Title: Like Heisenberg
Author: augrah
Fandom: Breaking Bad
Rating: PG
Summary: Walter talks to Jesse at the hospital. Post ep ficlet for “Crazy Handful of Nothing”
Note: First try with these characters but the epi was too amazing not to inspire me.
Disclaimer: Don’t own this amazingness but am completely blown away by its awesome.

x-posted to breaking_bad



~o~

Walter knew that if Jesse were awake, he would be laughing. Laughing and mocking, choice words blended with disbelief and amusement at the follies of a dying man. And why not? Walter White the chemistry teacher has been transformed into Walter White the vigilante. Shaved head, grimy face, fire in his entire posture. At that moment his wife would not have recognized him.

Except for his eyes. Eyes brimming with sadness and fear and the knowledge of a life wasted and empty and over.

Walter passed the curtain partitioning off the room, took in the site of Jesse asleep on the hospital bed. The busy noise of the hallway somehow stopped at that curtain and Walter let himself into the chair gingerly, a sturdy ache having rested in his bones and in his chest.

“Well,” he began, brushing his hands on his knees and looking at his partner’s sleeping face, “we got the money. That’s good. That’s good. And I know. I know I look ridiculous and I know when you wake up you will spend at least two days in your strange, delight-filled mocking of me but today – today I just. . .”

He took off his glasses, brushing his eyes. “I was Heisenberg today. Do you remember about him? No, probably not. We have already established that you never did pay attention in any of my classes and learned absolutely nothing from my entire lifetime of work and study.”

Another breath. “Some say Heisenberg was a man conflicted. Driven by ambition and the promise of power by the Nazis, he turned from an eager student under his mentor Neils Bohr into . . . well, let history decide the worth of a man. But he left us with something – many things really. The Uncertainty Principle. Basically – and I won’t bore you with the physics – but basically and in its most simple language, it states that you can never know for sure where a particle is or where it is going.”

“It’s like here is this wall. Just a wall, a large brick wall and it in front of me. And my wife can’t see it, my son – but it’s there. It’s right in front of me and I’m headed straight towards it and I know that’s where I’m going and I don’t know how to steer away, to change directions. I. . . I just don’t know how. My uncertainty somehow became a certainty and maybe I thought this would help, I don’t know.”

He took a breath, the air suddenly shallow. “But you would have been proud of me. Proud of ‘the dad’. And let me tell you I would do it again. Absolutely.”

Walter paused, looking up at Jesse’s face, masked by bandages and bruises and hurt and sleep. He smiled. “It’s a good thing you can’t hear me. I know you think I’m pathetic enough already. But that’s the funny thing, isn’t it? I went into this for the money, money to take care of my family like I never could. And so far the money has been in short supply and instead - instead - I ended up with more family. Another son.”

He laughed, less a laugh and more a cry, less a cry and more fear and worry and life and death and not knowing, not knowing.

“Try not to laugh. I know. Crazy. I mean I don’t even like you. And you don’t like me. But we’re going to make this work. I promise you, Jesse. We will make it work. And I will make this up to you. What you did for me. I promise.”

Walter look down, looked around the room, the sounds from the hallway suddenly invading the room. He stood.

“I should go. My family. But, um, I’ll be back. Okay? I’ll be back later.”

He paused by the foot of Jesse’s bed, hesitated, then reached out and put his hand on Jesse’s leg, squeezing quickly.

“Okay. Okay. I have to go. I’ll see ya.”

And with one final look Walter turned and walked away, walked out of the room, his path certain and direct and one-way.

Just like Heisenberg.

~o~

FIN