Chapter 4: Mirror, Mirror

"Belle, we need to talk about what has been going on."

Belle looked up, startled to find her father in the doorway of her room. She had thought that he had gone to bed as it was well into the night. Chip was sleeping quietly in the little cubby that he had claimed for his own. She was holding the mirror in her hand, but hadn't worked up the courage to ask it to show her the object of her circling thoughts.

"Yes, Father, what is it?"

Maurice stepped further into his only child's room and closed the door behind him. He met his curious daughter's eyes as he sat at the end of her bed, his own eyes glancing at the mirror in her hands for a moment before returning to her face.

"I have seen precious little of that mirror before, where did you get it?"

Belle blushed slightly and looked down at the mirror for a moment before looking back at her father, "The Beast gave it to me as something to remember him by when I left."

Maurice frowned, "I still find it hard to believe that a monster such as that-"

"He's not a monster!" Belle interrupted and then looked apologetically at her father when he gave her a reprimanding look, "What I mean to say, is that he's not a monster, not anymore. He might have been at one point, Father, but he's changed. He's not like that, not anymore."

Maurice watched as his daughter's fingers traced the mirror's frame around the glass, her eyes had a faraway look to them and he wasn't sure she was aware of what her fingers were doing. He sat in silence, thinking about her words and her actions and comparing them to the words and actions of the beast in his memories. He glanced over at the sleeping cup, Chip. He wondered if he should be concerned about his daughter's attachment to a beast or a man that she had stayed with. He would be more worried if he wasn't confident in his ability to read his daughter. She was in love, but it was highly unlikely that anything untoward had happened.

"Why do you think he let you go?"

Belle started out of her memories and met her father's eyes once more, "Because he's my friend." She hadn't hesitated in her answer, her hands continuing their journey on the mirror.

"Is that all he is to you?"

Belle's hands pulled away from the mirror as she looked at her father in surprise. He smiled at her, a smile of sorrow and happiness and resignation. She blinked; she hadn't ever seen him look at her like that, not since her mother had died. She placed a hand on her father's knee and looked at him in concern. He continued to smile at her and shook his head.

"Belle, my only daughter, before all of this started, we talked about your future. Do you remember that?"

She nodded and then grimaced slightly, "You mentioned Gaston as a possibility. Please tell me that you're not…" She trailed off as Maurice laughed softly and shook his head, the smile never leaving his face.

"No, although if he's the first person you think of when I ask you who you would like to spend the rest of your life with, then maybe you should give him a chance."

She frowned at him for a moment, taking in the seriousness in his voice despite the laughter before her eyes widened. "F-father!"

His smile didn't diminish, "Think about it, Belle." His face grew solemn for a moment as he stood and looked down at his daughter, his only child and all that he had left from his beautiful wife. "But, Belle, think about what it is you want, because from what we know of Gaston from our guest, we won't have as much time as I would like for you to come to your decision."

He left her there, thinking, on her bed. Her fingers returning to their task of tracing the mirror's frame in her hands, Belle watched as her father left her room, closing the door softly behind him once more. She looked down into the mirror for a moment before glancing at the sleeping Chip, making sure that he had slept through their discussion. Chip mumbled something inaudibly before returning to his slumber, having slept deeply enough that he was untroubled. She smiled softly at the young cup, before returning her gaze to the mirror in her lap. She hadn't used it yet this day for herself. She bit her lip as she held it aloft.

"Show me the Beast, please." Her whispered words fogged the mirror over for a moment, so close was she holding it. The fog cleared from the glass as an image came into focus on. Her breath caught as she took in the slumped figure in his room. The Beast looked so defeated, so forlorn. Her eyes drank in his every feature and movement, though she paid little attention to anything that was around him. He looked so sad, so broken… Her poor Beast… Her hand clenched around the mirror's handle as she thought about what her father had said. She hadn't wanted to leave the Beast, not in the end.

She had wanted to at first, when she had been alone with him for the first night. She had thought, in her tears that she would even prefer to be married to Gaston over being locked up in this strange castle with a monster. At least, if she had wed Gaston, he would have stayed in the village. She would be stuck there, tied down to a man that she didn't really care for, but she would be able to see her father. In this strange castle, locked up with a monster, the only friends she could possibly have would be the strange servants. She had thought, in a rather uncharitable moment, that the servants would spy on her and report back all her wanderings to the monster that had imprisoned her father.

"But that wasn't how it stayed…" Belle murmured to herself. The Beast had frightened her terribly, but he had come for her when she was in trouble. The servants, the strange objects that could walk and talk, had been kind to her and eased her loneliness.

She wanted to see them again, talk with them and laugh with them. Most of all, she wanted to spend time with the Beast, her Beast. She wanted to read with him and see him every morning and before the end of the day, so that he would be the first and last person that she saw every day. She wanted to introduce him to her father, watch as they, hopefully, learned to get along. She wanted her friends from the Castle to meet her father and she wanted her father to learn to care for them as she did.

She wanted to go home, home with her Beast.

Belle fell asleep holding the mirror to her chest as if she were cradling the mourning figure shown within close to her heart.