Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQGPH4X531J56PWC2PZYRC

Soho always looked like it was sweating—rain slick on the pavements, cigarette smoke clinging to the awnings, neon bleeding green into puddles like a slow chemical spill. Aurora Carter pulled her hood down as she reached the familiar door beneath the Raven’s Nest sign. The green glow caught the sharp edges of her cheekbones and made her straight black hair look almost blue-black, like ink. Inside, the bar folded around her the way it always did: dim light, close air, the low throb of a song she never quite recognized, walls crowded with old maps and black-and-white photographs that stared back with their grainy, dead-eyed certainty. It smelled of citrus peel and spilled beer and wood that had absorbed other people’s secrets. Silas stood behind the bar, polishing a glass with slow, methodical attention, as if the act itself steadied him. He looked up when the door shut. His hazel eyes found her without searching, taking her in with that quiet authority of his. The grey in his auburn hair caught the bar’s amber light; his neatly trimmed beard made his face look carved and deliberate. “You’re late,” he said. Rory shrugged out of her damp jacket. “Golden Empress had a surge of hungry students who suddenly discovered sesame oil exists.” Silas’s mouth twitched, the closest he came to smiling before midnight. His right hand—silver signet ring catching light—set the glass down. When he moved, the slight hitch of his left leg was there, familiar as the maps on the wall. “Eat?” he asked. “I ate on the bike,” she lied. She came around the end of the bar to her usual stool anyway, because the act of sitting in that same spot made her feel, for a few minutes, like her life had a spine. Silas slid her a short tumbler and poured without asking. The whisky smelled like smoke and honey. Rory wrapped her fingers around the glass, felt its coolness seep into her skin. The crescent scar on her left wrist flashed pale when she turned her hand; it was small, easy to miss, but she felt it like a private punctuation mark. The bar wasn’t crowded. A couple in the corner argued in whispers, faces close as if kissing. Someone played at being drunker than they were. Near the wall of maps, a lone figure sat with their back half-turned to the room, shoulders squared beneath a dark coat. A phone lay on the table like an offering. Rory didn’t pay much attention at first. The Raven’s Nest collected solitary people the way the Thames collected debris—some drifted in, some washed out, all of them carrying something they didn’t want to hold alone. Silas leaned his forearms on the bar. “Your mother called again.” Rory stared into her whisky. The surface trembled faintly with the bass from the speakers, a small quake. “Did you answer?” “I never answer,” Silas said. “But I listened. She sounded… tired.” Rory swallowed. Cardiff felt like another country sometimes, not because of distance but because of how neatly she’d folded it away. Her mother’s voice lived in old voicemails she couldn’t delete. Her father’s disapproval lived in her own head, properly barristered, always arguing. “She’ll be tired,” Rory said. “She married Brendan Carter.” Silas made a sound that could have been a laugh if he believed in such things. “He still a barrister?” “Still a barrister,” Rory echoed, like it was a curse that stayed effective through repetition. She lifted the glass, took a sip. Heat unfurled down her throat, softening the knot that always lived behind her ribs. She set the glass down carefully, the way she did everything that mattered, and when she looked up again her gaze snagged on that lone figure by the maps. It wasn’t the coat. It wasn’t even the posture, though there was something about it—too straight, too alert for someone pretending to be at ease. It was the hand that reached for the phone, a brief flash of fingers, a habit Rory hadn’t seen in years: thumb worrying at the edge of a nail, then stopping abruptly as if caught in the act. She stared, and memory did what it always did—made a doorway where there wasn’t one. That hand had passed her cigarettes behind the sports hall in Cardiff. That hand had held her wrist and said, Don’t, when Rory had wanted to run straight into trouble just to prove she could survive it. That hand had waved from the platform once, years ago, and Rory had watched it disappear into the blur of other lives. The figure shifted, turned their head slightly, and Rory saw the line of a jaw in profile. The light from the bar caught the curve of a cheekbone. A pair of small gold hoops glinted at an ear. Her chest went tight in a way that had nothing to do with whisky. “No,” Rory said under her breath, and it came out like a plea. Silas followed her gaze. His expression didn’t change, but his attention sharpened. “You know her?” Rory’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “I—” She hadn’t said that name out loud in a long time. It had lived in the category of names she didn’t use for fear they would answer. “Eva.” As if summoned by sound or instinct, the figure turned fully then. Eva Morgan’s face was older, not in years exactly but in finish. The softness Rory remembered—rounded cheeks, the earnestness—had been pared down. Her hair, once a tumble of light brown Rory had braided in her bedroom on long, lazy afternoons, was cut short now, sharp at the jaw, dyed a pale blonde that made her skin look paler. There was a thin scar at the corner of her mouth, a faint seam that tugged her expression into something like permanent skepticism. Her eyes were the same, though. Grey-green, direct, and when they landed on Rory they widened with a startled, unguarded recognition that made Rory’s stomach drop. For a second neither of them moved. The room kept breathing around them—glass clinks, soft laughter, the muffled city outside. Silas remained still behind the bar, watching as if he’d seen this kind of collision before and knew better than to step between. Eva stood. She didn’t hurry. She crossed the bar with measured steps, like she was walking over ice she didn’t trust. When she reached the stool beside Rory, she stopped and looked her up and down. Rory felt the inspection like fingertips. “Rory?” Eva said. Her voice had changed too—lower, steadier, with a roughness that might have been smoke or late nights or the weight of unsaid things. Rory tried to smile and found she could only manage something brittle. “Hi.” Eva’s gaze flicked to the glass in Rory’s hand, then to Silas, then back. “This is… where you ended up?” Rory heard the judgment in the question even if Eva didn’t mean it that way. She also heard the hurt under it, the implication: I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me. You vanished. Rory’s throat tightened. “I live upstairs.” Eva blinked once, as if that fact landed strangely. “Above a bar.” “Above a bar,” Rory confirmed. “It’s… cheaper than therapy.” Eva’s mouth twitched, almost amused, then stopped. She slid onto the stool beside Rory without asking, shoulders angled slightly away, as though closeness was something she’d forgotten how to do. Silas poured a second drink and set it down in front of Eva. “On the house,” he said. Eva’s eyes flicked to his signet ring. “That’s generous.” “Tonight’s already expensive,” Silas replied, and stepped away, giving them space with a tact that felt practiced. Eva stared at the drink. She didn’t touch it. Rory watched her hands—neat nails, no polish, a faint burn mark on one knuckle. Rory’s mind tried to build a story from those details and failed. “I thought you were still in Cardiff,” Eva said finally. Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I thought you hated London.” “I do,” Eva said. “It’s crowded. It lies about itself.” “And yet,” Rory said, gesturing weakly at the bar around them. Eva’s gaze moved over the maps and photographs with quick appraisal. “I’m here for a meeting.” Her eyes returned to Rory’s face. “I didn’t expect to see you.” Rory laughed once, quiet and humorless. “Neither did I.” Eva’s expression tightened at the edges. “You left.” The words were simple, but they struck Rory in the sternum. Rory’s fingers tightened around her glass. The scar on her wrist stretched, pale against the warmth of her skin. “I did,” Rory said. “And you didn’t call.” “I—” Rory’s mind flashed to that time: the cramped bedroom, the suitcase half-packed, the phone in her hand showing Eva’s name, the way her chest had caved in with the idea of explaining. The way fear had made her selfish. “I couldn’t.” Eva gave a short, sharp laugh. “Couldn’t. Right.” Rory forced herself to meet Eva’s eyes. “I was in a mess. You know that.” Eva’s gaze flickered—something old and protective trying to rise, then being pressed back down. “I knew you were with him,” she said, and the word him carried so much that Rory flinched. “I didn’t know how bad it got because you always made a joke out of everything. You always made it sound manageable.” Rory swallowed. The bar’s dimness felt suddenly too bright, like it could expose things she’d kept carefully hidden. “It wasn’t manageable.” “No,” Eva agreed, voice quiet now. “It wasn’t.” Rory stared at the whisky and saw, absurdly, the reflection of her own bright blue eyes in the amber. She’d been cool-headed once in a way that felt like invincibility. Now it felt like a learned skill, a discipline that kept her from collapsing. “I left because I thought if I stayed one more day I’d disappear,” Rory said. “Not in a dramatic way. Just… little by little. Like someone rubbing an eraser over me.” Eva’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. Her fingers finally touched the glass Silas had poured, but she didn’t lift it. She held it as if grounding herself. “You could’ve told me,” Eva said, softer. “I know.” Rory’s voice broke on the last word, and she hated herself for it. She blinked hard and willed it back into steadiness. “I know. I’m sorry.” Eva’s jaw tightened. “Sorry doesn’t—” She stopped, as if the rest of that sentence would do damage she couldn’t undo. Her eyes dropped to Rory’s wrist, to the scar there. “You still have that.” Rory’s fingers curled instinctively, hiding it. “Yeah. Some things stick.” Eva looked away, her gaze snagging on a black-and-white photo behind the bar—men in suits, women with victory rolls, everyone frozen in someone else’s past. “You were going to be a solicitor,” Eva said, and Rory heard the ghost of their younger voices in it, the certainty, the plans. Rory huffed out a laugh that sounded more like a breath. “I was going to be a lot of things.” Eva’s eyes returned, sharp. “And now you deliver food.” Rory felt shame flare, hot and immediate, and then, behind it, something defiant. “I do,” she said. “It pays. It keeps me moving. It doesn’t ask me to pretend I’m fine.” Eva studied her, and for a moment Rory saw the old Eva—curious, stubborn, unwilling to let Rory hide behind cleverness. “You look different,” Eva said. Rory almost asked, Do I? But she knew she did. She’d lost weight she hadn’t meant to lose. Her black hair was cut blunt at her shoulders now, no softness, no romance. Her face held a watchfulness that wasn’t there at nineteen. The way she sat—back straight, shoulders ready—wasn’t about posture anymore. It was about preparedness. “You do too,” Rory said, because it was true. Eva looked like someone who’d learned how to swallow fear without choking on it. Eva’s smile was faint and fleeting. “Yeah. I do.” They sat in the quiet that followed, the kind of quiet that used to be comfortable between them and now felt like a room with locked doors. Rory could hear Silas moving in the background, the soft clink of bottles, the low murmur of other patrons. The Raven’s Nest had seen confessions, betrayals, deals made on napkins. Tonight it held something smaller and somehow heavier: two women trying to measure the distance between who they were and who they’d become. Rory traced the rim of her glass with her thumb. “Why didn’t you—” She stopped. The question she wanted to ask was Why didn’t you come find me? but it sounded like accusation, and she didn’t have the right. Eva seemed to hear it anyway. Her eyes narrowed slightly, then softened. “I tried,” she said. “At first. Your number stopped working. Your mum wouldn’t tell me where you were. She acted like I was the problem.” Rory’s chest ached. “She didn’t know what to do with it,” she murmured. “With any of it.” Eva took a sip of her drink, finally, and winced slightly at the burn. “I told myself you’d come back when you were ready,” she said. “Then days turned into months, and I got angry. And then I got busy.” “Busy,” Rory echoed. Eva’s gaze drifted toward the back of the bar where, if you knew where to look, a particular bookshelf sat too close to the wall. Rory saw Eva’s eyes mark it, just for a second, the way a person clocked an exit. The way a person noted what could become a door. Rory’s stomach turned. “That meeting,” she said carefully. “Is it with Silas?” Eva looked back at her. Something unreadable crossed her face. “Yeah.” Rory swallowed. “Of course it is.” Eva’s fingers tightened around the glass. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t what?” “Don’t make that face like you’re disappointed,” Eva said, and now there was heat in her voice, old defensiveness with new edges. “You don’t get to disappear and then judge what I did to survive my own life.” Rory flinched because it landed true. She hadn’t meant to judge; she’d meant to understand. But understanding and judgment sometimes wore the same expression. “I’m not judging,” Rory said, quieter. “I’m scared for you.” Eva stared at her for a long beat. Then she let out a breath, slow. “You always were the one who got scared and called it logic.” Rory’s laugh came out genuine this time, small but real. “And you always were the one who did something reckless and called it bravery.” Eva’s mouth curved, a brief echo of their old dynamic, then it faded. “I missed you,” she said, and the admission sounded like it hurt. Rory’s eyes stung. She looked away quickly, fixing her gaze on the maps—Prague, Istanbul, places Rory had never been but Silas had pinned like trophies. “I missed you too,” she said. “Every time I saw something stupid and wanted to tell you about it. Every time I thought, She’d know what to do.” Eva’s voice softened again. “You could’ve reached out.” “I know.” Rory turned back. “I thought you’d be better off without me dragging you into my mess.” Eva shook her head, a small, sharp motion. “You don’t get to decide that for me.” Rory held her gaze. “I was trying to protect you.” Eva’s laugh was a quiet scoff. “From what? From knowing you? From being your friend?” Rory had no answer that didn’t sound pathetic. She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were stained faintly from handling delivery bags and coins; the lines of her palms seemed deeper than she remembered. “I’m sorry,” Rory said again, because she didn’t have anything else that fit. Eva stared at Rory for a long time, and Rory could feel the weight of those years between them, thick as London fog. Finally Eva nodded once, as if accepting the apology not because it fixed anything but because refusing it would require more energy than she had. “Okay,” Eva said, voice flat. Then, after a pause: “Okay.” Silas approached then, moving with his slight limp, his presence filling the space without pushing. He set something on the bar near Eva: a folded piece of paper. Rory’s pulse quickened at the casual secrecy of it. Eva’s eyes flicked to the paper. Her face closed down, that new hardness sliding into place. She stood, smoothing her coat as if this were an ordinary evening and not a collision of past and present. Rory’s throat tightened again. “You’re leaving.” Eva hesitated. For a second, her hand hovered near Rory’s shoulder, as if she might touch her. She didn’t. “I have to,” Eva said. “It’s… complicated.” Rory nodded because she understood complications intimately. “Can we—” The words caught. Can we try again? Can we be what we were? Can you forgive me? Can I forgive myself? Eva’s gaze searched her face. “Give me your number,” she said. Rory blinked. “It’s the same as—” “It won’t be,” Eva interrupted gently, and there was something careful in her tone, like she was laying a plank over a gap. “Give it to me now.” Rory grabbed a napkin and a pen from the bar with hands that trembled despite her best efforts. She wrote the number down, digits firming as she went, like she could make them true through pressure. She slid it across to Eva. Eva took it and folded it with precise movements. She tucked it into her wallet like it mattered. “I can’t promise anything,” Eva said. Rory nodded, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. “I’m not asking for promises.” Eva’s eyes held hers. In them Rory saw the unspoken regret—years of silence that couldn’t be explained away, words that might never be said. Rory saw, too, something like longing, and behind it fear. “Rory,” Eva said, and the way she said her name sounded like both a warning and an apology. “Eva,” Rory replied. Eva stepped back. Her gaze flicked once more around the bar, to Silas, to the maps, to the bookshelf that wasn’t only a bookshelf. Then she turned and walked toward the back without looking behind her. Rory watched her go, her chest tight, her hands cold around her glass. She listened for the telltale sound of the hidden door—wood shifting, a subtle scrape—and heard it, faint beneath the music. Silas remained beside Rory, his signet ring tapping once against the bar, a small metallic punctuation. “You all right?” he asked. Rory stared at the place where Eva had disappeared, at the ordinary wall that hid extraordinary exits. She felt the weight of years settle on her shoulders like a wet coat. “No,” she said honestly. Then she lifted her whisky and took a sip, letting the burn remind her she was still here. “But I think… I might be, eventually.”