Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYS6A77WK0X041Q9XBKFQ1

The green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest hummed, a low electric thrum against the damp Soho night. Rory hadn’t stood under it in three years. Not since the week she’d packed a single bag and fled her old life, leaving Eva to handle the fallout. She’d taken the flat above the bar because it was cheap and available, a desperate, last-minute choice. For the first six months, she’d treated the place like a fortress, its entrance a hostile border she never crossed. She used the back alley. Tonight, something had pulled her to the front. A perverse sense of curiosity, or maybe just the bone-deep weariness of a twelve-hour delivery shift. She pushed the heavy wooden door. The familiar scent hit her first—a mix of old wood, polished leather, and the faint, ghostly trace of pipe tobacco Silas used to indulge in. The lighting was low, casting long shadows from the tables that were mostly empty. On the walls, the black-and-white photographs of a bygone London stared down, their subjects frozen in a time that felt more real than the present. The maps, yellowed and creased, promised adventures that would never happen. Behind the bar, a figure moved with a slow, deliberate grace. Polishing a glass with a white cloth. The grey in his auburn hair was more pronounced than she remembered, a web of silver catching the dim light. He was thinner, too. As he turned to place the glass on a shelf, she saw the slight, almost imperceptible hitch in his left leg. The limp. Silas Blackwood looked up, and his hazel eyes found hers in the gloom. He didn't startle. He never did. He just held her gaze, his expression unreadable. Then he gave a single, slow nod, and placed the cloth on the bar. Rory walked towards him, her footsteps the only sound. She felt like an intruder in a place that was, technically, part of her home. She stopped a few feet from the bar, her hand resting on the back of a stool. "It's quiet." "A Tuesday." His voice was a low rumble, unchanged by the years. "They're usually quiet. Brings out the ghosts." She slid onto the stool. The worn leather was cool against her thighs. "I wouldn't know." He picked up another glass, a heavy tumbler, and began his methodical polishing. "No. You wouldn't." Silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, not entirely. It was a silence filled with everything they weren't saying. Three years of it. He watched her, his gaze moving from her face, down to her hands where they rested on the bar. He saw the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, a pale white line against her skin. He’d seen it a hundred times before, but tonight it looked different. It looked like a marker. "You look tired, Rory." "A long day." "Every day is a long day for you now, isn't it?" He didn't say it with pity. It was a statement of fact, an observation from a man who made his living reading the fine print of people's lives. She shrugged, a gesture that felt too casual, too forced. "It pays the bills. Most of them, anyway." "And the others?" A muscle in her jaw tightened. "I'm working on it." He set the glass down, perfect and gleaming. The silver signet ring on his right hand flashed. "I heard about Cardiff. From your father." Rory’s head snapped up. Her bright blue eyes, usually so cool and guarded, held a flash of panic. "You talked to my dad?" "Brendan and I go back a ways. He called. He was worried." Silas leaned forward slightly, his forearms on the bar. The movement caused a faint wince that he concealed almost instantly. "He said you left. Didn't say where. Just… left." The air crackled. The unspoken name hung between them, a toxic presence. Evan. "I left," she repeated, her voice flat. "You ran." There was no accusation in his tone. He was simply correcting the record. She looked away, her gaze fixing on a map of the London Underground from the 1940s. The familiar stations were all there, but the lines were different. The connections had changed. "What's the difference?" "Running is a reaction. Leaving is a decision." He paused, letting the words land. "You were always a decision-maker. Quick. Out of the box. That's what I liked about you." "I'm not that person anymore." "Nobody is who they were at twenty-two." He straightened up, his hand resting on the edge of the bar. "But the bones are the same. The foundation. You can't just pour new concrete over a cracked slab and expect it to hold." Her fingers curled into a fist on the polished wood. "What do you want, Si?" He used the old nickname, a small, sharp twist of the knife. "I want to know why you've been living above my head for three years and haven't once walked down those stairs until tonight." "I've been busy." "You've been hiding." He gestured around the empty bar. "This is a good place for it. I should know." The weight of his own past, of that botched operation in Prague, settled in the space between them. His limp wasn't just an injury; it was a monument to a life he'd lost, a price he'd paid. He was as much a prisoner in this bar as she was in the flat above it. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding. It shuddered out of her, a sound of profound exhaustion. "I didn't think you'd want to see me." "Why wouldn't I?" "Because I was stupid." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "Because I let it happen. Because I cut everyone off. Eva, my parents… you." "I was your employer, Rory. You delivered food for me." "You were more than that and you know it." She finally looked at him again, and the guardedness in her eyes cracked, just for a second. A glimpse of the scared twenty-two-year-old she'd been. "You taught me how to spot a lie. How to see the angles. And I still… I just didn't see it." Silas’s expression softened. The lines around his eyes seemed to deepen. "We rarely see the things we don't want to. Especially when they're standing right in front of us, smiling." He reached under the bar and brought out a bottle of whiskey, a twelve-year-old single malt he kept for special occasions. He poured a measure into two of the spotless tumblers. He slid one across to her. "On the house." Rory stared at the glass, the amber liquid catching the light. It was an offering. A truce. A return to a time when their conversations were about strategy and puzzles, not regret and scars. She thought of the empty flat upstairs, of the single box she still hadn't unpacked from three years ago. She wrapped her fingers around the glass, the coolness a small anchor in the sea of memory. She didn't drink. She just held it. "I should go." "The night is young." "So am I." She managed a small, sad smile. "Or I'm supposed to be." She slid off the stool. As she turned to leave, she stopped. Her hand hovered over the bar. "Si?" He looked up from his own untouched glass. "Your knee. Is it worse?" He considered the question, his head tilted slightly. A flicker of surprise in his eyes, followed by something else. A quiet acknowledgement. He saw her. He really saw her. "Some days," he said. Rory nodded once, a slow, understanding gesture. She turned and walked away, her footsteps fading into the quiet of the bar. The heavy door swung shut, cutting off the hum of the neon sign from the inside. Silas stood alone in the dim light. He looked at the two glasses of whiskey on the bar, one full, one untouched, standing like two ghosts in an empty room.