She ran. She ran back into the castle, up the winding staircases, past her mother who cried out her name, and flung herself down on her bed where she didn't wait for her nurse to leave merely buried her eyes into her arms and pillows and wept uncontrollably. Her nurse tried to help her. She sat down next to her own the bed and rubbed her back, asking her questions, which she answered in short tear-filled sentences. She didn't watch Lydia's face, she didn't really care what she looked like, but hearing her trying to make the most of it made her sick.

"There, there, Miss...I'm sure he's not that bad once you get to know him."

"Get to know him?" she shouted back. "I don't want to get to know him, I don't want to have anything to do with him!"

"Well...who says you will? Wars don't last forever, there was no engagement only a betrothal, maybe in a few years when all is said and done you won't have to marry the man."

She perked up at that thought and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Was that really a possibility? Her nurse was right, if Gaston and her father were so confident that this would work then who said that this would have to be forever? Who said that she couldn't break off the betrothal the moment the war ended and...

And send her country spiraling right back into the hole of war when Gaston mounted a defense because she didn't keep her word. No. This was it wasn't it. Either she'd marry Gaston or...there was no or. Not unless she died. Or he died. What was the chance he'd go to war himself to fight the ogres?

Her stomach turned at the very thought of such a terrible wish. She felt as though he'd invaded her soul already and all she could really do was let out a cry turn into her pillow and-

The door to her room groaned open and when she turned she found her mothers figure framed in the doorway, looking at her thrown over her bed. She opened the door further and finally stepped inside. "Lydia if you wouldn't mind I need a moment alone with my daughter."

Her nurse looked down at her with sadness and hesitation but she knew that Lydia was as stuck as she was, she couldn't disobey an order from the Queen. "Yes, your Majesty," she finally muttered softly before rising and leaving the room. Her mother closed the door after her took a seat at her vanity. They stared at each other for a long time before her mother finally let her stern unreadable expression fall into sympathy and sadness just as Lydia's had. "Oh my girl..." she breathed looking her over from across the room. "That was...a very brave thing you did. It was also the right thing."

"The right thing?!" she cried. "Mama he's evil! I saw it myself in the mirror! His soul, it's..."

"His soul is nearly as young as yours," her mother insisted. "He's only older than you only by a couple of years, there is plenty of time to change between now and your marriage, this Kingdom will change time and time again and so will his soul. You both have some growing up to do before you wed."

Before they wed! What a horrible little phrase. She'd known somewhere deep down that it was bound to happen one day but now that she could see him for herself, now that it had a face and glowing red eyes she just couldn't stand the idea! And love! When was love ever supposed to be like this! She'd read hundreds of books not once did it ever happen with a match like this! She was the hero and he was the villain! Heroes and villains didn't marry! They just didn't!

"I can't!" she insisted sitting up and wiping tears from her eyes. "Please, please don't make me, I can't! Not him!"

"Oh, you only think you can't now. No woman ever thinks she can when she finds out who she'll marry! But in time my dear girl you'll find you can."

She only shook her head. Not her. That wasn't how it was going to be with her. She just…she couldn't. "But…but I don't love him…I don't even like him and I don't want to!"

Her mother looked her over with sad eyes then stood and took a timid step forward. She sat down beside her on the bed and wrapped her arms around her. She should be angry, she should be too furious to let her touch her or come near her or even talk to her right now after all this. After all her father had told her he wasn't the only one to know about this match, her mother had known about it too and encouraged it. She should be as angry at her mother as she was at her father. But she was weak. She fell into her mother's arms just as she had when she was a child and a thunderstorm shook her from her sleep. She let her mother hold her and rub her back as she cried into her shoulder.

"My sweet girl…" she finally sighed forcing her to pick herself up as she cradled her head in the palms of her hands and wiped tears away from her damp eyes. "It's is unfair. I understand that. But it is the truth. For people like us…I'm afraid love has very little to do with it in the end."

"Why?" she cried trying to catch her breath. "It's…it's already written. I'm…I'm not…I'm not even allowed to…to try?"

"Oh…come…sit here my darling and we'll have a little talk. From one woman to another." Her mother patted the space on the bed next to her and she managed to wipe her eyes and nose again as she rearranged herself and sat beside her mother. She wasn't crying, not like she had been before but she could still feel the tears in her eyes, could still feel them fall down her cheeks every time she blinked.

"I am sorry it had to happen this way my dear. In a perfect world you would have had an opportunity to choose for yourself, to pick one of the many suitors you've already met but fate sometimes forces us to make choices. Your father and I don't want you to be unhappy, no parent ever does but there is a truth about our lives that I've tried to protect you from over these many months, one that I've tried to teach you in other ways so that if this day arrived you might understand and be better prepared. I had hoped that this wouldn't happen, but you've fallen prey to what so many of us before you have as well."

"What?" she questioned utterly confused. "I don't understand, what are you talking about, what lesson?!" Was it just her or was her mother speaking gibberish.

"Oh, my girl…our lives…they are not our own. We are not as free as the people that we rule over, it is the price we pay for the life we must lead. A sacrifice we must make day in and day out."

"Our happiness?" she assumed. Her mother hadn't said the word but she could think of nothing else from what she was saying. Her happiness was the price for the life she led? She'd trade it. In a heartbeat she'd give all of it up just to undo this mess she found herself in with Gaston!

Her mother offered a little smirk. "Only at first," she muttered. "It does not feel that way forever, trust me my dear."

"But…but why at all?" She fought back. None of this made sense to her. None of it at all! "There must be someone else! Mother I can't...I won't love him! I just can't!"

Her mother nodded, and for a moment she hoped that she was about to get her permission to break off this horrible idea that someone had for the two of them and give her her blessing to pursue whatever she wanted, but nothing was ever that simple. "Oh my girl, I know you could. You have a good heart the most intelligent and perceptive person I know! You can learn to love anyone! But there is more to it than just love to consider in this situation.

"We've known for months that this war was coming that it was a possibility but we've also known we don't have the soldiers to fight them off. Gaston's does."

"But the price is my hand!" she spat back. "Marriage for soldiers how does that make any of this right?! You've always taught me that a good person does good things for no other reason other than it's the right thing to do! Gaston is only promising soldiers because he has me mother! How am I ever supposed to marry a man like that?! How am I ever to love him?!" she whispered again looking at her mother, begging her to understand this. Gaston wasn't her handsome hero. He wasn't worthy in her eyes because she knew that he felt he was born worthy! He wouldn't fight for her, he'd fight for status, for a crown. She'd be nothing to him. Just as she suddenly felt she was now. A pawn in a chess game. Just as Samuel had said. Yes, having someone to help her support the Kingdom was important...but what about having someone to support her as she ruled? Why did she have to have a partner? Why couldn't she just have a husband that was happy enough to encourage her to be the leader he knew she could be during those tough times?

"Oh my dear," her mother reached out and played with her curls again. "Let me tell you something my mother once told me. Love grows. It grows out of the smallest of seeds and sometimes it springs out of nothing at all. So long as you make the effort, one day love will come!

"You, my dear girl, love stronger than many girls I have known in my lifetime. Believe me when I say that you don't love him now, but perhaps years from now, across the table at breakfast or at a ball or over a very difficult decision like this…you will realize you do. And you will realize it so quickly that you won't even know when you began to love him, or even like him. But you'll know that you do and that you would rather die than have him, or the family that you will have made together, taken from you. It won't just be a kingdom worth fighting for, it'll be a love worth fighting for! Believe me, my darling. My mother was right when she told me, though it seemed impossible at the time, it will be right for you too."

She felt her jaw drop. Something her mother had told her…something her grandmother had told her mother?! Was she…was she speaking from experience? She didn't know. All these years she'd been on this earth and she'd never once considered that the marriage her parents had could have been arranged like this! Looking at the pair of them it seemed impossible. Her mother loved her father. Her father loved her mother. She knew it. She saw it every time they looked at each other, every time the spoke with one another, every move they made around each other. She'd never considered the fact that they might not have been in love when they married.

But those words…the words that her grandmother had told her mother, they sounded like her. She'd had very little interaction with her mother's mother, in fact it had been nearly a decade since she heard her grandmother's voice but she knew it sounded like her. And her parents...they were perfect. She might not be happy with either of them right now but she knew that they were strong together. From the moment she was born she'd seen nothing but love and strength and heard the stories of how they'd taken the throne in the midst of their mutual pain and sorrow when her father's mother, her beloved grandmother had died. They'd cared for her and the Kingdom with a strength that she'd always admired. A strength that had been planned for them? Chosen? A strength that had grown?

"I don't understand why you didn't tell me all this before he arrived this morning, why it had to come to this!," she complained after a moment of consideration. Wouldn't it have been easier if she'd known to expect him? Maybe ignorance was bliss, maybe they'd have gone for a walk in the Gardens never found the ogre and wound up happily engaged only...only she didn't regret what had happened today. She was glad she knew the real Gaston. She was just upset she now knew her true future.

"Forgive me my child," her mother answered gently. "But you are just that to me, my baby, my child and watching this has been...you have such precious little time as it is to be a child less when you are royal as we are, my Belle. We never really see how small that time is until we're grown and it's passed, but I wanted to give you that for as long as I could. I wanted to let you be a child and enjoy it-"

"But I'm not a child," she argued quickly seeing the flaw in her reasoning. True her mother and father still called her 'child' and 'girl' terms of endearment, but she knew that she was well passed the age than anyone in the Kingdom truly considered her a "child". "Not anymore, not for a long time. And now I'm..."

She couldn't even bear to say the word

Her mother nodded sadly. "I know my dear, and for that I must beg your forgiveness, for it was my fault. Your old mother knew that it was time we speak of these things long ago…but I was selfish. I wanted to keep you my child, my baby, just a bit longer…as long as I could. Longer than I should have."

Longer than she should have. She wasn't a child anymore. She was a woman. A woman that had just gone from meeting suitors to being betrothed to a man she despised above any other.

When she didn't answer her mother quickly reached out and drew her close, wrapping her up I her arms so that she could hug her. She tried to remain calm. To absorb it all without falling to pieces again. But she just couldn't. She felt lifeless as she hugged her. She knew more than half the men out there her age. And one of those men was Gaston. What kind of life could she possibly hope to have with him?

I have so much that I want to say about this chapter, but I suppose I'll begin by saying that I hope you like it. Obviously it's been heavily edited and moved in the wake of 5x17. Half of it is here the other half was used to make a new chapter you'll encounter in just a bit. Despite what this chapter is about I really enjoyed writing out this scene because it is clear that Belle and her mother both have two different points of view and ideas about love...and yet they'll both mesh in the end. We all know that Beauty and the Beast, the original french tale, it was designed to be a tale for young women to encourage arranged marriage. It was meant to say "hey you are stuck with this guy for life now find some good and don't be afraid to fall in love with him" and that is kind of what is happened between Belle and Rumple. Moments has constantly mentioned that they were married before they were married, the deal she made with him, and the way they fell in love...it was very much what Belle's mother spoke of here. And yet, Rumple will become that man that Belle pictures despite the way they come together. He'll be her partner but he'll also support her in the way she dreams about and that is what I like about this chapter. Two different views...but they are both right at the core. Just not about Gaston.

Peace and Happy Reading!