Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR39AHT4CBFAQGDE1Z83T4

The door to the Raven's Nest swung inward, bringing with it the smell of rain-washed pavement and October cold. Rory shook water from her shoulders, her delivery bag still slung across her chest, the Golden Empress logo faded from a hundred runs through London weather. She'd ducked in to grab a drink before heading home to the flat upstairs—a habit that had become as natural as breathing over the past three years. Silas was behind the bar as always, moving with that economical grace that made his slight limp almost disappear. He was polishing a tumbler when she locked eyes with him in the mirror, and he nodded—their usual wordless greeting. The bar was quiet for a Thursday, just a couple of regulars hunched over their pints in the far corner, their faces lost in the amber glow of the wall sconces. Rory was halfway to the bar when she noticed him. The man sat alone at a corner table, nursing what looked like a Guinness. His back was to her, but something in the set of his shoulders made her freeze. Dark hair, longer than she remembered. A navy jumper worn at the cuffs. For a moment she couldn't place it—couldn't quite pull the name from the tangle of years and distance. Then he turned to set down his glass, and the light caught his profile. "Christ," she whispered. Marcus Webb. All of Marcus Webb—the easy slouch, the crooked nose she'd forgotten he had, the sharp angle of his jaw. Marcus from Cardiff, from the student union bar debates, from that drunken philosophy phase they'd both gone through third year. Marcus who'd promised he'd leave Wales and see the world, who'd written to her twice after she fled to London, both times letters that had gone unanswered because she'd been too wrapped up in the wreckage of Evan to think about old friends. That had been five years ago. "Rory?" Silas called from the bar, his voice carrying that note of gentle concern he reserved for his regulars' off days. "The usual?" She held up one finger—wait—and moved toward Marcus's table. He didn't see her until she was nearly there. When he did, his entire face shifted. Surprise gave way to something more complicated: a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, followed by a shadow of something that looked like guilt. "Rory Carter," he said, and his accent was softer now, flattened by distance and time. "I didn't think I'd actually—" "Run into me?" She slid into the chair across from him uninvited. "I live upstairs. Bit obvious place to find me, really." The smile became more genuine then, but tentative. "I wasn't looking for you. I was just passing through London and—" He gestured vaguely at the bar. "Saw this place, thought I'd get out of the rain." Rory studied him. There was something different about him, but not in the way she'd expected. She'd imagined Marcus would stay exactly as he was—frozen in her memory as the clever boy who'd debated postmodernism and made her laugh until her ribs hurt in the university library. But this man across from her had a heaviness to him, a weight that didn't belong to twenty-two. "You look well," she said, which was a lie. He looked tired. He looked like someone who'd been carrying something heavy for a very long time. "So do you. Different haircut?" "It's been five years, Marcus. People change their haircuts." He flinched slightly at her tone, but didn't look away. "I know it's been—I tried to stay in touch. I wrote you." "I know you did." She was quiet for a moment, watching him. "I wasn't in a place where I could talk to anyone." Behind the bar, Silas moved with deliberate noise, giving them privacy. The clink of bottles, the rattle of the ice maker—he was good at reading rooms, at knowing when to be present and when to fade into the background. It was one of the things Rory respected about him. Marcus took a drink of his Guinness. "I heard about... what happened. With Evan." Of course he had. The world was small, and the Cardiff bubble even smaller. "Did you?" "One of the lads mentioned it when I was home last year. Said you'd got out, that you were in London. I was glad." He set the glass down carefully. "I was worried about you, after you left. You stopped responding to messages and I didn't know if—" "I needed to disappear," Rory said quietly. "I needed to be someone else for a while." Something in her phrasing seemed to strike him. He leaned back in his chair, studying her as she'd been studying him. When he spoke again, his voice was different. Softer, but also somehow sadder. "And did you? Become someone else?" It was such a simple question, but it opened up something in her chest that she hadn't acknowledged. The transformation from the girl who'd fled Cardiff in panic to the woman sitting here now. The careful reconstruction of herself, piece by piece. The woman who could move through London with purpose, who had Silas and Eva and Yu-Fei Cheung, who'd learned to trust her own instincts again. "I'm not sure yet," she admitted. "Still working on it." Marcus nodded slowly. He was quiet for a long moment, turning his glass in circles on the table. When he looked up again, his eyes were bright with an emotion she couldn't quite name. "I thought about reaching out again," he said. "After the first couple of letters came back marked Return to Sender. But I convinced myself you'd moved on, that you wouldn't want to hear from me." "Would I have?" He opened his mouth, closed it. "I don't know. Probably not." He paused. "I'm not the same person you knew either, you know. I did leave Wales, like I said I would. I've been in Brussels for three years, working for an NGO. I met someone—" He stopped. "I was going to propose. Last month." "Was?" "She said no." He said it matter-of-factly, but she could see the seams in that façade. "Said I was holding onto something I couldn't let go of. That I was still waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen." Rory considered this. "Was she wrong?" Marcus looked at her for a long time. "I don't know. Maybe not entirely." She heard Silas pull a pint, heard the gentle conversational murmur of the regulars in the corner. Outside, London rattled past, indifferent and eternal. In this small pocket of warmth and dim light, two people who had once known each other sat across from each other like strangers, separated not by miles but by the weight of years and choices. "You should probably leave," Rory said finally. "I just—" "Not London. Just... sit somewhere else for a bit. Order another drink. Let it be less strange before we try to fix it." She stood, her delivery bag settling against her hip. "I'm going to get my usual. Then I'm going upstairs. Tomorrow I'll probably second-guess all of this. But tonight I need to process the idea of you existing in the same city as me." Marcus smiled then, genuinely—a flash of the boy she'd known buried in the face of this tired man. "Fair enough." Rory turned toward the bar, where Silas was already pouring her gin and tonic without asking. As he slid it across the polished wood toward her, he caught her eye. In his hazel gaze was the quiet understanding of someone who'd seen many people try to outrun their past and fail. She lifted the glass to her lips and tasted the sharp brightness of redemption, or the beginning of it, or at least the possibility that sometimes the people you left behind were also trying to become someone new.