Work Text:
September 17th, 2036
Fairbanks, Alaska
“… you know, some guy once told me that the only thing that stands in the way of change – true change – is guilt. Self-hatred. You can spend days, months, years, beating yourself up over the mistakes you’ve made, the mistakes you’re making… the mistakes you’re sure you’re going to make in the future. And that feels good, right? All that self-loathing lets you direct the hurt that’s building up inside you somewhere, even if it’s towards yourself.”
Apathetic stares line the walls, a garden of wallflowers staring back at the speaker. He’s used to it, of course; half of the attendees are only present because of a court order mandating their presence, or because they had nowhere else to go for a hot drink and some coffee cake. The rest of them were usually so shellshocked or catatonic they probably wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to contribute even if they’d wanted to.
“So, come on. This is supposed to be a support group, not a lecture hall. Hey, Linda. How’s the boyfriend? You were all about him last time.”
Linda’s eyes flickered upwards. “He’s fine.” She paused. “No, he’s not. He’s using again. Got fired a few days ago, and now he – he just spends all day at home, shooting up. Fuck.” She laughed. “I envy him. You know? I don’t know how it doesn’t affect him. Guess my standards are too high. Well, obviously not.”
“Sorry to hear that.” The speaker’s voice is calm and comforting. “How do you feel? Feelings. That’s what we’re here to talk about.”
“I feel like a fool. I feel like I’m letting somebody walk all over me. But, you know. I love him. I guess that’s my own fault.”
“It’s never your fault for loving somebody.” The speaker holds up a hand. “Let’s not get bogged down in self-judgement. Somebody else? Josiah. How’s your dog?”
“Fine.” The single word seems wrenched from Josiah with some effort. “Took him to the vet, turns out his paw isn’t broken.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Real party atmosphere tonight.” The words are spoken lightly, as a joke between friends. “Hey, I can’t make any of you guys spill your guts. It’s gotta come from you. All I can say is, you’re probably sitting there, bottling it all up, and there’s nothing I can say that’s going to change that. But there’s no happiness in that. It’s just a long, lonely, miserable path that you’ll be on as long as you let yourself be on it. Moving past it – it’s not easy, but this is the first step.”
A scoff from the corner of the room. “So how come you – what makes – who made you the expert, huh?”
The challenger isn’t a fresh face, but a fresh voice. A skinny, tattooed native kid, probably no more than seventeen. His eyes lock into the speaker, black spheres of contempt, swimming in all the hatred that he’d seen before in a hundred mirrors.
“I mean, have you ever done anything you can’t come back from? I don’t mean, like, gotten arrested or made your mom cry, but – have you ever really, really, hurt somebody?”
There’s a pause in the room as the speaker cocks his head as he considers the challenge. His name tag reads Joshua Driscoll, pinned loosely to the long-sleeved shirt he seems to wear all the time. Pale blue eyes rest behind a thick pair of glasses that rest above a greying beard, and when he speaks next, his voice still carries that matter-of-fact conversational tone.
“I shot somebody.”
The effect is both instantaneous and exactly as desired; the room goes silent and the kid blinks stupidly in his seat. Joshua leans back in his seat, smiling slightly to himself as he realizes the entire crowd is now rapt in their attention, revelling in the effect he has created.
“I don’t mean with a needle – that’s not some fancy way of describing an overdose. I mean with a gun. I killed a man – an unarmed, non-threat, good man…” He grimaces. “I was… let’s just say in my twenties. And I was in a bad place. I was involved with some pretty nasty characters. The kind of people who’d kill you the second you became… inconvenient. Anyway, this guy wasn’t anything like them. He was – I’m not going to say innocent, but he was gentle. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Joshua’s eyes swivel the room before they land on the kid once more. “And I killed him. Shot him in the head on his doorstep, just to save my own skin. And after I’d done that, I didn’t want to go on living. Not anymore. I turned to every chemical, every drink, every stimulus known to man to block out what I’d done. Oh, I tried. Didn’t work, of course.”
The silence lies heavy over the room. The eyes are still staring, but now with something more akin to shock and disgust. He could recall a time when that infamy had been all he’d ever wanted. But not anymore.
“I probably would have died, too, if the world hadn’t decided it wasn’t done with me. Sometimes…” His eyes close, hands wrapping tightly around themselves, as if crushing some unseen object. “Sometimes there’s that doubt. A wonder if… it might have been better to not keep going. All that happened afterwards…” The skin of his fingers whitens as they crush themselves together. “But I can’t change the past. None of us can. Otherwise… what would be the point in doing anything at all?”
His head rises, an in an instant, he could be a thousand years old, a divine grey-haired titan imparting worlds of wisdom upon his chosen followers. But the flickering of the harsh, artificial lighting and the smell of disinfectant ruins any semblance of apotheosis the scene might have, and in an instant the moment is lost, all that remains a sorrowful-looking man in a cheap shirt, old shoes and a tremor in his right hand that won’t quite stop.
“I am that I am. We’re not here to beat ourselves up over our pasts. We’re here to find a new future. Misery is easy, and cheap. It will always be there for you, and if you wish for it, I cannot stop you from finding it. Happiness is shy. It runs easily. But you stay true to your virtue, you follow the road, and you let go of who you were – it will find you. Just as it found me.”
The smile is back. Not a manic smile, not a forced grin, not a dazed, junkie’s smirk of pacification. A total sense of eudaimonia seems to emanate from Joshua, and when he opens his eyes again, the zeal is back.
“And once again, I’ve talked too much. I didn’t catch your name, son.”
The native kid blinks, as if surprised Joshua even remembered him. “Mike. Just… Mike.”
Joshua smiles at that, finding something inexplicably amusing in the name. “Mike. Well, welcome. Although I think I’ve seen you a few times here. Well, we believe in sharing. You want to talk, talk. Otherwise, guys, the floor is open.”
***
It’s late – almost 1am – by the time the gathering comes to an end. The attendees scatter into the night and disperse, car headlights flashing as they’re swallowed by the void. Joshua has barely finished turning the key on the church door when he hears a scrape of feet behind him.
The usual course of sudden panic runs through his body as a thousand possibilities pass through his head, but to his relief – the same sense of sudden panic followed by relief he’s been feeling for almost 30 years now – it’s Mike, standing awkwardly to one side as he waits for Joshua to finish locking the door.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
The two figures both hesitate, before Mike continues.
“I, uh… I wanted to let you know my probation is almost over. Will be over next week, and… I’m not coming back.”
Joshua nodded. “I understand.”
Mike nodded, rolling his head on his shoulders as he glanced around. “But… thanks for sharing, I guess. Assuming everything you said wasn’t just a huge pile of bullshit to make you look tough.”
“I haven’t been a tough guy for 25 years, son. But I appreciate it.” There’s a jangle of metal as the keys are retrieved from the door. “Well, this is it, then. Go forth and sin no more, I guess.”
Mike nods, then awkwardly holds up a fist. Joshua stares at it for a moment – then taps it lightly with his own.
“Later.”
The drive home is uneventful, the streets deserted at this cold, unforgiving time of night. When he finally arrives at his home – a small, run-down studio flat somehow jammed in-between two takeaway joints – he hasn’t the energy to do anything other than flop onto the couch and groan as he pushes at the pain in the small of his back that refuses to go away.
Despite his modest living space, he’s not short of money – or wasn’t, until he ended up giving most of it away. Slowly, steadily, almost $300 thousand in the end, to two addresses and two names – Kaylee Ehrmantraut and Brock Cantillo.
The flat is still and quiet. Books and empty coffee cups line every available surface, with the only bright colours in the room the fluorescent yellow tie he likes to wear to work. He always says it compliments the bright blue shirt Wal-Mart managers are forced to wear. Were the flat to be turned upside down, nothing in it would suggest anything about the life of the man who lives within, save for two small details, somehow jarringly out-of-place.
The first is prominent in its audacity, pinned to the wallspace above the bed, a football jersey, signed personally, belonging to the Duke City Gladiators.
And the second is an A4-sized black leather wallet, held in a locked box under the bed, filled to the brim with pictures of superhero characters, tattoo ideas, comic strips and a million other creative scraps – each one signed with the same dead man’s name.
Jesse Bruce Pinkman.