Run: 2026-02-17-01KHMR46E21KD5KY1XD15F3SYD

# The Weight of Years The Raven's Nest smelled like it always did—stale beer, old wood, and the ghost of a thousand cigarettes that had been smoked before the ban. Rory pushed through the heavy oak door just after nine, the November cold still clinging to her shoulders. She'd taken the long route home from the restaurant, needing to walk off the kind of exhaustion that didn't respond to sleep. Her feet ached. Her back ached. Everything ached these days. Silas was behind the bar, moving with the measured precision of a man who'd learned long ago to waste no motion. He didn't look up from the glass he was polishing, his hazel eyes focused on the work. The silver signet ring on his right hand caught the amber glow of the vintage light fixtures overhead. He'd added a few more grey streaks to his auburn hair since summer, or perhaps Rory had simply stopped noticing things. It was easy to stop noticing when you lived above the bar and saw the same man every day. She climbed the narrow stairs to her flat, muscle memory carrying her up the worn steps. Her keys were already in her hand—a habit born from years of working late, never wanting to fumble in the dark. The knock came just as she'd closed the door. Rory opened it again, expecting Silas with some mild complaint about noise or a water bill, but found only the hallway. She waited a moment, listening to the ambient silence of the building—the faint sound of a television through another wall, the hum of the aging boiler in the basement. Then the knock again, sharper this time, impatient. She made her way back downstairs, still uncertain. The bar was nearly empty now—just two regulars hunched at the far end of the counter, their conversation a low murmur. Silas was nowhere to be seen. A woman stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the green neon glow of the sign outside. Dark hair. Tall. For a moment, Rory's tired brain couldn't quite place her. Then the woman stepped inside, and the light caught her face. "Eva?" Eva Mendez was still beautiful, though not in the way Rory remembered. There was a hardness to her now, a practiced polish that hadn't existed five years ago when they'd last actually spoken. Her dark eyes were lined with something expensive and her tailored coat probably cost more than Rory's monthly rent. Her hair was shorter than before, cut into something sleek and professional. She wore a gold bracelet that caught the light when she moved. "Hello, Rory." Eva's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "You look... well, you look exactly like you did five years ago." There was a judgment in that statement, barely concealed. Rory found herself suddenly aware of her flour-dusted delivery uniform, the way her hair had begun to frizz at the edges in the November damp, the fact that she probably smelled like fried rice and soy sauce. "Eva." Rory's voice came out smaller than she intended. "What are you—I didn't know you were in London." "I'm not. I'm in Mayfair. Just flew in yesterday." Eva moved further into the bar with the ease of someone accustomed to expensive spaces. She glanced around The Raven's Nest with thinly veiled distaste, taking in the worn velvet booths and the maps on the walls. "Still living here, I see." It wasn't a question. Rory understood that Eva had done her homework before showing up, which meant this wasn't a chance encounter. The realization settled into her stomach like a stone. "I like it here," Rory said, and heard the defensiveness in her own voice. "It's quiet. Affordable. Silas is—" "A bartender," Eva finished, not unkindly. "Yes. I gathered. When did you decide to give up, Rory?" The question hung between them. Rory motioned toward one of the booths, aware that the two regulars were now watching with unconcealed interest. Eva followed, her movements fluid and assured. She slid into the booth with the ease of someone who'd never sat in a vinyl seat in her life, and Rory realized she was wearing a dress that probably cost more than the entire interior of The Raven's Nest. "I didn't give up," Rory said quietly. "I took a different path." "You took a job delivering food." Eva's hands were folded on the table in front of her, her nails manicured to perfection. "You were going to be a barrister, Rory. You were brilliant at Cardiff. Do you remember? You were the one who was going to do something, change something. You were the one with the plan." Rory did remember. She remembered sitting in Eva's halls in second year, both of them sprawled across narrow university beds, talking about the cases they'd take, the injustices they'd fight. Eva had been studying law then too, before she'd switched to business. Before everything had changed. "Plans change," Rory said. "Not like this." Eva leaned back, studying her with the intensity of someone conducting an interrogation. "Evan was five years ago. That was the excuse—get away from him, clear your head, figure things out. Five years is a long time to be figuring things out." Rory's hands clenched under the table. The crescent scar on her left wrist, hidden by her sleeve, seemed to burn in her awareness. "I'm not a victim, Eva. I made choices." "Bad ones, apparently." Eva's phone buzzed and she glanced at it, frowning. The interruption seemed to genuinely annoy her, which was somehow worse than if she'd simply dismissed it. The Eva Rory had known would have ignored a call without hesitation. This Eva was someone who couldn't be bothered to be rude because she was too important to worry about what people thought. "I'm putting together a team. A firm, actually—corporate litigation. We're poaching people from the top chambers. I thought of you immediately. You always had that gift for seeing the angle nobody else could see." "I don't have my qualifications," Rory said quietly. "I never finished." "So finish. I'll pay for it. Consider it an advance on your salary." The offer hung in the air between them, pristine and poisonous. Everything Eva was saying implied that Rory was broken, that her life in this bar, with her delivery job and her modest flat and her quiet evenings reading in the corner booth, was a failure that needed correcting. The worst part was that some version of Rory—the version that still existed in a locked-off corner of her chest—agreed. "Why are you really here?" Rory asked. Eva was quiet for a moment. Her perfect composure wavered, just slightly. "Because five years ago, my best friend disappeared. You stopped returning calls. You stopped coming to events. You stopped being the person I knew. And I realized the other day that I have no idea who you became instead." It was, Rory thought, the most honest thing Eva had said all night. It was also the cruelest. "I had to become someone I could live with," Rory said softly. "Someone who didn't hate herself. Someone who didn't need to prove anything to anyone. That person couldn't exist in law. Couldn't exist in the world we were building. She could only exist here, in this quiet bar, doing small kind things for people I'll never meet again." "That's not a life, Rory. That's hiding." "Maybe. But it's mine." The silence that followed was complete and terrible. Eva's phone buzzed again. This time, she picked it up, read the message, and began gathering her coat. "If you change your mind," Eva said, standing, "you know how to reach me. I'll be in London for the week." Rory watched her leave, watched the green neon light swallow her silhouette. When Silas finally emerged from the back room, limping slightly, he didn't ask who the woman had been. He simply started wiping down the bar with the same methodical care he gave everything, and Rory understood that he already knew. Some questions, after all, didn't require answers.