[OPEN] Wait, let me set the record straight: I was never really yours in the first place.

[hostage]

Date & Time: January 9 and onward
Location: in and about town
Characters: Jesse & OPEN to anyone
Summary: A chance for an everyday encounter with Jesse. Put the date in your subject line!
Warnings: Breaking Bad spoilers are likely.

[Jesse might be the only one who finds Exsilium's current state beautiful rather than desolate and depressing. For more reasons than one, if given the choice between here and home, he'd choose here without hesitation. The snow and the chill do nothing to deter him from taking long walks. For as long as he can physically stand it, he prefers the cold over being confined inside four walls.

So he walks. Every day, without any particular destination, without anything else to occupy him. The concerns of the Initiative and the Transports are no longer his own. Whatever they're up to, they mean little to him. He's still got enough stolen Russian gold to pay for whatever he needs without having to work, so that's how he's choosing to live for as long as he's able. His time is spent doing whatever he wants to do, and at the moment, what he wants to do is wander.

Freedom: that's what this is about. No one is ever going to make him do anything ever again.]

Comments

[selfequipped]

Prisoner and slave have very different connotations and reasons for ending up in that situation. [Kate has a feeling it's more of the latter than the former, but she doesn't ask, simply wondering if the little bit she's said is enough to coax him to go on.]

[hostage]

[He shrugs, wiping his nose with his sleeve.]

They keep me in a cage, they take me out so I can cook meth, they put me back in the cage.

[hostage]

[Jesse isn't sure what fortuitous means, but...]

It was pretty bad.

[He pauses, wavering between not wanting to bother Mr. Gold further and his overwhelming desire to run straight into the arms of someone who might replace what he's lost. He hates Mr. White. And he misses him, so terribly - that man who was older, wiser, looking out for him and defending him and making sure the worst never happened to him.]

I... I dunno if you...

[Shit, his eyes are getting watery.]

[selfequipped]

[That ... strikes Kate as odd, considering what happened here. Oh, she completely believes him, but she's wondering about the people's he's met here.]

When you got locked up here, did they know about this?

[hostage]

Nah. Nah, they knew I didn't like being locked up, but... I mean, I didn't know how bad it'd get back then, either. I went back home after I died. That's when all this happened.

[selfequipped]

Kind of puts a damper on every wanting to go home, huh.

[hostage]

Never wanted to go back, anyway. It ain't all that surprising, how it turned out.

[selfequipped]

... At least you came back. [Though most people wouldn't see that as a consolatory point, but at least they aren't keeping him locked up.]

[hostage]

[He nods, hugging himself to keep warm against the cold.]

I like it here. Even after everything, even with everybody thinking all that stuff about me. I wish I could just stay here forever.

[selfequipped]

Do you think there's any chance of it?

[It'd be better to give him an opportunity to do that. She'd fight for it.]

[hostage]

[He shakes his head.]

I can't.

I mean, they'd probably let me, if I ask. But I can't leave my world like it was. I gotta go back and change all this stuff from happening in the first place. There's a lotta people who died who shouldn't have. And here, we actually got a time machine to help me go back and undo it. I gotta at least try.

[5055034455]

[Saul doesn't know what Saul wants. That's part of the problem.

He sighs.]

You can go if you want.

[selfequipped]

Messing with time travel usually just makes things worse.

[Kate's steps slow and she looks away.]

You might save one life, but others die instead.

[hostage]

[Jesse shakes his head again, smiling ruefully.]

I'm taking one life and saving hundreds.

Trust me, things could not get worse than they ended up.

[selfequipped]

You don't know that.

[In her experience, this is exactly the reason why they're not supposed to resort to time travel. This is exactly the thing. No one can be absolutely certain.]

We hear horror stories about it all the time back home. And then there's this ...

[She bends down to brush her fingers through the snow.]

Surprising ripple effect.

[hostage]

[He follows her with his eyes, looking at the snow.]

Yeah, I get it.

But this guy? All he ever did was hurt people. And I know the exact day, right down to the time, when he shoulda died to stop everything happening how it did. It wasn't even that long ago. It wasn't like this, where we go back thousands of years to change stuff. Just a few months and it makes everything go back to how it was before he ever became king. I know it won't be perfect, but it'll be better. And it's something I shoulda done back then.

[hostage]

[Jesse takes a step back, hesitant. He does want to go. But he has that feeling - that feeling that isn't Saul's fault, but Walt's, ultimately - that something bad will happen if he tries to leave.

Such a sick feeling.]

...I'm still staying with Mike. Just so you know.

[There. It's almost like an invitation.]

[selfequipped]

Going back a thousand years or one year doesn't make a difference.

[Does she want to say exactly what happened to Cassie? Does she want to spell it out? Kate has a feeling that no matter how much she looks bothered, it isn't going to help. Her experience isn't going to ever convince someone.]

We once saved someone's father. That someone got killed not too long after. It was a good thing to do, to save him. He shouldn't have ever died. And that was just one person. It led to her death. And someone else's. [There's also the fact of Nate, of what he's going to become. She doesn't point it out, not that much, but these things escalate.

And this seems like the type of thing she should be discouraging, generally.]

[hostage]

[Jesse won't be swayed. He was, once. But then he went back.]

You don't get it. I'm from the Bad End. Everybody who could be dead already is dead. And it's all because me and some asshole decided to mess things up. When I kill him, everything that happened? It goes back to being how it was supposed to be: normal.

Who has two thumbs and loses notifs an obscene amount THIS GIRL. jfc i am so sorry.

[undealt]

[Oh.

Gold stiffens, caught off-guard by this sudden emotional break and while normally such a thing would put him off and set him to walking away to be rid of the situation, he can't move. Because all he can think of is Baelfire and countless centuries of not being there to be a decent father to him. And that's all this is, isn't it? Playacting and pretending he hasn't lost his son and he isn't going to leave this accursed war to die and hope in death, he did the right thing by him.

He hesitates for a second and then reaches out and lays a hand on Jesse's shoulder and squeezes it, reassuringly.] There now. What happened?

[Interest. Compassion. Possibly even an elimination of the threat if it's still there. He's projecting horribly and he can't be arsed to care about it. They both are- this much he knows without a shadow of a doubt.]

[selfequipped]

Bad ends happen all the time, Jesse. All the time. Messing with that, trying to make up a different ending, it just opens up different paths, different opportunities for terrible things to happen. [She speaks confidently at this point, because she knows. So much has happened in her tenure as a hero, and she knows many people have the power to change things. She also knows they're not supposed to do that.]