AI The ice in Aurora's glass had melted long ago. She hadn't touched the drink in twenty minutes, too occupied with watching Silas debate the football scores with a regular at the far end of the bar. The familiar rhythm of their voices blended with the low jazz piping through the speakers, creating the kind of background noise that made solitude feel like company.
She was about to leave when the door swung open and a figure stepped through.
For a moment, the face didn't register. The years had sharpened someone's features, carved new lines around their eyes. The hair was different, shorter, perhaps. Then their gaze met across the room, and recognition struck like a match in darkness.
No. Not him.
The shock must have shown on her face because he stopped halfway through the doorway, one hand still on the door. The same hesitation. The same uncertainty he'd always had, back when things were different.
"Aurora?" The name came out like a question he already knew the answer to.
She stood. The bar stool scraped against the floor, too loud in the sudden stillness. "Marcus ?"
He crossed the distance between them in three long strides, and then he was there, standing in front of her, and suddenly it was eight years ago and they were twenty again, penniless and full of possibilities in their cramped Cardiff flat.
"Christ," he breathed. "You look exactly the same."
"Liar." But she was smiling, despite everything. Old habits. "You look like a completely different person."
He laughed. The same laugh, at least. That hadn't changed. "Bit of an upgrade, I suppose. Got rid of the terrible jumpers."
"Your mother loved those jumpers."
"My mother still asks about you. Every Christmas. Wants to know why her son's only friend from university vanished off the face of the earth."
The words landed somewhere between accusation and jest. Aurora Signal for another drink, her throat suddenly dry. "I've been here. Same city. Same—" She gestured vaguely at the bar, the photographs on the walls, the whole dimly lit world she'd built in this corner of Soho.
"Raven's Nest." Marcus looked around properly now, taking in the narrow room with its mismatched furniture and its walls covered in old maps and black-and-white photographs. "Fitting, actually. You always did like hiding in dark corners."
"Pot, kettle."
"Fair enough." He settled onto the barstool beside her, and Silas appeared with a fresh glass without being asked . Old habits in this place too. "What are you drinking?"
"Whiskey. Neat."
"Grown-up." He flagged down Silas . "Gin and tonic. Whatever's in the good bottle."
Silas raised an eyebrow at Aurora. She gave a tiny nod. The old man had his own ways of reading situations.
"Long time," Marcus said when Silas had poured and retreated to his end of the bar.
"Eight years."
"You remember."
"I count." She took a sip of her whiskey, letting the burn settle her nerves. "How's London treating you? Big-shot corporate life suiting you?"
He flinched slightly . Good. Let him. "It's not—I don't do that anymore. I left that behind."
"When?"
"Three years ago. After—" He stopped, glanced away . "After the divorce."
The word hung between them like smoke. Aurora felt something twist in her chest, some old wound she'd thought had scarred over.
"Emma seemed nice," she said carefully . "When I met her. At the thing. The summer do."
"She was." Marcus turned his glass in his hands, watching the light catch the liquid. "She wasn't. It doesn't matter now."
"Children?"
"No. Thank God. Would've made everything messier."
Aurora didn't say anything. The jazz shifted to something slower, sadder. On the wall behind Marcus , an old photograph showed a London that didn't exist anymore, trams and bowler hats and streets that had been bombed and rebuilt into something new.
"I looked for you," Marcus said eventually. "After. When I came back to myself. But you'd moved, and your phone number changed, and—" He shrugged. "You were good at disappearing."
"Occupational hazard."
"What does that mean?"
She considered lying. It would be easy, given their history, given everything left unsaid between them. But the whiskey was warm in her blood, and the late hour made honesty feel like a gift she could afford to give.
"Silas knew a man," she said. "Back when I first arrived. In London. I was running from—" She stopped, restarted . "I needed to disappear for a while. New name, new job, new everything. Silas helped."
"Helped with what?"
"Identity. Documentation. The kind of things you don't ask questions about."
Marcus stared at her. In the low light, his eyes looked darker than she remembered, more guarded. The boy who'd argued politics with her until three in the morning, who'd believed they could change the world with enough conviction and cheap wine, was nowhere to be seen. In his place sat a man who'd built walls so high not even memory could climb over.
"You're not a criminal," he said slowly .
"No."
"You're not—" He stopped, laughed, ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what I thought. When I saw you through the window. I thought maybe I'd imagined it."
"You don't imagine in The Raven's Nest. That's Silas' job."
"Who's Silas?"
"The man pouring your drinks."
Marcus looked at Silas, properly looked, taking in the grey-streaked auburn hair, the neatly trimmed beard, the silver signet ring glinting on his right hand. Silas caught his gaze and nodded once, a small acknowledgment that somehow managed to convey decades of experience and absolutely nothing about what he'd done or seen or know.
"He knows things," Aurora said. "About the city. About people. About the kind of problems that don't have legal solutions."
"And you've been—what? Working for him?"
"Working for myself." She finished her whiskey, set the glass down with a precise click. "I deliver food. Chinese. Excellent dumplings, if you're hungry."
"You're a delivery driver."
"You're a divorcee with money to burn on fancy drinks. We all have our crosses to bear."
The sharpness in her voice finally got through to him. He flinched again, more visibly this time, and something shifted in his expression. The careful mask cracked, just for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of the boy underneath—the one who'd held her hair back when she was sick, who'd read her poetry when she couldn't sleep, who'd promised they'd always be friends no matter what.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly . "For not being there. After. When you needed—"
"I didn't need anyone."
"Aurora."
"I survived." She stood, pulled her jacket from the back of the chair. "That's what I do. I survive. You taught me that, actually. When you left."
The words came out harder than she intended, and she saw them hit him like blows. Good. Let him feel it. Let him carry some of the weight she'd been holding for eight years, some of the silence that had become so familiar she'd forgotten it was supposed to hurt.
"I didn't want to leave," he said. "You know that. My father was dying, and my mother couldn't—and I had to go home, I had to—"
"I know."
"So why are you—"
"Because you didn't write." Her voice cracked, just slightly , just enough. "You didn't call. You didn't send a single word for three years, and when you finally did, it was to tell me you were getting married. To someone I'd never met. To someone you'd known for six months. And you expected me to be happy about it."
"I know."
"I was happy for you." The lie tasted like copper in her mouth . "I was. I just—I thought we were different. I thought what we had meant—"
"It did." He stood too, reaching for her arm but stopping just short of touching her. "It still does. That's why I'm here. That's why I've been trying to find you."
"You found me."
"I never stopped looking."
The jazz had stopped. In the silence , Aurora could hear her own heartbeat, loud and steady in her ears. Somewhere in the back room, a clock ticked. The old maps on the walls seemed to lean closer, listening.
"You should go," she said. "Back to your life. Your other life. The one where you made it."
"And you?"
"I'm right here. Where I've always been."
Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled out a card. Expensive, minimal. He set it on the bar between them.
"My number's on there. If you ever—"
"I won't."
"I know." He smiled, just a little, just enough to remind her of who he used to be. "But I had to try."
He turned and walked toward the door, and Aurora watched him go. At the threshold, he paused, looked back, and for a moment she saw the boy he used to be, the one who believed in things, who loved without conditions, who promised forever and meant it.
"Goodbye, Aurora."
"Goodbye, Marcus ."
The door swung shut behind him. The jazz started up again, something slow and sad and beautiful. Silas appeared with the bottle, refilled her glass without a word, and retreated to his end of the bar.
Aurora sat alone with the card on the counter, white and crisp and full of numbers she would never dial. Outside, London continued its eternal spin, millions of lives intersecting and diverging, people finding each other and losing each other in the dark.
She picked up the card, turned it over once, and then dropped it into the ashtray beside her glass.
Some things couldn't be recovered. Some people couldn't be found, no matter how hard you looked. Some doors, once closed, stayed that way .
She drank her whiskey slowly , letting the burn fade to warmth , and watched the neon sign outside flicker green against the darkness.