Raffles.
...I know.
I know how it must have looked. I know how it must seem.
I know how the game played out in the end, on that ship, on that afternoon, on that cursed day; and I know that it seems a wholly unsportsmanlike thing for me to have done after the fact, and without all of the facts. I know.
But the art of our necessities is strange, after all, and mine perhaps more than most. I'd like to believe that Bunny at least knew why I did what I did. Why I did all of what I did, if not at the time, then at least when — at least if — he looks back on it all with the clearer eye of hindsight. I should like to believe that in spite of everything — despite everything — he of all people understood me at the last.
It should have been of little surprise to anyone, least of all to him, that at the push my reaction was, as it has always been, to run. At the scratch my steadfast rabbit stood strong, whilst I, cowardly and cornered wolf that I am, turned tail and bolted, leaving him alone to face the hounds. I know that's how it looks. I know.
But the wolf in the fold is a danger to the rabbit as much as to the sheep.
I can't with good conscience say that my actions were entirely free from selfishness. I make no claims upon heroics, nor do I seek to paint myself as the Saint I most assuredly am not, and have never been, and have never had the slightest desire to be. But at the moment I jumped, his safety was the first and last thought in my mind, and I should swear to that in a court of law — gods willing I never have to.
I didn't abandon Bunny. I didn't—
But I'm not writing this as a justification of my actions. I've never been one to seek absolution, not through confession nor by any other means. What's done cannot be undone, no matter how much you might wish it to be. No matter how much you think upon it; no matter how much you despair over it; no matter how much you would be willing to pay in order to set things right.
What's the point of regret? It can't change anything.
What is done cannot be undone.
That's the cold truth of it, and the truth of why I'm sitting here in this bona fide paradise, writing any of this at all: To cement all that has happened in my own mind as historical fact, as immutable now as the crossing of the Rubicon or the English Civil war, and to make it every bit as commonplace to me. To make it every bit as mundane, every bit as personally insignificant, and every bit as forgettable, so that I might dwell on it no more often than I dwell on the destruction of Carthage or the Hundred Years War. That I might put from my mind the what ifs and the could have beens and all of that venomous, insidious, pointless regret before it succeeds in offing me where even the Mediterranean sea failed. I write so that the gods, unaccustomed as they are to mercy, might accept a tale of tragedy and hubris in exchange for my freedom.
Because yes, in retrospect, I could have done something better. Something smarter. Something with less, shall we say, collateral damage. But in the heat of the moment, and under the not particularly sanguine conditions, I made the best decisions I felt that I could. I did what I could do best to protect my — friend from further trouble. From that which I had, at last, let him in for. From me.
I did what only The Great A. J. Raffles could have done.
I lied, I kissed the girl, and I leapt.