First, a briefish rant:

My take on the Beast being a little dark: I don't think it's fair to give him a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card, instant redemption just because he's fallen in love. He still, even at the end, needs Belle's physical presence right there to bring out the best in him. He doesn't fight to protect the people he has a responsibility to - the castle creatures are being hurt and even though it's really just him the attackers want, he takes no steps to either give himself up or fight for his friends. Boo on him for that; he's supposed to be the prince but apparently without Belle he's missing some vital part of his spirit and can't do his job. And of course when they're fighting he seems to mean to finish Gaston at first... i think it's only when he sees Belle watching that he becomes tame.

We all know he loses his temper easily, and despite looking like such a toughie he doesn't deal well with physical pain. Watch the way he has to catch himself when she dresses the scratch on his forearm - it looks like his first instinct is to eat her.

I'm sure if they can calm him down and get him under the covers he'll want to speak to her gently and in person... but considering he's surrounded by freed human beings while he's still a gross animal, and he's seriously injured because he just got stabbed over a girl, and the only thing sustaining him is the desire to have her there with him again... and now he finds out that she's not coming back because she's with the guy who put him through this... I don't think he's progressed so far that he wouldn't go buckwild first.

Although it could be that I need to lighten up and stop judging everyone so harshly... (my inner Javert shakes his head sternly at this idea).

End of rant.

"Your idea didn't work," Gaston griped. "Belle had a good time in the forest. Now she'll never start just staying in the house. She actually wants to come along next time, too!"

Lefou offered him a beer. Gaston emptied it over his head instead, and then snarled: "I said I was thirsty - get me a beer!"

Lefou shook himself dry like a dog and then fetched twobeers, so that this time Gaston would have one to drink and one to torment him with. He was very proud of his foresight.

"I don't understand it either, Gaston," he sighed. "I guess Belle's just weird."

"Hey." Gaston drank down both beers at once and then boxed his friend's ears with the empty mugs. "That's my wife you're talking about."

"Sorry. But girls are supposed to be afraid of the woods! Why wasn't she?"

Gaston brightened a little. "Probably because she was with me."

"That's true. What can she be afraid of when you're there next to her?" It was working, Gaston was cheering up a little, but there had to be something else... "Hey - I know! Let's play cards!"

The drunks all cheered and one of them threw a deck of cards down on the table. "Oh, no, boys - not tonight," Gaston complained half-heartedly. He loved cards, and he loved them begging for it.

They chanted "Cards, cards, cards..." until Gaston took out his bow. He turned his back and waited until Lefou shouted: "Four of clubs!"

Gaston spun around, notching an arrow at the same time, and swept his eyes over all the drinkers. They were each holding a card up on top of their heads, and without missing a beat he put a shot straight through the four of clubs. The men cheered and drank and shouted Again! and Gaston, sighing as if annoyed, turned his back and took out another arrow.

The pile of bones was now up to the Beast's shoulder.

Of course, he spent all his time on all fours, so that was a little misleading. Had he been walking upright, the pile would be waist deep at best.

Also, he cheated a little. When he came upon a fox or wolf or bear that was eating something, he would kill it and then add both it and the remains of its prey to the pile. And any carcasses or bones he found in the forest went straight to the pile as well.

Still, cheating or not it was fairly impressive. Whenever a stray thought of Belle crossed his mind, the Beast found that scattering his bone heap and then charging off to add to it worked wonders to help him forget.

Sometimes it occured to him that maybe he wasn't doing so well - snow would melt in a wide circle around him whenever he sat, and he often had trouble keeping down what he ate... even when it wasn't rotten, which it frequently was.

One night, not quite a week into his hunting spree, the Beast prowled for four hours without running into a single living animal. This was because the wildlife of the forest had by now realized that the new stinking snarling creature among them had to be avoided, but the explanation produced by his malnourished, feverish brain was: I killed everything.

"I killed everything." He said it aloud, sat down on the ground, and looked at his muddy, blood-smeared paws. "Look at me - I'm a monster." Blood dripped down his face and stained the snow. (He didn't realize that this was mostly due to having charged through a thornbush earlier, and took it as further proof that he was a bloodthirsty savage.)

"This can't go on," he muttered to himself. It was time to go and get help. Normally thinking of Belle or Mrs. Potts sickened him, but now it was the thought of the bone pile that made him queasy. The idea of being coddled was actually appealing... although it also made him want to cry. "It's over."

He lurched off in the direction of the castle straightaway.

When he finally reached the big iron gates, though, he realized what he must look like and was suddenly too embarrassed to go inside. Instead, he pulled the tattered remains of his cloak around him and just curled up to sleep on the ground. The morning, he thought - he would sort everything out in the morning.

The Beast had forgotten to worry that wild animals would come and maul him while he slept, but it turned out not to matter - after their week-long battle royale, the wolves had finally conceded the territory to him and had gone away.

They'd headed back towards where all the soft and yummy things lived: town.

Gaston took a deep breath, readying himself to venture into the unknown. There must be no hesitation. He would walk tall and burst into that claustrophobic and creepy little space, and he would track down his quarry and get out before anything unpleasant happened.

He was ready. He pushed off the wall, rounded the corner, and strode firmly down the street.

People's eyes were on him, he could feel it. Don't come near me, he thought at them. It's none of your business and I know exactly what I'm doing. He reached the door, knocked it open and stepped through.

He was there. In the bookshop.

He tried to let his breath out slowly, but his adrenaline was spiking as he looked around. In all his years hunting he'd never walked into a lair populated by so many of the enemy. Books everywhere. Hundreds of them, thousands perhaps. Piled up on shelves that were even taller than he was, looming over him...

So orderly and so, so many... this is a hive, he thought. A bookhive.

Before he could figure out what to do first, a soft voice spoke up from behind him. "Gaston! What a surprise. Can I help you?"

He whipped around to the wizened old man and snapped without thinking: "I don't need help." Then, embarrassed by his overreaction, he ducked into one of the aisles.

The bookkeeper looked a little puzzled but let him go.

Gaston had thought this through. The book Belle had cried over was blue, so clearly blue books were the kind she liked. That was fine; there were plenty of blue books here. Her old book was only about the size of his hand, but since he wanted to go the whole hog and really impress her, he picked out a blue book that was nearly two feet tall. Perfect.

He carried it to the front of the store and dumped it on the counter. "Belle needs this," he announced. "What does it cost?"

The bookkeeper blinked. "Illustrated Guide to Detecting Witchcraft and Defeating Its Practitioners," he read aloud. Gaston didn't seem to have registered that, so he added gently, "Are you sure this is the one she wants?"

"I know exactly what my wife wants. How much?"

He hesitated, not wanting to offend his customer. "You've, er, made a good choice, Gaston... you've found a very old and valuable book, probably one of my best... but Belle, um, she might find the pictures a little... disturbing."

Gaston's eyes narrowed. "Pictures? She doesn't usually read books with pictures..." He opened the book and was immediately confronted with a full-page illustration of... what?

He squinted at it. Some kind of scaly beast with a forked tail, something that would probably require a very big arrow through the eyeball to take down... and beside it, lit by a low and ominous-looking fire, several mildly attractive women seemed to be dancing. With no clothes on.

He frowned. If this was the sort of thing Belle looked at in her spare time, it was no wonder she was so strange!

He flipped to a point later in the book and it was a picture of a group of men in funny hats... holding pen and paper; as usual it was the scholars who were the strange ones... and they seemed to be dangling a very handsome and unhappy-looking man from the ceiling by his wrists. Gaston made a face - like the dancing women from earlier in the book, the fellow was stark naked.

"Belle shouldn't be reading this," he said with authority. "I'm going to get her something more... normal."

"Good idea," the bookkeeper agreed. "And I have just the thing."

He brought one from behind the desk, and Gaston looked at it suspiciously. "That one is orange," he pointed out. "Belle likes the blue ones."

If the bookkeeper had had any lingering hope that Gaston knew anything at all about literature, that dispelled it right away. "Well, yes, this one is orange on the outside..." he said patiently, "But on the inside, it's the same sort of book that Belle keeps at home. Shall I show you how to tell?"

"I don't read."

"That's fine. You're a hunter; you track. That's good enough. Look at this." He opened the orange book and pointed to one of the tiny markings. "See these marks, the little ones high on the outside of the letters? That's the mark of dialog - she said, or he shouted, that sort of thing. Follow?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Well, dialog you'll find in a story. In a book of information, philosophy, history, that sort of thing, you won't find dialog. Belle likes stories. Understand?"

"Hmm..." Gaston flipped through the orange book and saw quotation marks on nearly every page. He opened up the terrible blue witchcraft volume and skimmed over a bit. "No dialog, no story. That's easy." He had already dumped a pouch of gold on the counter before it occured to him to ask, "And how do I tell what the story's about - without reading it?"

The bookkeeper tore his eyes away from the ridiculously huge sum - Gaston must never have bought a book in his life - and thought it over. "That's a tricky one... but I suppose this might help." He opened the orange book to its first page and pointed. "Once upon a time," he enunciated carefully, showing him the words. "That's the beginning of a fairy tale. Here - I'll write it out for you."

He printed it on a slip of paper and Gaston put it in his pocket. "So, a book full of dialog that starts this way is a fairy tale? Good. Belle likes fairy tales. While she's stuck in bed for months bearing my children, I'll get her some more to keep her occupied."

"That's...er... a wonderful idea." The bookkeeper gave Gaston his change - most of the pile - and sent him on his way with a cheery "Hope to see you again!" It was only after Gaston was gone that he realized, with some surprise, that he meant it.

So that night, Gaston sat relaxing by the fire, petting his dog and congratulating himself on having finally found a way of keeping his wife quiet and happy and sitting home where she belonged.

Belle sat by the fire too, next to him for a change, reading and petting his hair absently with her other hand.

She had even - voluntarily - given him a great big hug and a kiss on the cheek today. Things were looking up.

In fact, by his estimation - and Gaston was never wrong; he had never ever spoiled a colt or puppy by training it too hard too fast - by his estimation, it was about time for Belle to give up her silly habit of sleeping on the couch. Tonight, he decided, she would sleep where she belonged: in the actual bed, like an actual wife.

He was just about to tell her so, when they were interrupted by a terrific banging on their front door. "Not now, Lefou!" Gaston shouted without getting up. The banging only got louder.

Belle had put her book down and her eyes were wide. "Gaston... that's not Lefou," she whispered, scooting close to him.

TBC.

Whuddyathink so far???