#and then it took a sharp left turn and is languishing in my wip folder

[llondonfog]

also made myself sick turning around and around the idea of lilia & silver making the journey to wild rose castle after the events of ch7

the sight it must be— the imposing veil of vines draped like an ironclad curtain over the silent castle walls; the way they yield for silver like a beloved pet upon his approach, curling away from their prince's touch lest he prick his fingers upon their thorns

how silver might hesitate at the gate, staring out at the path his mother must have walked to greet her returning knight; the same grim path his father took to leave behind his family for the last time, a path that held the footsteps of fleeing innocents and rabid conquerors. (lilia squeezes his hand without a word— the castle yearns for its prince, after all.)

the thought of the two of them picking their way through the tomb-like halls; lilia remembering a time when fae voices rang loud and clear, silver staring at the very walls themselves as if to wring from them forgotten memories. there are portraits lining their steps, faded and dim in the cool shade— they depict both nobility and scenery of great battles long past, and silver half fears the golden strokes caught in their paint. if he stares at them for too long, he wonders if they might absorb him entirely, a creature of the past left to linger on this earth far beyond his time.

i just want them to discover silver's cradle still standing where lilia left it all those years ago, with the very blanket silver's mother tucked around him still folded inside. for silver to brush a hand over the thrones where his mother and father might have once sat, for lilia to watch his son with stolen breath and glimpse a mirage— the phantom of meleanor in all her glory upon the dais, a glimmer of a crown upon silver's head. things that once were, ought to have been, and will never be.

and it kills me to think about how heartbreakingly tender it would be for them to both discover silver's nursery. the rooms where the knight and leia had so joyously decorated in preparation for their newborn son, their baby prince, the light of their life. the stuffed toys, now slumped and worn by time; the once colorful paint and plush bedding faded and moth-eaten. for lilia to pick up a carving knife and a half-finished wooden block, and be struck (for the hundredth, thousandth time) with the tragedy of war. of a man who would never be a father, of a family that would never realize peace.

i just want them to both sit in that room, surrounded by the eternal, aching love of silver's parents, and have that long, painful conversation about lilia's past and their present— unknowingly watched by the ghosts of a woman who creeps close to hold her child the only way that she can, and a man who lays a hand upon his once-enemy's shoulder, finding forgiveness at last after four hundred years.