Chapter 21

Disclaimer: I think by now we've established that everything in this story belongs to me…(ducks incoming lawyers)…and to Disney. I was getting to that!

The moment she spoke the words, Belle felt a strange sort of release in the still body beneath her, as if the Beast had been waiting to hear her say she loved him just once before he could truly die in peace. The thought made the tears of loss and regret spring all the faster to her eyes. A deadly hush seemed to overtake the oshiro as she wept on that smooth, scaled belly, still slightly warm from the dying fire that had once burned within.

So wrapped up was Belle in her own misery that she did not notice immediately when the first breeze ruffled her hair. The second demanded her attention. Tears coursing quietly down her cheeks, she stood and went to the precious glass panes in the windows to close them against the morning wind.

They were already shut.

Belle paused, one hand still outstretched, and looked quizzically at all the windows. Every one of them was tightly closed and latched, and none of the panes was so much as cracked despite the battle that had taken place in the room just moments ago. But the breeze swirling around the room was now unmistakable. Even Getsuru, though still unconscious, was an unwitting display of the strange effect: his sweat-streaked black hair was moving gently in a breeze that should not have been there. Stranger still, Belle could no longer smell the smoke that had begun to cling like a haze to everything: this breeze was sweet and clean and smelled of springtime.

Abruptly a cyclone seemed to overtake the room. Wind roared as it pushed Belle to her knees and then back against the far wall. Though it was an effort, she forced her blurring, teary eyes to stay open and watch as the dust of years, and everything else in the room small enough to be lifted, rose into the air. The broken furniture that was strewn about toppled over with resounding cracks like gunfire, causing Belle to cover her ears. The wind, now that she could see its path with all the debris it had picked up, seemed to concentrate itself into a vortex over Nightingale, lying still and gleaming in the center of the room. Though no longer under the wind's pressing influence, Belle stayed where she was, frightened by the display of power she could not understand.

A series of strange noises filled the room, such as Belle had never heard in her life: the sound of well-tempered metal cracking. By looking closely through the flying grit, Belle could see a fine web of dark lines weaving themselves all over the patterned surface of Nightingale's blade. Then, without warning, the blade itself crumbled into dust, leaving only the hilt behind on the floor. The silver-blue metal remains swirled up into the vortex—and the wind's focus abruptly shifted from Nightingale to the body of the Beast. Like a tornado it moved across the room, its roar deafening, the lowest point of its inverted cone concentrating itself on the spot on the Beast's chest where Belle had been resting her head only a minute before.

Slowly, so slowly that at first Belle didn't believe her own eyes, the Beast began to rise. He did not spin with the motion of the air, as might have been expected; he remained steady as if supported by unseen arms. Those arms shifted, moving so that his limp head, stretched out on its long neck, was close to the ceiling. From Belle's position he might as well have been on a mattress, had that mattress been both vertical and invisible. If she had not pinched her own arm, hard, to reassure herself that she was indeed awake, Belle would have easily been convinced she was either dreaming or imagining things due to grief and exhaustion.

Before her astonished eyes, the Beast began to change. His limbs were the first, broadening and lengthening considerably, shifting position on his body until they were clearly set up for bipedal walking were it not for his lizard's tail, which was already down to two feet and shortening rapidly. Belle's eyes were drawn upward, to where the paws on his lower legs were shifting into what were evidently…feet. The sharp claws shrank, the curved toes melded together and lengthened. And now his upper paws were shifting into hands, their claws retracting into nails. A glance downward showed that there was nothing left of the tail. The body in the air was by this point clearly more human than dragon despite the covering of brilliant red scales it still wore: the neck and snout were shortening into recognizable human shapes, and the golden crest melted inward and splintered into dark human hair. Scales flowed together, peeling away from hands, legs and face and forming into a simple long-sleeved robe Belle had been taught to call a yukata. Last of all, the face came clear. The man was Nipponese and as handsome as Getsuru, though the features were far more angular than the arrogant samurai's and somehow more noble-looking despite the fact that the face was inert and deadly white. He was also quite young, perhaps only two or three years older than Belle herself. For her own part, she could only stare, open-mouthed, stunned beyond words at what was taking place. So great was her shock that she could not even lift her hand to pinch her arm again.

Slowly the young man was lowered to the floor. Instinctively, despite her awe and fear, Belle started towards him. With a last rush, the wind stirred the young man's dark hair and blew itself out the open double doors into the rest of the oshiro, pouring the remains of the room's collective debris onto the still body on the floor like thousands of tiny stars where they caught the light.

And the face twitched. Belle restrained herself from staggering back to the wall as the strange young man before her visibly flinched from the dirt and soot raining down upon him. He drew a deep breath…and abruptly shot into a sitting position, coughing and choking violently on the small particles he had just inhaled. The icy white pallor that had been on his skin vanished immediately, replaced by healthy flesh tones.

Belle, out of a combination of compassion and deep curiosity, knelt at his side and supported his back gently until the coughing finally stilled. "Are…are you…all right?" she finally asked hesitantly, frightened at how weak and tremulous her voice was. Even to her own ears it sounded as if she had just survived a hurricane and more.

Eyes still closed, he answered, "Yes, I—" And then he went very, very still at the sound of his own voice.

She felt his shoulders stiffen. Slowly, as if frightened it might vanish if he moved too quickly, he brought one hand, palm up, before his face. He studied the lines etched there for so long that Belle's brief, fanciful thought was that he was reading his own future there. He flexed his fingers, curled them into a fist, and opened them again, all at that slow, awed pace that said clearly that he did not believe what his own eyes were telling him. Then he repeated the process with the other hand. Belle noticed that both hands were trembling slightly.

He turned his head to look at her, hands still palm up before him. When their eyes met at last, Belle sucked in her breath hard. The eyes now boring into hers were the color of a candle flame: orange on the edges of the iris, melting into gold and white and finally a core of blue surrounding a round, black pupil. She knew those eyes well, though the inexplicable sadness they had once contained was gone. They belonged to—

Her brain was refusing to function properly, refusing to admit what her eyes and heart were saying was true. She had had enough of that in the past weeks to last her a lifetime. There was only one way to know for sure, to convince herself forever that she was not hallucinating. Slowly, half-afraid of the answer, she asked in French, "Who are you?"

His brow knitted slightly, and her heart sank. But then the tiniest flicker of a smile appeared at the edges of his mouth, and he replied in the same language, with an accent that she recognized, "I am called…the Beast."

Belle smiled, her eyes filling with happy tears, her mind fixing on a single, overwhelming, joyous realization: somehow, inexplicably, he was alive. Not knowing what else to do, she flung her arms around his neck and buried her face in the long, dark hair that fell over his shoulders. After a moment his arms went around her, hesitantly at first, then with increasing strength until his intensity matched hers. She felt a few hot tears that she knew were not her own land on her shoulder.

How long they stayed there on the floor, he half-prone and she kneeling, ebony hair mingling with brown, arms locked about one another in a reassuring, reaffirming embrace, Belle could not have said. Neither did she remember which of them pulled away first. It never mattered. Later, all Belle could recall was sitting back on her heels and gazing into those familiar fiery eyes, now set into an unfamiliar, human, face.

"Kirei-san…" he murmured at last, stroking her cheek with one thumb, and again she recognized the intonations if not the gentle, articulate voice that spoke them. The name itself, spoken like a caress, pushed away any lingering doubts she might have had that it was truly her Beast inside this new man's body. Only he had ever called her that, in just that way. And her one thought became to close the final distance between them. She leaned forward, just as he did, and their lips gently met. Only afterwards would Belle think to put a name to the sensations of that moment: a brush of soot, and a taste of fire.

A sudden clatter forced them to pull apart far sooner than either of them would have liked. Turning to find the source of the disruption, Belle at first saw nothing. The furniture was still in disarray from the cyclone that had swept the room; Getsuru's unconscious form was still lying quietly on the floor. Then she realized what was different.

"Nightingale!" she exclaimed. The sword lay where she had last seen it, but instead of an empty hilt, the blade was in its usual place, gleaming and perfect again. "But…I watched it shatter!" She rose and started towards it. Her companion attempted to follow her but nearly overbalanced and fell until she caught his arm. Clearly he had some practice ahead of him to regain any ease with upright motion. They shared a brief, humorous smile at this, and Belle placed his hand on her shoulder in support. A small part of her brain registered that he was taller even than Getsuru, the thin, graceful lines of his body a match for the narrow features of his face. Together, they walked forward and stood side-by-side, looking at the silver-blue blade.

At last, the young man bent and wrapped fine-boned fingers around the sword's hilt. Straightening with Belle's aid, he turned the mirror-bright weapon back and forth in his hand, examining it with a practiced eye. Belle noted with interest that all traces of the vines and single wilting rose were gone as if they had never been. The blade was now the true half of a pair with her own daito knife.

They looked at one another, back at the sword, and then at one another again. "What…what happened?" Belle finally ventured. She could not have said whether she meant the sword, or something else entirely.

A half-smile that she immediately recognized tugged at his mouth. He held his katana upright and swung it experimentally a few times, sliding his other arm around her waist as he did so. "Nightingale has been reforged," was all he said.

Fin

Author's Note: I can almost hear the collective readership "ahhhhs" right about now. Anyway, even though technically this is the end of the story, an epilogue is forthcoming, so stick around! The fun's not over yet! Maybe Disney can get away with saying "and they lived happily ever after" and expect the audience to swallow it, but the character relations are so complex in my version that I have to say something about where everyone eventually ends up.

I'd like to hear some feedback on what you guys thought of the transformation sequence; it was admittedly very hard to write even though it has always been my hands-down favorite scene in the movie. I tried really, really hard to avoid it being cheesy and overdone, but let me know how close I got. Ditto on the kissing/"it-is-you!" stuff. Thanks in advance!

SamoaPhoenix9

P.S. Formal acknowledgements will appear in the author's note once the epilogue is complete.