Raffles.

Nereides, Poseidon, all the gods who must surely dwell in such a paradise as this:

I'm back with my bargain, if you will still take it.

I went in for half measures, last time. Didn't do the thing properly. Little wonder you haven't helped.

Could we start again?

I've been thinking—well, I can't stop thinking, that's the trouble. That's the point.

In particular, I keep finding myself thinking about how Bunny always kept a journal. He wrote it in code, of course, because he could be a very sensible little rabbit at times, but in it he wrote—he said he wrote—anything that he couldn't get out of his head. That writing things down set them out of his mind for a little while; that committing his fears to paper made space in his thoughts without letting him feel that he was neglecting them—ready to return to them whenever he felt better able. Worries placed on ice, so to speak. God knows he had enough of them. He could have supplied the Arctic.

I never believed in any of that, back then. It was all well and good for him, and anything that kept Bunny happy was fine by me, but I didn't understand it, personally. In my view, problems always fell into one of two camps: things you could do something about, and things you couldn't. If you could do something about it, do something about it. If you couldn't—and that was a rare thing, in my experience—then there was little good to be found in troubling yourself. Forget about it and move on.

These days I find myself more empathetic to Bunny's position. I find myself wondering if there wasn't something in the writing idea, after all. His only mistake was hanging onto them, those pages full of worries and fears and regrets. That was where he was in error. He should have burned the things.

Day and night, hour by hour, minute by minute, it runs constant through my mind: everything that happened, everything he said, every look, every touch, every damned mistake I made—and how many there were! I find myself endlessly, obsessively interrogating my decisions, my motives, my intentions—and for what? There's nothing I can do. I couldn't fix it now, even if I knew how to, even if there were any hope—!

I've never gone in for remorse. When I act, I do so with my eyes open. I do so with intent. I do so with a full understanding of the potential consequences of my actions. If things go wrong, that's simply part of the risk I accepted going in; the price I pay for the choices I willingly make. I'm never penitent. I refuse to regret. It's not in my nature. It's not who I am.

And yet here we are.

Well, if there is the slightest chance that writing this will help me... I'm at a point where I'd try anything—if I can't shift this soon, I'm worried I might. I'd do anything to be rid of this blasted blackness. It assaults me even in my dreams, not as a single spy, but as a battalion. I'd thought that doing this—writing it all down, admitting it all, if only to myself—I thought that I was making it worse. Wallowing in self-pity, living in the past, worshipping at veil'd melancholy's sovran shrine; all that insalubrious rot. But it's been weeks since I wrote a word, and things are as dismal as ever. Worse. I find myself caught in an endless downward spiral, dragging myself, my own unwilling victim, through the various circles of Hell. What happened, what is happening (to him; always to him…), what I should have done, could have done, will never now be able to do... I can focus on nothing else. It is intolerable. I'm simply no fun.

So if you're there, any gods, anyone, I'll pass it all onto you. Take arms against my sea of troubles, and in return I'll leave my life to you—properly, this time. That life, my life, the life I've lost in all but my cursed memory—I'll leave it on your knees, to do with as you will. Just let me forget it. Please. Take the damned lot of it; take my very name and destroy it! Let my name be Nobody in order that I might escape it. You can have it all, the good memories and the bad alike; for I'm not sure if the good memories don't hurt more than the bad ones. So just take them all: burn them, eat them, read 'em aloud for fun at your celestial banquets, I—don't—care, just so long as I'm freed of them.

I'll do it right, this time. I will write it all out, just as Bunny would: beginning at the beginning, ending at the end, and telling only the necessary facts, the pertinent details, and the honest truth. I think I'm still capable of honesty. I have to be.

I have to be.

So it breaks, so it ends; there let it rest.

...Shall we try this again?