Towers and Dungeons
By vcatrashfiend
Rating: M for swears, Deranged!Belle, and violence
Author's Note: To my readers in the "My Fair Lady" fandom, I PROMISE I will return to "A Better Man"... soon. However, I found myself obsessed with the "Skin Deep" episode of 'Once Upon a Time', and this plot bunny had fangs and I had to write this. It's a one shot for now, and it is at this point, unbeta'd.
To clarify things: Belle is referred to as Rosalie/Belle when she is in cray-cray mode, Rosalie when the curse seems to be working, and Belle when she starts to remember her former life. Again, forgive the roughness of it. This bunny hit at midnight, and I had to get it on to the computer and published ASAP.
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, especially the quote from "I Am The Walrus". That's The Beatles.
She was an anomaly. A freak. That is what the lady with the wicked eyes had muttered the first time (was it the first time, though?) that they had met in her prison cell.
"What is your name?" The woman had asked.
"Belle. I've seen you before in the forest... but I've never seen a forest..."
"No you did not, and your name is Rosalie French. You are the daughter of Moe French. Do you know why he had to have you institutionalized?"
"I was taken to the tower when the dark man wouldn't keep me. Papa didn't want me anymore. Dirty girl..."
"This is not a tower, Rosalie. This is a hospital."
"Oh."
"You are here because you are promiscuous, violent, and see things that are not there. You are a threat to society."
"I've been here a long time, haven't I? Decades..."
"Years, Rosalie, not decades. You were brought here as a teenager, remember?"
"I would that I could walk through the walls. He didn't have enough time to teach me..." Her brilliant blue eyes focused on the door beyond the wicked woman.
"You can walk out the door when you are well enough. You merely have to stop convincing yourself that you are this Belle woman... and you need to stop attacking the orderlies. They are on my payroll, and the insurance costs are bankrupting me." Belle/Rosalie smirked as she appraised the wicked woman's ensemble. Heels of the softest leather, a beautiful suit of burgundy wool, tailored to hug her svelte frame nearly perfectly, nails polished and gleaming, hair perfectly coifed. Her scent was exotic, and expensive. A spray of blood oranges and something else... Belle/Rosalie was suddenly self conscious of her chipped and dirty nails, her dirty hospital gown, and her matted brown hair. Not self conscious enough to suppress the ironic grin that stretched and pained muscles no longer accustomed to the expression.
"I am sure that is not what is bankrupting you, dearie." The wicked woman paled slightly, the faintest ghost of a frown crossed her beautiful features, and then the mask of composure was back.
"I can keep you down here forever, you know."
"You've said that before... only it was 'up'. What goes up, must come down..." Belle/Rosalie laughed at her own joke, laughed so hard and for so long that she began to cough. The woman in the suit backed up against the door, as though afraid that the younger woman carried some sort of disease.
"Something about the madness that the clerics beat into you must have interfered with the curse."
"What curse?" Rosalie blinked confusedly, her eyes filling with tears, and her lips trembling. "Where is my Dad? Why doesn't he come to visit me anymore? I promised I would stop running around with those boys... Who are you?" She began to sob in earnest, bringing her knees to her chest and burying her face against them as she hugged them tight. She heard a sigh of relief from the strange woman.
"The nurse will be pleased to know that you are lucid, Rosalie. She will no doubt write a glowing report about it. You only need to hold on to yourself, hold tight and never let yourself fall again. Do you understand?"
Rosalie nodded against her knees, her slight frame still wracked with sobs. "I promise I will. Only please let me out of here."
"We shall see."
The woman left, and Rosalie was unable to keep her promise. The woman never came directly into her cell after several visits turned futile, and one turned violent. Rosalie/Belle had grinned for hours after, clutching that fistful of hair that she had managed to yank off of that bitch's head. Eventually several orderlies had to be called to pry it out of her clenched fist. She had fought them off, like a rabid dog unwilling to share its' bone. The attack on the woman she had come to learn was the mayor ensured that her medications were increased in dosage exponentially.
Nowadays she just sat and stared at her four walls, occasionally catching those mad "visions" in her mind. She saw a life that seemed to have once been her own, but the scenery had changed. There was a man, always a man. He said he was not a man, but Rosalie... Belle knew different. How she had cried for him in that tower! His name had exploded from her lips with every snap of the whip for a very long time. He had not wanted her. She was a princess in a tower, and the prince was too indifferent to care. Eventually her cries for him to save her became curses for his slow, agonizing death. How she had hated him!
But who was he? Had she ever been kept in a tower; beaten and abused? Certainly her back tingled and burned with a phantom fire every time she recalled that life.
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together...
Rosalie/Belle snapped out of her reverie at the sound of the approaching music, and her lips curled into a sneer. The head nurse's son had recently come into employ at the ward. Apparently, he was a little mad himself, and therefore willing to take on the job. He had stayed longer than the others, certainly. Rosalie/Belle appreciated that he liked to carry around a portable radio. Music was something she had gone without for years until he came along. It was a shame, really. He wasn't a nice boy by any means, but she felt bad that she was going to risk losing the music with what she was about to do.
"Luke..." She practically cooed. It was time.
"Rosie." He peered through the peek-hole, revealing a chubby face, spiky black and purple hair, and nearly feline eyes. The effect was completed with he grinned, revealing unnaturally pointed bicuspids.
"What time is it, Luke?"
"Lunchtime, Rosie."
Rosalie/Belle rose from her seat, giving him her most devastatingly lovely smile. She had cleverly been able to fake taking her pills earlier that morning. She needed all of her wits about her, and she wasn't sure that she had that many to begin with.
"Did you nick the keys from your mum like I asked?" She had been cultivating this plan for ages, ever since that fat little bastard had started working at the hospital. He had been dazzled by her looks from the start, despite her bedraggled appearance, and had spent the first week of his employ whispered lewd suggestions to her, as she sat in a drugged stupor. Perhaps the dosage had been a little weak the day she realized what he was doing, and by extension, the power he was handing her. She had flirted little by little after that, dancing around the subject of her incarceration, hinting and promising things if only he would come into her cell. No one was allowed in there alone anymore, not even with the amount of drugs that were being put in her on a day to day basis, and it took four men to escort her to the showers once a week. But she would be as harmless as a kitten for Luke, she had promised. He was different from the others. They were kindred spirits. It amazed her, how easily she could feed him those lies, how honeyed and cool they appeared. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
Now, with three whole weeks of medication stuffed into her mattress, it was time.
He was at her side with surprising stealth, a fat paw clutching at her knee, his lips pursed expectantly as he leaned in for the kill. He nearly fell forward when Rosalie/Belle leaned back.
"Have you got a cigarette, Luke?"
"What?"
Rosalie/Belle rolled her eyes. "S'been ages, and I can smell them on you. I won't kiss you unless you give me one."
"You'll have to do more than kiss me if I give you one."
"Give it." She ground out her command through clenched teeth, her eyes dark. Luke blanched, and then complied, as if remembering the warnings he had heard of what she was.
"I need a light," Rosalie/Belle remarked, cigarette dangling from her rosy lips. Luke was a bit slow, but he was no fool. Gallantly, he lit it for her, and then pocketed the lighter.
Rosalie/Belle took a few drags, and let the smoke curl out slowly from her lips. She knew it looked appealing to the boy, and somehow managed to repress the urge to hack and cough at the taste. She tossed the cigarette to the ground, disdainfully, the thing half-smoked. Luke frantically jumped to his feet to put it out.
"Why would you do something like that? Now they'll know someone was in here!" Rosalie/Belle laughed at Luke's distress, and he turned on her, eyes wild and wide. He dove his hands into his pockets, and swore as he found neither keys nor lighter. With a violent cry, he swung his fist at the mad girl, knocking her to the ground. She continued to laugh as he straddled her, although the sound became choked as his hands closed around her throat.
"Give it back to me!" He screamed, spraying spit into her face. Still she laughed. He released his grip in order to hit her again, when her knee came up and connected with his groin. Luke released her completely, and rolled onto his side, crying in pain.
Rosalie/Belle grinned down at him, aware that the flames from her bed were beginning to rise. How very much like a demon she must appear to him, she mused. Suddenly a long forgotten memory came to her. A jest... a quip.
"It used to be my job to skin babies like you," she taunted before kicking him in the head and knocking him unconscious.
Within moments she was dressed in his uniform, and hurrying out the door. She zeroed in on a supply closet and sought refuge. Once the fire alarms went off, and the crush of bodies would begin to crowd the hallways, she was blend, and finally be free.
When her plan continued to play out, she resisted the urge to laugh. She remembered someone teaching her sleight of hand at one point in her life... one life or the other, she wasn't sure. Magic without having magic, they had explained. She would kiss the genius who had instructed her if only she could remember who it was.
The sunlight was blinding as she made her way onto the front lawn of the hospital. No one noticed her as of yet. Everyone was too panic stricken to notice the orderly in the too-large clothes, and the comically oversized shoes. She kicked them off, and revealed in the feeling of the green grass beneath her feet. Heaven. It had been too long.
She moved away from the hospital, down the sidewalk, the pavement hurting her. She had no idea where she was going, but she was going somewhere... anywhere.
The man.
Rosalie/Belle stopped in her tracks as he appeared in her line of sight, hobbling with a limp and a cane. He was different, but it was him. Her heart pounded wildly against her chest almost to the point of dizziness. Finally, he noticed her as well, and was likewise stunned.
She had caught a quick glimpse of him in his current form when she had...
Anger rose to the surface, and she sprang forward, taking long, purposeful strides towards the man she had once loved. She wanted to tear out his heart and drink from it.
"Was she better than me?" She heard herself scream. Belle remembered it all, and she was not pleased with this development. He still made no move, only stared at her like a man possessed.
"Prettier? Funnier? Obviously she helped you get over your fear of being loved, didn't she?" She was standing mere inches from him, glaring murderously, and willing him to say something, anything.
When he took her in his arms, and pressed her against his body as tightly as he could, she fainted.
