In this moment, life
Author's Note: This is a little bit of a darker story, depicting Christophe's torment and Belle's willingness to stay by him. I'm not sure where it fits in within my other B&B stories – Although, same story-line, it's from a slightly different angle then Refiner's Fire... more related (writing- style wise) to His beauty and sweet revelations... I'm not sure... or maybe it can just stand on its own :)
Scenario: Not everything is always as simple as 'happily ever after.' Belle struggles to persevere as Christophe goes through an emotional and depressive rebound.
Rating: T
o0o
Pressing my forehead against the cold glass, I watch as my breath spider-webs, white and translucent in front of me. I can barely see past the grey sheet of rain, beating down unmercifully on a faded and blurry landscape. I clench my teeth, my thoughts in turmoil.
"Why does he do this?" I trace the ornate woodwork of the sill, not fully expecting an answer. Instead I listen to the warm bustling behind me, snatches of humming and the spicy whiff of tea. Our first-born is already asleep and for that I am glad... But I cannot help but wonder when he's grown, what he will think of his father and his strange moody wanderings...
My fingers dig into the sill. "It's as if he doesn't care..."
Silence.
The movement behind me falters but I still feel reluctant to turn and enter into the warmth and stability of the room, for inside, I am as cold and numb as ice.
"He'll come back dearest... He always does..."
"Yes," I cut in, "but he cannot keep on doing this... as future ruler, as King and monarch..."
As husband and father...
I glance back and see Madame Potts' face wrinkled in concern and I bite my fist to keep from crying. It's strange how on days like this the words "for better or for worse," seem elusive and utterly impossible. Who would have ever known the level of forgiveness needed in a marriage...The level of grace...?
Oh Christophe, I wish you'd let me help you...
I curl up in the window-seat and touch the pane with frozen fingers. We have lived together these past two years, Christophe and I, and apart from the important things it's strange to think exactly how little he has changed. He is still... Beast inside and out, Beast with all his trappings and moodiness... and melancholy sweetness. Things don't change, just because you commit your life to someone...
I hear footsteps behind me, the clink of china, the rustle of skirts over wooden floorboards as Madame Potts moves closer. I pray that she doesn't touch me, for in this fragile state I feel as if I could shatter into a thousand pieces. I feel her warmth at my back for a moment, her hesitance, her body-heat familiar and reassuring.
"You must go to him dearest," she murmurs softly, "A wife must be an anchor sometimes."
I stiffen at her words, at how unfair they sound... Surely, he must be the one to anchor me in my failings... not the other way around?
Moments later I leave my warm haven and step out into the black and grey of the storm. Silently, I draw my red cape about me, slipping the hood over my head, the only bright colour in this treacherous weather. With a vengeance, the rain falls around me until I can't breathe, can't think and looking back I cannot even see my reflection through the diamond-paned windows... but I know who I am... or who I must be...
An anchor... Christophe's anchor...
Grief can consume a person, it can capture them and lock them away within themselves, but what Christophe suffers from... is deeper than grief... it is an unrest of sorts and I do not know how to cure it...
Bare, spindly branches part the sky and the moon, a ghostly outline peeks through the clouds. I can see my distorted reflection, red in a puddle of reflected silver and I follow my feet down a worn path, feeling the beat of the rain underneath my skin, closing me off to the world until I am lost in a sense of timelessness. No wonder it attracts him so...
There is something beautiful, something calming yet unpredictable about surrendering to the storm...
I walk for a long time until my feet grow numb from the cold, but I pay no attention for I know where he will be.
And at last I come to an open clearing, the pine trees towering above me, glistening with un-shed water. On one side the bare red-rock cliff drops into a fathomless ravine and on the other; the deep velvet forest opens up... alive and breathing. I look back at the castle, now only a grey smudge in the distance.
I see him through the falling mist of rain. Wild, wet and free, he melts into the landscape like a god, untouched and unlimited, the rain on his face, the wind in his hair. His shirt sticks water-logged to his skin, his sleeves tattered and his hands torn and bleeding as if he's deliberately cut himself...
He startles sensing me and pierces me with dark, unseeing eyes. My breath catches in my throat, caught off guard by his pain and his astonishing beauty.
"Belle..." and he looks up at me, his expression one of guilt and confusion.
I watch the muscles that ripple across his back... At times like this, I can distinctly see Beast... and I stop in remembrance and aching nostalgia... reminding myself to be patient one more time... to forgive one more time... But in this moment, I am angry, irrationally so.
"Why?" I demand through clenched teeth.
He looks at me defiantly.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?"
He opens his mouth to speak, but I am so angry I cannot see past the grey curtain of rain.
"Why are you doing this to me?" And I hear my voice as if from a great distance. "Don't you see how it hurts me, how it destroys me inside whenever you wander off like this. And what about your son...?
What about Noel. Do you even care about him?"
I stand there, out of breath, a drowning woman in an ocean of grey as the world spins around me on its axis, and I wonder for a moment if it's lost its placement. He looks at me, horrified and then his face crumples and he turns away, disappearing into the shadows.
No. No Christophe – don't go... I'm sorry... I reach for his hand, once, twice, grabbing thin air, until suddenly I am pulled along with him at a rapid pace through a tangle of wet leaves and forest decay, slipping on moss and unseen roots, but still I hold on. "Christophe, where are we going?" But all I can see is the tangled wildness of the forest, a picture of the darkness within, the hurts left to fester, the shadows that did not really heal...
"Christophe, where - " But I am only pulled along faster and I cling on for dear life as thorned branches whip across my face, leaving scratches, as I stumble and nearly twist my ankle on splintered wood.
"Christophe, stop this now!"
He lets me go and I nearly go flying into a pile of wet debris. I struggle to my feet, my legs trembling, my heart beating raggedly against my chest. And in this moment, I glimpse a certain unpredictability, a certain wildness that I've never seen before and... it frightens me.
"Christophe...?
But he just stands there...
Still.
The rain dripping into his face in small rivulets. He closes his eyes and covers his face with his hands, shoulders shaking.
"Please..." I whisper, my throat aching, "just... just... help me understand... let me in..." And I pull gently at wrists, tasting the salt of my own tears. An anchor... I must be an anchor... but in this moment, I do not feel strong...
And I can barely hear the muffled response over the patter of rain on pine needles, but it jolts me to the core. "Belle, I'm not worthy..."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not worthy of this... this life, this title, this position... It frightens me..."
"What are you frightened of?"
"Of myself!" And his eyes grow bright and flare like chips of ice in the dark.
I grab his hands so that he won't cover his face again and meet his eyes, seeing the darkness, the isolation and deep grief held there. His eyes flicker for a brief moment and then he turns and looks past me.
"My mother took me here once..." he whispers. "She loved this place, she loved wild roses..." I touch his hair and lead him quietly to a briar patch where we can sit, the ground damp beneath us. He closes his eyes painfully. "But one day - something happened... they were arguing... about me - and mother, she..." His eyes took on a faraway look again. "She... fell and lost the child she was carrying...
It was an accident, but it was because of me... and after that day, I came here and pulled up all those damned roses until my hands bled..."
I kiss his shoulder and look up into his clouded blue eyes through the mist of rain... "It wasn't your fault..."
He looks at me with anguished eyes. "I was only a child then, Belle... a child. I didn't understand... and then Father succumbed to his madness... He always looked at me with such hatred – I didn't understand, I..." He clenches his teeth, "and then he walked off into the forest one day and didn't come back. They found him the next day – the servants did – strung up from a tree..." He looks away, his jaw set painfully tight.
"Don't you understand...? That is why I am not fit to be a ruler or a husband or a... a... father. For this... this madness, this darkness is in me too! What if it overtakes me too?"
I turn his face to me, and capture his eyes with mine. "Christophe, look at me. That can only possibly happen if you letit... But you are not that person. Don't let this... this thing possess you. Come back here..." I place my fingers over his heart. "Come back to me, come back to your son..." He breaks down openly then, and I ache for him more than is humanely possible. I move my fingers through his hair, kiss him to remind him, touch him to make him forget... and my heart bleeds for him as everything he's tried so hard to bury inside comes to the surface.
And it rains on our foreheads, our eye-lids our noses. And still we hold onto each other as the forest comes alive, wet and glistening, the towering dark pines, the soft pattering of rain on pine needles, the smell of rich, wet earth. I will the shadows to go away with each breath and pray that whatever darkness hangs over him that it will wash away with the rain... I take each of his fingers in my mouth, where thorns have drawn blood and kiss them away He closes his eyes at my touch, eyelashes dark against pale skin.
After a while I lean my head on his shoulder with a sigh, drawing my knees to my chest and just watch the rain, letting myself be transported by this soft incandescence, this falling curtain of beauty and I remind myself of all the ways in which I must be strong...
Steadfast.
Constant.
Enduring...
"Belle," he whispers quietly. I turn to look at him, at the transparency in his blue eyes. "What do you see...?" I take his face in my hands and brush the hair away. I notice him watching me.
I know that there is so much I can say in this moment... along the lines of father and husband and soul-mate and King...
But I catch my breath as a certain hush falls on the clearing... and for a moment all I can see is light...
Soft light that hangs in festoons and ribbons, off an ear-lobe, the corner of an elbow, caught in the silver streak of rain, the glint of the moon, the tip of an eyelash. A light that lives and breathes. And when I tell him, his eyes take on a different life. He smiles, the corners of his mouth crinkling. "And if I am light, what are you...?"
I take the palm of his hand and kiss it, then bring it into the incline of my body, closing my eyes. Where his fingertips touch me, warmth spreads and grows in ripples and pools. I can hear my heart and feel his quiet indrawn breath. "Belle..." he whispers softly, almost shyly. I tremble as he draws a gentle line down my neck, across my collarbone and kisses the rain off my closed eye-lids, the corner of my mouth, my pulse-point...
I am your anchor... I whisper silently into the night and I can't help the sudden tears that stream down my cheeks, for in this moment of sorrow, is joy.