"The last time I asked for your help, you said: I hope you end up buried in a barrel in the Mexican desert."
When Mr. White approached him again, Jesse shoved him away. He almost felt bad about…but the leftover bruises from their fight in his living room throbbed in time with Mr. White's backward stumble.
Turning sharply on his heel, like he'd seen Gus and Mike do when they were tense, Jesse walked away. Let Mr. White stew for a bit, before he found out he and most of his family would be safe. Let him know what it feels like to have your life in someone else's hands when they don't seem to give a damn about you.
At the safety of his door, he reached for the handle with a trembling hand.
Then stopped as he realized his hand was trembling. He paused, clenching it into a fist; he didn't want Brock and Andrea to see him like this.
Resting his forehead against the cool surface of the front door, Jesse clenched his eyes shut, trying not to cry. Don't cry, don't whimper, don't even breathe-
That was probably the only reason he heard the crackling, and what sounded like Mr. White choking.
He jerked back in surprise, freezing when he saw Tyrus standing over Mr. White, a baton of some kind pressed into Mr. White's gut.
That choking sound could not be good for a lung cancer patient.
Another guy, whose face seemed only vaguely familiar, lifted up Mr. White with efficient movements. On a van Jesse hadn't even noticed, the door slid open and Mr. White vanished into its depths, body seeming to fall backwards as if he were already dead.
Like Gale's had.
No, he told himself, even as turned on the spot. You know he's alive!
Jesse could convince the entire upper echelon of a Mexican drug cartel and their chemists that he knew what the hell he was doing in a meth lab, yet somehow he couldn't convince himself that Mr. White would be fine.
Tyrus raised an eyebrow as Jesse strode over to them.
"I thought Gus and I had a deal!" he started.
Tyrus rolled his eyes. "You do."
Jesse pursed his lips, staring at the van. In the middle of the night, and in the shade of a tree that created a dark spot between two streetlights, the entire vehicle looked more a van-shaped hole in the air than a solid object that could hold a living, writhing, paining body.
"Where are you taking him?" Jesse demanded.
Tyrus said nothing.
But at least he didn't move. The van stayed dormant behind him, as the other guy slid into the driver's seat of Mr. White's rental.
"Can you at least give me a hint?" Jesse asked. "Or at least tell me what Gus is gonna do?"
With a silent shrug, Tyrus shook his head and turned away.
Jesse stood rooted to his lawn, as stuck as the giant trees lining dotting the yards on the street, while the van and the rental car started. The engines ignited with little noise, yet in the quiet of the street they almost deafened him as they drove away, taking Mr. White to god knows where.
To Gus knows where.
They had a deal. They had a deal and Gus would keep it, because he needed Jesse.
…but once upon a time, Mr. White had needed Jesse too.
And even if Gus avoided it, Jesse knew how good of a liar Gus could be if he needed to. He'd just seen it first hand.
Grunting in frustration, Jesse yanked his phone out of his pocket, and dialed Gus' number.
"Seriously? They put a bag over his head?"
Gustavo couldn't help the slight uptick in his smile at the incredulity in Jesse's voice.
"Can't he hear us coming?" Jesse continued. With Gustavo' gaze focused on the drive forward, he saw only Jesse's hand in his peripheral vision, tapping out an uneasy rhythm against the old Volvo's dashboard. Despite this, he could feel the uneasiness with every rustle and jostle from his passenger seat. "Wouldn't that defeat the point? It's not like there's anything out here for him to see-"
"You."
Jesse's hand — and presumably the rest of him — froze in surprise.
"He doesn't know you're here," Gustavo continued. "He won't know you were here. But more importantly, this is a reminder to him. He is at my mercy. He cannot even see what we do not want him to see; his world is contingent upon our whims."
Gustavo heard a nervous swallow and the jiggle of a knee, those adroit fingers twitching just outside of the sunlight warping through the windshield.
"…so it's, like, an intimidation thing?"
Tamping down on the satisfied smirk his smile wanted to curl into, Gustavo nodded.
This wasn't quite the thrill of watching Jesse show up the cartel's chemists, but it felt close enough that Gustavo looked forward to this meeting, despite knowing full well the disaster that loomed every time Walt and Jesse got close to each other.
Though given Tyrus' report of their scuffle on Jesse's front lawn the previous night, that potential disaster loomed a little further away than it used to.
Gustavo had enough faith in Walt's arrogance to only further push it away…if he did not know Jesse was listening to him in the first place.
As such, he pulled up and parked behind Walt's kneeling form. When he cut the engine, the silence of the desert draped over them like a heavy blanket, cut only by the occasional cough from Walt. The two men who'd brought him out here stood in stiff silence, facing outward to scan their surroundings for unpleasant surprises.
When Gustavo looked at Jesse, he didn't even have to say anything. Jesse just nodded at him. "Keeping my mouth shut," he promised. Looking back out at Walt, Jesse cracked open the window to listen to their conversation…then slouched, as if afraid Walt could somehow see out the back of his head and through the heavy hood currently wrapped around it.
After releasing their seat-belts, Gustavo spared a moment to stare in amazement between Jesse and Walt.
Just three days ago, Jesse had stood proud in the center of the cartel's attention as he cooked purer meth than anyone south of the border ever dreamed possible — unbowed under their scrutiny, and unwavering in the violence that followed.
How could Walt, kneeling and bound and blindfolded under the open sun, reduce Jesse to cowering in the passenger seat?
Well, it mattered little, now. For all the sympathy Gustavo could in Jesse's eyes as he looked upon his old mentor's vulnerability and destitution, he still clenched his jaw in angry resolution.
He opened his own door quietly, stepping out into the sweltering heat in silence.
Then he slammed the driver's side door shut; Jesse and Walt flinched in unison, though Jesse didn't seem to realize this, not tearing his gaze away from 'Mr. White' for even a moment.
Gustavo stood for a moment, resting his hand on the hot metal hood of his car as he let the echoes die down. Only once the silence permeated the triangle between the three cars did Gustavo start walking around his vehicle and towards Walt. He let the men hear every deliberate step he crunched into the rocky land.
Walt writhed as Gustavo approached. How much came from leftover shocks, and how much came from Gustavo' footsteps?
Did it even matter?
He came around the kneeling man, until he stood directly in front of Walt — with Jesse in the passenger seat directly behind him. Gustavo glanced at Jesse over Walt's head for a silent moment, before reaching out and yanking the hood off.
His bald head and glasses glinting under the sun, Walt clenched his eyes shut at the sudden brightness, cringing into himself as he tried to adjust to the light.
Gustavo waited until Walt looked up at him.
"You. Are. Done. Fired!" He enunciated every word, wanting to make sure both Walt and Jesse heard him. "Do not show your face at the laundry again. Do not go near Pinkman ever again."
Jesse flinched with every other word, and Walt curled over his knees. "Are you listening to me?" Gustavo demanded of Walt.
In slow, jerking movements, Walt straightened, squinting up at Gustavo.
"…or else you'll do what?"
Even in the quiet of the desert, Gustavo could barely hear the man. The words didn't seem to penetrate for a moment, the notion so preposterous.
"What did you say?"
"'Stay away from Pinkman'," Walt quoted, voice carrying through the still air. "Or else you'll do what?"
Hidden in the car behind Walt, Jesse slowly straightened, too. Confusion unfurled across his countenance.
"Kill me?" Walt demanded, shaking his head in slow arrogance. "If you could kill me, I'd already be dead."
A cloud passed overhead and the desert dimmed around them all, as if Walt managed to draw literal shadows to him as easily as he did metaphorical darkness.
"But you can't," Walt continued, more hubris saturating his roughshod voice with every word. "You can't kill me, because Jesse wouldn't cook for you if you did."
Walt said the boy's name with the surety of a master speaking of a well-trained dog.
"That's it, isn't it?"
In the passenger seat behind Walt, Jesse sat upright, lips curling back and bearing his teeth — even as Walt curled into a cough between them.
Gustavo had to fight hard to keep his expression neutral, hiding his triumph as Walt revealed his own ego to Jesse without realizing it.
"No matter how hard you try to turn him against me, to screw with his head so that he would hate my guts…"
It might be with a spoon instead of a shovel, but with every word, Walt dug his own grave deeper and deeper.
"…and he still won't let you do it."
Gustavo hadn't prayed since the day he lost Maximino, and apart from charity functions for his public image, he hadn't set foot inside a church since he first came to this country all those years ago.
Yet for a moment, he could've sworn that God sided firmly with him, for when the cloud finally passed overhead, the sun lit up the desert and Jesse's indignant rage almost shone in the golden light reflecting off the sand.
For now, Gustavo almost said.
But that was the last thing he needed Jesse to hear from him, no matter how much the rest of them knew Jesse would come around in time.
Jesse had come leaps and bounds away from the useless junkie Gustavo had first judged him as, but he still had a long way to go…and he had kicked his latest drug habit all too recently.
That craving for a semblance of power and security still lurked in Jesse's veins. Gustavo could substitute and provide most of it, giving Jesse prominence in his burgeoning empire…but not all of it.
Walt could provide the rest for him, as long as Gustavo could direct their conversation in the right direction.
"You weren't wrong," he said down to the top of Walt's bald head. Gustavo want to see how Jesse took his words, but he didn't dare look up and let Jesse realize Gustavo was talking to him as much as Walt. "Pinkman is loyal. Wasn't that what you praised the most about him? That 'he does what you say'?"
Perhaps that would be a little too blatant. He had no doubt that if Walt had known Jesse were there, he could have immediately have turned around such an obvious misconstruction.
But Walt didn't know, and Jesse didn't care.
"Jesse's loyal," Walt agreed. "He's loyal and he's smart, which I saw when no one else did. You're the one who called him nothing but a junkie! Your opinion of him was so low, you refused to work with me just because he showed up."
Deep in his head, Gustavo wanted to wince. Of course Walt couldn't make this easy.
Still, Jesse already knew what Gustavo had thought of him — and that Gustavo's opinion of him had changed.
"I did," he conceded. Had Walt ever conceded a point or admitted wrong-doing to Jesse? No matter; let Jesse see that Gustavo respected him at least this much. "Believe me, it has been a very long time since I've been proven so mistaken about someone. I don't know that I've ever been so glad to be this wrong." He narrowed his eyes at Walt. "But I was right about you. You are not a careful man. I only failed to notice because it was never you who paid the price. It was everyone else around you…Pinkman most of all."
He shifted his weight, as if adjusting in the New Mexico sun — and letting him glance unobtrusively at the vehicle behind Walt.
Though that effort might not have been necessary, as Jesse's gaze remained locked on Walt.
"'Pinkman'," Walt ground out with a condescending roll of his eyes. "Jesse wouldn't be the cook you need if it weren't for me. I was the one who pulled him out of that flop house after you condemned and dismissed him as a junkie; he wouldn't be alive if it weren't for me!"
"True," Gustavo granted. "For the heroin. But after that? You are the one that made him kill Gale-"
"And you're the one that forced our hand!"
"-and then abandoned him," Gustavo continued. "You let his grief and pain and trauma fester, because this time he could still cook. He could still, as you put it, do what you say. You don't care if his addictions destroy him, as long as they don't destroy your lab assistant."
Gustavo crouched down, the movement bringing him closer to Walt while giving him another glimpse behind the man. In the window of the car, Jesse trembled — but remained upright in his seat.
"He is a fine cook and finer young man that you've twisted around your every whim and word," Gustavo said, not lowering his voice despite his new proximity to Walt. "I'm almost impressed by how much you've managed to crush him to suit your needs."
"How much I crushed him?" Walt demanded, rearing up as if he wanted to rip Gustavo's throat out with his teeth. Were he a few decades younger, he might have even tried.
But in his fifties and only a few months out of chemotherapy, Walt fell back down, tilting sideways and almost falling over. He scraped out a balance despite his hands' bondage behind his back, and glared up at Gustavo with hatred almost as naked as Hector's.
"Jesse was cooking drips and drabbles of cloudy meth out of pseudoephedrine when I first found him!" Walt yelled. "He didn't even know anything else was possible until I showed him."
Behind him, Jesse's trembling slowed to a determined stillness, not dissimilar to what Gus had seen down in Don Eladio's laboratory.
"He'd be dead by now if it weren't for me," Walt repeated. "And even if he weren't, even if he somehow managed to survive the pathetic thugs and all the drugs, he wouldn't be half the man you care about without me. Jesse would be nothing without me!"
"Yo, what?!"
At Jesse's outburst, Walt's eyes flew as wide open as physically possible in the sun and the sand. He whirled around to see the boy slam out of Gustavo's car.
With their focuses locked on each other, Gustavo allowed himself a quick, smug smile. He could see his two men smirk with their own amusement, even as they remained otherwise professional while monitoring their surroundings.
Still savoring the vengeance decades in the making, this little victory made for a delicious dessert.
"You think I'd be nothing without you?" Jesse snarled.
Gustavo rose to his feet as Jesse took his place, crouching before the shocked huddle of his former mentor.
As the realization that Jesse had heard his every word sunk in, the look on Walt's face reminded Gustavo readily of Don Eladio's eyes as he realized he'd been poisoned.
The satisfaction tasted just as sweet.
"You're the one who forked over your life savings to a junkie you had to blackmail into helping you just to buy a stupid RV. You're the idiot who didn't even know where to get the 'ephedrine from when you did the pseudo cook. And your dumb ass is the one that chose to deal with a whackjob like Tuco in the middle of a fucking junkyard!"
…Walt had blackmailed Jesse?
This just raised even further questions about their history and Walt's hold over Jesse's heart. Gustavo turned the new information over in his head as Jesse seethed over Walt, but otherwise focused on the tableau before him. He'd have time to ask Jesse about this later.
After all, Walt had just handed Gustavo all the time in the world with Jesse.
"You might be a supergenius when it comes to the chemistry, but that's all you know!" Jesse continued. "You didn't know shit about the meth business or slinging on the streets. Everything wanted to do without me came out of old gangster movies. You were a nothing but a shitty teacher when you found out you were dying. All you had to leave your family were, what'd you call 'em, 'drips and drabbles', and you needed me to leave them something just a little less pathetic. You're the one who'd be nothing without me!"
That stillness couldn't last long, and Jesse's palm slammed down on the rocky ground, the cloud of dust puffing up into Walt's face and making the old man flinch.
"You're the one who fucked up killing Krazy 8, and I'm the one that had to use a bike lock on him in my basement until you grew a fucking pair to kill him yourself," Jesse rebuked, his rage cooling into ice as hard as the crystals he cracked every week. "You think I'd be dead without you? You couldn't afford your own damn cancer treatments until you started making big bucks on the side by cooking meth. You're the one who'd be dead without me!"
Gustavo reveled in the raw confusion in Walt's eyes, like a master who forgot his dog's teeth could sink into his own flesh as easily as anyone else's.
For a moment, the last of Jesse's words echoed in the triangle of space created between the three vehicles, fading into silence punctuated only by Walt's shocked gasps and Jesse's angry, heaving breaths.
Draping a gentle hand over Jesse's shoulder, Gustavo tugged the boy back to his feet.
"In the meantime," he reasserted himself. "There's still the matter of your brother-in-law."
Walt's gaze and terror snapped back to Gustavo; Jesse looked between them as he stepped back, anxiety bleeding into the anger on his face.
"He is a problem you promised to resolve," Gustavo addressed to Walt. "You have failed." He took a measured step forward, but this time did not crouch before Walt. For this, he needed to tower over the man. "Now, it's left to me…" His gaze flickered to Jesse, then focused back on Walt. "…to us…to deal with him."
Walt's shoulders slumped as the gravity of his situation bore down on him.
"You- you can't-"
"If you try to interfere," Gustavo continued. "This becomes a much simpler matter."
Walt's teeth clenched in terrified fury, and for a moment his gaze seemed almost identical to Hector's.
Both men who built towers of terror around themselves to disguise how pathetic they were underneath. Both men so quick to treat everyone around them as pawns, yet so unprepared for anyone to fight back against them.
It had taken Gustavo decades to get his own freedom and revenge. He hoped Jesse would not need to wait nearly as long.
"I will kill your wife," Gustavo enunciated, letting every syllable paint Walt's worst nightmare in his head. "I will kill your son. I will kill your infant daughter."
"No!"
Gustavo sighed, unsurprised at Jesse's protest.
"Gus, they're kids-"
"I know."
"A baby!"
"I know!"
Jesse took a step back at Gustavo's own outburst.
"While I understand why you might believe otherwise, I rarely enjoy killing, and I do not wish to murder children," Gustavo said, enunciating as much for Walt's benefit as for Jesse's. "I have no wish to murder innocent people for Walt's hubris and Schrader's mistakes…" Here, he turned his focus to Walt. "But I will if I have to. As you once put it…if it's us versus them, I choose us."
Jesse's face crumpled as Gustavo threw Walt's own words back at them. His hands spasmed, no doubt remembering the feeling of the trigger as he killed Gale.
Gustavo considered reaching out for Jesse again, hand almost rising. But given Jesse's revulsion at all three of them, he let the boy have his moment of space.
He turned away from Jesse, focusing on the excuse of a man piled on the ground in front of them.
"How many more innocent people will you force us to kill, just to keep you alive?" Gustavo demanded.
After Gale, Walt had been the one to insist that if someone else forced one to choose between lives, the resulting deaths were on their head.
Of course, Walt was just as unprepared for this weapon to be turned back on him, as he was with everything else.
Small men always were.
"Your brother-in-law made his choices," Gustavo continued. "He chose his line of work, he chose to kill Tuco Salamanca, and he chose to keep investigating me even after the DEA shut down his line of inquiry. Someone in your family will die, Walt. It's up to you whether it's only the man who made his choices…or several innocent people who had nothing to do with this."
Walt shuddered, eyes brimming as his brother-in-law's impending death sunk in.
Leaving Walt to that easy choice, Gustavo nodded at Tyrus to begin cutting the man free, as the other man approached with the keys to the rental car in an outstretched hand.
Jesse hadn't moved. His eyes shifted back and forth in terror between Gustavo and Walt, but the rest of him remained frozen.
"Vamanos," he said, holding out his own hand for Jesse to take or lean into. "You have a lady and child waiting at home for you, while I have business to attend to."
But Jesse flinched away from him.
Por la mierda.
Still, Gustavo kept outwardly calm as he tried again: "Jesse?"
The boy's chest heaved as his breathing approached hyperventilation. Gustavo cursed himself for not being more circumspect. He should've sent Jesse away to finish his word with Walter, or perhaps not let him come along at all.
With a grunt, the last of Walt's bindings fell away, and the man collapsed into a ramshackle pile of limbs, shaking on the ground between Jesse and Gustavo. Well, perhaps seeing Jesse in emotional pain will be a sufficient motivator to keep Walt from attempting to-
"You said you owed me."
Gustavo turned to Jesse. The boy trembled in his boots, one hand clenched in a tight fist at his side while the other twitched, seeming caught between reaching out for Walt and accepting Gustavo's hand.
"When we were talking to Texas," Jesse continued. "After you promised to let Mr. White live, you said you didn't consider that part of your debt to me for saving your life. Your life and Mike's life."
On his hands and knees, Walt froze, gaze slowly moving from the ground upward to Jesse.
Gustavo pursed his lips.
"You know what kind of power and resources I have," Gustavo said. "It is no small favor that I owe you. Is Agent Schrader really worth it?"
Jesse snorted, sounding almost like his regular self for a moment. "No," he practically spat. "The prick beat the shit out of me in my own living room." Inexplicably, yet thankfully, Jesse tilted his head to Walt and grumbled, "Guess that makes two of you, now."
Walt flinched, but Jesse turned back to Gustavo.
"I don't give a fuck about Schrader. That asshole can go to hell for all I care." Jesse held his hands out, failing abysmally at affecting an aloof posture. "But those kids? His wife? Hell, their wives? That's worth protecting." He swallowed. "A-and hey, you just said he kept investigating you after the DEA shut him down, right? And making Mr. White drive him all around and putting that little infidelity bug on your car…none of that sounds legal."
"It wasn't," Walt said, eyes filling with despicable hope. "That was how I tried to get him to back down, but…"
Jesse nodded hurriedly, latching on. "Yeah, so like, the DEA ain't gonna be happy, and they'll do something about it. Especially since you like, sponsor their stupid little race thing? And you're friends or whatever with the head honcho, right? So what if we, like…tell them what he's been doing? Make him look especially stupid or going crazy or whatever?"
Gustavo didn't say a word…but he did shift his weight back a little, leaning into Jesse's words and lifting his chin up, indicating that Jesse keep talking.
For once in his life, Walt did the smart thing and kept his mouth shut.
"So like, we use that. We use Schrader's illegal investigation and like…make his boss thing he's going crazy and needs to be committed or arrested or some shit." Jesse straightened as some idea occurred to him. "You were just talking about employing me on paper somewhere as a way of laundering my money — heh, what if we launder my money at the laundry? DEA already knows I was gonna charge him with police brutality and only dropped it because of the cartel hit. Maybe we make it look like he was coming after me or something? Stalking, or harassment? He's been illegally investigating you and found nothing, and then I come along and resume my police brutality lawsuit or whatever — or even just threaten to — now that all the good publicity from his attack's died down."
Gustavo narrowed his eyes, but continued to say nothing. Jesse's shoulders drooped in discouragement, but he didn't let that stop him.
"So like, we keep him alive, we make him look insane, maybe frame him for something or Mr. White 'confesses' to Schrader's boss about the Nancy Drew bullshit. Make it look like he's stalking me or something, after he already beat me up. We can destroy his career, and bury his information so deep that if the DEA ever sees anything weird about your or the laundry or Los Pollos Hermanos, they'll toss it in the trash just because of Schrader. He'll become the joke of the DEA, like a law-enforcement laughing stock."
Pushing himself up to his feet with the careful movements of the aged, injured, and infirm, Walt cringed as Jesse laid the destruction of Schrader's career — but still said nothing.
Better to end the man's career than his life.
Jesse attempted a wobbly smile in Gustavo's direction. "And I mean…I was gonna go after him with everything I had, for money and to destroy him. I don't need the money now, but that doesn't mean I'll just forgive and forget, right? Saving those kids and innocent people alone is worth cashing in on saving your life — but getting to do that and destroy Schrader's career, watch it crash and burn around him? Hell, man, I'll come out feeling like I owe you."
Gustavo rather doubted that.
Oh, he had no doubt that Jesse still bore ill will towards Schrader, but not enough to pull this off; Jesse's entire focus was on the children, with maybe some heart to spare for their mother.
Still, Gustavo had wanted Jesse to start standing up for himself — and for Gustavo's empire as well.
"Besides," Jesse continued. "They already know it was the cartel that send those guys after Schrader, and you just decimated them. You'll buy yourself time right now, sure, but how long before someone wonders what Schrader knew, that the cartel was still willing to send someone out to kill him even in the middle of…that mess you just made? Eventually we're gonna be back at square one. So why not start from there, anyway?"
Gustavo looked between Jesse and Walt.
Jesse's idea and argument had merit. While killing Schrader would be the fastest way to get rid of him and end the investigation, it would only surely end the investigation for now. Eventually, someone would come looking for him again. Discrediting Schrader in the eyes of the local law enforcement would do wonders for protecting them in the long run…but in the short term, it would be a gamble, because if they left Schrader alive and he kept looking…
Not to mention, this would be yet another instance of Jesse and Walt protecting each other, even working together almost.
"The idea has merit," Gustavo announced. "But it is not without its own risks."
He thought over his schedules, over the likely effects of his attack on the cartel, what he expected to happen in the near future and further beyond that. Most likely, the next three to four weeks would be quiet, which Gustavo had planned for.
"Two weeks," he continued. "If, in two weeks' time, Schrader has ended his investigation, then the White-Schrader family will all live, and this matter stays permanently behind us."
Walt and Jesse both slumped in relief-
"But there's a caveat."
-and then tensed again.
Gustavo looked at Jesse. "If, in two weeks' time, Schrader is still looking into us, he dies — and one way or another, anyone who attempts to interfere with that will be dealt with." He looked meaningfully at Walt, before addressing Jesse again. "I can leave him alive, but kill his family. Or, I can kill the men who are making their choices, and suffer the consequences of them — while the innocent women and children live on."
Jesse's face paled and he shivered, despite the New Mexican heat.
"It will be up to you."
Gustavo could see Jesse swallow…and stand tall, looking as terrified but desperate as he had in the cartel's laboratory.
"Well, it won't matter, because this will work," Jesse declared. He sounded more like he was pleading than stating, but he still spoke with all of what little confidence he had.
While the situation was far from ideal, this had been one of Gustavo's biggest goals, now that the cartel was decimated and all of Max's killers were dead.
"Two weeks," Gustavo reiterated. He glared at Walt. "We will make contact once we've firmly established what your role in Jesse's plan will be."
This time, he did not wait for Jesse to come to him. As Gustavo's men returned to their vehicle, and Walt stumbled toward his rental, Gustavo laid a firm hand on Jesse's shoulder to direct him back to the Volvo.
When Jesse had his door open, he spared one last, regretful look for Walter as the man slithered into his rental — but then climbed into Gustavo's car, shutting the door and looking forward and refusing to even look in Walter's direction.
Gustavo obliged his new determination, making an extra large loop to get back towards the road so that Jesse didn't have to turn his head to avoid looking at Walter's rental car.
At first, neither of them said a word, the silence pickling between them.
Then Jesse said, "I'm sorry."
Gustavo tilted his head in acknowledgment that he heard, but he did not respond.
"I just…Mr. White's gonna — he'd never just sit back and let you kill his family," Jesse rambled. "And then you would have to do something about it, and I can't…I can just let you guys kill kids or get them killed. Neither of you."
Gustavo clenched his fists around the steering wheel, silently snarling at being lumped in into any category together with Walter White.
"And if you two went to war," Jesse muttered, his gaze still fixed outside the windshield. "I don't know which of you would win…but the rest of us would definitely lose." He snorted bitterly, slumping down in his seat again. "Like you said, Mr. White usually comes out fine no matter how much the rest of us get covered in shit."
Fists loosening, Gustavo let out his breath; this meeting and its ending hadn't been a complete loss, after all.
"I won't insult your intelligence by pretending I don't want him dead," Gustavo said. "But I will say that you are one of the reasons why I want him dead."
On the open road, he could afford to glance to his side and see Jesse looking at him in confusion.
"You have sacrificed so much and done so much for the man," Gustavo said. "And instead of building you up, he kept crushing you down…no, pulling you down. Tell me, how did he react to finding out you were cooking his formula without him?"
"This time or last time?"
Gustavo blinked in surprise, looking at Jesse in askance before focusing on the road again. "'Last time'?"
He could hear Jesse's swallow.
"When I sold you the meth after Mr. White said he was out?" Jesse asked. Then he rolled his eyes and added, "And then you fucked with us to hire Walt and get rid of me."
Gustavo sighed as Jesse threw his old mistake back in his face.
"I…apologize for that."
Silence.
"Jesse?"
"Uh- sorry, it's just…I'm not use to that," Jesse muttered. "People apologizing when they fuck me over."
Thank Walt for failing at such a simple and fundamental part of being a decent human being in a civilized society.
"I should have accepted your offer then, when you first came to me offering your meth," Gustavo said. "All of this…mess could have been avoided."
Jesse snorted. "When I showed him, he called it 'substandard product'."
For every complication Walt introduced, he also seemed to make Gustavo's job easier.
"That was no substandard product you cooked down in Juarez," Gustavo said.
He could see Jesse's shoulders move with a shrug. "I dunno if what I cooked back then was as pure as the stuff I made down in Mexico."
"Even if it weren't," Gustavo said. "It would still have been purer than anything else on the market at the time. If Walt had meant it when he got out of the business, then even the product you gave me would have been the purest crystal meth on the streets, and given me a tremendous advantage against the cartel."
"…but he did mean it…?"
"He didn't come back to me because of the money or because I coerced him," Gustavo reminded him. "He came back because of his pride. He would've found a way back eventually. I just sped up the process to my advantage — and the way I see it, better I got you later, than never."
Jesse snorted again, a dark, bitter chuckled that sounded almost too deep to come from such a young chest.
"He called it an inferior product," Jesse said. "I asked him to set me up a meet between me and, well, you, but he refused. I was going to cut him in and everything, he wouldn't have had to do anymore work."
"You would have given him money for nothing?" Gustavo asked, frowning.
"I mean, it's not nothing," Jesse said. "Like…he did teach me the formula and how to cook and all that. And between that and setting up the meet, and the fact he was the one who made the Blue Sky meth famous in the first place, it's not like I would've just been giving him free stacks, y'know? More like…legacy payments? Or, uh, what's it called when like companies put characters on shoes and backpacks and shit and gotta pay the movie producer or whatever?"
"Licensing."
"Yeah, that," Jesse said. "Since it's the Heisenberg name and all. 'Cause…he did do a lot for me. And I get that this business is rough and kinda sucks sometimes and why he wouldn't want to stay in it forever. So I thought he'd be stoked. He'd already done most of the hard work, all he needed to do was introduce me to you, then sit back and let the green roll in."
Gustavo fought down his grin.
"Like I said," Gustavo said. "If he were just interested in the money, he would likely have accepted my offer to him the first time around, three million for three months work."
"Which is way over his magic number."
"Magic number?" However much it aggravated Gustavo, hearing their history together was both necessary and fascinating in equal measures.
"Yeah, when, uh…when we started out, and he thought he was gonna die soon? Neither of us were stoked to be dealing with Tuco, and wanted to be done with him as soon as possible, but we didn't think we could like, kill him or anything. And we were still splitting everything fifty-fifty."
As they passed a road sign welcoming them back into Albuquerque, Jesse swallowed again, breathing in deep as if he needed to brace himself.
"Mr. White figured out what his family would need to get by after he died. He calculated it all in his head, on the spot — shit like mortgage and cost of living and college and whatever. Seven-hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars. That was all he wanted. And our deal with Tuco got us seventy grand a week."
Gustavo ran the numbers in his head, while voicing them aloud. "You needed a little under a million and a half, yes? Seven-hundred and thirty-seven…except you two were splitting everything in half, so multiply that by two…one-thousand four-hundred and seventy-four. Divided by seventy, it should be approximately twenty-one weeks?"
"…yeah," Jesse muttered. "Something like that. We were gonna get that million and a half, then call it quits. Then Tuco fucking kidnapped us, and Schrader killed him, which blew up that plan. We tried to cook and distribute on our own again, but it just wasn't enough…so Saul eventually set us up with you."
It would be more accurate to say Mike had set them up, but Gustavo didn't think it would be prudent to clarify that.
"So you two were going to work for months towards a million and a half, then quit. Then Walt was going to make three million in three months, then quit."
"Until I fucked that up for him," Jesse muttered, turning in his seat. Gustavo wondered whether Jesse was looking to see if his men were still following them, or if Walt was — but he didn't ask.
"As I understand it," Gustavo said instead. "Walt engineered Gale's removal and your return when you did not even want the job."
Jesse snorted, falling back in his seat to watch the streets pass them by.
"Like I said, I was gonna sue Schrader for everything eh was worth. Dude literally stalked into my home and beat the shit out of me, I woulda won that case in a heartbeat, til the cartel hit. Mr. White just wanted me to not sue his brother-in-law…and now I get to destroy him, anyway."
"If that's what it takes," Gustavo cautioned. "Deceive your enemy based on how you want them to act, not how you want them to think. What Schrader and the DEA actually think of us is largely irrelevant, as long as the investigation into us ceases."
Jesse fell silent. For a moment, Gustavo debated letting him stew the rest of their way to the laundry.
On the one hand, Jesse clearly still had bitter feelings toward Walt, and that sentiment would be strongest if Jesse built it up himself in his head.
On the other hand, those feelings were conflicted, and Gustavo did not want to risk Jesse's Stockholm Syndrome overcoming the bitterness.
"There is a cell-phone inside the glove box," Gustavo instructed, and did not need to say more as Jesse extracted it for him. "Put it on speaker and speed-dial 5 for me."
Despite the trembling, Jesse complied. For a moment, the ringing echoed around Gustavo's car.
Then his doctor answered, "Hola, Gustavo. ¿Qué pasó? ¿Está todo bien?"
"I'm very well, thank you," Gustavo answered in English. "I was wondering if Mike is well enough to speak?
"Sí, sí, let me go find him…"
As the tinny sound of footsteps from almost a thousand miles away filled the car, Jesse sagged in relief.
"How is he, really?" Gustavo asked in Spanish.
"Well," his old friend answered truthfully. "Just too stubborn to admit he isn't Jesse's age or even yours, and cannot take such an injury and get back up like he used to."
"I recognized my name," Jesse grumbled, but didn't seem all that put out when Gustavo chuckled and the doctor laughed outright.
Even out of the corner of his eye, Gustavo could see and feel Jesse's smile when a gruff American voice answered, "Hey, boss, what's up?"
Jesse waited a moment, but when Gustavo nodded, he asked, "Hey Mike, it's both of us. How you holding up?"
"I'm fine, kid," Mike answered. "You did good work, down here. It'll take a lot more than this to kill me."
"Excellent," Gustavo said. "Now, Jesse and I just brokered a deal with Walter White. Among other things, he will be assisting us in discrediting Agent Schrader in order to press Merkert into forcibly ceasing his investigations into us, independent or otherwise. You said the DEA did not take his investigation seriously?"
"Nope," Mike answered, popping the 'p' sound, in a way Gustavo had previously only heard from the man when he spoke to his granddaughter and other young children. Did he hope Jesse never found out, or look forward to the day he did? "They don't know about the Hardy Boys routine, but while they were willing to hear him out due to your finger prints being at Gale's, ultimately none of them took it seriously — and whatever you answered to their questions seemed to satisfy everyone 'cept Schrader."
"Good," Gustavo said.
Jesse snorted. "I guess making friend with 'em really pays off."
"Staying connected with local and national law enforcement has many benefits," Gustavo said. "This is only one of them — but right now, it is the most crucial benefit of all. They think they know me, and the best way to get someone to believe what you want them to is to tell them exactly what they expect to hear."
"Uh-huh," Jesse answered. "So what exactly does Schrader's boss expect to hear, and how do we tell it to him in a way that'll get somebody to make Schrader back off for good?"