Yeah I know. I shouldn't be starting yet another BATB fic until I've finished at least one of the currently active ones. What can I say? I'm at the mercy of the plot bunnies, who NEED to stop breeding for just a little while. Well hey, I guess the benefit of working on multiple fics at once is I can switch my focus between stories to keep my mind fresh.

I must put out a warning that this story will be angsty. I'll try to maybe put some light moments in at some point but it's probably going to be mostly fairly depressing. This story assumes that after Beast let Belle go, she was more or less forced to marry Gaston to keep her father out of the asylum and Gaston away from Beast. Twelve years later, Gaston is killed and just a week after the village of Villeneuve is hit with plague, causing a dying Belle to tell her daughter to flee to the castle before she falls ill. Soooooo yeah, Beast has been alone, for a dozen years, and depressed, and along comes this girl who informs him the one he loved and lost so long ago is on her deathbed. From the same disease Beast and Belle once learned had claimed Belle's mother. So it's mainly how Beast copes with this, and how he and Belle's daughter try to comfort each other. So if you're not looking for something that will be mostly sad with maybe some light moments, you may want to give this story a miss. You have been warned.

It had been twelve long, lonely years since those long, long nights began. If the Beast had had his say in the matter, he would have allowed himself to starve long ago. He'd have quite literally wasted in his lonely tower, and would now be but a skeleton. Just a pile of dry bones to tell of the creature who had once lived.

But it seemed that the curse had one more cruel trick to play. It simply would not let him wither away. Though all that remained of his faithful staff were an assortment of inanimate objects, some sort of magic kept meals arriving in the dining room, and kept him driven to eat them. Fires mysteriously stayed lit in all the castle's fireplaces so he stayed warm. Basically what was needed to keep him alive was provided. It was as if the curse was determined to force him to live, alone, without Belle, without even the company of his staff who he had come to love as family under Belle's influence. That way, it seemed, he would be ever-conscious of his utter failure to lift the curse.

It had been twelve years since that fateful night, that night he realized that in loving her, he had to release her. Learning to love was half the battle. He had to earn that love in return before the last petal fell from an enchanted rose. Cruel irony, that by meeting the first requirement, he had to let her go and forfeit his chance of meeting the second requirement. The fact that he was so close made it all the more cruel. But he'd had to let her go just hours before the last petal made its lonely descent from the stem. The fact that it had been twelve years was not known to him. Because of the endless winter he never knew what season it truly was. Days simply bled into years here.

On this particular afternoon, Beast sat in the parlor reading. It was an unlikely choice of reading material for him, but it was Belle's favorite so reading it made him feel close to her in a way. Romeo and Juliet was its title. He actually kept it close to him, just to feel close to her. When she had first told him it was her favorite play, he gagged. He hadn't been fond of all the heartache and pining found between its covers. Ironic, considering now his life consisted of nothing but heartache and pining. This is what he was reading when there was a loud knock at the front door of the castle.

Beast was startled. No one had visited since Belle. He made his way to the foyer and looked out the window. A child stood at the door, a girl who looked not much over a decade old. Was this the enchantress coming to pay another dreaded visit? Or was it truly a child who may be in need of shelter? If the former, he knew he had better act in a way to pass whatever test she may be here to torment him with this time. If the latter, well, no longer was he the person who would callously turn someone in need out to their fate. He tentatively opened the door and looked down at the child.

The young girl looked up into his eyes. He noted with surprise that she did not appear at all frightened by his monstrous appearance. She almost looked as if she was seeing what she had expected to see.

"Forgive my intrusion please sir," she said respectfully. "Are you the Beast that lives here?"

"I am," the Beast said, realizing she actually did expect to see him.

"My mother sent me," the girl said. "Belle. She says you knew her twelve years ago?"

The Beast let out a soft gasp. This was Belle's daughter? And Belle had sent her? He opened the door further and stepped aside.

"Please come in," he said. "Let's get you warming up by the fire. Yes I knew Belle. Has it been twelve years?"

"That's what she says," the girl said, following Beast into the parlor. "I'm eleven, so she last saw you a year before my birth. She said you may not know how many years since it's always winter around here. My name is Didiane by the way."

"Let me have your cloak, Didiane," Beast said holding out a paw. When she handed it to him, he hung it on a coat rack that used to be a servant named Chapeau. "Sit down. How is your mother?"

"Not well I'm afraid," Didiane said glumly. "Most of Villeneuve is terribly sick. Maman told me to flee this morning before I fall ill. She got sick last night. She feared it was bad and told me to stay away from her and if it's what she thinks she'd have to send me away. Then this morning a doctor came in wearing a funny mask...like a bird's beak, and said Maman would be dead within a week."

The Beast felt like somebody had just thrust a dagger into his heart and was now slowly turning it. The last time he saw such a beaked doctor's mask he and Belle were discovering the fate of Belle's own mother. A fate Belle was now falling victim to. He knew the mask meant only one thing.

"Plague..." he said sadly. "Of all the things, Belle had to be stricken with plague."

"I think that's what the doctor called it," the child confirmed. "To make matters worse her death will make me an orphan. My father was killed just last week in a hunting accident. Though Maman never would wish anyone ill, I think there was some relief not to have Papa anymore. She tried to hide it from me my whole life, but I always knew. I could tell. Finally she admitted to me last month that her marriage to Papa was an unhappy one. I asked if there ever was a man she'd have preferred. That's when she first told me about you."

"Me?" Beast was surprised.

"She said the one she really loved was a Beast, though only by appearance," Didiane said. "She told me under the fur was the gentlest man she ever knew, besides her father. We lost Grandpere two years ago."

Such loss and tragedy and this child had only lived eleven years.

"Do you know how...she ended up in an unhappy marriage?"

"She finally told me that story after Papa was killed last week," Didiane said. "She said when she was with you, you showed her a mirror...oh! That reminds me!" Didiane took a mirror out of her pocket and handed it to the Beast. "She wanted me to return this to you. She hasn't touched it since before she was sick so she told me where to get it. She wrote you a note too but she said I couldn't take it or I'd get sick. She wants you to have the mirror show you the note. Anyway she said you showed her this mirror which would show anything asked of it. She wanted to see her father, my grandfather, and found he was being taken somewhere by the villagers who had formed a mob. She said you told her to go to him and she found him about to be committed to the insane asylum for telling them a Beast was holding her prisoner. She said Papa told her he did give my grandfather one way to escape the asylum. Grant him Maman's hand in marriage, and he'd be free despite his delusions of a beast. Grandpere refused. Maman said she almost showed you to everybody with the mirror, to prove her father wasn't crazy. Surely they'd have to let him go if she proved the Beast was real. But then she remembered that Papa was a skilled hunter and former war hero. She said surely he'd have led the mob in a rampage to storm the castle and kill you. So she said if Grandpere would be released from custody, she would marry Papa. So while she never loved him, she married him to save Grandpere...and you."

The Beast listened silently. He bowed his head in grief to know what Belle had put herself through partly on his account. He wished she had just used the mirror so she and her father could both be free. He cradled the mirror in his paws.

"When she told me where the mirror was," Didiane continued, "she told me to ask to see you so I would know what you looked like and wouldn't be frightened when I got here. She also told me to have it show me the fastest but safest route here."

The Beast was suddenly struck by how...beyond her years Didiane seemed. She seemed to lack the youthful innocence a child of eleven should still possess some of. And if he knew Belle, he knew she would preserve her daughter's innocence as long as possible. When he'd let her go to her father, he'd set her free. At least he thought he was setting her free. But she'd been anything but free these past twelve years if her daughter already had the maturity of a young adult, way too careworn for a child of eleven. The Beast hoped Belle's note would shed some light.