#ahhhhhhhhhh i wrote this super quick before i board my plane

[llondonfog]

⚔ living weapon verse ⚔ | a friend and i have been tossing around an au where silver is a literal "living weapon"— he's been transformed into a sword due to being cursed by maleficent and forced to serve the many fae generals throughout the centuries who wield him. eventually, time finds him in the hands of the most recent general of the right, a certain lilia vanrouge :) there's so much more to this au and i hope that i can express more of it through upcoming drabbles. but in the meantime please enjoy this snippet below! <3

The water in the basin almost instantaneously rusts into an ugly, mottled brown, the kind of stinking, brackish water that Silver has only seen in the most polluted of swamps. It makes sense, he supposes, twitching his fingers idly beneath the surface to watch the resulting eddies with a glazed stare— he is a tool of and for destruction. There is nothing that remains sacred and innocent for something like him, not even the bathwater warm like a hearth against his phantom, aching bones. 

A clawed hand takes his chin and grips it firmly, the pressure a welcome distraction from the encroaching abyss sinking its poisonous tendrils into his mind. He allows it to guide him, unable to resist even if he wished, and it tilts his head up until his dulled gaze meets blazing crimson, the sight stirring a long-dead emotion in his still and silent heart. “Focus,” the general murmurs, and the order is a kindness, a mercy he knows he does not deserve. “Eyes on me.”

These simple, straightforward commands are part of their ritual, and Silver clings to them like the last anchor in a tempest-tossed sea. His handler’s hold on his chin lingers a moment longer, the fae eyeing him impassively to ensure his compliance as if it were possible for Silver to disobey, before removing itself to reach for the damp rag draped along the basin’s side. Silver mourns its loss like a child yearning for a comfort toy, but his features do not betray his thoughts. They do not betray much of anything at all, the need to emote drilled out of him from centuries of cruelty and callous objectification. After all, what does a sword need a smile for, what use is a blade that weeps?

Instead, he centers himself along the pain, one of the only constants he’s come to know as intimately as any true love. His handler is quick, another one of those unnecessary mercies, but thorough— the rag glides along his bruised and blood-stained skin, sweeping away the gory evidence of mere hours ago. Idly, Silver wonders if it would truly be so easy to wipe away the memories. To cleanse what is so ingrained within him: the dying wails of his own kind, the wet heat as he slices through their flesh and beating veins, the fear wide and white in their eyes. 

“Silver.”

His head snaps up, a dull burn of shame creeping beneath his skin as the fear of disappointing the fae, a compelling need sewn viciously into the very nature of his being as part of Maleficent's curse, floods his mind.

The general has paused in his ministrations, for how long Silver does not know, and instead is crouched by the basin’s side with an inscrutable expression on those delicate features. Without a word, he reaches out, and Silver’s eyes all but close as a passive tranquility spreads like treacle through his trembling limbs at the touch of those warm fingertips against the curse mark branded along the back of his neck. His handler need not look to find the recent addition of the bat flitting above the floral-wreathed sword emblazoned on Silver’s skin, and he feels the tips of those claws press lightly against it— he’s never heard of a curse mark changing over time, and he cannot forget the strange flash of possessiveness that flickered through the general’s eyes at the sight before being smoothly buried under his usual narrowed gaze. 

He cannot forget the odd churning of his heart when he first caught sight of it in the broken mirror hanging in the general’s tent. 

“Silver,” the general repeats, and Silver flushes at having drifted off once again. But instead, the fae brushes his thumb over the length of the curse mark, from the nape of his neck to the top of his spine, and stares at him like he’s something deserving of tenderness. 

“You did well today, boy. Rest now,” his handler’s hand shifts forward to cover his eyes, the darkness beneath his palm warm and inviting and nothing like the cold and miserable nothingness that Silver returns to when he’s outperformed his usefulness. Another kindness, for swords do not sleep, or eat, or drink— his body, what little humanity it has retained, no longer is tethered to such mortal requirements. But his general has given him an order, and a good weapon obeys the will of its handler. 

Silver sleeps— swords do not dream, but what else could it be, when he feels the ghost of lips brushing against his forehead?