exsiliumlogs | [open] out of the blue and into the black

Entry tags:

[open] out of the blue and into the black

Date & Time: Throughout August
Location: Around Exsilium
Characters: Saul & TBA
Summary: A catch-all log for Saul's many business etc. meetings throughout the month. Again.
Warnings: N/A; will be updated accordingly.

[The more time Saul spends in Exsilium, the more he realizes he misses Albuquerque. And the more he misses Albuquerque, the more he realizes what he's missing isn't so much ABQ itself, but the idealized version of the city he's constructed in his head over the past four and a half months where nothing mattered but his business and his life and it was all hunky-dory, for the most part.

And then he thinks, shit. Four and a half months. Damn.

Albuquerque was perfect. People came and went, sure, but not at the same rate they do here. Back home, all Saul anticipated on the first of every month was the flipping of a calendar page. (National Geographic's American Landmarks calendar, to be precise. Francesca gets — used to get — him one every year. August would have been a photo of the Alamo at sunset, if he remembers correctly. Ha.) But here — here, each new month brings a horde of unhappy newbies and random disappearances, and there's really only so much doom and gloom Saul can take before it really starts getting to him. He used to be able to track people down. Here? He's helpless.

He misses the sunshine, all 300+ days of it. The Initiative-sponsored trip to the beach was nice, but his tan's already faded and he's pretty sure he's developing some kind of vitamin D problem. He also misses the security of having a boatload of money sitting in his wall. He misses a lot of things. Even the dust storms.

At least he has Jesse. But he can't really cling to Jesse with Walter hanging around, and then there's the problem of Jesse not wanting to be clung to in the first place. Saul can hear that stupid kid's voice in his head just thinking about it: You don't need me, yo. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Right now, it feels like the former. It hasn't stopped feeling that way since April.

Anyway, here's the weird thing: much as he misses home, Walter's presence has made it crystal clear to Saul that he absolutely does not want to go back to that mess. Not now, maybe not ever. He has a bad feeling, and he likes to think he's a pretty intuitive guy — nine times out of ten, his gut's right. Sometimes it's indigestion. But those are odds you don't mess with, and the chow here is just bland enough that it's much easier on his stomach than all that Mexican food.

Somehow, he got it in his head that the more he does in and for this place, the less likely it is that he'll see the sunshine and his money and his calendar and all that dust again, so he's twice as busy this month as he was last month. Three times, maybe. Training, yes; doing business, yes; fueling up on caffeine, hell yes. But August has the added bonus of new things that need caring for: his kitten. His girlfriend. His stupid-as-shit-in-hindsight idea of forming a Transport-run government.

He'd wonder what he was thinking, but he already knows. Better to burn out than fade away, right?]

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[She can try to crowd his personal space, but he's usually the one doing the same thing. It doesn't faze him. If he's at all worried that she might hit him, it doesn't show.]

You wanna come home with me, sometime? Come back to Albuquerque, have some real Mexican food, bask in the desert sun for a little while? You can meet my secretary, Francesca. You'd like her. And then maybe I can introduce you to all the people who are just as scared of Walter as I am. Because you only get part of the picture, looking at Jesse. He's an impressive wreck, isn't he? But he wasn't in great shape when Walter found him, so maybe it's not all that surprising that it was so easy for some junkie kid to lose everything to one man.

[He pauses for a breath, but it's quick and taken in between his teeth.]

I just wish you could see the progression I saw, how things got so bad so fast. You wouldn't believe it. Hell, you don't believe it. You must think I'm cuckoo bananas, right? Just paranoid and delusional and scared. But let me reiterate: The man who walked into my office was just Walter White, exactly as I described him to you. And then time passed, and shit happened, and all of a sudden I was looking at Heisenberg. What does that tell you, that this is a man who just — who up and took on an entirely new identity, like some comic book villain? And it worked. It's a damn shame we're all just a bunch of mundane, giftless humans, Sonya. The only person who can stop him never will. So.

[He ends with a tired shrug, like he's finally run out of steam.]

[And that grinds further on her patience. It grinds her terribly. And so she leans forward. With Goodman, she always keeps up that image of the posh, elegant, charmingly ruthless lawyer, a consummate member of the middle class, just like she does with all her colleagues back home, all her opponents. They like her like that. They understand her like that.]

I grew up in the Bronx, Goodman. Not even a nice part of the Bronx. A shitty fucking part of it. My parents were two refugees from the ass-end of Eurasia, and they rented the place they could afford until finally we had enough to move someplace that wasn't a step above a flophouse. All around me, I saw kids who were poor and humiliated and powerless staring with big eyes at the men with the guns and the drugs and the respect. I went to school with them, watched them grow up to get badder and angrier and worse. Had one of those kids in my fucking house, as a matter of fact.

[She didn't mean to say that; her mouth twists a moment, and then she shakes her head and continues:]

Congratulations. You saw the evolution of some white guy from a good white community into a drug dealer and murderer. I saw a hundred of those, just nobody gives a shit 'cause it's expected. I saw these good, nice, humiliated kids look for that respect and that power with the gangs, and I saw some of them get killed and some of them get worse. I work Manhattan so that I don't have to see the kids I went to school with in my courtroom.

You're acting like he's something new. Something special. Only difference is he comes from a different background. And only difference is that you let yourself get too close to a hood 'cause you didn't see it coming, so now you're all tied up emotionally. For me? He's just one like any other.

So tell me what it is I don't get.

[This is what infuriates him most. He knows he's about to yell, he knows there are people around, and he doesn't care.]

That's not fair! You can't compare our experiences like that when you're not from my world! You've got people with fucking superpowers literally flying around — do you have vigilantes, too? A few regular ol' Gothamites running the streets and taking down the big bad gangsters? We don't have that! So great, okay, the archetype theory is true and there are Jesse Pinkmans and Walter Whites in every world, fine. Whatever. But you can't say oh, well, in my world — because it's not your world, Sonya! It doesn't work! Walter might not seem comparable to the villains in your world — your world, Sonya, yours — but he sure as shit is one of the most twisted, dangerous ones in mine. Stop invalidating every goddamn thing I say and telling me I'm wrong! I'm not wrong!

Well, this isn't your world either, Goodman!

[Bitterly:] Don't I know it. But with part of my world here — what the hell am I supposed to do?

[He's quick to hold up a hand.]

I don't want you to answer that. What I want is a drink.

[And Sonya nearly grinds her teeth, nearly snaps something angry - but bites it back. Just shakes her head and turns to the left, stalking out into the evening.]

Fine. This way.

[Saul hopes the walk to wherever they're going will cool them both off, which is why he's quiet for the duration, attention alternating between the horizon and the ground underfoot.]

[Sonya's silent, too, but hers is a fumey sort of silence. She knows she shouldn't be mad like this. She knows she should be showing sympathy, because irrational reactions are irrational reactions; it's not like Goodman and Pinkman chose to be fucking nuts. But their fucking drama has just created a whole shitstorm that's enveloped her and who even knows how many others, and now the man responsible is gone and yet they refuse to let go of this drama. They just decide to keep being scared.

She was fucking threatened with...In spite of everything, she decided to keep with it. Keep with them, to try to help them resolve their fucking issues. Starting to seem like that's not even possible.

She pushes open the door, stalks inside. Points to a table.]

Sit there.

[He follows, looks to the table, and sits.

He's so good with directions!

And then he looks to her, all expectant-like, but there's something in the way his eyes are slightly narrowed that suggests something's annoying him. Like maybe how she's bossing him around.]

[She gets a cranberry juice for herself - standard drink, done up with a wedge of lime to look like a proper cocktail and everything - and gets him a vodka martini. She brings it over to him, sets it down in front of him, sits opposite.]

[Saul approves of her choice, but all he really does is stare at it.

And stare. And stare. And when he finally speaks, he's still looking at the drink — not her.]

Sorry.

Don't apologize to the martini; just drink it.

[She sighs, though, and leans back in her chair, and glances balefully off to the side - but she's losing some of her anger.]

I'm not trying to be shitty saying all this, you know.

I know. I'm just tired.

[He takes a sip, which quickly turns into a gulp.]

And it's kinda impossible not to take all this personally.

It's completely possible.

[She lifts her eyebrows, sitting forward, engaging a bit more.]

I wouldn't be taking it personally, if our positions were reversed. You've lost your professionalism.

You spend six months here dealing with the kind of shit I've been dealing with, and then we'll see whether your professionalism decided to tag along for the ride. My money'd be on "no."

[Bitterly:]

Oh, I don't know. I've gotten a pretty good taste of your shit, haven't I?

[He smirks against his glass, taking another long drink.]

Ah, there it is. Go on, continue. Tell me how you really feel.

[Her lips thin; she looks to the side.]

We're not talking about me.

We never do, do we?

[Her eyes snap over to him. Her patience and temper have been ground down enough that, finally, finally, she says:]

Okay. Sure. You want to know how I really feel? You want me to tell you? How I feel is that I almost got raped by Pinkman and I'm not even allowed to hate him. No: I have to feel sorry for him. I have to pity him, when I was so fucking - [She falters for a moment, then presses on - ] Scared. Because it wasn't his fault. Because it's not any of your faults, because you're just ruled over by Walter White. I just wanted to fucking help him, and he -

[She cuts herself off and shakes her head; she's not going that far down that path. She's not laying her terror bare for Saul to see. She's still guarded enough that's not a possibility.]

And still I kept with it. Because of you. Because I thought you were smart, and I thought you could help me get home. Because you seemed like the only person not talking about fighting and stabbing our way out of here. But you - you just went on your merry path of being terrified of this man, stayed paralyzed and terrified. So I thought, okay, whatever, I'll help him, try to get this worked out, even though people are fucking talking about me being murdered and dissolved in acid for helping, because Saul's got potential; it's just gonna be ending this that's key. And now there's a fucking end in sight and instead of accepting that you double down on your need to be afraid. You just work yourself into this frenzy -

You know what I think? I think I need to get home so that if the fucking United Earth comes knocking on the door of my parents' apartment I can be there to keep them from bleeding my family like pigs. I need to get home where there are police who can keep people like Pinkman from trying to...And you know what else I think? I think that that's never gonna happen. I think that I'm going to have to stay here for six months, for a fucking year, until I hear that New York's been overrun by these fascists and that my boss has been killed and my brothers have been killed and my mom and dad have been killed. All because all of you, the whole fucking lot of you, can't fucking -

[Her voice breaks; she reaches up an unsteady hand to her eyes and finds that somewhere in the course of that speech she's ended up close to tears. She takes a moment to compose herself, breathing hard, before lowering her hand again. Her eyes are dry, at least.]

I'm tired of it.

[Well.

He did ask for it.

Sonya gets his full attention as she speaks. He figures he owes her that much, no matter how badly he wants to gulp down the rest of his drink and then some right now, because she's right. About everything.

The thing is — and maybe this is the part she doesn't get, he thinks, what with all her confidence and her impossible-to-scale walls and her ability to manipulate — it's so much easier to be scared. Especially for him. He's not a fighter, not in the way the Initiative needs him to be. Hell, not even in the way Jesse needs him to be — but damn it, he's trying.

Or he was, until Walt showed up. The problem now is that he knows it's going to happen again somehow, some way, eventually.

Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if Jesse weren't here. Walt without Jesse is just Walt, not Heisenberg. But that thought leads him straight back to Jesse's bedroom the other day when he almost lost the kid to a needle full of UE drugs, and —

He fidgets with his glass for a moment, then looks up to meet her gaze.]

There's never an end in sight. Not here. People die, they come back. People leave, they come back. They can always come back. If Walter —

[He pauses to down the rest of his drink so quickly that it makes him cough.]

If Walter comes back, things'll be different. Okay? I mean, they show up at the first of every month, right? So if he doesn't turn up again in three days, then I have a whole month to get the fuck over myself. And then another, maybe. Or five months, six months. Maybe a year.

The difference between you and I is that you want to go home — I don't. So when the biggest piece of home I don't want to return to shows up here and ruins the other piece of home I have, the one I actually care about — yeah, that's a big problem. And it scares the hell out of me. I mean, think about it. What if your brothers show up here? Will you want to go home then?

Of course I will.

[She looks down into her glass; there's a bitter twist to her lips. She's not proud of her outburst, her emotionality, but she's not taking it back, either. Not going to pretend she feels otherwise.]

Like I'd let them stay here? With these fucking people? My home might be full of racists and criminals and shit might be fucked, but at least I've got control back there. At least I know how to protect them.

Who said you can take them back with you?

[He's not trying to sound mean.

It just sort of happens.]

You could disappear just as quickly as you appeared here in the first place. As far as I know, it doesn't really sound like people get to drag others along for the ride. Or — no, sorry. I forgot. You think the ones who disappear, right? That they don't go home. You still believe that?

[She clenches her jaw.]

This is really where you want to take this conversation? This is the hypothetical you want to pursue? My brothers dying?

No.

[What he wants is for this conversation to end before he says something stupider. At least he has an excuse, now that his glass is empty.

He pushes away from the table.]

I'm getting another drink.

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