It was late morning when a small gap appeared between two flaps of the material obscuring the contents of the cart. A large blue-irised eyeball materialised between them, the pupil darting back and forth a couple of times before hastily withdrawing. The gap closed.

"Belle," rumbled a low voice. "We're on a road."

Belle, her attention having been fixed on said road and their relationship to it for some hours, had thus entered a kind of trance of disinterested concentration and therefore responded only with "Mm."

The Beast tapped his claws on the cart's wooden base for a few moments in a twitchy sort of way, then tried again. "Belle. Belle!"

Belle shook herself into alertness. "What is it? Darling," she added, not having meant to be testy.

"We're on a road," the Beast repeated. "We might come across people."

Belle slowed the horses to a comfortable walk. "That's what the covered cart is for, remember?"

"I know. But I don't like it." He sighed, shifting his position. "I'm not ready."

She eased them to a halt at the edge of the road and turned in her seat. Taking a moment to compose herself, she lifted up the edge of the cloth and poked her head through. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"I think so," he said. "It's just... I think this might be the furthest I've been from home."

Belle frowned, though not unkindly. "Is it?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I think my parents took me to the coast once, when I was very small. How far is that?"

Belle shrugged. "Two, maybe three days' ride." She reached through, awkwardly unbalanced, and squeezed his shoulder. "We don't have to carry on if you don't want to."

"No," he said, "I do. It's just... What will I do? If someone sees me?"

Belle looked down for a moment, then started to clamber through the opening. "You know," she said, reaching his side and straightening her clothes, "I've been thinking."

He looked down at her, a teasing smile on his face in spite of everything. "A dangerous pastime."

She rolled her eyes and nudged him. "I know. But maybe..." She paused to arrange the words in her head. "Don't you think that maybe you've overestimated me?"

It was his turn to nudge her. "I don't see how that's possible."

She arched one eyebrow and smiled, mock-annoyed at the interruption, before continuing. "But you're not afraid of me seeing you. Now, I mean," she added, trying not to think about that horrible first moment the night he had been transformed again. I don't want you to touch me...

"No," he replied, looking away. Then, meeting her gaze again, "But you're my wife. If I didn't know you loved me..." Something struck him then and he stopped.

Belle reached across and squeezed his paw. A moment later she said "But I wasn't always your wife. What about those early days, when we were just becoming friends? You weren't afraid for me to see you then, were you?"

"No." He looked away. "I was excited. I missed you when we weren't together. I mean, I wished I looked like myself, so that I could show you that you didn't need to be afraid, to make it easier for you to love me. But I suppose that I came to realise that you weren't afraid and that it didn't matter to you, that you could see past it." He looked back at her. "That's what I love about you."

Belle swallowed. "But don't you think other people could do that too? See you for who you are?" She smoothed a couple of stray strands of hair behind her ear. "I don't think that makes me special." She hesitated, then plunged on. "Do you still miss me when we're not together?"

He frowned. "What do you mean? We're always together."

Belle looked away this time, softly shaking her head. "We're always in the castle. We sleep in the same bed. But I never see you. I don't know what you do all day. I miss you when you're gone. And when you're with me we never talk..." She was crying now. She hadn't meant to, but the ridiculousness of it was suddenly rushing up to meet her. What was she doing? Dragging her husband out on some stupid quest, chasing some stupid childhood dream of hers just when he needed her help. Help she'd always longed to give him but he'd never asked for. And now they were miles from anywhere and she was tired and all she wanted to do was snuggle up to him and feel safe only now she was going to have to explain what was the matter with her and, and... "If another girl had found the castle and made that bargain with you, would you have fallen in love with her instead?"

The Beast's eyes widened. So did Belle's. She certainly hadn't meant to say that. She hadn't even realised that she'd been thinking it. Now, though, the dam disintegrated and the feeling flooded through. She realised it had been there all along, that uncertainty, when she thought about their story. She had never seen the fact that she had fallen in love with a Beast, as he had, as an indication of a kind of purity and generosity of spirit. She had been frightened by him, but he spoke with a human voice, tried to behave like a gentleman. She had come to know him, had fallen in love with his underlying sweetness, his earnest, gentle nature. She hadn't undergone a heroic struggle against the urge to hate him because of how he looked. She had felt nothing of the kind – and who would have? If there was anything that two years as a princess had taught her, it was humility. She wasn't special. She was one of any number of village girls who, if accidentally plucked from obscurity, would have made a decent job of wearing a tiara and smiling. She didn't particularly deserve a prince, but she wasn't unworthy of one either.

What had bothered her, she now realised, was that they had been alone all that time. In most of her favourite romances, the peasant girl caught the attention of a prince who could have had his pick of any number of finer ladies thanks to her unsurpassable beauty and kindness and strength of spirit. Her prince, though they could be sure that their love was true enough to break a spell, had been in desperate need of someone to love him. He hadn't chosen her. Fate had.

"Belle..." he began, but suddenly they were both conscious of a sharp ray of light. They looked up. A large, hooked nose was protruding into the cart followed, at some distance, by a squinting pair of eyes and a sparsely-toothed mouth.

"Oh," said the mouth, in a deep, wheezing voice. "I'm sorry, I thought this cart was abandoned." The eyes flicked to Belle. "Are you alright, miss?" And then to the Beast. "Oh."

"Oh," said Belle. No other words sprang to mind.

Epic AN!

First off, I'm so sorry for the delay in updating this! It's been... –checks-... Oh, OK, not as long as I thought, actually. But still way too long and I'm sorry! I'm also sorry if this chapter isn't terribly good. It was really difficult to think my way back into this story because I'd kind of lost my thread. But I'm too far into it now not to finish it off!

Second, I'd like to get my plug on. What I've been doing instead of attending to my fanfiction duties is experimenting with other online stuff, namely blogging and making YouTube videos. So if you like my writing enough to not mind if it's not about Beauty and the Beast (although at least one of my blog posts actually is) and/or you would like to see my face and hear it talk about my life and other things, please visit my website IsabellaTyler (dot) com (link in my profile if writing that out into your address bar sounds too much like hard work. I totally understand). You can sign up to get an email every time I add a new post. There's also a link there to my YouTube account and also my Twitter, if that floats your boat (if so please tweet me, I'm feeling so awkward twittering away to myself!). Oh, and I'm working on a kind of comic-book style version of The Phantom of the Opera that sets it in a high school, so that will be posted on the site soon.

If none of this is interesting to you, that's absolutely fine! I'm still incredibly happy to get hits and reviews on my fics and I'll still be working on this and A Lost Illusion. Plus, throughout December, I'll be posting an edited version of my 2006 Christmas fic The One Thing We're Looking For, because I accidentally deleted it in the summer because I am an idiot.

As always, thanks for reading!