Chapter 22: Jesse's Rehab
The New Mexico Addiction Recovery Center squatted in the foothills east of Albuquerque like a concrete promise—sterile and hopeful in equal measure. Elijah signed the visitor's log as Marcus Reid, listing his relationship to Jesse as "friend of the family," and wondered when that lie had become partially true.
Jesse sat in the common room, staring at nothing with the hollow intensity of someone whose world had collapsed. Three weeks had passed since Jane's death, three weeks since the planes fell over Albuquerque, three weeks since Jesse's grief became part of the landscape.
"You knew she'd die," Jesse said without looking up as Elijah approached. "You fucking knew, and you let it happen anyway."
Jesse's hands shook as he spoke, not from withdrawal but from the weight of carrying impossible guilt. The common room smelled like industrial disinfectant and forced optimism—the scent of people trying to rebuild lives from the wreckage of their choices.
"I woke up, and she was cold," Jesse said, words coming in fragmented bursts. "Jane was cold, and there was vomit, and I just... I fell asleep. If I'd stayed awake, if I'd checked on her..." His voice cracked. "I killed her by being a shitty boyfriend."
Marcus wrote on paper, hands steady despite the emotional devastation radiating from Jesse: Addiction killed her. You loved her—that's not a crime.
Jesse read the note and crumpled it with violent precision. "You don't get it. You don't feel shit. You're like some kind of robot calculating percentages while people die."
But then Marcus did something unexpected. His hands began to shake as he wrote the next note, trembling with very human emotion: I've watched people die because I couldn't save them. I understand more than you know.
Jesse looked up for the first time, really seeing Marcus instead of projecting his own pain onto him. The guy's eyes were haunted—not calculation, but genuine suffering carefully controlled.
"Yeah?" Jesse's voice carried cautious hope. "Who'd you lose?"
Marcus's speech curse activated when he tried to answer directly, forcing him to communicate through careful writing: People I should have protected. People who trusted me to keep them safe.
It wasn't the whole truth, but it wasn't a lie either. Jesse studied the note, recognizing something familiar in the careful distance Marcus maintained from emotional pain.
"Shit," Jesse said quietly. "You're fucked up too, aren't you?"
Marcus nodded, and for the first time since transmigration, Elijah felt genuinely connected to another human being.
Group therapy met in a circle of mismatched chairs, fluorescent lights casting everything in the harsh glare of forced honesty. Jesse had requested that Marcus be allowed to observe—family sessions were part of the recovery process, even when family consisted of a meth operation's logistics coordinator.
"Jesse," the counselor said gently, "you mentioned losing someone important. Would you like to share how that's affecting your recovery?"
Jesse's jaw worked silently for several seconds before words emerged. "There was this girl. Jane. She was... she was everything good I ever had, and I destroyed her." His voice broke. "If she were here right now, what would I say? I'd say I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry for dragging her down with me."
In the visitor chairs, Marcus was typing frantically on his tablet, then deleting everything, over and over. His face showed the same desperate struggle Jesse recognized from his own mirror—fighting demons through incomplete confessions.
"What are you writing?" Jesse asked after the session ended.
Marcus showed him the tablet screen: dozens of attempts at the same message, all deleted. But the last version remained visible: I'm sorry too.
Jesse realized that Marcus carried his own body count, his own catalog of people he'd failed to save. They were both survivors clawing through guilt, neither quite ready to forgive themselves but maybe learning to understand that forgiveness might be possible.
"You want to get coffee?" Jesse asked. "Real coffee, not the shit they serve here."
Marcus nodded, and they walked toward the cafeteria like two broken people discovering they weren't completely alone.
Walter White's rental car pulled into the rehab center's parking lot with characteristic precision—not late enough to seem disrespectful, not early enough to appear eager. Elijah intercepted him before he could reach the building, timing the confrontation for maximum privacy.
"Leave him alone," Elijah said without preamble. "He needs time to heal."
Walt's face shifted from concerned teacher to calculating predator in the space of a heartbeat. "I don't pay you to have opinions about Jesse's recovery, Marcus. I pay you to move product and solve logistical problems."
"You don't pay me enough to watch you destroy the only decent person in this operation."
Walt stepped closer, voice dropping to the dangerous register that preceded his most ruthless decisions. "You think you're his friend? You're a mercenary, just like me. The difference is I admit what I am instead of pretending to have principles."
The accusation hit harder than Elijah expected because it was fundamentally accurate. He was a mercenary—selling supernatural abilities to the highest bidder, choosing survival over morality at every critical juncture.
"Jesse's not ready," Elijah tried anyway.
"Jesse will be ready when I need him to be ready. That's how this works." Walt's smile carried the cold certainty of someone who'd learned to manipulate human weakness with scientific precision. "You can either help me bring him back, or you can find yourself excluded from future operations."
Elijah used his Probability Assessment to calculate the mathematical inevitability he already knew:
Will Jesse Pinkman return to cooking methamphetamine within two months?
76% probability.
Cost: $3,800.
The numbers confirmed what his heart already understood: Walt's manipulation would succeed because Jesse needed purpose, needed to feel useful, needed something to distract him from the grief that was eating him alive.
Recovery was a luxury Jesse couldn't afford when guilt demanded penance.
Leaving the rehab center, Jesse surprised Elijah by pulling him into a brief hug—the first physical affection either of them had shown in months of careful partnership.
"Thanks for not bullshitting me," Jesse whispered. "Everyone else keeps saying it's gonna be okay, but you... you get it. The weight."
Elijah nodded, throat tight with emotion and speech curse activation that made words impossible. He drove back toward Albuquerque crying for the first time since transmigration, feeling the full weight of his complicity in the tragedies surrounding him.
In his rearview mirror, just for a moment, he could swear he saw the Curator's reflection—smiling with satisfaction at the emotional devastation it had orchestrated.
"What do you want from me?!" Elijah screamed at the empty air.
Silence. The game continued, carrying them all toward whatever fresh hell awaited in the desert.
"Jesse is the last thread connecting me to my humanity. When Walt pulls him back into the business—and he will—I'll lose the one person who still sees me as something other than a monster. The Entity's corruption will be complete."
But for now, in this moment, driving through New Mexico's vast emptiness with tears on his cheeks, Elijah Chen still remembered what it felt like to care about another human being.
It would have to be enough.
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