Jason

I fell asleep not long after I got in Jesse's house. It was barely dark out, but the past few hours had killed me.

It wasn't just the sitting around and waiting for Jesse to pick me up, it was the short fight I had at Crossroads was like the spark that started a bush fire. I wanted to fight someone or something again, I wanted to do it soon.

Instead, I just slept, it was better than trying to fight Jesse.

Before I could even think about waking up, Jesse managed to wake me up without even trying to. All he did was shake my leg to get me up.

"Hey, get up." Jesse groaned as he shook me, still sleepy apparently.

"Tā mā de, wǒ hái zài zuòmèng" I slurred in Chinese at him, telling him to kindly leave me alone and that I was still dreaming.

"I don't know what you just said, but I hope it means you're getting up." Jesse groaned as he stretched his arms out.

"I told you to fu-" I began to tell him what I said until I tried to roll onto my side, only to fall off the couch.

I hit the wooden floor, hard enough to wake me up fully.

"What?" He asked, still not getting it.

"I told ya to feck off." I sighed as I climbed up, using the couch as leverage.

"Oh, nice to know." Jesse shrugged it off as I straightened up.

There was a knock at the door, making me freeze in place, wishing I was smart enough to keep the handgun on me just in case.

"Oh no..." Jesse sighed, annoyed.

"What?" I asked as I reached for my bag and tried to get a shirt out of it.

"Jesse, open the door, it's me." A woman's muffled voice came from the other side of the door.

Jesse breathed a sigh of relief, pretty much confirming it was his girlfriend. Before I spoke to anyone new, I needed a shower more than anything. As Jesse walked over to the door to open it, I pulled out clean clothes and set them on the couch for me to wear after my shower.

"Hey, Andrea." Jesse greeted the Hispanic woman outside whilst I wrestled with the bag, trying to conceal my meds and the gun.

The sound of a kiss rang out whilst I checked my watch for the time.

10am

"Christ." I gave up trying to wake up in the morning on time.

Andrea noticed me like the elephant in the room I was.

"You're Jesse's friend right? I'm Andrea, are you alright?" She came forward with an outstretched hand.

When I stood up, I accidentally pulled out the case of meds and dropped them back in the bag.

"Y-yeah, I just had a fall that's all. I met Jesse at an addicts meeting, how about you?" I asked as I shook her hand, hoping she hadn't seen the case.

She had.

"Same here, are you on meds for it?" She asked.

"For what?" I asked, confused.

"The addiction?" She asked, almost seeing through my bullshit.

"Oh, no. They're steroids for my leg." I thought of the easiest explanation, I had a large scar on my leg, she'd believe it.

"Ahhh." She nodded.

"You're young for an addict, what is it?" She pressed on.

Quick thinking came into play, of course, that easier said than done.

"Morphine." I answered.

Well, it was better than saying I had a sex addiction.

"Must be rough, so what happened last night?" She asked.

More quick thinking.

"These weren't cutting it, so I scored a bit of morphine from a doctor. When I hit it..." I paused, more for effect than thinking what to say next.

"I lost it, I just packed up my bag here and started walking for miles. Then I fell over pretty hard, just managed to call someone before I passed out. Good thing I had Jesse's number." I smiled at Jesse, making the story seem more feasible.

"He's putting me up for a bit until I can get back up on my feet. Then I'm headed back home." I explained as I quickly took the case and zipped the bag back up.

Andrea took to smiling at Jesse, praising him somewhat for being a charitable soul.

"Jesse, do you mind if I use your shower?" I asked, trying to get out of the couple's way.

"Yeah, make yourself at home man." He focused on Andrea.

I chuckled a little as I took the clothes and the meds and took them up the stairs. I went into his bathroom and locked the door behind me. Before I did anything, I took the shirt off and took the holster off with my belt, then I took off my vest.

I saw myself in the mirror, scarred and tattooed. There I stood, Jason White.

Jason White, who needed to take his meds, even if they hurt.

Instead of putting it off, I got on with it. I put the case next to the sink and took out one of the preloaded syringes then set it down next to the sink.

I tightened the belt around my bicep and bit the loose part until I could find the vein. Before I could hesitate, I stuck the vein with the needle and pushed the plunger down, filling the vein with what felt like molten lava. As soon as it was done, I took the syringe out and let go of the belt before taking it off.

The flood of a burning sensation rushing through my veins, it felt like it was going to burn my soul away. It got worse when it finally reached its destination.

My heart.

I felt like my chest was going to burst. My bones clicking as if I was stretching when I wasn't.

"Fuck me..." I groaned through my gritted teeth.

The pain got worse until I could feel the rise of fluids trying to flush out of my system, and the only way was up.

I fell over next to the toilet, tainted blood rushing out of my mouth like a leaking tap.

"Are you alright in there J?" Jesse knocked on the door.

"Yeah." I croaked, blood still curdling in my throat.

I spat out the last of the blood, hoping that that would last of it. The worst thing was that it wasn't the last of it. The second I got into the shower, there was a large red streak appearing down my face and down to my chest.

Thankfully the water was just washing it away. I managed to spit out the rest of it and clean myself up at the same time. Of course, by the end of it all I was feeling a lot better, but still feeling much too hairy for my taste, I'd have to fix that before we went to Mexico.

As I dried myself off, I actually began to wonder how I was going to do it. Gus' suggestion was for me to go as his 'slave' for lack of a better word. It would make it easy for me to get close to my target, but it might not be convincing. Gus would have to make me look like a slave, I didn't want to know how that would go, I just wanted to get it done and soon.

I got dressed into a pair of black jeans and a white t shirt. I checked myself out in the mirror to make sure that I didn't have any blood on my mouth before I went out back down the stairs into the living room.

I saw Andrea looking at the folder that was hidden in my bag, I didn't say anything. The folder was under the two guns in the bag, she already knew about them.

Jesse was stood over her shoulder, reading along with her.

When I noticed that Andrea was getting more distressed with each word she read, I gave a swift cough.

Jesse and Andrea's eyes snapped onto me in shock, wondering if I was even real or not.

"Don't say a word." I spoke quietly.

"Whatever you've read in that book, forget it. It's got nothing to do with you, so don't worry about it." I warned them, it wasn't a direct threat, but I guessed it was good enough.

"Is this you?" Andrea asked, holding up the book to me.

It was then that I noticed that the book was missing something, a small photo. The same I'd shown to Walter, I walked down the stairs quickly, trying to rack my brain to think where I'd left it.

The picture Andrea was referring to was in fact me. I wasn't too concerned about it though.

"Yeah it's me, did you take a picture out of this book?" I rushed her.

"No." She replied simply.

"Fuck." I hissed.

Quickly I went into my bag and took out the PPK and it's holster before putting it on again. Quickly I retrieved a waistcoat and threw it on before wrestling with my shoes.

"Where are you going?" Jesse began.

"I'm getting that photo back." I sighed as I opened the door and walked out.

Skyler - 30 minutes later.

Walt had gone to work and Flynn had gone to school, that left me and Holly to ourselves for a while. That was until I heard swift knocking on the front door.

"Wait here baby." I set Holly in her cot before walking over to the door.

I looked out of the peep hole and didn't see more than a tuft of brunette hair. Wondering who it was, I opened the door to see Walt's nephew standing at the door.

"Hey." I greeted him with a friendly tone.

"Hi, do you mind if I come in?" He asked, purpose on his face.

"Sure." I let him in.

J walked into the room before rubbing his temples lightly.

"I don't mean to disturb you, trust me. Walt had a photo of my brother and me, I need it back." He spoke quickly and quietly as not to disturb Holly.

"Oh, umm. I think Walt put it around here somewhere. Is it important?" I asked, wondering how important the photo could actually be.

J looked awkwardly at Molly's crib, almost as if he was afraid by it.

"J?" I asked, resisting the temptation to click my fingers in front of his face.

He snapped out of it.

"Oh... Yeah, it's very important. Someone took it after Luke got kidnapped and I found him again." He explained as he walked over to the window.

I began to realise that J's English wasn't the best I'd heard, he was fluent but he wasn't exactly the best speaker I'd heard. I looked around the kitchen where J had left it when he came to the house for the first time, as I searched through a drawer, I realised something else.

"Hank must have taken it, either that or Walt still has it." I sighed.

"Shit. That's not good at all." J shook his head.

"If Hank has it he's going to use it as leverage, if Walt has it he's probably lost it. Why did I even bother?" He groaned into his hands, clearly frustrated with himself.

"I'm sorry I wasted your time, this clearly was a mistake on my part, I'm sorry." J began to walk over to the front door.

"J!" I called before he could even open it.

He waited for me, worry pasted on his face.

"How will it help?" I asked.

"The photo?" He tilted his head.

"Yeah, I mean. It's not incriminating, how are you going to use it against your Dad?" I pressed, trying to get something out of him.

"It's not evidence, it's the only picture of Luke I've got with me through this whole trip. He means more to me than... Well, anything really." He explained, looking as though he was about to start staring at the wall again.

"I'll take you to the DEA offices then, Hank will let me in to see him." I smiled kindly for him.

Hank

Blue was still on the rise in the ABQ, of course I would have just loved to make that my main concern over the course of the next few days, but the issue of Jason White being in the US was almost bringing a halt to the whole investigation.

The question everyone was asking was 'why?'

Why had he come to the US?

I was going to go and find out, see if I could squeeze something out of Walt if I could find out wherever it was he was 'disappearing' to every day.

Well, that's what I would have had to do if he hadn't walked into my office, escorted by Skyler. The first question that came into my mind was how did Skyler find the courage to come with him, did he threaten her to do it?

Then again Skyler didn't know for a fact who it was standing next to her.

They sat down in the chairs opposite my desk, of course my gun wasn't too far away.

"Isn't this a surprise?" I asked, keeping my eyes on Jason.

He was looking at me, his eyes scanning me for everything he could use against me.

"You do know why I'm here don't you?" He asked, almost as if he'd rehearsed it.

"Done something I need to know about or do you have some information about the blue meth?" I wondered.

"Hank, you took the photo. He just wants it back." Skyler took up a position, clearly in favour of Jason.

I opened the drawer in my desk, put my gun on the desk and pulled out the photo. When i looked back at my desk, the Glock had been disassembled. The recoil spring on one end of the desk, the slide on the other and the barrel firmly in the hands of Jason. Skyler looked the most shocked out of the two of us.

"Who takes the trouble to have the feed ramp chromed, but not replace the barrel when the rifling has been worn out?" Jason asked, looking down the barrel.

However, he managed to do it didn't matter. What did was the fact he'd done it without me noticing.

"Someone who's stupid enough to think that if they change something so fundamental, it would change the way it feels. Am I right?" He pressed, tossing the barrel into the centre of the table.

I could have hit him, instead, I had something a lot closer to him that my Glock was to me.

"Tell me something, why is this so important?" I looked at the photo.

Jason was sat down next to his brother Luke, both of them smiling, Luke looking like a dog from a rescue home.

"It reminds me of why I'm here. See, Luke didn't know his mom." Jason began.

"And why's that?" I interrupted.

"Because Angel killed her before he ever got the chance to see her. Luke wasn't raised in the open air like you and I were. He was raised underground in a testing lab. He's ten times smarter than I am, but he doesn't know jack shit about life up here. He doesn't even know why we live on the island, he doesn't know what cruelty is." Jason's eyes had narrowed with every word, he kept staring at me.

"That kid has been through more shit than you would ever believe, the last thing I want for him is to meet one of the people that made it practically impossible for him to live amongst humans." It was almost as if he was trying to make me feel guilty.

Before I could say anything back, he kept going.

"It's important for people like me to live around humans. That's how we know something is different about us, it gives us an understanding of who and what we are. It gives us a responsibility to control ourselves." He spoke almost as though he was a doctor, laying out what was obvious.

The way he said it though made me sort of pissed. Almost as if we were lesser beings than him.

"Before you even begin to say 'you think you're better than me' and all of that bullshit, let me tell you something." Jason had read my mind.

He leant forward on the table, his face in mine, eyes narrowed and venom in his words.

"I don't look down on people I've only read about." He almost growled.

Slowly he backed up, stood up straight before looking at Skyler and then smiled at me.

Smiled.

He almost waved the photo in front of my face as he turned his back.

"Good luck on the meth hunt." He chuckled before walking out.

"Sorry, Hank. I'd better go with him, we're still on for tonight?" Sky asked, keeping the door shut for a second.

"Y-Yeah, hey-" I was distracted, still watching him walk away, almost as if he owned the place.

Before I could call him back, Steve walked in.

"Oh, uh. Am I interrupting or?" He asked.

"No, I was just leaving," Skyler spoke as she got after J, leaving Steve to ask.

"The fuck was that?"

J

Perfectly done, I was actually pretty pleased with myself and my line of bullshit. Looking at the picture again, I saw just how much I'd changed in a few months. Skyler saw this too, but she waited until we were outside. She handed in her visitors card and outside we were.

"How did you do that to his gun?" She asked, an underlying tone of amazement in her voice.

"Glocks are easy enough to disassemble, I used to carry one just like it until I got sick and tired of the way it looked." I explained, placing the picture into my vest pocket.

I got in Sky's car as she put Holly back in her car seat, she got back in the driver's side and sat there for a few seconds.

"J, what is it exactly you do?" she asked.

I looked at her for a few seconds, wondering how to reply without her freaking out. Like most cases the truth was important.

"Normally I oversee important deals for the men and women I work for. We export everything, our island depends on trade to grow. Mainly I deal with the more risky stuff seeing as most people trust me." I explained as vaguely as I could.

"Export?" Sky asked.

"A lot of companies need middlemen in order to get their product into the US. Clothes and cars from Japan, but mainly we deal in cars and guns." I finished abruptly so I could get another word in.

"The guns come from ex com-bloc countries, they need to get rid of their stocks, so a factory converts them into guns that can be sold in the US through registered dealers. Everything is legit, sometimes we even get military contracts to provide weapons to allied rebels in the middle east." I started to elaborate my work to her.

She seemed shocked, the idea of someone my age working in the line of work I was in was uncommon, the truth was that there were more people my age working in my line of work than you'd think.

"Do you like the work?" She asked, almost as if I'd said I was a cashier.

"There's days where you just want to smash the whole thing to pieces. It's harder work than you think, I had to learn four new languages. Just to say 'hello' 'goodbye' 'yes' 'no' and most importantly 'fuck you' which is used more than you think." I joked.

"Really?" Skyler actually sounded interested, less than afraid.

That pretty much told me she knew Walt was a meth cook, I wasn't going to push my luck with her or anything.

"I already knew English, Mandarin, Cantonese and a little Italian. I had to learn German, Russian, Slovakian and believe it or not; French." I sighed.

She began to drive away, but she hadn't finished asking me questions.

"Do you travel to other countries?" She pressed.

"Depends, if it's a large shipment we normally send a group over, I usually get dragged in on occasional business. One trade we went to Yugoslavia, pricks decided it would be funny to paint roses on the containers." I sighed.

"What's wrong with that?" She interrupted, still focused on the road.

"Where I come from, a rose is taboo. Back when the exiles happened, they sent cards to the families explaining what was going to happen, on the cards, there was a rose. It's a reminder of what happened. The police killed almost Twenty exiles and for what? They didn't want to leave.

Motherfuckers promised us a better life, when we arrived on that island it was like a refugee camp, no houses worth living in, just tents and water bottles everywhere. Everything the US gave us to help us live had a rose on it.

When you give a rose to someone where I'm from, it means to get the fuck off the island or die."

I'd gone a little bit too far, my anger had gotten the better of me, it still hadn't gone away though.

"It's why I don't want to be in the country any more than I need to, I pretty much had to suck the president's dick to be able to get into this country. Now it's just the matter of a week or so and then I'm done here, never have to come back." I tried joking with her, but she didn't seem to appreciate it.

"What are you going to do with your dad?" She asked one final question when the car seemed to go silent after I'd answered.

"I'm going to set the fucker on fire and watch him beg for his life."

Silence, Skylar was physically shaken with what I'd said. Then again, it wasn't that often someone like me came along and told you he was going to set his dad on fire. The car seemed like the most uncomfortable place in the world, that was until I began to recognise the area Jesse lived in. I could easily find my way there.

"Sky, pull over." I sighed.

She looked at me, worried until she finally pulled over. We sat there for a second.

"I'm sorry." She began.

"Don't be, it doesn't surprise me that you didn't know about it." I sighed, knowing full well that she didn't know.

"How come no-one else knows about this?" She asked.

"Can you imagine what people would think if they found out the government practically became the Third Reich? Total bedlam, every person who was serious about the 2nd amendment would have picked up arms if they hadn't been told that people like me are dangerous. Then again, we are dangerous, but we aren't cattle." I began to hate the conversation even more.

"We certainly aren't dormant." I sighed, realising that I was getting too angry to continue.

"Thanks for the ride Sky." I sighed, getting out of the car.

She tried to stop me but I just kept on walking, it always amazed me how blind humans could be. It wasn't like my eyes were wide open, but I could remember being dragged out of a cot when my parents refused to leave their home.

I also remembered hearing about the deaths of supernaturals on the news, killed for refusing to leave their homes. I just kept walking until I ended at the front door of Jesse's house.

His car was still outside so he was still in the house but when I knocked there was no answer. Fearing the worst, I tried to open the door but it was locked.

"Jesse?" I yelled.

No answer, so I was stood there with no way of getting in. Something could have happened, the junkies who attacked me could have come back for me and ended up with Jesse and his girlfriend.

Hoping that no-one would see me, I formed a lockpick out of a little bit of ice. It took me 20 seconds to open the door, as soon as I got in I started looking for the two of them.
My bag was still there, undisturbed except for the file still on the couch. I pulled the PPK out and went through the house looking for them.

Eventually, I ended up at the bedroom door.

"Jesse?" I gave one last call before I thought about what to do next.

No answer except a small muffled voice.

I didn't know what to think, so I grabbed the handle and pushed the door open, slowly with my gun raised I moved into the room, checking the corners first before I did anything else. I was quiet as I performed my sweep, it wasn't until I noticed that both of them were sleeping in the bed, I couldn't smell blood so they were fine, plus I could hear them breathing.

I didn't shut the door as not to disturb them, leaving them to stay in each other company for a while longer.

In the meantime, I went back downstairs to my bag, opened the folder and slid the photo back into its original place, seeing Luke's face again gave me a little bit of hope that the trip out to the US wouldn't be a complete waste of time. I'd get something out of Walter, even if it killed me.