This story is set just after the end of season 5, and is primarily about what happens to Walt's family after he's gone. Trigger warnings: trauma, anxiety, panic attack, mental illness. And grief, obviously.
One of the best things about Breaking Bad is how well it is done on every level, from the photography to the thriller-like stories to the music to the shoot 'em up excitement to the chilling character psychology. My personal interest is mostly in the psychology, so if you love the show for the shoot 'em up stuff, you won't find any of that in here, sorry – but you will find some interesting deeper insights into the characters!
Update 18/12/18 – I have fixed some typos and some of the more obvious things that weren't in US English, in response to a review! (Thanks for the review Cheryl, it made me happy ) Funny thing is, I had been trying really hard to write in US English, doing things like ctrl F "Find and Replace" searches to change "couch" into "sofa" and "bench" into "counter", for example, but I was working in multiple documents so some slipped through. Hope I've got them all now!
...
When Skyler's alarm went off that morning, she felt like she hadn't even been asleep. This wasn't very unusual. Whether it happened or not on any given morning depending on how recent the latest criminal threat was in her mind.
Opening her eyes, she performed her now daily mood check. She felt alert, and not unhappy. Good, she thought. I'm not depressed. Am I anxious? There was definitely a tightness in her chest, which was also not unusual, but today it was just a mild tightness, which was surprising given that Walt had visited only the previous day. She had expected to be more upset. But instead, she had felt completely resigned. Her heart rate had barely even spiked when she saw him. But it had stood still, just as it had done every other time she had been separated from him, in all the 18 and a half years that she had known him.
As she swung her legs off the bed, she conceded that her heart rate was elevated, she definitely felt on edge, but not in an overwhelming way. Not nearly as badly as she had felt at other times. Good, she thought. Skyler went to her wardrobe and began pulling on her clothes.
Rippling up the stairs and through the thin walls, she heard her daughter's laughter, followed by her son saying, "That's right, Holly, i-if you don't finish your br-breakfast I'll...tickle you again!" This was followed by a pause and then more laughter, so Skyler guessed that Holly had not done what her brother said. "C-come on, hurry up!" he said, laughing himself. "I have to go to s-school!"
The stairs creaked as Skyler began to descend them. "Holly, M-Mom's coming! Quick, e-eat your breakfast before she gets here!"
The kids came into Skyler's view just in time for her to see Holly turn her head to look her brother in the eye and say, "No."
Flynn looked up at his mother. "Sh-she's a spoilt brat," he said.
"Oh, not related to you, is she?" quipped Skyler, kissing them both on the head and moving to the pantry to pull out a box of cereal. "Have you eaten?"
"Y-yeah. I just wanted Holly to finish s-so I could clear up before I left, but...I don't think I...have time now."
"That's fine, I'll do it. Thank you for getting her up and feeding her."
"No problem." Flynn stood up and put on his backpack. "You know how to call 911, r-right Mom?"
A shockwave rushed through Skyler's body and she braced herself on the counter. Flynn didn't seem to have noticed. "9-1-1," he said, looking her in the eye. "If you see him again, just call. It's...not hard. Don't...have a chat to him first, just call."
Skyler didn't respond. All she could think of was yes, it was hard.
Flynn came towards her and gave her a hug. "Are y-you ok?" he asked as he pulled away.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Have a great day."
"See you...later. Eat your breakfast, H-Holly!"
The child squealed as her brother tickled her on his way past. Skyler watched him walk out the front door, but she wasn't really seeing him anymore. Her mind was somewhere else. She stood there holding an empty coffee cup until there was a knock at the door about 10 minutes later.
She opened the door to two police officers. This also was not unusual.
"Good morning, Mrs White," said the stouter of the two, an officer called Clayton she had dealt with before. "May we come in?"
This was less usual. Usually they just asked her to go with them to APD or the DEA.
"Sure," she replied, stepping back from the threshold and turning to check on Holly. Now that no-one was asking her to do it, she was now happily eating her oatmeal and paying no attention to the visitors.
Skyler turned back to find that both of the officers had now taken off their hats and Officer Clayton had sat down on her sofa. "Take a seat, Mrs White," he said.
"I'm good," Skyler replied, her heart rate rising.
"Well we're not sure if this is bad news or good news for you, but late last night the Albuquerque Police Department was called to a shootout on an industrial estate just north of the city. Upon arrival there, officers found the bodies of nine men. No survivors were found."
Skyler's heart was now beating out of her chest, but you couldn't tell it to look at her. Officer Clayton paused, and the silence was the longest of her life. Her jaw tightened and her thumb began to rub the knuckles of her left fist.
"We believe that one of the bodies was your husband."
Blood pounding in her ears, Skyler felt herself sway, and she pushed her feet into the floor and her fingernails into her palms.
"Officers at the scene have identified him and some of the DEA officers had met him before, so."
"So you believe it is him or you know it is him?"
"Unless he had a twin," said the second officer, a smirk on his face.
"We know it's him," said Officer Clayton. "But we need you to formally identify him. You're the next of kin."
"H-he looks different now," Skyler's voice shook. "I saw him yesterday, he looks more like he used to look. But thinner, and-"
"We know that, ma'am. The officers at the scene identified him based on your physical description from yesterday."
Skyler nodded. She didn't know why she was denying it. Walt had been so close to death for so long. In so many ways.
"Are you able to come to the morgue with us now? Can someone look after the little one?"
Skyler was still nodding, the movement rippling through her entire body. "Yeah," she said. "I'm working later so my neighbour was going to take her."
"You might want to call your boss, then. Our instructions are to take you to the DEA after the morgue."
"OK. Sure."
Suddenly, Skyler was calm. She took Holly's empty bowl to the sink, washed it and set it on the dish rack. She wiped the baby seat and Holly's hands and face. She picked her up and walked calmly towards the door.
...
He looked clean, calm and peaceful. Harmless. Old. Thin. Sick. The age part melted away when Skyler looked at him, though. To her, this was Walt as he was. This was the man she'd fallen in love with. The man she'd married. Not the bald-headed monster that he became. Later on, she would learn that it's a normal part of grief for different memories of the person from different times to all hit you at once, particularly those from earlier times, making you feel as if almost no time has passed and nothing has changed.
"Is this your husband, ma'am?" asked Officer Clayton.
She shuffled towards him, then froze about two feet from the trolley, psychologically unable to move any further. Her whole body went rigid, her fists clenched, her eyes wide.
"Mrs White? Is this your husband?"
She felt her head nodding jerkily, not even sure if it was attached to her body anymore. She could feel her feet. They were firmly rooted to the spot.
Her head floated somewhere above them. She felt disconnected from the world around her, as if her entire reality was behind a blanket or a screen. She'd felt this before, many times.
Tears burned the back of her eyes, but didn't fall. She couldn't stop looking at him. And she couldn't stop seeing the bright young scientist she'd met all those years ago in Los Alamos.
Suddenly the psychological bond pressing her feet into the floor broke, and Skyler turned and ran.
Completely unable to remember which way she had come, Skyler darted down corridor after corridor in a state rapidly approaching panic, until she found a set of stairs. She tore up them to the ground level and out a large set of double doors to the outside, almost crashing into a tree next to the parking lot. She pulled her cigarettes from her pocket, lit one, grabbed the tree trunk in her other arm and leaned on it heavily as she smoked.
The thinner of the two APD officers stepped out of his patrol car and looked at her. She didn't notice Officer Clayton appear a couple of minutes later from the other side of the building where the main entrance was, quite out of breath. His colleague caught his eye and pointed to her.
"Definitely him, then?" he asked.
"Yeah," Officer Clayton puffed.
"He was certainly a man who had a strong effect on people."
"Yeah."
"Even gets your ass running about on a Wednesday morning."
"Let's give her a minute."
"What's she doing?"
"Smoking."
"Looks like she's having a spiritual experience with that tree."
"That'll be the trauma. Sometimes it makes you wanna curl up in a ball, grab things, hug things. Bury your face in things, bury your whole body in things. Curl up on things."
"She going to be capable of doing an interview?"
Officer Clayton shrugged. "That's the DEA's problem."
"Why do we have to do all the shit jobs for them?"
"They're pretty busy right now."
"They found a meth lab the size of a warehouse, a stack of cash and nine bodies, why can't we help with that? This is so boring, man. Waiting for a crazy lady to let go of a tree? What is the shit?"
"Why didn't you come inside and see Heisenberg's dead body with me, then?"
"Oh no, man, I don't look at bodies on slabs. Bodies on slabs are the creepiest shit."
"And you a cop?"
"I don't mind other dead bodies, just not ones on slabs. It's the location and the way they're all laid out like that. Eugh. So what'd he look like?"
Officer Clayton shook his head and let out a low whistle. "Not at all what I expected."
...
"Did he say who they were?"
"No."
"I don't mean their names, just anything at all he used to describe them, did he say 'the guys' or 'the gang' or anything, any words that he used."
"The men. He called them the men who stole his money."
"You reported to Agent Thompson yesterday that Mr White did not tell you where he was going but that he said the police would be coming to him."
"Yeah."
"Did he say anything more specific about the place or the men?" Agent Martinez's hands flew up in frustration.
Skyler shook her head slowly. "No."
"Alright," said ASAC Hoffman, hitherto a quiet listener to the interrogation. "Stop. Let's rewind. Mrs White, starting from when he first arrived in your apartment, tell me every single thing that he said."