AI Rory pulled her jacket tighter against the damp London chill . The scent of fried noodles and ginger, residual from her shift at the Golden Empress, clung to her like a second skin. Streetlights bled into the fogged-up windows of passing buses, their colours blurring into streaks of indifferent light. Soho hummed with its usual nocturnal pulse , a frantic energy she usually found comforting , a counterpoint to the quiet desperation that had followed her from Cardiff. She’d meant to walk straight home, up the narrow stairs to her small flat above Silas’s bar, but her feet had faltered outside The Raven’s Nest.
Through the window, she could see him. Silas, a fixed point of calm in the swirling city. The dim glow of the bar was a warm invitation, his familiar silhouette behind the polished wood counter a constant presence. Tonight, though, seeing him felt different. Years seemed to stretch between her last properly significant conversation with him and this moment. Years where she’d shed one life and painstakingly cobbled together another, where the girl who’d arrived with nothing but a suitcase and a scream trapped in her throat felt like a ghost haunting this new existence. She hesitated, her fingers tracing the worn leather of her delivery bag. Then, almost against her will, she pushed the door.
The chime above the door announced her arrival, a small, polite sound swallowed by the bar’s quiet thrum. The air inside was thick with the comforting scent of aged wood, stale beer, and something faintly spicy, a ghost of a forgotten evening. Maps, faded and sepia-toned, covered the walls, alongside a gallery of austere, black-and-white faces from a bygone era. Silas looked up from polishing a glass, his hazel eyes, usually sharp with an almost unnerving perceptiveness, softening with recognition. A slight limp accompanied his movement as he pushed off the counter and came around toward her. His auburn hair, streaked liberally with grey, was neatly trimmed, as was his beard, a picture of contained composure.
"Aurora," he said, his voice a low rumble, deeper than the background murmur of a few solitary patrons nursing their thoughts at scattered tables. "A long shift?"
"You could say that, Si," she replied, forcing a smile . She scanned the mostly empty room. The usual haunts occupied by lone drinkers were just that tonight – occupied by lone drinkers, their faces shadowed in the low light. "Just getting some air before I head upstairs."
He came to a stop beside her, his gaze appraising but kind. He always managed to strike that balance, a quiet authority that never felt oppressive . "The air in here is often better than outside, I find. And it offers more in the way of comfort." He gestured towards an empty stool at the bar. "Join me for a moment?"
She nodded, sliding onto the worn leather seat. It molded itself around her like memory, soft and familiar . Silas moved back behind the counter, his movements economical, practiced. He poured a measure of whisky without asking. It was usually his way, an almost telepathic understanding that she often needed something stronger than conversation after a grueling day. He slid the glass towards her. The amber liquid caught the dim light, a small pool of warmth .
"To breathing," he offered, raising his own half-empty pint in a silent toast.
"To breathing," she echoed, the word feeling heavy, earned. She took a slow sip of the whisky. It burned, then settled pleasantly, a familiar , grounding warmth spreading through her chest. Silas watched her, his expression unreadable , that quiet authority that had always both intimidated and reassured her.
"You haven't been in often of late," he observed, his hand resuming its meticulous work with a clean bar towel.
"Been busy," she said, which was a truth, but far from the whole truth. Busy trying to outrun the silence , the echoes of things left undone, and the gnawing what-ifs. "Deliveries back up. Yu-Fei’s been… particular about her timings."
He smiled, a brief crinkling at the corners of his eyes. "The Empress has always been a demanding mistress. But you manage. You always do."
That was the thing, wasn't it? Managing. Surviving. It felt increasingly like a poor substitute for living. She looked at him, at the faint lines etched around his eyes, the silver threading his hair. He had always been an older presence, a steady anchor in the choppy waters of her London arrival. But tonight, more than ever, she saw the layers beneath the proprietor, the retired operative. His quiet authority now felt like a mantle woven from countless unseen battles, a life lived in the shadows.
"Do you ever think," she started, then stopped, the question lodging itself behind her teeth like a shard of glass. What she wanted to ask was: *Do you ever regret it? All of it?* The risks, the choices, the people lost, the Prague operation that had cost him so dearly? But that wasn't her regret to voice, and he had always been discreet about his past, a past he’d only hinted at as a brutal, necessary education.
Silas, as if sensing the unspoken weight of her thoughts, tilted his head slightly . "Think what, Aurora?"
She traced the rim of her glass, the condensation cool against her fingertip. "Cardiff. University. Pre-Law." The words felt alien, remnants of a life that belonged to someone else, a distant melody from a forgotten song. She saw herself there, bright-eyed, on the cusp of a future meticulously planned by her parents, by her own youthful ambition and sharp intellect. Before Evan. Before the shattering, the slow erosion of everything she thought she was. Before Laila, the persona she’d tried on and shed like a second skin, and then Aurora, the name she’d landed with, like a paratrooper dropped into unfamiliar, hostile territory. The bright blue of her eyes, usually so sharp and observant, often clouded with a distant sorrow she tried to mask with practiced neutrality. It was a sorrow that had settled in the corners of her vision, a perpetual guest since she’d fled Cardiff. The girl who’d excelled at everything, who’d dreamt of a life in the courtroom, now spent her days navigating sticky pavements and the whims of restaurant owners, her only ambition to make rent and disappear into the anonymity of her small flat. The weight of that divergence pressed down, heavy as the London fog.
"A different path," Silas said softly , his hazel gaze meeting hers. He didn't push, didn't pry. That was another of his formidable skills – knowing when silence was an invitation and when it was a necessary wall. But he knew she often felt adrift, tethered precariously to this London life, a life built on necessity rather than desire .
"Too different, I think," she admitted, the confession a small tremor that shook her carefully constructed composure. "Sometimes I look at old photos, or my parents talk about my cousin’s graduation… and I feel like I’m watching a movie about someone I used to know. Someone who was supposed to be more." She felt a prickle behind her eyes, an unwelcome surge of emotion. She’d built walls around that person, brick by careful brick, but the foundations were starting to show cracks.
Silas picked up another clean glass, polished it with a soft cloth, his movements slow and deliberate. "Ambitious young women often find their intended paths are not the only ones available. Life has a way of rerouting us." He paused, the slight limp more noticeable as he shifted his weight , a constant reminder of a past that had irrevocably altered his present. "And sometimes," he continued, his voice holding a deep resonance , "the detours lead to places one couldn't have imagined. Not necessarily worse, just… different. And ultimately, it's the living you do on the path you're on that matters."
"Or just survival," Rory murmured, the whisky suddenly tasting less comforting , more like a potent numbing agent. Her left wrist throbbed , an old phantom itch beneath the sleeve of her jacket, a reminder of a childhood accident her mother had always called it, but Rory knew better than to believe that innocent explanation. It was from a fight, a desperate, foolish attempt to prove something she couldn't articulate even to herself. Like so many things with her.
Silas’s gaze, for a fleeting second, dropped to her left wrist as she gestured. He saw the pale, delicate curve barely visible beneath her sleeve, a crescent moon etched into her skin. He didn't ask. He wouldn't. His job had taught him the stories skin could tell, the secrets it held, and the resilience needed to bear them. It was a mark not of weakness, but of survival, a testament to a moment when things had nearly gone terribly wrong, and she had, somehow, pulled herself back from the brink.
"There's never shame in survival, Aurora," he said, his voice low and steady, laced with an understanding that spanned years and experiences. "Not when the world tries to break you. The shame," he paused, his hand resting on his silver signet ring, the metal glinting under the low lights, "is in letting it win. In letting the fear or the regret keep you from living on the path you've chosen, no matter how it came to be."
He was talking about her, but she suspected he was also talking about himself. The botched Prague operation, the knee injury, the quiet retirement that was anything but – the ghosts trailing him were surely as numerous as hers, just dressed in different uniforms. He carried the weight of choices made under duress, the burden of knowledge, the price of competence.
"But what if… what if you left things behind that mattered more?" she whispered, the question so raw it surprised her . "What if the price of survival was… the person you were meant to be?"
Silas leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar. His gaze was steady, direct, holding hers without wavering . "No one is 'meant' to be anything, Aurora," he said, his voice dropping lower, a private confidence shared across the worn oak. "Not definitively. We become who we have to be. And sometimes, the 'meant to be' is just a story we tell ourselves, a convenient narrative to mask the messier, more interesting truth of who we actually become." He looked around the quiet bar, his eyes settling on a faded photograph of men in uniforms, faces grim, standing against what looked like a bombed-out European street . Faces he likely knew; men who became ghosts. "The real regret, I've found, isn't in the paths not taken, or the lives we might have lived. It's in looking back and realizing you didn't truly *live * on the path you chose, because you were too busy being afraid of failure, of judgment, of becoming someone you didn't recognize."
She absorbed his words, feeling their truth resonate, sharp and unwelcome where it pricked her armor. She was afraid . Afraid of the future, afraid of her past catching up, afraid of being found out as not being enough. Afraid of disappointing the idea of herself that had felt so solid, so attainable, back in Cardiff.
A comfortable silence settled between them, not the strained silence of strangers, but the quiet understanding of two people who had navigated darkness, each in their own way. The ambient sounds of the bar – the hum of the ancient refrigerator, the distant clatter of a glass, the muted thrum of traffic outside – seemed amplified in the stillness .
"Thank you, Si," she said finally, her voice a little choked . She pushed the whisky glass back towards him. "I should… I should try and sleep. And maybe unpack some of those old feelings."
He nodded, his gaze never wavering , a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken shared between them. He didn't try to keep her, didn't offer platitudes beyond the truth he’d just imparted. "Rest well, Aurora. And remember," he added, a ghost of a smile touching his lips, "even rerouted, a journey can still lead you somewhere worthwhile."
She managed another weak smile. As she slid off the stool, he gave a small nod, his left knee protesting the movement almost imperceptibly. It was the subtle signs, the almost invisible tells, that allowed him to see the world so clearly. And tonight, he had seen a glimpse of her, too. She walked towards the door, the chime sounding again, this time like a soft farewell entering the night. The London air, still damp and cool, felt less oppressive now, the weight of time and regret still present, but perhaps, just perhaps, a fraction lighter.