This was inspired by a prompt by awfulaus on tumblr, so credit for the idea goes to them. I found a bunch of theirs that inspired me, so I'll probably write more oneshots in the future.
Disclaimer: I don't own Throne of Glass.
If that infernal pounding didn't stop soon, Rowan thought, he was going to march up there himself and strangle the offender.
The first time it came, a steady constant throb like a too-persistent headache that made the lampshade tremble and caused the doors to shudder on their hinges, Rowan was in a relatively good mood. Lyria had just phoned him and said, in between excited squeals, that she'd arranged to come and see him, a rare feat, considering her job as a botanist who specialised in preserving near-extinct species of flower took her all over the world on a regular basis. But she'd managed to squeeze in time for a quick flight to their hometown to visit him for a few days, and he hadn't been able to stop grinning at everyone since she'd told him.
It grated on people's nerves, he knew, even as they grinned back. Well, it wasn't really the smile that grated on their nerves, but rather the fact that they didn't know what he was smiling about. He knew that he came off as sullen to the wider world, but come on. Did they think he was that much of a wet blanket?
Apparently yes, as the dark-haired woman who lived in the second of the two flats on the floor above his gave him a curious look as he passed her on the stairs, her green eyes narrowing in a picture of cunning that uncannily and eerily reminded Rowan of a ghost leopard. He shook it off.
The residents of the first flat - the ones at fault for the irritating noise - were the only ones who looked happier than he did, though the blonde woman with the striking turquoise-and-gold eyes did raise an eyebrow as they bounded past him. They were a young couple, as far as Rowan knew, who'd only moved in a few days before. That was all he knew about them; he didn't even know their names, though, admittedly, he didn't know most of the people who lived in his block of flats. He once heard the man murmur, "Celaena," to his girlfriend, with enough adoration in his voice to make Rowan feel like he'd intruded on a special moment, so he presumed that was her name, but as far as he could remember, that wasn't the name the flat was registered under.
Even so, these amiable circumstances were undoubtably the reasons that when the pounding from the flat above his first began, he didn't mind it all that much. He was feeling kind, so he let the couple have their moment to dance together, or whatever the hell they were doing to make such a racket.
The second time it happened was the next day. It was seven in the evening, and Rowan had just sat down to read a book when it started up, a rhythmic thumping that wound its way through it skull and struck a bell in his head, sending the reverberations everywhere. His good mood had begun to slip a little, but when he looked at the photo of Lyria on the table in the centre of the room, and remembered she would be coming within the week, he calmed again.
This was the thought that supported him for the next five days, even as all that good humour he was using up began to drain away. The couple started dancing at exactly seven pm every night, and would stop at seven thirty. Then he wouldn't hear a peep out of them until the following day.
When the day came that Lyria was meant to be arriving, he drove to the airport to pick her up, her favourite flowers clutched in his fist. He frantically searched for her amongst the crowd, but he never found her. He kept a close watch on his phone, jumping out of his skin every time a ringtone sounded around him, even when it was a stranger's phone, a stranger's who answered.
Her plane was due to land at nine am. By four in the afternoon, he was so worried he could hardly think straight.
Lyria wouldn't have been this late and forgotten to call him, or text, or alert him in some way. She was far too kind hearted and thoughtful for that. So where was she? Had she gotten lost? Had Rowan gotten the date wrong?
No, he confirmed as he scrolled back up the text conversation that had clarified when and where he'd meet her. He was on time, on the right day, at the right airport. So where was she? Had the plane encountered some sort of turbulence?
He phoned her mobile for what felt like the billionth time, even though he knew, logically, that if she was on the plane it would be turned on aeroplane mode. But he had to try.
It went to voicemail. He tried it again. Voicemail.
His throat was dryer than a desert as he went to hit the call button again because what he was thinking might've happened wasn't true it couldn't be-
His phone started to ring, and his heart leapt into his throat like a frog trying to escape. He shoved the device against his ear. "Lyria?"
"I'm afraid not, Rowan," sad the cool, collected tones of his aunt Maeve.
Maeve was his aunt in the loosest sense, with several generations between them since the original siblings that bound their bloodlines, but she was, as far as he knew, his only living relative other than his cousin Enda, who he'd grown up with. She was also the woman who'd been the guardian of Lyria since her parents had died of a swift and fatal attack of illness, and her mistreatment of her ward thereafter was one of the many reasons for Rowan's distaste for her.
But if anyone knew what had happened to his girlfriend, it was her.
"Where's Lyria? What happened to her?"
"Her plane crashed, Rowan," came the curt, unfeeling reply, and Rowan's world ground to a halt. "There've been no reported survivors."
No.
No.
No.
LyriaLyriaLyriaLyriaLyria-
"What?" He managed to choke out. But she'd already hung up.
He absently took the phone down from his ear and shoved it into his pocket. He looked down at his hand; he'd crushed the flowers in his death grip. They were nothing more than a collection of stems and crumpled petals.
Rowan unfurled his hand and let them drop to the ground.
That was when the first sob hit.
He was never entirely sure how he got home in that frenzied state. He was lost in the worst possible way, even as his limbs worked on autopilot. walking to the car park, paying the exorbitant parking fee, and driving home. He'd made it into the flat before he collapsed on the sofa and just nestled himself amongst the blankets and pillows already thrown there.
That evening, when the pounding started, he had to contain his snarl. He burrowed deeper into his cocoon, and clutched his head, but as always the beat managed to strike into the soft parts of his brain that still ached, and thoroughly rattle him from the inside out.
It was only that remaining sliver of the kindness Lyria had taught him that had kept him from marching up there, taking their dancing shoes, and shoving them down their gods-damned throats.
That was yesterday.
Today he was too empty to consider moving, let alone yelling at anyone.
And so the days passed.
He wasn't sure when the day came that he noticed that the pounding had stopped, but one day he glanced at the clock and saw, to his surprise, that it was ten past seven, and no sounds emanated from the floor above. He merely grunted at this observation, and swiftly moved on.
But the silence stretched on.
A foreboding itch scratched the back of Rowan's mind. As annoying as it was, the beat had become almost soothing to him in his brooding solitude, and he missed it. And there was that nagging, unshakeable feeling in his gut that something was wrong.
He didn't realise what he'd decided to do before he'd secured the latch on the door and was letting it fall shut behind him.
Rowan's footsteps echoed loudly on the stairs as he wondered what the hell he was doing.
If the first sign that something was wrong was the eerie silence of the past few days, the second sign was a little more obvious. A large, broad shouldered man who had to be about Rowan's age sat against the wall just next to the door to the young couple's flat. He slouched against it, his head lolling back, and it was a moment before Rowan realised that he was asleep.
The third sign was the ghost leopard girl who lived in the flat opposite. She opened her door briefly to eye the snoring man, and when she caught Rowan's eye, she nodded her head at the door like it was perfectly natural for him to be there. "If you knock, she won't answer. The door's open; just head in. See if you can get through to her." He cast a questioning glance at the man on the floor, and she said quickly, "He's her cousin," as though that explained everything.
Nevertheless, Rowan heeded her words and gently pushed the door open, careful not the wake the blond man. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, before he stiffened at what he found.
The main room was a tip. The sofas had their cushions ripped apart, with stuffing littered haphazardly all over the carpet. Furniture was overturned and in some cases broken, with a varnished table leg lying next to its overturned table. Books and magazines and DVDs had been thrown around, and broken glass crunched under his boot as Rowan took a step in.
But the most haunting sight was the tearful woman - who looked more like a girl in this light - leaning over a piano, though no notes came from it. It was the woman with the odd turquoise eyes.
He instantly saw what the brunette had meant when she said that she and the man outside were cousins. Looking at her now, there were many undeniable similarities between them - the precise shade of their hair, the slope of their brows, the jut of their chins. Rowan wondered if her cousin had the same peculiar eyes as her.
A phone rang and Rowan jumped, but the woman - Celaena? - just looked at it with dead eyes and let it ring. He made out the name Dorian flash across the screen before whoever was calling gave up.
Finally, she spoke. "If you're here to apologise again, Aedion, you can- Oh." She turned and saw Rowan standing there. Her mouth slanted into a viciously bitter smile. "Buzzard." A blink was all the surprise he showed at her choice of nickname. "Have you come to apologise, too?"
"What would I be sorry about?"
She barked a harsh laugh. "I don't know. But the whole damn world feels the need to apologise anyway." She turned back to the piano, and her hands hovered above the ivory keys, though they didn't quite touch them. She shot her next barb over her shoulder. "What are you doing here?"
He didn't know. He honestly didn't know. "You're Celaena, right?"
"Don't call me that." He flinched involuntarily. "Only Sam called me that."
Called.
Oh.
Rowan said carefully, "How did he die?"
She replied with, "How did your girlfriend die?"
The words hit him like a punch to the gut. His confusion must have showed in his face, because she laughed, and there was nothing happy in it. "Oh come on, it's not that hard to figure out. You were positively beaming a few weeks ago, and smiling in anticipation every time you got a text. And there was that time I heard you call her 'Lyria', so I assumed they were a girl. But correct me if I'm wrong."
"No." His voice was very, very distant. "You're not wrong." At her expectant look, he said shortly, "Plane crash."
"Gun shot," she replied. "I'm still not sure what happened. He was walking to the studio and when I caught up to him, he was already dead. They dug the bullet out of his chest in the hospital."
That she could talk about this at all, that she spoke about it with such casualness to her voice, seemed almost blasphemous. But then he closed observed her posture, the face, and her tone. No, that wasn't casualness; that was a deadness that one felt to their very core. A numbness that completely cut you off from the world, and all the creatures in it.
She said quietly, venomously, "I don't know who did it. Which is probably a good thing. Because if I did, I would hunt them down and rip out their rutting throats."
He observed the flowers strewn across the top of the piano, the smashed vase. They were daffodils, the trumpets smashed into a flat yellow mush. His voice was hoarse as he said, "Sometimes I still hear her voice in my head, telling me to be kinder, or less of an arsehole."
A beat of silence, then-
"Sometimes I want to dance. Like we used to dance, regardless of whether we're at the studio or on stage or even in the middle of the flat. I want to dance with him. Or I want to play the piece of music he used to love so much and I'll sit down at this gods-damned piano but then my fingers touch the keys and I remember. He's dead. Sam is dead. Dead and gone. He's not coming back. He'll never dance with me again, or teach those children all so eager to learn how he moves the way he does, like the world's not there and he's dancing for you and you alone. We'll never get to grow old together, and he'll never get to give me the engagement ring I found in his coat pocket the week before he died."
Rowan wasn't sure how to respond to her soliloquy; there were so many things he could have said to ease the pain, even a tiny bit, but there were also so many things he could say to make it worse. So he said instead, "I'm not sure I caught your name."
She smiled then, a weak, watery smile, but a smile all the same. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "It's Aelin."
"Rowan," he responded, and slid onto the bench beside her.
Heartbreak is everywhere, Rowan thought, reflecting back at you in every possible shape and form. In the crushed petals of a flower, in the vicious remark of a golden haired girl, in the rhythmic pounding that had set his nerves alight for the last months - or lack thereof. And it never really goes away.
Her full name was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, she told him, and her cousin sleeping outside the door was Aedion, who'd been trying to get through to her for the past two days before he passed out, exhausted by his efforts. The ghost leopard woman across the hall was Lysandra, Aedion's girlfriend, and one of Aelin's closest friends. Others who'd tried to get through to her included friends - "well," Aelin grumbled, "I wouldn't necessarily say friends" Elide, Dorian and Chaol - the latter of whom phoned her whilst they were talking, and she just hung up immediately.
Aelin was a dancer, and had met Sam aged fifteen at one of the shows she'd performed in. Their initial rivalry had fizzled into camaraderie, then friendship, then love, until they were young adults, and had moved in with each other. They'd been looking into setting up their own studio where they could teach young children, which was where Sam had been headed on the night he'd been killed.
There came a time where Rowan accidentally jostled Aelin's elbow and she slipped, her fingers landing on the keys with a less than melodic thunk. She sucked in a breath, eyes pressing tightly shut, even as her fingers settled into position as if they'd done it a hundred times before. For all he knew, they had.
She tentatively opened her eyes, and her fingers still rested there. She pressed down, and flinched at the note.
Aelin played a series of low notes, flexing her hands periodically, before she slumped back, and they fell in her lap.
"My friend, Dorian," she said tightly, then cleared her throat. Her eyes were bright. "He lost his girlfriend Sorscha last year. Perhaps he could. . ."
Rowan said gently, "If that's what you think is best."
She slowly took her phone in hand, and looked down at it like she hadn't realised she'd done it. She robotically typed in a password and then she was scrolling through her contacts until she found one titled His Highness, The Puppy Lover. Her thumb hovered over it for a second, before she pressed the call button.
The sharpness of the ringing cut through the tranquil atmosphere. Dorian answered with surprising speed, and his tone was panicked and breathless as he said, "Hello? Aelin?"
"Hi."
"How are you? You keep ignoring all our calls, Nehemia's absolutely out of her mind sick with worry-" Aelin flinched at the mention of the name, and Rowan briefly wondered who she was to her. There was a silence, then, "Aelin?"
Aelin swallowed, but that lump in her throat was very much audible as she asked him, "Does it ever stop hurting so much?"
A brief silence, and Rowan could practically hear the internal battle her friend was having with himself. But the sorrow in his voice was very real as he said, "I think you have to work that out for yourself."
I have ideas on how to continue this, if anyone's interested, but for now I'll leave it as a oneshot.
What did you think? Review?
