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Silverbell, because it is second nature, because he does it more easily than he breathes, draws back and releases. The arrow lands squarely in the neck of its target. Of course it does.
Shakily, Silverbell lowers his bow, breaths forced in and out of lungs that feel like they’re not getting enough air no matter how much he heaves. He watches, horrified, as Black Sapphire, who had not even attempted to dodge the attack, staggers and falls to his knees.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. They weren’t supposed to be here at all, really; they’d made plans to leave together—real ones, too, more than the kind of fantasy you make up late into the night, but a strategic exit, a set of stage directions that would lead them swiftly off this set. They’d walk as far as the forests of Beast-Yeast would take them, and they’d settle, away from the prying eyes of the knights who’d told Silverbell to kill the man who’d fooled their kingdom, and away from the eyes of the puppeteer who’d ordered Black Sapphire to fool them in the first place.
The arrow wasn’t supposed to hit.
“If you see him,” They’d said, “Shoot to kill.” The patrol group hadn’t found him the first day, and foolishly, Silverbell had thought that he’d escaped. Better alone than not at all, he’d figured.
The second day had not been so fortunate.
“..Good work.” A firm hand plants itself on Silverbell’s shoulder, and he thinks he might tip over. “We’ll go alert the others of his death, if you’ll carry him to the city.”
Silverbell nods wearily as the two knights who’d come with him leave, and he waits to hear the clattering of silver armor slowly fade into silence. And then he waits a little longer before he drops his bow, because he can’t stomach turning around to make sure they’re gone—can’t stomach the thought of taking his eyes off the shuddering body before him, wheezing and coughing, doubled over and desperately scratching at his neck.
“Hey. Hey, look at me,” Silverbell mumbles, drifting forward and crouching down in front of Black Sapphire, who uses whatever strength he must have left to gaze upwards with bleary eyes. Silverbell drapes him over his shoulders and, agonizingly slow, lifts him onto his feet. Or, he attempts to, though Black Sapphire’s eyes slip shut and he goes limp in Silverbell’s arms before he’s even been brought to his knees.
“It’s going to be okay,” Silverbell whispers. He’s not sure whether he’s talking to Black Sapphire or himself anymore, as he scoops up under the other’s armpit and begins to drag him forward. He urges quietly under his breath for Black Sapphire to stay awake, to walk, to speak, to do
anything
. He assures him that they are not going to the city. Black Sapphire does not respond.
That’s okay. It’s been a long day for both of them.
--
As soon as Black Sapphire is laid down gently in Silverbell’s bed, he sets to work.
The first thing Silverbell does is bandage the wound. Black Sapphire opens his eyes briefly when the arrow is removed, mutters something Silverbell doesn’t catch, and then falls unconscious again. Which, though it worries him, also makes Silverbell extremely grateful, because this must hurt quite a bit, and he doesn’t want Black Sapphire to have to be awake during it. It’s also just messy and gory and not that nice to look at, though Silverbell doesn’t mind the blood that stains his sheets. Obviously he doesn’t.
As the afternoon slips into evening, Silverbell prepares an herbal medicine for Black Sapphire, and tips it into his mouth with a small spoon. It takes a little coaxing, but he swallows it eventually—or, at least, Silverbell assumes he does, though he doesn’t notice any movement in his jaw. His mouth lays open after Silverbell withdraws the spoon, and he gently pushes it closed.
Silverbell spends the evening with him, one hand gently clasped over the clammy palm of the other, while he props a book upright in his lap. He reads the words aloud, voice soft and shaky, and though it’s one he’s read countless times over he still finds himself lost more than once. He stops, sometimes, between chapters, to catch his breath, and to glance over at Black Sapphire, just to make sure he’s still there.
It must be around chapter 10 or 11 when Silverbell notices that Black Sapphire’s eyes have opened, just slightly, lidded gaze staring up at Silverbell fondly. Silverbell jumps when he realizes, dropping the book and scrambling to cup Black Sapphire’s face in his palms.
“Oh! How long have you been awake, love?”
Black Sapphire does not respond. That’s okay. Silverbell doesn’t expect him to.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been boring you with this,” He chuckles, leaning over to pick up the dropped novel, before he rests his hand over Black Sapphire’s again. “The silence was just bothering me. I hope that’s okay.”
Black Sapphire, Silverbell must assume, doesn’t mind the book all that much, even if the plot is admittedly not that gripping. It’s historical fiction, and Black Sapphire’s more of a fan of fantasy, but he’s never minded Silverbell reading aloud before. So he continues, steadier under Black Sapphire’s affectionate regard. He idly runs his thumb over the back of Black Sapphire’s hand, tracing his knuckles and fighting off yawns as he continues to read, counting the minutes as they go by with the help of a clock that hangs solemnly on the wall across the two.
“I think—” After he finishes the 15th chapter, Silverbell closes the book, eyeing the landscape outside the curtained window behind him, pitch dark save for the glow of a few lone stars. His eyelids feel almost too heavy to keep open. “I think I have to go to bed now. I’m sorry I can’t stay with you longer.”
Silverbell turns back to Black Sapphire, who’s still looking at him with that same endeared expression, lips parted and eyes half-open. Silverbell starts to wonder—a bit lightheartedly—if he’s blinked at all in the last few hours. His eyes look all sunken in, undoubtedly restless or anxious or something like what you’d expect after being shot and rendered unable to move all that well, and Silverbell’s gut twists with guilt at the sight of him.
“I don’t mind you sleeping here,” He continues. “I’ll.. be on the couch. I don’t want to bump you in my sleep by accident. If you need anything, call for me. And I’ll come check on you, too. Everything’s going to be alright.”
He presses a chaste peck to Black Sapphire’s forehead, then shelves the novel and retires to his living room, falling unceremoniously over onto the couch. He’s far too drained to notice that he’s still in his uniform as he lays down, ivory garments tinged red with blood that dried hours ago—even if he did notice, he probably wouldn’t have cared. He very desperately wants it to be tomorrow.
And tomorrow comes in the form of somebody banging on Silverbell’s front door.
He wakes suddenly, and realizes it’s become morning. Moonlight filters in through the windows and creates little squares of white across the floor, and normally Silverbell enjoys this routine, but the rapping on his door causes him to jump upwards, grasping at whatever his hands can find—which ends up just being his shirt. His breaths are heavy for a moment, and then he pauses to get his bearings, and stops breathing altogether. Slowly, painstakingly so, Silverbell rises, and begins walking backwards towards his bedroom door, instinctively ghosting over the creakier parts of the floor. His gaze stays trained on the front door until his back hits the wall, and he ducks into his bedroom and shuts the door behind him.
Silverbell’s gaze finds where Black Sapphire sleeps, and he realizes that the other must’ve been woken up by the ruckus as well, because his eyes are open, even if he doesn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” He whispers. “It’ll pass.”
In the meantime, Silverbell trails forwards and retakes his seat next to where Black Sapphire lays dormant. He places a gentle palm on his shoulder (Silverbell would take his hand if the blanket wasn’t pulled up to his chin) and squeezes his eyes shut, as if he can will the people outside away. He hears their conversation faintly—something about how the elder is searching for him, how the traitor’s corpse is missing. They don’t sound accusatory, but they do sound angry, and Silverbell knits his eyebrows together.
It takes a while, but eventually, he hears a comment along the lines of “let's come back later”, and he sighs, hand falling into his lap. “Okay. They’re gone now. I’ll go make breakfast.”
The day is slow after that, which Silverbell is thankful for. He makes a very simple dish of oatmeal for breakfast and once again attempts to feed it to Black Sapphire, whose jaw has gone so stiff it hardly moves.
“Gosh, you must be exhausted,” He remarks sadly, pushing the spoon past Black Sapphire’s teeth.
Silverbell stays sitting next to the bed as he eats his own breakfast, commenting casually on things like the weather and what he’d like to do that day. He tells Black Sapphire about how he wants to finally clean his bathroom, how there’s no clouds out today, how he’s set on finishing the book he was reading by the evening. When he’s done eating, he cleans the two bowls—his almost empty, and Black Sapphire’s almost full—and starts preparing a routine check on Black Sapphire’s wound.
The bandage comes away much bloodier than Silverbell expects, and though some still oozes out, the wound has mostly crusted over. With a small grimace he tries to hide for Black Sapphire’s sake, Silverbell cleans the injury and wraps it with fresh gauze, and then uses the cleaning supplies he already has with him to wipe Black Sapphire’s makeup. Muttering a series of apologies as he fumbles around his face with a washcloth, Silverbell wipes away the black that decorates his lips and eyelids, which is a bit of a pain, because Silverbell has to try
very
hard to hold his eyelids closed and to keep the soap he’s using from getting into Black Sapphire’s mouth.
Washing off his lipstick reveals that Black Sapphire’s lips have gone awfully pale, and with a pained inhale, Silverbell presses the back of his hand to Black Sapphire’s forehead. “Oh! You’re so cold. I’m sorry.. I’ll get you a compress, hold on.”
Silverbell trails in and out of the room after that. He spends the afternoon tidying up, checking on Black Sapphire periodically as he goes. Actually, periodical is a bit weak—it’s more constant. He pops his head in the room about every 5 minutes, just to make sure nothing’s happened. Part of him worries that if he looks away for too long, somebody’s going to break in through the window and snatch Black Sapphire up from under his nose. The other part of him worries that he’s going to bleed out if he’s left alone for too long. Silverbell doesn’t really like either of those outcomes, if he’s being honest.
They speak again during dinner, sort of; Black Sapphire still isn’t talking, so Silverbell just rambles to him and prays he isn’t getting sick of it. He apologizes for forgetting lunch, a habit he’s been scolded on many times before, though he feels worse about it because he’s made it Black Sapphire’s problem now too, and he says he’ll write himself a reminder tomorrow as he crushes bits of fruit into paste before spooning them into Black Sapphire’s mouth. He’s paler than he was before, even though the towel on his forehead has just been wet with warm water, though Silverbell chalks it up to all the blood being redirected to his wound, which he’s sure can’t be a bad thing if it means he’ll heal faster. He’s not a doctor by any means, but he did learn basic medical training when he became a knight, and he feels like he remembers something like this being explained to him once. He recounts this train of thought aloud, and then says that Black Sapphire should be better in no time as long as he keeps taking his medicine. Like he has a choice anyways.
Night comes and goes. In the morning, the first thing Silverbell does is check on Black Sapphire. He couldn’t discern it that well the night before because it was rather dark, but he definitely notices it now, how Black Sapphire almost appears to be turning blue, lilac skin now hued pale and indigo. His first thought is the medicine—sudden changes in diet can affect how someone’s complexion looks, can’t it?—and it’s then that he considers calling a doctor for the first time, but immediately, he shoves the thought aside. It’s far too risky, trying to explain the situation to an outsider, and Silverbell isn’t even sure he could find the words to properly describe what he and Black Sapphire have. He’s not sure if there are any that would do the two of them justice. No doctor, no matter how trustworthy, would not report the two of them to the elder and the other knights, and then they’d be back at square one, right in the jaws of the beast, five breaths away from a death sentence.
Whatever. He’s a competent enough doctor, he thinks, and when Black Sapphire gets better and the two of them run away together they won’t have to worry about other people ever again. Silverbell feeds off the fantasy as he makes breakfast, something to keep his mind from wandering. He imagines tending to their garden while Black Sapphire reads on the porch. Black Sapphire would tip his reading glasses down and look out over the field, and he’d ask if Silverbell needed any help with the garden, to which he’d cheerfully reply that he didn’t, because he’d know that Black Sapphire would rather die than get his clothes dirty. And Black Sapphire would laugh, because he knows what the answer is going to be every time, though he’d still ask anyway, just to be polite.
In the present, Silverbell feeds Black Sapphire small chunks of egg. He’s slowly growing more comfortable giving him solid foods, though Black Sapphire still shows no effort to chew or swallow on his own, just lets his jaw hang loosely, like it’s a door with broken hinges. It’s alright, though, because Silverbell knows he must still be in a lot of pain. His eyes remain open, staring up at Silverbell wordlessly. As much as he found it charming at first, Silverbell starts to wish Black Sapphire would be more obvious about blinking, just once, so he could catch it. He’s beginning to get a little freaked out at the sight of him.
Silverbell passes the rest of the morning reading to Black Sapphire. He’s started a new book for him now, one from the spire that Black Sapphire gave him a few months ago. It confused him a great deal the first time he read it, and it’s no different now, rereading it aloud for the patient in his bed, though he tries his best, because he wants Black Sapphire to have some sense of familiarity while he’s bedridden. The words keep shifting as he’s reading them, though, so he makes slow progress.
While he’s making lunch, Silverbell hears more pounding on his door. He manages to steal a glance out the window this time, and vaguely sees a short girl with green pigtails banging with both her fists, yelling something incoherent into the wood. Silverbell doesn’t stay in the kitchen for long enough to discern what it is she’s saying, though he’s fairly certain he recognizes her. He’s also pretty sure she knows Black Sapphire—his faerie disguise, that is—and he begins to wonder if, somehow, she’s figured out that he’s being hidden there.
The thought is something he knows, rationally, cannot be possible. He was careful, far too careful, for it to be possible. He knows this. He’s sure of it. But he still staggers his way into his bedroom and locks the door behind him, almost falling across the floor as he runs to yank the curtains shut. And then he sinks to the ground, back sliding against the wall, and covers his ears. He runs over everything in his mind, replays the arrow, and then the journey back to his home, and then the visit by the knights, and then he tries to go over all the other things, but they blend together. He looks up at Black Sapphire. Black Sapphire’s hollow eyes stare back at him.
The girl is more persistent than the knights were, but she, too, eventually leaves. Even so, Silverbell stays balled up on the floor for a while, arms curled around his knees. If only Black Sapphire would get better faster, he thinks. But, no, it isn’t his fault, so instead he starts to wish that none of this had ever happened. Or, maybe, that he’d shot the knights who’d come with him instead. There’d still be blood on his hands, yes, but then Black Sapphire wouldn’t be desperately clinging to a small sliver of life in the bed beside him, so he can’t bring himself to feel bad about it. He wishes that they’d left sooner, but, still, that isn’t Black Sapphire’s fault, so he just thinks that everything would be so much better if they were two other people who didn’t need to pretend for everybody else. How nice it’d be, if Black Sapphire were a faerie. Or if Silverbell were a minion for that wretched playwright, even that would be better than this.
“I don’t think I’m going to finish lunch today,” Silverbell mumbles. “I’m sorry.”
He gets up around 6 pm that night and awkwardly trails into the kitchen, tripping over himself like he’s never walked before. Two sandwiches sit unfinished on the counter, and he hesitantly tops them with bread before cutting one of them into tiny, bite sized squares. He’s noticing that the dishes are starting to pile up in the sink, though he feels that, even though he’s had all the time in the world these past two days, he hasn’t had a chance to take care of them.
After he feeds Black Sapphire dinner, Silverbell lays down on the couch in the living room and stares up at the ceiling. He feels utterly fatigued, even though he hasn’t done much of anything today, so to remedy that, he continues to not do much of anything, only in a different room. He tries very, very hard to sleep, but he keeps getting startled awake. It’s a mix of things—sometimes, he suddenly feels like he’s falling; sometimes he hears more knocking, only to realize nobody’s there. Sometimes his eyes just flit open and he can’t do anything about it.
It’s quite suffocating in here, Silverbell thinks. The clutter in his house has never bothered him before now, but tonight, he feels as though the walls are slowly closing in. And there’s an awful smell he can’t place the origin of, so he begrudgingly accepts that he isn’t getting much sleep tonight, and stands up. He finds his way to the closet that sits nestled between his bedroom and bathroom and pulls out an old box from when he first moved in that he never threw away for some odd reason, and starts to pack up some of the things in his living room. If he and Black Sapphire are to leave as soon as possible, he’d better get a head start.
He starts with random trinkets he’s collected over the years, birthday gifts from colleagues and impulse purchases and things he doesn’t remember ever actually acquiring, just always having. And then he begins to put away extra cutlery and dishes that he’s not exactly sure why he has. He wants to throw this box away when he’s done, wants to rid himself of all this memorabilia, and by extension, things he doesn’t need, just to make their escape more efficient. He stops a few times, while he’s putting away a particularly sentimental item, because, truly, Silverbell doesn’t hate the faerie kingdom, or the knights, or anybody who’s ever been wary of him and Black Sapphire, because he can’t blame them. He also simply doesn’t have the function in his brain to hate them, but they’ve made it him or them, so he shoves picture frames and heirlooms into the box and wonders if it’d be more effective to burn it or to toss it into a river.
He guesses it’s around 1 in the morning when he moves on to his bedroom. The box he’d used filled up long ago, so he starts by dragging an empty bag behind him, something that usually carries dirty clothes outside to be washed. The smell he’s been trying to ignore hits him like slamming into a wall as soon as he opens his bedroom door, and his first thought is that something’s wrong with Black Sapphire. The bag slips from his hand as he approaches the bed, murmuring a quick apology before he switches the light on.
Something is wrong with Black Sapphire.
Silverbell doesn’t fully know what it is. There’s an assemblage of new blisters that have sprouted on his face, and he traces them with his eyes as they trail down his neck and disappear under the blanket. He’s paler than he was before, now a weird shade of grey-blue, and it looks as though he’s drooling. It clocks that, in the three days Black Sapphire’s been staying there, Silverbell hasn’t raised him from the bed at all. It’d simply slipped his mind that he perhaps needed to be bathed and given a change of clothes. So, he removes the blanket.
He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it most certainly isn’t what he sees.
Even though he’s still clothed, Silverbell can tell that Black Sapphire’s body does not look the way people ought to. He’s swelled up grotesquely in some places, and completely sunken in in others, and what Silverbell can see of his hands, arms, and legs, is unrecognizably discolored and covered in similar blisters as his face and neck. His skin is waxy, and he somehow looks simultaneously rigid and loose, like a poorly strung ball-jointed doll that’s about to fall apart. Silverbell hates that his first reaction is to clasp both of his hands over his mouth, to keep the bile that rises in his throat from escaping, but he can’t help it.
His head reels as he tries to think of what could’ve gone wrong. He did everything he was supposed to, didn’t he? He was good. He gave Black Sapphire the right medicine, bandaged up his wound, made sure he had enough food and water. Even if Silverbell had accidentally been a little negligent here and there—and who wouldn’t be, in his shoes?—there was no possible way Black Sapphire could be dead. Black Sapphire would not die from one arrow. He wouldn’t do that to him, he wouldn’t give up so easily, certainly not. Silverbell shakes his head at the thought.
“You..” Silverbell sighs, letting his hands fall. He’s calmed himself by now. Black Sapphire cannot be dead. “..could use a bath, okay? I’ll clean you off, get you some fresh clothes, wash the sheets.. I can fix this.”
He’s talking more to himself at this point, but he doesn’t really care. Shakily, Silverbell leans down and gently plants a kiss on Black Sapphire’s pale, chapped lips. They’re unnaturally cold, unfamiliar, not the way Silverbell knows. But he doesn’t pull away, just kisses him deeper, hands on the bed balled into fists as he searches, desperately, for a hint of warmth, for any sign that he’s doing something right.
Black Sapphire does not respond.