Chapter Text
Mike stared at the photograph, horror crashing down on him like freezing water, blacking out his other senses and turning his blood to ice. Andrea and Brock Cantillo, on the way out of their house to drop Brock off at school, obviously, painfully oblivious to the camera trained on them like a sniper’s rifle. The young mother’s face had been crossed out with a fat red marker, in a smeary X that looked as though someone had tried to wipe it off.
His eyes naturally averted themselves from the unsettling image, only to land on the corded rope dangling from the ceiling behind it, winking silver at him like a snake on the water. An even meaner looking looped chain was attached at the end, and, when he took a leery step closer, Mike could make out what appeared to be dried, bloody fingerprints where someone might have held onto the cord for support.
The implication was nightmarishly surreal, but it had to be.
“ Jesse! ” He called, on the off chance that the kid was still in the lab somewhere, maybe hiding from the sound of gunfire, of approaching male footsteps. The desperate note in his voice echoed mockingly, as though the lab were nothing more than an empty tomb.
He had run back outside before he could think where to go, and the sight of the bullet-riddled clubhouse halted him in his tracks as effectively as the nozzle of a gun. If Jesse had been in there during the standoff… Mike hadn’t been shooting with the intention of leaving survivors, and some of the bodies had been face down when he’d gone inside to take stock of the aftermath. God, could he have accidentally..?
As he half-stumbled back to the clubhouse, dread laming his gait like a weighted chain, a current of movement to his left caught Mike’s eye. It looked to be a tarp, cresting lazily as a lake tide a few yard-lengths away. With an instinctive, inexplicable sense of conviction that he’d learned over the years not to dismiss, Mike ran towards the beckoning motion without another moment’s hesitation.
And there he was, bone-thin and filthy, hands and feet shackled, his body frozen stiff in the fetal position on an equally thin and filthy mattress. His hair had grown in as wild as brambles around his young face, and Mike could see, even from his bird’s eye view angle, scars and bruises and fear in the set of his mouth and his closed eyes, fear that didn’t sleep. He called down to him, and then he called again, and again, and with each passing moment that Jesse did not respond Mike became more and more convinced that he was looking down at the emaciated corpse of his young friend, left to weather the elements in an open grave.
Then Jesse shuddered awake with a pained hiss, only just managing to loll his head into a position where he could look up at Mike with bleary, leaking eyes.
“Kid!” The shaky relief in his own voice startled Mike. “Jesse, are you with me?”
Jesse just blinked up at him sadly, his sky-blue eyes clouded gray. As though rescue didn’t even register to him as a possibility anymore.
“Kid, I need you to listen to me, alright? Where are the keys to this…”
Cage.
“The bunker? And the cuffs? Jesse- do you know where they keep the keys?”
Jesse blinked again, suddenly tearful.
“Mike?” He rasped. Mike could hear the blood in his mouth when he spoke, even with just the one word.
“Yeah, that’s right. Jesse, do you know where they keep the keys?”
The look Jesse gave him was almost pleading, as though he thought he would be punished for not giving the right answer. Then-
“Todd has them.” Jesse took a rattling, worrying breath. He looked as though he were trying to ground himself. “Todd has the keys,” he clarified, as though that hadn’t been what Mike was asking.
Goddammit. Mike wouldn’t have been surprised to find Todd kicking it back in the clubhouse with his uncle and the rest of those Charles Manson motherfuckers (and all while they’d been keeping Jesse starved and bound in this literal hellhole, Mike’s hands were shaking, he was so mad) but that hadn’t happened, as luck would have it. He’d track down that particular loose end later; no one was getting away with this.
He had some tools in the car that might work on the locks. Mike righted himself and made to step away from the bunker.
“Don’t leave,” Jesse said desperately. His arms, through which Mike could make out the outline of bone, trembled violently under his weight as he tried to sit up. As usual, his face held all the vulnerability of an open wound and evoked around the same amount of begrudging sympathy, especially now, with the addition of actual open wounds on his face. Mike heard the inflection in his own voice soften automatically.
“I need to get some tools from the car to unlock those cuffs with. I’ll be right back.”
Jesse continued to stare miserably up at him but made no further protestations. Mike allowed himself one last worried glance back at the kid before taking off for the car, barreling half-blindly through the clawing heat of the Albuquerque sun.
Jesus fucking Christ.
He ignored the first stirrings of horror that he knew would hit him hard if he lost focus, opting instead to focus all his energy on the task at hand. This had been his go-to strategy for staying sane since Vietnam, and it had only failed him once, when Matty died. Putting that thought aside as well, Mike swallowed the bile that had been brewing in the back of his throat and made it back to Jesse within the span of a minute.
The kid had already lost consciousness again, but woke up to watch Mike work on his handcuffs with a detached sort of interest that made Mike wonder if his captors had kept him sedated, though judging by the thick veneer of sweat slathered across his forehead he was probably just sick, horribly sick. The lockpicking didn’t take long, thankfully, and Mike climbed out of the bunker first before helping Jesse up after him, which was easier than he’d expected, which was almost as easy, actually, as lifting up Kaylee.
“Let’s get you out of here, kid,” he murmured, more to himself than to Jesse, but the kid definitely heard him, taking hold of Mike’s jacket with trembling hands and looking him in the eye with such raw, unfiltered anguish that Mike narrowly avoided acting on an impulse to push him away.
“If I leave,” Jesse whispered, his voice so low and urgent that Mike felt all but obligated to hear him out, even though they really didn’t have time for this- “if I leave, they’ll kill Brock. I can’t leave.”
Mike felt his gut twist unpleasantly with pity, or maybe empathy. Jesse’s enthusiasm when he’d talked about his girlfriend and her young son had been somewhat contagious, had given Mike a modicum of hope that the kid might someday be motivated to leave the life behind and let Walter White do his own goddamn dirty work for once. Either that hadn’t happened or Walter hadn’t taken it particularly well, but either way, the irony of Jesse’s one tenuous link to freedom being what eventually doomed him to captivity was not lost on Mike.
“They killed…” Jesse couldn’t finish his sentence. He choked on the name until he was actually coughing, the little sound he could make causing his shrunken body to shake uncontrollably, and Mike didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that Andrea Cantillo was dead. Mike had seen stronger men go through less and not come out the other side, and although he’d known from the moment he’d set eyes on that telltale scorpion tattoo that the kid would never fully recover from being abused like a big cat at a roadside zoo, it had only just hit him that he might have been too late to really rescue Jesse Pinkman. The kid might still die from his injuries, or he might live just to give in to his addiction another day, the same way he’d so often given in to Walter White in the single year Mike had known him. He might defy those odds and live on in relative anonymity for years before waking up one day with the sudden realization that things would always be as hard as they were, and deciding to cut his losses. But he wasn’t going to die here, not in or anywhere near this hell pit where he’d been bound and beaten and no doubt expected to die like a dog, Mike would make damn sure of that.
“Kid-,” he placed a firm hand on one of Jesse’s shoulders, doing his best to ignore the flinch that followed, the way Jesse eyed the hand as though it were a spider that might change course for his face at any moment. “Jesse. Look at me. Listen to me. They’re dead, alright? I killed them.”
Which was true, for the most part at least. Mike had never been one to sugarcoat an admittedly shitty situation, but he would say whatever he needed to to get the kid out of there. He’d have one of his contacts relocate Brock Cantillo and caretaker under some bullshit pretense or another; Todd was the very definition of a bad seed, for sure, but he was also noticeably lacking in brainpower, which was in all likelihood why he’d kept Jesse around. He could never figure out the cook, he would never figure out where to find Brock, and he would be dead soon enough.
Jesse was gazing up at him with the same awestruck look of adolescent wonder Kaylee would sometimes take on during story time.
“Really?” He whispered, big eyes boring into Mike’s soul, and Mike, feeling irrationally and irritatingly guilty, managed only a curt nod of confirmation. The kid seemed to collapse in on himself with relief, his face breaking into the sorriest smile Mike had ever seen, laughter convulsing his entire tiny body until he was whimpering instead. Mike helped him to his feet as gently as possible and began steering him toward the car, scanning their surroundings for signs of Todd along the way. As soon as they had crossed the threshold out of the compound Jesse lost consciousness, lurching backward as though the leash they’d kept him on was still snared around his waist, so Mike carried him the rest of the way to the car, settling his limp body into the passenger seat as though he were a child worn out from soccer practice. He glared hatefully back at the compound through the review mirror until it was out of sight, and let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
“Slow down, kid. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”
As Mike went to pry the sandwich from Jesse’s hands, he saw the kid’s eyes go mean and hard like a dog’s, just for a second. Then Jesse seemed to remember himself, setting the food down slowly and with shaking hands. Tears tracked through the filth on his face as though it were makeup, and Mike could tell he was ashamed. He’d drank the water Mike gave him with a ferocity that had felt too intimate to interrupt, throat bracing with the effort it took just to swallow.
Jesse was long overdue for a shower, and Mike felt ill inclined to take a chance on the seriousness of his injuries. He led the kid with an arm vised around his shoulders to the dingy motel bathroom, where he sat him on the lid of the toilet and began, with murmured assurances of his intentions and identity, to undress him.
Sometimes when he was distracted, which he tried never to be as a rule, Mike would find that the universe had taken advantage of his momentary absentmindedness to transport him back in time.
“Arms up,” he said, to Matty, who was too young to dress himself, and Jesse Pinkman, who looked older than Mike would have ever predicted he’d live to be, complied as best he could.
Jesse’s ribs were so pronounced, Mike could see which ones had been broken. Swears and swastikas and cigarette burns littered his torso like scattered debris, and in between the brittle bars of his rib cage Mike could make out the freshly stamped imprint of a man’s work boot. The centerpiece of the whole macabre exhibit was undoubtedly the word RAT, rendered in impossibly large letters across the small canvas of Jesse’s back, put there like an afterthought, written so sloppily as to be almost illegible. Worse still, somehow, was the clustering of bruises on his inner thighs, veined by rivulets of dried blood and semen, and a deep, voracious bite mark flagging the peak of a protruding hip bone.
Mike tried to maintain his composure, tried to stifle a sharp intake of breath and keep the Old Testament fury he felt from bleeding into his expression. He lifted Jesse’s knees one at a time to get him into the tub- “that’s it, careful now-” lowering him with a hand under each arm. As soon as he was seated Jesse wrapped his arms around his legs and buried his face between his knees, curling back into himself like a pill bug. He’d started shaking again, and after a moment of deliberation, Mike lay a hand across a scanty patch of intact skin on his back, and he quieted.
Mike didn’t turn on the shower head, instead using a measuring cup from the kitchen to drizzle lukewarm water over the kid’s matted hair and beard, shielding his eyes with one hand and dabbing lightly at his wounds with a damp washcloth. The kid’s obvious attempts to keep from crying out manifested as a puppyish whimpering, and as Mike went to clean out a particularly vicious burn on his arm, he rasped “no more,” in the same pleading tone he must have used with his captors, and the older man found himself nodding in assent. He bandaged up Jesse’s more pressing injuries and helped him out of the tub onto a thin strip of bath mat, dried his hair and swaddled him into a mangy motel bathrobe before leading him to the bed.
Jesse passed out as soon as he hit the comforter, but his muscles never relaxed, and the new lines on his face stayed stretched tight. “You did good,” Mike whispered, patting his shoulder absently, then threw a blanket over him, set a glass of water and a bucket by the side of the bed and headed outside to the car to place some calls.
After he had secured protection for Brock Cantillo and put a hit out on Todd, he turned on the radio. Only the barest details of his shootout with the Nazis were being circulated at the moment, leaving him wistful for his police scanner. They would find his and Jesse’s DNA soon enough, of that he had no doubt, and what was worse, he’d had no time to disable the cameras before they’d made their departure. Finding the kid had blown everything out of the water, but then, Mike supposed that leaving evidence of their involvement behind wasn’t nearly as damning an act as it might have been if they weren’t already fugitives.
When he had told Walter he would kill him if anything happened to Gus’ nine guys, he’d meant it, and Walter shooting him in the stomach for having the audacity to tell it like it was hadn’t exactly made Mike less inclined to keep that promise. He had literally escaped within an inch of his life; the bullet brushing past a vital organ as it burrowed into his gut. Luckily he knew the area, knew where and when to hide and run, and who to call when shit inevitably hit the fan.
He had almost placed a second call, to the kid, almost. But he knew Walter would be waiting for him to get in touch, and had worried that the man might kill Jesse on the spot at the first sign of contact between them.
He could have called, though. Could have come back, even, could have done more. He’d always known that, really, but it had stared him full in the face through Jesse’s glassy, unseeing eyes in the old mugshot they’d broadcasted a few months back, alongside the news saying he’d been swallowed up by the Albuquerque desert after turning on Walter White too late, with no one left to back him. Died alone like Matty, probably, died alone like no one had ever loved him. Mike had relapsed that night, crawled back into bed sweating whisky through his bandages, thinking that even though he’d tried to warn Jesse (not hard enough) he hoped to God the kid hadn’t seen it coming.
That particular regret, at least, could be washed down with a couple of whiskeys. This one lingered in the mouth like medicine.
Rumors of blue meth still circulating in the area had been what eventually prompted his post-recovery return to Albuquerque. He knew even Walter wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick around New Mexico after screwing himself the way he had, but outsourcing the operation to a literal Nazi cult definitely kept with the man’s track record of engaging in acts of reckless evil as a first resort. The Nazis themselves had been less than forthcoming, to put it lightly, and Mike had thought it a shame until he found Jesse. Now he was just glad he’d killed the sons of bitches.
He wondered, suddenly, if he had been on the right track, if Walter had been profiting off of Jesse’s pain even after the partnership dissolved. Mike had refrained from expressing the full extent of his rage in front of the kid, not wanting to escalate an already volatile situation, but now, alone in the car, he brought a hand down on the dashboard and let his face contort with unchecked fury. The blood roaring in his ears was so loud, it nearly drowned out the distant sound of Jesse’s screams.
Mike reentered the motel room gun drawn, fully expecting to catch Todd or Walter in the act of bludgeoning Jesse to death, but there was just the kid, writhing so badly on the bed that Mike wondered for a split second if he might be having a seizure, and screaming his head off as though he’d been set on fire. The sound was nothing but raw pain personified, almost inhuman in its honesty. A sound that shot past his pretenses and pierced his gut, as surely as Walter’s bullet had.
He was going to get them caught. Mike slung one arm over Jesse’s shoulder and slapped his free hand over the kid’s mouth, then grimaced as Jesse sunk his teeth into it.
“Easy, kid. Easy. You’re out, alright? Nobody’s gonna hurt you here.”
Jesse’s banshee wail slipped easily through the spaces between his fingers, and Mike was struck all of a sudden by an unusual and distinctly unpleasant feeling of helplessness.
“Jesse. It’s just me. It’s Mike.”
Nothing he could say was going to help. He stayed put until the kid cried himself to sleep, waiting until Jesse’s screams had worn themselves back into whimpers before laying him back down on the bed as gently as possible and parking himself in the seat next to it.
He only got up once that night, to put the gun up someplace high.