Chapter Text
“Why are you drinking? demanded the little prince.
"So that I may forget," replied the tippler.
"Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who was already sorry for him.
"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
"Ashamed of drinking!”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince
He has one hundred years of penance, and he wastes the initial part of it drunk as a fish. This is unfunny according to Quỳnh.
“You had what I wanted and you wasted it,” she says in disappointment.
And Jesus, he hasn’t even known her long, and she’s already laying on the guilt. He waves the empty bottle at her. “You think if I could, I wouldn’t have swapped places with you?”
“You say that, but you wouldn’t. You just want to be miserable, instead of living the one life you’ve been given.”
“One life?”
She shrugs in her fine clothing. Despite being away for so long, she dresses better than he does. “So it’s a long one.”
Later, as he downs a different vintage, a different appellation, he asks, “Why are you here, and not with them?”
Her face grows pensive, lost. She takes a sip of her mint tea, then says, “Because you and I have both been set adrift. I don’t know if I am ready to …” She shakes her head, sets her tea down, picks him up over her shoulder, and throws him into the bathtub.
From then on, every time he drinks, she douses him in water: dumps water on him, shoots very accurately with a water gun, water balloons, and of course, the damn bathtub. It also has the unexpected result of him finally taking off his shoes inside the house, since wet shoes are miserable.
“Haven’t you have enough?” he shouts in the tepid shower.
“Haven’t you?” she says in turn, and then returns to reading The Little Prince out loud to him from where she’s perched on the counter.
“Jesus, woman, couldn’t you just… monologue at me instead of ignoring me by reading?”
Quỳnh fucking chortles. “You think I would give a villainous speech?”
Yes, yes he did. “How do you even know about those?” He needs a shower anyway, so he turns the knob for more hot water, and strips his clothes.
“You,” she replies. “I’ve had nothing but water, and your memories for years.” She takes a sip of her chrysanthemum tea. “And now the woman too. Andy,” the name still sits funny in her mouth, “likes her.”
“Nile shot her.”
“Good,” Quỳnh smiles. “Keep her on her toes, since I’m not there.”
“Not good. Andy doesn’t heal anymore.”
Quynh draws figures in the fogged up mirror. “Hmm.”
Booker stills, looking at her in her pajamas set stamped with geese. “Do you... do you know if she can become immortal again?”
“The same way fairy tales solve problems: kindness, blood, and true love’s kiss.”
And Booker knows then she’s fucking with him. He picks up his wet shirt and throws it at her. She catches it, and tosses it to the floor. “Then why are you here and not with her?” he grouses.
She closes her book, and looks at him. “You and I are alike, drowning. I need time to...reconnect with the world, and you need time to come to your senses.”
“I’ve come to my fucking senses. I fucked up. I fucked up. And now they’re all… I’m all...”
“Alone. Yes. You think so little of family,” she says a little sadly. “We will be alone together until we find our land legs.” She turns her attention back to the book. “On est seul aussi chez les hommes, dit le serpent...”
He and Quỳnh stay in Paris. When you’re lost, you’re supposed to wait where you are, right?
His apartment grows furnished now that Quỳnh’s here. Since she’s filling his (their?) apartment with things – cutlery that matches, an organizer for the closet, a shoe rack by the door – he figures he can fill the bookshelf that’s been serving as an over-sized recycle bin for his empty bottles. Eventually he starts reading again. It’s unoriginal, he knows.
His shelves fill with books he loved, books he hopes to read, and books he’s finished. He often thinks of the team (“The family,” Quỳnh corrects), and who would like what book. What they would talk about. He has these books, and he can’t send them to his family, because it would be intrusive. They exiled him; they don’t want his gifts. But he collects books, a shelf for each of them, books he wants to share with them and say I thought of you when I read this or I think you’d like this.
His shelves are full of unspoken wishes, regrets. He misses them fiercely, wondering what they are doing: How are Andy’s joints doing, is she still insisting on going in first despite her mortality? What stupid bets are Joe and Nicky making? Who does Joe watch football with now? How is Nile settling into her new life? So he keeps reading, dreaming of them in his own way, and fills his shelves.
“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.”
― Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War