I think I love Jean Vicquemare so much because I recognize parts of myself in him. Younger parts, angrier parts, CPTSD parts. All of which went ignored because I was struggling to process my abuse in the ‘correct’ way. When you’re traumatized you lose so much of the ability to be a nuanced person. If you’re not the perfect victim, society tells you that you’re no longer deserving of forgiveness or even that you deserved the abuse to begin with. You must be helpless, so that you may be pitied, so that you can cling onto the tiny sliver of hope that the world may actually give you justice.
When you meet Jean at the end of the game, he is the opposite of everything a victim should be (and yes, he is a victim of Harry’s behavior do not argue with me). He is mean, he is cruel. You have to read between the lines to see the hurt and compassion that lingers there. People dont like to do that. They see the snarls and snapping teeth of the dog, but they do not see the fear in his eyes.
Consider being 31-32 year old Jean Vicquemare. Clinically depressed, sufferer of suicide headaches, meth addict, in the RCM because you want to make a change, somehow, someway. You become partners with a guy 10 years your senior who is truly something special. He is not the violent, not corrupt, not like other officers you know. He works hard, he embodies everything you think the RCM should stand for. You rise through the ranks with him. But, oh, he’s slipping. He’s becoming a stranger, his behavior is now so erratic that good men are leaving your already short staffed precinct. Not you, though, never you.
You know the officer he once was, and you trust that he will get better and become that man once more. You know this in your heart. You know it because he promises, and you love him enough to trust him. “Life partners” is what the other members of the precinct call you two. But, he’s breaking promise after promise. Slowly, you’re left wondering how much more you can take. Theres a bitterness brewing inside of you that you can no longer push down.
In Martinase there is a major case that he pushes you away for. “Cramping my style” is the phrase he uses, even though it has been you that takes care of him between relapses, between your own chronic headaches. *You* who had decided to *stay*.
So you give him what he wants for four days. The thought of him alone probably gnaws at you. You cant ever be angry at him, not truly. All your anger is real, but it is also a guard for your for concern and love, because if you make these emotions too accessible to yourself he *will* hurt you. It is never an “if” he lets you down, it is always “when”. And when the time comes this will soften the blow.
Now, consider being 34 finally returning in a costume of one of the men he made quit the force. As if to say, “look, you have driven everyone away but I am still here. And I always will be. Nothing you do to me will change that.” You want him to laugh at men weaker willed than you, more disloyal.
He doesn’t. He doesn’t even know who the hell you are. In four fatal days, he has betrayed you for the final time. Drunk himself into an oblivion he cannot return from. It is everything you feared would happen. You were life partners, now you are the initials JV in a trashed ledger. He once gave you something you thought dangerously close to love, now memories of you are over rided by the smell of apricots and the color orange.
You are left alone to work through your memories together. Days where the outside is so painfully cold, and you’re so very high together. Mornings where you peel away from his body heat in bed, do a line, and then wake him up for work.
I love Jean despite him being a little asshole because I believe the traumatized people deserve to be portrayed as nuanced people. We can be mean as well as capable of incredible kindness. None of these things mean what happened to us wasn’t real.
If you take a step back from Jean, he isn’t magically a good person. But you can surely start to see why he behaves the way he does!!!
