Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYJWB5J26HFGSANDD0VBQQ

The green neon sign bled through the rain-speckled window, casting the bar in a sickly glow that made everyone look slightly unwell. Aurora pushed through the door of The Raven's Nest, shaking water from her jacket, her delivery shift finally done. The warmth hit her face like a wall. She nodded at Silas behind the bar—he raised a glass in acknowledgment, the silver signet ring on his right hand catching the light—and made her way toward the corner booth she'd claimed as her own over the past three years. Someone sat in it. She stopped mid-stride. The woman occupied the seat with the particular posture of someone waiting, though her attention was fixed on the tabletop, on the untouched glass of wine before her. Dark hair, cut short now, almost severe. A blazer that probably cost more than a month's rent at Aurora's flat. Something familiar in the angle of those shoulders, the way she held her cigarette—no, she wasn't smoking, just turning the unlit thing between her fingers. The woman looked up. Aurora's breath caught. "Rory." That voice. Lower than she remembered, rougher at the edges, but unmistakably hers. "Katherine." They stared at each other across the bar. Three years. Three years since Cardiff, since late nights in the university library, since Katherine had held her hair back at a party and told her she was making a mistake with Evan, since everything fell apart and Aurora ran and Katherine— Katherine had stayed. Finished her degree. Got the training contract at that firm in Bristol she'd always talked about. The one her father pulled strings for. "I heard you were in London." Katherine gestured at the seat opposite her. "Sit." Aurora remained standing. "How did you find me?" "Does it matter?" It didn't, really. Cardiff was a small city, and gossip travelled. Evan's crowd still talked about the girl who left. The girl who ran. Maybe someone had mentioned seeing her here, or maybe Katherine had simply combed London until she found what she was looking for. She'd always been thorough. Aurora sat. Up close, the changes were more apparent. The sharp lines of Katherine's face had softened, or perhaps the makeup was simply better applied. Her eyes—still that penetrating grey-green—carried shadows that no amount of concealer could hide. The blazer hung slightly loose on her frame. She'd always been thin, but this was different. This was deliberate. "You look good," Katherine said. "Liar." A smile flickered across Katherine's face. "You always could tell." The unlit cigarette kept turning between her fingers. Aurora noticed then that her nails were bitten down to the quick. The Katherine she remembered had manicures every fortnight without fail. "You're not smoking." "Quit. Eight months ago." Katherine set the cigarette on the table. "Old habits." "You kept the cigarette." "I kept the cigarette." Silas appeared at their booth, his limp barely audible over the murmur of the other patrons. He set down a pint of lager in front of Aurora without being asked. "Friend of yours?" "University," Aurora said. Silas studied Katherine for a moment—his hazel eyes sharp despite the easy smile he wore—and gave a small nod. "Another wine?" Katherine pushed her untouched glass away. "Whisky. Whatever you have that's decent." "Coming up." He left them in the weighted silence. Aurora watched Katherine watch the bar—the old maps on the walls, the black-and-white photographs of a London that no longer existed, the faded booth seats that had seen better decades. "This place suits you." "Does it?" "Grungy. Out of the way. Full of people who don't ask questions." Katherine's mouth twisted. "Very you." "What's that supposed to mean?" "Nothing." She smoothed her blazer. "Just an observation." The whisky arrived. Katherine wrapped both hands around the glass, and Aurora caught sight of something on her left hand—no ring, but the pale band of skin where one had been. Recently removed. The skin was still irritated, red and raw. "You got married." Katherine's fingers tightened around the glass. "Briefly." "How briefly?" "Fourteen months. Separated at eleven. Divorced final last week." She downed half the whisky in one swallow. "His name was Oliver. He worked in finance. He was—" A pause. "He was fine." "Fine." "Boring. Safe. Exactly what I was supposed to want." Katherine laughed, but there was no humour in it. "My mother adored him." "And you?" "I adored the idea of him. The life he represented. The stability, the house in Clifton, the dinner parties where everyone discussed their portfolios and their holidays and their children's prospects." She finished the whisky. "I thought if I just... kept moving forward on the path, everything else would fall into place. The career, the husband, the house. All the things we're supposed to want." Aurora thought of her own mother, of Jennifer Carter née Ellis, who had never pushed but had always hoped. Who had watched her daughter walk away from Pre-Law and never said a word of disappointment, though it must have been there, buried somewhere beneath the acceptance. "And instead?" "Instead I realised I'd built an entire life out of things I didn't actually want." Katherine signalled for another drink. "Turns out that's the quickest way to end up exactly where you started. Only older. Only more tired." "And you came here because...?" "Because I needed to see someone who walked away." Katherine's gaze was steady now. "You left, Rory. You left everything—your degree, your family, your relationship. You just... left. You didn't explain yourself, didn't justify it, didn't wait for permission. You just went." "It wasn't that simple." "Nothing ever is." The second whisky arrived, and Katherine cupped it between her palms. "But you did it. You're here. You're—" She looked around the bar again. "You're something. Someone. I can't quite figure out what, but you're your own person. Not just a collection of other people's expectations." Aurora thought about her flat above the bar, cramped and perpetually damp. Her delivery shifts in all weathers. The freedom she'd found in anonymity, in being nobody in particular in a city of millions. The safety of Silas's network, his quiet protection, the way he never asked about the scars she'd carried with her from Cardiff—visible and invisible both. "It's not a glamorous life," she said finally. "Glamour was never the point." "What was the point, then?" Katherine was quiet for a long moment. Around them, the bar hummed with conversation, with the clink of glasses and the low rumble of laughter. Someone fed coins into the ancient jukebox in the corner. Johnny Cash started singing about walking lines. "I don't know anymore," Katherine admitted. "I thought I did. I thought the point was building something, creating something, becoming someone. But I looked up three months ago and realised I had no idea who that someone was. Just a collection of CV points and social obligations." She met Aurora's eyes. "I wanted to know if you figured it out. If leaving gave you the answer." "It gave me quiet." "That's not an answer." "It's enough of one." Katherine studied her face. Searching for something—truth, perhaps, or reassurance, or maybe just a version of the past she could hold onto. "Evan came back to Cardiff," she said quietly. "After you left. He told everyone you'd had some kind of breakdown. That he'd tried to help you, but you were too far gone." Aurora's hand went unconsciously to her left wrist, to the crescent scar hidden beneath her sleeve. "I bet he had a lot of sympathy." "You'd be surprised how many people believed him." "I wouldn't." "No." Katherine's voice softened. "I suppose you wouldn't." The jukebox moved to another song. Silas was watching them from the bar, his expression unreadable, though his hand rested casually near the phone. Ready, if she needed him. She raised her chin slightly—I'm fine—and his attention drifted elsewhere. "Why are you really here, Katherine?" "Because you're the only person who knew me before I became... this." She gestured vaguely at herself, at the blazer and the bitten nails and the raw skin where a wedding ring used to sit. "Everyone else only knows the version I showed them. The successful lawyer. The perfect wife. The good daughter. You knew me when I was still figuring out who I wanted to be, before I let everyone else decide for me." "And what do you want from me?" "Permission, maybe. To stop pretending I have it all together." Katherine laughed, and this time there was a trace of genuine bitterness in it. "Or absolution. For staying when you left. For choosing the safe path when you chose the hard one. For not calling, not checking in, not asking if you were okay when I knew—when I knew something was wrong." The weight of those words settled between them. Aurora felt the familiar tightness in her chest, the echo of those final months in Cardiff. The fights that left marks no one could see. The friends who looked away. Katherine had been the only one who'd said something, who'd pulled her aside at a party and asked if she was alright, really alright—and Aurora had lied, because that was easier, because admitting the truth would have meant confronting it. "You couldn't have fixed it." "I could have tried." "Would it have changed anything?" Katherine had no answer for that. She turned the empty whisky glass in a slow circle, watching the light refract through the crystal. "I'm not asking for forgiveness," she said finally. "I'm not sure I deserve it. I'm just... I'm tired of carrying it. The knowing. The wondering if I could have done something, said something, been someone who made a difference instead of just another person who watched and did nothing." Aurora looked at her old friend—really looked, past the expensive clothes and the carefully maintained composure, to the exhaustion underneath. The uncertainty. The grief for a life that looked perfect on paper and felt hollow in practice. They were not so different, she realised. Both of them running. The only difference was the direction. "I don't hate you, Katherine." It was the closest thing to forgiveness she could offer. Katherine seemed to understand, because something in her shoulders loosened, just slightly. "Thank you." The rain had stopped outside. Through the window, Aurora could see the wet streets glistening under the streetlamps, the city moving on without caring about the two women in the corner booth and the years between them. "Stay for another drink?" Katherine smiled—a real smile this time, small and tired and genuine. "I'd like that."