Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMQYKFE8JVTF1162G58Q1N6

By nine the bar was breathing properly. The Raven’s Nest always took its time. Early evenings belonged to the city’s stragglers: men in loosened ties, women with aching feet, tourists who’d lost their way in Soho and decided the green neon raven above the door looked as good a place as any to stop. By nine, the office ghosts had cleared out and the people who weren’t ready to go home yet started to trickle in, bringing with them the low hum that Silas said made a bar feel like a heart with its own rhythm. Aurora—Rory, here—sat on her usual stool at the far end of the bar, the one closest to the wall of old maps. She’d meant to only come down for a glass of water and to say goodnight to Silas after her last food delivery, but the Nest had that slow gravity. Twenty minutes later she was still there, jacket folded on the stool beside her, helmet on the floor, damp hair curling slightly at the ends from the drizzle outside. Her wrist ached dully from the weight of the delivery bag she’d lugged all day. She turned her glass in small circles on the bar’s scarred surface, watching condensation etch a pale ring into the wood. The crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist caught the overhead light as she moved. It glowed almost silver, a thin, white half-moon against her skin. “Stop brooding holes into my bar, Carter,” Silas said, setting a bowl of salted peanuts down between them. “Wood’s older than you are. It’s seen worse.” She looked up. “You talk about this place like it’s a war veteran.” He tipped his head, the grey streaks in his auburn hair catching the low light. “In Soho, it might as well be.” His hazel eyes flicked past her, toward the door. “You eating? Or just living off Yu-Fei’s leftovers again?” “Yu-Fei sends me home with half the menu,” Rory said. “I’ll die under a mountain of cold dumplings someday.” “There are worse fates.” He wiped the bar with a damp cloth, his movements economical, the silver signet ring on his right hand flashing at the edge of her vision every time he turned his wrist. Even when he moved around the far tables, carrying drinks, she could hear the slight unevenness in his steps—the faint catch of his left leg, the limp that deepened if he’d been standing too long. The door swung open, letting in a gust of London damp that smelled of wet pavement and traffic. The green neon raven above the entrance bathed the newcomers briefly in sickly light as they stepped inside. A group—four, maybe five—voices overlapping, laughter a little too loud in that way that suggested they’d started drinking somewhere else first. Rory didn’t look up at first. She’d got good at that, at staying small at the edges of rooms, unnoticed. She watched the reflection instead: the angled mirror behind the bottles caught the door, the shifting shapes, the fragments of faces. A woman stepped into view in the reflection and something in Rory’s stomach lurched. It was the hair she noticed first. Bethan had always worn it long in uni—dark brown, nearly black, usually yanked into a messy bun with a pencil stabbed through it. In the mirror now, the hair was sleek and precise, cut to just above the shoulders, tucked behind one ear. There was a line of silver at the ear: three small studs marching up the cartilage. The woman shrugged off a camel coat that hadn’t come from anywhere cheap and laughed at something the man beside her said, her profile turning briefly toward the bar. For a second, Rory thought, No, I’m wrong. Faces in mirrors distorted, memories lied. It had been—what, four years? People changed. That’s what she told herself when she woke with the ghost of his hand on her throat, or when her phone lit up with a Cardiff area code and she let it ring. Then the woman pivoted fully, scanning the bar, and Rory felt the floor tilt under her. Bethan Price, ten feet away. Slimmer in the face than Rory remembered, cheekbones sharpened. Lips painted a muted red that looked almost professional. There was a fine line at the corner of her mouth now when she frowned, which she did, briefly, as her eyes moved past the cluster of regulars, the couple in the back booth, the lone man nursing a whisky by the dartboard. Her gaze reached the end of the bar. Rory’s heart gave a hard, traitorous thump. She thought, fleetingly, absurdly, about sliding off her stool, ducking behind the bar, slipping through the door disguised as the shelf of antique port bottles that led to Silas’s hidden room. Silas would raise an eyebrow, and she’d owe him some nonsensical favour, and— Bethan’s eyes locked on hers. It was such a small thing, recognition. No dramatic music, no slow-motion. Just an instant in which Bethan’s face smoothed out, the polite, slightly harried social smile dropping, something raw blinking through—surprise first, then confusion, then a flash of something like anger or hurt before it was all snatched back under control. “Rory?” she said. Out loud this time, not just in Rory’s head. Her voice was almost exactly the same, only lower, like she’d burned the higher edges off with too many late nights and coffee. “Aurora Carter?” The name landed in the space between them with an old weight. Silas glanced up at the sound of it, his hands pausing briefly over the glasses he was drying. Rory had a thought as her mouth opened: You could lie. You could shake your head, shrug, say, Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. Let her believe her memory was playing tricks. But Bethan was already stepping forward, her friends fanning out behind her, looking mildly interested. The bar music hummed on; the TV in the corner murmured over some late football highlights with the sound off. “Yeah,” Rory said, throat dry. “Hey.” Bethan closed the distance in three strides. Up close, the changes sharpened. There was a new steadiness in the way she carried herself, shoulders squared, chin up, like someone accustomed to walking into rooms and having people stand. Her eyes, though—brown, fringed with those absurdly long lashes Rory used to tease her about—were the same. “Aurora fucking Carter,” she breathed. Then she laughed, but the sound was frayed. “Jesus Christ. I thought you were dead.” One of Bethan’s friends, the man who’d walked in beside her, shifted slightly. He was tall, black-haired, in an expensive-looking navy suit. “Beth?” She waved a hand without looking back. “Two minutes, Rhys.” He hesitated, then murmured something to the others and steered them toward a free table near the maps. They went, cast briefly in black-and-white by the old photos on the wall—soldiers, trains, places that didn’t quite exist anymore. “I’m not dead,” Rory said. It sounded weak even as she said it. “Hi.” Bethan stared at her, eyes tracking over Rory’s straight black hair, the faded bomber jacket, the Yu-Fei’s Golden Empress logo still faintly visible on the sleeve. Rory had shoved her helmet under the stool, but the smell of rain and the faint tang of chilli oil probably still clung to her clothes. “I can see that,” Bethan said. “You just…” Her hand lifted as if to gesture to all of Rory and then dropped again. “You disappeared.” Silas, efficient and almost invisible, set a fresh glass of water in front of Rory and a wine list gently between them. “Can I get you anything?” he asked Bethan, voice courteous, neutral. Bethan blinked. “Oh. Um. A house white? Whatever’s drinkable.” “It’s all drinkable.” His mouth quirked. “Sit. I’ll bring it over.” Her hand brushed Rory’s elbow. “We’re…?” It was strange, that small question encompassing too much: We’re still allowed to sit together? We’re still something like what we were? Rory nodded because shaking her head would require a kind of courage she did not have. “Yeah. Sure.” She slid off the stool and followed Bethan to a small table along the side wall, half under an old map of Europe with the Austro-Hungarian Empire still clearly marked in a faded red. The map had split along one crease and been carefully repaired with yellowing tape. They sat. Bethan shrugged off her coat for real now and draped it over the back of her chair. The suit underneath was charcoal grey, the cut flattering but severe. On her wrist, a slim gold watch glinted. “You live in London,” Bethan said, like she was confirming something insane. “Of course you do. God, I can’t believe I’m seeing you in a bar off Shaftesbury.” “Soho,” Rory corrected automatically. The old habit made Bethan’s mouth twitch. Once upon a time they’d fought for ten minutes over whether Splott counted as “in town” or not, hunched over their notes in the university library, Evan already a shadow at the edge of everything. Silas arrived with Bethan’s wine. He set it down carefully and gave them both a brief, measuring look. “Shout if you need food,” he said. “Kitchen’s open till eleven.” “Thanks,” Bethan said, already frowning at Rory again. As soon as he moved away, she leaned forward, her voice dropping. “Where did you go?” Rory wrapped her hands around her water glass. The condensation was cool and tacky under her fingers. “Cardiff,” she said, buying a second, knowing that wasn’t what Bethan meant. “Then here.” “No, I…” Bethan caught herself, exhaled. “You left. Do you know how many times I went round to your place? Brendan looked like he was going to murder me the third time I showed up. Your mum couldn’t stop crying. Then you sent that text, what was it—‘I’m safe, don’t worry’? And then you blocked my number.” The memory of that day came back with unwelcome clarity: the old Nokia she’d been using because Evan had smashed her smartphone against the wall three weeks earlier; her hands shaking so hard she’d kept hitting the wrong letters; the decision to send that single line to a short list of names—Mum, Dad, Eva, Bethan—and then erase all of them from her phone. A primitive kind of amputation. “I didn’t block you,” Rory said, then frowned. “I mean, I changed my number. I nuked everything. It was easier.” “Easier for who?” Bethan shot back. Her voice wasn’t loud, but there was heat in it now. “I thought you were dead in a ditch, Rory. Or that he—” She broke off, jaw clenching. The name hovered unspoken between them, slick as oil. Rory dropped her eyes to her left wrist. The crescent scar there was from falling off a bike when she was eight, trying to copy Eva riding with no hands. She’d panicked at the blood, sobbed all the way to A&E, her father trying not to laugh at her dramatic horror. Her mother had kissed the bandage and said, There, battle scar. Now you’re officially a girl of the world. Later, Evan’s fingers had wrapped around that same wrist so hard she’d been sure he’d leave new marks, real ones. He hadn’t. He’d been good at that. “You could have called my parents,” Rory said, quietly. “If you were that worried.” Bethan flinched like she’d been slapped. “I did. I sat at your kitchen table with your mum and drank that awful instant coffee she likes and watched her cry, and your dad alternated between swearing at the police and swearing at your ex, and then he went very quiet and started calling in favours from people I had honestly assumed were only metaphors. It was terrifying, Rory.” Rory could picture it too easily: Brendan Carter’s fury, the way it made him smaller, denser, like all the air had been vacuumed out of him. Jennifer pressing tissues to her face, going through three in ten minutes. Bethan looked away, swallowed. “And I felt… useless. I was twenty-one, doing bloody tort law, and the only things I knew how to do were write essays and drink cheap wine.” A silence stretched. At the other side of the bar, Rhys and the others were arguing cheerfully about which theatre to hit after last orders. Someone near the door laughed; the sound bounced off the maps and photographs. “I thought you’d hate me,” Rory said, before she could stop herself. Bethan’s head snapped back to her. “What?” “For not listening to you,” Rory said. “You and Eva. You both told me to leave him. I kept going back. I thought—if I called you, you’d say I told you so. And I… couldn’t. Not then.” “Christ, Rory.” Bethan leaned back, eyes closing for a second. When she opened them again, they were bright, wet at the corners, though no tears fell. “You mad little martyr.” “That’s me,” Rory said, but the joke landed flat. Bethan took a deep breath, some of the sharpness draining from her shoulders. She picked up her wine and took a sip, holding the glass by its stem like it might give her something to do with her hands. “So. You’re alive. You live in London. Above a bar, I’m guessing?” Rory blinked. “How did you—” “Your helmet’s under the stool, you smell like takeaway, and you’re sitting in what is obviously your spot, with a bar owner who looks at you like a grumpy uncle. I can still put two and two together.” “You always were infuriatingly observant,” Rory muttered. Bethan smiled, briefly. “Occupational hazard now.” “Occupational?” Bethan hesitated half a beat, then squared her shoulders. “I’m a barrister. Criminal, mostly. Grays Inn. Pupillage nearly killed me, but I survived.” Rory let out a low whistle. “Look at you. Realising the dream.” “The ‘dream’ was you and me and Eva sharing some poky chambers over a kebab shop, changing the world one case at a time,” Bethan said. “Eva’s in Manchester doing housing law, last I heard. You—” She lifted her hand in a helpless little gesture. “You vanished. So I settled for… this.” “This” looked expensive and exhausted and faintly brittle. There was a smear of ink on Bethan’s left index finger, half-hidden by her manicured nail. Her under-eyes were cleverly concealed, but Rory could see the faint bruising of too many late nights. “You still doing the protest thing?” Rory asked. “Climate marches, sit-ins, all that?” Bethan gave a dry laugh. “Last protest I went to was as duty counsel. Bailed out a nineteen-year-old who’d glued herself to a bus stop. I spent the whole time trying not to think about how much I used to want to be her.” Rory pictured Bethan at nineteen, waving a placard outside the library, her HOME IS A HUMAN RIGHT sign slightly misspelled because she’d been rushing. “You used to drag me along,” Rory said. “Said it’d look good on my record when I became the first Irish-Welsh female Prime Minister.” “You said that,” Bethan corrected. “I just pointed out you’d have to join a party first, and you nearly had a panic attack.” Rory smiled despite herself. “I don’t remember you being this mean.” “You don’t remember a lot of things,” Bethan said, but there was no real bite in it now. Silas wandered past, dropping a basket of chips on their table without comment. “On the house,” he said. “You both look like you’ve been hit by buses.” “Is that your medical opinion?” Rory asked. “It’s my bar owner opinion.” He rapped his knuckles lightly against the table. The silver ring clicked on the wood. “Eat.” They did. For a minute they were just two women in a bar, burning their tongues inelegantly on chips that were too hot, licking salt from their fingers. “So,” Bethan said eventually, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “You deliver food for a Chinese place and live above a bar. Is there a plan, or are we just… vibing?” “Vibing,” Rory repeated, with faint distaste. “I’m saving. Maybe. For something. I don’t know yet.” “You always had a plan,” Bethan said. “Colour-coded timetables. Revision schedules from hell.” “Yeah, well.” Rory shrugged. “Turns out life doesn’t respect my highlighters.” Bethan studied her. “You could still go back, you know.” “To Cardiff?” The word tasted strange in her mouth. Streets and rain and Evan’s hand on the small of her back, steering. “To law,” Bethan said. “Different uni. Different city. You were good, Rory. You were annoying as shit in seminars but you were good.” “I can’t afford it,” Rory said. “And I don’t…” She trailed off. Didn’t what? Believe she’d be safe in lecture halls again? Trust herself to recognise red flags? Think she deserved a career after detonating the old one? Bethan seemed to read some of that on her face. “You don’t have to decide now,” she said quietly. “Or ever. I just—” She broke off, chewing the inside of her cheek. “I had this… thing in my head. You know? That you were out there being brilliant somewhere and that I’d run into you at a conference in ten years and you’d be all, ‘Oh, hey, I’m head of some NGO in Geneva, how’s Cardiff?’ And I’d have to pretend I wasn’t petty about it.” “Sorry to disappoint,” Rory said. “That’s not—” Bethan scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’m not disappointed you’re not in Geneva. I’m just… angry, I think. That he—” Again, the name stopped. “That he took that from you. From us. Do you know how many sets of friends just… drift apart? For boring reasons? I could have lived with boring. Instead I get to spend four years wondering if you’re a body in a canal.” Rory swallowed hard. The chip in her mouth tasted like cardboard. “He didn’t take everything.” “You’re here,” Bethan conceded. “That’s not nothing.” The weight of time pressed in around them. On the walls, black-and-white faces stared out, their wars long finished. The neon raven outside buzzed faintly when the door opened to admit another stranger. “I’m sorry,” Rory said. The words felt inadequate. “For leaving like that. For shutting you out. You didn’t deserve that.” Bethan stared at her for a long beat. Then she nodded once, a small, precise movement. “I know you were trying to survive,” she said. “Intellectually, I know that. Emotionally, I still want to shake you until your teeth rattle.” Rory huffed a laugh. “You’d need to stand on a chair.” “Don’t test me.” They shared the ghost of their old rhythm then, a flicker of familiarity that made Rory’s chest ache. Rhys appeared at Bethan’s elbow, clearing his throat politely. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re calling last orders at the theatre bar. If we don’t leave now, Griff will sulk through the whole second act.” “Inconsiderate bastard,” Bethan murmured, but there was fondness in it. She looked at Rory again. “This is Rhys. We work together.” “Colleague,” Rhys emphasised cheerfully, offering his hand. “In case you were wondering if this was my subtle way of meeting her mysterious ex-flatmate.” Rory shook his hand, a little dazed. His grip was firm, his palm warm. “Rory. Old… friend.” Bethan’s mouth twitched. “Very old. Practically ancient.” Rhys glanced between them, his gaze flicking over the wreckage of chips and the tension still humming under the surface. “Right. I’m going to go settle up, yeah? Meet you outside.” “Give me two minutes,” Bethan said. When he’d gone, Bethan stood slowly, smoothing her suit jacket. She picked up her coat but didn’t put it on yet, letting it dangle from her fingers. “I don’t know what to do here,” she said, with a bluntness Rory recognised from old debates. “Do we… add each other on Instagram? Do we pretend we didn’t see each other? Do I drag you back to Cardiff by your hair?” “I’d like to vote against that last one,” Rory said. Bethan’s laugh was softer this time. “Look. I’m in London a lot. Court, conferences, wining and dining awful clients.” She hesitated, then reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a card. It was thick, good-quality, her name embossed in raised black letters: BETHAN PRICE, Barrister. Chambers address. Mobile number in small print at the bottom. She set it down between them, next to a salt shaker. “If you ever decide you want coffee. Or if you… need anything. A lawyer. A witness statement taken properly. Someone to tell your dad you’re not twelve anymore.” Her mouth twisted. “You don’t owe me anything. You don’t have to call. But I’ll stop checking morgue reports if I know you’ve at least got my number.” Rory stared at the card. It was such a small thing. A rectangle of cardstock bridging four years. “I don’t have cards,” she said. It came out stupidly. Bethan rolled her eyes. “Write your number on a napkin like a human being, then.” Rory found a pen in her jacket pocket—a cheap blue biro from Yu-Fei’s, smudged with grease. Her fingers shook slightly as she wrote her mobile number on the corner of a napkin, the digits familiar and strange in equal measure. Bethan took it, folded it carefully, and tucked it into her wallet like it was something precious. Silas appeared again as if summoned by some internal bartender’s clock. He held out her bill; Rhys had clearly paid for the round. “You’re clear,” he told Bethan. His gaze flicked briefly to the card on the table, then back to her. “Don’t lose that. She’s terrible at replacing things.” “Noted,” Bethan said. She looked at Rory one last time, all her lawyer’s poise briefly stripped away. For a second she was just the girl Rory had shared library tables and late-night chips with, the one who’d held her when she’d shaken after the first big fight with Evan, saying It’s not supposed to be like this, love. You know that, right? “Don’t disappear again,” Bethan said. It wasn’t quite a plea and not quite a command, something raw lodged awkwardly in between. “I’ll try,” Rory said. It was the only honest thing she could offer. Bethan nodded, as if that would have to be enough. She shrugged into her coat, turned, and crossed the bar to join Rhys and the others waiting by the door. For a moment her reflection floated again in the mirror behind the bottles, a duplicate Bethan stepping out into the night. The green neon raven buzzed as the door opened, painting her in phosphorescent light, then snapped back to its steady glow when it shut behind them. Rory sat there for a long time after they left, staring at the empty chair opposite her, the damp ring from Bethan’s wine glass on the table, the business card lying face-up beside the untouched peanuts. The weight of years settled around her, heavy as winter coats. Silas picked up the card, flipped it over, read the name. “Friend?” he asked. “Once,” Rory said. “Maybe.” “Still could be,” he said, and laid the card back down gently, like something that might break. Rory traced the raised letters with the tip of her thumb, feeling the edges. Bethan Price. Barrister. Cardiff, London, the world. She slipped the card into her pocket. Upstairs, above the bar, her room would be exactly as she’d left it: helmet on the floor, textbooks she hadn’t opened in months stacked by the bed, delivery bag slumped in the corner like a tired animal. Down here, the maps and photographs watched in their faded silence as the night moved on, as conversations started and ended, as people came and went. As old lives brushed against new ones and, sometimes, failed to pass cleanly by. Rory finished her water. The ring of moisture her glass had left on the bar blurred slowly, then disappeared.