Run: 2026-07-01-01KWEA7CG8GQD5XX6V6KCJTFMJ

The rain had followed Rory all the way from Camden, soaking through the shoulders of her jacket by the time she pushed open the door of the Raven's Nest. The green neon sign buzzed faintly overhead, throwing its sickly light across the wet pavement, and she was grateful for the warmth that met her inside — the smell of old wood and spilled whiskey, the low murmur of conversation, the black-and-white photographs on the walls watching her like a jury of the dead. She'd worked a twelve-hour shift for the Golden Empress, her bag of delivery boxes finally empty, her feet aching in a way that made her wonder, not for the first time, why she hadn't stayed in Cardiff and finished the law degree her father had paid for. She wanted a drink. She wanted her own bed above this bar, three flights up, where Silas kept the heating too high and never asked questions she didn't want to answer. She didn't expect to see Eva. But there she was, at the far end of the bar, hunched over a glass of something amber, her blonde hair cropped short now instead of the long plait she used to wear tied with elastic bands stolen from the school office. Rory almost didn't recognize her. The Eva she remembered had been soft around the edges, always laughing, always the one who dragged Rory out of whatever dark spiral she'd fallen into. This woman looked carved out of something harder. Her cheekbones stood too sharp against her skin, and there was a stillness to her that hadn't been there before, like she was conserving energy for something. "Eva?" The woman turned, and for a second there was nothing in her face at all, and Rory's stomach dropped, because maybe she'd made a mistake, maybe this was some stranger who happened to share her friend's bones. Then something flickered behind the eyes, a door opening a crack. "Rory." Eva's voice was rougher than it used to be, like she'd taken up smoking, or shouting, or both. "Christ. Rory Carter." "It's just Rory now. Well — Carter, some people call me. Long story." She slid onto the stool beside her, dripping rain onto the polished wood. "What are you doing in London? I thought you were still in Cardiff." "I was." Eva turned her glass a slow half-circle on the bar top, not quite meeting her eyes. "For a while." Silas appeared from behind the bar, wiping his hands on a cloth that had seen cleaner days, his hazel eyes flicking between the two women with the quiet assessment of a man who'd spent thirty years reading rooms for a living. "The usual, Rory?" "Please, Si." He poured without asking Eva anything, which told Rory he'd already served her once tonight, maybe more than once. He set the glass down and retreated to the other end of the bar, close enough to overhear if he wanted to, far enough to pretend he wasn't. "You look good," Eva said, though it came out like a question. "I look like I've been carrying takeaway boxes up five flights of stairs all day, which I have." Rory laughed, but it died in the air between them, unanswered. "You look—" She stopped herself. She'd been about to say *different*, but that felt insufficient, felt like it was skirting the real word, which was *diminished*. "It's been what, six years?" "Seven." Eva said it too fast, like she'd been counting. Seven years since Eva had shown up outside Rory's flat in Cardiff at two in the morning, hammering on the door, telling her to get her things, that she knew a place in London, that she wasn't going to watch Evan do to her what he'd already started doing. Seven years since Eva had driven her the entire way in her rusted-out Fiesta, singing along badly to the radio to keep Rory from crying, or maybe to keep herself from it. "I never got the chance to thank you properly," Rory said. "For that night. I don't think I ever said it right." Eva's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You don't have to thank me for that." "I do, though." "You really don't." There was an edge in it now, something Rory hadn't expected, and Eva took a long pull from her glass like she was trying to drown the words before they surfaced further. "I didn't exactly stick around to see how the thank-you would've gone, did I." That was true. Eva had dropped her at the mouth of this very street, told her to call once she'd found her feet, and then she'd simply — vanished. No calls returned. No messages answered. Rory had spent the better part of two years wondering what she'd done wrong, before deciding it was easier to assume Eva had just moved on, the way people did, the way lives forked without warning and left you standing at the wrong end of the road. "Where'd you go?" Rory asked. "After." Eva was quiet for a long moment. The bar noise filled the space where her answer should have been — someone's laughter near the door, the clink of ice, Silas murmuring something to a man in a flat cap at the far end. "Manchester, for a bit. Then some other places. It doesn't matter." She finally looked at Rory properly, and there was something raw in it, something that made Rory's chest tighten. "I made a mess of things, Ror. Bad choices. People. You don't want the details." "I might." "You don't." It wasn't unkind, just final, the way a door closes when someone's decided the conversation on the other side of it is over. "I heard you were doing alright, though. Someone said you were in London. I didn't believe it at first." "Small world." "Small enough that I walked into this exact bar tonight." Eva laughed, but there was no humor in it, just a kind of exhausted disbelief. "I wasn't even looking for you. I want you to know that. I wasn't — this isn't some grand reunion I planned." "I know." Rory did know. She could see it in the way Eva held herself, like she'd wandered in out of the rain the same as anyone else, looking for warmth, not looking for ghosts. They sat like that for a while, the silence stretching comfortably and then uncomfortably and then comfortably again, two women who used to finish each other's sentences now searching for the shape of new ones. Rory thought about all the versions of Eva that existed only in memory now — the girl who'd stolen hair elastics, who'd once cried at a Sunday afternoon film about a dog, who'd driven through the night without complaint because a friend needed saving. She wondered if that girl was still in there somewhere, folded up small beneath all the years that had happened since, or if she'd been spent entirely, used up in the driving and the leaving and whatever came after that neither of them would ever quite say out loud. "I should go," Eva said eventually, though she didn't move. "You don't have to." "I know." She smiled, and for just a second, it was the old smile, the real one. "But I think I will anyway." She left a note of money on the bar, more than the drink cost, and Rory watched her go, the door swinging shut behind her, the green neon sign flickering once through the glass before the rain swallowed her whole.