A quick note about Gaston for this fic of mine. I haven't really made him out to be the villain in this story (at least not yet). For right now, his character persona is more heavily based on Once Upon a Time's Gaston. Just thought I would leave this here, in case some of you read his more tender side towards Belle and are thinking WTF, that isn't the Gaston we know! I hope that you enjoy this chapter for what it is. More to come soon!

CHAPTER 4

BELLE could not bring herself to look into Gaston's piercing eyes, so intent on watching her, though she could feel the man's intense stare burning a hole in the side of her skull as she served the Prince and his fiancée their meals, poured their wine and took her place dutifully by the door and anxiously awaited the Prince's next commands.

She point-blank refused to look at any of them. She never smiled. She saw them all except perhaps the blonde woman, who seemed kind and sympathetic enough and tried to give Belle her best, 'Everything Will Be Fine' smile on occasion in between sips of her red Italian wine.

Everything was NOT going to be fine. Why was Gaston here?! Belle felt her panic return tenfold. She looked as though Monsieur Cogsworth had punched her in the gut as she could hardly bring herself to tear her horrified gaze away from the wealthiest man in her village and back towards the Head of House in order for Cogsworth to excuse her, hopefully, that moment would come for her sooner rather than later.

But the old man's face remained impassive. The only person in the room who was smiling at her was the lady Circe. Belle cringed and tried to return the smile, though she could already feel her cheeks' reluctance to mold so falsely. When she tried, it definitely felt strained, false.

So, she stopped, the smile sliding off her face like water over rocks. Luckily, the Prince's fiancée, who Belle learned over the course of catching snippets of their conversation, was named Circe, and was a princess from some remote corner of a distant country, far away in north Germany. During the course of the dinner, Belle was forced to watch as the Prince grew drunker the more he drank. She was beginning to feel a pang of pity for this poor princess.

"A toast to my future Princess! May our union spread from the vast corners of France, and all the way to the edges of Romania when we marry," The Prince's strong but slurred and sluggish voice roared.

Belle bit the wall of her mouth and pointedly looked away as Gaston raised his wine glass, too intently studying Belle over the rim of his golden chalice, his eyes glistening with a horrible intrigue. Belle's face betrayed her emotions of disgust and abhorrence as she crinkled her nose as the Prince bit off a chunk of turkey leg as he pulled the meat off the bone in a ravenous way that Belle could only describe as wolfish.

She would have thought a noble Prince would have had better manners, but that did not seem to be the case here. Heaving an angered sigh, she turned towards the Prince and dutifully bowed her head, keeping her hands clasped folded together in front of her middle in respect.

"Permission to be excused, Your Grace," she begged, biting down on her bottom lip, and sticking it out then. Belle could still feel Gaston eyeing her, and the longer she remained in his presence, the sicker that she felt.

The Prince could not even be bothered to look at her, much less acknowledge her words with a verbal response of his own. Instead, he dismissed her with an airy, almost cold wave of his hand.

Belle shot a furtive glance towards Princess Circe, almost abhorring the thought of leaving the young woman alone in the company of this brute, pitying the princess, but nor could she stomach standing being under the same roof as Gaston. Belle was only too happy to comply.

She turned on her heels and hastily quit the dining room, not even waiting for Monsieur Cogsworth to open the double oak doors for her.

As soon as she reached the hallway that led down into the servants' quarters, she stopped and leaned against a white marble pillar for support, her chest heaving for calm, her body trembling.

The thought of what she had done weighed heavily on her heart, how she had given up her freedom in order to save her father's life, filling hot, wretched tears in her eyes, and she vented off a sob that caused a pressure behind her eyes.

Willing to forget the almost hungered look in Gaston's eyes, Belle collected herself and straightened her gait, and walked on, down towards a spiraling elaborate staircase, and another set of rows of immaculate marble pillars to the rose gardens, where she was surrounded in a sea of the red and white flowers, their intoxicating scent calming to her frayed nerves. Tonight, thank God, it was peaceful.

Everyone back in the castle was sure to be gossiping over Prince Adam du Barreau, and what a beast of a pig he was. She walked among the flowers, the scent of the roses slowly calming her, melting some of the tension in her muscles away until she thought she'd let herself relax.

"Strange, isn't it, pretty Belle, don't you think?" came a manly baritone voice that made the fine hairs on the back of Belle's neck stand upright as she turned on her heels.

Dread seeped its way into the pit of her swooping stomach as she found herself looking into Gaston's face. His towering, hulking silhouette in the rose gardens was unmistakable as he crept closer to her, sticking to the shadows, like the phantom Belle always knew Gaston was.

Gaston smiled at her, though not necessarily maliciously. "A girl away from her father. How did that happen, pretty Belle?" Gaston was smiling at her, though his smile did not quite reach his glistening eyes as he looked at her. "What are you doing here, Belle? Why have you come?"

"It isn't like I wanted to be away from Papa, Gaston," Belle seethed, gnashing her teeth together in her rage. "I did not have any say in the matter, this punishment is my burden to bear, my cross, if you will," she huffed angrily.

She turned away and folded her arms across her chest, though revulsion spurred in her chest as this seemed to entice Gaston to move in towards her even closer, like a vulture swooping down on its prey, she, his prey tonight.

"But you did, pretty belle," Gaston pointed out bluntly, though not necessarily unkind.

But Belle thought she detected a faint trace of anger, annoyance, or perhaps even fear slowly creeping its way to the surface of his tone.

"You could have chosen the option to remain silent and kept your tongue in between your teeth, Belle. Jesus. Have you any idea what it meant to me to see you and your father escorted from the village. People are talking, Belle," he hissed through gritted teeth.

Belle inwardly sighed. There it was. The root cause of his anger. He was angry with her, but not for the reasons she'd expected.

Gaston Dupont cared more for his own reputation and did not give a damn about her and her father, and never would. He cared that the entire village was whispering behind his back at the fact that the object of his desires and affections had been whisked away along with her father by a pair of the Prince's guards.

When her father returned, and she did not, she could only imagine the simple-minded peasant folks' gossiping tongues wagged harder. She turned and gave him a grimaced look by way of an answer, not sure what else to say to the man now.

His chuckling gave way to laughter before a glint of feigned worry plastered its way across handsome features. "Ah. Forgive me. I'm sorry for the disrespect." Gaston, without waiting for an invitation, took Belle's soft hand to kiss the back of her bone-white hand, and he knelt gently. "My lady," he murmured, though the minute his lips touched her knuckles, Belle tasted bile in her throat, and she angrily shoved his chest and pushed him away, hard.

"Don't, Gaston, please," she begged, biting on her lip as she summoned enough strength on her throat to plead with the dark-haired hunter and soldier to keep a respectful distance. "If you've any decency in your heart, if you truly care for me, just…don't. Stay away from me."

Gaston paused, a shadow flitting across his sharp, angular features. Belle, who had been able to turn on her heels and quit the gardens too and flee to the sanctity of her bedroom in the servants' quarters, perhaps the only room in the entire castle where she could be left alone, halted when she heard the man's next words to her then.

"Even though you are here under the servitude and roof of my old friend, Belle, don't think it changes anything, I'm still in love with you, pretty belle. Say the word, and I can take you away from here. I can pay your debt. Prince Adam won't trouble you or your father ever again if you just allow me to help you."

Belle cringed and slowly turned about to face him, gaping at him and unable to say anything, the breath was stolen from her lungs in such a way that she knew had nothing to do with the cold night air surrounding them.

Gaston had, in so many ways since she'd know the man, spoken of his feelings for her for too many years to count, ever since she had turned eighteen and had grown into her beauty, and now, at twenty and one, he was relentless in his attempts to court her and to marry her.

But as handsome as Gaston was, and she suspected the man would treat her well enough were Belle to finally concede and accept his offer of marriage, she simply could not bring herself to love him, or to see him in a romantic light in the way he hoped for. Gaston Dupont was a difficult man to love, and as such, she could not return his affections.

"Gaston, I…I don't…I never…" she whispered, feeling as though her tongue suddenly felt thick in her mouth, as though someone had stuffed it with wet clay.

If the man in front of her were masking his sadness, then Gaston was excellent at hiding it from Belle now. A flicker of something unreadable darted across Gaston's eyes, his jaw hardening. He licked his lips to moisten them and took a step backward away from Belle.

"My lady, you are playing a very dangerous game here," Gaston warned, his tone shifting to something much more serious in a way that made Belle shudder. "Adam might come looking for you. You are the man's new hearth keep, after all, darling, like it or not about yourself, pretty belle. Think of how this would look if we were to be found."

Belle made an odd little strangled noise at the back of her throat after fingering a delicate blood-red rose's petals and plucking it carefully with a practiced thumb and forefinger, vigilant to mind the plant's sharpened thorns.

Belle knew full well how this was sure to look. But given her current agitated mood and surliness, she could not manage to pretend to care what the Prince would think. Or anyone else in his employment, for that matter. She felt Gaston looking on at her with an expression akin to pity and sympathy for her current situation, and she immediately tasted a horrible bitterness in her mouth.

"I—I don't need your pity, Gaston," Belle stammered awkwardly, having noticed the man had gone silent.

Gaston let out a tired sigh. He had to lie. "I was not offering you any, Belle. Merely a chance to escape here."

"That's cruel. I take it you know then what happens if I try to flee and leave this place. He will come for my father. I—I can't let Papa get hurt, Gaston. No." She shook her head vehemently, as though to convince herself that staying was the right choice, the correct path forward, though Gaston's offer, she hated to admit it, was sorely tempting, if only for her chance at freedom and seeing her father again. She flinched when she saw Gaston smile.

"Oh, Belle," he laughed, though there was a twinge of sadness laced throughout his tone as he continued to look at the prettiest girl from their village. "I know you to be many things, pretty little dove, but a coward, you aren't."

This time, Gaston really did see Belle shudder as she fingered the rose she now held clutched tenderly in her palms, fingering the petals as though she'd never quite seen anything like the flower she held now in her hands.

"He's just a man, your new master, Belle. Adam might be bloodthirsty and cruel, yes, that much is true, but just a man," Gaston pointed out in almost a languid voice as he strategically placed his hands behind his back and calmly approached her, not wanting to startle Belle any further.

Belle paused with her absentminded fidgeting of the petals of the rose, as much as to quell the shakes in her hands as to avoid having to look Gaston in the eyes.

Something she was avoiding doing, and unfortunately, Gaston was even more determined to make her look at him. At the very least, judging by the way her breaths almost stilled, Gaston knew that Belle was listening to him and heeding his words, so he trudged on with his bit.

"Men…we are fierce creatures, Belle, until a woman tears her robe or flashes of her ankles and then we fall to our knees at the first sight of a pretty girl. What I'm offering you, Belle, is freedom. Think on my words. I could have you whisked away from this very place, tonight. We'd go somewhere. Your father could come too. You would never have to set foot inside this place again. You would not be marrying me for nothing, Belle."

Belle suppressed a breath at hearing Gaston's words. Grasping this, she fought against the saddened smirk that tugged the edges of her lips upward and turned to face him. "You should learn manners how to talk to a lady, Gaston, curse you, if you ever want to win my heart…"

She let her voice trail off as she wriggled her brows at Gaston, and for a moment, Belle almost smiled at Gaston. That was, at least, until a young foot soldier appeared, vexed, and agitated, and seemingly uninterested in the festivities that were going on within the Prince's castle.

The newcomer breathed a sigh of relief upon spotting the pair of them, and if the guard found the sight of one of the Prince's friends of noble blood conversing with a young peasant woman, he did not seem to hold interest.

It did not escape Belle's notice that the guard was almost trembling, his entire body quaking from head to toe. She took a cautious half-step forward, a hand gingerly outstretched with the intention of putting her hand on the man's shoulder in the hopes of providing some comfort.

But she thought better of it when he staggered back.

"M—Milady, Monsieur Dupont, you'd better hurry. There's been...an incident."

Belle blinked owlishly at the guard, feeling quite certain she had misheard. She drew in a frigid breath of cold air that pained her lungs. What happened? Was someone hurt? Though before she could part her lips open to speak, Gaston was the first to break the awkward and heavy silence between the three of them.

"What happened?" Gaston cut through, his voice losing the previously softened edges that had lingered only seconds ago when he'd been conversing with Belle. "What is it? Is it the Prince? Has something happened, Laurent?"

The guard kept his attention fixated on Gaston, though his nervous blue eyes briefly looked towards Belle in a quandary, bowing to her before turning back to Gaston. "Ah, well, you could say that," he stammered. "A—a woman at the gates, monsieur," the guard mumbled.

Belle swallowed down hard past the lump in her throat despite her drying mouth and licked her lips to moisten them. "A woman?" she asked, furrowing her eyebrows, as she looked towards Gaston for confirmation. "Were you the Prince's only other company tonight asides for her?"

He nodded. Gaston's heart began to race in anxiety, and he was currently cursing the guard for picking the wrong moment to approach, right when he'd been about to make one last push to convince her to come with him. Before Belle could ask what on earth was going on, a prattling noise hooked her attention from behind, as somewhere in the distance, towards the front gates, a number of guards and servants alike were congregating.

If Belle strained her ears to listen, she thought she could hear the unmistakable flustered tone of Cogsworth.

"Come, we'd better see what the commotion is," grunted Gaston in a tone that sounded off-put by the interruption to what had otherwise been a private conversation, one that the guard rudely interrupted.

Without waiting to be asked, Gaston gripped tightly onto Belle's forearm and began to follow the frantic guard towards the small crowd now gathered by the iron gates. One was shouting out behind the closure, things neither Belle nor Gaston could even begin to articulate.

But Belle could tell from the looks of the servants gathered around the gate, this wasn't any good news.

"What's going on?" she squeaked in a breathless voice, clutching at a stitch at her side as Gaston pulled her towards the front. She felt a twinge of fear upon recognizing the thick blond luscious hair of the Prince.

The Prince and his fiancée, Circe, stood at the front. Lumiere was the first to grace Belle with an answer. "There's a woman at the gates seeking an audience with the Prince," the golden-haired Head of House spoke in a surprisingly calm and collected tone as he spoke up.

Gaston scoffed and found it difficult to roll his eyes. "And neither of you could interrogate her without making this much of a ruckus?" he barked hoarsely, completely missing slightly rueful glower Belle shot him.

"She uh, wanted to see the Prince, monsieur."

"She has a name?" Gaston fired back immediately.

"She didn't want to say it, sir," Lumiere pointed out with a slight shrug of his shoulders, furrowing his brows at the way the handsome dark-haired acquaintance of his master seemed to hover protectively over the young Belle.

"Then someone should have told her to leave before the Prince got involved, though it would seem it's already too late for that, old friend," Gaston muttered darkly, spitting his words as though they were poison upon his tongue, striding past Lumiere and not sparing him a second look.

Lumiere looked flustered and troubled. "But…" he stammered, though he trailed off when he felt Cogsworth nudge beside him and the older gentleman shook his head no, motioning for his colleague to stay silent on the issue.

Gaston seized Belle's forearm and dragged her forward, ignoring Belle's startled yelp of surprise as she faltered forward and practically bowled the hunter over, though for once, Gaston did not apologize for his rough handling of the young brunette. For right now, his calculating mind was stuck on one thing and one thing only: protecting her.

Belle curiously had to stand on tiptoes to peek her head over Gaston's broad shoulder to try to get a good look at this mysterious woman who'd showed up at the castle gates, uninvited and unannounced, and causing a scene.

She drew in a sharp gasp at the sight of the old woman. Her skin was cracked and bruised, to say nothing of wrinkled. Her hair was stiff and coarse, what little of it she could see, as most of it remained hidden underneath a thick black woolen set of robes. A fresh smattering of red surrounded the edge of the old woman's blue-tinged lips. Her wrists were bound, the tight rope binding her wrists together was frayed at the edges, and in her hand, she held a single and beautiful elaborate blood-red rose.

Like the one that I plucked from the gardens, Belle thought wildly, biting the wall of her cheek as she fell silent and waited for someone to break the silence. She felt Gaston nudge beside her, and did not, for once, protest, when she felt his strong hand come to rest on the top of her shoulder.

"What is it that you want?" Belle shuddered upon hearing the Prince's threatening tone, though she was more than a little taken aback to see that his harsh bark merely spurred a quiet shrug from this cloaked stranger.

She took two shuffling steps near, stooped over, hunched, perhaps she would not stand upright in the hopes of keeping her face concealed, or perhaps she was not able to stand upright on her own two feet, but whatever the reason, Belle felt a pang of pity tug at her heartstrings as she saw the rope chafed the woman's skin badly, suggesting she'd been a prisoner for a while now.

When the old crone spoke, it was a voice coming from a woman of an undeterminable age—hoarse yet acrid and filled with a horrible abhorrence for the noble Prince now. "I would beg of you sanctuary from the bitter cold, Your Highness. What little I have to offer in exchange is not much, monsieur, but I can offer you this rose, sire."

Belle shivered as a heavy uncomfortable silence filled the air, except for the whistling gales of the wind around them. She considered herself a good judge of character. She knew men like this Prince. He was a plain, transparent chap. An inconceivable monster of a man.

Studying the old woman a moment longer, Prince Adam du Barreau allowed the smallest of smiles to grace across his handsome features.

"You've committed a crime on my lands, wench, punishable by hanging, and you would ask of me shelter in exchange for a pathetic rose? You trespass on my domain, peasant," the Prince growled.

Belle gritted her teeth at the contempt and malice that dripped from the man's tone like poison as he stalked his way towards the iron-wrought gates and motioned with an almost lazy wave of his arm for a nearby guard to open it. The guard looked hesitant but could only obey.

As the Prince stalked towards the would-be-trespasser, it was only when the hooded she-stranger lowered her cloak and stood up straight to her fullest height that Belle felt her blood run cold in her veins and a sudden stab of fear prick her heartstrings, rendering her feeling utterly paralyzed and rooted to her spot at that exact moment.

Belle felt her heart very nearly cease beating within her chest as the quivering feeble muscle gave a painful lurch, and the color drained from her face with sick realization as the stranger slowly swiveled her gaze and met Belle's eyes.

And then the unthinkable occurred. She smiled at her, though she couldn't return it. The woman who had just made a very grave mistake was none other than Villeneuve's own resident beggar woman, the kind-hearted Agathe, a widow on the streets.

"Guards," barked the Prince in a hoarse voice as he came to a halt in front of Agathe.

Belle could only watch on in horror and she heard Gaston beside her give an audible grunt of disbelief, or was it anger? Gaston's face remained impassive, rendering it impossible for Belle to tell what the man was thinking of all of this.

But she had no time to dwell on what the former war captain was thinking of doing or saying in hopes of supplicating his friend as the Prince continued barking out commands. His next words sent a chill through Belle's spine.

"Arrest her. Have this trespasser hanged."