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In another life, he would be like Jake.
He’ll live at his parents house all his teenage years, the thought of moving with his aunt never crossing his mind. His room will have his many academic achievements adorning the walls, plastic trophies on the desk and a big computer to study on. He would have never gotten with the “wrong crowd.”
His report card will look fantastic. His teachers will love him, maybe even Mr. White too. He’ll graduate near the top.
He’ll do…something. Some white collar job that payed good. Would he be happy? That’s a weird question he didn’t know how to answer. Maybe he would become used to the need of almost being on top, of needed to prove yourself to his parents. So much so it wouldn’t bother him anymore. He’ll retire after some years, and die old and surrounded by people.
But maybe he’ll need an escape. Maybe he’ll hide a joint at 13 years old in a pot plant like his brother, smoke it as a stress reliever when he became an adult after a shift at his white collar job after removing his suit. Which he would have many of.
Or maybe it would be too little, and he’ll seek more. Ending up in the exact same position he was in in his regular life, just older and with more money. That would lead to a quicker end.
His parents would mourn, seeing all the work they put into him gone with something as disgusting as drug use. Jake, an adult with an amazing career himself, would mourn too. Jesse can’t imagine him mourning, he can’t really imagine him and his brother being close.
In his last moments, both an old retired man or a well-to-do man who went too deep with drugs, Mr. White will be long forgotten. Hidden in a dusty yearbook.
…
In another life, he would have died young from an overdose. He would lay on his couch in his junkie home and put meth that was nowhere near 99.1% pure in his pipe and smoke it. Something will go wrong, and he would overdose.
He would throw up, foam will come out of his mouth and nose, he’ll seize uncontrollably and will eventually go a special kind of limp only the dead go. He would die.
Pete and Combo(oh…his friend Combo) would find him hours later wanting to shoot up. The’ll scream, the’ll shake him, do terrible CPR on him that would force more vomit out of his mouth, before finally calling for help.
The medical examiners(maybe the same men who came for Jane)will come for a simple clean up job. His parents will feel relieved, he’s certain they will. Maybe the’ll feel horrible for feeling free of his problems. Jake wouldn’t feel a huge way, they hardly knew each other. Maybe that was for the best.
In his final moments, Mr. White will be far and far from his mind.
…
In another life, Tuco put a bullet through his head.
It was simple. Tuco wouldn’t have been distracted by Mr. White. His consciousness would just end. And he’ll be bleeding out on the sand.
Maybe Mr. White will talk him out of murdering him next. Do something to ensure Tuco wouldn’t shoot him. Disarm him in a way? Mr. White will escape unharmed while he laid dead, that thought angered him a little. Him bearing the blunt of the consequences. And then maybe Mr. White will replace him (someone like Gale, damn Gale) starting a new story where he wouldn’t be important anymore.
Would Mr. White avenge him? Kill Tuco or the Salamancas like Gus. He didn’t know anymore.
But if Tuco killed Mr. White too, maybe that will be the end of the drug empire. He’ll dump their bodies somewhere, the news will care for a little, their families would mourn, and that’s it. Nobody else gets hurt. Jane and Andrea would be safe from his bad decisions. From their deaths. Heisenberg would disappear and remain a cold case. Like D.B Cooper or the Zodiac killer.
Or maybe Tuco would leave their bodies there for Mr. White’s asshole brother in law to find it. And maybe their meth business would be known, or at least suspected.
Then it would be the same story. His parents horrified, Mr. White’s family upset, hating him, but maybe hating him less. He hadn’t fucked up their lives just yet.
In his last moments, Mr. White would be front and center on his mind.
…
In another life, he escaped with Jane.
While trapped in a box under the watchful eye of the Nazis, he twirled the last thing Mr. White said to him in his mind.
“I watched Jane die. I was there…and I watched her die. I watched her overdose and choke to death. I could have saved her…but I didn’t.”
Jesse was too tired by that point to even be angry at it. He was a slave, and had watched Andrea be murdered and plagued with the unknown of Brock’s safety. He was just too tired. Even before this, Jane was a memory he liked to put aside. In a chapter of his life he didn’t like revising. The question of “what if” being forgotten.
But not anymore. Both right now and in that box.
Something would change. Mr. White would have saved her. He’ll leave, hopefully. And he and Jane will wake up the next morning and start right where they left off.
The’ll throw away the remaining needles and hop on the first plane to New Zealand. Maybe the’ll have a happily ever after, just like the movies. Getting clean, growing their relationship, growing old together. Living a good life. He would be a regular man.
He’ll die old and happy, with the woman he’s loved and seen the worse with beside him. The one he fled the country for so they could live a life free of the judging eyes of Albuquerque.
Maybe she’ll die first, and she would think the same of him. He’ll be sad seeing her go, but glad he got to be with her…to make it that far.
He couldn’t imagine Jane as an older woman.
He could only think of her as the woman she was, and remained. A soul that drew, sat outside to smoke and talked about her annoying dad. A lipstick stained cigarette on his holder. A disconnected voicemail.
His inability to imagine her as an old woman led him to another thought. One where they died young, both of them. Being clean ending like their other attempts of being clean. Overdosing on New Zealand heroin, their acquired wealth leading to a faster path towards death.
Again, he’ll overdose. Maybe with Jane at his side, just like their end in Albuquerque.
If he’d died old, Mr. White will be faint memory he rolled around in his head throughout his life, but he wouldn’t think about him as he was dying and staring or thinking about the woman he’d lived a good life with. As a young overdosing man, Mr. White wouldn’t be on his mind either. Too busy trying to stay alive then think of him.
…
In another life, him and Andrea will have worked it out.
A delusion idea that he could explain all his crimes to Andrea, and she’ll love him regardless. And he’ll get them out of this mess.
He’ll get Mr. White and the trouble out of his hair, move the family far away and start a new happy life.
They will be clean for good. He’ll marry Andrea, he’ll be Brock’s father. Jesse will not make him bear the weight of expectations his own parents had given him. He will be the father he needed as a kid.
Eventually, he’ll be a standard suburban dad. Mow the lawn, watch baseball, make unfunny dad jokes, read newspapers, have a beer belly. With a wife he loved and a step son he loved as well. The consequences of his drug work never catching up to him.
It will go too good for him. More than realistically possible. Jesse knew that. But wasn’t that the point of a fantasy? Imaging a perfect scenario. With no care how realistic it is.
In his last moments, Mr. White will be a memory of a bad time he had pushed away long ago to make space for better times.
…
In another life, Jack executed him in that desert.
Todd would have kept his filthy mouth shut. It was as simple as Tuco’s execution. He already accepted his life was over. He imagined that blue sky again. Those birds flying across it. Peaceful creatures they were.
He wouldn’t mind his life ending like that. He wouldn’t have spend a year as a slave to the Nazis, blissfully unaware of the truth about Jane, and Andrea alive.
And Mr. White will go do whatever he did. It would just be over.
In his last moments, Mr. White will be heavy on his mind, but pushed away to focus on the beauty of the sky.
…
But he didn’t have that many lives. He only had this one.
Maybe in an alternate universe there is an old, retired Jesse dying with family thinking in another life? A Jesse overdosing with many suits in his closet thinking in another life? A Jesse two years younger overdosing on inferior meth thinking in another life? A Jesse with a gun to his head thinking in another life? A old Jesse living in New Zealand thinking in another life? A Jesse overdosing in New Zealand thinking in another life? A stepfather thinking in another life? An executed man who last saw the sky thinking in another life?
But this is the life he was given. And there is only one Jesse. A Jesse who is a wanted drug lord escaping to Alaska thinking in another life? while nowhere near the end he’d been thinking about. But there was no use thinking of death. He only had one life. And he’ll make sure to make it the best life he could possibly live.