Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYQCS4WZCPCAAED7TW1B4A

The green neon glow of The Raven's Nest bled onto the wet pavement outside, casting sickly light across the faces of smokers huddled near the entrance. Aurora pushed through them, shoulders hunched against the November drizzle, and slipped inside. The warmth hit her first—that particular blend of body heat, old wood, and whiskey that Silas's place always carried. She shook the rain from her jacket and scanned the room out of habit. Tuesday nights ran quiet. A handful of regulars nursed pints at the bar. Some student types commandeered the corner booth, laptops open, pretending to work. The old maps on the walls seemed to yellow further each week, curling at their edges like they were trying to escape their frames. She needed a drink. Needed to wash the taste of exhaust fumes and curry from her mouth after six hours weaving through London traffic on that bloody scooter. Yu-Fei had kept her late—some catering order gone sideways—and now her lower back screamed and her fingers still felt locked in throttle position. Aurora made her way toward the bar, already catching Silas's eye. He stood behind the counter, wiping a glass with the kind of meditative patience only bartenders and monks seemed to possess. His silver signet ring caught the low light as he worked. "You look like hell," he said. "Charming as always, Si." "Whiskey?" "Please." He poured without measuring, two fingers of something amber and expensive that he definitely shouldn't have been wasting on her. The glass slid across the scarred wood, and she caught it, brought it to her lips— "Rory?" The voice came from behind her. Feminine. Familiar in a way that made her spine straighten before her brain caught up. She turned. The woman standing three feet away wore a tailored charcoal coat that probably cost more than Aurora's monthly rent. Her blonde hair, once wild and perpetually escaping whatever elastic she'd trapped it in, now fell in sleek waves to her collarbone. Diamond studs glinted at her ears. She clutched a designer handbag like a shield. "Megan." The name felt strange in Aurora's mouth. Foreign. Like speaking a language she'd once known fluently but had let atrophy through disuse. "Oh my God." Megan's perfectly lined lips curved into something between a smile and grimace. "I thought—I saw you walk in and I thought, no, it can't be. But then you went to the bar and I recognized the way you walk, you know? That thing you do with your shoulders when you're cold." Aurora didn't know she did anything with her shoulders. She also didn't know what to do with her hands, her face, her entire body suddenly aware of its own inadequacy. Her delivery jacket still dripped. Her jeans had a curry stain on the left thigh. She became acutely conscious of the crescent-shaped scar on her wrist, visible below her pushed-up sleeve. "What are you doing here?" Aurora asked. "Work thing. Drinks with clients." Megan gestured vaguely toward a table near the window where two men in suits pretended not to watch their exchange. "But they're leaving soon. I could—we could catch up? If you're not busy?" Aurora's whiskey sat untouched on the bar behind her. She felt Silas's attention like a physical weight, though when she glanced back, he'd moved to the other end of the counter, giving them space while missing nothing. "Sure," Aurora heard herself say. "Yeah. Let's catch up." They settled into a booth near the back, beneath a black-and-white photograph of some long-dead explorer standing beside a plane with a crumpled nose. Megan ordered a gin and tonic. Aurora retrieved her whiskey. The wood between them felt like a canyon. "So," Megan said. She folded her hands on the table, and Aurora noticed her nails—perfect French tips, not a chip in sight. "Cardiff feels like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?" "Seven years." "Has it been that long?" Megan's laugh came out too bright, too sharp. "God. Seven years. I think about those days sometimes, you know. The three of us in that terrible flat with the mould problem. Do you remember the mould? It kept coming back no matter how much bleach we used." "I remember." "And the parties. All those parties." Megan sipped her drink, leaving a perfect lipstick mark on the glass. "You were always the one who'd stay up talking until four in the morning. Philosophy and poetry and all that deep stuff. I'd pass out by midnight and you'd still be going." Aurora turned her whiskey glass between her palms. The amber liquid caught the low light, held it, released it. "We were young." "We were." Something flickered across Megan's face—a shadow that didn't match her polished exterior. "I tried to find you, after. After everything. But you'd deleted all your socials, changed your number. Eva said you needed space." "I did." "From everyone? Or just—" "Everyone." The word hung between them. Megan's clients rose from their table, shrugging into overcoats. One of them caught her eye and made a gesture—leaving, call tomorrow—and she nodded with the practiced ease of someone who'd mastered the language of professional obligation. "You're in finance now," Aurora said. Not a question. She'd done the maths. The coat, the bag, the clients in their expensive suits. "Mergers and acquisitions. Henderson Pierce." Megan said it without pride, just fact. "It's mind-numbing, honestly. But the money's good. Peter and I bought a house in Richmond last year. Four bedrooms. We're thinking about a family." "Peter." "My husband. Two years now." Megan twisted a diamond ring Aurora hadn't noticed. Three stones, princess cut, obscenely large. "I know what you're thinking." "You don't." "You're thinking, that's not the Megan I knew. The Megan who wanted to backpack through Southeast Asia. Who talked about opening a used bookshop in Brighton. Who cried when we found that injured pigeon outside the student union and insisted we take it to a wildlife rescue." Megan's voice had dropped, lost some of its careful polish. "You're thinking I sold out." Aurora met her eyes. Bright green, same as always, but something had dimmed behind them. Something she couldn't name. "I was thinking you look tired," Aurora said. The observation cracked something open. Megan's composure slipped, just for a moment, and underneath Aurora glimpsed the girl she'd known—the one who'd cry at sad commercials and laugh too loud and believe, genuinely believe, that the world would bend to accommodate her dreams. "I am tired." Megan wrapped both hands around her glass. "I'm so bloody tired, Rory. I work sixty-hour weeks. Peter works seventy. We have this beautiful house and we're never in it. We have a garden and I can't tell you what's planted there because I've never looked. We talk about children like they're a line item on a spreadsheet—optimal timing, career impact, childcare logistics." She stopped. Took a breath that shuddered at the edges. "I had a plan, you know. We were going to travel after graduation. You and me and Eva. That summer trip we kept talking about. And then—" She faltered. Swallowed. "And then Evan happened, and you disappeared, and I kept waiting. I kept thinking, she'll come back. She'll call. We'll pick up where we left off. But you didn't. And somewhere along the way I stopped waiting and started settling." Aurora's throat tightened. She remembered that summer. Remembered the bruises hidden under long sleeves in July. Remembered Evan's voice in her ear, telling her she was worthless, telling her no one would believe her, telling her she deserved everything he gave her. She remembered packing a single bag in the middle of the night and catching the first train to London, to Eva's spare room, to the beginning of a life rebuilt from wreckage. She'd never said goodbye to Megan. Never explained. She'd simply vanished, leaving her old life like a snake shedding dead skin. "I'm sorry," Aurora said. The words felt inadequate. Thin. "You don't have to apologize." Megan's eyes glistened. She blinked rapidly, fighting for control. "I'm not saying it's your fault. God, I'm not saying that at all. I made my choices. Every single one. But sometimes I wonder, you know? What would have happened if things had been different. If you'd stayed. If we'd taken that trip. If I'd been braver." "Brave isn't one choice," Aurora said slowly. "It's a thousand small ones. Every day. You wake up and choose again." "Is that what you do?" "I try." The answer felt honest. Aurora thought about her flat above this bar, small but hers. Her delivery job, unglamorous but survivable. The way she'd learned to exist in her own skin again, to trust her own judgment, to believe that she deserved to take up space in the world. It had taken years. It was still taking years. Maybe it would never stop taking. "What do you do now?" Megan asked. "Besides haunt atmospheric bars in Soho, I mean." "Delivery work. For a restaurant in Chinatown." "That's—" Megan stopped herself. Aurora watched her swallow whatever she'd been about to say—something condescending, probably, something about wasted potential and law school and all the things Aurora had heard from her parents before she'd stopped taking their calls too. "It's honest," Aurora finished for her. "And it's mine. I don't answer to anyone. I don't pretend to be someone I'm not. I don't wake up at three in the morning wondering if this is all there is." The accusation landed. Megan flinched. "That's not fair." "No. It isn't." They sat in silence. The Raven's Nest hummed around them—low conversation, the clink of glasses, someone feeding coins into the ancient jukebox in the corner. A song started up. Something from the eighties. Megan's mouth quirked. "Remember when we learned all the words to 'Don't You Forget About Me' and performed it at that terrible karaoke night?" "You forgot half the second verse." "I improvised. Very badly." Megan laughed, and this time it sounded real. Broken and sad and real. "I miss her, Rory. The girl I was. I don't know where she went." Aurora reached across the table. Her fingers brushed Megan's wrist—a touch so light it barely qualified as contact. But Megan grabbed her hand and held on like a drowning woman finding something solid. "She's still there," Aurora said. "You just buried her under a lot of expensive things." "How do I dig her out?" "I can't answer that for you." "No." Megan's grip tightened. "No, I suppose you can't." The door opened. More patrons spilled in, bringing cold air and street noise. The moment stretched thin, ready to break. "I should go," Megan said finally. "Peter will wonder where I am." "Okay." Neither of them moved. "Can I—" Megan's voice caught. "Can I give you my number? I know you probably won't call. I know we can't go back to who we were. But just in case. Just in case you ever want to talk." Aurora thought about it. Really thought about it. The past lived in that number—Cardiff and Evan and the girl she'd been before she'd learned what it meant to survive. But so did something else. Something that looked like possibility. "Yeah," she said. "Okay." Megan fumbled in her bag, produced a business card. She scrawled a mobile number on the back in handwriting Aurora recognized—still messy, still slanting left, unchanged by all the years between them. Their fingers touched when Aurora took the card. Megan's were cold. "Take care of yourself, Rory." "You too." Megan stood. Gathered her coat, her bag, her professional armor. She looked down at Aurora one last time, and her face held something that might have been longing or regret or simply the weight of choices made and chances missed. Then she walked away, heels clicking against the hardwood floor, and Aurora watched her go. Silas appeared at the booth a moment later. He set a fresh whiskey in front of her without being asked. "Old friend?" he said. Aurora turned the business card over in her hands. The weight of it felt significant. Heavy with history. "Something like that."