A little late on this friends! I'm sorry! This chapter had been a placeholder keeping me back on this story for a while, but now it's done! And it is...the CURTAIN SCENE.
Please let me know if you're still reading, I need the encouragement! :)
Chapter 7
If Belle had to put a date to it, she would say it started the morning she fell fixing the curtains.
When he'd awoken that morning, she'd caught snatches of birdsong filtering in with the sunlight through her tiny bedroom windows, and it had struck her that she'd been here, with her master in the dark castle, for nearly two months. The snow was beginning to melt in patches nearest to the warm stone walls of the castle. Spring was coming.
It made her feel like a fresh start, and that, in turn made her feel like cleaning. Everything.
She'd been on a tear in the back part of the castle all morning, scrubbing grime from the kitchen windows, sweeping out the moldy straw littering the corners, and even opening the doors to the thrillingly icy but fresh outside air. Afterward the kitchen had looked so bright and welcoming – it was easy to choose the next target.
Her resolution had wavered slightly when she saw her master spinning in the corner of the main dining hall, but she picked up her skirt and determinedly stayed her course. If he'd noticed her raucously and awkwardly moving the ladder into the room at all, he hadn't said anything about it. In the end, she was the first to speak.
"Why do you spin so much," she heard herself ask, and was surprised by the boldness of her own voice. She hadn't really meant to ask it out loud, but she'd caught herself watching him intently, and she was burning to ask.
He didn't answer. Well, of course he didn't, she thought. It's kind of a personal question. She apologized, stammering out an explanation. "I'm sorry, it's just, you've spun straw into more gold than you could ever spend…." She petered out weakly. He remained quiet for a long moment, and she was about to turn back to the curtains when she heard him answer.
"I like to watch the wheel." He said quietly, and he was using a voice she hadn't heard before. "It helps me forget."
It sounded like an honest answer, which was shocking in itself. There was something hypnotic, reassuring about watching the wheel. Belle had felt it herself - the slow movement of the large wheel pacing the frantic activity of the small spindle, the stillness of the spinner which belies the intense focus and skilled hands required for the craft. Add to that the magic of her master's methods and the mysterious transformation that he seemed to go through when he sat down to spin, and even she found it hard to take her eyes off of it.
"Forget what?" she asked gently, coaxingly.
He stopped for a moment. "I guess it worked," he trilled, smiling his sneering grin. There's the answer she expected. He turned and smiled, giggling shrilly at his own joke, and Belle wanted to scowl at him for teasing her, but it WAS kind of funny, and she found that she was laughing along in spite of herself.
She turned back towards the curtains, grabbing a fistful of fabric and attempting to tug them back. Really, there should have been some sort of pull or sash. Perhaps they'd been left shut so long they were lodged like this. She shook them a bit more violently, hoping to break them loose.
She heard his footsteps as he got up from the wheel and walked over to watch her, and she could feel his gaze on her.
"What are you doing?" he asked, and there was that voice again, this time genuinely curious, slightly concerned. She preferred him in this timbre – lower, and somehow richer. Maybe it was the absence of mockery she was hearing, but it made her feel like she was actually speaking to him, rather than acting out some sort of role in his little play.
"Opening these!" she said, trying to sound exasperated but unable to keep the smile out of her voice. "It's almost spring – we should let some light in." She tugged again, feeling uniform resistance, and sighed in frustration. "What did you do, nail them down?"
"Yes" he said, as though it went without saying, and she rolled her eyes into the curtain. He would nail them down. Ridiculous man.
Well, nothing to do for it. She grabbed hold of the curtains with both hands and gave one powerful yank. She was rewarded with the feel of fabric ripping loose, but her moment of triumph was short-lived. She'd lost her footing on the ladder, misjudged the momentum, and the curtains were falling, and she was falling with them.
The shut her eyes and braced for the impact, but when it came it wasn't nearly as sharp as it should have been. It was gentle, and solid, and warm…
She opened her eyes.
Oh.
She was in his arms, safe, and, she realized with a flush, closer to him than she had ever been. Closer than she probably should have been.
His face was inches from hers, but he wasn't looking at her. He was squinting, as if in shock, into the sunlight. The pupils of his strange eyes had contracted to tiny pinpoints of darkness, and she could see the golden flakes that were embedded under the surface of his skin glittering in the harsh light. She found it hard to look away.
"Thank you" she said, and he seemed to finally realize that he was holding her, and gently dropped her to the floor. He stepped back, his hands fluttering, his eyes looking anywhere but at her.
"Thank you" she repeated, brushing down her skirt.
"It's – it's no matter." he stammered. His discomfort was palpable. She wondered, if he stopped fluttering his hands about, if she'd be able to see them shaking.
Nobody touches him, she thought. When was the last time he'd had that much physical contact, been that close to another human being?
Another human being. In a moment, she realized what had been bothering her about his tone, and all of the pieces came together in her mind. He was two sides of a coin. He wasn't just some kinder or more complex version of the beast in the stories – he was that beast, with all of its horrors, and also something completely different. He was – or had been – and maybe still remained, somewhere underneath it all – a man. He must be. Looking at him in that moment, she wondered if she was catching a glimpse of his true self through his thick haze of dark magic. There had been hints, when she thought about it - his moments of quiet, the small kindnesses that seem to cost him so much, how easily he was set off-kilter by her presence at times. They were so unequivocally human.
And for him to exist that way – so violent and so gentle – there must be a war being waged inside him. The man he could be - a human man, quite possibly a good man, enveloped in a shroud of power and darkness, struggling to move within it, thrashing about, stumbling and frequently losing the battle. He was coated in this curse, obscured by it, shackled by it. Maybe he wasn't fighting as hard as he should be - but there was still defiance in him.
His moments of emotional vulnerability, his rush to catch her, his sudden awkwardness at their proximity – if she thought of him as only a man, his actions were endearing. They were kind – they were sweet.
Her heart pulled at her throat. It was cruel of her, she thought, trying to tear down the curtains, rip away his protection, send the light of the outside breaking in like a bull tearing through the safe confines of his dark castle. What if he needed the darkness. What if it was a comfort to him – possibly his only comfort.
"I'll put the curtains back up." She said softly, and she was truly sorry.
He began to walk away, hesitated, stopped.
"Ah, um…" he turned to face her, puts his hand up in a gesture of dismissal, or resignation, or possibly defeat, "There's no need." He looked more uncertain than she'd ever seen him, grimacing in something she thought might be meant as a smile. "I'll get used to it."
And there was a flash of something there she hasn't seen before, she thought. For a man, who had spent God knows how many years couched in darkness, letting even a little light in was a brave step forward indeed.
