#(a lot of booker's problems are caused by General Unwillingness To Take Action actually)

[words-writ-in-starlight]

im vibing with your notes about how long 100 years is for booker because i've got SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT HIM AND HIS EXILE. how is he even going to spend those hundred years? does he just get paris for his exile? is he constantly just. drunk out of his mind so he doesn't have to process?? is he TALKING to anyone or is he in like. solitary confinement? if quynh didn't show up literally how would he survive (well, metaphorically)? can he get medicinal assistance getting more serotonin or not??

I’M NOT GOING TO LIE, I DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH SYMPATHY FOR BOOKER

Well, okay, I do have sympathy for Booker, I’ve never been into immortality as a concept because I’m ninety-four abandonment issues in a cadet cap, his life is my personal nightmare and I absolutely understand why he’s suicidally depressed, he should maybe get some therapy about it and honestly if alcohol works on them (and it clearly does) I see no reason that antidepressants shouldn’t.

However.

He does condemn the family that’s stuck with him and done their level best to be there for him to what could very easily be an eternity of torture!  And I am a sufficiently vindictive person to understand why some sterner consequences than an apology (Nile I love you sweetie you’re doing amazing but literally no one including Booker would have taken that option) were called for.  Both because the rest of the Guard was (justifiably) incredibly angry and within their rights to say that this is their limit for taking damage from him, right now, and because the relationship between Booker and the rest is absolutely going to require some time and distance in order to have a hope in hell of healing.

And the exile is...it’s the worst thing they could have done, sure--except, ironically, what he did to them--but it’s also something of a blank slate.  I think part of the reason they all agreed to it, even Nile, is because it would ultimately be as bad as Booker made it for himself.  If he spends a hundred years periodically drinking himself to death and not speaking to anyone except the person manning the liquor store, that’s Booker’s choice.  Like, it sucks to say and it’s exhausting to live with, but no one can make you stop self-destructing.  So if Booker spends a hundred years in total isolation, he chose to do that; if Booker tries to find something to fill his time other than drinking himself to death and travels and talks to people, he chose to do that too.  The exile is a punishment no matter what, but it’s only hell if Booker decides it’s going to be, which is why I frankly think it’s a decent solution.

And sure, maybe the Guard could have done more to see the writing on the wall with Booker’s family and keep him away from them, or to save him from himself, but they’re all in the middle of wars and atrocities too.  He’s their family, but it’s not their job to swallow being handed over as lab rats and tortured in order to drag him out of his own head.  And I think Booker knows it, too.  He takes the exile without batting an eye.  He knows how badly he fucked up, he knows they’re right to be angry with him, he knows that any death could be their last, and even if Andy hadn’t been mortal, he would have been playing dice with all their lives.  

That might have been fine if it was just him, by the way, because Booker wants to die!  But Andy, Joe, and Nicky don’t.  Even Andy doesn’t want to die, not like this.  And Nile--Nile is twenty-six for God’s sake, she should have had another sixty years even if she wasn’t immortal, and Booker balks at bringing her into things but he still does it.  And Booker knows all of that.  He knows what he did and he is transparently horrified with himself, once he gets shocked out of his suicidal downward spiral to see the effect he’s had on his family.  I genuinely do not think he could have lived with himself, if they had handed down anything less than exile as a punishment for his actions.  

Which brings me to the fact that he still chooses to drink himself to death in exile.  But to be totally honest?  I think it’s kind of a different suicidality than before.  It’s not the plain, uncomplicated death wish that leads him to sacrifice his whole family on the altar of his own depression.  It’s self-loathing, pure and simple.  Booker’s always hated immortality as a concept, for daring to choose him, for daring to be irrational and meaningless, for daring to be non-transferrable, but after the lab he clearly turns that hatred on himself.  Booker’s always been his own worst enemy, and by god he’s not about to stop now that he doesn’t have anyone looking over his shoulder.