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The flowers died on Monday.
Jesse noticed it right after his coffee was finished. Those little yellow things he’d bought from the hardware store in town. The kind of flowers that were supposed to survive frost, neglect... Anything, had folded into themselves overnight. Petals thin as paper, stem bent like tired backs, flowers facing down like sad heads.
He stood there, in the grey Alaskan morning, watching smoke ghost around the chimney. Everything survived up here... The trees, the animals, him... Just not the flowers.
Jesse has told himself it had been the cold. Jesse told himself that maybe an animal damaged them. Jesse told himself that it didn’t matter, that they were just flowers. But it wasn’t true, and he knew it, he knew it had been his fault. But Jesse told himself that it wasn’t.
Mondays always had been bad days, and he just could hope for it to end.
Nightfall came. The sky was a deep bruise over the pines. He sat on the back steps of his wooden cabin, warped in a jacket that he didn’t remember buying, staring out into the deep forest as the sun hid over the snowy mountains. Alaska was quiet in a way New Mexico had never been... No buzzing neon signs, no desert wind scraping sand against metal, no distant sirens.
Just silence.
Silence was supposed to be peace.
And, if silence was peace... Why did it feel so heavy?
His mind wandered in the silence, bringing back memories he wanted to forget, but he had never been really good at that. Certain tasks helped him keep his mind busy, chopping wood, fixing engines, cooking, fishing... But something about those dead yellow flowers brought him back to that night.
He could see it clearly, too clearly.
The hot night air. The cold metal. The sounds. The smell. Him.
Walter had stood there before him, small. His back was slightly crouched and his eyes were glistening with something that Jesse couldn’t quite name.
Jesse remembered how the machine gun had roared from the trunk, how Walter had thrown himself over him covering with his own body. Jesse remembered the chaos, the confusion, the bodies... Then all went quiet.
Walter got up, and he did the same.
He remembered walking away from him. Rushed. Like walking back from a fire you know would burn you to death.
Walter looked up at him and for the first time his eyes were empty of pride. It was the first time Jesse had seen such a sad look on anyone's eyes.
“Do it” Walter had said.
Jesse had held the gun and it felt heavy. His hands trembled as the thought crossed his mind. He could have done it. He wanted to do it. To end it. To end him. End the whole sick orbit they’d been trapped in.
But he saw the blood already staining red on Walter’s side. He refused. Jesse remembered screaming that he would only do it if he, if Mr. White himself, told him that he wanted it. For the first time, Walter obeyed, he had told Jesse that he wanted it.
Jesse realized then that killing him would be mercy, that by killing him, Jesse would be obeying to him once again.
And Walter White didn’t deserve such thing. So he lowered the gun, dropping it to the floor.
“Then do it yourself.” He’d said.
And he walked away, Walter followed outside and with a quiet nod Jesse disappeared inside that car. Leaving him behind.
Jesse pressed his cold hands against his temples, grounding himself. The memory was too vivid... The way Mr. White’s eyes had followed him as he drove away, not angry, not sad, almost... soft.
God, that was the worst part! Because Jesse had loved him.
Not when Mr. White was his chem teacher. Not when they started cooking. At first, he’d hated him. The condescension, the insults.
“Jesse, you idiot!”
“Apply yourself.”
“You’re stupid.”
It had felt like being crushed under a boot several times.
Somewhere between the desert late night cooks and the mornings in the secret labs, between arguments and rare flickers of prise, something twisted inside him.
Mr. White had looked at him like he was worth something. Like he was important. Like he wasn’t a lost cause.
And Jesse had chased that look like a dog chasing a ball.
He remembered one night in the super-lab when Walter had helped Jesse adjust his googles. The man’s fingers brushed his temples and they were so close that Jesse could smell his aftershave beneath the sharp chemical smell.
“Focus” Mr. White had murmured while giving him a small pat on the shoulder.
And Jesse was, just not in the task at hand.
And maybe that had been the beginning of the end.
The Alaskan wind cut across the porch. Jesse pulled his jacket tighter.
He tried to name it. Manipulation. Power imbalance. Abuse. Trauma bond...
Love didn’t make sense in any of those definitions.
Any label fit, but it had felt like love.
Love of the worst kind. The kind that burns your house down and still convinces you it was keeping you warm...
He’d love the rare smiles. The rare “Good Job, Jesse.” The rare hugs. The way Mr. White’s voice softened when he talked about chemistry. He’d love the moments Mr.White let the mask slip and looked scared, confused...
He’d love when he saw Walter. Not Mr. White, the chemistry teacher. Not Walter White, the man who had a wife, a teenage son and a baby on the way. Not Heisenberg, the scary bald man with glasses and a Fedora. Just Walter, the man who loved chemistry, the man who would scold him for getting high, the man who looked after him.
And Jesse wanted to be the one who made him less alone. But by doing that, he became a tool for Walter to use.
His mind wandered again. Suddenly, Jane was there. He thought he loved her, and in some way he did, but it was more obsession than love. He had destroyed her and she had broken him... She could have been the one, maybe it wasn’t the time for them.
Andrea replaced Jane inside of his head, and Brock was there too. He had loved them. Jesse had loved the idea of being a family, of having someone wait for you at home... But it didn’t felt right inside of him, he was not made for that life, he was not made to be a family guy.
They were dead.
Dead just like Walter.
Just like those damn flowers on his window.
The stars were out now, sharp and endless. Nothing like the New Mexico sky, that one had felt suffocatingly hot and crowded. This one felt distant and cold.
Jesse wondered what would have happened if Walter had lived. If they’d both walked out of that compound. If, in some impossible and distant universe, Mr. White had chosen him over the rest of the things.
It was a stupid thought and he knew that. Mr. White had chosen his pride over everything. Over Skyler, over his kids... Over him.
Jesse swallowed hard. He still dreamed about him.
Not Mr. White.
Not Heisenberg.
Just Walter, laying on the couch while waiting as the mixture of chemicals cooled down. Walter coughing loudly into his sleeve. Walter standing too close. Walter saying his name as if it was the only word worth pronouncing.
“Jesse.”
Up here, no one said his name like that.
Up here, he was just a quiet man in a cabin with dead flowers on the windowsill.
He stood and went inside. The wooden floor creaked. He picked up the pot of wilted flowers and carried it to the sink. The soil was cracked and dry.
“I forgot,” Jesse muttered. “I forgot to take care of you...”
Those words hit harder than he expected.
Jesse had tried so hard to keep Walter alive in his head. The version he’d loved, not the one who destroyed him. He replayed the almost-tender looks, the shared silences, the rare pride...
But memories, like flowers, needed tending.
And maybe he’d let them rot on purpose.
Jesse opened the window over the sink. Cold air flooded in. He tipped the pot and let the brittle stems fall into the dark snow below.
He stayed there a long time, staring into the night.
Walter was dead.
The desert was far away.
He was free.
So why did it still feel like something inside him had died that Monday too?
Jesse closed the window and leaned his forehead against the cold glass.
“I loved you...” He whispered into the empty room. “I might still do.”
The trees didn’t answer.
And somewhere beneath the weight of the Alaskan night sky, Jesse Pinkman grieved again a man who had never truly loved him back.