Title: Unworthy

Author: Rissa85-Stargazing85

Rating: PG13 to R

Genre: Angst, Drama, Romance

Part: Part Four (Retrospection on Chanelle)

Disclaimer: =( -You know what this symbolizes.

Author's Note: I should really quit with the Disclaimer, I think everyone gets it by now. Now this is always the fun part of the story. I love this part in the movie sometimes I have to watch it and do 4-5 repeats. =) So much opportunity for imagination, I'm trembling. I guess mine will be running wild this chapter. Thank you all for your great reviews. TrudiRose, Kates, Serengeti Dawn -Thanks for all your immensely helpful reviews. This is the part of the story, finally, were I stop being a Sports Broadcaster for the movie, and develop my own ideas...sort of.

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With suddenness, she saw a bizarre contraption, moving about like an arachnid on that wide strip of stone that disappeared into hazy inscrutability. She looked about her, her view still misty, there were gargantuan piles of sodden straw at either end of the small and impersonal dungeon. Dismal words were etched into the stonewalls. Insomnie, Désespoir, Mort. All of them signifying the same sort of emotion. Dejection.

She heard scratches ascending the flight of steps. The Beast was heading toward her, and she felt the glacial wind envelop her. Now she grasped the depth of fright and chilliness that her father had experienced. It was almost as if the cloak did nothing and she was just sitting on the frosted floor only in her thin chemise.

In her peripheral vision, she could see his talons. She wanted to speak to him, question him why he didn't let her say good-bye to her father, spend a few minutes with him before his untimely leave. But the monstrosity she saw, and the overwhelming fear that she felt kept her from being verbal.

She gazed down at the wool, sapphire-hued cloak. It still held the scent of her father's cologne, the cloak had been his. She clutched it tighter about her, almost as if it would bring back her father. It only served to bring back an accelerated flow of memories, some as far back as she could remember and some as recent as the past weeks. Those memories that she cherished; to live the rest of her lifetime with her mind crucified by them.

"I'll show you to your room." His voice was imposing. She was surprised, she did not know what she should anticipate but it was not another atmosphere. She was definite that she would be spending the greater part of what was left as a meager existence, in a wretched tower without light and fire, such as her father had been held.

She stood inflexibly, the wind more tempestuous and giving her fingertips, face, and arms the feeling of numbness. Behind him, taciturn, she cast her head down, somehow her poise had been decimated. She did not wish to retrieve it, for it served no purpose her. As gigantic and arresting as he, he should desire a complacent prisoner. And having little to sustain her, she intended to be one, if only to make it easier for her to manage.

Her darling father. Making his way to a home without her. She had always felt a sort of emptiness in her home, even with her father there. Half of her heritage had passed and now, with both ladies in the home gone, how would her father keep up? She would gladly send him correspondence from the castle, if only to see his familiar and scratchy handwriting scrawled across the Laroque stationary. But asking the Beast for permission would lead to a circumstance that she could not deduce a pleasant conclusion.

It almost made her eyes water when she stepped from the aloof dungeon into the semi-familiar warmth of the rest of the castle. The door behind her latched, without any help from either her or the Beast, and she gaped back at it before following the Beast, keeping a distance from him. It was morbidly noiseless and sinister for all the impressive embroidery they were trudging on, all maroon and gold and detailed with clashing onyx hellions.

She had been instructed in a religion where hellions and serpents such as the ones she saw on the walls and in the sculptures, where linked with sin and suffering. The fall of Man had been attributed to serpents. And this caused her imagination to wander, perhaps the fall of the Beast in front of her had its cause allied to such an odious creature. Certainly, beings like him were not conceived that way. Or perhaps...

Papa had always made it a ritual, since as far as she could recollect, to drop to one's knees and pray before sleep each night and during supper. It had always jaded her until she was mature enough to comprehend what she was doing, but even when she did not understand, he was stern with her. Religion, she remembered from a faraway sermon, will be release.

Perhaps there were only two elements that he had ever been unpleasant with her. Practicing religion and her mother. She had never even known her mother's name, the bookkeeper had not even known it, and she had never pressed her father for information, because she did not like to see his solemn expression. Her eyes began to water once more.

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He glanced out of his eye's corner and saw her bowed head, her hushed tears that slid down her face, and her changed composure. When she had walked about the castle, prying for her father, he had noticed her probing enthusiasm and poise. Now, she kept her head cast down, her poise had altered.

Her decision was still imprinted in his mind, along with the feelings of reverence and astonishment. She was exclusively self-sacrificing and strong- minded, though her small frame and feminine voice did not reveal her venerable personality. He cast a glimpse behind him once more, seeing her exterior.

She was notably gorgeous with full and thick chestnut-brown hair that stopped where her corset should begin. Her nose was small and the tip was slightly rounded, and her full lips were coral-hued and with a slight pout. Her step was light and agile, and though she was not tall, her slender and once poised character had made her seem so. Most of the stunningly attractive women he had come in contact with during his lifetime were the utmost of selfish and the majority had been extremely wealthy. Perhaps her station in life had caused her to be humble.

Her eyes fluttered and at once he turned his head forward again, feeling a foreign emotion. Guilt. Not even when he had been enchanted did he feel such way. In all essence, the only thing he felt had been resentment at the Enchantress dressed in jade muslin and silk that billowed. In all his ten years of imprisonment in a grotesque form, he did not feel remorse. Only antagonism at the Enchantress and his form, he had not modified his personality much at all. It was as if he was the same person he had been ten year before.

His mind voyaged to the past, the last time he had felt contrition. When his mother had passed, Madame Montague, the lovely woman with impeccable manners and married to royal blood with spiraling straw-colored locks that cascaded down her back like a golden waterfall. Her eyes had been verdant and lenient, the rare times that she was severe; her voice never rose or fell in tone. She had been all which had brought him to his feet in his youth.

He had joked with ferocity accompanied by his elite companions about her, noting her lack of blue blood and her 'commoner' origins. They often teased him in ill will, bitingly calling him 'half-rabble', when his near uncontrollable temper surfaced. His friends themselves were the sons of notable earls, dukes, and of other landed gentry.

The form behind him was probably more magnanimous than his mother, as sacrilegious as it sounded to him. Casting away her life so that her elderly father might live in freedom. She had crucified herself for her father, and caused him to think. He must speak with her stunning character, closing his eyes and thinking of his persecuting remorse.

A soft whisper from the golden holder he was grasping spoke to him in near- silent tones. Conseiller royal à la providence Lumiere, royal advisor, having been turned to a candle-holder since the far-off Enchantment. Since childhood he had known Lumiere, nephew of a humble governess and only a few years older than he. From his youth, he remembered Lumiere as suave and refined, and found no trouble in conversing with ladies or drawing them to him.

"Say something to her." He pressured, in the same smooth voice that always fell easy on ears and appealed to females in romantic tones. Though he was a royal advisor, the Beast could always recollect that he had often conversed with him, during the inactive times at the numerous balls that Chanelle held. His advice was usually correct and nothing to be ignored if one wanted pleasant results.

He informed her with vacillation, strange that she should plunder him of his influential confidence, all the while her aura was nothing imperious and everything of dispiritedness and resignation. "I...I hope you enjoy your life here....This place is your home now, you are free to roam wherever you wish, except the West Wing." He turned to look back at her and noticed her eyes were a deep russet, fringed with dark lashes that were long and thick.

She had a curious glint in her eyes as she spoke to him, "What's in the West Wing?" she questioned in her feminine voice, meekly losing its despondency. She was valorous for questioning him, and on such a subject.

The thought of her prying hands on the imported and precious tapestries, all coordinated by Madame Chanelle Montague, led his serenity to snap without delay. And he felt the vehemence near what he experienced when he saw her father wrapped in the cloth that belonged Monsieur Leverette. He answered as rapidly as the thoughts that entered his head. "It's forbidden!" he spoke with passion and dynamism, turning around and glowering at her from his height.

Her intrepid curiosity was shattered, and he saw in her the loathsome fright that he often saw in his servants when he raised his voice. For a fraction of a second he saw the fright, then it was replaced by her docility and quietness as before. Impulsively, he wished he could take back his outburst so that the becoming intrusiveness would resurface on her lovely features. But he had learned- To undo the past was unattainable.

He led her to the second floor of North Wing, descending several flights of steps and through corridors. He had no idea, essentially, of what room he was give to her, just so that it may be farther from the West Wing, and the South Wing, which had belonged to his father. The woman that was walking behind him was soundless, if he had not known better he would think that it was only he walking by himself.

The door, that he came to a halt at, was one that covered him with dread. It was the room his mother had often wandered to when she would sleepwalk in the dead of night. It was a beautiful room, the first she had decorated when she married Monsieur Montague, it was the first room she stayed in before embellishing the West Wing. He often found himself swigging spirits, the times when contrition overwhelmed him, in this very room. He commanded that it be kept smelling of her perfume and of peppermint, a smell that instantaneously reminded him of her.

Unlatching the door for her, he watched her walk in, holding the cloak about her as tightly as one would wield a cross in front of a vampire. She was very still with her back toward him. He spoke soothingly, venturing to be gallant toward her. "If you are in need anything, my servants will wait on you."

He saw Lumiere nod and then urge more from him. He was annoyed that she should command without so much as word such chivalry from him, it was as if all it took was her presence to almost make him deferential to her. It irritated him, that she was capable of unwittingly ravaging his insouciance.

He drew himself up, attempting to make up for his uncharacteristic courtliness, and ordained riotously. "You will meet with me for dinner....That is not a request!" he slammed the door promptly, but not before seeing her straighten impertinently and square her shoulders.

He felt something detached and cool drape over him, and he closed his eyes. Her defiance reminded him so much of his mother it stunned him. During her time as Mistress of the castle, he had but one time see someone act insubordinately toward her. As a small child, he had heard plenty of his father's elite companions speak of her discourteously, and upon hearing them speak one would think they were referring more to a impure and salacious harlot than the wife of royalty.

The one time he had heard a servant dare to provoke his mother, he had been sitting at her feet as she read to him. In her soft tone, she questioned a servant on the whereabouts of the Le Roi Leverette, she was formal, even after years of marriage. In a slanderous voice, the maid had replied that perhaps he could be found either in the embrace of opium or in the embrace of another concubine.

His mother, asking the servant in a low and vicious tone to follow her out of the room, left him sitting on the floor. All the while he heard his mother's always composed but now vicious voice, and then a distinct and forceful slap. Subsequently followed by the hurried patter of heels across polished and gleaming marble. The servant, with a face bright red against an ashen complexion, replied stoically that his mother had retired immediately and that he should read and continue his studies alone.

She had remained defiant, through during the marriage, where she was occasionally the brunt of crude banter among the propertied classes. And her obstinacy to nothing less than respect made her admirable to him, and toward his latter years-he began to esteem her strength.

It was the same strength which had made him flashback to his mother that he had seen when the young woman now in his confinement had shown. Though in her position she was lesser to him, she still held herself in esteem.

But it pained him to see that she was now inhabiting the same room he had often drank spirits in, the room he had often slipped unconsciously into drink because of his mind-splitting remorse. Another cool drape of air passed over him, and he opened his eyes before fleeing back to the West Wing.