Not all scars are physical. Sometimes the mark is a deep one left in hidden places of the mind. Scars that wake you up screaming, or make you jump at a shadow in the dark and the sound of thunder.

Most nights, indeed most days, I'm okay. The memories are dulled by distance and tempered by better ones since. But lately….lately I've been jumping at the shadows again. Yamatai weighs down on my again. Costa Rica. Peru. Turkey. Germany. The oil rig. Tibet. All those events, all that time racing Shaw and his men. Killing them. And then the jungle. Something happened there a few months back. Something I haven't been willing to share with Sam.

And that may be the most damning scar of all. Sam is my best friend, my wife. The person who understands me better than anyone else, the one person I love more than any other in the world. How can I tell her I killed a boy? It doesn't matter that he was armed, that he was being forced to kill me, and likely others. He was still a child and I put a bullet in him, unthinking, uncaring until the act was done and I'd seen what I wrought.

My dreams are haunted again. Old ghosts I'd thought I'd put down. Dreams of Amanda falling to her death. New ones in the form of that boy. Everywhere I go I leave corpses in my wake.

It was so bad tonight that I found myself in the bathroom, furiously scrubbing my hands to clean blood that isn't there. It's familiar behaviour, from those first six months after Yamatai and I feel like I'm right back at square one. How can I shoulder so much suffering over the seven years since and one event, one little boy can send me back?

I feel a hand on my shoulder, and then arms wrap around me. I lean in, turning my head to look at Sam. Maybe she doesn't quite know what's set me off, but she understands. She's been there nearly every step of the way. She's scrubbed her hands raw sometimes, too. And sometimes, a lot of the time, I wish we'd never found that fucking island. So that Sam wouldn't have this weight. That I wouldn't carry it myself.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks me. Her eyes, they've seen too much, and this would be just another burden to add to her shoulders. But she has a way of breaking through my barriers. "Is this about the jungle? I know it had to have been bad, but I'm here for you. We share things, remember? I'm ready to listen, when you're ready to talk."

"There was a boy," I rasp.