The next few days passed without any distinct feel to them, except for the listless drone of another boring day in the town. I'd never realized quite how each day was exactly like the next – in the past, I'd always had Gaston to make the day more eventful and interesting.
"Gaston is gone," Dominique said to me one day, as I passed her in the marketplace. She was sitting on a rock near the bookstore, looking depressed and lifeless.
"Where are Chanal and Anne?" I asked.
"We don't really talk anymore," she admitted, "All we ever had in common was Gaston."
"What if we found something new to have in common with them?" I asked, scratching my head and possibly coming up with the first smart idea I'd ever had in my entire life.
"Like what?" she asked.
"Like actually fixing D'Arque's asylum. And maybe making it a place that people aren't so afraid of going. I mean, I've been thinking…" I trailed off before quipping, "A dangerous pastime, I know."
"I guess it's better than moping around all the time," Dominique admitted, "But will D'Arque want anything to do with us after all of this?"
"There's only one way to find out."
And so we went to D'Arque's house yet again. He'd swept up the broken glass, but the asylum was empty and he had no desire to see us.
"You've brought me nothing but trouble," he snapped, "I've been robbed of my livelihood and nearly my life, so I would recommend you leave me in peace before Gaston receives a few new visitors."
I explained the idea that I'd had, about making the asylum more habitable (though obviously I didn't use that word.)
He threw us out, me literally.
We came back the next day. And the next, at which time Chanal and Anne joined us. And yet again the next, and so on. There was nothing else to live for, so we guided our days towards these meetings that revolved around pestering D'Arque. At last, one day he gave in.
"If it means you don't bug me every single day, SURE, ALRIGHT you can help build my asylum back up!"
We set to work. Despite our intentions, the asylum went very much back to D'Arque's usual heavy-handed tactics. But we added some extra refinishing to the Maison, along with a new room… a library.
Dedicated to Gaston's Belle. Whether she'd killed him or not, we'd never know. Why he loved her, we'd never know either. But the four of us – and D'Arque too, whether he really liked it or not. We had been strung together by Gaston since the beginning, and this final act of remembrance was the thing that finally brought it all full circle. We could never go back to living our lives as if Gaston had never existed, like many of the other villagers seemed to be able to. But then again, we didn't want to.
Five years later, we rode out to the castle again, in the middle of the night. But this time it wasn't for a confrontation. All of our fire to avenge Gaston had been spent, and now we just had this final thing to do. As Anne and Chanal kept watch to make sure none of the Prince's men came rushing in, Dominique and I dug a hole in the earth. She took a bag off her shoulder and rifled through it before picking up the magic mirror.
"Show me Belle," she said quietly. Turning the mirror towards the ground, she dropped it in the hole. I sifted the dirt over it before we rode off.
"Now Gaston has what he always wanted," Anne said, as we arrived back in town.
"What if that mirror could show us what we always wanted?" I asked, "What would you ask it for?"
"I would ask it to show me a Gaston that never met Belle," she replied bitterly. I let the subject rest. We would go to sleep, I knew, and let the darkness peel away to reveal another day of missing Gaston.
The End