Chapter Text
Walter is sitting on the couch when his front door opens.
He’s immediately on alert; his door is meant to be locked, but he always knew there was a chance this could happen. Locks can’t keep out any of his enemies forever.
Slowly, quietly, face lit solely by the light from the window, he stands, feet drawing toward the door.
His way is blocked by Mike Ehrmantrout calmly holding a gun to his head. A moment of terrified silence passes before he steps aside, revealing the silhouetted figure of Gus Fring in the doorway.
“Hello, Walter”.
He can practically hear the smile in Mike’s voice.
–
“What do you want?” Walter demands, trying and failing to conceal his fear.
He’s met with a stony silence. Walter grows increasingly agitated, and starts to speak again before Gus’s voice cuts through the room.
“Your partner is back from Mexico”.
“And you had to break into my house to tell me this?”
Gus shrugs. “We thought it would be of interest to you, considering you thought he may not survive the journey”.
Mike can see the gears turning in Walter’s head before it clicks.
“You bugged his house-”
“No”, Gus says, holding a hand up to cut him off. “He told us”.
“Jesse would never-”
“He told us a lot of things”.
Gus pauses here, letting the weight of his words settle over Walter. His expression’s changed from false confidence to total fear. He knows, Mike thinks. He knows exactly what he’s done.
“You want to know the funny thing about Mexico, Walter?” Mike asks. “Jesse did what he was told. The entire time”.
Both sets of eyes are on Walter now.
"Even when he shot a man in the head. Even without you".
“Does he do whatever you want him to, Walter?” Mike continues, casually, calmly, watching as his discomfort grows. “Does he do everything?”
The implications are too obvious to miss. As expected, the facade drops. “You have no right to ask about either of our private lives”, Walter bursts out, all precedent gone. “It’s none of your business”.
“It is my business, Walter” Gus booms. “If you are endangering one of my employees-”
It’s Walter’s turn to cut him off, not with an admonishment but a sudden cackle. Gus falls silent, clearly annoyed at the disruption, but Walter takes no notice.
“Endangering Jesse?” he wheezes, like the possibility of this is somehow so ludicrous that it’s amusing. “I knew you were low, but never this low. Fine, you caught us”, he said, throwing his hands in the air in mock surrender. “But I have never endangered Jesse in any way”. There’s an inflection of anger in his voice now. He does care about Jesse, after all, or he thinks he does. In a twisted, sick way, he really does.
–
His voice rises as he gets more heated, face growing red at the nerve of the men in front of him to stand there like they know anything about either of them. Like they know what Walter’s sacrificed for Jesse, the time and work and blood that he’s put into him. Jesse knows this, deep down, and that’s why they can still work together, after everything; he owes him. He owes everything to him.
“I’ve saved him from himself, time and time again, and you have the nerve to say I’m endangering him? Because Jesse’s so brave and grown up now, he thinks, somehow, that he knows what he wants. I know what he needs”.
It’s crude, but it’s true. He thinks of Jesse, high off meth, throwing a glass at him. Jesse vulnerable, Jesse alone, Jesse looking at him like he’s hung the stars in the sky. And they think he’s hurting him.
There’s more to it than that, too- Mike and Gus have been whisking Jesse away from him at every turn, manipulating him, building him up like he was theirs to build. When was the last time Walter had Jesse all to himself, for just a day?
“That you would trust a junkie- a junkie whom you wanted dead, by the way- to whisper in your ear about what a victim he is, is, frankly, insane to me! You say he said he owes me. Well, I hate to break it to you, but he does. I handle him. I put up with him. I’ve made him the person you seem so interested in today”.
Gus and Mike just stare, Gus with his faraway, piercing disapproval, Mike with a straight face, narrowed eyes, and clenched jaw. Walter can tell, distantly, as if he’s floating somewhere outside himself, that they’re angry, but the heat of their anger pales compared to Walter’s desperation under his own. Jesse is the only thing left in this business- in this life- that he truly owns. He’s his only weapon in this battle, the only other body in his bed, the only bullet in his chamber. The wave of understanding about what they’re trying to do, previously relegated to his head, rushes into his heart. They’re trying to take Jesse away from him, because they want him to be theirs. It’s not about Jesse; why would it be?
They want Walter to have nothing.
“What, you want an instruction manual?”, he asks, half sarcastic, half bitter. “It’s not difficult, you know. Ask him and he’ll do it. He’ll do anything for anyone”.
Their silence stretches onward. Their refusal to admit to their theft grinds away at his self-preservation.
“Fine, you want answers?”, he continues. “Let me offer you some advice: He’ll shut up if you have him suck you off, but good luck getting peace and quiet anytime else. You have to rough him up a bit, sometimes, but he likes it, don’t let the doe eyes fool you-”
–
Walter sputters as he’s punched in the face. It’s not the professional way of doing this, but Mike figures that nothing is about this situation is professional. As Walter staggers backward, clutching his nose, Mike turns back to Gus. He watches Walter with a detached disgust, eyes looking at him but seeing nothing, before catching Mike’s eye. His lip twitches and he gives him a singular nod. This is as much of an indulgence for Gus as it is for him.
Mike turns back to Walter and knocks him to his knees, then smashes his face in with his gun. It goes on like that for a long time, but Mike doesn’t get tired. He just hits, and Walter cries while Gus watches, moans of pain echoing horribly throughout the room. He’s not a sadist by any stretch of the word, but with Walter- if anyone in the world deserves this, it’s Walter.
All too soon, Gus holds up a hand, and Mike draws away, starting the process of cleaning blood off his gun. Walter is curled up on the floor, face raw and swollen. Blood pours from his shoulder, his nose, and his cheek until it all swirls together in a sea of red. Gus crouches down next to him, unarmed; he doesn’t need to be. Right now, Walter is completely and utterly powerless.
“Rest up, Walter”, he says, patting his shoulder reassuringly right on top of his wound. Ignoring Walter’s flinch of pain, he continues; “Come back to the lab when you’re healed. And when you do, you will never touch Jesse Pinkman again”.