Five Things That Never Happened to Jesse Pinkman (and One That Still Might)

Rating/Spoilers: PG-13. Mostly for language, some violence, and possible subject matter issues, but there is nothing you won't see in the show itself. Spoilers for all three seasons.
Words: ~13,500
Disclaimer: I do not own anything Breaking Bad related, though I hope I have in me enough creativity to come up with such complex characters like Walt or Jesse (but I doubt it).
Summary: A "five things" AU fic.

one. a house of cards

She has been staring at a dark spot on the white-washed floor for about half an hour. The bathroom floor's painted exactly in the same shade as the rest of the hospital, and while it hasn't quite turned beige yet, by now it's clear no amount of bleach would restore it to its original color. She fights the desire to take a scrub to the small, bruise-shaded stain, just beneath where her feet are wedged and crammed between the toilet and the sink. There are faint scratches around the spot, hinting that previous attempts have already been thwarted.

She absently wonders what it has been. Blood, obviously, is the first thought, but it shouldn't have left any stain. Blood usually comes out. Usually.

She's more than peripherally aware that she cannot afford to spend any more time in this exercise in non-thoughts. She should be getting home soon. Marie's looking after Holly and Walter Jr. for the night, but her sister's got work tomorrow morning and a dying brother-in-law is not an excuse for skipping work. At least not yet.

The thought almost wrecks her into another sob. She restrains it just in time.

She dabs a crunched ball of toilet paper on her face to dry any hint of tear. With some effort, she gathers herself tightly until she feels ready to make an exit from her refuge.

She's almost successful, but not quite. She makes herself get up, but freezes at the sound of the door creaking open outside the bathroom. The nurses have already come and gone, it's well outside the visiting hours, and while a concession can be made for the wife of a terminal patient by sympathetic nurses, no one else is allowed in the private hospital room at this hour.

But someone enters the room anyway, and she can hear, even through the closed door, the slow steps toward the center of the room. The sound stops near the bed, where her husband is slowly withering away.

She doesn't recall any scheduled visit from doctors, but it's still a possibility. She isn't certain whether the nurses would get into trouble for letting her stay this long, so she remains on her spot, hesitant.

That's when the visitor starts to speak.

"Hey, Mr. White."

She thinks the voice sounds a little young to belong to a doctor. There's some scuffling noise of metal against linoleum, and she pictures the chair at the corner being dragged to the side of the bed.

"Um, don't freak, okay? I know you'd yell at me and totally throw fits for coming here, but no one saw me or anything, so you can just chill, alright?" There is a long pause. "I wouldn't, you know, actually mind, though. You know, if you feel like waking up and just yell at me or...whatever."

Suddenly, right there right then she recognizes the voice, because at one point in time she's listened to the same recorded voice over and over half in panic and half in helplessness, trying to figure out what her errand husband was up to. This is that obnoxious kid who sold her husband weed. What was his name? Red, no, Pinkman. Jesse Pinkman.

Her first thought is to fling the door open and scream at him to get out. But the second thought stops her: what if Walt called him in? To get him to bring in something, anything, that would help with the pain? He's now under several different pain medications, and there isn't anything more that would help, but it's possible Walt still could've called in this kid before -

Before.

It's too late, she wants to tell this kid. You're too late. He hasn't woken up for two days. They're telling me to prepare for the inevitable. You're too late.

Tears have run out, used and dried up and no more, but her eyes sting just the same, leaving her exhausted and brittle, like she can no longer be glued together as a whole.

For a long moment, she's unable to muster up strength to do anything other than sitting still on the lid-covered toilet and listening to the silence. There's nothing but the sound of feet occasionally shuffling on the floor.

"Mr. White," Jesse Pinkman's voice, finally, begins to make a dent at the heavy silence, "did I, uh, ever tell you how I found my aunt, you know, after?"

There's a moment when she thinks nothing more would be said, but one by one his words begin to trickle out, "There was this time when we thought she was doing okay. Better. I mean, I knew, we knew, there was no hope. You know, hope hope? But still, for those few days before she - well, before, she was actually up and 'round all the time, trying to clean the house and wanting to cook stuff. She, like, got up super early every morning and started vacuuming, kicking me out of the bed and made me help her with gardening and stuff. But she seemed, you know, happy. Happier than ever. So, I just let her do whatever she wanted.

"And one day she woke me up, like, four in the morning, and told me she wanted to bake lasagna for dinner. There was no changing her mind, no amount of begging would get her to just rest, just ease up a little. She just had to make it, like, right now, and we didn't have the lasagna pan anymore, so she was all, could you go to the store and get one, like, now?

"I didn't know what came over her, 'cause, seriously, she didn't even like lasagna, and it was in the middle of summer and the kitchen was basically too sizzling to use the oven and just, and... Maybe, maybe, I don't know, I think I liked it when I was a kid. Or something.

"Had to wait hours, man, until the department store was open, but I got the pan she wanted, though. When I came back from the store, she was sitting in the kitchen - you remember that wooden rocking chair right next to the oven, overlooking the window? She was sitting on that chair, so still. Smiling with her eyes closed. She was waiting for me. She looked so, I dunno, I think she looked happy. But then she just...didn't wake up. I tried. And tried. And she just, she just didn't.

"Just like that, that was it. I, well, I never used to know what that meant, you know. Before. Dying. Gone. Never seeing that person again. We never even said goodbye. I...I never got to say goodbye to her, and I- " There's a brief pause, and Pinkman clears his throat. "Yeah, so that was that."

The silence descends again. Skyler cannot think. There are certain things that start picking at the corner of her mind - Walt knows this boy better than he's said he did, knows him well enough to have been to his place, and why and how and why - but she cannot think, between that infectious sadness sipping through the fabric of air with each word spoken by this kid, and her own fear that she does not want to know the answer to the questions.

"Hey, uh, guess what, Mr. White?" The kid starts again, his voice painfully feigned and excruciatingly light. "We found the buyer. Saul set up the greet-n-meet again. At some random chicken fast food joint, which is just weird, but Saul's sure this guy's totally legit. It took a while to convince him to meet with us, but now I think we can get rid of the merchandise. You know, like, completely in wholesale. Once it's done, we're totally set, yo, the last score we'll ever need, like, ever. So, there's nothing for you to worry about anymore."

There have been questions.

There have always been questions, ever since Grechen called her, profusely apologizing for not being able to offer assistance before, not being able to make Walter accept their help. Questions, ever since Elliot and Grechen offered to pay for this expensive private hospital room and anything else that could be done, even though the treatments have already failed and right now all they could do was make him more comfortable.

There have been questions, even before then. What has he been doing, all the times when he was gone? Where did the money come from, then, for the previous treatments? What has he done?

And now, things begin to fall in place, little by little.

She wants to demand answers. She doesn't want to know. She's left with a newborn daughter and a teenage son to care for, so she has to know. She doesn't want to know.

Her fingers tear at a piece of crumbled toilet paper in her hand.

She doesn't want to know.

Still, she doesn't cover her ears when Jesse Pinkman starts talking again.

"You know, Mr. White? I never thought of her not being there anymore. I mean, not that I didn't think about it before. I knew she was going to go. I knew she wasn't going just to hang on forever. It, just... And I," he pauses, his voice stilted and awkward and all so desperately young. "I wish we had one more day, so she could've baked that stupid lasagna. There's this hole where she used to be, even now, and I wish I could've told her that - I wish we at least said goodbye. And with you, it's just - it's just that - "

Even through the wall and the door, she can hear him trying to gather his breath, the strain in his voice trying to contain his words.

"It's all been taken care of. Your wife and kids. Saul set it all up so they'll be lacking in absolutely nothing. I swear you've got nothing to worry about. They'll be okay - I promise, Mr. White. I'll take care of them, and they don't ever have to find out this. I won't mess this up. I really won't. So, I - just -" His words are rushed, heavily punctuated and mangled together, until they all come to a sudden halt.

"Shit," he breaks. There are tears in his shaking voice. "Shit."

A quiet, wordless sob pries out of him in little, shattered fragments.

This kid, a stranger to her, is breaking in pieces over her dying husband.

And the air feels saturated with this grief that doesn't feel so foreign to her, that almost overwhelms her own.

There's white hot pain flaring in her chest, behind her closed eyes.

She doesn't think of intruding, of asking the questions, of asking him to leave. What she has heard entitles him to this moment, and she can't take it away.

And eventually, when he leaves, quiet and dejected, she doesn't catch up with him nor demand answers that she's been seeking.

Instead, she reaches her husband's side once again, occupies the chair that the kid has left and holds Walt's thin, skeletal wrist connects to one too many tubes that are sustaining his life.

What were you to that kid? What do I not know? What have you done? What is it that you did to us, for us? Get up and answer me. I'll forgive you for anything and everything if you just come back.

Get up and answer me. Please. Please.

This time, she doesn't hold back her tears.

She stays at her husband's side for a while longer. There's so much, and yet nothing, to ask him, to tell him, but she would let it all go, all of it, if he would just wake up.

He doesn't.

Before the morning sets in, she returns home to her children.