Mornings were not Lumière's natural habitat. He was a creature of the evening, at home with romantic sunsets followed by long, slow nights. It was therefore a somewhat unnerving surprise to everyone to see him bounding down a passage in the servants' quarters well before breakfast. Cogsworth, although he would have been the first to chide him for tardiness, didn't like it.
"What's got into you?" he asked, examining his colleague closely. "You're not ill, are you? That's all we need, our replacement prince getting ill. And they've already seen you, now, so it's not like another replacement will do. What is it, a fever? Have you spoken to Mrs Potts? Let me feel your forehead."
Lumière neatly sidestepped him. "My forehead, Cogsworth, is none of your concern. I am fine. Dieu est aux cieux and all is right with the world."
"Mmm," said Cogsworth, in a tone that suggested that this was not entirely to be desired. "Well then. You can come to my meeting with the Prince, then. It'll save me briefing you later."
"I prefer a good debrief myself," commented Lumière, with the kind of lewd gesture that Cogsworth was not prepared to tolerate on an empty stomach.
"Lumière?"
"Yes?"
"You're disgusting." He grabbed him by the elbow and started to haul him along the corridor. "Come on."
Belle left her husband in one of the interchangeable reception rooms to wait for Cogsworth and made for the library. She hadn't even asked if he wanted her to stay. They both regretted what had passed between them the previous night, but there was still a certain amount of tension in the air and she knew that attempting to disrupt their usual arrangements would be a risk that wasn't worth taking.
She hated the discord between them. These last two years hadn't exactly been easy, what with the Prince politically returning from the dead in addition to everyone trying to recover from the curse, but there had always been the safety of their marriage to retreat into, even when there wasn't time for them to actually be together. He was her best friend and she just didn't know how to help him.
She was also... disappointed. Was it wrong to think that? It didn't seem as though there was anything she could think that wasn't wrong. Who did she imagine was policing her thoughts? The Enchantress? Maybe. If she thought she could delve like that into a person, to decide whether they were worthy, whether they met up to her standards... What would she find, Belle wondered, if she looked in detail at Belle herself?
Anyway, however hard she tried to smother the feeling, Belle was disappointed. He'd promised her an adventure. It was a silly thing to hold on to in the face of all this and, deep down, she'd always known that it wouldn't be the adventure she'd always dreamed of, with great feats of bravery, avoiding death by the skin of their teeth and then making camp and doing it all again the next morning, because how much danger could a prince be allowed to get into? Now that she thought about it, his "just you and me" promise had been pretty empty. They'd have been lucky to get away from the castle flanked by only, say, ten royal guards. But they would have been away from the castle, away from running the kingdom, and he'd have been doing his best to make her happy. And now they couldn't do it.
Could they? She tried to brush the thought away as ridiculous, but it kept coming back, prodding at the corners of her conscious thought.
Of course they couldn't. Much as she loved him, she surely had to admit to herself that, in his current state, her husband was likely to cause fear and anxiety in the populous at large if spotted out and about in civilised areas.
Was he? Belle frowned. She tried to remember a time before she had known her Beast, a time when he was just a monster in a castle. It was difficult: two years had covered the memory with layer after layer of love and understanding and forgiveness. She was dimly aware that she'd hated him. But... not because he was a Beast. Because he was the monster who'd imprisoned her father, who had taken her own freedom.
The freedom both of them so sorely pined for now.
Perhaps she was underestimating the population. After all, he only looked like a Beast. He was a man inside, a good man, and she would defend that notion to the death, no matter what the Enchantress said. Not everyone would understand, of course – the mob that had stormed the castle the night the curse was broken sprang to mind – but was it fair to say that no one would? She had come to see through it, and she had had real cause to despise him in the beginning. Who was to say that other people couldn't do the same?
Would it help? She wasn't sure. But she was sure of something else: they couldn't carry on like this, isolated in their little backstage world up here, drawing nothing but blanks while life went on without them downstairs.
She had promised him they would fix this. He'd promised her an adventure.
She turned on a glittering high-heel and ran, clattering, back down the corridor. She burst back into the room without knocking and was greeted by the bemused faces of Lumière, Cogsworth and the Beast.
"Come away with me," she said, breathless.
A wall of silence confronted her. After a few puzzled moments, Cogsworth ventured: "Are you alright, Belle?"
She strode over to the table they had congregated around and gripped the back of a chair, staring, starry-eyed, at her husband. "Let's go on my adventure anyway. To hell with everything else! Let's hitch up one of the carts the servants use to go to market and just go!"
The Beast looked at her with a mixture of confusion and concern. "Belle, what are you talking about?"
Belle realised she wasn't making a lot of sense and forced herself to slow down. "Listen," she said. "I know you're miserable here and I am too. It's no life, lurking in the darkness, scrabbling hopelessly for answers, you said that yourself. So let's go out into the light! Cogsworth's got everything under control and Lumière's doing a great job as faux prince – this is the chance we've been waiting for! You can't be the prince and the kingdom's never needed a princess, so let's just be... us. You and me. What do you think?"
The Beast hesitated. It was there, the light in Belle's eyes that made him want to forget everything and sweep her up into the air so that they could fly together on the wings of her excitement, but something was holding him back. "Belle, we can't. I'm a monster, remember? We won't get a mile away from the castle without the locals grabbing their pitchforks."
Belle paused, but only for a moment. She doubted her husband's ability to share her faith in the basic goodness of people. At the moment, anyway. "We'll cover the cart, so no one can see in. We can travel in secret. I'll wear my own clothes so no one knows I'm the princess and we'll be careful about where we stop." She leaned forward, meeting his gaze, unblinking. "If nothing else, we'll be free. Even if it's just for a few days. Do you trust me?"
He took her in again, her soft, brown hair, her huge, imploring eyes, her soft, gentle lips. He'd be a fool – he'd been a fool – to miss chances to be alone with her. Even before the spell had broken the first time, she'd given him freedom and happiness he'd long since forgotten to dream about. If he was going to put his faith in anything, it was going to be her. "I do," he said. "Let's do it."
I apologise for any bizarre quirks that this chapter might exhibit – I'm sleep-deprived and stressed! The good news is that this chapter, while not terribly exciting, sets the story off on what I can only describe as the "road trip" element of the plot, which I'm really looking forward to writing and for which credit must, again, go to Nikki (nikki(dot)anjo - the site eats the dot if I put it in properly!) and Faith (LumBabsFan) for helping me to develop. The bad news is that, between driving lessons, having teeth out and the start of the new semester, I'm not going to have as much time for writing as I have had for the last few weeks, so updates won't be quite as regular. However, as I keep saying, I really am very excited about this fic and I genuinely feel like it's going to get finished! As always, thank you so much to everyone who is reading and reviewing this fic, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support!
Oh, and ladyofthelake - I almost ended the last chapter so before the last few lines about them making up, but I didn't want to leave any doubt as to whether they would. They really need each other at the moment and they can't afford for an argument to divide them too much. I didn't want it to be that big a deal. They really do love each other, but it's only natural for them to fall out when they're trapped under this much pressure. Having them repair their relationship after a huge fight would have been taking them back to where they were in the movie, and I wanted to cover some new ground. But I absolutely understand where you were coming from!