I really don't want to have to be the one to tell you this, but, uh, the kid ... sort of ... 'bought it' in the ER." Walt didn't get this right away, didn't understand it at all. "He was semi-conscious when the cops got there. You were out cold. I spoke to a couple of those law enforcement types, and they say they saw him dragging you out of that place while they were still trying to run down the remaining amigos that presumably put on the big fireworks show in the laundry. They thought that you were done for and that he'd be fine as paint after a transfusion. But those deep femoral arteries, well, they're tricky..."
"Is he dead?" Walt questioned stupidly through numb lips.
"Um, yeah," Quick, guilty confirmation, at least not spoken like the easiest thing in the world but not said with any great difficulty either. Walt felt his mind go blank. "Look, try not to think about it. Right now we have to talk before the feds and your family start fighting to get in here... Uh, Walt? You all right in there? Are you- Whoah, Jesus! Over the side!"
Walt barely had enough strength to turn his head before his lips sputtered and his cramping stomach revolted, spraying bile onto his pillow. The body that hosted the face and the voice moved closer to him to clumsily pat his back and attempt to wipe at his face with something itchy and cottony, and he finally began registering it as a whole. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to will the throbbing in his being to subside. There were angry shudders wavering throughout his gut and a repulsive tightness in his chest, closing around his repaired wounds, the stitches that sizzled and hummed under bandages.
"Well, I'm sure he'd be touched you reacted like that," The person remarked, quipped, almost, and Walt finally realized who it was when bright, lively contempt stung him.
"Get out of here, Saul," He growled, wanting to sound authoritative, but lacking the strength to sound like anything other than miserable.
"I will. Soon. Just, we need to talk, pretty urgently. Because you, my friend, are in a Mount Everest dwarfing heap of shit right now. At least, you would be, if you weren't being represented by Saul Goodman and associates. I can find you a way out of this. Your boss, though, I don't think he'll be so lucky."
Walt shut his eyes again, trying to listen to what the idiot was saying and not doing a very good job of it. Saul's words droned on through his head, important advice and life-saving tips mixed in with pointless chatter and awkward jokes. His family would be arriving any time, once they heard he had stabilized. Saul might be able to spare him in the courts - Walt didn't doubt it of the guy, even if he was a clown he knew how to do his lawyering - but it's not as if he could represent him against his family, who would know about the drugs now. Walter Jr., Hank, Marie. They'd all find out what he was up to after this, even if he escaped jail time he'd lose them all, not the same way he had lost Jesse, but... Jesse. Oh God.
Saul's hand reached out again and slapped his shoulder. "Don't be so down!" He enthused, his voice as brittle and fake as an actor in his crappy late-night commercial. "Look on the bright side if you can. You're really lucky to be alive, you know that?"
From a technical standpoint Walt supposed that could even be true. From an emotional standpoint he certainly didn't think so. That must have showed on his face then, because Saul withered further. "Look, I got something that might cheer you up. I was gonna save it until you really needed it... Actually I just forgot about it. Anyway, the kid wrote something for you in the ambulance while he was still lucid. And I use that term loosely because what he wrote makes no sense whatsoever. I think the cops would have tossed it if he hadn't insisted that it be given to you when you woke up. He was sure that you would, apparently. Anyway, they gave it to me and-"
"Just let me see it!" Walt snapped impatiently. Saul quieted and fished a little scrap paper out of the pocket of his suit jacket, handing it carefully to Walt, who snatched it covetously and ran his eyes across it swiftly, as if the faster he read it, the more likely it was that he'd wake up and this whole thing would be a dream. His eyes scanned the page at least thirty times in the space of five seconds, each word sinking in separately, driving the point home that Jesse was gone only after he allowed each messily scrawled syllable into his mind. Across the note, in barely legible script, was written:
'It's gonna rain, but it's nothing you can't handle without me. If you can make it through the thunder, the lightning's nothing. Weather it, Mr. White. Be a blowfish.'
After he finished reading it for the hundredth time, he slowly crushed the note in his fist, sinking back into his pillow that reeked of vomit, and he turned his head away, closing all other discussions altogether. Saul watched him, waited for his outburst, probably even tried to get his attention a couple of times. Very quickly though - or quickly it had seemed - the lawyer gave up and showed himself out. According to him cops would be pestering Walt very soon, and his family, couldn't forget about them. His mind touched upon this briefly, then swept it aside. What good was it for him to think about those things? He was still breathing.
He squeezed his fingers together, feeling the pointy edges of the paper poke at his skin, the already near-indecipherable words growing fuzzier with the sweat from Walt's palm. After a moment he squeezed again, just to feel it there as he lay alone in a hospital room, watching the rain from outside pelting against the window.
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x
A/N: Phew.
If you're wondering what became of Mike, I could say that the voices Walt hears before blacking out alludes to his brief appearance in the lab; since Jesse, according to Saul, did in fact get Walt out and Walt wasn't wrong in thinking that they weren't anywhere near an exit, I had it in my head that maybe Mike helped them before making himself scarce... Or maybe he just showed up to take off Jesse's tourniquet and that's why he died? Who knows! Possibly he got killed in the shootout but I can't imagine Mike getting out-gunned. lol
P.S. sorry I killed Jesse.