AI The Raven’s Nest glowed green on the corner of the street, its neon sign humming over the wet pavement while taxis hissed past and threw up dirty water. Inside, the bar held its usual dim warmth , all black wood and old maps pinned to the walls, black-and-white photographs of strangers with hard mouths and narrow suits staring out from frames that had gone a little crooked over the years.
Rory stood near the end of the bar with a clean glass in her hand and a half-tied delivery bag at her feet. The night had gone quiet after the dinner rush. A few stools held the same regulars nursing the last of their drinks. Silas moved behind the counter with his easy, measured pace, his limp obvious when he turned, his right hand flashing the silver signet ring each time he reached for a bottle.
The door opened and a slice of damp London air cut through the room.
Rory looked up on instinct, ready for another customer, another late drink, another shrug at the world.
The woman in the doorway stopped as if she had walked into the wrong decade.
Rory knew the voice before the face settled into place.
“Rory?”
Her fingers tightened on the glass.
“No one called me that in years.”
The woman blinked once, hard, and the rain on her coat shivered. “Megan Hughes?”
Rory stared. The room shifted around the shape of her memory. Megan used to come into lectures with a backpack hanging off one shoulder, hair in a messy knot, three pens jammed into a pocket and a laugh that bounced off the walls. This woman wore a tailored navy coat, her hair cut sharp at her jaw, one silver streak running through the brown near her temple. Her posture had changed too. She stood like a person used to doors opening for her.
“Don’t stand there gawping,” Rory said, and the words came out rough.
Megan let out a breath that sounded like it hurt . “You’re alive.”
Rory snorted and set the glass down. “I can see how that would throw you.”
Megan crossed the room in slow steps, as if she expected Rory to vanish if she moved too fast. She stopped at the bar, close enough for Rory to catch the smell of cold rain and expensive perfume under it.
“You look…” Megan’s mouth worked once. “Different.”
Rory tipped her head. “That’s rich coming from you.”
Megan glanced down at her own coat, her shoes, the leather satchel hanging from one shoulder. “I meant you look like you’ve spent the last few years fighting somebody.”
“London did most of the work.”
Silas set a clean tumbler on the bar between them and filled it with a finger of whisky before Rory could stop him.
“For the reunion,” he murmured, his hazel eyes moving once over Megan’s face and back to Rory’s, “I’ll leave you to it.”
He walked off with the bottle, his limp steady and familiar , and the soft clink of glasses filled the gap he left behind.
Megan turned the tumbler in both hands but didn’t drink. “I walked in because it was raining.”
“That’s usually how rain works.”
“I mean I walked in because I wanted somewhere warm.” She looked up at the green neon glow reflected in the mirrors behind the bar. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Rory leaned her hip against the counter. “I live upstairs.”
Megan’s face changed at that, something quick and raw sliding across it before she smoothed it away. “Of course you do.”
“You say that like it’s a confession.”
“It sounds like one.”
Rory lifted one shoulder. “You always did like making drama out of geography.”
Megan gave a short laugh, then her gaze snagged on Rory’s wrist where the crescent scar sat pale against her skin. Her voice dropped.
“You still had that.”
Rory curled her hand around the glass. “It never grew back.”
“I know that.”
“You remember it?”
“I remember everything about you, Rory.”
The words hung there, heavier than either of them wanted.
Rory looked away first, toward the row of bottles lit from below, toward the mirrors that returned her own face in fragments. Her hair had gone straighter with time, the black cut to her shoulders. Her mouth had lost the loose openness it used to have. The scar on her wrist had grown into the rest of her like it belonged there.
Megan swallowed and finally took a sip. “I heard you went to London.”
“I’m in London.”
“I know that now.”
Rory reached for a tea towel and folded it once, twice, not needing it. “You heard after it happened.”
Megan’s hand stilled around the glass. “I heard after you left Cardiff.”
Rory looked at her. “That wasn’t the same thing.”
“No.” Megan held her stare. “It wasn’t.”
The quiet that followed had edges. Someone at the far end of the bar laughed too loudly at something on a phone. Ice shifted in a glass. Silas moved somewhere behind the racks, letting the room pretend it was still only a bar.
Megan set the tumbler down. “I rang your old flat.”
Rory’s expression didn’t move, but her fingers did, once, against the towel.
“I spoke to your mother,” Megan said.
Rory shut her eyes for a breath. “You rang home.”
“She sounded tired.”
“She always sounded tired when she had to talk to students.”
“She asked if you were in trouble.”
Rory opened her eyes again, and the bright blue of them sharpened. “And you said?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“That part was true.”
Megan flinched, a small movement around the mouth. “You vanished.”
“I relocated.”
“You vanished,” Megan said again, and this time there was steel under it. “No forwarding address. No new number. Eva kept saying you were fine, and then she stopped answering me too.”
Rory’s laugh came out once, dry and ugly. “Eva knew better than to answer questions she couldn’t solve.”
“I wasn’t asking for a solution.”
“What were you asking for?”
Megan looked at her for a long second, then dropped her gaze to the wood grain in the bar top. “To know you made it out.”
Rory leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. The old habit of defensiveness sat on her shoulders like a borrowed coat.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“No.” Megan rubbed the rim of the glass with one thumb. “I thought you might not let anyone know if you did.”
“That sounds more like me.”
“It sounded like you at the time. Not so much now.”
Rory stared at her. “What does that mean?”
“It means you used to talk before you thought.”
“I still do.”
“No.” Megan’s eyes flicked over Rory’s face, her hair, the line of her jaw, the hard set of her mouth. “You’ve got this whole new way of looking at people like they’re standing too close to something breakable.”
Rory let out a small breath through her nose. “And you’ve got a whole new way of sounding like a lecture.”
“I spent enough years in rooms where people listened when I spoke.”
Rory’s mouth twitched. “Right. That happened.”
Megan’s expression shifted, half pride, half discomfort, like praise had landed somewhere she hadn’t expected. “I’m at chambers now.”
Rory glanced at the coat, the satchel, the watch with a narrow silver face. “That explains the suit.”
Megan looked down at herself as if she had forgotten what she wore. “I came straight from work.”
“You still chase other people’s disasters for a living, then.”
“Someone has to.”
Rory gave her a long look. “You always wanted to win arguments.”
“I wanted to be right.”
“You were never shy about that.”
“You weren’t either.”
Rory picked up the glass again and turned it between her hands. The scar on her wrist flashed when she moved. Megan noticed it. Her eyes held there, then came back up.
“I should have called,” Megan said.
Rory laughed once, a sound without much humour. “That’s a useful line. Pity it came late.”
Megan lifted a shoulder, then let it fall. “I thought if I gave you space, you’d come back when you were ready.”
“Back where?”
“Anywhere.”
Rory looked past her, through the mirror behind the bar, where their reflections sat side by side in a frame full of old photographs and dim light. Time had done its work on both of them. It had taken Megan’s softness and sharpened it into something polished. It had taken Rory’s ease and rubbed it thin.
“You always did believe people had clean exits,” Rory said.
Megan’s mouth tightened. “What was I meant to believe?”
“That I could sort it out.”
“You couldn’t sort everything.”
“No one can.”
Megan nodded once, but she didn’t let it go. “You never asked for help.”
Rory set the glass down with care. “You never asked the right question.”
The words landed between them and stayed there.
Megan looked down at her whisky, then up again. Her voice turned quieter.
“Did he hurt you?”
Rory went still.
Even the room seemed to hold its breath around the question. Silas stopped mid-step at the far end of the bar and glanced over, just once, before turning away again.
Rory’s eyes stayed on Megan’s face. “That’s a late question too.”
“I know.”
“Then why ask it now?”
“Because I wanted to know whether I’d failed you, or whether I just arrived too late to matter.”
Rory looked at her for a long time. The green light from the sign outside slipped through the window and caught in the glass, in Megan’s ringless fingers, in the line of Rory’s wrist.
“You were never there to fail me,” Rory said at last.
Megan closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again, the shine in them had gone hard at the edges. “I heard about the move through Eva. She said you’d taken a new name.”
Rory gave a small, tight smile. “Eva had a talent for making disaster sound like admin.”
“Laila,” Megan said, careful with the word. “That was it, wasn’t it?”
Rory’s jaw tightened. “Don’t fish for the one you want.”
Megan held her stare. “What do you want me to call you?”
Rory’s hand brushed her wrist once, over the scar, like she was checking the shape of an old wound. “Rory’s fine.”
Megan nodded, once, as if she had been given something fragile and was afraid to break it. “Rory.”
The name sounded different now. Smaller. Older. Full of years neither of them could put back.
Silas came back down the bar with a clean cloth over one shoulder and a bottle tucked under his arm.
“You two looked like you’d run out of weather,” he said, his gaze moving between them. “Need another drink?”
Megan looked at the whisky in front of her, untouched save for one swallow. Rory watched Silas’s face instead, that quiet, knowing look he wore when he chose not to step in too far.
“I’ll have one more,” Megan said.
Rory reached for the bottle, then stopped with her fingers around the neck. “You’ve got somewhere else to be.”
Megan’s mouth parted, then closed again. She glanced at the satchel at her side, at the rain on the window, at Rory’s face.
“I did,” she said. “Then I saw you.”
Rory poured the drink anyway. The amber liquid moved steady into the glass, catching the light.
When she set it back down, Megan’s hand covered the base for a second, not taking it yet.
“Tell me something,” Megan said.
Rory raised a brow. “That’s dangerous.”
“Were we ever good to each other?”
Rory met her eyes across the bar, the old maps and the black-and-white dead looking on from the walls, the green neon bleeding through the glass and over both their hands. She didn’t answer straight away. She kept her fingers on the bottle, feeling the cool shape of it, and Megan stayed still on the other side of the wood, waiting with the kind of patience that cost something.