"Women and wine, game and deceit make the wealth small and the wants great."

-Benjamin Franklin

With a resounding thud he hit the ground.

The impact reverberated through each of his bones, numbing aftershocks coursing through his bones and flesh and veins. To see or not to see, that is the question, for he did not remember closing his eyes; but memory now seemed like such a distant concept as his mind faded, seeped, spilled away from his non-continuous body. It was the pain of a thousand wounds.

And yet soon the pain was gone and there was nothing more to be felt. He thought his final thought (which you will imagine that no one will ever know). His lungs heaved a final breath. And within his broken chest Gaston's heart hammered its last beat, unheard and in vain.

Beneath looming pines and among blooming buds he laid on the cusp of death. Dying, very nearly dead, as a coldness overtook his limbs…

Footsteps.

The cold began to retract suddenly, replaced by the heat of his blood as his heart drummed with power, rib cage reconstructing and freeing his lungs of pressure. Unconsciously, Gaston inhaled the cool evening air, sweeter than any gift of man. Pain reappeared and disappeared in tandem with the dampness about his skull, until soon he could recall the fundamentals.

I am Gaston, firstly. Then: I was atop a castle. I fell. I am alive, but I shouldn't be.

And then: sight.

The sun was more powerful-even at sunset-than it had ever been, and above him, fine gothic buttresses cut the sky into slices while grasses and wildflowers danced against his skin in the wind. If Gaston were a Romantic, it would have been tragically beautiful.

But he was not, and so with the distinct feeling of a miracle, he stood, gazed skyward at the castle above. Now, Gaston had very little mathematical ability, but the number of feet that he estimated he fell left very little room for survival and even less a sudden recovery. For a moment he stood and pondered this, but upon turning around to gather his bearings, he came face to face with a familiar figure.

"Agatha?"

It was most certainly Agatha, but she looked far different from the town hag with whom he was familiar. Her eyes were bright and young, and on her back she carried a long, ornate cloak. Perhaps he had died. Perhaps this was a trip into the netherworld.

"Gaston," She said cryptically, unblinkingly. "I have saved you; you are not to die."

"Oh," Gaston shrugged indifferently. Perhaps in other circumstances, he would be shocked, but despite his sudden health his head throbbed painfully, and all he wanted was to lie down. Whatever had happened, and however Agatha was involved, he would contemplate later, along with the suddenly reconstructed castle and hustle and bustle he could hear in the distance. "I should probably be going, then."

"But during your life," continued Agatha, "you have devalued the lives of others to your own gain; and in particular, you have ignored the legitimacy of those fairer than your kind. You have been shallow, seeking only beauty and duty. In their name, have you made threats and even murdered. It is shameful."

Surely this was a dream. "Agatha," said Gaston. "What in God's name are you talking about?"

"For your crimes, and in exchange for saving you from death, you shall be cursed."

Gaston suddenly felt delirious panic rise in his throat. "Cursed? What? No-"

"And so it shall be until you have found it within your capabilities to love someone-and to earn their love in return."

Before Gaston had any chance to react, there was a blinding white light, more fierce than the lightning; soon he was engulfed in it, time stretching and binding before his eyes, so forceful that he closed his eyes…

And when he reopened them, he was lying on the ground once more, facing the bruise-colored evening sky for the second time that day. Agatha was gone, no trace of her remaining. Well, thought he. It must have been a dream.

But as he stood to begin the trek down the mountain, he soon realized that something was...different. Something was wrong. The world around him seemed inexplicably larger. When he looked down his body to examine himself, Gaston let out a rather girlish shriek.

Girlish indeed, for Gaston's body was now that of a woman's.

He wore a long, burgundy dress with white laced cuffs; against his ribcage he felt the brutally tight hug of what could only be a corset; and all together his frame had taken on curvier, feminine qualities. Dashing over to a nearby puddle of water, Gaston kneeled down and examined his reflection. His jawline was significantly softer-no longer the powerful, chiseled chin like before-and his dark hair was long and tied with a ribbon on his back. When he stood and examined the tree by which he stood, he estimated he had lost a half a foot of height, perhaps even more.

And when he uttered "Dear God," he found his voice had settled in his throat, soprano in kind. The feeling was foreign to someone so used to having his baritone voice trapped in his chest.

Certainly, he recognized himself, for many of his features were nonetheless similar, but there was no mistaking it: either this was a hellish nightmare or Agatha had turned him into a woman.

In the distance, he could hear something going on in the castle. They sounded vaguely like the sounds of celebration, perhaps shouting and cheering. Desperately, he tried to remember the events that he lead up to his fall. Closing his eyes, he saw darkness and rain, crumbling rock, his handgun in his palm… the Beast! With three bullet wounds it surely could not have survived. (But, then again, Gaston had survived, despite his current circumstances.)

Perhaps the castle was celebrating the Beast's death; he'd expect them to be more somber, though, given that he himself had been witnessed tumbling hundreds of feet to his death. Belle was probably in the palace, dutifully awaiting and hoping for Gaston's return so she, free of the Beast's sorcery, could become Gaston's wife. A tear on her cheek, disregarding the festivities, wishing only that there must not be sacrifice.

Gaston had a mind to march up to the castle this instant and clear up the confusion, but he soon realized that, in his current state, it would do absolutely no good. In fact, there was no explanation he could possibly offer.

He ran over Agatha's words in his head: devaluing lives to your own gain...legitimacy of those fairer...until you have found it within your capabilities to love someone-and to earn their love in return…

Well, she made the conditions clear enough. Gaston didn't know what she meant by devaluing and legitimacy, but to break this wretched curse, he would need to find someone to fall in love with and have her fall in love with him. All he would need to do was explain his predicament to the nearest young woman, tell her that he was truly the famous Gaston, cursed into a woman's body. The details were unimportant, for he'd figure that any woman would swoon at the mere mention of his name. It wasn't ideal, but it would work.

The question was, then...which woman? Not Belle...no, that'd be for when he's finally regained his masculine form. Perhaps one of the Bimbettes? (Or all three?) No, he'd have to wander into town for that, and it would be best to avoid crowds for now. A farmgirl, then. Some quaint young woman desperately hoping for a man to sweep her off of her feet.

As he passed the entrance to the castle to align himself with the path towards the village, he took notice of an enormous crowd gathering at the castle's base. Most of them were embracing and (for some bizarre reason) rubbing their faces in shock. Each were so absorbed in the commotion that Gaston could easily slip away, unnoticed. The details of the events were still blurry in his mind-the chronology hardly lined up-but in taking a quick glance at the crowd, no Beast was to be found. Perhaps he had done his job.

Before he turned back around, Gaston thought he saw LeFou among the crowd; if anyone were mourning, it'd surely be his loyal aide-de-camp. But he hadn't time to fret about that, for he needed to find the nearest female before sundown. What a funny story this would be someday.

Hope regained and fear subdued, he began sauntering down the mountainside, cursing that hag Agatha under his breath.

A/N: Thanks for reading this first instalment. This will get put up on Ao3 by tomorrow, probably. I'd like to say that the idea of Gaston being cursed into a woman is a concept I saw somewhere as I was lurking about tumblr, but I cannot remember who said it. Whoever you are, credits to you. The rest of the story that I have planned, however, is, to my knowledge, entirely my own creation.