Anysia

The evening had settled into the quiet, practical rhythm the soup kitchen always seemed to find once the first rush had passed. Steam drifted softly from the industrial pans in the parish hall kitchen, clouding the narrow windows and carrying the warm, familiar smells of vegetable stew and bread through the room. Volunteers moved between the tables with the easy coordination that came from routine rather than organisation, refilling cups, clearing plates, exchanging brief words with the men and women who had come in from the cold. Outside, beyond the thick brick walls of the hall, the traffic on Holloway Road murmured steadily in the background, a distant, restless tide of engines and brakes that never entirely stopped in that part of London.

Anysia Rowan stood beside the serving counter with a tray balanced against her hip, carefully stacking bowls as they were passed back to her. The work itself was simple enough that her hands moved almost automatically, rinsing, stacking, carrying, returning again to the same place beside the counter, yet her thoughts drifted elsewhere in the quiet spaces between the small practical tasks. It had been like that for weeks now, her mind slipping away from the moment into a soft, persistent current of reflection she could never quite shut off. Losing her parents had left the world strangely hollow around the edges, as though something essential had been quietly removed while no one was looking, and the breakup with Daniel only months later had finished the work grief had already begun. The convent had appeared to her during that time not as a dramatic revelation but as something calmer, steadier, like a doorway she had slowly noticed standing open at the edge of her life.

Mother Beatrice had listened to her explanation with the patient attention she gave everyone who came to her with earnest certainty, her lined hands folded loosely on the desk between them as Anysia spoke. She had not dismissed the idea. That had been the most surprising part. Instead she had nodded once and said gently that a vocation was a serious matter and could not grow properly if it began as a refuge from pain. Anysia must finish her final year at university first, she had said, her voice calm but immovable. One year was not so long in the life of a soul. If the calling remained after that, the convent doors would still be there.

The tray in Anysia’s hands was suddenly heavier than she had expected, the bowls stacked a little unevenly against one another, and she turned towards the small preparation area at the back of the kitchen to set them down. The corridor there was narrower, the bright noise of the hall fading slightly behind her as she pushed through the swing door into the smaller space where crates of vegetables and stacked tins lined the walls. Someone had propped the back door open earlier to let the steam escape, and the cold evening air slipped in quietly through the gap, carrying with it the faint smell of damp brick and traffic. Anysia paused beside the sink, resting the tray down with a soft clatter before reaching to pull the door closed, her hand catching the edge of the handle as she leant slightly into the chill.

The sound reached her first. Not loud, not even immediately recognisable, just a dull impact somewhere outside in the small service yard behind the hall, followed by a brief scrape that set her nerves tightening without quite understanding why. The yard was usually empty at that time of night, the deliveries long finished and the bins already lined up against the wall ready for collection in the morning. For a moment she hesitated, her fingers still resting on the door handle as she listened again, the distant murmur of traffic pressing softly against the silence beyond the door.

It was curiosity more than concern that made her pull the door open a little wider.

The security light above the doorway flickered as the motion sensor caught her movement, flooding the small yard with a harsh yellow glow that threw the shadows of the bins sharply against the brick walls. For a fraction of a second the scene outside refused to make sense, her mind trying to rearrange what she was seeing into something ordinary. A man was standing near the far wall of the yard, his pale hair catching the light as he straightened from a crouched position, while another figure lay crumpled at his feet in a shape that was far too still.

The man turned his head.

Their eyes met.

Something inside Anysia dropped away entirely, a hollow rush of understanding tearing through the fragile calm she had been standing in only moments earlier. The man’s expression did not change as he looked at her, his gaze settling on her face with a quiet, almost clinical interest that seemed far more terrifying than anger would have been. For a moment neither of them moved, the air in the yard suspended between them like a held breath, and then his eyes flicked briefly towards the open door behind her.

Anysia did not remember making the decision to run.

The corridor beyond the kitchen blurred around her as she stumbled back through the door, the tray clattering violently against the sink as her hip struck it. Someone called her name from the hall, the sound lost behind the pounding rush of blood in her ears as she pushed through the swing doors and veered towards the narrow service exit at the side of the building. Her hands were shaking so badly she almost missed the handle, the metal cold and slick beneath her fingers as she dragged the door open and stumbled out into the narrow alley that ran along the side of the parish hall.

The alley was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other comfortably, the brick walls rising steeply on either side and trapping the faint yellow glow of the streetlamp at the far end. She ran blindly towards it, her shoes slipping slightly on the damp pavement as the slope of the street beyond tilted downward towards Holloway Road. Somewhere behind her a door slammed open, the sound echoing sharply between the buildings, and the sudden certainty that he was following sent another surge of panic through her chest.

She did not see the man standing at the end of the alley until she collided with him. The impact drove the breath sharply from her lungs, her momentum carrying her forward hard enough that she would almost certainly have fallen if his hands had not closed around her arms in the same instant. The grip was firm, controlled rather than rough, and it steadied her with a certainty that felt strangely immovable against the chaos racing through her body. For a moment she could only stand there, bent slightly forward, her chest dragging in uneven breaths while the world tilted unsteadily around her. Then she lifted her head and saw the man properly for the first time.

He was taller than she had realised in that first blurred instant, broad through the shoulders, his posture loose but balanced as though absorbing her weight had required almost no effort at all. His expression was calm in a way that felt jarringly out of place against the frantic rhythm of her own pulse. There was no confusion in his face, no irritation at being nearly knocked over by a stranger fleeing blindly out of a dark alley. Instead his eyes moved once over her shoulder, scanning the length of the narrow passage she had just run through with a brief, precise attention that suggested he had already begun assembling the situation before she had managed to speak a single word.

“Someone’s behind you,” he said quietly.

The words were not a question. They landed with the quiet certainty of an observation already confirmed. Anysia tried to answer but the air in her chest would not cooperate, her throat tightening painfully as she fought to force breath back into lungs that still felt half collapsed from the collision. She nodded instead, the movement small and jerky beneath his hands.

The man watched her for another second, his gaze settling briefly on her face as though measuring how much she understood of what had just happened behind her. Then he shifted them both two small steps sideways without warning, guiding her gently but decisively out of the pale circle of the streetlamp and into the deeper shadow where the brick wall of the building blocked the light. The movement was smooth enough that she barely registered it happening until the alley behind them fell into clearer view beyond his shoulder.

“Did he see you?” he asked.

Anysia swallowed, the image of the yard surging back through her mind with brutal clarity: the still shape on the ground, the pale-haired man straightening slowly, the moment his eyes had lifted and met hers across the yellow glare of the security light. She nodded again, the answer tearing loose from her before she could stop it.

“Yes.”

The man’s expression did not change, but something in the stillness of his posture sharpened slightly, as though a piece of information had settled into place. His gaze moved once more towards the darkness of the alley, listening now rather than merely looking, the faint sounds of movement somewhere beyond the bend carrying through the quiet London night.

“Alright,” he murmured.

The word carried no urgency, only quiet acceptance, as though the information had merely confirmed something he had already suspected. His gaze returned briefly to her face, then he turned slightly, guiding her with a light pressure at her shoulder so that she stood fully behind him, her back almost touching the cold brick wall.

“Stay behind me,” he said softly. “And don’t make a sound.”

Cruz felt the tremor of her breathing before he heard the sound that had driven her into the alley. Her shoulder brushed lightly against the back of his coat where she stood pressed against the wall behind him, the cold brick leaching quietly through the thin fabric of her blouse while the echo of hurried footsteps moved somewhere deeper in the darkness of the passageway. The alley itself was narrow enough that sound travelled oddly along it, the faint scrape of a shoe against damp pavement carrying further than it should have, then disappearing again beneath the distant wash of traffic from Holloway Road. Cruz did not move. He leant slightly back on his heels, one hand resting loosely against the wall beside him, his posture relaxed in a way that would have looked almost idle to anyone passing in the street beyond the mouth of the alley. Only his eyes remained entirely still, fixed on the dim stretch of brick and shadow where the passage bent out of sight twenty feet away.

Behind him Anysia’s hand closed unconsciously on the back of his sleeve, the movement so small he might not have noticed it if the rest of her had not been trembling. He said nothing, offering neither reassurance nor instruction, because reassurance was useless and instruction had already been given. The only thing that mattered now was silence. After a moment he lifted one hand slightly and pressed two fingers lightly back against her wrist where it touched his arm, a brief steadying pressure rather than a warning, and felt the frantic rhythm of her pulse racing beneath her skin.

The footsteps came again, slower this time.

They were measured now, no longer the hurried noise of someone running blindly after prey but the deliberate pace of a man who had reached the end of pursuit and was beginning to look instead. Cruz’s gaze shifted fractionally, tracking the sound before the figure itself appeared, and when the man finally stepped around the bend into the thin wash of streetlight at the mouth of the alley he was already studying him with the quiet attention of someone accustomed to reading people long before they spoke.

The man paused.

For a moment he simply stood there, the pale fall of his hair catching the yellow light from the lamp above the pavement. His eyes moved slowly along the length of the alley, taking in the bins, the damp brick, the empty shadows where the wall met the ground. There was no urgency in the search. No agitation. The stillness of it struck Cruz almost immediately, the way the man seemed to examine the space rather than rush through it, as though the absence of what he was looking for was merely another detail to be considered.

Then his gaze lifted.

It met Cruz’s.

The distance between them was barely fifteen feet, the streetlight behind the man casting his face into partial shadow while the deeper darkness of the alley concealed the details of Cruz’s expression entirely. For a long second neither of them moved. Cruz felt the subtle shift in the man’s attention the moment recognition occurred, not the recognition of identity but of nature. Something in the way Cruz stood there, unhurried, unafraid, occupying the mouth of the alley without explanation, had already answered the question the man had been asking when he stepped into the light.

Behind Cruz, Anysia stopped breathing.

The man’s eyes flicked once to the shadow just beyond Cruz’s shoulder where her shape might have been suggested by the angle of the wall. The glance was brief, no more than a passing curiosity, yet it carried with it a faint, unsettling interest that lingered just long enough to confirm what he had suspected.

When his gaze returned to Cruz, the faintest suggestion of a smile touched his mouth.

Not amusement.

Acknowledgement.

Cruz held his ground without reacting, his expression unreadable in the darkness, and after a moment the man inclined his head slightly as though greeting a stranger across a quiet room. The gesture was almost polite.

Then his hands slid slowly together once, the soft brush of skin against skin barely audible in the narrow space.

The sound travelled further than it should have.

For another moment he regarded the man standing between him and the darkness beyond the wall, his eyes lingering with thoughtful attention as though committing something about the encounter to memory. Then, just as calmly as he had arrived, he stepped back from the mouth of the alley and turned away into the dim spill of light along the pavement.

Cruz listened to the retreating footsteps until they were swallowed again by the distant noise of the road. Only then did he shift slightly where he stood, turning just enough that the tension in his shoulders eased.

Behind him Anysia drew in a shaky breath she had been holding far too long.

“He saw me,” she whispered.

Cruz glanced once towards the street where the man had disappeared, his eyes narrowing slightly as the shape of the encounter settled quietly into place in his mind.

“Yes,” he said.

The word carried no surprise at all.