Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTXSN0Y4Q88SZYBRA7DK5DR

The green neon sign of The Raven's Nest flickered twice before steadying, casting its familiar sickly glow across the rain-slicked pavement. Aurora pushed through the door, shaking droplets from her jacket, the smell of old wood and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the walls decades ago wrapping around her like a worn blanket. Thursday nights were dead. She counted three regulars nursing their pints in the corner booth, a couple she didn't recognize by the window, and Silas behind the bar, polishing a glass with the same methodical patience he applied to everything. "Rough shift?" He set a whiskey sour in front of her usual spot before she'd even sat down. "Mrs. Patterson ordered soup." Rory slid onto the stool. "Soup. In delivery containers. On a motorcycle. In the rain." "And you're surprised because?" "I'm not surprised. I'm wet." She took a long sip, letting the sourness cut through the exhaustion. "And apparently I smell like hot and sour." Silas's mouth twitched beneath his beard. "Could be worse. Could be fish." The door opened behind her, bringing a gust of November air and the sound of an umbrella shaking out. Rory didn't turn. The Nest attracted all sorts—Silas's network of contacts drifting in and out like ghosts, tourists who'd wandered off the beaten path, locals seeking refuge from the relentless pace of Soho's nightlife. Footsteps approached the bar. A woman's voice, somewhere behind her left shoulder: "I'll have whatever local bitter you recommend, thanks." Rory's hand froze halfway to her glass. She knew that voice. Knew it the way she knew her own reflection, the way she knew the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist—instinctively, bodily, before thought could catch up. "Coming up." Silas reached for a pint glass, his eyes flicking briefly to Rory's face. Reading something there. He'd always been too observant for his own good. Rory turned. The woman standing beside her had Eva's cheekbones, Eva's wide-set brown eyes, Eva's habit of tucking her hair behind her left ear first, always the left. But the hair itself was wrong—cropped close to her skull where it used to fall past her shoulders in careless waves. And she was thin. Too thin. The kind of thin that spoke of months rather than weeks, of something chronic rather than circumstantial. Eva's gaze landed on her, and for one suspended moment, neither of them breathed. "Rory." "Eva." The name felt foreign in her mouth. Three syllables she hadn't spoken aloud in—what? Two years? Closer to three? "I didn't—" Eva stopped. Started again. "I didn't know you still came here." "I live upstairs." "Oh." Eva's hand went to her ear, tucking phantom strands of hair that were no longer there. The gesture was so achingly familiar that Rory had to look away. "Right. I'd forgotten Silas mentioned that. Years ago." Silas set the pint down between them with pointed neutrality and retreated to the far end of the bar, suddenly very interested in reorganizing the whiskey bottles. Eva slid onto the stool beside her. Not the one with an empty space between them, but the one directly adjacent, close enough that Rory could smell her perfume—different now, something sharp and green where it used to be vanilla and amber. "You cut your hair," Rory said, because it was the safest observation available. "Eighteen months ago." Eva wrapped her hands around the pint glass but didn't drink. "After the first round of chemo." The word landed between them like a stone dropped into still water. "Chemo." "I'm in remission now. Hodgkin's lymphoma. Stage two. They caught it early enough." Eva's tone was practiced, the cadence of someone who'd delivered this speech dozens of times. "I was lucky, really." Lucky. Rory turned the word over in her mind, searching for a place where it fit. Found none. "You didn't tell me." "No." "Why?" Eva finally lifted the glass, took a long drink. Set it down with careful precision. "You know why." And she did. That was the worst part. She did know, had known the moment Eva's calls stopped coming, the moment her texts went from daily to weekly to nothing at all. She'd told herself it was natural. People grew apart. Lives diverged. The friend who'd convinced her to flee Cardiff, who'd helped her find the flat, who'd introduced her to Yu-Fei and held her hand through those first terrible months after Evan—that friend had simply moved on. Easier to believe that than to ask. "I should have called," Rory said. "I should have told you." Eva shrugged, a small movement that made her collarbone stand out sharply beneath her sweater. "We both should have done a lot of things." The rain had picked up outside, drumming against the window. One of the regulars got up to leave, nodding to Silas on his way out. The couple by the window leaned closer together, sharing something private. "Tell me something," Eva said. "Do you still think about that night in Cardiff? The one before you left?" Rory didn't need to ask which night. There had only been one that mattered—the two of them in Eva's cramped kitchen, a bottle of cheap wine between them, Rory's face still swollen from where Evan had grabbed her. "Sometimes." "I think about it constantly." Eva traced a finger through the condensation on her glass. "I keep wondering what would have happened if I hadn't pushed you to leave. If you'd stayed and tried to work things out with him instead." "I'd be dead." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. "Or as good as." "Maybe. Probably." Eva's mouth twisted. "But you'd have been there. When I got the diagnosis, when I was lying in that hospital bed convinced I was dying, when I needed—" She stopped herself. Took a breath. "That's not fair. I know that's not fair." "No. It's not." "I'm saying it anyway." Rory reached for her whiskey sour and found it empty. She stared at the remnants of ice melting in the bottom of the glass. "You pushed me to leave because staying would have killed me. And then you didn't tell me you were sick because—why, exactly? Because I'd left?" "Because you'd finally gotten out." Eva's voice cracked on the last word. "You were safe, Rory. You were building something. You had the flat and the job and you weren't flinching every time someone raised their voice. I wasn't going to drag you back into—into being someone's caretaker. Not again. Not after everything he put you through." "That wasn't your choice to make." "I know." "You took three years from us. Three years I could have been there." "I know." The silence that followed was thick enough to drown in. Silas had stopped pretending to reorganize bottles and was now openly watching them from his peripheral vision, his hands still on the bar. "I looked for you," Rory said finally. "After you stopped answering. I went by your flat. Your neighbor said you'd moved." "Bristol. My mother's place. Easier for the treatments." "And you couldn't send a text? An email? 'Hey Rory, I'm in Bristol, I have cancer, thought you should know'?" Eva flinched. "I started writing that text maybe a hundred times. Never sent it." "Why?" "Because I knew what you'd do." Eva turned to face her fully, and up close, Rory could see the shadows under her eyes, the slight hollowness in her cheeks that makeup couldn't quite disguise. "You'd have dropped everything. Quit your job, left London, shown up at my mother's doorstep ready to fight god himself on my behalf. And I couldn't—I couldn't let you sacrifice everything again. Not for me." "That should have been my choice." "I know." "Stop saying that." "What do you want me to say?" Eva's voice rose, drawing a brief glance from the remaining regulars. She lowered it again, leaning closer. "That I was wrong? I was wrong. That I was selfish? I was selfish. That I spent eighteen months wondering if I'd die without ever seeing you again and the only thing that kept me from calling was this stupid, stubborn pride that I couldn't—" She broke off, pressing her palm against her mouth. Her shoulders shook once, twice. Rory watched her fall apart, watched this woman she'd known since childhood crack open in the dim light of a Soho bar, and felt something in her own chest give way. "I'm still angry," she said quietly. "You should be." "I'm going to be angry for a long time." "I know." "But I'm also—" Rory reached out, her hand hovering in the space between them. "I'm so glad you're alive. I'm so bloody glad you're not dead." Eva grabbed her hand like a lifeline. Her fingers were cold from the pint glass, her grip too tight. "I came back to London last month," she said. "I've been walking past this bar every night for two weeks, trying to work up the courage to come in." "Why tonight?" "Because I'm tired. Of carrying this alone. Of pretending I'm fine when I'm terrified every day that it's going to come back. Of missing you so much it feels like someone carved a hole in my chest." Eva's laugh was wet, broken. "You're the only person who ever knew the whole me, Rory. And I threw that away because I was too scared to need someone again." Rory squeezed her hand. "You're an idiot." "I know." "I'm going to be angry with you for a very long time." "I deserve that." "And you're going to come to Sunday dinners at Yu-Fei's. Every week. Even when you're tired. Even when you don't feel like it. You're going to let me feed you and worry about you and be there, the way I should have been all along." Eva stared at her. "Rory—" "That's the deal. Take it or leave it." For a long moment, Eva didn't respond. Then, slowly, she nodded. "Okay." "Okay." Silas materialized beside them, setting a fresh whiskey sour in front of Rory and another pint in front of Eva. "On the house," he said, his hazel eyes unreadable. "For old friends." He retreated before either of them could respond. Eva wiped her face with her free hand, leaving her other one firmly clasped in Rory's. "He always did have excellent timing." "Former spy. It's his only marketable skill." "I heard that," Silas called from the end of the bar. Rory raised her glass. Eva did the same, their movements awkward with their hands still intertwined. "To second chances," Eva said. "To showing up." They drank. Outside, the rain continued to fall, and the green neon sign flickered its endless rhythm against the dark.