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Jesse had just sat down on his futon and buried his face in his hands when there was a pounding on the front door. He shut his eyes and tuned it out, already well aware that it was Mr. White way before the man started calling out his name, insistently banging on the door for entrance. Jesse thought about just ignoring him completely. He had already told him he was finished. He wanted nothing to do with the man.
But for some ungodly reason, he got to his feet and answered the door anyway. Didn't say a word, just opened the door and walked back into the empty space of his living room. He couldn't shake the feeling that this would be the last time they came face to face.
"We need to talk," Walt started. He shut the door behind him before seemingly eyeing Jesse, looking him over. He wasted no time in jumping right to it. "Hank knows."
Jesse sighed as he ran a hand over his head and stopped at the back of his neck. He lowered his gaze to the floor recalling the events from earlier that day. "I know."
"You know? What do you mean you know?" Walt's tone changed drastically, a sudden bite to his voice. Something Jesse had become far too acquainted with.
"I was brought in for questioning. He talked to me," Jesse admitted.
The room fell as silent as the night air outside. Jesse could see Walt's mouth fumble for words in the dimly lit room but he couldn't quite seem to grasp any in that moment. He swore he could almost see the gears turning in his ex-partner's head.
"Did you say anything?" Walt's voice wavered ever so slightly. A side of the man Jesse hadn't truly seen since everything that had happened with Tuco. Something close to fear but not quite on the money.
"What do you think?" Jesse narrowed his eyes. He wanted to yell at him but he was too exhausted at the thought of it. All this time and it felt like things still never changed.
Walter really gave the question some thought before he spoke up. He dug deep, recalled that day he was sitting there on the futon next to Jesse and talking about Mike. He could see it in the kid's eyes that he didn't believe him. Jesse knew deep down whether he admitted it or not—and Walter knew it too. It was all just a lie to bury the truth and put it in the past.
"You told him."
"I didn't say a damn thing," Jesse's demeanor changed, his voice dropping. "It's what you wanted though, right? To get away with it. This is your chance. Pack up your family and go."
"Hank is my family and I am not running," Walt argued, pointing a finger. His rage quickly escalated as he stepped up to Jesse, practically in his face before Jesse threw a right hook and nailed him right where Hank had landed one to his face just a couple days ago.
Walt must have sensed a fight coming after the first blow or he was just tired of getting his ass handed to him because he pulled a pistol from the back of his waistband immediately after stumbling back a few steps. Upon seeing the metal contraption and hearing the audible click of the hammer being pulled back, Jesse stopped dead in his tracks, his glare locked. The pistol was aimed somewhere towards his chest and Walt's hand quivered as he stared down the sight.
Jesse knew this reaction should have stunned him but it didn't. He suddenly found himself forcing a laugh, even smiling, as he nodded his head in understanding. "You didn't come here to talk."
"Jesse…"
"What the hell do you want from me, alright? I didn't say shit when I should have turned your crusty ass in, gave a confession to all the bullshit you've pulled."
Walt opened his mouth to reply but was met with an abrupt coughing fit instead. Jesse didn't see a point in fighting for his life but he figured it must have been natural instinct. He wasn't afraid like he should be. Like he was when Tuco had beaten the shit out of him and jammed a gun to the back of his head. Like the time he had entered into Gus Fring's home and sat down to dinner with the man or flown off to Mexico and got tangled up with the cartel. But Jesse saw his opportune moment and lunged forward, grabbed for the gun without even processing much of anything. Just the niggling impulse to fight back.
The two tussled over control of the pistol. Jesse already knew it was a horrible mistake as soon as he stuck one foot in front of the other. But there was no backing down now. The only thing that put a stop to the fight was a loud crack and a sharp pain ripping through Jesse's abdomen.
It felt like time had legitimately stopped in that moment. Walt's mouth hung agape, his armed hand still raised with smoke rolling off the barrel. There was a distant ringing in Jesse's ears as he stumbled back and gripped at his shirt. Somewhere in-between he had let out a yelp of pain and didn't recognize his own voice. He could feel the warm moisture soak through his shirt and saturate his hand but he found himself staring down at it regardless. Like his brain couldn't quite register what had happened.
Walt slowly lowered the gun, his hand still slightly trembling, his face stern. "I'm sorry, Jesse. But we both know this was how it was going to end."
Jesse staggered backward into the wall. He wanted to keep his distance at all cost now, his hands pressed against the bleeding wound. He wanted for nothing more than Walt to leave that very instant—or to drop dead. "Bullshit—I told you…"
"You told me nothing." Walt lowered his chin at Jesse so that he was looking out over his glasses. He was filled to the brim with nothing but bitterness as he spoke. "You are negligent. You're a liability. If you didn't say anything now, it was only a matter of time. Something doesn't go your way and you cry about it to whoever is willing to listen."
Jesse found himself sliding down the wall until his bottom hit the floor. He shut his eyes tight, his face distorted in pain as he tried to drown Walt out again. But Walt cornered him in like a wounded animal.
"You were right though. I'll give you that."
"About what?" Jesse dare asked. "The fact that you're a prick?"
"The fact that I did take care of Mike. The fact that I did poison Brock. And I was there when your girlfriend asphyxiated on her own vomit and did nothing to stop it." Walt shared in a smug smirk. "Figured why not go ahead and share this with you now. You deserve to know, right?"
If Walter was going to put an end to Heisenburg and get his life back, it started here. It started with getting rid of Jesse, then Lydia and Todd. They were next as far as he was concerned. Jesse had to go because he was becoming far too unstable again. Besides, why not put the kid out of his misery anyway? Though he truly didn't see this turn of events taking place quite like this.
Jesse was still trying to wrap his head around Walt confessing to offing Mike that the admission about Brock and Jane had completely floored him. Walt had played it off like Mike made it out safe. Walt had planted the ricin cigarette in his Roomba and had him worried sick with guilt that it was his fault that Brock had almost died. And Jane? Jane could have been alive.
"Jesus… Christ." Tears filled Jesse's eyes as his lip curled up in a snarl. "You sick son of a bitch!"
Jesse lunged at Walt once more in an attempt to at least grab him by the collar and pummel his fist into his face but the man was too quick. Walt stepped back out of reach just in time as Jesse crashed to the floor in a bloody heap of tears and pain. It was then that he made the true realization that he had been too blind to see: Walt just used him, manipulated him into getting exactly what he wanted. Jesse was nothing more to him than a pawn in his sick game. And he succeed.
"I only did what needed to be done, Jesse."
"How can you stand there and—and have no remorse for anything?" Jesse choked. He managed to bring himself back up on his hands and knees, almost slipping from the blood that covered his palms, his eyes clamped shut. It remained silent however, Walt having no answer to Jesse's question. He raised his head and looked up at the man through red rimmed eyes. "I swear to God… I hope the cancer kills you… And I hope you rot in hell."
Jesse hung his head in that moment, an involuntary gasp of pain escaping his lips as he dropped to an elbow, his hand shooting for the gunshot wound. His words were all he had left and he knew it. And by the look on Walt's face—he knew it too. Jesse wasn't coming back from this.
He just vaguely heard the door shut and when he looked back up after trying to compose himself, he noticed Mr. White was gone. The bastard had just left him to die.
Jesse collapsed to the hardwood floor, his body and mind now equally exhausted and engulfed in a pain he'd never known. He dug into his pocket for his cell phone and upon realizing how much blood was on his hands, he quickly tried to wipe some of it off. His slick, trembling fingers barely made it over the buttons as he dialed, his vision blurring, fading in and out. He was lying on his side as he pressed the receiver to his ear and listened to the steady ringing, silently begging.
"Saul Goodman speaking," the voice cracked on the other side of the line. One voice Jesse never thought he'd be so relieved to hear.
"Saul—ya gotta take down Mr. White. Ya gotta… ya gotta keep an eye on Andrea and Brock for me. And Kaylee… Kaylee Ehrmantraut," Jesse stumbled over his words, straining to speak. He was trying to process them as they were leaving his mouth.
"Kid, ya gotta speak to me. What's going on? You fall and bump your head? Where's this coming from?" Saul inquired. "Are you in some kind of danger?—does this concern me? Because I gotta say—"
"Saul," Jesse cut him off. "Just do it, alright?"
"Okay, alright. You have my word. I'll do what I can."
"That's not good enough. I need you to p-promise you'll do all of it. Kill Walt, let his ass rot in a jail cell, I don't care—"
"Please tell me you did not just call me and you're bleeding out or something... This is just you having an epiphany, right?"
"Saul," Jesse begged.
"Okay. Got it. But Jesse, you uh… You alright, kid?"
The mobile device slipped from Jesse's hand and slid some distance across the floor. Everything was really starting to fade now. He could almost feel himself slipping into the darkness. A place where he'd never wake. He didn't have it in him to reach out for his phone and dial 911. He figured there wasn't a point anymore. He had lived his twenty five years of life and after the past two years, he was ready to call it quits.
All he had to do was slip away into the darkness where he would no longer feel the sharp and aching pain radiating from his abdomen. He had feared death and he had stared death right in the face a handful of times in the past. Now he was ready to welcome it with open arms. He could stop suffering. He could let his mind rest. And maybe if he was lucky, he'd get to see Combo and Jane again. And Mike.
There were so many things he wished he could take back. So many lives he wished he hadn't stolen, Gale's especially. He wondered what things would have been like had he never partnered up with his old chemistry teacher, had he stayed inside Emilio's house that day and just been busted by the DEA then and there. How different his life would have been and how many people would still be alive.
Walt had robbed him of anything and everything that he had ever cared about. He had no last phone calls he wanted to make, no one to give a heads up to that he was dying. A slim part of him wanted to reach out and dial Andrea's number just to hear her voice one last time. Apologize to her for everything. Wish her and Brock the best of luck in life. He even thought about that little redheaded boy and wondered what became of his life after he placed that 911 call, leaving the phone dangling by the cord.
The thoughts just kept consuming him until eventually, they just didn't anymore.