Just A Little Change
Chapter One
The more she thought about it, the more Belle Beaumont realised that it might have been more sensible if she had changed into her old clothes before racing off to save her father.
For one thing, the dancing shoes she wore didn't have a very good grip; they kept slipping out of the stirrups as she and Phillippe galloped into the night. Additionally, the flimsy material of the dress itself had gotten snagged on several branches when she had ridden back to town. Belle had managed to unlace the back of the dress by herself before she got back on her horse, tossing it over her head as she raced back towards the Beast's castle. It was wholly impractical for what she was hoping to do - and some small part of her mind even had time to mourn the weeks of work that Madame de Garderobe had spent making the dress, and hope that her father would pick it up where she had unceremoniously dropped it on the ground.
But the main reason she regretted not changing was that after she had crossed the magical barrier that had trapped the Beast's castle in an endless winter - one of the few mysteries she hadn't yet solved or asked about - Belle was freezing. Even though she was shivering violently, she kept riding Phillippe as fast as he could go. As she rounded the old, familiar corner to the gates of the grounds, she could hear the noise of some sort of battle taking place.
"At least they're putting up a fight," she muttered, even as she was stung with guilt for putting her friends in such danger. "Come on, Phillipe - to the stables, quickly!" In the dim light her pale chemise and petticoats blended in with the snow almost perfectly, but the noises coming from within the castle assured Belle that all the villagers were too occupied to spare a glance out any of the windows, and she quickly settled Phillippe in.
Belle jogged back around and up the steps to the front doors, slipping a little on the ice. It was utter chaos inside; Cogsworth and Lumiére, fighting back-to-back with a weapon in each hand; little Frou-Frou, knocking into assailants in all directions and tripping up as many as he could; Chip and the other magically-animated teacups, flinging china saucers at anybody who got too close; Maestro Cadenza, leaping on top of a hapless villager. The man in front of him turned back, his red coat swishing, and Belle scowled when she saw his face.
Gaston said something to the villager that she couldn't hear, and continued up the main stairs. By what had to be pure luck, he headed up the corridor that lead to the West Wing. Belle could see the full quiver of arrows at his belt and the large rifle strapped to his back; she also knew that he had a habit of keeping knives in his boots when in battle, although she was too far away to see the hilt. Belle raced after him, fear spurting low in her stomach for the first time since she had left the village. She neatly avoided most of the brawling staff and villagers as she went up the stairs, although she couldn't have said how, exactly.
"Belle!" She looked up to see Plumette fluttering about in mid-air, her upper body scratched and her feathers sticky from the battle. "You came back after all! I told Lumiére that you would return to us!"
"Plumette, this is all my fault," Belle said, darting her head from side to side to take in the battle raging around her. "I showed them the Beast in the mirror, trying to convince them that what my father saw was real, only now they're out for blood, and I don't think they'll stop until the Beast is dead!" She followed Gaston's path towards the West Wing, Plumette keeping pace with her easily. "I have to save him, Plumette - this is all my fault."
"Follow me," she said, gracefully flying around Belle's head and going in the opposite direction, towards her rooms. "Lumiére led you to your rooms through the old servant's passageways; I can take you out to the roofs the same way. The Master is not in his bedchamber just now, which will buy us some time while this . . . Gaston looks for him. Besides," she continued, fluttering around Belle's ankles for a moment as the two of them hurried along, "I think you could use some more practical footwear, if you're going to be on the roofs."
"Thank you, Plumette," Belle said, and she broke out into a run to keep up.
In next to no time, she was in her bedroom again, although the doorframe looked as though something had battered at it until it gave way completely. When she walked in and noticed that, for the first time ever Madame de Garderobe was not in the room, Belle reckoned she had a solid idea about what had happened. Everything that had been inside Madame's drawers - petticoats, stays, chemises, skirts, bodices, stockings, and much more besides - was strewn across the room. To Belle's relief, her trusty boots were next to each other on the floor, and in a matter of minutes she had swapped the dancing shoes for them.
"Alright, Belle," Plumette said urgently. "Prise open that door in the corridor wall, and we'll be on our way in no time."
Belle rushed back through her room and across the hallway. She ran her fingers firmly over the wall until she found the hidden doorknob, artfully disguised in a wall sconce. Belle and Pumette were inside the servant's passage in an instant, and Belle followed the fluttering feather duster as quickly as she could in the dusty, dim passageway. It felt as if she was merely losing herself deeper and deeper inside the castle walls, but she trusted Plumette to take her to the Beast safely.
After what felt like an eternity, but most likely was only a few minutes, Belle was opening another door to the bracing air of the midwinter night. She gasped at the cold, automatically pulling her arms close to her body.
"This is where we last saw him," Plumette said, lowering her head as much as she was able. "And this is where I must leave you - I must go and protect that foolish candelabra of mine, as you must protect the Master."
"I -" Belle started. The next moment she realised that even though she had rejected the Beast's affection earlier that night, Plumette was right - she would protect him from Gaston with the same ferocity that Plumette would defend her lover. "Thank you."
"Au revoir, Belle. We will meet again." Plumette soared back down to the battle with the next gust of wind, her white feathers and painted body blending in with the snowy backdrop almost immediately.
Belle looked around frantically for any sight of tall horns or a blue coat. Just as she drew breath to call for the Beast, she noticed a flash of red from a gaping hole in the floor beneath her. Stifling her gasp, Belle hurried down a set of stairs, hoping that the fierce wind and Gaston's egotistical mutterings would muffle the noise of her boots on the stone. She snuck up behind him, grabbing the weapon closest to her - his full quiver of arrows. He spun around almost before she had them in her grasp, and the look of shock on his face was almost comical. Belle broke the arrows over her knee and threw them further back into the tower before he could snatch them away from her hands.
"Belle!" He was recovering from his shock now, his face contorting into a grimace which would have struck fear into her heart, if Belle had been anything less than furious.
"Where is he?" Belle demanded, her anger boiling up to the surface again. "Where's the Beast?"
He ignored her question entirely, reaching for the smaller gun at his hip. If Belle hadn't been so afraid for the Beast's safety and whereabouts, she could have punched him. "When we return to the village, you will marry me - and that Beast's head will hang on our wall!" he said, lifting it up as if he was about to aim at her.
"Never!" Belle cried out, darting forwards to wrestle the gun away from Gaston. For him to still believe that they would marry, after everything he had done that night, was almost ridiculous. But Belle could see the glint of righteous fury in his eyes, remembered the countless tales of how he had defended the village against the foreign invaders, and she knew that he was deadly serious. He meant to kill the Beast - her Beast - and force her to look at his corpse every day.
The castle rumbled beneath them, and another section of the stonework came loose - this time, the walkway that Gaston was standing on. He fell straight down to a lower level; neither he nor Belle had the gun, as during the fall it had fallen from both of their hands and landed on a parapet that was still lower - and out of reach for both of them.
With a snicker, Gaston turned back towards the wider roof. "I'm coming for you, Beast!" he shouted. Belle ran back into the tower, as the staircase she had come down went down another floor. She and Gaston both ended up on a walkway only a few feet wide, and Belle shivered violently again at the wind biting her extremities.
Before she could stop him, Gaston had already leapt across to a neighbouring roof, and another, and another. Belle kept running along the walkway, mirroring Gaston's path parallel to the roofs. Suddenly, the walkway itself began to crumble beneath her feet. Belle made a desperate jump for the safety of the next tower, landing just before she would have fallen to her death. The adrenaline pumping through her veins allowed her to keep running, even as her heart skipped a beat at how close she had come to falling. She would not see the Beast die - not if she had anything to do with it.
The more she thought about it, the more Belle Dupont realised that it might have been more sensible to leave her father at home before racing off to save the Beast.
Conscious of her father's illness as she was, Belle was doing her best to ride Phillippe quickly but safely towards the castle as fast as she could. Maurice was sat behind her, one arm around her waist for balance. Chip was in his other hand, and Belle could feel his rim against her back as Maurice shielded the little cup with his other arm. It would have been more sensible to leave him at home, where he could rest as much as he needed and Belle could ride as fast as she wanted to reach the castle. But Gaston's scheme and their long separation had been enough for father and daughter to want to stay together, and the three of them had all mounted Phillippe without argument.
"Belle," Maurice said as they thundered through the woods, the winter air whipping away at their cloaks and hair, "what exactly are you going to do when you get there?"
"I . . . I don't know," she admitted. "But I can't just let him die without any warning, Papa - the villagers are here because of me. If I could have made them realise that he's not a monster, then maybe . . ."
"I don't think so, Belle," Maurice said gravely. "People see what they want to see. Gaston sees you as his wife, no matter how many times you turn him down. These people see Gaston as their leader, who's never been wrong before, and they see us as the eccentric old father-daughter pair who don't live by their rules. They were always going to side with him." Belle was almost surprised by the bitterness in his voice; she had never heard her gentle, absent-minded father so angry. Then again, she reasoned, he had almost been thrown into a lunatic asylum by men and women he considered his peers.
"I'm sorry 'bout your house, M. Dupont," Chip piped up in a small voice. "I didn't mean to chop up the wood so bad."
"You got us out, Chip," Belle said, "and for that I can't thank you enough."
"And one way or another, I don't think we'll be staying there anymore after tonight," Maurice said.
Before Belle could ask him what he meant by that, a large group of men carrying torches came running down the road, from the direction of the castle. Some were limping, others shrieking in terror. Many had rather nasty-looking burns on their arms and hands, and everybody looked to be in disarray of some kind. But more than that - overwhelmingly there was a sense of defeat about the villagers.
"Belle?" one of them said. "What are you doing here?"
"Trying to save the people you just marched off to fight!" Belle cried out.
"Belle, you can't go out there - that place is alive, somehow!"
Without waiting to hear any more, Belle spurred Phillippe on from the slow walking pace he had entered when he saw the men, and kept on traversing the forest. It was by far the simplest trip she'd had to make in those woods - she had been directed by the mirror to find her father, and had similarly used it to find her way home - but it was easy to follow the trail of debris left behind by the villagers back to the castle. As she emerged from the woods to the bridge, rain began to fall with a rumble of thunder. Phillippe hurried across the bridge, his shoes clinking against the stonework.
Out of the corner of her eye, Belle caught a flash of movement above her. The next moment, she was frozen in horror. The Beast - her kind, gentle, Beast - was hanging limply over a battlement. A man in a red shirt - Gaston, her brain supplied helpfully - broke off a piece of stonework and raised it above his head, clearly intending to strike the Beast.
"No!" she screamed. "Gaston, don't!"
Gaston paused for a moment, but continued in his preparations to kill the Beast. But that moment was all the Beast had needed - in a flurry of movement too fast for Belle to interpret, he was back on his feet and fending off Gaston's blow as if it was nothing more than a friendly punch on the arm.
"Go, Belle," Maurice said, sliding off Phillippe. "Go and save him."
Without hesitation, she giddied Phillippe up, and he burst through the castle doors. The servants all shrieked at the sight of her - Belle was sure she saw Cogsworth, now in a blue hat, raising a musket on instinct - but she slid off the horse and started running, as fast as she could to the West Wing. Behind her, she could hear Chip's excited voice as he recounted their misadventure to the staff assembled in the hall.
She ran up the grand stairs, and flew around the corner to an upper hallway. She was beginning to pant for breath, but Belle knew she didn't have a moment to lose. She kept running - past the flying buttresses, past the examples of the late neo-classical Baroque period, past the hallway which was usually filled with suits of armour. It was empty now, and Belle realised that they must have fought to preserve the castle from the violent men attacking it. Finally, she found the stairs to the West Wing, and hurried up them. A stitch was forming rather painfully in her side, but she kept sprinting through the pain.
Belle shoved the doors open without the hesitation of a few months ago, and raced through the newly-cleaned rooms to the balcony, narrowly avoiding the rose and bell jar on the table in front of the balcony doors. The rain came pummelling down on her head, soaking her instantly, but Belle didn't care.
"Beast!" she yelled, looking frantically from side to side. "Beast!" She found him a moment later, on a parapet several feet below her.
"Belle," the Beast breathed, spinning around in the rain so that they faced each other.
Belle reached out her hand, half-hanging over the balcony. The Beast moved over the rooftops with careful ease, reaching out his own massive paw and taking her hand in his. Belle squeezed his hand, and slowly, as if she would start away, the Beast raised his hand to her cheek - a mirror of how she had left him, she realised with a sudden pang.
"You came back," he said, with an incredulity that would have broken her heart, had she not been so happy to see him alive. Belle leaned into his caress, really feeling the rough pads of his paws, and the slight but definite weight of his claws in her hair. She wrapped both her hands around his arm, allowing herself to enjoy the calm moment.
Suddenly, the Beast jerked backwards with a roar of pain. Belle grabbed at his shirt, using all the strength she had to stop him falling off the edge of the balcony and into the ravine below. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, a flash of red shirt and a glint of metal. Gaston was already out of her reach by the time she realised he was falling, and Belle instead dragged the Beast over the railing as best she could.
He collapsed on the ground next to her, his breathing coming in pained gasps. Had she taken a moment to look at them, Belle would have noticed that her hand was covered with the Beast's blood, where she had been gripping his shirt as she pulled him over the railing.
"Belle!" the Beast cried out from his precarious position on the turret, a smile the likes of which she'd never seen before transforming his face. "You came back!"
Belle Beaumont could have cried from the sheer relief that he was alive. "I tried to stop them!" she shouted, desperate for him to understand. Although she was too far away to see his face clearly, Belle could tell that a certain tension had eased from his shoulders.
"Stay there - I'm coming!" he said. He made an impossibly huge leap to a tower closer to where she was standing, and Belle's heart was in her throat once again. He jumped again - to another walkway, parallel to the one she was on - and almost missed, hanging over the edge of the abyss for what, to Belle, felt like an eternity before pulling himself up.
Before she could even take a sigh of relief, Gaston rushed out from behind the Beast and hit him before he could even get to his feet. Belle rushed out of the small tower she was in, running along the walkway as it continued on. Even in her sturdy boots, she found herself perilously close to slipping off the edge, and found herself cursing whoever had designed the castle in such a dangerous manner. The walkway led to a large balcony, and Belle realised in the back of her mind that she was in the West Wing for the second time that night. Her attention, however, was caught entirely by the two men on the bridge opposite her - for that was what they were, to her.
Gaston kicked the Beast onto his back, and in the back of her mind Belle wondered what had happened for the Beast to be so weakened. The forefront of her mind was taken up with the swagger that Gaston had just adopted; the same manner he moved in whenever he approached an enemy, or an animal ready for the slaughter. In his hands dangled a menacingly sharp piece of stonework, and Belle knew with a sudden horror what he was about to do.
"Gaston!" she shrieked. "No!"
But he ignored her entirely. Just as he was about to strike, the Beast surged upwards and held Gaston's arm still, twisting the stone out of his reach and grasping for his collar. She saw the weapon clatter harmlessly over the edge of the bridge, and then she saw the Beast, a hand firmly around Gaston's throat, dangling him over the edge of the abyss. Belle gasped; a tiny thing, which neither man seemed to hear. Belle could hear Gaston choking something out, but the exact words were carried away by the wind. She didn't need them to guess that he was pleading for his life.
For one awful, endless moment, she thought that the Beast was going to drop him.
Slowly, the Beast pulled Gaston back to the safety of solid ground. Belle could have fallen over, her relief was so great. She knew that Gaston deserved as much for what he had done, and if he had been tried before a judge and sentenced as such, she would have seen it as justice. But to for the Beast to do such a thing would have been different, somehow, in a way which would have coloured her opinion of him forever. She could hear him growl something to Gaston, but his voice was too low for her to know what he was saying. Judging by his frantic scramble to get away, once the Beast released him, it was threatening enough for Gaston to leave without a fight. The Beast himself back away on all fours, towards the very edge of the bridge.
"Don't!" Belle cried out, realising what he meant to do instantly. "It's too far!"
But the Beast had already leapt for the balcony. Once again, he almost missed, pulling himself up by his powerful arms. Arms which had embraced her so gently as they danced earlier that night - had it only been a few hours ago? He stood up to his full height, panting heavily with the exertion of the last several minutes, looking straight at her. His eyes were so blue, Belle noticed as she tried to hold back tears, that it was almost as if the sky had lost a little of itself in them. He broke into a sheepish little half-smile, and he had never looked more human, or more handsome.
And then, without any warning, he collapsed with a roar of agony as a shot from Gaston's forgotten gun rang out.
"You . . . came back," the Beast choked out. His eyes were fixed on hers, even as he struggled to breathe. Belle Dupont stroked his face tenderly, running her fingers soothingly from his eyebrow to his cheekbone.
"Of course I came back," Belle said with a reassuring manner she didn't for a moment possess. "I couldn't just let them - oh, this is all my fault!" She bunched her fingers up in the fabric of his shirt, consumed worse than ever before by the guilt of leading Gaston straight to him. "If only I'd gotten here sooner," she said, bending down to embrace him as best she could in their current positions.
"Maybe - it's better this way," he said.
"Don't talk like that," Belle said, shaking her head even though she knew it was useless. "You'll be alright - we're together now, everything's going to be fine." Lies, every word of them, but Belle couldn't have told him the truth - that he was going to die outside his own bedroom, in a body which he clearly despised - even if she had been able to confront it herself.
With a superhuman effort, the Beast lifted his hand to her cheek, running his fingers through her hair. "Then at least . . . at least I got to see you . . . one last time," he managed to say, before falling back to the cold stone, unconscious.
Belle let his hand fall, covering her mouth as if she could physically stop her sobs coming out. "No," she gasped, the tears on her face mingly with the raindrops. "No!" She laid her head on his chest, weeping bitterly. "Please, please - please don't leave me." Belle turned her face, so that she could catch the last, faint beatings of his heart.
"I love you," she whispered, so quietly she was barely sure she had said it.
Behind her, the last petal fell.
Belle Beaumont rushed to the Beast's side as he half-staggered, half-fell back into the West Wing. Behind her, she could hear the cracking of stone, and what sounded like a human scream of terror. She couldn't care less about Gaston, however - not when her Beast was lying on his back, fighting to keep breathing after he had been shot twice in the back.
"You came back," he murmured, as if he still couldn't quite believe it.
"Of course I came back," Belle choked. "I'll never leave you again!" Her hand snuck to the back of his neck, supporting him as he gazed up at her - a mirror of when he had dipped her during their dance, she realised with a pang.
"I'm afraid it's my turn to leave now," he said. His tone was almost apologetic, and his eyes sought her gaze as if he was afraid, suddenly.
"We're together now," Belle whispered; she had begun crying, and her throat was so tight she found it almost impossible to speak. "It's going to be fine," she lied. Enchanted castle it might be - even Belle Beaumont knew that nobody could survive two bullet wounds without a minor miracle.
"At least I got to see you . . . one last time," the Beast sighed. His whole body slacked in her grasp, but his eyes - those blue eyes she had come to know so well - remained open, unseeing.
"No," Belle choked out, hot tears pouring down her face. "Please, no. Come back!" She shook his chest, but it was pointless. He was gone.
Behind her, the last petal fell.
Belle gently kissed his forehead, still crying inconsolably. "I love you," she whispered, so quietly that only the Beast would have been able to hear her.
Agathe had seen the entire rooftop battle from her hiding spot - both battles. She had heard the two Beast's final words, and had observed the two Belle's heartfelt sobs. Looking for the moment at Belle Beaumont, sobbing wildly over the broken body of her Beast, Agathe felt ashamed. She had never intended for either Beast to come to any bodily harm - and what was worse, the Beaumont girl had missed the curse's deadline by only a few seconds. Agathe took a moment to look at the servants in the courtyard; to her horror, they were already inanimate.
Agatha clenched her jaw. Even she could not turn back time. But the Dupont girl had declared her love before the deadline, and the Beaumont girl merely seconds later. It would have to do.
She flung back her hood, and allowed the magic of both women's love to flow through her veins. She took a deep breath, and stretched her hand out to the bell jar which still contained the rose. With a flick of her fingers it disintegrated, and she guided the petals over to the Beast's body. Looking at Belle Dupont's Beast, she sent tiny sparks shooting down from the sky, enveloping him in cool-toned light.
Agathe frowned when she turned back to Belle Beaumont's Beast. He was in mid-air, the petals swirling around him, but he had not yet changed form at all. She concentrated even more on the love of both Belle Dupont and Belle Beaumont, filling herself with its energy.
Suddenly, her magic surged within her, and Agathe's eyes flew open. Against her intentions, the same light which was carrying each Beast had shot to his Belle, although both girls were too engrossed in what was happening to notice. Agathe tried to draw the magic away - it was intended for transformations, nothing more or less - but that only increased its hold on each Belle. Unable to stop, Agathe watched in helpless horror as Belle Dupont and Belle Beaumont were enveloped in light.
At the very instant the two princes transformed, the light pulsed around the two women, and both flinched away on instinct. The magic from both transformations faded, and even though both women looked the same, Agathe's heart sank. If what she thought just happened had just happened, things could not possibly be worse for Belle Dupont, Belle Beaumont, and the men for whom they had just confessed their love.
A/N: Hi! This is my first time writing for 2017!verse - well, I say writing. Almost all the dialogue in this chapter was taken from Beauty and the Beast, 1991 and 2017, which I do not own. I'll get more creative, I swear!
For reference: Belle Dupont is 1991!Belle. Belle Beaumont is 2017!Belle. Further clarifications will be made as we meet more characters with the same name. Also, full disclosure - in the name of everybody's sanity, the princes will have different names, neither of which will be Adam.
Feel free to leave a comment!
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