AI The air in The Raven's Nest held the familiar scent of polished wood, spilled ale, and the faint, ever-present hint of Silas’s cigar smoke that had seeped into the walls over decades. Rory Carter sat on her usual stool at the far end of the bar, the one with a slight wobble that matched the uneven rhythm of her thoughts. A half-finished pint of bitter sat before her, condensation tracing slow paths down the glass. She traced the crescent scar on her left wrist with her thumb, a subconscious habit when the silence grew too loud.
Silas moved behind the bar with the economical grace of his trade, his slight limp more pronounced in the damp evening. He polished a tumbler with a white cloth, his silver signet ring catching the low green glow from the neon sign outside the window. He didn’t speak. He never did when she was like this, lost in the grey space between delivery shifts and the four walls of the flat above. It was a kindness.
The door opened, slicing a wedge of sodium-yellow street light and the damp murmur of Soho into the dimness. A woman stepped in, shaking a compact umbrella closed. She was all sharp lines and expensive wool—a tailored coat the colour of charcoal, hair cut in a severe bob that screamed a salon in Mayfair. For a moment, she was just another city professional seeking a discreet drink. Then her eyes adjusted to the light, and they landed on Rory.
Rory felt the recognition like a physical jolt. It wasn’t immediate. The woman’s face was older, sharper, the softness of her early twenties carved away by years and ambition. But the eyes, wide and a familiar shade of hazel, were the same.
“Rory?”
The voice was different too. Lower, more assured, polished with received pronunciation that had sanded away the Welsh lilt . Megan Davies. Cardiff University. Pre-Law tutorials, late-night library sessions fueled by terrible coffee, shared laughter that used to come so easily.
Rory’s hand stilled on her wrist. She offered a slow, careful nod. “Megan.”
Megan’s perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted. She approached the bar, her heels clicking a precise rhythm on the old floorboards. She slid onto the stool next to Rory, leaving one empty between them as if it were a necessary buffer. She placed her leather handbag on the bar with a soft, definitive thud.
“My God. I heard you’d moved to London, but I never…” Megan’s gaze swept over Rory, taking in the worn leather jacket, the simple grey t-shirt, the hair that was just a bit too long and fell across her eyes. “I never expected to find you in a place like this.”
“It’s a bar.” Rory’s voice was flat. She took a sip of her bitter. “People drink in them.”
“You know what I mean.” A faint flush touched Megan’s cheeks. She turned to Silas, who had materialised soundlessly before her. “A gin and tonic. Hendricks, if you have it. Fever-Tree tonic.”
Silas gave a near-imperceptible nod and turned to prepare the drink. His hazel eyes met Rory’s for a fraction of a second—a question, an offer of intervention. She gave a slight shake of her head.
“So,” Megan said, turning back. She clasped her hands on the bar, her nails a flawless , neutral pink. “How long has it been? Four years? Five?”
“Five and a half.” Rory remembered the last time vividly. A crowded student union bar, Megan waving a letter of offer from a law firm, Rory forcing a smile while Evan’s hand was a possessive weight on her lower back. She had stopped returning calls not long after.
“Right.” Megan accepted the gin from Silas with a murmur of thanks. She took a delicate sip. “You just vanished, Rory. One day you were there, top of our torts class, the next… poof. People talked. There were rumours.”
“Let them talk.”
“I didn’t believe most of them.” Megan’s tone was careful, probing. “The one about you running off to join the circus seemed a bit far-fetched.”
A ghost of a smile touched Rory’s lips. It felt strange on her face. “Not the circus.”
“What, then? What have you been doing with yourself?” Megan’s gaze was intent, searching for the girl she’d known in the woman sitting beside her.
Rory considered the lie, the easy deflection. *I’m in consulting. Freelance work.* But the weight of the years, the unspoken chasm between the life Megan assumed and the one she actually lived, pressed down. “I deliver food. For a Chinese restaurant in Camden.”
Megan blinked. The silence stretched, filled only by the soft clink of ice in her glass. “You deliver food.”
“Part-time. The hours are flexible.”
“Rory, you were the smartest person in our year. Professor Callahan said you had a mind for constitutional law that came along once a decade.” Megan’s voice held a bewildered frustration. “And you’re riding a moped with noodle boxes?”
“Sometimes it’s rice.” Rory took another drink. The bitter tasted of dust and regret.
“Why?” The word was sharp, stripped of its professional polish. “What happened? Was it… was it Evan?”
The name hung in the air between them, toxic and familiar . Rory’s fingers tightened around her glass. She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
Megan let out a slow breath. “I knew it. I knew there was something… off about him. I should have said something. Done something.”
“You did. You told me he was a ‘bit intense.’” Rory’s voice was quiet, devoid of accusation. It was just a fact.
“I was twenty-one. I was scared of sounding like a nag. I thought you’d tell me to piss off.” Megan stared into her gin. “I regret that. More than you know.”
The admission settled over them. Rory studied her old friend—the impeccable suit under the coat, the air of controlled competence. She looked like everything Rory’s parents had hoped she would become. “You look successful.”
Megan gave a short, humourless laugh. “I am. Associate at Thorne & Grafton. Seventy-hour weeks, a flat in Canary Wharf I never see, a boyfriend who schedules our dinners a month in advance.” She looked at Rory, really looked at her. “You look … free.”
Rory barked a laugh, a harsh, unexpected sound. “Free? Is that what this looks like?”
“It looks like you answer to no one. It looks like you left a cage, even if you landed in a… a different kind of room.” Megan’s eyes drifted to the scar on Rory’s wrist, then away, as if she’d seen something too private. “I think about that cage sometimes. The one we were all scrambling to get into. The partnership track, the corner office, the right postcode. I got in. And most days, I can’t remember why I wanted it.”
“You wanted it because it was the plan,” Rory said. “The only plan we were ever given.”
“And you broke the plan.” There was no envy in Megan’s voice, only a profound , weary curiosity. “How does it feel? To be off the map?”
Rory thought of Silas’s hidden back room, of the coded messages she sometimes carried for Yu-Fei Cheung, of the quiet, watchful life she’d built piece by piece from the wreckage. It wasn’t freedom. It was a different kind of survival, narrower and more deliberate. “It feels quiet,” she said finally. “Mostly, it just feels quiet.”
Megan finished her drink. She signalled to Silas for another, but he was already there, replacing the empty glass with a fresh one. He moved away without a word.
“I miss you, you know,” Megan said softly , to her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “I miss the person you were. The one who could argue a point into the ground and then buy the rounds after.”
“She’s gone.” The words came out more bluntly than Rory intended.
“I can see that.” Megan turned to face her. The professional mask had slipped, revealing the tired, regretful woman beneath. “But is what’s here… is it better?”
Rory didn’t have an answer. Better was a luxury she’d stopped weighing years ago. Existence was the metric. Waking up without fear was the milestone. She looked at Megan, at the life she had chosen and now questioned, and felt a surge of something that wasn’t pity, but a deep, resonant sadness for the paths not taken, for the versions of themselves they had both buried.
“It’s different,” Rory said at last.
Megan nodded, accepting the non-answer. She took a long drink. “Do you ever think about coming back? To the law? It’s not too late. I could put in a word. We’re always looking for researchers with sharp minds.”
The offer hung in the air , a lifeline thrown from one ship to another drifting in separate seas. Rory imagined it: the crisp shirts, the weight of a legal tome, the sterile smell of a corporate office. The cage, polished and gilded.
“No,” she said, and the word felt final, a stone dropped into a deep well . “That’s not my life anymore.”
Megan’s shoulders slumped, just a fraction. She finished her second gin and tonic and reached for her purse. “I should go. Early deposition tomorrow.”
She stood, pulling on her expensive coat. She hesitated, then placed a business card on the bar next to Rory’s pint. The card was thick, creamy stock. *Megan Davies, Associate. Thorne & Grafton Solicitors.*
“If you change your mind. Or if you ever just… want a coffee. With someone who remembers the old you.”
Rory looked at the card but didn’t touch it. “Goodbye, Megan.”
Megan offered one last, searching look , then turned and walked back into the London night. The door swung shut, sealing the bar in its familiar , amber-lit silence once more.
Silas appeared, collecting the empty glass and the condensation-ringed coaster. His eyes flicked to the business card.
“Leave it,” Rory said.
He nodded, wiping the bar clean where Megan had sat, erasing the physical evidence of the encounter . Rory stared at the scar on her wrist, then out the window at the distorted green glow of the neon raven. The weight of the last five years settled in her bones, heavy and irrevocable. The past had walked in, spoken its piece, and left. All that remained was the quiet.