Part 19

[A/N: Just a quick note. I really see Jesse as only being about 22 or 23 years old, or maybe even a little younger, not as old as the official website seems to say. Plenty of time to be out of high school and cooking meth. Thanks, that is all. ; ) ]

Jesse opens his eyes. His heart, painfully thudding in his chest, chases the panicked remnants of a dream. A steady, pulsing current of images, of places he didn't want to be, plays behind his eyes. Waves of nauseating heat and cold pass through his body. His clothes are slick with sweat, and the pure oxygen in his nostrils only makes his heart want to race faster. The monitor above him shrieks.

The nurse in the room stands up quickly, comes over to her ward to try to quiet him. She flicks off the alarm, already has some filled needles at the bedside, but wants to try talking to him first.

"It's alright, you're safe. You're in St. Stephen's hospital, and you're doing fine, you just need to calm yourself." She puts her hands steadily against his shoulders, pushing down as he fights against the minor, security straps. "My name's Selena, it's pretty late now so no one's going to bother you. Just try to…"

She looks into his wide, uncomprehending eyes. There is almost an insanity in them, a regression, and she reaches for her syringes.

"Okay, okay, this will make you feel better. You've had this before so it… works." He sees her poise the needle. It calms him - surprisingly trusting the welcome shot as she quickly plunges the point in. She doesn't like seeing that junkie's reaction in her patient, but she guesses it is fitting. Someone's injected him before, probably heroin, and he is comforted by it, likes it.

"These straps on your shoulders and arms are to keep you off your… hands. You can't feel them right now, but they are completely padded and bandaged. The doctor will tell you what it all means, later. It's not… too bad."

Jesse starts to feel the deep quiet of the ward, hears the soft, steady chiming of the monitor, drifts into the lateness of the hour. His nurse is young, sweet, and does not have that hidden shaft of madness in her face, what he had became used to seeing day after day. He is in a safe, lighted, clean, new place. The silence, and solutions, slows his tremulous heartbeat. It would start being alright now. He's made it through the worst parts, his worst fears, hadn't he?

…

The DEA agent ushered Marie to a stiffly cushioned, worn, dull red hospital chair far back from Walter White's bed. Against Dr. Casler's protests, they had decided to handcuff each of Walt's hands to the bed's side railings. He was sitting up, a myriad of pillows along his skeletal back, the head of the bed sidled against a corner. His lightly patterned hospital gown was thicker than most, tied at the waist and neck, and a few thin, wool-like blankets were thrown over his legs. He looked uncomfortable, but the agents assured the doctor and anyone interested that the visit would not be long, and he could get back to his recuperation soon. It was just a friendly, taped meeting with his sis-in-law, who didn't mind if everything was recorded, and he didn't have to say anything if he didn't want to. They would be sure to Miranda the tape up the ying yang before they started. Walter did not ask for representation, and hinted at being cooperative, if they would listen to a few demands of his own. They made no promises, assured him they had the upper hand, but would see how well things went with this session.

She sat on the crinkling, protesting, red plastic surface, studied White's face as he didn't look at her and stared straight ahead. An agent adjusted the angle of the small camera. It focused more on his face, only Marie's long black gloves and legs up to lower thigh showed in the lens. She dressed the part of the grieving widow, mid-length black dress fully covering her up to the base of her neck, her wedding ring on a golden chain against the black. Jet black diamonds darkly twinkled in her earlobes, another pair of fiery, sinister eyes staring at White. She forego the veil, her rich hair framing her own blazing eyes. It was all a reminder to him of what he had done to her. His own blood.

I want that blood back.

The agent stood back from the camera, nodded, looked at Marie to start.

"Look at me, Walter," she said, teeth only slightly clenched, "don't I deserve to be looked at and spoken to?" She tilted her head slightly to one side, inched her head forward, looked into his sidelong stare. Strands of her dark, reddish brown hair fell over a furious eye. Her voice, though, was too cool, too smooth. "You didn't say a word to me that night, but I think I wouldn't have been able to say anything coherent anyway. Certainly not anything decent. Did you hear me crying in the background?" She smiled faintly, pulled her chair sideways so he could see her without turning his head, closer, her back to the camera. "What would you have said to me if I could have spoken over that phone? Would you have told me how Henry died? How much did you hurt him? Was he surprised it was you?" She pulled in even closer, her voice lower. "Did you make him beg? I don't think he would do that very easily, but maybe he would for my sake? You know, besides me, you'd be the only one in the world he would show that kind of hurt to, you might have listened to him. And probably he would show you that even before me."

She paused, looked into Walter's face, put her hand on the railing near his. A glance downward showed her that his handcuffs had left deep red marks on his thinned, translucent skin as he strained at them, strained at her words. A small smear of fresh blood marked the bright metal.

"You know, I once tried to take Holly away from Skyler. That house was no place for her, and I was right. Hank stopped me. He cared about your family so much. He cared about what was right for them even over me, or the law. He would have helped Skyler with all this if he still could. He would have eventually made me take your whole family into our small one. He would have taken care of everyone left."

Marie continued to push in further, her face almost against White's, her hand almost caressing his.

"You were supposed to have loved him, loved us. Why didn't you? He loved you."

White couldn't hear more. Even though his confessed, recorded threat on Schrader's life bought Skyler sympathy and possibly some protection from prosecution, he kept reminding himself that they had their prize, they didn't really want her anymore. In his balance, at this moment, Marie mattered more.

"I didn't shoot Hank, Marie," Walter blurted out, "I told Skyler, I tried to save him."

Marie pulled back slightly, triumphant. "So, you shot him. Where? In the back first?"

"I didn't kill him. I was giving myself up to him!" He turned toward her. "I could never do that to you, Marie, or to him. I couldn't do that to Skyler, or my son. I didn't even try to run. It was over."

"So you're twisting things like that recording you gave us, that they found, your 'confession.' That's an old sermon, brother Walt."

"No, I saw him, on his cell phone. He must have talked to you. Thinking back, who else would he have called? He didn't ask for back up, no one else showed up. I expected a whole squadron to come wailing in. I had hoped to God they would. I tried to delay things as long as possible."

Marie abruptly sat back. She remembered that call, it was so long ago in her eternity of grief. They were the last words he would ever speak to her, and she both cherished it and wanted desperately to block it all out. He was so triumphant sounding, so proud, so eager. She had run to Skyler to tell her, and Flynn, the news. It was the hardest she had seen her sister crying, breaking down in despair, instantly realizing her most feared fate. Marie, too, was expecting a flurry of activity after that, breaking news programs, a clamoring of reporters, a high note of celebration from the DEA, Hank absorbing it all in all his glory. They would have easily forgiven him that it was his own brother-in-law who did all this, because, in the end where it counts, he got him. That would have been a congratulatory time for the entire department. She remembered looking forward to being with a happy, exultant, rare husband.

"S-so what happened after he called?" she stammered. She saw tears begin in Walter's eyes as he looked away again and slowly shook his head. Offended, she wanted to shout at him, how dare he lament over her husband, lie all this time and now try to fake some reptilian emotion? Still, she had been so alone in her anguish, here was someone who could understand it, might even share it? Could it possibly be real?

It was months since that day, but he felt it all came back as fresh as if it happened that morning. He had never spoken about it to anyone, and here was Marie, right in front of him, someone he thought he could never, painfully, explain it all to. It didn't matter if she believed him, he would do it.

"I didn't know who Pinkman was working with. I guess you know him now, but I thought he could have been working with any number of people. I saw a couple of trucks come over the ridge, come to shoot me, followed me to take the money. I was alone. I hid, and called… some people to help me. When I realized it was Hank, I told them not to come." He had been looking down all this time, lifted his head up to face her. "They came anyway, Marie. I didn't want that. I was already on my knees when he handcuffed me. He put me in his truck. I couldn't sacrifice all of you for what? A few months of freedom? It was the end, and I would be enough so that they would have let Skyler go. That was the time it should have all finished."

Marie did not want him to go on, did not want to hear how much her husband suffered. She thought she would be strong enough, that that was the whole point of this exercise, that that was the one question in her mind if answered, she could rest. It was not. The man before her was now her question.

"So what happened next?" an agent behind the camera piped in after the long silence.

White didn't answer. He continued looking at his sister-in-law. "Do you want to know, Marie?" Marie gasped in a sob, put the back of her hand over her mouth. She believed him, now.

"No," she breathed.

"Well, you have to tell us, we want to know," the DEA agent demanded.

"Well, then, first, I have a few demands of my own," White replied.