A/N: Well, here I am, with another BatB one-shot. It's not a companion piece to "Reflections of the Enchantress", but it does take place at about the same point in the BatB plot, when Beast is releasing Beauty. This is just a sort of get-back-into-fanfiction story, as I haven't been writing for a while. Read and review!
The Reason Why
Because he loved her.
Yes; that was it. It was as fantastically simple as that, no matter how he tried to find some surreptitiously self-centered motive. It struck him as bizarre that anyone could sacrifice not only their happiness, but their very life for another. It was infinitely more peculiar that he himself had made this very sacrifice without so much as a second thought.
But what else was there to do? He saw in those dark eyes a helplessness and hopelessness surpassing what he himself had felt, even in the darkest moments of despair. He saw how desperately she longed to understand the unfathomable mystery that stood between them, even when she only had the vaguest suspicion of such a mystery even existing. And at the same time, he saw in her a sort of childish indignation at being deprived of this magnificent truth—real or imagined—that would ease in one moment the culmination of all her heartache and frustration.
She did not deserve to suffer thus.
"I miss my father," she told him, not daring to look up from her plate. "I miss my sisters. I—I should like to go… to go home."
His mind revolted. His thoughts were in a tumult. He longed to scream—to accuse—'You're lying! You're afraid! I know that you must feel something… Why else would you look at me as you have? Why?'
She continued before he could make any attempt at an answer.
"I do appreciate the kindness you have shown me. I do…"
She paused. She fumbled with her silverware awkwardly and furrowed her brows. Her hands were trembling.
"You miss your father," he repeated as soon as he could trust himself to speak. "You miss your sisters. You want to go home."
A ghost of a smile graced her features. He felt stupid and resentful and fiercely perturbed that she would not so much as glance at him.
"Only for a short time," she added belatedly, with a voice at once filled with compunction and laced with mirth. "If you will allow it."
He said nothing. The anger and sulkiness were rapidly giving way to the much deeper and more excruciating feeling of defeat. What could he possibly say to convince her to want to stay?
He wished with every fiber of his being that he could tell her the truth: that he was a handsome prince and that their mutual happiness might easily be achieved by a simple 'I love you'. He need not even tell her he was a prince! A man… that alone would suffice!
But it could never be simple as that. It was apparently necessary that they both suffer abominably. Even she, who had done nothing in her life to deserve such sorrow! It was not enough that she love him in her heart, as he knew—positively knew—she did. No: she must declare it to him, to the world! In spite of the protestation of her logic, in spite of every convention she had ever been privy to in her eighteen years. It required not tremendous humility, nor lack of vanity, nor great kindness to make such a declaration. It required insanity.
He was not an ugly man. Not even a hideous man. He was a beast.
Perhaps unnerved by his silence, she pressed on. "I have been denied nothing during my time here, and I am thankful for that. I know that in making the agreement for my father's freedom, I pledged my eternal presence here. I will not go back on my word, of course, but I'd hoped…"
The disparity between the formality of her words and the vulnerable desperation of her appearance was vast.
"I'd hoped, perhaps, that you might consider disregarding our promise. Not forever, of course. Just briefly? For the sake of my sanity. So that I might see them and know they're there."
Her ability to keep herself composed was rapidly waning. It was neither tears nor tremors that threatened the facade of self-possession, but the way that her brows were furrowing and her cheeks were flushing and her lips were pressed together with such severity that they were nearly drained of all color.
His chest tightened uncomfortably, but he said nothing still.
She laughed weakly, fingers fidgeting with the jewel-encrusted stem of her goblet. "I've begun to think that the outside world doesn't exist at all. Sometimes it feels as if it is only you and I, and that all the rest has fallen away to oblivion. I know it must seem narcissistic, but I cannot help it. It's terrifying to feel so disconnected. Do you… Have you ever felt that way?"
As if in defeat, she lifted her umber eyes to meet his gaze. Such bitter despondency he had never seen in his life! She attempted a smile and failed miserably. Perhaps there was something in the way he looked at her that made her want to comfort him. Perhaps—even with the bestial countenance with which he had been cursed—his self-loathing and penitence were comprehensible.
"Yes," he replied throatily, feeling quite like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. "I have often felt that way."
She was triumphant. "Then you know! You know how it is—how lonely it is! To be the only peop--"
She halted and looked at him tentatively. She had nearly called him a person. She had almost tormented him with the title of humanity when it was glaringly obvious to both that he was a grotesque monster; nothing more. Her face, already tinged red, quickly flooded with crimson.
"It isn't fair," she murmured, her voice low and ardent. "It's not fair."
Indeed, it was not. Not fair for either. Certainly not fair for her.
His heart was hammering in his chest at such a feverish pace that he wondered if it were even possible to speak.
"You wish to return home?" he inquired evenly; more evenly than he could have imagined achievable. "You ask this of me?"
The look in her eyes said it all.
In that moment, any delusions he had of refusing her vanished. No bothersome thoughts of indecision crossed his mind. It was devastatingly simple.
"Then you shall."
Her cherubic face was devoid of expression.
"Thank you," she answered after a ponderous moment of silence. She stood, her every movement the product of farcically arduous effort.
"Return in a month," he added senselessly. "If in your heart you care for me in the least, you will return."
Why? What for? What would change in a month? Would he be any less a beast? The thought of existing eternally in their miserable limbo between friendship and love seemed a worse prospect than seclusion. Worse, maybe, than the death this isolation promised.
But this was his last dismal hope.
The girl nodded thoughtlessly, seemingly insensible to his suffering.
"Yes," she replied, almost as if in a trance. "A month. Yes."
"Very well," he conceded, his voice breaking pitifully. "You may leave tomorrow at dawn."
It was odd how little he felt. He had expected a relentless tempest of rage, regret, and anguish to swell within him: to howl in his ears and pulsate in his weary mind. There was instead a still—a peace, even. Yet he knew that the salamandrine flame of yearning—the perfectly silent blaze that persisted even in the calm—would consume him. There was no hope. Perhaps there was comfort to be found in simply admitting that.
It was her voice that drew him from his reveries.
"You did not have to release me," she observed, her voice ethereal and mellifluous. "You did, though. You released me."
"Of course," he murmured.
He did not for a moment have to wonder why. The reason was obvious to him. He imagined it was obvious to her, too.
PS- The whole "I've begun to think that the outside world doesn't exist at all" bit seemed vaguely familiar as I was writing it, which either means that I've used that in another unpublished BatB story, or that I unwittingly pilfered the idea from someone else (or perhaps neither... mrrrh?). I'm hoping that's not the case, but I'm sort of scatter-brained (and paranoid) and I don't want anyone to think I'm a literary thief. I'll take it out if it belongs to you!
PPS- The blurb about Beast wanting to tell her who he really is was inspired by Answer's story "Dropping Eaves", in which Belle knows that the Beast is under a curse from the start. Read it!