Chapter 6: The Walter White Question
POV: Marcus
January 10th, 2008. Six weeks until diagnosis. Marcus drove past the White residence for the third time this week, each pass adding another layer to his understanding of the man who would become Heisenberg.
308 Negra Arroyo Lane sat in a neighborhood that represented middle-class aspirations achieved through decades of careful financial planning. Well-maintained lawns, two-car garages, the kind of quiet street where children rode bicycles and neighbors knew each other's names. Walter White's house looked exactly like its owner: respectable, unremarkable, slowly deteriorating beneath a facade of suburban normalcy.
Marcus parked across the street and watched Walter wash his Pontiac Aztek in the driveway. Even his car choices reflected the man's essential mediocrity—practical, ugly, designed by committee to offend no one and inspire nothing. Walter moved mechanically, spraying soap and water with the enthusiasm of someone fulfilling an obligation rather than enjoying a weekend activity.
He looked tired. Older than his fifty years, with the rounded shoulders of someone who'd spent decades carrying disappointment like a physical weight. His movements were precise but joyless, the choreography of a man going through motions because motion was better than stillness.
Skyler's voice carried through the open front door, something about dinner and guests and could he please hurry up. Walter's response was too quiet to hear, but his body language spoke volumes—a slight tensing of shoulders, a pause in his washing rhythm that suggested resignation rather than enthusiasm.
Walter Jr.—Flynn—hobbled onto the driveway with his crutches, saying something that actually made Walter smile. Brief, genuine, the first spark of life Marcus had seen in the man's expression. Father and son shared a moment of connection before Flynn headed back inside, leaving Walter alone with his mediocre car and mounting obligations.
Hank's SUV turned the corner with the aggressive rumble of someone who wanted the world to know he was arriving. The vehicle dominated the street like its owner dominated conversations, all chrome and noise and barely contained energy. Hank emerged wearing his weekend uniform of cargo shorts and polo shirt, radiating the confident masculinity that made Walter look smaller by comparison.
Marcus watched the brief interaction between brothers-in-law, noting how Walter's posture changed in Hank's presence. More defensive, shoulders pulling inward, like someone preparing to be diminished. Hank's boisterous greeting carried across the street—something about football and beer and family dinner—while Walter nodded and smiled and retreated into himself.
This was the Walter White who existed before Heisenberg. A normal man trapped in a normal life, surrounded by normal people who loved him without really seeing him. No monster yet, just a chemistry teacher who felt small in a world designed to make him smaller.
"Six weeks," Marcus thought, gripping his steering wheel. "Six weeks until everything changes."
He could prevent it. The cancer wasn't divine judgment or cosmic inevitability—it was random cellular mutation that could be detected early, treated aggressively, possibly cured entirely. Marcus had the means to intervene without revealing himself: anonymous health screenings, medical advice delivered through doors, even direct chemical intervention that could eliminate the cancerous cells before they spread.
Save Walter White from cancer, and Heisenberg never existed.
No meth empire. No violence. No plane crash. No dead children, no dissolved bodies, no families destroyed by drug addiction. Jesse Pinkman would remain a small-time dealer instead of becoming Walter's partner in destruction. Hank would continue investigating routine cases instead of hunting the most dangerous criminal in Southwest history.
The math seemed simple: save one man, prevent countless tragedies.
But Marcus had learned to distrust simple mathematics when applied to complex systems. Removing Walter from the equation didn't eliminate the demand for meth, the cartel violence, or the economic desperation that drove people to crime. It just changed the variables.
Without Walter's blue product to disrupt the market, Tuco would continue his reign of terror unchecked. Gus would build his empire using different suppliers, probably more violent ones. The plane crash might not happen, but other planes might fall from other causes. The 167 victims would die anyway, just at different times and places.
"And then there's the question I can't answer," Marcus thought, watching Walter disappear into his house. "What if preventing Heisenberg creates something worse?"
Walter's transformation, horrific as it became, ultimately dismantled multiple criminal organizations. The cartel war he instigated weakened both sides. His final confrontation with Jack's gang eliminated a group of neo-Nazi murderers. Even Gus Fring, for all his efficiency and intelligence, died because of Walter's actions.
Chaos, yes. Destruction, absolutely. But also a kind of cosmic justice that cleared the board of players who might otherwise operate for decades.
Marcus started his car but didn't drive away immediately. Instead, he sat across from the White house, watching normal people live normal lives, and wrestled with the moral implications of omniscience.
He could save Walter. Should save Walter, by any reasonable ethical standard. One man's life weighed against the suffering of hundreds. The choice seemed obvious.
Except...
"What if I'm wrong?" The thought cut through his certainty like a blade. "What if saving Walter dooms more people than letting him become Heisenberg? What if my intervention creates worse problems than the ones I'm trying to prevent?"
This was the paralysis of perfect knowledge—knowing the consequences of action while remaining ignorant of the consequences of inaction. Every choice created ripple effects that extended beyond calculation, and Marcus was beginning to understand why Ryuk found him frustrating.
The death god materialized in the passenger seat, his yellow eyes reflecting the streetlights as darkness fell around them.
"Funny," Ryuk observed, biting into an apple that definitely hadn't been there moments before. "Most humans with the Death Note want to change everything immediately. Write names until the pages run out. You're paralyzed by choice."
"I'm paralyzed by consequence."
"Same thing. You know what's going to happen, but you don't know what won't happen if you interfere. So you sit in a car watching a man wash dishes while time ticks away toward his transformation."
"He's washing a car."
"Whatever. Point is, you're afraid of responsibility. Easier to let fate take its course than accept blame for the alternatives."
Marcus turned to face the death god, noting how Ryuk's presence made the car's interior feel colder. "What would you do?"
"Me? I'd flip a coin. Heads he lives, tails he dies. Let chaos decide instead of agonizing over choices that don't have right answers."
"That's sociopathic."
"That's honest. You're pretending there's a moral solution to an amoral problem. There isn't. Every choice you make will hurt someone. The question is whether you can live with the consequences of deciding or the consequences of avoiding decision."
Ryuk finished his apple and tossed the core through the windshield, where it vanished like smoke. "Clock's ticking, Marcus. Six weeks until everything changes. After that, your choice gets made for you."
The death god faded into invisibility, leaving Marcus alone with questions that had no comfortable answers.
Through the White house windows, he could see the family gathering for dinner. Walter at the head of the table, Skyler to his left, Flynn making everyone laugh with some teenage observation about the world's absurdity. Hank and Marie adding their voices to the conversation, creating the warm chaos of family connection.
Normal people living normal lives, unaware that their happiness was built on a foundation of sand that would crumble the moment Walter received his diagnosis.
Marcus made his decision.
He would let the timeline proceed naturally, at least until he understood the ripple effects better. He'd watch Walter, be ready to intervene when necessary, but wouldn't prevent the cancer that would transform a high school chemistry teacher into the most dangerous criminal in the Southwest.
It was a coward's choice, and he knew it. The path of least resistance disguised as principled restraint. But it was also the only choice that didn't require him to play god with incomplete information.
Marcus drove away from the White house, glancing in the rearview mirror at windows glowing with warm light. In six weeks, that warmth would begin its slow transformation into something colder and more dangerous.
The question wasn't whether Marcus would be ready when that moment came. The question was whether anyone could be ready for the hurricane that Walter White was about to become.
Behind him, 308 Negra Arroyo Lane disappeared into darkness, carrying its normal family toward their extraordinary destiny. Marcus drove home through empty streets, counting days until the quiet man washing his car would discover that death was growing in his lungs and decide to become death incarnate in response.
Forty-two days and counting.
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