Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQYJCA04XYMYAPW9J3FPBV

The dregs of her shift clung to her like the city's damp chill, a phantom weight on her shoulders even after she’d dropped the last delivery from the Golden Empress. Rory slumped onto her usual stool at the far end of the bar, the worn leather a familiar comfort. The Raven’s Nest was quiet tonight. Only a low murmur from a couple in a corner booth and the soft clink of Silas polishing a glass behind the bar. He moved with a practiced economy, his slight limp from the old Prague job almost imperceptible in the tight space. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the low light as he worked. Rory traced the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist, a pale smile against her skin. Here, walled in by old maps of places she’d never see and black-and-white photos of strangers long dead, she felt safe. The bar was a pocket of stillness in the Soho chaos. She could breathe here. Silas set a glass of water in front of her without a word. His hazel eyes held a question, but he never pushed. He just waited. “Long day,” she said, her voice a little rough. “They usually are.” He moved down the bar to wipe a phantom spill, his presence a steady, grounding anchor. The chime of the bell over the door cut through the quiet. Rory didn't look up, just listened to the footsteps – hesitant at first, then more confident as they approached the bar. A suit. She could tell by the expensive, self-important squeak of the leather shoes. Probably another banker who’d lost his way from Mayfair. “Excuse me,” a man’s voice said. It was smooth, curated, with the soft edges of a Welsh accent she hadn't heard in years. It was the accent of home, a place that wasn’t home anymore. “Could I get a pint of the pale ale?” Rory’s head stayed down, her focus fixed on the condensation beading on her glass. Cardiff. The accent dredged up ghosts she preferred to keep buried. Pre-Law lectures. Rain on cobblestones. Evan’s smile before it turned sour. “Of course,” Silas said, his professional tone betraying nothing. There was a pause. The scrape of a stool. Then the voice again, closer this time, colored with a disbelief that made the hairs on her arms prickle. “Aurora? Aurora Carter? Is that really you?” The name hit her like a physical blow. Aurora. A girl who wore sweater sets and dreamed of a barrister’s wig. A girl who hadn’t yet learned the specific weight of a man’s hand raised in anger. Rory lifted her head slowly, her heart a cold, tight knot in her chest. He looked different, but the same. The boyish softness of his face had hardened into handsome, angular lines. His hair, once a floppy, untamed mess, was now styled and severe. He wore a charcoal suit that was probably worth more than her last three months' rent. But the eyes were the same. Kind, brown, and wide with a shock that mirrored her own. “Leo,” she breathed. Leo Jones. Her study partner from Tort Law, second year. The one who’d always saved her a seat in the library. “My God.” He laughed, a short, incredulous bark. “I can’t believe it. What are you doing in London? In… well, in a place like this?” He glanced around the dim bar, at the peeling varnish on the counter and the faded maps on the wall, his expression a mixture of confusion and something that looked uncomfortably like pity. Rory straightened on her stool, a familiar spike of defiance sharpening her spine. “I live here,” she said, her tone cooler than she intended. “Upstairs.” “You live… above a bar?” He seemed to be trying to square this reality with the phantom of the girl he remembered, the one whose father was a barrister, the one who was supposed to follow in his footsteps. “I thought you’d be… I don’t know. Making partner by now.” “Plans change,” she said, taking a deliberate sip of water. She felt Silas’s presence nearby, a silent, watchful guardian. He was still polishing glasses, but his attention was fixed on them. Leo seemed to recover himself, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just… it’s been five years. You just vanished. No one knew where you went. Eva wouldn’t say a word.” “I needed a change of scenery.” It was the flattest, most sterile explanation for the chaos that had ripped her life apart. “Well, you certainly got one.” He took the pint Silas placed before him. “Thanks, mate.” He turned back to Rory, his smile returning, more genuine this time. “It’s good to see you, Aurora. Really.” “It’s Rory now,” she corrected him, gently but firmly. “No one’s called me Aurora in years.” The name was a relic, a costume she’d shed. Aurora was the girl who let Evan happen. Rory was the one who survived him. “Rory,” he repeated, testing the name on his tongue. “It suits you. You seem… different.” “I am.” The silence that followed was heavy with everything left unsaid. He gestured to the empty stool beside her. “Can I?” She gave a tight nod. He settled in, his expensive suit looking comically out of place against the scarred wood of the bar. “So, what have you been doing?” he asked, trying for casual. “I’m with a firm in the City. Corporate law. It’s a killer, but the money’s good. Just closed a big merger, which is why I’m slumming it in Soho for a celebratory pint.” He laughed, but it sounded hollow. “I’m a delivery person,” Rory said, watching his face for a reaction. There it was. A flicker of surprise, quickly masked. “Oh. Right. For…?” “A Chinese place down the street. The Golden Empress.” “Right.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Good for you. Flexible hours, I bet.” Rory almost laughed at the transparent attempt to find a silver lining. “Something like that.” He fiddled with a coaster, the silence stretching again. She could feel him searching for common ground, for the shared path they had once been on. “Do you ever miss it?” he asked quietly. “Cardiff? Uni?” She thought of the library, the smell of old books and rain-soaked coats. She thought of arguing case law with Leo over coffee, the easy camaraderie, the intellectual spark. That part, she missed. But it was tangled up with everything else. Meeting Evan in that very same coffee shop. The gradual, terrifying erosion of her own self. “I miss parts of it,” she admitted. “I don’t miss who I was.” Leo looked at her, truly looked at her, and the manufactured pleasantry in his expression softened into genuine curiosity. “You were brilliant, Aurora. Top of the class. Everyone thought you were going to be the next great legal mind out of Cardiff.” “People thought a lot of things.” Her gaze drifted to the bookshelf at the end of the bar, the one that hid the door to Silas’s back room. A place of secrets. A place of survival. She had her own hidden rooms now. “Did you ever finish your degree?” he asked. “No.” No explanation. Let him fill in the blanks. He could think she’d failed, dropped out, thrown it all away for nothing. It was easier than the truth. He sighed, running a hand through his perfect hair. “You know, Evan asked about you, for a while.” The name, spoken so casually in the safety of the Nest, was a violation. A cold dread seeped into her bones. She kept her face impassive, her hand tightening around her glass. She was distantly aware of Silas pausing his work. “He was pretty cut up when you left,” Leo continued, oblivious. “Told everyone you two had this massive row and you just took off. We all felt bad for him. Never saw it coming.” *Of course you didn’t,* she thought, a bitter taste in her mouth. *No one ever does.* “People are rarely what they seem,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet. Leo finally seemed to notice the shift in her, the glacial stillness that had taken over. He saw the hard set of her jaw, the way her bright blue eyes had gone flat and cold. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just… ancient history, right?” She gave a noncommittal shrug, wanting him gone. This collision of worlds was too jarring. He represented a life she’d been forced to amputate in order to save herself. Seeing him, polished and successful on the track she was supposed to have run, wasn’t painful because she envied it. It was painful because it reminded her of how much she’d had to burn to the ground just to escape. “I should probably get going,” he said, sensing the chasm that had opened between them. He finished his pint in two quick gulps and stood, pulling a wallet from his jacket. “It was… it was really good to see you, Rory.” He placed a twenty-pound note on the counter. “Seriously. If you’re ever… I don’t know. If you ever need anything.” He trailed off, the offer feeble and absurd. What could he possibly offer her now? A reference? Legal advice? “I’m fine,” she said, and for the first time that night, it felt completely true. “But thanks, Leo. You take care.” He gave her one last, searching look, as if trying to find a trace of the girl he once knew in the woman sitting before him. He found nothing. With a small, sad smile, he turned and walked out of the bar, the bell chiming his departure. The silence he left behind was a relief. Rory let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her hands were shaking. Silas came over, picked up the twenty-pound note, and slid it back in front of her. “On the house,” he said, his voice a low rumble. He began wiping down the counter where Leo had been sitting, erasing the last trace of him. Rory looked at her reflection in the dark mirror behind the bar shelves. The straight, shoulder-length black hair, the pale skin, the tired eyes. She didn’t look like a barrister. She looked like a survivor. And for now, that was more than enough.