A/N: Originally featured in my listing called "The Final Chapter", this is one of the few one-shots that I have decided to extend into chapters. For those of you that originally read this before as a one-shot, take note that there will be many added scenes to make the story more continuous. Chapter 3 will be the start of the new material for those familiar with the story already.
LeFou put Mrs. Potts down, leaving her to continue in the battle. After such a betrayal by Gaston, LeFou wasn't sure what to do with himself in this strange battle. The villagers were still attacking the furniture, but he felt that he could no longer justifiably participate in such actions. He hadn't wanted to come here in the first place. He had only been blindly following along with Gaston, but clearly that had done him no good. In the midst of all the turmoil and chaos of the battle, LeFou walked straight out the front door. He had every intention to head straight home and forget this whole night had ever happened. But there was a chill in the air as he walked down the expanse of stairs. He had a sudden feeling that something terrible was going to happen.
The night was dim and cold in the perpetual winter. He stopped walking. It was eerily quiet. He waited cautiously for the proverbial pin to drop. The first noise came from the castle behind him: the doors had banged open. The villagers were running out of the castle, apparently having been successfully beaten by the furniture. The horde was coming in his direction. He quickly scampered down the last few stairs, hiding just behind them, out of the path of the crowd. The villagers stampeded past him. When the last of them had gone past, he slowly stepped away from the castle again. He made to head home again, but was stopped by a second sound, this one far more ominous: a gunshot.
LeFou spun around, looking back at the castle. He knew the shot had rang outside of the castle. His eyes darted all over the massive expanse before him, trying to locate the sound of the gunshot. He ran around the castle, his eyes still looking up. He heard some shouting as he got closer, but he couldn't make it out. He heard a woman scream, a gunshot, and a growl. He knew what had to be happening. His feet followed the sound of the clamor. And that was when his eyes managed to locate what his ears were hearing. There stood Gaston, far away from LeFou and high up on a bridge. He was holding a pistol in his hand. The Beast was hunched over not far away, kneeling in pain in front of Belle. "God, no." LeFou muttered to himself, bearing awful witness to the events. He watched Gaston fire another shot at the Beast. The Beast tumbled out of sight into the castle from the impact. He heard the sound of the bridge crumbling.
"No, no, no." LeFou said helplessly, knowing he could do nothing to change what was about to happen. He heard Gaston scream, saw him begin to fall as the bridge collapsed right below his feet. LeFou turned away and started to run, terrified that he was going to hear a dull thud — or worse, a wet splat. He ran harder than he'd ever run in his life. He whizzed out of the palace gate and straight toward Villeneuve. Gaston was dead. He knew that. He wasn't going to try and deny what he himself had witnessed. No man could survive a fall from that height, not even the stubborn Gaston. A whirlwind of emotion was blowing through his mind as briskly as the winter wind that was blowing right through him. As his feet crunched in the snow he cursed to himself, feeling the freezing temperatures pushing in on him. But as he continued forward the snow suddenly started to melt. The earth beneath his feet was suddenly growing grass and softening. "I've had just about enough of this magic!" He cried out loud, shocked by the sudden change in season.
He barrelled out of the woods and down the hill that lead home. He was almost out of breath at this point, though the air was no longer so cold it hurt his lungs. It was warm again, as it had been when they left Villeneuve. The sun was beginning to rise on the horizon. And despite all that had just occurred, LeFou's first thought at the sunrise was that he was going to have a hell of a time trying to catch up on sleep. He continued down into town, tears falling down his cheeks. He was unsure whether the tears were elicited by sadness, the freezing temperatures his eyes had just endured, or by the wind blowing against his face. He had no interest in knowing which it was. All he cared about at this point was getting home. This has to be a dream, he told himself as he made his way into town and headed down the main street.
He turned down a narrow side street and found his way to his rented space. It was the attic of a kind old woman's house. Luckily for him, the large attic had it's own entrance. A rickety wooden staircase in the alley lead up to his front door. He pounded up the stairs, trying not to think about the one time that he had broken a stair and hurt his leg doing the very same thing. He survived his trip up the stairs this time though, and burst through the door of his home. It was no more than a square shaped room with barebones furniture. The only other entrance into the attic was a small door in the floor that could only be reached by ladder. There was never any concern about someone accidentally barging into his home. Which was exactly what he needed now. Uninterrupted privacy. He collapsed into the creaky wooden chair facing his small fireplace.
In the safety of his home, he finally let it go. The physical exertion of running all the way from the castle had kept the raw emotional pain at bay. But now that he was still again, it came rushing in like a hurricane. He screamed in terror, a delayed reaction to his shock at seeing Gaston fall. His elbows rested on his knees, his hands covered his face, trying to shut out the world physically. Regardless of how he had betrayed him just before his death, they had known each other their whole lives. They were friends. Unwanted memories filtered into his mind's eye, only deepening his sorrow.
Gaston was filling his gun with bullets. LeFou was cleaning the other soldiers' guns. It was late. The moon was high in the sky above them. The other soldiers were sleeping in tents all around them. But they were on nightwatch. Which was less of a watch and more of a chore. They were expected to keep themselves busy through the night. They preferred to work with the weapons, making sure they were all in tip top shape. Gaston always told LeFou that a good weapon could mean the difference between a defeat and a triumph. He hadn't been wrong yet.
"LeFou, what's the first thing you're going to do when you return home?" Gaston asked quietly, his tone hushed to avoid waking their fellow soldiers.
"I'm not sure." LeFou said honestly, wiping the dirty rag carefully across the gun he held, "I hadn't really thought about it. What are you going to do?"
"Provided we're not shipped off immediately," Gaston said with a smile, as if the thought of being sent to another war immediately after finishing another was far more exciting than it sounded, "You know … I'm not sure. I have nothing else to do aside from this war. I suppose I ought to marry now."
LeFou shrugged, "Well, you don't have to if you don't want to. As men, it's fine if we don't marry. Nobody will think twice of it."
"That's true." Gaston said, considering it quietly.
"After all, who needs a woman when you have us?" LeFou said with a small smile. "No wife could understand your ways like I do. All women know how to do is cook, clean, and cause problems. They can't drink with you, can't share war stories with you, or even go hunting with you. Where's the fun in that?"
"That's a fair point, LeFou." Gaston said, putting down the last filled pistol and putting an arm around LeFou's shoulders, "And a woman can run off. But you, LeFou?"
"I'll always be right here at your side." LeFou reminded him.
LeFou cringed at the rawness of the memory. It was as if it was yesterday, rather than years ago. But it had been that moment where he finally had admitted to himself that he was more than just Gaston's friend. They were inseparable when the war started. Thick as thieves. He had not known what to call how he felt about Gaston, but it dawned on him shortly after the war ended, when Gaston had begun to pursue Belle with a fresh vigor. It had hurt him. He recognized the emotion as jealousy. He didn't want Gaston paying all of his attention toward her.
Flickers of images assaulted his mind. Gaston's body falling to its demise. His grin whenever he shot an enemy down on the battlefield. His grim face as he'd left LeFou pinned under that piano in the battle. His stupid smirk when he was feeling especially full of himself, particularly when LeFou had cheered him up in the pub after being rejected again by Belle. And now he was dead. A man so full of life was now without one. How was that even possible?
A war brewed in LeFou's mind and heart, threatening to split him in half. Gaston had tried to kill the Beast, and what for? So he could marry Belle? LeFou had watched himself. The Beast had had his back turned to Gaston, he was not a threat. Yet Gaston shot him regardless. He shot him twice. He'd killed the Beast. LeFou was uncertain how he felt about the Beast. But he knew that he did not deserve to be shot and killed when he was presenting no threat. On top of that, Gaston had completely abandoned LeFou just before killing the Beast. He had left him for dead. LeFou had been lucky that the piano had been so shocked by the betrayal that he had let him go. For God's sake, Gaston had used LeFou as a literal human shield. Didn't this all make Gaston a bad person? A villain?
No, that was not the man LeFou had fallen in love with. LeFou shook his head in response to his own terrible questions, tears flowing like rivers down his cheeks. On a lower level of thought, his brain registered an itch on the back of his hand. He absentmindedly scratched at it. What if he had been blind all along? What if Gaston was actually this terrible — had always been this terrible? Had LeFou been seeing him through rose tinted glasses? A dull pain caught his brain's attention. He opened his eyes and glanced down at his left hand. It was bright red with inflammation, small dots of blood appearing on the skin. The pain became a little stronger as he paid more attention to it. How had he managed to do that? He sighed in defeat. His mind was out of control. He couldn't take it anymore. He needed to make the thoughts stop, but he wasn't sure how. He got up and walked across the room and laid in his bed, not even taking off his shoes. He tried to sleep, hoping this would briefly suspend the thoughts. He spent an hour thrashing in restlessness before his sheer exhaustion took over and forced him into sleep.