Chapter 16

Disclaimer: OK, people, it's Disney. Say it with me: Dis-ney. (Kudos for you if you get the Disney movie reference from this one!)

The Beast watched Belle vanish down the hallway, greater weight descending on him with her every step. At last, the nightingale floor fell silent, and she was gone. Gone out of his life.

"Idiot!" he cursed himself aloud, with a short accompanying molten blast of fire. "Why didn't you at least ask her before she left?" He knew, though, the answer to his own question: while she might have had some buried feelings for him, her love for her father was far stronger. Hadn't she proved that already by agreeing to the Beast's cruel bargain in the first place in order to spare her father's life? Certainly whatever she felt for him, the Beast, was not a 'love that lasts beyond time'. That part of Belle's heart belonged to her faraway father and deceased mother. But as for his own feelings…

His heart was given. Though she didn't know it, would never know it, Belle now carried his heart with her as she left him, and the further away she went the more it hurt. And it was because she held his heart that she was able to leave. He had seen the mingled hope and joy in her face when he offered to let her go, and had known then that the honorable thing to do would be to release her. Even if letting her go would destroy him in the process.

"'Honor' and 'Service'," he spat harshly, mocking. "The yuurei was right, after all these years. I have discovered that Love matters in finding the true meaning of all other virtues, but in so doing I have lost everything." He sighed, and sank to the floor, curling into a tight and miserable ball. This is your true form for always now, he thought, resting his head on his scaly tail. The curse will never be broken. Kirei-san made her choice, and you made yours: she is not coming back. And Nightingale's final rose will vanish in a matter of days. He didn't even have the heart to tell the servants yet; they had been so hopeful in the past weeks that he couldn't bear to see the looks on their loyal faces when they learned that they would never be human again either.

As if his thoughts had called to him, Dai-san appeared cheerfully in the doorway. "Master? Did all go well?"

The Beast decided to give the news without preamble; he owed it to the servants not to keep secrets from them. "Gather everyone in the household together in the main reception room, Dai-san. You are to be my official messenger of both my news and my deepest apologies."

"Apologies?" the young onii looked completely flabbergasted.

"She's gone, Dai-san, and she's not coming back."

"Beru-san? Why? I thought she liked it here! I thought she liked us, I thought…I thought she liked you."

"She did, I suppose. But her father is in trouble back in Nagasaki, and she felt obligated to go to him. She will return with him to Brussels in a matter of days."

"Bu…but…" Dai-san looked utterly crushed, "how could you let her go?"

The Beast turned his head away. He hadn't cried since the first hour of the curse's onset, but now he was nearly choked with the despair and sorrow in his chest. The unwanted, hated tears began to fall. In a very, very low voice, the Beast said, "Because…I love her."

Belle felt strangely-light headed as she made her way towards her own room to change and collect her things. She wanted to attribute the strange clawing at the pit of her stomach to excitement at being free to leave the oshiro at last, but deep down she knew it wasn't that. The memory of the hurt in the Beast's eyes as he released her still haunted her thoughts. Several times she nearly changed her mind, but whenever she thought of her father's sorrow at never knowing what had happened to her she reaffirmed her resolve to go. It seemed an age until she was finally dressed in a very simple Nipponese kimono and covered by the old blue cloak Getsuru had given her, all as a precaution against detection when she was making her way through the forbidden portion of Nagasaki. She paused at the portcullis gate to look back one more time. The oshiro, imposing as it still was, no longer frightened her. It had been her home for seven swift months; she had been happy there for the first time since her mother died. Did she really want to walk away from that? And the Beast. The same feeling that had once smote her in the oshiro dungeon at losing her father forever was creeping over her once again as she thought about the Beast's stricken face.

Belle took a deep breath and stepped through the gate. Her father needed her. She couldn't turn her back on him now. So why did it feel, as the oshiro faded out of sight for the last time behind her, that she was turning her back on someone else who had become just as dear to her? Jaw clenched hard against the tears, Belle continued on into the forest.

She found the clearing where the Beast had saved her from the gaijin-killers easily enough, and from there the narrow trail she remembered led back to the outskirts of the city. Belle was twice as cautious once she entered the city, careful to speak to no one and never to show her face. She spent the first night in a doorway and continued wandering the next morning until she came to a group of buildings she recognized: the pleasure district. Not long after that she reached the high, imposing wall of the Dutch quarter. But how to get inside? There were now guards posted around the bolt-hole she and Koru had used before; apparently that was where her father and the brave Nipponese man had been caught. The only other illegal entrance she knew of was the one that Getsuru used, the one that led into Bram's house.

As if her thoughts had called to him, Getsuru himself came strolling nonchalantly by. Belle's heart nearly leaped from her chest, but the young samurai did not even give her cloaked figure more than a cursory glance. On a sudden inspiration, Belle followed him at a distance until he vanished into one of the tall sheds that leaned precariously against the Dutch quarter wall. She waited for at least fifteen heart-stopping minutes, but he did not emerge again. Belle screwed up her courage at last and entered the shed, one hand clutching the Beast's dagger at her belt.

The shed was empty, to her intense relief. Behind some old crates in the tiny storage space over the main floor was a narrow rectangle of light. Belle squeezed past the crates, took two steps forward, and found herself looking at the headboard of the bed in the spare room Getsuru had once dragged her to. Belle pushed the bed out as far as she dared, fearing to make a noise that would alert Bram's family to her presence. At last, she was out from behind it. Gently she nudged it back into place, thinking with some scorn of Getsuru's brags about being a "real" man to be able to move the bed. Then, as silently as she knew how, she stole to the bedroom door and listened. She heard nothing behind it; she slid the door open and saw that there was no one in the hall or on the stairs. The front door was only a few feet beyond the base of the steps. Though she wanted nothing more than to pound down the steps, fling wide the door, and get out of the house as fast as she could, Belle forced herself to take things one step at a time. Then she was easing the door open, sliding through it, pulling the hem of her cloak out after her, and shutting the door again. She had made it!

Flushed with her success, Belle made her way as fast as she could to the house she and her father had once shared, careful to keep her cloak around her and to stay in the late-afternoon shadows of the houses. The Dutch quarter was as painfully small as she remembered, but luckily there were few people about at this time of day. Still, Belle could not help gasping when she bumped right into her old friend the bookseller, just locking up his shop for the day. His eyes bulged when he caught sight of her face. Before he could say anything Belle shushed him with a gesture and beckoned him to follow her. Without a word, he nodded, and she led the way back to her old house. Luckily the key was still hidden beneath the doorstep.

As soon as they were safely inside and Belle had removed her cloak, she rushed to the bookseller with her arms outstretched. But he backed away from her, his face pasty white, his fingers making the sign of the cross between them. "I know why you've come back," he whispered, "It's your father's trouble, isn't it? I swear, I'll help as much as I can to put it right so you can rest in peace once more."

Belle stopped short, completely thrown for a moment. Then she realized what was troubling the older man. With a slight smile she reached forward and pinched the bookseller firmly on the arm, laughing aloud at his yelp of pain. "See? It's only me, Belle. Doesn't that prove to you that I'm no ghost?" The Dutch words felt strange and clumsy on her tongue after months of disuse.

"Aye," he answered, ruefully rubbing the red patch beginning on his arm, "But Mistress Bella, if you're truly still alive, then…where have you been? And why in Heaven's name are you dressed as a Nipponese?"

"Oh, zut," Belle swore, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table, "There's so much to explain." She thought for a moment, then said, "Do you remember the day you told me the story about the haunted oshiro outside of the city?"

"How could I forget? You vanished the very next day! Everyone assumed…"

"Assumed what?" Belle asked, surprised.

"That that samurai boy Getsuru had gotten you somehow. We all heard how you rejected him the first time, but when you didn't appear the next day, well…opinions differed. Most seemed to think you'd given in and become Getsuru's lover, and were living hidden in the luxury due the local lord's son's prize concubine. Myself, I knew how you felt about him. I knew you'd never willingly give yourself to a man like that. So there was only one other option--" He looked away, brushing roughly at his eyes with the back of his hand.

"You thought he killed me," Belle finished softly. "My friend, I am so sorry for the worry I must have caused you."

The bookseller smiled thinly and patted her hand. "In truth, girl, I worried more for your father. When he returned from that trip of his, he was desolated without you." Belle's heart constricted painfully at these words. The bookseller continued, "He shut himself up for weeks; the only people who saw him at all were the kind souls who brought him food. My good wife was one of them. She said he looked like death walking for the longest time…but then he seemed to pick himself up and get on. And now he's mixed up in this terrible business…"

"Yes! Tell me what's been happening! I want to hear about his arrest!" Belle demanded, leaning forward.

"Very well, I shall tell you all I know," the bookseller replied calmly, "if you first tell me truthfully where you have been keeping yourself these past six months and more."

Belle slumped back in her chair, staring at the floor. "You won't believe me."

"Try me. I've been fed many a tall tale in my day, and learned exactly what to swallow and no more. It's how I've lived as long as I have." The old man's sharp eyes bored into her.

Belle sucked in a hard breath, and began her story.

Author's Note: I feel really evil admitting this, but I have actually been very pleased with all of the concerned responses to Chapter 15 I have been getting! It's an author's dream come true when she causes the audience to react the way she wants (maniacal cackle). Keep reading, keep reviewing, and all will be revealed in due time.

Jya Matashita,

SamoaPhoenix9