Chapter Text
It's the winter of '50 and in the north of Revachol, in a forgotten church, a small crack opens up in the fabric of reality. The rats avoid it. The world trickles out of it like water through a drain, into the Nowhere, and a small invisible creature of ultrasonic sound waves gets swallowed by it, marking the final extinction of its kind.
Several kilometers southeast of the church, in Central Jamrock, Satellite-Officer Jean Viquemare hurries through Boogie Street, his coat collar turned up against the foreboding wind.
He hates the cold season. Snow in Revachol always feels like ash settling after an explosion. Somehow, Jamrock manages to get even more depressing as it attempts to fight off the cold with its neon lights and fresh vomit and warm-bodied roadkill on the street. The air bites into Jean's face and he envies the starving stray dogs and the mosquitoes that died out weeks ago.
Of course he always envies the dead things he surrounds himself with, but he envies them especially today because they don't have to put up with Harrier Du Bois.
"Fucking shitkid," he mumbles. He tries to light a cigarette on the go, but the wind keeps putting it out before he can take a proper drag. "Fuck!"
Not being able to smoke bothers him more than the fact he's chasing after his drunkard asshole of a colleague once again.
It's always the same, a cycle he's learned to settle into.
A couple of relatively normal days at the Bloody Murder Station, case files and chain smoking, lunch breaks with Harry at shitty burger joints, more case files, debriefs, all-nighters, and then, the collapse of it all. Sometimes after a particularly bad case, sometimes just randomly. By now, Jean can usually see them coming a day or two before they happen; the drunk calls. The crying, shouting, punching…
They're followed by a familiar kind of seething in Jean's chest, because this shouldn't be his responsibility, but it is, because nobody else cares. He always gets the urge to hurl the telephone across the room, but tells himself it's not worth it every single time. And then he'll smoke and cough out the anger, replace it with worry and resentment and nothingness. He'll pick Harry up from whatever gutter he's thrown himself into this time and he'll move on.
Harry's an alcoholic and a bastard. There's no use finding euphemisms for it—which doesn't stop Harry from doing so, of course. "I'm not a drunk, I'm just drinking. There's a difference," he'll say, and then he'll come in the next day wearing the same clothes, reeking of sweat and liquor and other bodily fluids Jean doesn't care to identify.
It's a Thursday night. Hookers in fur coats and tiny skirts wink at Jean as he's passing them by, trying not to shiver. Slurred chatter and music pours out through the cracks in the bar windows and from underneath doors. Drug addicts and homeless folks linger in the darker corners, ducking away from the halogen street lights.
Somewhere at the end of the road, a gravelly male voice howls. It's yelling something. It's unmistakable. Jean's jaw clenches, steeling himself.
What's it gonna be this time?, he thinks as he approaches the swaying, large silhouette of a man. Insults? Calling Jean "the worst partner he's ever had" or "a fucking failure"? Or is it gonna be self-depreciation this time? Is it gonna be "Jean, I'm the worst, I'm a fuck-up, I'm gonna kill myself." or more like "She said she'd love me like a- fucking liar. Fucking bitch!"?
Will it even be coherent, or is Harry already past that point? He was halfway coherent on the phone, at least. Talking about how he's "lost and scared, Jean, I'm- I'm on the edge. I'm fucking drowning."
Jean's heard it all. Drunks aren't particularly creative, they just repeat the same couple of things that drove them to the bottle in the first place. A feedback loop.
This particular feedback loop is dressed in a dirty purple blazer and obnoxiously yellow pants, both grimy with mud and… other things. He has fallen to his knees in the middle of the road, not far from a telephone box. His face is turned toward one of the street lights, his arms stretched out vaguely towards it.
Jean can hear Harry's growling, watery voice, "You're beautiful!" He's screaming at the street lamp. "Fuck, you're too beautiful, you're too bright, I don't… I don't fucking deserve… You're so beautiful!"
By the time Jean reaches him, Harry is doubled over in some kind of ridiculous prayer to the lamp, pressing his forehead to the road. Jean would laugh at it if it weren't so tragic.
He steps over a puddle of vomit to get to him.
"Hey! Shitkid." He nudges Harry's large fist on the concrete with the tip of his shoe.
"Huh?" Harry's bloated face comes up to look at him. His nose and cheeks are red from the alcohol and probably the winter, too, but there's no recognition in his eyes.
People often tell Jean that he just has one of those faces. They say it's a good thing. "Makes it easier to blend in," they say, "during undercover missions."
In truth, Jean's face is bland. Neither particularly pretty nor particularly ugly, just... forgettable. That's what it is. When Jean looks in the mirror, he often finds that his smallpox scars are his only defining feature; they make him distinguishable from other salt-and-pepper haired, bearded men in his age.
Not distinguishable enough, tough. Quite apparently.
"It's me, you fucking idiot." He nudges Harry again—it's more of a kick this time. "Your fucking partner."
"Jean?!" Harry immediately starts crying. "Oh, you're here. You're here!" He lunges forward with wobbly precision, hands latching onto the fabric of Jean's trousers.
"I am," replies Jean, "Unfortunately."
He assesses the situation. Harry doesn't seem high. He's not that clingy when he's high, so it's probably just alcohol this time. Alcohol can go two ways; aggressive or pathetic.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry," says Harry, pretty much grovelling at Jean's feet.
Pathetic it is, then.
Somehow, Jean wishes Harry would just punch him instead. This puppy-eyed display of remorse makes it significantly harder to be angry at Harry.
"Yeah, you should be," he says, "Stand up!"
"I lost it… I lost it…"
"I know. Get the fuck up!"
Harry sobs his way through standing up. Jean has to put a hand on his shoulder to keep him upright and he feels Harry leaning into it immediately.
"Get it together, shitkid! We're going home."
"Yes. Home." Harry sniffles and before Jean can stop him, the man's collapsed into his arms, crying and hugging him like a sad sack of wet clothes.
Harry's a very physical man. Always has been.
He likes to clap Jean on his back after a successful case, likes to squeeze Jean's shoulder, likes to ruffle Jean's hair, likes to shove Jean around, likes to touch his snakeskin shoe to Jean's RCM-issued boot under the table. And when he's drunk, he either likes to punch Jean in the face, or he likes to cling on to Jean like there's no tomorrow.
This time, Jean lets him. He's too tired to care, even in the face of Harry's greasy hair and Harry's breath smelling outright abhorrent. Harry's body is heavy and clumsy next to Jean's. At least there doesn't seem to be any puke on his horrendous disco clothes.
That's when Jean notices it—Harry's wearing his riding boots.
"Shit," hisses Jean, "Did you take the fucking horse?"
His question is answered by the loudest sob yet.
"Tell me you didn't take the fucking horse, shitkid!"
Harry cries into Jean's coat, "I was trying to- to tell you. She wanted to go exploring… I only wanted to be nice! She's a good horsey…"
"You lost the fucking horse!" Jean pinches the back of his nose. "No, yeah, that's great!" He's so tired. "That's perfect, let her go for a stroll through the city, why don't you? Just fabulous. What's next? Set the patrol dogs free and start a rescue center for guinea pigs instead?"
"We're gonna rescue guinea pigs?" Harry looks up at him with big, hopeful eyes.
"No, the fuck we're not!" Jean sighs and drags Harry along by the scruff of his diamond-patterned blazer. "Finding a horse on goddamned Boogie Street. Regular day on the job…"
Harry starts crying again.
Jean decides that calling the precinct is his best bet. If anyone's found the horse—and miraculously hasn't decided to keep it or ignore it—that person would have called the RCM. All RCM horses are branded, easily identifiable. Harry's horse is a chestnut brown Thoroughbred by the name of Solène and notoriously unbothered. (She has to be, with a rider as erratic as Harry.)
They walk towards the telephone booth. Well, Jean walks and Harry stumbles after him, half-dragged, half-shoved. It's the same booth Harry used to call Jean twenty minutes ago. One call is 10 centim. Precinct 41's telephone number is one Jean knows so instinctively, he doesn't even have to look as he presses the corresponding buttons.
It rings.
Keeps ringing.
Harry's still leaning on him, whimpering slightly, mumbling something about the wind and the horse and being sorry again.
A click, then Oldboy's familiar voice is patched through. "Precinct 41 listening." (Does he ever sleep?)
"Oldboy, it's me, Jean. Say, has anyone reported a stray horse near Boogie Street tonight?"
"A beautiful horse," Harry adds beside him and Jean hopes the communication officer doesn't pick up on it on the other end of the line.
"A… horse?" repeats Oldboy.
"Yes."
"No, officer, there's not been any report of a horse."
"Shit." Jean closes his eyes in agony. "Right. Thanks anyway. Good night."
"Good night, officer." The line goes dead.
Harry hiccups. His breath smells foul as he says, "The light… the light knows where she is…"
Jean takes a deep breath to steady himself—immediately regretting it when Harry's stench fills his nose. "I can't fucking believe you," he mutters, "Come on. Get your shit together and stand up straight!"
As they saunter down the street, with Jean keeping a look out for the horse, he can't help but think about reversed roles. Harry's always been an alcoholic, but it wasn't always this bad. Before the Harry's heartbreak, before—before everything that happened between them, it used to be the other way around. It used to be Harry offering his shoulder for Jean to lean on. It used to be Jean calling Harry around midnight, the phone in one hand and a dozen pills in the other. It used to be Harry rescuing Jean from himself.
It used to be the other way around.
Years ago.