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Jean must be in some amphetamine induced coma. That has to be what it is, because it's the only explanation for the waking nightmare he finds himself in.
He breaks down the facts of the "case" again, to himself, in the privacy of his apartment, just to stave off the thoughts of putting his gun in his mouth;
1. Harry was shot.
This part seemed the most reasonable, and for lack of a better word, real. This was the kind of thing that happens in their line of work all the time. It doesn’t usually happen without your partner to back you up, the recriminating part of his brain points out, but he squashes that down because he doesn’t even have time to process those feelings right now. Not when all of it pales in comparison to the fact that:
2. Harry went on a bender so apocalyptic he just... forgot. Fucking everything.
This is where things started crossing into nightmare territory, not just because it was horrifying, but also because it made no fucking sense. Yet he seemed to be the only one still concerned with how that isn’t a thing that fucking happens, what the fuck do you mean he forgot everything??
The worst part isn't that he can't believe it.
It's that he does.
Oh he believes it all right. Mullen well and truly fucked his brain into oblivion. Barely said a word to him for three goddamn days, bumbled around town like a fucking idiot, and spent every second looking at the Lieutenant for guidance like a lost puppy.
Jean didn't want to believe it, but he had. He had believed something so irreversible had finally happened, had been gripped suddenly by such a visceral fear, that threatening Trant into coming along so he could perform some kind of head diagnosis was the only thing that gave him the courage to wait on that rotting fishing pier for the other shoe to drop.
And drop it did, because:
3. Perhaps scariest of all, was that Harry had said he wanted to get better.
He almost laughed out loud by that point, cowed only by the latent need for professionalism—even in what might be a waking nightmare—in the face of another Lieutenant. It couldn't be more obvious that this was a dream. Harry Du Bois never said things like "I want to be better."
He never showed up to work early and not smelling like some ungodly mixture of cheap alcohol and cologne; even before the benders he was a raging alcoholic, it's just that he had been a mostly functional one–until recently.
He never hung his head in shame when reminded of some shitty thing he did, no he always doubled down. Never took orders from anyone, even when it was Nix just doing his damn job, trying to make sure he didn't get an infection and die.
And he certainly never failed to put Jean in his fucking place, Satellite that he is.
So needless to say, Jean is having trouble reconciling the ghost of his best friend and the person currently piloting his body right now.
Because if he does start reconciling the two, starts accepting this new Harry, it'll mean accepting that everything from before is lost.
And so this has to be a nightmare, because with every day that passes he's being given no choice but to try and reconcile the two, and it just seems wildly, unfathomably, unacceptably cruel to suggest that this is his reality now. That the very last time he got to see Harry was a week ago, at the tail end of the worst argument of their entire partnership. That he doesn't get a chance to grieve, or say goodbye—Harry couldn't even afford him that small kindness.
And it's not enough for Harry to be dead and truly gone, eaten away by his addictions, like Jean had been preparing himself for when he started this whole unstoppable backslide into insanity. No, Harry had to take it one step further, had to twist the knife even harder, by dropping him into this fucking…parallel dimension, where the Harry everyone knew is gone and everyone's fine with that, more than fine, fucking relieved that he's gone.
This dimension where he's being forced to go through their routine with a man who doesn't remember his half of it. This dimension where he's being forced to recount basic facts of their partnership like he's planning on quizzing Harry on the answers later. Maybe he should.
(He's afraid of how many questions Harry would get wrong if he does.)
This alternate universe, of how things could’ve been—how they should’ve been with Harry—and he can’t even enjoy any of it because it’s also one where he just so happens to have been conveniently removed from Harry’s mind entirely.
A hysterical part of his mind wonders if this is divine retribution of some kind, a punishment for him leaving Harry alone in Martinaise when he was clearly not in a sound state of mind. That the ramifications of his decision led to a cascade of events so severe as to alter reality itself.
He comes to the same conclusion he does every night he's come home since Martinaise, in that there is no explanation for what the hell just happened, that he must be nearing brain death, and there's nothing he can do but wait for his synapses to waste away and reality to start flickering around the edges, until everything becomes sludge.
Somehow that is more tempting an option than the other—that this is all horribly, painfully, real, and that his partner, his best friend doesn't remember him at all and it’s all his fault, because in the quiet of his own mind, he can’t fully bring himself to agree with the louder, petulant, part of him that wants to scream from the rooftops that He started it! He’s the one who told me to fuck off!
But the only one who would’ve argued against it in the first place is Harry, and that Harry went and killed himself mid argument just so Jean couldn’t get the satisfaction of telling him off.
Tonight is a particularly bad night for these thoughts because he thinks, rather tantalizingly, that if he’s already entering brain death, what’s to stop him from killing himself here? How would that even work?
The mania is still thrumming in his head, but he has just enough lucidity still to recognize that that's a patently awful idea and he should really be talking to some kind of professional about adjusting his medications again if those thoughts are being given space, but on the hierarchy of mental and emotional problems, his own wanton desire for death is ranking pretty low right now.
And maybe it's the mania speaking but he almost wants to see if things could get any worse. That seemed to be the only fucking constant in his life; things get worse. He almost wants to live just to see what could possibly top this.
Normal people would look for the light at the end of the tunnel, there's so much to live for and blah blah blah.
But he’s not been fucking normal since Rada dumped his pathetic ass, so why not have a morbid as fuck reason to stay alive?
It's not enough forever, but it's enough for tonight. He stashes the metaphorical gun in its chest and resigns himself to this doomspiral. Resigns himself to preparing for another hellish day in this alternate reality where everything is the same except for one glaring detail that seems to only be affecting him, because Harry just can't stop fucking him.
Or maybe his brain will give out first and he won't wake back up.
Wouldn't that be fucking poetic.