Gaston was alone in his house.

All alone.

What to do? What to do? There was nothing to do but wait. LeFou was stationed at Belle and Maurice's cottage, ready to give news whenever they returned. Monsieur d'Arque was on notice that he would be called for once Maurice was at home, so he could enact their agreed-upon scheme.

And that left… Gaston.

No one else but Gaston.

Nothing for Gaston to do but sit. Thinking.

Bad things came from thinking. He had to shut it off at once, before the wicked thoughts could overtake him. What was to be done? There were the daily situps and pushups, of course. He had to do several thousand to maintain his strength, but he was so accustomed to it that he knocked those off in an hour. He checked on the horses, and gave his horse, Tencendur, a brushing, thinking all the while of what on earth could be keeping Belle so long?

One could almost believe Maurice's crazy story that she was locked in a dungeon somewhere. But, more likely she was chasing down batty old Maurice after he'd gotten himself into another scrape — probably fallen from his horse or something. Still, where on earth could they have gone? Maybe Maurice had taken her somewhere, needed her help moving some cumbersome and explosive invention…

Explosive?

Oh God, what if they exploded? Gaston tried to recall if he'd heard any explosions on that night when the pair had vanished. He had been making such a ruckus singing about himself in the tavern that he might not have heard something like that. If they exploded out on that empty road through the woods — well, who would have heard them?

Gaston grabbed his rifle and powder horn, and he hurried out of the house. In a few minutes he was on Tencendur's back and galloping out to the forest.

If Belle was in trouble there wasn't time to lose.

Gaston returned to his home at dawn, in a sour mood despite an assortment of furs and fresh game meats slung over his shoulder that would have brought smiles to the faces of most men. They would think it a sign of a very successful hunt. But not Gaston: while he'd caught the animals easily, even effortlessly — he had not found what he sought.

He had not found Belle.

He believed he'd seen some traces of Maurice, or at least someone about Maurice's size; but, despite being the greatest hunter the town had ever known by far, he never located that man in the night. If he couldn't find him, then surely the man was not around to be found.

Maurice and Belle were not in the woods.

The old song began to run through his head:

Nous n'irons plus au bois,
Les lauriers sont coupés,
La Belle que voilà ira les ramasser.

He groaned wearily; that annoying tune wouldn't be leaving his skull any time soon. Gaston took his load of meat upstairs and began to cook it upon the fireplace gridiron. A good breakfast was very sorely needed after his long, sleepless night. He had a box of coffee in the cupboard and prepared a small pan of it, drinking the hot beverage under the philosophy that it was medicinal; and thus, Frenchman he was, he also had a glass of wine on the side as his real beverage. Some typical breakfast bread was stocked up in the cupboard, though it was growing stale.

After he'd consumed his wine, coffee, nine pounds of meat and three loaves of bread, he heard the usual delivery of eggs arrive downstairs. No snail could have been more sluggish in its progress than he, as he descended the stairs and listlessly collected the box from the doorstep.

Five. Dozen. Eggs.

He just couldn't stomach them right now. It was not even an issue of appetite, it was just… well, it wouldn't kill him to skip a day, right? He'd do ten dozen tomorrow to compensate…

He had taken to eating the indecent number of eggs in an effort to increase his bulk. He had been average to small in his youth; a certain incident had made clear to him that unless he corrected that, he'd be… well, he didn't even like to think about what it would make him into, but he knew he couldn't live in such a state.

Eggs fixed it.

Yet somehow, today, the eggs didn't seem like the magic bullets they once had. They were not bringing Belle into town any faster. Why was she always so difficult? Surely she had to know she was keeping him waiting… oh, ha ha, of course she didn't. She didn't know about the plan to blackmail her.

Then an awful thought crossed his mind. What if she wasn't coming back? What if, somehow, she did predict his plan, and had run away with her father in advance of it?

Placing the box on the table upstairs, Gaston realized he was thinking far too much.

He was suddenly stricken by a recollection of those long, dull-yet-anxious days he once passed, in wait for his mother to die. She had been sick for months, and for the final two weeks it was understood by everybody that her demise was imminent. Fifteen year old Gaston couldn't really see what good it did to wait around for her to pass — she was sleeping most of the time, drugged up on laudanum if she was awake, and didn't seem aware of the family one way or another. It made him angry — that he was being made to sit and wait for her death, as if that achieved anything. That he was forced into this grotesque charade of bedside vigil, as if it held some kind of twisted significance. He craved the wild — yearned for an outlet to unleash the pent-up fury on some helpless creature, bludgeoning some birds, filling a deer's body up with arrows. Or maybe, just maybe, he would've preferred to be with Giraut, that twisted mate he called a friend.

(Eggs. Eggs would keep him from that ever again.)

He wondered if things would have fallen that way, had his mother not died. He wondered what would have been — without her death there'd have been no Giraut, hence no broken arm, hence no eggs, hence no bulk —

Ugh. No wonder he was in a bad mood! Thinking always did this to him. He needed to do something to take his mind off of all this. Something fun, something difficult enough to occupy his thoughts. An adventure!

Pinfinger. That was about the right level of concentration. Gaston was in the village tavern playing pinfinger. His skill and speed at stabbing the knife blade between his bulky fingers was drawing a crowd to the building, even though the day was young.

He could have played it at home by himself, of course — but what fun was a feat without an audience? Besides, the standards he was setting were drawing competition… and the results were laughable. As the name of the game implied, men who braved the challenge were pinning and slicing their fingers apart on the tabletops. There was blood everywhere. Gaston delighted in seeing the misery of his less-skilled rivals.

"Aw, it's no fair," one bearded spectator complained. "Look at how big Gaston's hands are! He has enough space between his fingers to put seating. Of course he'll have an easy time at this."

Gaston heard him. "Bigger hands means bigger fingers to avoid, you know," he said defensively. He couldn't bear the thought of his achievement going unacknowledged.

Gaston wizzed the blade between each of his fingers and back again. He held up his hands, showing them unscathed. Hoots and cheers rose from all around.

The competitor took the knife for his own turn, and in that time Gaston's mind immediately went a million miles away. He began wondering where Belle could be at. He knew she certainly was not in the woods. Where could she have gone? To a nearby village, maybe? Or maybe she'd traveled to one of the cities, like Toulouse. In fact he recalled hearing that she was originally from Marseilles, and that was where she had learned those fancy-lady habits like using forks at the table and reading… so unlike the people here…

"Your turn, Gaston!"

Without missing a beat, Gaston took the knife blam-blam-blam-blam-blam across his hand with lightning speed, avoiding his fingers on each rapid pass. Cheers and exclamations rose from the spectators. Gaston proudly raised his hands in the air.

He faintly wondered if a fork would be just as good for the tool in pinfinger. Maybe once he was with Belle again, he'd try it out. He could picture sitting with her at a dinner table, eating some kind of venison or duck he'd caught, that she'd have wonderfully prepared because women all inherently know how to cook, and he'd whip out his pinfinger skills and she'd be very entertained by him and so pleased to have such an impressive husband…

"Your turn, Gaston!"

Gaston distractedly took the knife. He lifted it to play.

Suddenly he looked at his hand and realized he could scarcely see his actual fingers before him. He just kept seeing the mental pictures of Belle by his side.

Gaston slammed the blade into the table. "You know what? I'm tired of this game."

A man bandaging his wounded fingers frowned. "Already? I was sure you could make fifty passes in a row."

"Two hundred on a bad night," said Gaston. "Not that I ever lost, as my set of ten fingers should prove." He waved his fingers around like they were trophies. "But... I've got this itch, a call to arms. I need to find something else, something that'll make my soul fuckin' roar."

He thus began curling his hands into fists, vaguely planning to pick a fight with someone. The barkeep trembled at the sight.

Still, Gaston's breakfast coffee was wearing off, and the fatigue of the prior sleepless night was beginning to weigh on him. He relaxed his muscles. "I'm getting a little tired," he said, surprised at himself. "I need a good, stimulating drink."

The barkeep, who was literally cleaning glasses with his own spit, smiled at Gaston's request. From beneath the counter he pulled up a jug with little Xs on it. "We have absinthe! The finest mountain hooch you can get."

That sounded alright to Gaston. It was regarded as a stimulating beverage. Being large, he ordered a serving that amounted to five shots.

Unbeknownst to him, the barkeep poured a double portion; for he knew Gaston needed it, if his mind were to be distracted from thoughts of Belle. At this point everyone in town knew about her rejection of him, and it was plain to everyone that Gaston had been behaving a bit oddly since that time.

Still, the barkeep was as curious as many men in town. "Have you seen Belle again?" he asked Gaston, warily.

Gaston felt his heart stir and throb at the very mention of the name. It baffled him. Why were his organs behaving like this ever since he'd met her? It was so weird!

"No," said Gaston with a sorrowful sigh that came from true feeling. Then he suddenly realized that he looked weak and vulnerable behaving like that. He puffed up and went instantly into his macho act. "Nah, been too busy killing — " quick think of a manly animal. Wolves, bears, bison — "Sharks."

"Sharks? I thought those only lived in the ocean."

"Yeah, but one of them got out. No need to worry about it — I took care of it."

The barkeep wasn't an expert on animals, and he figured Gaston must know more about it than he would. "Well, that's our Gaston. Keeping the village safe!" he said approvingly as he slid up the rather large drink. "Glad to hear you're doing alright. We were a bit concerned after what happened, with Belle."

"Belle will change her mind, just wait!" said Gaston with great assurance, as he picked up the glass.

After slugging back his drink, Gaston was requested to perform a song for the taverners.

And then he drank another serving of absinthe, alike in size to the one before.

And he sang again, the world going hazy around him.

He was never going to see Belle again, was he? She had fled — why, he didn't know. But what good was all the world, without a Belle in it?

Nous n'irons plus au bois,
Les lauriers sont coupés,
La Belle que voilà, la lairons-nous danser.

And then it all went green, and he lost track of what was actually happening.