Run: 2026-02-17-01KHNG3BMA94AM20RJMN0CF3ZF

The Raven's Nest was quieter than usual, the Tuesday night crowd thin enough that Aurora could hear the low murmur of a conversation at the far end of the bar and the occasional clink of glasses from behind the counter. She sat in her usual spot — third stool from the left, close enough to the door to watch it but far enough from the window to avoid the neon glow bleeding through — with a glass of something amber she hadn't touched in twenty minutes. Silas had left her to it after the first hour, reading her mood with that uncanny stillness he possessed. He'd brought her the drink, raised an eyebrow, and when she'd given nothing back but a tight smile, he'd retreated to the back room to do whatever it was spymasters did when they weren't being spymasters. She was grateful for the space. Some nights the walls of her flat above pressed in too close, and the bar below offered a different kind of silence — one filled with ambient noise that drowned out the particular frequency of her own thoughts. She was thinking about nothing in particular when the door opened and a woman walked in. Aurora noticed her the way she noticed everyone — a quick, assessing glance that catalogued height, gait, the set of the shoulders. The woman was perhaps thirty, perhaps a little more, with chestnut hair pulled back in a professional twist and a coat that cost more than Aurora made in a week. She stood in the doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness, and that's when Aurora felt something clench in her chest. No. It couldn't be. The woman spotted the bar and walked toward it, her heels clicking against the worn floorboards, and as she came closer, her gaze drifted across the stools — across Aurora — and then stopped. The silence that followed was the kind that existed in its own universe, sealed off from the rest of the room. "Rory?" The voice was the same. Slightly lower now, steadier, but the same warm cadence that had once filled lecture halls and student pubs and the cramped flat Aurora had shared with Evan in their second year. Megan Whitmore. Megan who had sat next to her in Criminal Law and passed her notes when she'd been too exhausted from fighting with Evan to focus. Megan who had pulled her aside after one too many bruises covered by long sleeves and asked, very quietly, if she needed help. Megan who had watched Aurora lie about being fine and had said nothing, because what could anyone say? Aurora's mouth was dry. She reached for her glass and took a drink just to have something to do, the whiskey burning a familiar path down her throat. "Megan." Megan stood there, still wearing her expensive coat, her handbag clutched in front of her like a shield. She looked — God, she looked *good*. Put together in a way that spoke of stability, of a life that had continued on its proper track. Her hair was longer than Aurora remembered, her face sharper with age, but those dark eyes were the same. Concerned. Watching. "What are you —" Megan stopped, shook her head. "What are you doing in London?" "Working." Aurora heard her own voice, flat and guarded, and hated it. She tried to soften it. "I live here now. Above the bar, actually." She gestured vaguely at the ceiling, at the flat that was hers and wasn't, at the strange life she'd built in the years since Cardiff. Megan glanced around the bar — at the old maps on the walls, the faded photographs, the green neon casting strange shadows — and something shifted in her expression. Not judgment, exactly. Something closer to disbelief. "Here," she said. "You live *here*." "For about two years now." Aurora straightened on her stool, her shoulders settling into a line of defensiveness she didn't mean to show. "What about you? What brings you to Soho on a Tuesday?" The question came out sharper than intended, and Megan flinched slightly before recovering. A reflex, Aurora realized. She was remembering. Remembering the girl who'd snapped at everyone who'd tried to help. "I have a client dinner," Megan said. Her voice was careful now, measured. "At that new French place on Wardour. I saw the bar from the street and thought —" She stopped again. "I don't know what I thought. I didn't expect to find you." "No," Aurora said. "I suppose you didn't." They stared at each other across the gap of the barstool, the length of polished wood between them. Somewhere in the back room, a chair creaked. Silas, moving. The ordinary sounds of a Tuesday night in a bar that was also something else entirely. Megan exhaled slowly and moved to the stool beside Aurora, sitting down with the careful precision of someone who'd had enough wine at dinner to lower her inhibitions but not enough to impair her judgment. She placed her handbag on the bar and looked at Aurora fully, openly, in that way she'd always had — the way that had made Aurora feel seen in a way she hadn't wanted to be seen. "You look different," Megan said, quietly. "Different how?" "I don't know. Smaller, maybe. Or — no, not smaller.Quieter. You used to fill up every room you walked into, even when you didn't mean to. You were so *loud*, Rory. In a good way. You had all this energy, this fire, and you pretended you didn't but everyone could see it." Megan's voice caught. "You look tired now. But also — I don't know. Calmer, maybe." Aurora turned her glass slowly on the bar, watching the whiskey catch the low light. "I was tired then. I just didn't know it yet." The words hung in the air. Megan didn't respond, but Aurora felt the weight of everything they weren't saying — Evan, the bruises, the nights Aurora had shown up to lectures with sunglasses she claimed were for a headache. The conversations Megan had tried to start and Aurora had shut down. The last time they'd spoken, in the library, a week before Aurora had finally run — when Megan had pressed a piece of paper into her hand with a number for a women's shelter and Aurora had shoved it in her pocket and never called. "I tried to find you," Megan said. "After you left. I went to your flat and Evan said you'd gone to stay with family, but that didn't — that didn't sound right. And then you didn't come back for finals, and no one knew where you'd gone, and I—" She stopped, pressed her fingers to her lips briefly. "I thought the worst. For years, I thought the worst." "I'm sorry." The words came out rough. Aurora cleared her throat. "I should have — I know I should have told someone. But I couldn't. I couldn't think about it, let alone talk about it. I just needed to be somewhere else." "Away from him." "Yes." "And you're — you're safe now? You're okay?" Aurora looked at Megan then, really looked, and saw the fear beneath the composed exterior. This woman had worried about her for years. Had carried the weight of not knowing, of having watched and been unable to help. All that time, while Aurora had been rebuilding herself in London, delivering Chinese food to strangers and sleeping in a flat above a bar run by a former spy, Megan had been wondering if she was alive. "I'm okay," Aurora said. And meant it, for the first time in years. "I'm actually okay. I have a — I have a good life now. It's not what I thought it would be, but it's good." "What's it like? Working in a bar?" The question was gentle, curious, and Aurora felt something loosen in her chest. "I don't work in the bar. I deliver food for a restaurant around the corner. Chinese. Very good. Silas — that's the owner — he lets me live upstairs. We look out for each other." She paused. "He's kind of a mentor, I suppose. He teaches me things." "Things?" Aurora smiled, just slightly. "How to watch people. How to notice when something's wrong. How to get out of situations before they become problems." She shrugged. "It's useful." Megan stared at her for a long moment, and Aurora could see the questions she wasn't asking. Who was this man? What was this life? What had happened to the girl who was going to be a barrister, who was going to change the world? But Megan didn't ask any of them. Instead, she reached out and put her hand over Aurora's — gently, carefully, the way you'd approach a stray animal. "I'm glad," she said. "That you're okay. That you got out." Aurora's throat tightened. She turned her hand over and gripped Megan's fingers, holding on for a moment before letting go. "I should have called. I should have told you I was alive. I'm sorry I didn't." "You were busy surviving," Megan said. "That's allowed." The green neon from outside flickered through the window, casting the bar in pale light. Somewhere in the back, Silas was silent, giving them the privacy he somehow always knew how to provide. And in that moment, sitting beside a woman who had once watched her fall and had never stopped wondering if she'd hit bottom, Aurora felt something shift. Not forgiveness — not for herself, anyway. But something like release. "I'm here now," she said. "If you ever want to — I don't know. I have dinner breaks. Sometimes. If you wanted to —" "I'd like that," Megan said. "I'd like that very much." They sat like that for a while, not speaking, watching the empty bar fill with the particular kind of quiet that comes after a storm. Outside, the city continued its endless hum, indifferent to the small miracles happening in bars and flats and hidden rooms. But inside The Raven's Nest, two women who had once known each other in a different life sat together, and let the past be the past, and began the slow work of becoming something like friends again.