Chapter Text
“It’s breathtaking!” she gasped as she swiveled her head around her. Ice dripped off every tree branch as if the forest canopy was a gigantic diamond chandelier, swaying and creaking slightly in the crisp breeze. The snow that Belle and he had played in had been melting over the last couple days, but the temperature had fallen sharply again overnight, leaving the forest frozen in glittering jewels of ice.
“It really is beautiful,” Beast said, looking up too. He’d never cared much about nature before, but Belle’s enthusiasm for it had opened up his eyes to how beautiful and interesting it could be.
It wasn’t just nature that she’d taught him to enjoy. Reading was finally pleasurable again, as it had been when he was a young boy, before it became a chore his tutors were forcing on him during his selfish, idle adolescence. He and Belle spent hours nearly every day reading and discussing their reading with each other. Excitedly praising passages that moved both of them, debating passages that intrigued both of them, and yes, sometimes arguing over passages that they thought differently on. But even arguing with Belle was a pleasure.
Belle had awoken both his mind along with his heart. After the curse, his world had shrunk down to the cold confines of the castle’s stone walls. But Belle had expanded his world to include places all over the globe and beyond, into even the realms of fantasy. She’d opened his eyes to more than his illustrious tutors ever had, because he could see the world now through her eyes, eyes that saw everything as fascinating and beautiful, even in its flaws.
He turned his head to look down at her. She was close by his side, her arm linked with his as they slowly wandered through the forest. She noticed him looking, and tilted her face towards his, giving him a curious smile.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“Uh, are you warm enough?”
“Perfectly.” She pressed herself closer to his side. “You’re basically my own personal traveling furnace. I can honestly feel the heat pouring off of you.”
He chuckled. “I’ve always run hot. Even before—” He cut himself off, and his face fell.
“Before what?”
“Just…before now,” he mumbled.
She narrowed her eyes at him slightly. He knew she didn’t buy that answer, and waited for her to press him to say more, but thankfully she seemed willing to let this secret go, for now.
“Well…you’re lucky to have your own built-in coat to keep you warm in weather like this. I’m looking forward to seeing how you deal with the summer heat in all that fur, though.”
His heart throbbed at that. On one hand, he loved that she assumed she would still be with him next summer, and could speak about it as though that was a good thing, or at least not a dreadful punishment. But if he was still covered in this fur next summer, it would mean that he had failed and that she did not love him.
Because he knew the rose did not have that much time left. He did not have until summer. If she didn’t fall in love with him in the next few days, he would be stuck as this ugly beast forever, and all his servants, everyone who depended on him, would be stuck as objects forever.
Lumière, Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts were preparing a beautiful dinner for the two of them in the ballroom tomorrow night, as a last-ditch effort to woo her and break the curse. The idea was that he would lay on the charm and romance, and then finally confess his love, and hope she would say the same back to him. But just thinking about it now made his stomach twist in knots. Would she say it back? She seemed to enjoy his company now, even care about him in some way, but it was still hard to believe she could love someone like him.
“What’s wrong?” Belle asked, peering up at him with friendly concern in her eyes. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to tease you about your fur. I’m quite fond of it, really.” She reached up to tug his beard, and he couldn’t help but smile. She was so kind and so good at calming him.
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Alright, so then how do you deal with the summer heat in that coat of yours?”
“It’s not as bad as you would guess. My fur thins out a bit when it warms up. But when it gets really hot, I try to dunk myself in water as often as possible.”
Belle grinned. “That sounds fun. Will you take me swimming once it’s warm enough?”
His stomach twisted again. “If you like.”
“Where do you do it?”
“There’s a pond close to the castle. I can show it to you now, actually. I think it’s best we head in that direction anyway.” The wind was picking up, and although Belle wasn’t complaining about the cold, he could see how red her nose and cheeks were.
“I’ve always enjoyed swimming,” Belle said as they walked, still arm in arm. “Well, ever since I learned. We lived in the city when I was little, so I didn’t learn how to swim until after we moved to the countryside. There was a pond not too far from my house where all the children played when it was hot. The first time I went, I thought that swimming looked awfully fun, and not difficult at all, so I jumped right in.”
Beast was not at all surprised to learn that she’d acted so eagerly and impulsively. He smiled. “How did that go for you?”
Belle laughed. “I went down like a stone! A boy had to pull me out, I was sputtering and crying, oh it was awful! But as soon as I calmed down, I was ready to try it again.”
“Of course you were.” He loved how confident she was, how she never backed away from a problem.
“But I had learned my lesson enough that I didn’t just jump right back in. I asked the boy who pulled me out to teach me how to swim properly. His name was Adrien. We had a lot of fun that summer.” She got a far-off look in her eyes that Beast couldn’t read.
She often told Beast about her life before the castle, but rarely mentioned any people in her stories. He had never been sure if that was because there were so few people in her life to talk about, or if talking about her absent friends was too painful for her. The former made Beast feel sad, and the latter made him feel guilty, so he never asked her about the people in her life, but he now felt desperate to know more about this Adrien fellow and how close he had been to Belle. What if he had been courting her before she left the village?
“This…Adrien is a good friend of yours, or…?”
She tilted her head thoughtfully. “I suppose he was for a little while. Swimming was about the only thing we had in common, though, and the more I tried to talk to him about books, the less interested he seemed to be in me. So our friendship didn’t last long past the summer.” She paused for a moment. “He was the first boy I kissed, though, so that will always make him special.”
Beast raised his eyebrows. “Only boy I kissed, I should say,” she quickly amended. “It was in the pond. We were splashing each other, pushing each other under the water, that sort of silliness. And then his head came up out of the water, the sunlight was sparkling on his wet hair, and he just looked so pretty all of a sudden, so I kissed him.”
“What did he think about that?”
“I’d say he liked it, since he gave me another kiss back as soon as I pulled away.”
“And what did you think about it?”
She gave him a bashful smile. “I enjoyed kissing him quite a bit. We did it several more times. It felt nice, and of course I thought it was terribly romantic, like something from my books. But then, like I said, he lost interest in me.”
His tail flicked at the air like a whip. The idea of anyone losing interest in Belle made him so irritated he couldn’t hold his tongue. “This boy sounds like a fool—not wanting to talk about books with you, giving up the chance to kiss you—” He clamped his jaw shut. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Belle was looking up at him, but he couldn’t bear to turn his head to look at her directly.
A sharp gust of cold wind swept at them, making Belle duck her head and turn in towards Beast, partially hiding her face against his chest. He reached his arm around her instinctively. When the gust passed and she lifted her head, she didn’t pull away from him, just gazed straight up at his face.
“Have you ever kissed anyone, Beast?” she asked quietly.
He swallowed. This was dangerously close to talking about his past.
“Yes,” he said finally.
The fact that her eyes didn’t register a bit of surprise at that answer made him love her even more. Only Belle was good enough to be unfazed by the idea that someone would overlook his form and kiss an ugly creature like him. Of course, all his experiences with kissing had been before he was a beast, but he didn’t need to tell her that.
“And what did you think about it?” she asked, speaking barely loud enough to be heard over the wind.
“I enjoyed it as well.”
For a moment, time seemed to freeze like the world around them, Belle’s face looking up at him, a bright spot of warm color surrounded by the hazy white and gray and brown of the forest behind her. Her eyes were soft and glowing, her rosy lips gently parted, and he’d never wished more fervently than at that moment that he had normal lips of his own that he could fit against hers. A choice hung frozen in the air between them, the choice to accept her apparent invitation and lean down and figure out how to kiss her, this beast’s mouth be damned, or to wait and hope that she could love him enough to break the curse and make him human again, when he could kiss her properly, like she deserved.
But before he could make that choice, a frigid blast of wind cut at their faces, carrying icy, sharp snow with it this time. Belle ducked her head again, and Beast tipped his upward, looking at the sky and sniffing the air.
“A storm is blowing in. The pond will have to wait. Let’s get back.”
Belle pulled the hood of her cloak up and clutched it at the neck to keep it from blowing back off as they walked through the mounting wind. “I can’t wait to see Mrs. Potts as soon as we get back inside. I’m asking her for some more of that wonderful hot chocolate you drink.” She flashed him a smile, and he marveled at how she could still be cheerful and optimistic when a winter storm was biting and battering them.
Another gust hit them head-on, and Beast gritted his teeth and blinked against the snow starting to cling to the fur around his eyes. The frozen tree branches groaned overhead. They both whipped their heads to the side at a sharp crack and watched a broken tree branch crash to the ground.
Beast wrapped his arm around Belle’s shoulders and tried to push them ahead faster. But the ground was uneven, covered in branches and patches of ice that made them stumble. A thorn bush clawed at Belle’s skirt and tugged her back, out of Beast’s arm. She bent to free her skirt while Beast stepped back to shake the gathering snow off himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and scraped his paws over them, trying to clear the ice in his fur that was making it hard to see.
There was another sharp crack overhead, then Belle screaming “Look out!” as his eyes flew open to see a tree branch flying straight at him, and then a flurry of color flashed in front of it. Before his mind could even process what he was seeing, something rammed against his chest and he fell backward, striking his head on the ground and knocking the wind from his lungs in a burning whoosh. He lay still for a moment, eyes shut against the sickening spinning of his head and mouth hanging open to gasp for air that wasn’t there. And then, finally, it was like his lungs opened back up, and he sucked in a great, ragged breath.
He tried to sit up, but something heavy was lying on top of him. He opened his eyes, his vision spinning for a moment as he brought his arms up to feel. Belle was sprawled on top of him, completely still, and a tree branch was lying on top of her.
He held onto her and tilted his body to shift her off to the side and slide out from under her, laying her gently onto the ground. He felt a rush of relief to see that her eyes were open and looking up at him. He shoved at the tree branch still lying on her, but it stayed where it was, and with horror he saw that it was attached to her body, protruding from her chest under her right breast. Blood was seeping out, looking black against the fabric of her dress and bright red anywhere it touched snow.
“Are, are you alright?” she asked him, her weak voice barely discernible over the howling of the wind, and for a second he couldn’t even understand the meaning of her words. She was asking him if he was alright? He stared down at her, face twisted in despair and horror. She had purposely jumped in front of the branch so it wouldn’t hit him, so that he would be alright.
“I’m alright, but you—you’re—” His paws hovered around the wound, shaking. He didn’t know what to do. Should he remove the branch? He had to, to get her back to the castle.
“Hang on, Belle, I have to take it out.” He grasped it and pulled. It came away easily, but Belle cried out, and a surge of blood followed it. He pressed one paw tight against the sickening hole, hating the feel of the hot blood pulsing against his palm. Its metallic scent hung heavy around her.
He tore his cloak off with his other paw, balled up a corner of it, and moved his paw off her wound to shove the wad of his cloak there. She moaned, her face twisted with pain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he told her. “Can you keep your hands pressed tight on it?” He helped her lay her hands over the bloody spot, then spread the rest of the cloak over her body, and scooped her up into his arms.
He held her tight against him as he barrelled forward through the icy wind, leaping over broken branches, hearing more of them crack and crash around him. His heart thundered in his chest, not with exertion—she weighed nothing to him, and although running was more difficult on two legs than four, his animal legs were still powerful enough to keep it from being taxing—no, his heart thundered with terror. Even once they were back at the castle, would they be able to do anything to save her? No one had any real hands to use to help her.
The gates flung themselves open before he reached them, as if frightened to see him running toward them at full speed. The front doors of the castle, too, seemed to sense his urgency and made way, and he shouted for help before he was even all the way through them. He saw Cogsworth go scurrying off, shouting orders at everyone along the way.
“We’re home, Belle, I’ve got you,” he murmured as he rushed her to the nearest room off the huge entrance hall. He glanced down at her face; her eyes were closed and her skin was so pale it was almost blue. His chest tightened with panic.
The fire blazed into life when he entered the room. He laid her down on a sofa, and her hands immediately fell limp from where they had held the cloak to her wound. “No no no no no!” He pressed his own paws over the wound. “Help! The surgeon!” he roared again.
He leaned close to Belle’s face. “Belle, Belle, wake up, you’re home, you’re safe, please Belle,” he pleaded.
Her eyelids slitted open. “Yes! Belle, I’m going to fix this, you’re going to be alright, just hang on.” But her eyes just shut again.
Mrs. Potts zipped into the room on her cart, loaded with a basin, clean cloths, and bandages. “What happened?” she gasped.
“A tree branch, from the wind.” He took the blood-soaked cloak off her and pressed a clean cloth in its place.
Lumière rushed in next, followed closely by Monsieur Trousset, the castle surgeon. The next few minutes were a frantic flurry of activity. Beast and Lumière got her wet boots and stockings off while Trousset’s animated medical tools set to work cutting open the front of her dress and chemise. Mrs. Potts helped the other tools clean the wound, and at some point Cogsworth slipped in and perched himself by Belle’s head to dab at her face with a warm cloth.
Beast didn’t watch as the tools worked to repair her wound, both for Belle’s privacy and because seeing her like this made him feel like he would be sick. He paced behind the sofa on all fours, swishing his tail.
“Is she going to be alright?” he asked.
Trousset was silent on the other side of the sofa for a moment. “She’s very weak.”
“But you’re still a surgeon! You can fix her!” he barked, digging his claws into the rug.
“I’m doing everything I can,” the surgeon snapped, and Mrs. Potts gave him a stern look for his tone. Trousset could be just as prickly as Beast, so the two of them had never gotten along. It’s probably why he’d been all too glad to let Belle dress Beast’s wound after the wolf attack instead of doing it himself. But it was Belle, good, sweet Belle, who needed his help this time.
Trousset sighed. “Look, this is a very serious wound, so just let me do my work in peace, please?” He continued to give instructions to his tools. Beast growled but kept his mouth shut.
“Master, are you alright?” Mrs. Potts asked gently. “Is there anything you need?”
Are you alright. The same thing Belle had asked him as she lay there under a tree branch that she had purposely taken to the chest to protect him. It made him furious. “Why are you asking me that?” he bellowed. “She’s the one who needs help, not me! She’s hurt, not me!”
“I’m so sorry, sir,” she said, looking back at him with sorrow and pity heavy in her eyes. That made the anger surging under his skin run even hotter. He knew she meant she was sorry about Belle, not about her question. She was acting like Belle had already died. Belle wasn’t going to die from a stupid fucking tree branch!
“We’ve done everything we can do,” Trousset finally announced.
Beast bounded to the other side of the sofa to look down at Belle. A blanket was drawn up over her so only her head stuck out. Her face still looked sickly pale. He settled on the floor by her side and stroked her hair.
“She’ll be alright?”
“I think she…she lost too much blood before we could attend to the wound. I’m sorry, sir.” It was the gentlest voice Beast had ever heard Trousset use with him. He hated it.
“Sorry?” Beast snarled at him. “But she’s alive, I can hear her breathing!” It was a faint, slow, rattling wheeze, but it was there, all the same.
“She’s very weak,” the surgeon repeated. “She might last another quarter of an hour.”
Beast felt as though his heart was being crushed. His massive chest heaved as he struggled to breathe.
“Again, I’m sorry, but there’s only so much I can do like this,” Trousset complained, looking down at his cursed form, a medical bag with handles as a poor substitute for hands.
A low growl rattled in Beast’s throat. He clenched his jaw so hard it hurt. The blasted Enchantress just had to change everyone, didn’t she, and so now there was no one capable of saving Belle—
—the Enchantress.
Beast bolted from the room, leaping up the steps five at a time, careening down the hall toward the west wing. He nearly tore the door off its hinges as he ran into his quarters, straight to the magic mirror. He snatched it up in his paws.
“Show me the Enchantress!”
The mirror fizzed and flared up with eerie green light, the silvery surface swirling until it solidified into an image of a beautiful woman with golden hair that floated around her head as if she were underwater. Her mouth was curved into a bright smile, and she was looking directly out of the mirror.
“You found me! Hello, Adam dear!” she trilled.
“Save Belle, please, I beg you,” he blurted out.
“Oh!” she said, sounding genuinely surprised and blinking her eyes quickly. “But obviously she wanted to sacrifice herself to save you.”
“But she doesn’t have to! You can save her!”
“Well that’s certainly true, my dear, but you haven’t explained why I should save her.”
“Because—because I love her.”
A musical laugh bubbled out of the Enchantress’s lips and she clapped her hands in front of her face like a little child that’s excited to see a cute animal at the circus perform a trick. “Oh, you see how delightfully my lesson worked? You’ve finally learned to love, just like I wanted.”
Beast dug his claws into the table and willed himself not to snarl at her. “So are you satisfied? Will you save her?”
“Well you see, that depends, my dear.”
“Depends on what?” he snapped. Every second that this witch wasted in talking got Belle closer to death.
“That depends on what you’re willing to do in return. Because you see, I can’t just use my magic on a whim. No no, that wouldn’t do at all. There always has to be a price, I’m afraid, otherwise everyone is just using their magic all higgledy-piggledy, and I’m sure you can see how dreadful that would be, dearest.”
“I’ll do anything, please, she doesn’t have much time left!”
She tilted her head like a bird, her green eyes sparkling. “Will you give up Prince Adam forever?”
“What?”
“Give up your title and your humanity to remain a beast forever, and Belle will live.”
For a moment, Beast was too stunned to speak. He had thought he already felt hopeless about ever becoming a man again, but in that moment he realized that had been a lie. Deep in his heart, there had always been a tiny spark of hope that remained alight, hidden but cradled carefully, a hope kept alive by the faint possibility that his curse would one day be over. And now he faced the thought of extinguishing that single tiny point of light amidst his darkness. The long years of his life stretched ahead of him, devoid of hope, stagnant, a beast day after day until he died.
But wouldn’t he have to face this hopeless future in a few days anyway, when the rose died? What was the difference if he agreed to it today?
“What about my servants?”
“Oh silly, this little deal has nothing to do with them! They’ll remain subject to the terms of the original spell in order to become human again. But I’m feeling generous, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”
She waved her hand, and the wilted rose in the bell jar beside him flashed. It was restored to health, every glowing petal back in place, straight and beautiful again.
“I’ve given them an extra year on the original spell, so you have plenty of time left to make Belle fall in love with you. And once she does, all of your servants will go back to being human again!” She smiled brightly. “Just not you. So do we have a deal? Your humanity for Belle’s life?”
His shoulders sagged. His limbs felt as heavy as lead. But he could save everyone this way.
“Deal.”
“Wonderful!”
Her grin widened, and she waved her hand again, her eyes glowing the same unnatural green as the mirror. He felt a preternatural tremor buzz through every part of him and settle deep in his bones.
“It’s done! Belle is healed,” she chirped.
He slammed the mirror down on the table and raced back to the room where he'd left Belle.
The pain had been gradually fading into the background, becoming hazy as the blackness got heavier. The blackness wasn't an absence, it was a presence, heavy, pressing in all around her. But not unpleasant. No, it was calm, peaceful, almost comforting, making it harder and harder for her to feel any pain, fear, sorrow. It was hard to breathe with the blackness around her, but that was okay, she didn’t need to breathe. She could let that go.
And then suddenly, there was a flash of white behind her closed eyes, and she felt like she was floating in it, the heavy blackness transformed into buoyant light. All the pain vanished as well, not fading further into the background as it had been doing, but simply ceasing to exist, as if it had never been there at all.
She gasped and opened her eyes. The light was gone and she was in a room. Four little amazed faces stared back at her: ceramic, wax, wood, and leather. Where was Beast? She sat up and felt a rush of cool air on her skin; she looked down to see that she was bare on her torso, save for a bandage wrapped around her chest. She blushed and snatched the blanket in her lap up over her chest.
Beast suddenly appeared in the doorway. His fur was matted with leaves and dirt and his shirt saturated in blood. His wild eyes went wide as soon as they landed on her. “Belle!” he cried out.
He fell to his knees beside the sofa and pulled her into his arms. "You're alive, you're alright now," he said into her hair. She hugged him back with one arm and let herself relax against him for a moment. Over his shoulder, she saw the servants all smiling as they shuffled and hopped out of the room, the door quietly clicking shut behind them.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
He snorted. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“You’re covered in blood.”
He pulled back and looked down at himself. “Oh. Yes. That’s all yours, not mine. I’m fine.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I lost that much blood?”
Beast’s face became very grave. “You almost died.”
She let out a long breath. “Why didn’t I die? I remember the tree branch, but then…What happened?”
“I brought you back here, and then—then you were healed.” He looked her over as if checking for remaining injuries, and she blushed again at being only half-dressed. “You feel fine now, completely?”
She laid her hand over the spot on her ribcage where she knew she’d been impaled. She couldn’t feel anything unusual under the bandage, and not a bit of pain when she pressed there. “I feel like nothing even happened to me. One moment I was in pain, and everything was black and heavy, and then the next moment all the pain vanished, and I opened my eyes here feeling as though I’d just had the best sleep of my life. How is that possible? Was it some sort of magical object that healed me?” She thought about the glowing rose she’d seen in Beast’s quarters. She’d never asked him about it, but it was obviously magical; perhaps that was what had healed her.
“Something like that,” he said, his eyes flickering away for a second. But when he returned them to hers, a tender smile infused them with warmth, and he lifted a hand to stroke over her head and down her cheek. “I’m just so glad you’re not hurt any more,” he said quietly.
She smiled back at him, leaning her face into his soft, giant hand. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“Thank you for saving my life.”
They stayed that way for several heartbeats, Beast just cradling Belle’s face in his hand, smiling at each other. She felt utterly content.
Beast finally spoke up again. “What do you need now? Some tea, food?”
“Yes, please! I still want that hot chocolate from Mrs. Potts. But a dress, I think, first.”
He pulled his hand off her and looked away. “Oh, yes, of course. I’ll, um, go ask someone to bring that.”
“How could they stay away from home for weeks?” Gaston demanded.
LeFou shrugged. “Dunno. But I swear I’ve been watching, every day, just like you told me.”
Gaston knew he wasn’t lying; he himself had been by the house several times to check too, just as he was doing again now. Their cottage was still empty.
Gaston scowled and struck his hand against a fence post as he stalked away from the porch. He was getting impatient. He should have been married to Belle by now, working on making that first son, getting foot massages every night. Where could she have possibly gone?
He remembered what Maurice had said about a beast having kidnapped Belle. Surely this beast couldn’t be real. And yet, something was keeping Belle and Maurice away from the village. Maybe some crazy man dressed in furs had taken her, and Maurice’s addled mind had taken it for a big hairy monster. Gaston shook his head at his own imagined story; it was preposterous.
But then he imagined the rest of the story: he, Gaston, saving Belle from this monstrous man. She’d cling to Gaston and be so grateful to him that she’d marry him for sure. He’d be a hero, not just to Belle but to the whole village, for saving them from this mysterious menace. They’d revere him even more than they already did.
He puffed out his chest and smiled just thinking about it. This was much better than his plan to coerce Belle to marry him by locking up Maurice, which admittedly had given him some uncomfortable inklings of guilt and doubt occasionally. If he rescued Belle instead, she would truly love and admire him, like a wife should. Like he needed.
Of course, he didn’t know if she actually needed rescuing, or even if she was still alive, but he didn’t need to think about those details when he could think about pleasant things like being worshiped as a hero.
“New plan, LeFou,” he announced with a cocky smile.
“Ooh, what is it?”
“I’m going to track down Belle and rescue her.” He knew that part would be easy; he could track anything.
“And I’ll kill the villain that’s captured her.”