Fic: Door, Door (Breaking Bad)

[beer_good_foamy]

Here's the first of the two fics I've written for zombi_fic_ation - the next is going up in a couple of days. Because there's no reason my first Breaking Bad fic shouldn't have zombies in it. Or at least one.

Title: Door, Door
Author: Beer Good
Fandom: Breaking Bad
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Drug use, language, character death and zombification
Pairing: Jesse/Jane
Word Count: ~1000
Betas: frogfarm, local_max
Author's Notes: Written for zombi_fic_ation and the prompt "Breaking Bad -- Jesse/Jane -- He has to believe she'd want to come back like this". No spoilers past season 2.
Summary: Jesse gets a visit from Jane at the end of season 2. It has to mean something that she'd come back to him, even if it's like this. There has to be a point to it. He just needs to figure it out.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.
- Georgia O'Keeffe

Door, Door

It's been about a week since she died when she comes back to him. He's been nodding in and out so much that when he wakes up and she's standing over him he just rolls with it, because it's not like it hasn't happened every time he closes his eyes. She'll be at the foot of the bed, looking... well, still pale (he never understood how she could live in the middle of a desert and not tan) but alive, with that not-smile that says he's a moron but her moron. Or he'll roll over in bed and bump into her and she'll mumble in her sleep, elbow him right in the gut and snuggle up to him. Or he'll wake up shaking in an empty bedroom, cook up a spoonful and suddenly she'll be there, holding him, talking about all the things they're going to do with all that money, and he'll bury his face in the crook of her neck and breathe her in, hold on to her so hard he could break.

For days, that's been his life. Not this stinking room where the phone sometimes rings or someone comes to bang on the door and yell his name and try to peak through the curtains he keeps drawn.

In his dreams she's not usually trying to eat his brains, though.

This time she stares at him with dead eyes and her hands reach out to claw at him. He doesn't want to fight her but something kicks in and they're wrestling on the bed and her teeth are snapping and he's yelling chill bitch and she just moans in reply and the bedsprings squeak and he bangs and bangs her head against the wall trying not to think about what it must sound like.

Next thing he knows, he's trying to tie her up before she wakes up. He's arranged her sitting up against the wall. It would be easier if he could lay her flat on her back on the bed, but then he remembers waking up next to her, her throat blocked by vomit, her skin cold, eyes staring at the ceiling. She fucking died on him. He can't lose her again.

(Yeah, he's seen the movies, he's played the games. Removing the head or destroying the brain, not the person you knew, if you get bit... Fuck 'em. She came back to him. That's gotta count for something.)

He tries to get through to her. Talks, soothes, yells, screams, even tries jokes ("There's a bike made for two parked outside the fridge.") She follows his every movement without blinking, moans, snaps at him when he comes too close. Nothing. The phone rings and she stares at it. He doesn't pick up. He tries to get her to eat something, cold pizza or cold Mexican; she's hungry but won't touch it.

He finds the APOLOGY GIRL comic, holds it up to her. "Remember this? You drew this. This is you. Jane Margolis. You." She stares at it, cocks her head, then snaps her teeth again. "Jane. You. This is you. You gave it to me." Her hands strain at the ropes, trying to reach for him. He cries. Moan, bitch, moan. Can't lose her again, can't stay here. He cooks one up and tries to drift off, but it doesn't work anymore; he can't go see the real her when she's here, there's no there left to go to. Doesn't mean he can't try.

He wakes up to the phone ringing. He doesn't need to look at the screen to see who it is. Not like there's anybody else who'd call him. He stares at the phone for a while, then tosses it on top of the pile of money. She moans at him, showing her teeth. He yells at her until his voice is gone.

He keeps drifting, always just this side of conking out. If he could dream he'd let her take him to whatever retarded museum she wanted, some woman who just paints doors or pussies or whatever, and believe anything she told him they were about. They'd go to Europe and she'd paint castles and he'd embarrass her like the dumb-ass kid he'll always be and she'd forgive him. She wouldn't need the dope because they had each other. Anyfuckingthing just to get out of waking up in this stinking room over and over again, with not-her staring at him.

He wakes up and sees he's been doodling in his sleep, a hundred stick figures all saying the same thing: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He shows it to her and again she strains at the ropes as soon as he gets within reach, trying to grab him. He looks at the pen in his hand.

When he slips the needle in her arm he half expects it to make her, like, super strong or some shit. Who knows what drugs do to the undead. But it seems to calm her down; fucking chemistry, right? Enough, at least, for him to untie her arm along with the tourniquet, place paper under it and force her hand to hold a pen. She grips it like a little kid, in her fist, like she doesn't know what it is. Fuck it. He refills the needle.

When he comes to, the papers and sheets are torn to shreds. She's used the pen like a knife, carving the same picture over and over again. She can't draw anymore, but put them all together and he can see it. The face, the angle, the arm reaching out and pulling back. She's drawn the last thing she saw over and over.

The next time the phone rings, he picks up. Somehow she stops moaning for as long as he's on the phone.

"Yo, Mister White."

"Jesse? Finally! Where the hell have you been? I've been calling you for days! Are you OK? Do you need help?"

"I'm fine," he says. "I got something to show you. At the house."

He unties her just as he hears the door open.