AI The green neon sign outside The Raven’s Nest flickered , casting a rhythmic , sickly emerald glow across the rain-streaked window. Inside, the air tasted of stale tobacco, expensive scotch, and the damp wool of coats drying near the radiator. Aurora Carter—Rory to anyone who had known her for more than a week—swiped a rag across the scarred mahogany of the bar. She wasn't officially on shift, but Silas’s left knee was acting up again, the old injury from Prague pulsing with the arrival of a low-pressure system, and she couldn’t sit in her flat upstairs listening to him limp through the evening rush.
Silas sat on a high stool at the end of the bar, his grey-streaked auburn hair caught in the low light. He was nursing a soda water, his right hand resting flat on the wood, the silver signet ring catching the glint of the overhead lamps. He didn't say much, but his hazel eyes tracked every movement in the room with the practiced stillness of a man who used to count exits for a living.
"You're scrubbing the finish off that wood, Rory," Silas said, his voice a low, gravelled rumble.
"Just keeping busy, Si," she replied, not looking up . She adjusted the sleeve of her black sweater, making sure it covered the small, crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist. It was a habit now, a physical tick born of a decade’s worth of guarding herself.
The bell above the door chimed, a lonely, tinny sound that cut through the low hum of the jukebox playing something melancholic and brass-heavy. A man stepped in, shaking a dripping umbrella. He was dressed in a tailored charcoal overcoat that screamed Chancery Lane, his shoes polished to a mirror shine that had no business in a Soho dive. He looked around the room with a squint of mild disapproval until his eyes landed on the bar.
Rory froze. The rag stopped mid-circle.
It was Julian Vance. Ten years ago, he had been the boy in the front row of her Jurisprudence lectures at Cardiff University, the one who had shared high-waisted dreams of becoming a KC alongside her. Back then, she had been Aurora, the barrister’s daughter with the bright blue eyes and the certain future. Now, she was Rory, a delivery driver for the Golden Empress who lived above a pub and smelled faintly of Yu-Fei’s ginger-sculled broth.
Julian approached the bar, his expression shifting from confusion to a slow, dawning shock. He stopped two feet away, his hands hovering over the wood as if afraid he might catch something.
"Aurora?" he whispered. The name sounded like a ghost, a heavy, ornate thing she hadn't carried in years.
Rory forced her fingers to relax. She pulled the rag over her shoulder and met his gaze. "Julian. It’s been a long time."
"A long time?" He laughed, a brief, frantic sound. "You vanished. One day you were there, arguing about the Human Rights Act, and the next, your flat was empty. Your father—Brendan wouldn't tell anyone where you'd gone. He just said you’d taken a 'leave of absence.'"
Silas shifted on his stool, the movement subtle but deliberate. He didn't interject, but the weight of his presence settled over the exchange like a shield. Rory felt the phantom pressure of her past pressing in on her, the memory of Evan’s voice, the way he had isolated her until London was her only oxygen.
"I needed a change of scenery," Rory said, her voice tight and professional . "What can I get you? We have a decent Islay single malt, or the usual suspects on tap."
Julian stared at her, his eyes tracing the line of her shoulder-length black hair, so different from the long, polished curls she’d worn in Wales. He looked at her hands—calloused from bike grips and heavy crates—and then back to her face. "You’re working here? Aurora, you were the top of the class. You were going to be a litigator. My God, I’m a junior partner at Fletcher & Ward now. I thought... I don't know what I thought, but not this."
"It’s Rory now," she said. The precision in her tone was a blade. "And what you thought doesn't really factor into the reality of the last five years, Julian."
He flinched. He took a seat, the expensive fabric of his coat bunching awkwardly. "Small Macallan. Neat."
Rory moved with practiced efficiency. She poured the amber liquid, the glass clicking softly against the bar. Julian reached for it, but his eyes never left hers. He looked older, certainly—the soft edges of his youth had sharpened into the weary cynicism of the London legal circuit—but he was essentially the same. He was the version of her life that had stayed on the tracks.
"I saw your mother last Christmas," Julian said softly . "In Cardiff. She looked... diminished. She said she hears from you, but you never come home. Not even for the holidays."
Rory focused on the reflection of the green neon sign in the back-bar mirror. "London is a busy place, Julian. People get lost in it. Some by accident, some by choice."
"Was it him?" Julian asked, his voice dropping an octave, leaning in . "That guy? Evan? Everyone knew he was a prick, but we didn't think..."
"Don't," Rory interrupted. The "out-of-the-box" thinker he remembered was still there, but she had applied that intelligence to survival, not statutes. "Don't pretend you were worried then. You were all too busy with your pupillages and your networking. I left because I had to. The rest is just history."
Silas cleared his throat, a dry sound that broke the tension . "Everything alright here, Rory?"
She glanced at Silas, seeing the quiet authority in his posture. He knew. He didn't know the specifics of Julian, but he knew the look of a shadow from the past trying to lengthen itself over the present.
"Fine, Silas. Just an old acquaintance," she said.
Julian looked at Silas, noting the grey-streaked hair and the signet ring, then looked back at Rory. "Is this it then? This life? Delivering takeaway and pulling pints in a place that looks like it hasn't seen a health inspector since the Cold War? You were brilliant, Aurora. You could have been anything."
Rory leaned her elbows on the bar, closing the distance between them. The blue of her eyes was cold, startlingly bright in the dim tavern. "I am something, Julian. I’m free. I don't wake up wondering if the person next to me is going to snap. I don't spend my days lying to judges or polishing my ego in a mirror. I have a roof, a job, and friends who don't ask for my pedigree."
Julian took a long swallow of his scotch, the burn making him wince. "You sound like a different person. You look like her, but the voice... it’s harder. You used to be so soft, Aurora. You used to laugh at everything."
"Soft things get broken," she said. She reached out and took a stray coaster from the bar, spinning it between her fingers. "I grew up. It happens to the lucky ones."
Regret flared in Julian’s eyes, a fleeting , painful look of a man realizing he’d missed a turn-off miles back on the road. He reached across the bar, his hand stopping just short of her wrist—the one with the crescent scar. He seemed to notice the tension in her arm, the way she didn't pull away but signaled clearly that he shouldn't touch her.
"I should have called," he whispered. "When you stopped showing up to the library. I thought about it. I just... I didn't want to get involved in the drama. I figured you'd handle it. You were always the smart one."
"That’s the thing about being 'the smart one,'" Rory said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper . "People assume you don't need help. They stand by and watch you drown because they’re sure you’re just practicing your backstroke."
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the crackle of the ice in Silas's glass and the distant muffled roar of a bus turning onto Dean Street. Julian looked at the remainder of his scotch as if it were poison. He reached into his leather wallet, pulled out a twenty-pound note, and laid it on the bar.
"I’m sorry," he said. It was a small word for a decade of silence . "If you ever... if you want to come back. My firm is always looking for researchers. You wouldn't even need to finish the degree, not with your marks. I could talk to the partners."
Rory looked at the money, then at him. She felt a strange surge of pity. He was offering her a ladder back to a house that had burned down years ago. He thought he was being a savior, but he was just showing her how little he understood.
"I have to check the kegs," Rory said, stepping back from the bar. "Keep the change, Julian. It’s expensive to stay that polished in London."
She turned away before he could respond, heading toward the small door behind the bar that led to the cellar. She didn't look back to see him stand, button his charcoal coat, and step out into the neon-green rain.
As the door chimed shut, Silas let out a slow breath. He adjusted his bad leg and looked at Rory as she emerged from the cellar stairs, her face a mask of careful neutrality.
"You okay, kid?" Silas asked.
Rory picked up a glass and began to polish it, her movements slow and deliberate. The bright blue of her eyes was shadowed , reflecting the maps on the walls and the old photographs of people who had long since moved on.
"I'm fine, Silas," she said, her voice steady . "Just a ghost. They don't have a lot of weight once you stop believing in them."
She tucked her hair behind her ear, the crescent scar on her wrist caught for a moment in the green light, and went back to work. The Raven’s Nest was quiet again, the way it was meant to be, a sanctuary for those who had finally stopped running.