-The Beast-
He stalked through the trees silently, frustrated at the quiet night. He needed a distraction to pull his mind away from the castle away from her.
She had cast her spell on him earlier when he came across her in the gardens. He could not stop his curious mind that had endless thoughts and questions about the mystery woman in his castle. There were more pressing matters to spend his thoughts on, but he could not control his mind that just kept circling back to her wide eyes and her dark brown hair.
Polly was right when she blamed his self-control. Even now far from the castle sulking in the late hours of night his every spare thought moved to the small glimpses of her that he had seen. He was so deluded and crazy that he could even smell her scent out here in the forest. She smelled like honey, and he found himself following the phantom scent daydreaming of a world where they had met under different circumstances.
He was not daydreaming anymore. He knew she was in the forest. There was no longer faint traces of her scent, it was strong now and there were clear tracks leading deeper into the heart of the forest. She did not even know where she was going.
The Beast ran silently through the forest to catch up with her, fearing the worst in the dark monster infested forest. If she was dead- the horrific thought stopped him. He would kill Birch. What was he thinking, letting all his spies leave when they were needed the most?
When he saw her, he could finally breathe. Not only was she alive, but she was not hurt or being eaten, she was slowly shambling along using an antique rapier as a walking stick.
He barely stopped himself from storming over and demanding what in the actual hell she thought was doing out here. The last time he acted on his first instinct, he abducted her and put them both in this mess, so he forced himself to think his next actions through.
She was just trying to get away from him, he realized, and suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to help her flee. Polly and Vandy had both said she asked if they would help her escape. She was turned down both times but here she was struggling along the path.
He watched her struggle along the path in the dark. Could he let her go? Could he keep the monsters around them at bay and let her walk back home?
Before he even figured out his course of action, he felt himself shift. Horns retracted and claws shrank, and he became human for the first time in a while.
The simple Black tunic and pants reappeared, and he set off towards Belle. Polly had made it a point that he did not know what she wanted. Finally, he would rectify that. Whatever she wanted most, he was going to help her. It would bring some semblance of meaning into his life.
-Belle-
The last thing you want to do when you first meet someone is to scream bloody murder in their face.
She had not even heard the man behind her and when she stumbled over a rock and a mysterious hand kept her upright, she screamed, ripped herself out of his grasp, and threw herself on the ground in the process.
She scrambled back and held the rapier out towards the man.
"Get back!" She yelled.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you." He rushed, "May I help you up?" He asked and Belle crawled away from him a few inches just to feel safer.
"No. You may not." She said, feeling safer on the ground. "What do you want?"
"I uh- I just saw you walking around, and I wanted to make sure that you were alright. It's not a safe place to be wandering around at night."
Belle let out a strained manic laugh. She had been playing over in her mind over and over again the horrific things that could happen in a forest. He might have gotten the jump on her, but she was not an idiot.
Her heart still racing, "Thank you for the advice. You can be on your way; I'll take it from here."
"You'll die out here." He said flatly.
"Yes, most likely, I'll take my chances, thank you."
The man still stayed in the exact same spot and Belle was debating whether she should go on the offensive and just start waving her sword as hard as she can and hope to hit something important. Not her finest strategy, but she had no other course of action. She decided to act first and ask questions later, and she started brandishing the blade with reckless abandon.
"And I'll take that." He said wrenching the rapier from her hand. Now she was defenseless, and he held all the cards.
"Who are you?" She asked.
"I'm uh- Birch." It was darkly comical how bad of a liar the man was.
"Really? Birch? You must be kidding me-" She laughed lightly but her laughter was strained, his voice had a maddeningly familiar timbre.
"Ok, Birch", she said drawing out the fake name dramatically, "you know who I am don't you."
There was another pause and she smiled to stop herself from laughing, he really was the worst liar she had ever met. "Don't bother answering that. You have already given yourself away. Are you from the rescue party? Are you here to rescue me?" That was the only thing she could imagine she could know his voice from. He must have been one of the men who cheered as they tied her up.
"Yes I am." the man said a little too quickly and a little too enthusiastically. "I'm going to take you back home."
Belle frowned. Something still did not feel right about this. She only saw the world through noises, and she could not place his voice. She could not trust him until she remembered.
"Well, I am not going back with you, so you can turn around and go tell them that you didn't find me."
He took a while to respond. She figured he was either trying to figure out a way to force her or he really was slow. "You don't want to be rescued?" His voice was quiet and small, and she took that as a victory. She had caught him off guard.
"No, I have everything under control here, so good-bye." She said using her other hand to shoo him away.
"But the Beast, he could show up at any minute!" The man said halfheartedly in his being shoo'd away.
She smiled thinly. "I'll take my chances with him. Quite frankly I would rather die out here than go back home with you. If you plan to force me, I will scream so loudly that I will bring every hungry ungodly monster in this whole damn forest right here and let you deal with them. So, I say once again sir, goodbye."
He did not move, and Belle was beginning to get frustrated. It was one thing to have to deal with a beast, but it was a whole other thing to deal with a town of people who had dragged her and tied her up just so they could have their moment of glory in the sun.
"I cannot leave." The man said.
"It is not hard. Just turn around and walk out the way you came."
"I can't leave you out here to die." He said simply.
"You already left me out here to die. You must have grown a conscience in the last week.
"I did not leave you to die."
"Yes, you did. "She said emphatically. "Every last man in the city heard as they paraded me through the streets. You probably even celebrated with the same men who tied me up and dragged me out here. You left me to die just as much as any of them."
Her fists were balled up in anger and her chest was rising evenly with every breath she took. He was completely silent after her angry words, and she wanted him to fight her. She wanted him to tell her that there were people who did not condone the way she was treated.
"I'm not from your village," He said finally. "I lied. I work for the Beast King; I just want to help you."
Belle's eyebrows raised. "You want to help me? You realize that lying and sneaking up on me wasn't an ideal strategy, right? Who sent you out here? Was it Polly?" She asked.
"No one! I was just out-" He died off suddenly.
"Out? At midnight? Just hanging out in The Beast King's Forest?"
He had to be here to either kill her or drag her back and no matter which it was she was not going to make easy.
"You can't make me go back there." She said stubbornly.
"I wasn't going planning on it." He said sighing. He sounded tired and ready to give up.
"Then what are you planning on doing?" She asked suspiciously.
There was silence. She did not like silence, it left her alone in the dark.
"On second thought, I don't care what you're doing. You can have full range of the forest, I won't bother you, just let me go my separate ways and we can both pretend this conversation never happened."
-The Beast-
The Beast was dumb struck. She had a death wish, she had to have. She was sitting here meeting him word for word trying to scare him off. He thought she would be less intimidated if he came to her as a human, but this was not exactly the reaction he had expected.
It seemed that the only ones who had hurt her more than he did was the men who tied her up and left her in the forest. Anger was an old friend that threatened to overwhelm him as he realized what the townspeople had done. There were no women out desperate for comfortable lives like he had thought. Every woman from the previous years had been just like Belle. Ugly words went through his mind. Sacrifices. Forced.
He tried to keep humans from dying in the forest. It always led to nasty hunts that only ever seemed to end in more bloodshed. He would make an exception for the men who now searched the forest for Belle, he decided. They would die, but before he could exact justice, he needed to get Belle out of the open where it was unsafe.
He suddenly sat down across from her. It was the only thing that he could think of doing. To prove to her that he was not a threat. He would treat her like he did any small wild creature.
"What are you doing?" She asked.
"I'm going to help you just like I said whether you want it or not."
She stopped at that.
"Help me with what?"
"That depends entirely on why you are out here." he said. "I initially came over here to help you get back home safely, but now that doesn't seem like what you have in mind."
"Yes- No- That is where I'm going, but I don't want or need your help."
He held up his hands in defense as if trying to calm a wild animal. The harder she insisted on not needing his help the deeper his conviction to help her became. He tried to hide his smile so she would not think he was mocking her.
"You'll want my help, I promise. You would not make it another twenty feet without being eaten. You should be thanking me for coming along."
"I was doing fine before you showed up." She said evenly.
He shrugged, picking at the weeds that surrounded them. "You've been lucky so far. Besides, there is already a scarcity of beauty in this world. I cannot just let someone like you get themselves killed even if you have some sort of innate desire to die trying to prove your independence!"
He saw a quick blush flash up her face and he could not hold back a wide grin. He knew that he had her.
"You're not going to leave, are you?" She asked, defeated.
"Not unless you're coming with me."
"Are you usually this boorish?"
He finally laughed at that. "Always, are you?"
She did not answer his question, but she put her hands on her knees. "Okay. Let's go."
"Has anyone ever told you that you don't accept favors very well?"
She looked past him, her face full of unhidden contempt for him making him smile. He did not know why, but it made him giddy that she disliked him as a human as much, if not more, than she disliked him as the beast.
"Has anyone ever told you that you're extremely unlikable?"
"Everyday."
He held his hand out for her to take but she ignored it and stood up nearly pushing him over in the process.
They stood then inches away and Belle's face flushed pink again. The Beast was stuck between his fight or flight mode, frozen, unable to act. A voice in the back of his head told him that a gentleman would take a step back, but a much louder voice commented that he was not a gentleman.
It took him a moment to realize that she was holding out his arm for him to take and he felt embarrassed, grateful that she could not see his deep red face in the dark.
"Shall we go?" he asked when she did not make any moves forward.
"Not until you start over and introduce yourself properly, Birch."
His shoulders shook in a silent laugh, "Adam." He said, surprising himself, "just Adam." Once his name was out there, he immediately felt like she had lost control of the situation until she flashed a wide smile.
"You know Adam, I almost believed that one." She dragged him along leaving behind his comfort and ability to string a sentence together.
He was not tired anymore.