Walt awoke on the floor after an hour of unconsciousness and looked around to survey his surroundings. The cell was a small, white cinder-block room with a tiny, barred window in the furthest corner. It had four built-in bunks, much like a jail cell, and it was filthy. It smelled faintly of urine, which was likely due to the tiny commode in the corner. All surfaces appeared to be covered in a thick layer of dirt and dust.
Walt sighed, admonishing himself again. If he had just killed Jesse in To'hajiilee, this would not be happening to him now. If he had just acted with some honour in that moment, maybe things could have ended differently. Walt stood up and slipped himself onto a bunk. He sighed again and looked to the pile of filth that was Jesse in the bunk across from him. The kid's back was turned to him, which was a small miracle.
After about five minutes, Walt rose and quietly walked to the small, barred window. He couldn't quite reach it, so he placed a foot onto the bunk where Jesse laid. He bounded upward from it and tried to grab a bar, only to miss and fall back with a thump against the wall. With a look of quiet embarrassment, he coughed and cleared his throat, and then straightened his shirt out before sitting back on his original bunk. Jesse barely stirred at the noise.
Sitting up and hunching over so his head wouldn't touch the top bunk, Walt pressed his hands together. "Jesse," he said quietly to no response.
He let out a long sigh. "Jesse!" He said more sternly, imploring him to respond.
An old, familiar feeling of annoyance grew in Walt. "For Godsakes' Jesse, stop…sulking, or whatever it is you are doing."
Jesse suddenly sunk onto his back and Walt could see his face – it was hollowed and distant. His eyes were not wet with tears as Walt had expected. He looked terribly thin, Walt noticed, and the black cord was still tied tightly around his wrists. Walt moved a hand towards him and Jesse flinched, moving back towards the wall.
"Oh…" Walt murmured. He looked on Jesse curiously. He hadn't anticipated any of this and then remembered Jack's words from inside the clubhouse room. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Suddenly Jesse spoke.
"Whatever you want from me, just take it. I don't…I don't really have anything left to give. But just take what you want." He quietly stammered.
"I don't understand," Walt said slowly. He inhaled, perplexed. Walt was an erudite man, but his knowledge of others and their feelings was always beset in his own desires. He saw others through a certain prism that distorted them, molding them for his own purposes.
Jesse closed his eyes, refusing to meet Walt's gaze. The moment became very still and quiet, and the urge to be tender overtook Walt momentarily. He quickly cast out that feeling and said, "This is the last thing I wanted or expected, okay? We're all supposed to be dead by now and you're not supposed to be…whatever it is you are…being right now."
Walt could see that something he said registered in Jesse in that moment. In low growl, he said "What's it to you, asswipe, what I'm being?"
Balking, Walt retorted "Nothing! Absolutely nothing. I could not care less." He scoffed for a moment or two longer, and then suddenly shook his head and rubbed his forehead. "Okay, okay – wait. No, we need to set aside our mutual hatred momentarily to figure out how to get ourselves out of this room."
"We're not getting out of here alive." Jesse said, in a low, flat voice Walt found haunting.
"I would rather die trying to get out of here than await whatever those twisted men have in store for me," Walter admitted, now pacing in the room.
"I've been trying to die for months," Jesse said in the same eerie voice. "I've tried…I've really tried but they won't let me."
Stunned, Walt turned around to look at Jesse. Pity clawed at him. "What are you saying?"
"I used a blanket and tried, you know, to…hang, or whatever. But they were watching me. They revived me."
Sadness creeped into Walt, but he quickly pushed it away. Was Jesse capable of doing anything correctly, he wondered. "You tried, and you failed, is that what you are saying?"
"You don't understand - you really don't understand." Jesse said wavering shakily as he still lay on the bunk.
"Enlighten me!" Walt barked, splaying his arms wide cartoonishly.
Suddenly, Jesse burst into tears and began shouting. "You don't know how many times I tried! You don't know!" He slowly sank off the bunk onto the floor. "Ten times! I counted it. Ten times, and every time I woke up." He sat on the floor sobbing, his head cradled in his bound hands.
Walt stared at him from the corners of his eyes unwilling to turn his body to fully face him. Walter had spent the past year in New Hampshire confronting the winter of his life. For a very long stretch of months he had accepted that he would die in New Hampshire alone having succumbed to his cancer. At first he felt it was a pathetic, anti-climactic fate but soon he yielded to it as a fate he deserved. When he began to recover from the chemotherapy, he began contemplating his vision of the journey to his death back in New Mexico. That was when he decided whom he would take with him to the void. Jesse had only been an afterthought at that time. If he was found to be alive here, in this compound, he would die like the rest of Jack and his companions. Walt was not prepared for the Jesse he had before him. He didn't know what game to run to get him to do his bidding this time. He was a shell of person before him; he wasn't really someone he knew. And so Walt stayed quiet longer.
Quietly and seeming timid, Jesse began, "Would you…with this cord around my wrist, would you do it?" He looked up at Walt, his eyes big and wet.
Walt looked at him with sorrow and sat down on the bunk opposite to where Jesse sat on the floor. He grabbed Jesse's hands and pulled them toward him and started to softly untie the the black cord. "Please, please," Jesse begged.
When the cord was finally unwound, the depth of his scars were laid bare before him. Jesse hadn't just tried to hang himself. Walt took off his sweater and then his undershirt quickly. He tore his undershirt, with some effort, and wrapped makeshift bandages around Jesse's wrists. Momentarily he clasped his hands and said, "I'm not going to kill you."
Walt put his sweater back on and breathed in deeply. This wasn't like To'hajiilee he told himself; this wasn't a cowardly act. He couldn't just kill Jesse because of the kid's misguided desperation. He needed him, even in this weakened state, to have one last chance at controlling his fate. With deep conceit he was aghast at resigning his fate to spending his last hours on earth with Jesse's dead body.
"Jesse, this isn't what you really want," he said with persuasive certainty. Jesse had calmed down yet Walt could see the despair and resignation now in his face. He was haunted but Walt couldn't concern himself with trying to help him; that would be of no use to Walt.