Hi everyone! Again (again?!), I apologize for the delay in updating. I do actually have a legitimate excuse this time. I did a little travelling over the summer, so I was without a computer for several months. But now I'm home! And I have internet access! So I have prepared another chapter.
As always, countless thanks to the reviewers of the previous chapter: Aspen of the Fae, Akora17, Arista Everett June, secretwritergirl, Bottled Sunshine, and AvilaAddy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 12:
The village where Vincent had taken up residence was only an hour's walk from the Beast's palace. The road between the palace and the village was slightly overgrown, since few had traveled that route since the Beast – "the lord," to his vassals – had supposedly perished in a crusade. Still, it was not at all arduous. Belle found that she could easily make the walk to visit Vincent in his new home.
The first time she announced her intention to visit Vincent, the Beast had objected. "I would prefer as little traffic as possible between my home and his," he said stiffly.
"Then my visits will be as infrequent as possible," Belle retorted. "How about once a week?"
The Beast rolled his exasperated eyes. "Are you telling me that any greater infrequency would be impossible?" he asked.
"That is correct," Belle said, grinning cheekily as him.
When confronted with such a beaming smile, the Beast had no choice but to relent. His scowl gradually softened. "Do what you want," he sighed, turning away.
Thus, Belle made it her habit to weekly grace Vincent's home with her company. His abode was really nothing more than the back room of a prosperous baker's cottage, rented out at a reasonable price, but he seemed to be very fond of it. Belle suspected that he would have taken delight in a hovel, so relieved was he at being out from under the Beast's thumb.
"Hard at work, I see," she said one fine summer day as she approached the baker's cottage, seeing Vincent chopping wood outside.
"Good afternoon," he said, letting his axe swing downwards to stick in the ground. He smiled warmly at her. He had propped open the door to his room by leaning a wooden board against it. Within, the only thing visible was the pallet on the floor where he slept. Outside, creeping vines framed the doorway.
Vincent was still smiling. Belle always had to fight back tears when she saw how content he was in his new surroundings. This time, he noticed her eyes growing damp. "Is something wrong?" he asked anxiously.
Belle drew a ragged breath as she tried to control her overly emotional eyes. She was tempted to blame her tears on the rays of the lowering sun, but ultimately decided that honesty would be best. "It's just that – that – you're happy. And that's so good. I'm so very glad. I'm so very glad he let you go."
Vincent hoisted his axe over his shoulder and fixed Belle with a serious gaze. "He did it for you, you know," he said.
A blush spread through Belle's tears. "That's what – what I had assumed," she haltingly said, her face growing redder with every word. "I was always pestering him about it," she hastily added. "I'm sure that's why he finally…did it. He wanted to shut me up."
"Yes, I'm sure that's what it was," Vincent said, more than a trace of sarcasm laced through his words.
More blushing. It was time to change the subject. A question occurred to Belle, a question which she desperately wanted to pose to Vincent. However, she was not sure it would be wise. She opened and closed her mouth without saying a word.
Noticing her hesitation, Vincent prompted her. "What is it?"
The words rushed out before Belle could stop them. "Do you think you and the Beast could ever be reconciled?"
A hardness that Belle had never before seen crept into Vincent's eyes. He had never dared show his bitterness against the Beast while dwelling in the palace. Now, however, many years' worth of resentment was unveiling itself in the harshness of his expression. He said nothing.
Belle had to look away. "Do you want to be reconciled?" she asked, rephrasing her initial query.
Vincent kicked at one of the logs he had just chopped. "I don't know if it would help either of us," he finally said.
Belle did not quite understand, but she knew the time for invasive questions was over. "I see you're creating a sort of yard here," she said, glancing at several flowerpots he had set up by the doorway.
His expression immediately brightened. "I've fixed up the interior, too," he eagerly said, beckoning for Belle to follow him. "Come. I'll show you what I've done."
Relieved that their interaction was now on less shaky ground, Belle hurriedly followed Vincent into his home to admire and praise the changes he had made. Everything was rather shabby, but for a man who had never possessed anything more than a few cheap trinkets, having an entire room, however unimpressive, to dispose of however he pleased was more than he had ever dreamed possible.
Belle returned to the palace with a full heart. As always, she briefly toyed with the idea of not returning, of fleeing back to her family. But fleeing hardly seemed necessary anymore. What was there to flee from? The Beast? He had become the closest friend she had ever known. Fleeing would feel like heartless abandonment.
She reentered the palace grounds through the main gate, which she had left open when she had departed earlier in the day. She had grown to dislike coming into the palace through the main doors – she felt like she made far too stately an entrance that way – so she skipped to the side of the palace, where the enchanted rosebush was growing, to use the side entrance through which Francoise had led her on the very first day she came to live with the Beast. Before closing the door behind her, she briefly turned around to soak in the peaceful, dusking ambience for a few final seconds.
Within, the palace was anything but peaceful. Somewhere, the Beast was raging. Belle could hardly remember the last time she had heard his fearsome roars. They did not plunge her into abject terror as they used to, but they did send a bit of a tremor through her. Something very terrible must have happened.
She hurried through the halls of the palace, following the roars as they grew ever louder. Her anxiety rapidly increased along with the volume of the Beast's wrath. What could have happened?
At that point, she had come to the entrance hall of the palace. She could hear the Beast's voice emanating from one of the rooms along the balcony that extended from the top of the central staircase to surround the entire hall. At last, she was close enough to hear what he was saying. It seemed that he and Francoise were quarreling rather fiercely.
"That woman has no claim on my kindness!" the Beast snarled, his words echoing throughout the hall as Belle crept up the staircase as silently as possible.
Belle was certain she would perish of grief if she found that the Beast was talking about her. "Please, please, let me not be 'that woman,'" she prayed over and over as she continued sneaking up the stairs.
"Kindness is not something that is earned," Francoise snapped back. Belle had never before heard the old woman sound so venomous.
"Isn't it?" the Beast demanded.
"Look at Belle's treatment of you. You have done nothing to deserve that."
"Stop using Belle as your trump card. She has nothing to do with this." Belle could have wept at these words, so relieved was she to hear that she was not the woman under discussion. The Beast did not despise her.
Francoise sounded utterly disgusted. "Doesn't she?" the weary old woman hissed. "What would she think of your hardness of heart? You think she'd let it pass unchecked?"
"I will not help the woman who destroyed my family!" the Beast roared at her.
Belle froze at the top of the staircase. Finally she knew who they were arguing about. It was Marie, Vincent's mother. Belle had assumed that Marie was dead. Evidently she had assumed wrongly.
"You destroyed your own family!" Francoise screamed at him.
There was a long silence. Finally, the Beast snarled, "Get out." The ferocity in his voice sent chills down Belle's spine.
"You don't even have to see Marie. Just send her some sort of allowance. Try to make things right."
It seemed to Belle that the Beast did not at all want to make things right. The thought nearly broke her heart.
"Get out," the Beast said again.
Belle tiptoed closer to the voices. Now that she was on the balcony, she knew for certain where the argument was occurring. The Beast and Francoise had cloistered themselves in one of the palace's many unused sitting rooms.
"Perhaps I can calm them down," she murmured to herself as she drew nearer.
"I thought that your kindness to Vincent indicated a true change of heart," Francoise was ranting. "Evidently it was a superficial act, calculated – to do what? To please Belle, I assume? Acting good will do nothing. She wants you to be good, you fool!"
"You are asking too much!" the Beast howled in a voice of complete despair.
"Don't be a coward!"
"It is not cowardice to hate the woman who caused my suffering."
"You caused your own suffering, and you will sustain it forever if you refuse to forgive!"
"Get out!" the Beast bellowed for a third time.
Belle rounded the doorframe and stepped into the sitting room just in time to see the Beast raise a powerful claw and, with a single swing, shatter the chair that separated him from Francoise. Its pieces hit the wall with a clatter, sending wooden splinters in a thousand different directions. Several splinters pierced Francoise's arm, raised to protect her face.
Belle gasped. The noise startled the Beast, and he whirled about to find her huddled in the doorway, eyes wide and terrified. An array of emotions flitted across his face in quick succession: shock, confusion, anger, fear, and finally despair. "I'm hopeless," he muttered. Head bowed, he charged past Belle, onto the balcony, down the central staircase, and into the depths of the palace. Belle could hear his footsteps rapidly growing fainter and fainter.
"Follow him," Francoise hissed at her.
Belle did not need to be told twice. She bolted out of the room, following the same path that the Beast had taken. She had never before known just how quickly her legs could carry her. She ran far too quickly: Into the wall went her shoulder; into a doorframe went her toes; onto the stone floor tumbled her entire body. She hauled herself upwards, ignoring the throbbing in her leg and the sticky warmth that seemed to be trickling downward from her knee.
She glanced upwards to see the Beast standing before her with an expression of deep pain and concern. "I heard you fall," he said.
"I'm fine," she replied.
He turned and ran. Stone-faced, Belle followed. She soon found herself charging down the spiral staircase up which Francoise had led her on the day she first arrived at the palace, the same staircase which she had so cheerfully ascended only a few minutes earlier. The Beast disappeared through the door at the staircase's base, and shortly later Belle did likewise.
"For God's sake, stop!" she shouted desperately as she emerged onto the palace grounds.
She need not have strained her voice. The Beast had already stopped his mad flight. He was crouching in front of the enchanted rose bush, staring at its ever-blooming petals with an inscrutable expression.
Belle approached slowly, as though he was an animal that she feared frightening away. "It's really alright," she told him.
"Leave me alone," he said. The words came out not as a snarl, but as a sigh.
"Please listen to me," Belle pleaded, taking a few steps nearer.
"That enchantress…" The Beast began to speak, but his words soon trailed away.
Belle decided to encourage him. "What about the enchantress?" she gently asked.
It took some time for the Beast to complete his thought. "I was still a child when she laid her curse." He paused. "Most people would give a child time to change his ways. But the enchantress was wiser than that. She knew that there would be no happy metamorphosis of my soul."
"Please don't say such things," Belle broke in.
The Beast ignored her entirely. "That enchantress was, I think, tired of dishonesty. She was tired of watching beasts like me roam the earth in disguise. That's why she cast her spell. At the very least, I am now an honest beast. There will be no mistaking me for anything but what I am." He finally looked at Belle, and the emptiness in his eyes nearly broke her heart. "You've always been honest. When you first came to my palace, your exterior fully resembled the frightened child that you were within. You're quite different now." His voice had grown soft, almost tender. "Regality has become part of your nature. Queenliness. It was not always there. But as soon as it emerged, your visage changed to reflect the new trait within." Another lengthy pause. When he spoke, his voice had grown even quieter. "Some things have not changed. Your beauty remains constant, both within and without. It is as striking as it was on the day of your arrival."
How was one to respond to this? Belle could only look upon the Beast and fight back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes at the slightest provocation. Fortunately, she did not need to respond. It seemed that the Beast did not want her to.
He seemed embarrassed; he was awkwardly shuffling his paws back and forth in the dust. "Would that I had been born as honest as you," he muttered. "Truthfulness came too late for me. Far too late. But at least it has come. I am a beast, and all who see me will know that I am a beast." Abruptly he halted his rambling and leapt to his feet. He slowly approached Belle, keeping his red eyes fixed on her face. She could not read his expression. "Just as all who see you immediately recognize that you are a beauty."
Blushing, Belle broke eye contact. She wished her heart would not pound so loudly.
"Don't worry," the Beast told her. "I will not make you uncomfortable much longer. I'm sorry." With those words, he turned and dashed away, back into the shadowy recesses of his palace. Belle stood by the enchanted rosebush for some time, desperately trying to understand what had just transpired.
Over the next several weeks, the Beast was curiously silent. He no longer summoned Belle or sought out her company. When she came to him, he spoke very little. Most of the time, he simply stared at the ground.
It was unaccountable. Belle found herself growing increasingly confused. The Beast was certainly not shy. Why, then, did he refuse to look at her? The Beast did not seem angry with her. Why, then, would he not speak with her, as he once had? On the rare occasion that he looked her in the eye, his expression was terrifying in its unreadable intensity.
It was not difficult to diagnose the problem: He had lost hope. His volcanic episode with Francoise had apparently convinced him that he would never and could never change. Again and again, Belle told him that everything was alright, that he had changed, and that he was not by any stretch of the imagination a beast. Repeatedly she attempted to convince him of this fact, but he would not be persuaded.
"All the evidence is against you," he growled.
"You are examining only the evidence that suits your rather depressing hypothesis," Belle impatiently retorted. She almost wanted to provoke him to anger. Anything would be better than dead-eyed despondence.
He merely looked at her. Try as she might, she could not decipher the thoughts hidden behind his red eyes.
After several weeks of this, Belle began to panic. "What can I do?" she desperately asked Francoise as they prepared dinner together one evening.
The old woman dropped the knife with which she had been mincing vegetables. It fell to the stone floor with an alarming clatter, startling Belle rather badly. In a show of uncharacteristic emotion, Francoise covered her face with her hands. "Forgive me," she croaked into her shaking palms. "I pushed him too far. If I had not provoked him…"
"You are not to blame," Belle declared, gathering Francoise's frail body into her arms and giving her as comforting an embrace as was possible. She had never before realized how very old Francoise was.
"I have no solution for you," the old woman sighed into Belle's shoulder. "Perhaps…the master is right. Perhaps his current form is best. If he is at peace with his condition, is it right for us to interfere?"
Belle abruptly withdrew her embrace. "Don't ever say that again," she snapped, stepping away from Francoise with an expression of disgust. "He shuffles about as though only half alive. How dare you call that peace? He needs to come to his senses. We need to bring him to his senses. For his own good, and for…me." Her voice trailed off at the end of her rant as she realized what she was saying. "Forgive me, but I'm not hungry tonight," she said, making a hasty exit.
Several days later, for the first time in weeks, the Beast requested Belle's company. He sent Francoise as his emissary. When Francoise announced the master's summons to Belle, both women struggled to keep from weeping for joy.
Belle dashed to his chambers as though carried by the wind itself. Without knocking, she flung open his heavy wooden door. "Recovered, are we?" she breathlessly asked.
The scene before her was reminiscent of her very first meeting with the Beast. There was the roaring fire, completely unnecessary now that summer had come. There was the Beast, crouching before the flames and soaking in their heat. There was the pathetic little stool upon which Belle had cowered many months earlier.
The Beast did not bother to greet her. "I've come to a decision," he said, staring into the fireplace.
"Have you?" Belle said. She pulled the stool closer to him and eagerly sat. "Will I like your decision?"
The Beast hesitated, glancing from the fire to Belle and back to the fire. "I…do not know."
Immediately Belle's entire body went cold, despite the sweltering heat emanating from the hearth. "What do you mean?" He did not reply quickly enough to suit her; impatiently, she added, "Look at me and answer my question."
"I cannot look at you."
A long silence followed these rather strange words. "What do you mean?" Belle asked for the second time.
"It will be easier this way…for me. I would like to make this audience as brief as possible," the Beast said, still staring fixedly at the flames within the hearth.
"By all means, do so," Belle said. "Please, just tell me what you've decided. Your hesitation is a torment to me." Her voice quavered. She had not felt so fearful in many months.
The Beast scratched at the floor with his massive paws. He shook his horns. He closed and opened his blazing red eyes several times. He took a deep breath. "It is time for you to leave."
And there you have it. I'd love to hear what you think!