Adam felt Belle stretch luxuriously in his arms. He gloried in the pleasure he had brought to her, fully satisfied in the sensation of having done right by her. He knew that a woman's first time was supposed to hurt. It was a thing he'd never given much thought to before, but a thing that now seemed terribly unfair to him. Why should a woman carry all the pain in life? Surely women were not truly to blame for all the evils in the world? His world was larger than hers and in the men in it were such wretched creatures. He knew far more pious, tender women than men.
He reached to brush a lock of hair from her face and balked at the sight of his hands. Gone were the pale tapered fingers of a prince. In their place, he saw his beastly claws once more. The sweet face of Belle evaporated before him and darkness and dust was left in its place. Sunlight turned to ashen night, and the glory turned cold in his chest.
Anguish slashed through him as the face of an old woman loomed over his bed.
"A beast you once were," she said, in her broken old voice. "And a beast you shall ever remain."
He roared in torment, the sins of a thousand generations lacerating his soul, as he bled on the cold stone floor. It was no less than he deserved.
He woke with a roar and a shudder to find Belle clutching at him. Ice pierced his chest and he wanted to vomit from the empty, sour, all consuming panic in his gut. Still, she brushed sweat dampened hair from his face as she soothed him and pulled his head to her breast.
She did not ask him what he dreamed of. He knew she dreamed, too. He wondered if it would ever end. He supposed one could not live through such as they had without such consequences. He had died a beast. She had watched him do it. He wasn't as strong as he'd always pleased himself to think he was. They had died. All of them had. His servants, his friends, everyone he had ever loved. They had all died. They had been reborn, but rebirth did not erase death fully. They still remembered it. All of it. All of them did.
"Thank you," he whispered into the soft crook of her neck, as they lay together, tangled in the warm sheets.
"Always," she answered, cradling him close to her. "You do it for me. It's what people in love do." He kissed her, then, a soft kiss, not meant to inspire lovemaking, but to convey the depths of affection he felt for her.
"What do you dream of?" he asked her, at last. "Or is it something you don't wish to talk about?"
"Death," she answered bluntly, turning away from him. He was hardly surprised.
"I dream I am a beast again. I dream that you are gone and all the world is cold and nightmarish." He sighed as he felt her embrace.
"I'll never leave again," she said. "Not if I can help it. And I would love you even if you were a beast."
"But you couldn't make love to me," he said. "And I do love the way you touch me," he kissed her lips. "And kiss me."
"I kissed you," Belle answered. Adam was confused. He knew she kissed him after he transformed. "I was too late. You wouldn't remember. But I kissed you. And were you unchanged. And I would kiss you again." There was a long pause before Belle continued. "I don't know about the rest of it, but I think…" Belle let her sentence hang and was silent then.
Adam stared at her in wonder and horror and fascination and uncertainty.
"I, uhm," he paused. "I don't know what to say." He was fascinated with the deepening blush on Belle's cheeks as she refused to meet his gaze. "Oh, my god," he exclaimed. "You're quite serious, aren't you?" Belle still refused to meet his gaze.
"Am I utterly perverted? Are you repulsed by me?" Adam still could not speak. Some sort of shameful lust began to grab hold of him. "You really were more man than beast, you know," she tried to argue, finally looking at him. Tears glittered in her eyes and he began to see that these feelings had tormented her. She did not know what to do with them.
"How?" he asked. "How could you see me like that?"
"A beast cannot make conversation, cannot read or quote poetry. A beast cannot speak of love and history, teach mathematics or latin, or converse in languages. A beast does not care, does not give of himself in generosity. A beast does not empathize, does not dance, does not live as you lived. If you were an animal, then so was I, and so what difference would it make, as we were both the same. You were just… hairier?" Adam was moved by her description of him. He had not seen himself that way. She had made him feel more human, more alive, but he truly had not seen himself as a man.
"Your lips," she continued, touching his lips softly. "Your lips are the same now. Full and sweet and lovely. They were a man's lips, even in your broader face. Your eyes," she touched the outer corners of his eyes, "are the same now. Still blue like the summer sky. I would have kissed you, even had you not been dying. I would kiss you again, even with the same face."
"Is that why you asked me to grow a beard?" Adam mused softly. "Do you miss his face?"
"There is no his," Belle denied. "No 'him'. 'He' is not separate from you. You mustn't think of the beast that way or you will never heal. 'He' is you and you are 'he' and you are one and the same and always will be. You'll always be my beast, and I will always love you for it. I'll always love that wild untamed part of you. And yes. Sometimes I miss your other face. I fell in love with that face. Does that make me odd?" Belle looked utterly and preciously vulnerable in his arms and Adam leaned down to kiss her fully and firmly on the mouth.
"Wild and untamed?" he asked, teasingly. Belle moaned softly in agreement.
"Very wild," she agreed, moving seductively under him.
"Then I shall always be your beast," Adam agreed, finding a peace in the words he did not think he would ever feel. "Yours, and yours alone." The remainder of Belle's unfinished sentence hung in the back of Adam's mind. She didn't know about the rest of it, but… But what?
"Belle," he breathed softly. She answered with a soft noise of acknowledgment. "What did you mean by you don't know about the rest of it, 'but…'?" There was silence and Belle was utterly still beneath him. Even her breathing had stilled. Adam began to regret asking. "Belle?" he eventually prompted?
Belle exhaled and the sound was weary and worried and sad.
"Please Belle," Adam told her, his heart clenching at the concern emanating off her. "If something is troubling you, please tell me. We, each of us, have enough burdens to bear without making new ones or trying to carry them on our own. I will not judge you, for I feel as though I know where your thoughts lie. Still, I would like to hear you say it. I think I need to hear you say it." He felt hers muscles loosen, as though she'd let go of some mighty weight.
"I keep trying to convince myself that I never would have lain with you as a beast. That I am only here now because you are a man. But," she paused and the silence was utterly pregnant with implication. "I don't know if that is true and it speaks to something dark and terrifying in me." Adam watched Belle lick her lips, struggling for words. "By the time you freed me, I was already free, though I didn't know it. By the time I made it to my father, I knew how much I loved and needed you. By the time I saw you on the turret, I knew I would spend all of my life with you, regardless of your eternal outward shape. And spending all my life with you," Belle again did not finish her sentence.
There was another long and length silence, and Adam allowed Belle to gather her thoughts into words, curious to know what she would say. Already, she had gifted him with more peace than his transformation had.
"The night we danced," Belle paused and smiled. Adam smiled too, pulling her closer to him as he laid on side near her and remembered. It had been glorious. "Your hands were all over me. It felt amazing, better than it had any right to. And I was aroused by the feel of it. And I could not believe such a thing was even possible. It was such a foreign sensation to me. Had you kissed me, right there on the dance floor, I would have let you. You felt so deliciously large and formidable in my arms. I felt so delicate and utterly safe. And I replay that night over and over again in my mind. Each time, the fantasy progresses a little further." Belle leaned into Adam then. She began to shake a little, and Adam realized she was crying.
"I think I must be very wrong, somehow," she sighed. "And yet I love you so deliciously and truly. I loved you then and I love you now."
Adam did not answer her, but simply held her close, willing the strength he did not possess into the very essence of her being. She would ever be his beauty and he would ever be her beast. Right or wrong, it did not matter.