Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXNYT7563E1CPXXCH8SFMA

The rain had driven her inside. That was the only reason Aurora Carter pushed through the door of The Raven's Nest that evening, shaking droplets from her black hair like a dog drying off. She hadn't planned on drinking. The delivery rounds had finished an hour ago, and she had the evening shift at the restaurant tomorrow. But the green neon sign had glowed through the downpour like a beacon, and her jacket was soaked through, and sometimes convenience was the only logic that mattered. The bar was quieter than usual. A Tuesday night in Soho, and The Raven's Nest kept its own hours anyway. Silas stood behind the counter, polishing a glass with the slow patience of a man who had learned that everything worth doing took time. He'd told her once that the maps on the walls held memories more than routes. She still didn't understand what he meant, but she'd stopped asking. "The usual?" Silas called out. "Tea, please. I can't afford—" She stopped herself. Old habits. "Just tea." He poured it anyway, sliding the cup across the bar without comment. Aurora wrapped her hands around the ceramic, letting the warmth seep into her fingers. The television above the bar played muted news. Somewhere in the back, a couple argued in hushed, urgent tones. She didn't look. The door opened again. A woman stepped in, shaking an umbrella, muttering something about British weather. She was tall, maybe an inch taller than Aurora, with close-cropped blonde hair and a sharp jawline that seemed familiar in a way Aurora couldn't place. The woman glanced around the bar, her eyes landing on Aurora for a moment, then moving on. Then she stopped. Turned back. "Rory?" The name hit Aurora like cold water. Nobody called her Rory anymore. Only one person had ever called her that—had ever been allowed to. "No," Aurora said, too quickly. "You've mistaken me for someone else." The woman laughed, but it was hollow, uncertain. "Don't be ridiculous. I know that scar." She pointed at her own left wrist, mirroring the placement. "You got it falling off Melissa Prendergast's fence. I was there. I held your hand while you screamed for your mum." Aurora looked down at her wrist. The scar was there, a small crescent, faded now to white against her tan. She pressed her thumb against it instinctively, a gesture she'd never been able to break. "Imogen?" The name came out strangled. "In the flesh." The woman—Imogen—crossed the bar in three long strides and pulled Aurora into a hug that smelled of rain and expensive perfume. She felt thinner than Aurora remembered. Harder. "God, look at you. You're all... grown up." Aurora stood stiff in the embrace, unsure where to put her hands. When Imogen finally released her, she saw the changes she'd missed at first glance. The slight hollowing of cheeks. The fine lines around eyes that had once laughed easily. A small silver cross hanging from her neck that hadn't been there before. "What are you doing in London?" Aurora asked. "I could ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you were in Cardiff. Pre-Law, wasn't it? You were going to be a barrister like your dad." The words landed like stones in water. Aurora gestured at the barstool beside her. "Sit down. Let me get you a drink." "Whisky. Neat." Of course. Imogen had always drunk like the older boys she tried to impress. Aurora poured two glasses from the bottle Silas had left within reach, sliding one across to her old friend. "So," Imogen said, wrapping her fingers around the glass but not drinking. "Cardiff didn't stick?" "It didn't." Aurora kept her voice flat. "What about you? What happened to the—" She hesitated. "What happened to everything?" Imogen laughed that hollow laugh again. "Everything. Right. That's one way to put it." She took a long sip of whisky, then set the glass down with a precise click. "I got married, actually. Did you know that? Last year. He was... he's a good man. A vicar." "A vicar." "God works in mysterious ways, or so he keeps telling me." There was something bitter beneath the joke. "What about you? Anyone special?" "No." "Anyone at all?" "No." The silence stretched between them, filled with the murmur of the television and the soft clink of Silas's glass. Aurora studied her old friend surreptitiously. The Imogen she remembered had been wild, careless, the kind of girl who snuck out to parties and dared Aurora to do things she'd never have done on her own. They'd been inseparable through secondary school, two halves of a whole chaos. Then university had pulled them apart, and phone calls had dwindled, and eventually they'd become photographs in albums and memories that hurt to touch. "You look different," Imogen said finally. "So do you." "I didn't mean—" Imogen stopped, pressed her fingers to her temples. "I'm not judging. I'm just trying to understand. You were always the one with the plan. The one who knew where she was going. And now you're here, in London, serving drinks?" "Delivery," Aurora corrected. "I deliver food. This is just—" She gestured vaguely at the bar. "This is where I live." "You live above a bar?" "I live above a bar owned by a former intelligence operative who may or may not be running an international spy network from his secret back room." Aurora shrugged. "It's a long story." Imogen stared at her. "That's not funny." "It's not meant to be." The television above the bar flickered. Somewhere in the back, the couple had stopped arguing. The silence had grown heavier, more expectant. "I should go," Imogen said, but she didn't move. Her fingers traced the rim of her glass. "I didn't come here to— I just saw you through the window, and I couldn't believe it, and now I don't know why I thought this was a good idea." "Why did you?" "I don't know." Imogen's voice cracked. "I thought maybe if I saw you, if I talked to you, I'd remember who I was. Before all this. Before the wedding and the house and the— God, Rory, I used to be fun." "You were terrifying." "I was terrified. There's a difference." Imogen finally looked at her, really looked, and Aurora saw something in those eyes she recognized. The same hollowed-out feeling. The same desperate search for solid ground. "I thought if I did everything right—got the husband, got the house, got the faith—I'd stop feeling like I was falling. But I just keep falling." Aurora remembered the nights with Evan. The explanations she made to herself. The promises she believed. The slow erosion of everything she thought she was until she didn't recognize herself in the mirror. "It doesn't work," she said quietly. "Doing everything right." "I know." Imogen's voice was barely a whisper. "That's why I came in. Because I saw you, and you looked— You looked like someone who understood." The door opened again. A burst of cold air. Two men in suits stumbled in, laughing loudly, disrupting the heavy atmosphere. Imogen glanced at them, then back at Aurora. "I have to go," she said. "He's waiting. The car— I have to go." Aurora nodded. "It was good seeing you." "Was it?" Imogen stood, pulled her coat tighter. "I don't know what it was. I don't know what I was looking for." She paused at the door. "Are you happy?" The question hung in the air like smoke. Aurora thought about the flat upstairs with its slanted ceilings and drafty windows. She thought about the deliveries through London streets, the anonymity of being just another face in the city. She thought about Silas and his secrets, about the strange comfort of living above a bar where nothing was quite what it seemed. "I'm still here," she said finally. Imogen nodded slowly, as if that meant something. "Yeah. I suppose that's something." The door closed behind her, and Aurora was alone again with her tea and her silence and the maps on the walls that held memories more than routes. She didn't know if she'd ever see Imogen again. She didn't know if she wanted to. But for a moment, in that dimly lit bar with the green neon glowing through the window, she'd seen herself in someone else—the same lost, the same searching, the same quiet desperation to find a reason to stay. She finished her tea. She left money on the counter. She climbed the stairs to her flat, and she didn't look back.