Quaternion rotation not behaving as intended

I am fairly new to Quaternions, and I seem to have run into an issue. The following script is attached to my player and the weapon GameObject is a child of the player. The motion is correct, however, the weapon object always points in 1 direction and does not follow the player's direction. How can I fix this issue? From what I can tell, my issue is in my if/else of the motion. Should I not use Lerp and something else?

 public class SwordMelee : MonoBehaviour {
 
     public float rotationAngle = 90;
     public float startingPosition = 0;
     public float smooth = 5;
     public GameObject weapon;
 
     private bool swing = false;
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start () {
 
     }
     
     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update () {
         swing = false;
 
         float animation = Input.GetAxis("Vertical") * rotationAngle;
         float normal = Input.GetAxis("Vertical") * startingPosition;
         Quaternion target = Quaternion.Euler(0, -animation, 0);
         Quaternion atRest = Quaternion.Euler(0, normal, 0);
 
         if (Input.GetButton("Fire1"))
         {
             swing = true; 
         }
 
         if (swing == true)
         {
             weapon.SetActive(true);
             weapon.transform.rotation = Quaternion.Lerp(weapon.transform.rotation, target, Time.deltaTime * smooth);
             
         }
         else
         {
             weapon.SetActive(false);
             weapon.transform.rotation = Quaternion.Lerp(weapon.transform.rotation, atRest, Time.deltaTime * smooth);
             
         }
     }
 }