[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]

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.

[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.

[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.]