Skyler pulled Marie's front door shut and stepped forward gingerly, her shoulders slumped and her hands tightly gripping her handbag in front of her. Her sunglasses covered her red eyes and any other weaknesses on her face, but the way she walked told the story of someone falling apart.
Kim opened the passenger door of her car for her, watching her carefully. Skyler got in, fastened her seat belt, turned calmly to Kim and said, "I'm so sorry about that. Not only was I very late because I overslept, but Flynn decided to do... that... right then, right in front of you, and I couldn't not engage with him because -"
"Skyler. He's right."
Skyler stopped talking and took a few shallow breaths. "I know, I know he's right. Once again I find myself stuck in an impossible situation and every decision I make is wrong."
"You're on the home stretch. The trial has been going very well, and Judge Stephens has ruled that your confession about Jesse Pinkman will not be heard as part of this trial."
"What?"
"Confirmation came through late yesterday. There's no evidence. You don't know what Walt did with what you told him. The DEA are trying to prove it and good luck to them, if they can find any evidence there can be a separate charge brought, but it's far too late for this one."
"But it shows my character. If the jury don't know about that they're being misled."
"It doesn't show anything about your character. Anyone would lash out if they thought their children were in danger."
"No that's not the point, the point is I told Walt to do it and he didn't want to! He didn't tell me what to do, I told him!"
"That one time, sure. But how many times did he make you feel that you had no choice but to do something you didn't wanna do?"
Skyler's eyes fell.
"Including that time, because thanks to him you were cut off from your family and too afraid to speak to the police. So when someone threatens your children, and you can't get help from your family or the police, what else are you gonna do?"
"No! You do not say that to me! That is what Walt would say! You do not say that! You can't justify it, you can't explain it away - it doesn't go away, it won't leave my h-head!"
Kim nodded. "Ok." She turned the ignition key and reversed out of the driveway. "Tell me about the phone call."
...
Flynn was meant to be writing an essay, but he couldn't concentrate at all. He finally slammed his laptop shut and stomped out into the kitchen, where his aunt and sister were at the table doing a jigsaw puzzle. Holly loved puzzles; Marie secretly hated them but they had been playing with My Little Ponies all morning and a puzzle at least didn't require much invention or interaction, so Marie had suggested it so she could have a break.
"Are you gonna make up with Mom?" Flynn said grumpily as he opened the fridge.
Marie turned. "I hope so," she said wearily.
"Kim said she thinks she's trying to…jeopardise her case. I agree, I mean w-why would she even tell you that?"
"She was in a really low place."
"Well th-that's even more reason why you should treat her with… understanding and compassion i-instead of getting mad at her!"
"I am trying. Do not lecture me."
"W-what I'm trying to say is, you've fallen for it! Sh-she's trying to jeopardise herself, because of…her bullshit self-guilt or whatever-"
"Hey! Language!"
"-and so sh-she's trying to make you hate her. She's…deliberately saying things that she knows will upset you, and you're falling for it!"
...
Kim sucked up the last of her milkshake, looked out at the view and sighed. "Ok. I wanna tell you something that may surprise you. Trials are not about truth. Trials are about arguments. For me, I try to make them about justice. I try to fight wherever I can for justice. But justice isn't about truth either. Justice is about what is fair. So it might be true that someone stole a cell phone from someone else's purse. And the person whose phone it was might be really upset and they might have been really hurt or scared by it. And they might be saying that to the court and that might be the truth. But the person who stole it might have done so to sell it to get money to buy food for their children. It's true that they stole the phone and it's true that that's against the law, and it's true that that crime hurt somebody else. But would it be fair to sentence that person based solely on that, or do you think that the judge and jury should also take into account the fact that that person's children were starving?"
Skyler kept looking down, focussing all her energy into trying to breathe slower.
"Say the person who stole the phone was black or Indian or had a previous criminal record. Or they were just poor and couldn't afford a proper defence. And the person whose phone was stolen was rich and white. In cases like that, justice barely ever gets done. A trial will be prosecuted and it will be based on truth, but the result will be completely unfair. I've spent most of my career trying to fight that wherever I can. And it doesn't mean I'm fighting for truth, it means I'm fighting for justice, so when I can see that the odds are stacked against someone, I'm not at all averse to sometimes having to manipulate the truth in order to get justice. I'm not talking in big ways - I have done it in big ways in the past but I don't anymore. I'm talking things like allowing my witnesses and defendants to sob openly in court because it gets the jury's sympathy. I'm talking things like using pieces of evidence we happen to have that don't tell the full story, but that give enough of an impression that they're worth using anyway. In the case of the phone call, it may not be true that Walt yelled at you or threatened you directly, but he did force you to do what you did through putting you in a position that made you feel that you had no other option. He did make you afraid. He did compromise you. He did make you feel that you couldn't get out. He did control you. So it doesn't matter that he didn't do those things in exactly the way he implied in the phone call, the point is he did them, and with this phone call we can easily show that to the jury. Without, all we can do is argue. The Prosecution can also argue, very very well, and they have a lot more money and power to do it and they have the media in their pocket. The media is and has always been whipped up into an anti-Heisenberg frenzy that spins around and doesn't care who it hits. You are a scapegoat. They grabbed you and they've latched on. Truth can't punch its weight against that, you need something to help it along. That phone call will do that."
Kim held Skyler's eyes for a long second. Skyler looked away.
"So that's my first point. A trial is not about truth, it's not even about proof. It's about arguing, and if you've got something to argue with you grab hold of it and milk it for all it's worth. My second point, and I'm not sure how much this will mean to you, but Walt made that phone call because he didn't want you to take the fall for what he did. That was his gift to you. Maybe you should take it."
"I don't want anything from him."
"Ok, but you know if you don't, that won't hurt him at all. Only you and your children. If he was still alive, and he'd been taken into custody, do you think he'd except full responsibility? Would he deny that you knew anything of significance?"
"Maybe."
"You didn't know anything of significance. You have said many times that if you had known what was really going on you would not have helped him."
"That's no excuse."
"He rowed you up shit creek and left you there without a paddle, and he even left you believing that you rowed there of your own accord when you didn't. But he left you one lifeline. Your children need you to use it."
Skyler gripped the edge of the bench and leaned forward, her shoulders above her ears, her teeth grinding and her mouth dry. "There's another problem," she said. "I umm… I lose more control every day, I… I c-can barely even move properly anymore. I can't straighten my body, I can't relax my muscles, I can't walk properly. I can't even think, I can't follow...thoughts. My mind is either screaming with fear and self-hatred, the same self-deprecating thoughts rolling over and over again, banging into me, pushing me...and the same images of ...Hank in the diner and ...Holly in the truck and… Hank and Marie and ...and Flynn and Drew Sharp… I see those images so often now that I have trouble focusing on my family how they are now. I can't follow things or remember things that are happening now. And it makes me… a bad mother - I've missed Holly's bedtime more times than I can count, I've forgotten to buy things she needed like vegetables and books and band-aids, and the last few days, most of the time I've spent with her I was sleeping. She knows I'm not well and she is now trying to look after me instead of me looking after her. Flynn's been doing that for a long time now. I don't look after them, they look after me."
"That doesn't mean they don't still need you."
"Yeah, but the reason I'm like this is that I can't forgive myself for everything that's happened. I know that's the reason because it never leaves my mind. Even when I try to make it, it won't go. If I try to have a night off or if I try to smile or… It won't let me. It never goes away, and lately it's been… overwhelming me more and more often. Making me hurt myself and... sometimes it even makes me wanna die. It's because of what I did and the destruction it caused, and… I think the only way I can get past that is if I'm properly punished, with everything the law can throw at me. If that doesn't happen... if I get off or if I just go to jail for a year, or… then I can't give my children anything because I'll be like I am now. I can't give them what they need."
"Skyler, I'm listening to everything you're saying and I'm really sorry that you're going through all of that. But the way to get past it isn't prison. It's therapy. I know what I've seen and what you've told me, and what Heather has told me and what I've been through myself in the past, and what you need to get you out of it is regular ongoing therapy and probably medication, and-"
"I've got some meds, they're not helping."
"No. You need therapy. Which is not only something that you can't access effectively from prison, but also everything about prison will make everything you've described infinitely worse. Prison is designed to make people feel horrible. To remove them from their families, to give them lots of time alone to ruminate on what they did whilst at the same time subjecting them to some truly frightening situations with other inmates, and cutting them off from everything they ever cared about and from all control over their own lives. I'd say about 70% of inmates are depressed and 90% are afraid. And almost all of them are traumatised, and it just doesn't go away - you can't treat mental illness in a place like that, it only gets worse. So you're right that you can't look after your children effectively when you're mentally unwell, but prison will make that worse, not better. And if you're having suicidal thoughts now, well prison will make those worse too and then… if you go in there and never come back… that will mess your children up very thoroughly. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to scare you, I just… I know that you're scared already and the way out of that is not prison, it's therapy. One of the reasons I've been working so hard to try and get you out of this is that it was obvious to me from the moment I met you that your mental health would not survive prison."
"What do you mean obvious?"
"I mean that the most obvious thing about you is your strength, but I can see it wavering. And prison could make that waver permanent."