A/N: Breaking bad is not mine, but I love it something fierce! Also, spoilers!
This fanfic is what I imagine went through Gus' head during the mass murder in Salud and a little bit of his thoughts during Max's death as well. I was really saddened by Max's death and Gus' extreme emotional reaction to it, and since Gus is my favorite character, I decided to write this as a tribute to both him and his heavily hinted at relationship with Max
Amazing how the simplest image, once tainted, can resurrect an army of repressed emotions, painful as the first time they cut you. Powerful as an ocean.
Or a swimming pool.
Looking down into the deceptively serene water, I saw not the turquoise of a lazy summer day but the vivid red memory of blood. Your blood.
It made me pause. Unexpectedly. Uncharacteristically. For as many times as I had been forced to relive that horrifying scene in my nightmares, as many times as I tormented myself in the throes of my regrets, nothing I had done, nothing I could do, could prepare me for being here again.
It was sunny then, almost sunnier than it is now. You had come with me to this very place to try and pitch the brilliant methamphetamine scheme that I had come up with, that we had come up with together.
How could I have known that things would end so wrong?
The exact moment of your murder is hardly as clear to me as the immediate aftermath. The mere seconds it took for Hector Salamanca to pull the trigger almost didn't register as I sat, carelessly turned in the opposite direction, the realization of your death not hitting me until the specks of your blood came flying against my face.
In nauseating horror, I watched my business associate, my partner, fall limp to the ground with vacant, deadened eyes.
Eyes still locked on mine.
I couldn't run away, couldn't move. Couldn't bring myself to break your gaze. And as such, the primitives who killed you saw it fit to force me, in my trauma induced stupor, to lay on the concrete beside you and watch the blood trickle from your lifeless body.
To say it was the worst moment in my life would be an understatement. Watching you die made me a blubbering mess. Inconsolable. Ironically, it was the first and only time you would ever see me cry.
And it was all too much. How, after all, could I have avoided breaking down at the sight of the man I loved being drained, being discarded as if he were nothing?
I wouldn't close my eyes, I owed you that much. But I had to look past the pain and start seeing through it.
Start seeing red.
I saw red like the blood and brain matter that poured through you. Red like the darkening water that swirled below.
Your loss would have surely destroyed me at that moment had I not felt such loathing, seen such an intense shade of red for the men who took you from me, such a stab of fury through my heartache. And even though I was broken, even though I was shaking with grief, I made you a promise. A promise that in twenty years I have never forgotten.
I will avenge you.
And finally, my moment had come. After all this time, who would thought that a little bottle of Zafiro Añejo and some carefully hidden toxins would be all it took to bring down the mighty Don Eladio?
Although I myself had to ingest some of the poison to bring my plan to life, it was well worth it. Don Eladio's men dropped like flies. Helpless. Unsuspecting.
I felt no sympathy.
Through the creeping nausea and the impending shutdown of my system, I instead felt elation at the sight of Don Eladio's corpse floating quietly around the water.
I will avenge you, Max. Te lo juro. I swear it.
The promise I had made all those years ago had at last been fulfilled. I yelled out to the Heavens, more to you than anyone else.
"Don Eladio is dead. His capos are dead."
I stumbled, depleted, this time addressing any living souls who might be listening.
"Fill your pockets and leave in peace. Or fight me and die!"
I was getting weaker by the moment. With each passing breath, I edged dangerously closer to unconsciousness. I stumbled into the getaway car with great difficulty and quickly fell into a restless sleep.
As I slept, I remembered. Visions of our past flashed before me, like life flashes before a dying man. Visions of your eyes. Visions of your smile. Visions of my first time meeting you in the slums of Chile and your subsequent transformation into the most brilliant chemist I knew.
And visions of red. The same red from my nightmares.
But this time, it was different. This time, the red contorted. Shifted. Gave way to become Don Eladio's body, floating through the same water that started it all.
The last thought I had before passing into a near comatose state was for you. Always for you.
I could not save you. For that I will never forgive myself. I could not save you, but I have avenged you. And if this poison takes me with it, at the very least, I am vindicated.