There was a banging on their front door the next morning, and a cry going out of a public execution in the square before Notre Dame.

Belle's blood turned cold in her veins to hear it, and as she dressed she also slipped a knife into the folds of her dress. It had been Gaston's once. It was the knife he had killed Prince Adam with – and wasn't it ironic that she had only learned his name after he had died. The knife was a horrible thing, but sharp, and Belle had kept it more because she had hated the feelings of fear and helplessness she had experienced then so recently. The wolves that had attacked her when she ran from the Beast in his fury, and Gaston's great bulk had been difficult to deal with, unarmed as she was... and when she and her father had been locked in the basement with no way to escape, a knife would have been useful then to break the glass or shift the lock.

She was afraid to use it, but she was more afraid of the idea of needing it and not having it.

Belle hesitated before she left her room, a glance spared for her vanity where the mirror was safely in its hiding place. But no. If Clopin was in the square, awaiting execution, then she did not need any reason more to hurry. If he was not there, then she could return home and seek him in the mirror.

He was in the square awaiting execution, with soldiers standing at the doors of his cage, of the captain's cage, and other cages with other prisoners in them. It looked so wrong to see him there, all in his bright colours and lurid mask still, but behind bars.

Belle left her father's side and hurried to them.

"Monsieur," she asked the guard. "What crimes did these men commit?" she asked, with a gesture to Clopin and the three other gypsies in the mobile prison with him. "I have seen one play the pipe, another the drum, while this man walked on stilts and this man tells stories to children. Why, he was the Prince de Sots at the Feast of Fools this year!"

"Minister Frollo says they are thieves and scoundrels Mademoiselle," the guard answered with a shrug. "I do not object to there being fewer of such on the streets, and I don't dare question if Frollo is right or wrong. I have a wife at home, expecting a child. I cannot risk to find myself in the same position as the captain," he explained with a vague gesture towards where the blonde man stood in his own cage not far away.

"Frollo would accuse us of theft if we accepted a gift on our birthdays," Clopin snarled as he pressed against the bars that contained him.

The bleat of a goat joined that in affirmation.

Belle looked lower than she had before. "What crime did this goat commit?" she asked with incredulity.

The soldier shrugged. "I do not question my orders," he answered, turning slightly so that he also Clopin over his shoulder.

"Monsieur," Belle said softly. "May I stand near them, until they are..." she trailed off.

The guard shrugged, nodded an absent permission, and turned his gaze up to the stake where Esmeralda was tied. Where other guards were piling bundles of kindling to burn her with.

"Mademoiselle," Clopin said softly to her, bending slightly in his cage so that he could look Belle in the eye. "This is not a place for you to be."

"You are here," she answered him simply, and placed her hand over his on the bars of his cage. She did not look away from him as Frollo lit Esmeralda's pyre. Did not look away when Quasimodo saved her – nor when the crowd cheered for her rescue. Did not look away when Frollo ordered his soldiers to break down the door of the cathedral.

"Citizens of Paris!" the blonde captain yelled across them all when he escaped his cage and stood atop it.

Still Belle did not look away from Clopin.

"Frollo has persecuted our people, ransacked our city! Now he has declared war on Notre Dame herself!" he declaimed loudly. "Will we allow it?" he demanded of the people.

"No!" was the resounding response from people all around her.

She finally looked away from Clopin to take hold of the knife she had brought with her, and broke the lock on his cage with it.

"And where does a pretty girl like you get a wicked looking thing like that?" Clopin asked with a delicate touch to the tip of Belle's dagger once he is free and standing before her.

"A story for another time," Belle answered with a slightly crooked smile as she turned it around in her grip, an action that presented him with the handle.

Clopin smiled back and accepted the weapon. "Then we'd both best live to see the end of this fight," he informed her. "Because I very much want to hear this tale."

It was not long before the fighting had mostly ceased though, all preferring instead to watch the spectacle above of Frollo chasing after Quasimodo and Esmeralda, a drawn and gleaming sword in his hands. Not one person failed to see him fall, clutched onto the stone carving he had been standing on a moment before – though one soldier was not so smart as to get out of the way of Frollo's fallen sword. The stone cracked a bit when it hit the top-most step of Notre Dame. Frollo's landing was considerably messier. If it were not for his robes of office, and that everyone had seen his fall, no one would have known him to look at him.

The soldiers, those still standing, all immediately lay down their weapons, and they all waited for the heroes of the hour to return to them – the captain had gone into the church after Frollo, and had been witnessed catching the hunchback when he slipped from Esmeralda's grip.

Esmeralda and Phoebes had reappeared, hale, healthy, and victorious.

The crowd cheered.

But when they quieted, Esmeralda went back to the cathedral's doors and held out a hand to a figure hiding there in the shadows. Cautiously, Quasimodo stepped into the light.

"Three cheers for Quasimodo!" Clopin rallied, and the crowd obliged.

The boy had saved Esmeralda after all, and rather dramatically at that. Quasimodo was guided into the crowd by one of the children who enjoyed Clopin's puppet show, and hoisted up onto the shoulders of a couple of men, a hero, and accepted at last by the people of Paris, despite his deformity.

"So here is a riddle to guess, if you can, sing the bells of Notre Dame," Belle sang softly to Clopin with a smile on her face as she recalled the tale the man had been telling the children the day they had met. "What makes a monster and what makes a man? Sing the bells..."

"Whatever their pitch, you can feel them bewitch you," Clopin cut in gently, and wrapped his arms around her waist, careful of the blade he still held. "The rich and ritual knells of the bells of Notre Dame."

Belle smiled happily, and was content to lean into Clopin's embrace.

"Mademoiselle, I should like the tale that comes with this knife in my hand," Clopin requested softly.

Belle nodded and drew back. "There was a man in the village where I was living with my father. He wanted me to marry him," she said with disgust.

Clopin chuckled. "I take it you disliked him?" he asked, vaguely amused. "Was he unattractive like our friend the hunchback?"

Belle shook her head. "Worse, Gaston was handsome," she answered. "And rude, and conceited, and... boorish, brainless! He couldn't even understand how people could read a book that lacked pictures–! Well, not long after I rejected his officious, offensive proposal of marriage, I became a prisoner in an enchanted castle," she said, determined to continue her story. "Not for an overly long time, and I was treated as an honoured guest for the period that I was there," she assured Clopin.

"But you weren't free," he said fiercely, well sympathising with such a situation.

Belle shrugged. "The castle had a wonderful library though," she recalled, "and if I could not have adventures of my own, then a library full of the adventures of others would serve me just as well. But... well, the master of the castle learned to be charming, and I... Well, I suppose I lacked other company, but I came to love him, and he loved me. Loved me enough to let me go when we found out my father was sick. Gaston was determined to impose himself on me when I returned though, and when he learned where I had been, what had happened... he went to kill..." Belle cut herself off.

Clopin draped an arm around Belle's shoulders.

"He killed him. I tried to stop it, but... The enchantment on the castle was broken at last, but Gaston had already driven the knife into him and the wound stayed even when the curse was lifted. Gaston fell to his death even as he drove the knife into..." Belle trailed off. "I kept the knife... So that I would not be defenceless against people like Gaston again."

Clopin nodded in understanding and handed back the knife to her.

"Will you go with your father when he leaves Paris?" Clopin asked softly. "He is returning to the same village, you said?"

Belle nodded as she slipped the knife away. "Oui," she agreed. "I worry for him."

"He would not be welcome at the castle you freed from its enchantment?" Clopin suggested. "It would seem to me that they would be pleased to repay you a debt, unless they hold you responsible for the death of their master?"

"With the prince dead, the staff all agreed to defer to me. Cogsworth gave me all the papers of ownership for the castle before we returned to Paris," Belle answered before she even realised exactly what she was saying. "Of course! The castle! Lumiere is always delighted to welcome a guest, and Mrs Potts and Cogsworth would see he was taken care of, and he is my father so... Oh, Clopin, thank you!" she cried happily, and kissed his cheek. "I must find my father," she declared as she rose to her feet. "And then I must prepare for the journey!" she said happily as she ran down the steps of the cathedral.

She was unaware that behind her, Clopin raised a black-gloved hand slowly to his cheek, and his eyes followed her form through the crowd until he could no longer see her.

~oOo~

Caught up as she was with the general elation of having not been burned at the stake, Quasimodo being hailed as a hero, and the general warm, fuzzy feelings that she got when in Phoebus' company, Esmeralda still managed to spot Clopin in the crowd. The bright colours of his tunic helped of course, but there was more to it than that. The man was her older brother, of sorts. Her parents had been taken by Frollo when she was little, and Clopin had taken her in, even though he was only newly a teenager himself at the time. As she'd grown up, she'd learned to look out for him as well.

He was sitting on the steps of Notre Dame, not far from where she stood in fact, talking with a young woman. It took her a moment, but Esmeralda recognised the girl reasonably quickly. It was Belle Leburinrusée. The young woman who had helped her when the guards had wanted to arrest her for theft on the day of the Feast of Fools, and who had spent most of her time at the Feast of Fools in the company of Clopin. On his arm even, a good deal of the time.

Esmeralda saw Belle kiss Clopin on the cheek and run off, saw Clopin raise a gloved hand to his cheek where he had been kissed, square between his neatly trimmed beard and his brightly painted mask.

Esmeralda excused herself to Phoebus, and went with Djali to sit with Clopin.

"I saw that," she said lightly.

"She kissed me," Clopin answered faintly.
"She did," Esmeralda agreed neutrally. To kiss a cheek in Paris was hardly a rare action, but this one seemed to be more somehow.

"She came to the cart where I was being held," he told her, but his eyes didn't waver from Belle's form as it disappeared into the crowd. "She held my hand through the bars and didn't look away from me until the Parisians around her moved to start releasing us to fight back for Paris. She'd brought a knife with her and used it to free us, then she... gave it to me. She smiled and she gave it to me."

Esmeralda watched Clopin's expression silently as she listened to him talk, what she could see of it through his mask, though she had learned to read the bright mask as well over the years. Both of them had been orphaned young. It was why they were so close now, the two of them as brother and sister, just and only them as family. Neither had been settled in an arranged marriage by their parents as was frequently done among their people. They had no parents to make such arrangements after all, and at the appropriate age, they'd had little inclination or resources to secure such things. There were few gypsies of their age that had no wife or husband, and most of those in such a position were so because their partner had died... either they had been executed at Frollo's orders or they had died of illness after being released from being tortured in the dungeons of the Palace of Justice – again, at Frollo's orders.

Esmeralda felt that she had finally found the one man for her, and she would turn to Clopin as her family to discuss matters of course when she was certain. Now, she wondered if Clopin might himself be as afflicted with affection as she was.

"I told her," Clopin said, "I told her that it was not a place for her, and wished she would not stay to witness our deaths. Do you know what she said, Esmeralda?" he asked, and finally looked away from the crowd that Belle had disappeared into, and focused his gaze on the woman at his side.

Esmeralda shook her head. She had, after all, been rather preoccupied at the time.

"She said to me 'you are here'," Clopin supplied softly, and turned his gaze down to his gloved, empty hands. "Esmeralda, I have known her for only a little more than two days, and I already know that I have never known a woman like Mademoiselle Belle Leburinrusée before in my life, and will never meet another like her again."

"Then what are you doing sitting here?" Esmeralda demanded fondly, a smile on her face. "Go after her!" she insisted with a laugh, and shoved his shoulder lightly.

"She is leaving Paris, Esmeralda," Clopin stated. "Perhaps forever." There was no particular emotion to it, but Paris was as much his home as it was the home of all the Parisians who had never thought of leaving. It had cost his parents their lives to get him into the city, and he had made a life here. He left occasionally, when he was feeling too trapped within the city walls, but he always came back eventually. "And I need to be here for you, don't I?" he asked archly, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "I must be ready to haggle your bride price when the Captain asks to marry you."

Esmeralda blushed and bit her lip. "We could skip it," she offered softly.

"You're a valuable woman, Esmeralda. He can't have you for free," Clopin stated firmly. "Besides, as a man of his position, I'm sure that he can afford to pay an appropriate bride price."

Esmeralda sighed and shook her head in fond exasperation before she leant in to rest her head on Clopin's shoulder.

"Esmeralda?" Phoebus called as he came over to them. "There's confiscated property that needs to be retrieved from the Palace of Justice. I'm going to need someone who knows what belongs to who for sorting the whole mess out."

"Go," Clopin urged her softly.

Esmeralda gave him a quick hug about the shoulders, then rose to join the restored captain in keeping the peace. Djali followed her, as he always did.

"Whatever the pitch, you can feel them bewitch you, the rich and the ritual knells..." Clopin hummed to himself as he stared at his hands again. "Belle sang with Notre Dame."

Clopin sighed and hung his head, then pushed himself up off the cathedral steps and went to seek out his cart.

He was relieved to find it undamaged, if a bit cleaner than it had been for a while, and he was delighted to thank the children who rushed up to him with their own stories of how they had made sure his cart would not be destroyed by the soldiers – they only wanted another puppet show, and to give them a show would take his mind off his own troublesome thoughts for a little while.

When the tale was done and the children had applauded and returned to their homes, Clopin packed up his wagon. There wasn't much to do. He had made it ready to move to another part of the city after the Feast of Fools already. He simply had to close the shutters once more and fold up the few steps that he didn't really need, but had for those occasions when he was too tired, returning to his cart after a long day, to jump up to the small ledge before his door.

He would likely be glad for those steps when the day was over. Clopin hitched himself into his cart where anyone else would hitch an animal. Djali's mother, a fine milking nanny goat they'd called Jolie, had done the task before she had run afoul of a particularly unpleasant dog in the autumn months just gone. Until Djali himself was big enough to pull a cart, or until Clopin could afford to buy another animal to take Jolie's place, then he would have to do his own pulling.