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

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[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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[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.

Be my guest.

[She stabs her straw bitterly into her drink, but her anger's mostly spent now. She just feels tired and sad and like she just...wants to cry.]

[It's probably not surprising that he lingers at the bar for longer than it actually takes for him to get his second drink. Straight-up cheap vodka, this time. (As if he'd expect to find any other kind here?)

When he returns, his head is bowed slightly, but he's looking right at her this time. Not at his drink.]

I'm sorry, Sonya.

[She folds her arms across her chest, her posture defensive, and stares down at the table. Doesn't meet his eyes. And her voice is nearly a mumble when she says:]

What for?

[That makes him huff out a sound that might pass for a laugh.]

Do you actually want a list?

[He sits. Before she can answer whether or not it's a litany she's looking for, he continues:] I'm sorry I keep treating you like this. I know you're just trying to help me; I love you for that. You don't deserve any of the shit I or Jesse or this whole damn place has been putting you through, and if I could figure out how to help, I would, but that's one of my current problem areas. I'm not so good with the fixing. Not that kind, anyway.

[The mulish look fades from her face as he gives that little speech. At the end of it, she says:]

Look, I don't get involved in things. Emotionally. You know.

[Which is a blatantly absurd thing to say with her straw crumpled between her frustrated fingers, with her mouth still dry from that two-minute rant, but...Well.]

So I don't give a shit about being...mistreated, if we're even going to say things like that. I'm a professional. It comes with the job. I don't give a shit about being put through the ringer, either. I just -

[And here she falters.]

I just want to know it isn't all for nothing.

[Yeah, that's a lot of bullshit. Saul considers calling her on it, but doesn't.]

Are we talking on the micro level, or the macro level? Because I can only speak for one of those, and I promise you're not wasting your time.

Which one's micro and which one's macro for you?

[She gives a humorless smile down into her drink.]

Sometimes it's a bit hard to tell.

Y'know what? Even I'm not sure, sometimes.

[He knows his priorities are a little out of order.

A lot out of order.

...there is no order, only Zuul.]

Well, I want macro.

[She looks down into her drink.]

I don't care about the day-to-day. I don't care about the little frustrations. I don't even care about the fucking dramabomb that is every interaction with Pinkman. I'll put up with any and all of that if it means successful resolution of this shit.

Eventually. That's the best I can do. Not now, maybe not soon, but — I'm working on it.

[Which might be part of Saul's problem. I.

He keeps dragging people into this mess, then insists on handling it himself.]

[Her response is unsentimental:]

How?

[He doesn't really have an answer for her that isn't vague.

Maybe he'll find one at the bottom of his glass!]

[She gives a heavy sigh - but her manner is a bit less severe.]

You're really bad at avoiding my questions.

I need to get over myself, right? That's what this boils down to.

Yeah.

[But she allows a half-smile:]

Though for what it's worth, we all need to do that.

I couldn't agree more.

[And there goes the rest of his drink. He sighs and settles back against his chair, folding his arms. It's not a defensive gesture — he's just getting comfortable.]

What, no thank you Sonya for your magnanimousness?

[That gets a small, quiet, reluctant chuckle out of him.]

Thank you, Sonya, for your —

[Wow okay so guess who's having some trouble getting his tongue to work with pronouncing that word.]

That.

Alkie.

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