SEND ME A CRYSTAL AND I’LL TELL... ▸ ACCEPTING. CHALCEDONY ▸ THE SADDEST MY MUSE HAS EVER BEEN.
u mean outta all the times jesse pinkman’s been Done Dirty i gotta pick one ?? this Soft Boi has been taken for all he’s got, but honestly ?? i’m gonna go through the most obvious candidates for me before coming to a conclusion. note for heavy breaking bad spoilers ahead —— but if you haven’t watched this show, what the hell are you doin ?? get on that shit already xo
SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN FOR TL:DR; i rambled, sue me. xo
01. AUNT GINNY’S DEATH. TRIGGER WARNINGS : CANCER / TERMINAL ILLNESS.jesse’s aunt ( presumably one he was very close to, given photos together and his role as her carer ) had an unspecified form of cancer. he lived with her through his school years, was very involved in everything from looking after her on a general, daily basis to hospital trips and treatments, if his in-depth knowledge on cancer to the point of recognising it in walt from the marks on his chest is anything to glean from. he looked after her during the seven months after which she was diagnosed, and she unfortunately passed away after that time.
aside from the obvious impact of losing somebody close to him, jesse was extremely young when the responsibility of looking after her was given to him. it’s canonically mentioned that his parents offered little assistance, leaving jesse alone for seven months with an aunt that he cared for deeply, and whose condition was rapidly deteriorating despite any treatment attempted.
the most important thing, to me, to note is that he didn’t lose her overnight. it wasn’t a car accident, or something unprecedented. he had to watch as every treatment they tried didn’t work, knowing anything they did would only be delaying the inevitable. he had to watch as the cancer spread to her brain, and his aunt saw opossums under the house that weren’t there. that slow loss of a person is heartbreaking, and i don’t doubt it not only had an effect on jesse’s mental state, but consequently his grades, his interpersonal relationships, and his already frail familial dynamics with his parents and brother.
02. COMBO’S DEATH.jesse’s reaction to this isn’t actually all that thoroughly explored, and while i don’t take this as suggestive of his friendship with combo being any lesser than that of badger and skinny pete ( he did help jesse get the rv after all ) i do think because a) jesse didn’t directly witness it happen and b) given the drug business they’re involved in, some element of danger is to be expected, it wasn’t as big a blow to jesse as some of the other points listed. i do still note it though, because combo’s death is still the loss of a friend jesse felt close to, a loss that does encourage him to do drugs again, and consequently heroin with jane.
03. JANE’S DEATH. TRIGGER WARNINGS : SUBSTANCE ABUSE / VOMIT.jane’s case is particularly sad because we watch jesse, who at this point doesn’t have all that many strong interpersonal relationships, find someone he relates to artistically and is interested in. walt hardly counts as a father figure, and his friend circle is not only fairly limited in quantity and an ability to be vulnerable, but is closely tied into his work as a drug kingpin. jane, initially clean, is detached from that, and when she does die choking on her own vomit in her sleep because of the heroin they’d been shooting up, he takes it hard.
one, because she’d been clean. likely, if combo hadn’t died, jesse wouldn’t have relapsed hard, and jane wouldn’t have followed suit. by some screwed up butterfly effect case scenario, jesse is somewhat to blame for her death. emphasis on somewhat. jesse takes that somewhat and assumes a direct responsibility for the entire thing without the knowledge that walt could well have prevented it until he tells him so in season five. not only that, but jesse has to deal with the shock of literally waking up to his girlfriend glass-eyed and cold in bed beside him, of trying to resuscitate her to no avail, of having to recount it to the police, of sticking himself in a limbo of listening to her voicemail which likely would have never ended if her phone number wasn’t discontinued.
04. GALE’S DEATH.this is the only one jesse actually killed out of the list. like, literally held at gunpoint killed, and not really by choice, given the ultimatum walt indicates pretty quickly, the us or him dynamic that forces jesse pinkman to kill this quirky vegan who makes perfect coffee and reads stephen king and gets excited about science solely because otherwise it’s his and walt’s lives on the line.
this sends jesse spiralling in drug-induced euphoria for pretty much all of season four, shaving his head, throwing parties, likely under my belief that he’s doing everything to detach himself from the person he was, the person who shot gale boetticher as he begged him not to. the drugs, the music, the people, they were all an attempt at distraction from the broken record playing tht memory back to him time and time again.
05. ANDREA’S DEATH. TRIGGER WARNINGS : PARENTAL DEATH / SLAVERY.andrea’s death is another level of witness / blame. not only does she get shot as he watches, but it’s a more direct source back to him this time. he tried to escape from jack’s gang, so as a consequence andrea gets killed. not only that, but brock having to see it makes it all the more horrifying, making them both just another set of innocent bystanders caught in jesse’s hurricane. after this he goes visibly numb, daydreaming about his wooden box as he lives out his enslavement as the gang’s personal meth cook, and never tries escaping again until walt arrives to bail him out.
CONCLUSION.with the arguably biggest moments of jesse’s arc entailed, i narrowed it down to two holding the potential of being his saddest moments, being jane and andrea’s deaths. they’re the two that he was a) the closest to, and b) had a stronger involvement in their deaths, rather than strictly due to the romantic connection he shared with them both. you could likely argue the case for either of them being the most impactful, and i very nearly went with jane at first — after all, she’s the first big moment he doesn’t see coming, and the scenes that follow and thoroughly explore his grief are, for lack of a better phrase, fucking heartbreaking.
however ! upon thinking about it more, i think andrea’s was worse. coming from somebody who doesn’t really agree with the introduction of a second love interest in jesse’s life, i assure you this isn’t drawn from any ship bias or preference, since i actually find jesse and jane’s dynamic more interesting. but i think just because the show wraps up with little afterthought to exploring the grief jesse feels ( it is the end of the show after all, so time constraints and all the works of a finale don’t really permit for that ) doesn’t mean it affected him any less.
in jane’s case, he wakes up to find her dead, and blames himself for her death, and likely, to a lesser extent, her father’s grief, having met him however briefly and under however tense circumstances prior, and with the knowledge her dad had encouraged her to stay away from drugs. it feels to jesse like he encouraged the betrayal to her father and her consequential death, and he’s fucking sorry for it.
in andrea’s case, he watches her die while he can’t do anything, and blames himself for her death, and to an equal extent, and here’s the difference that matters, brock’s grief. jesse has shown a huge tie-in to kids from the beginning, from his brother, to spooge’s kid in peekaboo, to being extremely affected by the knowledge that walt poisoned brock. that’s where i think it’s worse. he’s killed andrea, but also a child’s mother, and when he kills todd in the finale as comeuppance, i doubt it’s enough closure for jesse. that sadness isn’t something he’ll ever really be able to repair, not when brock grows up without his mother and jesse, essentially, gets out free.
TL:DR; ANDREA’S DEATH AFFECTED HIM THE MOST / LEFT HIM THE SADDEST DUE TO 1) HIS DIRECT INVOLVEMENT IN HER MURDER AND 2) THE KNOWLEDGE BROCK HAS LOST HIS MOTHER AS A RESULT AND MAY VERY WELL POTENTIALLY BE THE ONE TO FIND HER DEAD.
Tic tic toc, the time bomb clock ... He can hear them outside, muffled through the walls of the burnt metal ship. The air smells of smoke still, his fingers black from brushing against the walls blackened with soot when he was tossed into the iron cell. By the wall he sits, knees pulled to his chest, and waits for the inevitable. Skaikru’s cruelty is not unknown to him. He’s quite certain that he will not live to see the next night. But while he feels no desire to fight for his life now ( what purpose is there, what reason to ? he has no home to return to, has had his vengeance ), he is surprised they did not shoot him on the spot. It is their reputation. Shoot and then ask questions. Now they are discussing. He can hear it. There are no regrets in his heart. The iron chains of grief that have it enclosed tightly have loosened merely the slightest bit. Yet even now that there is no more tech to put people in danger, he cannot rest. The memories have not left him, the pain remains. Sleep is not granted to him – the dreams terrify him. But one could not sleep in here, not with skaikru debating his fate outside. Fingers curl into unkempt hair, brush it behind his ear, when suddenly someone is opening the door. Brown eyes shoot up to find the golden haired girl that appears to be the leader. Have you come to kill me? His eyes ask, but he says nothing, merely follows her movements attentively and waits, waits for the sentence to be spoken. / @saviourse
“i...appreciate the gesture, but clarke? are you SURE that’s not poisonous?”
this is no place for her - - all wild, all danger. and susan much too gentle, much too used to comforts. (still isn’t sure how she’s here at all, she and her siblings, all sent down at once.) holds still, frozen, half-wary of motion. worried that one brush of petal or of leaf upon her skin shall burn and bubble, send some strange poison seeping.
“or, you know....radioactive?”
Send 🌼 to put a flower in my muse’s hair! : (ACCEPTING AF!)
