Skyler had stopped leaving messages for Walt. Now she just called and let it ring every ten minutes—or, if Junior and Marie needed someone to talk to or distract them from their anxieties, whenever she got a free moment—between card games and feeding Holly and trying not to let Hank see how worried she was, when (irony of ironies!) he was the only one who didn't understand the danger he was in.
By this point she had given up any hope of Walt picking up, but she had to keep calling, the only signal she could give him of everything she felt—rage for all he'd put her through for the past year, and at herself for still caring, but worst of all—terror, that that moment, when she'd looked through the window at him, next to Holly, would be the last time she ever saw her husband.
The shrill ring of the phone was a shock to the system akin to a glass of water to the face, and she almost dropped it in her eagerness to answer, not bothering to check if it was a number she even recognized.
"Hello?"
"Is he with you?"
It wasn't Walt. The frantic, somewhat manic voice on the other end of the phone wasn't anyone she knew.
She hurried into the guest bedroom, locked the door and climbed into the closet.
"Mr. White! Is he with you?"
This stranger on the other end of the line asked the question as if his own life depended on it. And maybe it did, maybe this was one of the faceless, threatening figures from Walt's shady other life, finally invading hers, no longer something she could pretend was separate. Wedged in Marie's purple guest bedroom closet, the idiocy of her husband's church and state analogy was on full display.
"Who is this?"
"I went to your house, yo. He's gone, his car is gone, I can see all the shit on the floor from you packing your stuff, like you're getting out of town, but your station wagon is still there—"
The crushing blow of realization. Gone. He's gone. Then she processes the stranger's words, and her protective instincts reared up.
"—And there was like, a note here, addressed to you, like a—goodbye note, only there's a code in it, and if he's not with you, you need to tell me what this shit means!"
"What the hell were you doing in my house?"
"I only went over there because he's not answering my calls, okay?"
"What do you—do you think I am going to give my husband up to you people?"
She heard a string of curses, and then fumbling, as if someone had grabbed the phone and yanked it out of his hand, then the staticky sound of the call being put on speaker.
"Skyler, Skyler—there is no need for the hostility. We're all friends here, this is a safe place to share information. The kid is one of the good ones—relatively speaking."
Saul. Never had she been happier to hear the slick, snake oil salesman voice than now.
"Saul—what the hell is going on? Have you heard from Walt?" There was more cursing in the background. "And who is that with you?"
It took Saul a moment to get the walking string of expletives to shut up.
"I'm on the line with my client, one Jesse Pinkman. Your husband's partner. I believe you two have at least a passing familiarity with one another."
Skyler's mind went blank for a moment—what the hell was he talking about? Who?
Then it registered.
Jesse Pinkman.
Pinkman. The stoner, druggie burnout who had called her house once, who she had told off for selling Walt weed, who had threatened her sister's husband with a lawsuit. The guy whose website blared rap music. She had not thought about Jesse Pinkman for months, not since Hank had attacked him, when she had gone to Walt's new condo and pleaded with her estranged husband to get Pinkman to drop the charges—which Walt had evidently done, though just like everything else, he'd never explained how.
Of course, she hadn't wanted to know.
He'd made it out like Jesse Pinkman was an afterthought, of no consequence, a footnote in his life of crime.
"Look, Skyler, I don't know what kind of relationship you picture me having with this person. He's not my friend—it's not as if we were even close."
"His partner?"
In all of Walt's cryptic, veiled remarks about the shady underworld he'd crawled into, it had never once occurred to her that the kid who loved "MILFs" had followed him down there.
"Yeah—his business partner. His protégé, the Abbott to his Costello—or to put it in terms you'll understand, the other woman. It's an on-again, off-again thing, kind of a Ross and Rachel situation. Guess it's on again, since he's here, he seems to care where Walt is almost as much as you do, and he's convinced only you will know."
"Know what?"
"How to find the bastard. We have the treasure map, you have the intimate knowledge of our quarry. We're pooling our resources."
"Take the phone off speaker, Saul."
He obeyed her.
"What the hell is this?" Skyler hissed into the receiver. "Do you expect me to trust this person? To help him find my husband?"
"You don't have many options, here, Skyler." He lowered his voice. "This is your best play, believe me. This kid has committed felonies for Walt—something you have in common, incidentally. What he lacks in polish he makes up for in loyalty—a regular Lassie on two legs."
"Yo, shut up, Saul, I can hear every word you say."
"It's a term of endearment!"
The speaker phone came back on.
"Uh, yeah…so…hey, Mrs. White. It's good to talk to you again." She certainly wasn't about to return the sentiment, so Skyler said nothing. "We met before. I don't know if you remember. You, uh, came to my house that…one time."
Oh, yes. She remembered. She remembered telling the punk with baggy clothes to stay away from her husband and that he should consider another line of work. Apparently Pinkman had done neither, which she considered reminding him of, but that felt like a bitchy move, and if there was one thing she was sick of besides fearing for her family's safety, it was people thinking she was a bitch.
"Yes, I—remember you," she said, in a forced 'pleasant' voice that probably did read as 'bitch', in the end. Oh, well.
"You okay? You, uh—you got your kids? In a safe place?"
She wanted to snap at him that it was none of his business, but it didn't seem like there was time for her to be angry or confused about this stranger who knew God knew what about her children. And the question—this Pinkman—was so awkward it could only be sincere.
"We're with my brother-in-law, in DEA protective custody. They got an anonymous tip that the cartel is after Hank." Her fingers tightened around the phone. "I assume that's Walt's doing."
"In a manner of speaking—it was his tip by proxy."
"So, in other words—you called for Walt."
"I will neither confirm nor deny—"
"—What the hell, man. Why did you tell them it's the cartel? Those dudes are all dead."
"Do you think I was going to bandy Fring's name about with the DEA? I'm not you, kid, I don't have a death wish."
Skyler slammed her left hand into Marie's spare comforter. It was her worst fear confirmed.
"So—this Gus Fring is the man Walt has been working for all these months." She had figured, of course, but it wasn't like Walt ever actually told her anything about his work. "And now he wants him dead, what—because Hank is onto him?" She lowered her voice to a whisper, as if there was a chance Hank had bugged the closet of his own house. "Because he knows about this—laundry?"
"Well that is, uh—part of the concern, but as I understand it, there's been some personality clashes with upper management. Walter maybe doesn't have what we'd call a 'people-person-personality.'"
"You mean he's the world's biggest dick. I think she knows. Look, we don't have time to talk about this—we need to figure out where he is, like now. He's not picking up my calls."
Join the club, she thought.
"I don't know where he is! Walt refused to come when the DEA came to put us in protective custody. He insisted that—that he's the real target, and if he is at Hank's house then we're all—" Her voice broke. "If he's not at the house, then—I don't know where he is."
It was obvious where he was, wasn't it? Walt had been right. The consequences he feared…had come at last.
"Why is this even happening?" Skyler demanded, her voice shaking. "Walt told me he was essential to the business. That everything stopped without him. Was he lying about that, too?"
"Not…exactly. No."
"Then what's changed?"
The pause that followed was among the most painful of her life. She could hear arguing in an undertone, as if they were debating who had to give her the bad news.
"This is the problem with being a world-class educator like Walter," said Saul, at last. "You're that good at teaching, you render yourself redundant. You gotta make yourself irreplaceable in this business. Job security, and all that."
There is another awful pause, and Pinkman, she couldn't help notice, had stopped the cursing and rambling in the background.
"What are you talking about?"
"Well, I uh—I gather the apprentice surpassed the master—or is at least good enough to run the lab on his lonesome, by Fring's estimation."
Then she remembered. This kid was one of Walt's old students.
"Wait a minute. Fring is replacing Walt with—you? You're the reason this is happening?"
"That's not what—it wasn't like that—" She could hear guilt seeping into his voice, and there was some hysterical part of her that wished she had thought to go to this kid months ago, because Skyler was fairly certain she'd have had the whole story from him in ten minutes flat. "Nothing is gonna happen—he's gonna be fine, Mrs. White."
"He doesn't think that. Walt thinks assassins are coming after him and our whole family—so maybe you can explain to me what you know that he doesn't."
"He's paranoid as shit—you gotta trust me. I told Gus I wouldn't cook for him if anything happened to Mr. White. He needs me. He's got to have a cook who can make his formula or the—the business stops. He's not going to do anything. He knows he can't."
He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself as much as he was Saul and her, which did not fill Skyler with optimism.
"No offense, kid, but while I've always admired this song and dance routine you've got with your partner, I'm not sure when Walt is dead and Fring has a gun to your head, he's going to be as convinced the mutual death pact you two have will hold up."
"It's worked up until now!" Pinkman shouted, his voice hysterical. "Look, I swear to God, I will not let anything happen to Mr. White. If you tell me what this means I will find him and get him somewhere—I don't know. Safe, or.…whatever."
Or whatever. This was the person she had to put her trust in. Skyler would have hung up the phone in despair if not for that genuine, desperate panic that she heard in Jesse Pinkman's voice.
If she had to trust someone, he, she decided, was a better option than Saul.
"What's in this—note? How can you even be sure he wrote it?"
"It's his handwriting."
"Maybe these people—I don't know—made him write this before they took him off somewhere. Is that possible?"
"No way. I found crumpled up ones in the trash, like you know—rough drafts."
"Yeah, I don't get the impression Fring's people are the types to let their victims leave a goodbye missive for the nearest and dearest."
"Saul, what—exactly are you talking about?"
"I think the time for euphemisms has passed. What we've got here is your classic suicide note." She swallowed down her sob. "Whether it's the real deal or Walt is just stalling for time while he makes a different play is uh, harder to guess. There's some heartfelt words about your husband's gambling and his cancer coming back, so I'm fifty/fifty on whether this is just a cover for your son in case Walt is 'disappeared' by these characters, or if he's really going to go through with it."
"Go through with…what?"
"Look, I don't want to alarm you, but Jesse here checked your house and I sent Huell to sweep his condo. The gun's not in either, so…"
"What are you talking about—Walt doesn't own a gun."
As soon as she said the words, she realized how stupid they sounded.
"I guess I have to be the one to tell you, but—yeah, he does. I put him in touch with my most discreet gun guy awhile back. Of course, just because he has it with him doesn't necessarily mean he's planning on using it on himself—"
"—Just tell me what's in the note! Not the beginning—" She didn't want to think about that part, what it might mean about his state of mind, and she'd had enough of Walt's lies to last a lifetime. "The part that you think is a clue to where Walt is."
Saul read the last paragraph. Skyler closed her eyes. Her heart beat double-time, and then it started to ache.
"So…Mrs. White?" Jesse Pinkman's voice trembled. "Do you know where he is?"
Skyler opened her eyes again.
"Yes, I do. I know—I know where he's gone."
"Yeah, bitch!" She almost started to laugh, and wondered if she was having the same mental breakdown Walt had had when she told him what she'd done with the money. "Lay it on me."
Skyler gave the most detailed and exact description she could of what she thought Walt was trying to tell her. She made Jesse Pinkman repeat the directions back to her three times before she was satisfied he had memorized them, since apparently it was risky for him to have it on him, if he was 'found.'
Then she told Saul to put the note in the shredder, because no matter what happened, she was never, ever going to read it. There was a brief, tense debate about what car he should take, which mattered because he might be 'tailed'. She settled the argument, to Jesse Pinkman's satisfaction, if not Saul's.
Then, because it seemed to matter to Jesse, she explained the significance of the place.
"Seriously? That is…so fucked up." His voice was full of righteous anger—on her behalf, which was the most bizarre part. Chivalry in the strangest package. "You have anything you want me to say to that asshole, when I find him?"
"Please just…bring him back."
"I will. I promise."
She heard the slam—Jesse was out the door before Saul could give one of his lame send-off reassurances. Skyler hung up the phone, made the other call she had to make, then crawled out of the closet and onto the bed.
This was it. Walt's life was in…this person's hands. So be it.
She wasn't sure if she could trust Pinkman to keep his word—but she believed he believed he could, for whatever that was worth. Maybe it was worth a lot.
Whatever Walt had taught this Jesse Pinkman, Skyler didn't think he'd learned how to lie like him.
Watching 'End Times', one of the things that struck me was Jesse's slowburn freak-out over Walt's fate as the episode progresses, and the fact that he might very well have come to his partner's rescue without being manipulated into thinking Gus had poisoned Brock. It's like, tragic yo. I also cannot get over how mean these two are to each other in S4 while still having each other's backs to all outside threats (all aboard the dysfunctional codependent train, choo choo!) I like to think a single moment of different selfishness on Walt's part could have...if not fixed everything, at least made it marginally less terrible.
So, this weird fix-fic was born.
