Chapter Text
The days that followed that fateful night were nothing short of horrifying. It was as if the freakish nightmares of his darkest slumbers had entered into his waking moments. Adam could barely breathe with the horror of it. He couldn’t look at what was now his household staff from shame and so he hid himself from their gaze, retreating to the West Wing for how long he knew not. No one came to find him. They certainly had enough to worry about.
The first night he flew into a fit of violence brought on by blackest despair. After speaking with Lumière, he stumbled up to the West Wing, barely heeding the fact that he was completely disrobed with the exception of the thick fur coat that now adorned him. Shuffling into his room, he caught sight of a creature most hideous and terrifying in the mirror, and without thinking he reared back. It took several moments for him to absorb the fact that the monster in the mirror was indeed him, and for the first time he was forced to fully face the truth of what he was.
Thick, coarse fur covered every inch of a body that was now far more large and lumbering than Adam had ever remembered it to be. The legs were twisted in a strange way. It eventually dawned on Adam that they were the legs of a predatory beast, a wolf or large cat, with the knees drawn and bent and feet long and lifted onto toes with lethal-looking claws. The arms weren’t arms anymore, either—bending at the elbows of their own accord, they ended with clawed, stubby fingers. Adam twitched a finger experimentally, with an irrational hope that the mirror monster would not do the same. His hope was dashed almost immediately as the beast’s claws twitched in response, and Adam noted dazedly that his fingers, or whatever they were now, moved stiffly. He attempted to curl them into a fist. They moved more readily than a dog’s, but they were much clumsier than that of a man. Adam moved his head heavily to the side. The creature moved its massive horned head as well, and Adam’s hand automatically flew up to feel one of the smooth, twisted objects, to explore the base where it burrowed into his hair and met with his skull. The rough skin there was irritated from the sudden growth, and Adam bit his lip against the unpleasant sensation. He immediately tasted blood and ran his tongue over long, uneven fangs.
A tail flicked back and forth in the mirror, and, in a sudden rage, Adam swiped the tail from behind him and yanked with all his might. The pain built up in the base of the tail and he howled in despair and fury. Wrong, it was all wrong. This couldn’t be happening. He could not be this creature, this could not be his body! That was not his tail, those were not his horns! Oh, God, this wasn’t real. Enchantresses, fairy folk, monsters, curses, there were the stuff of the fairy tales and legends his Maman and Lumière would tell to him in his younger years. This, this was impossible.
At that thought, he gazed over at the portrait hanging on one of the oak wood walls of his chamber, the royal familial portrait of his father, himself, and his dear Maman. He had often wondered why he kept it there—certainly not to honor his father.
But his Maman—there were no portraits to honor her, none that were unmarred by the hawk-like visage of his father, and so the portrait had come to hang on his wall. Adam suddenly realized with a pang of shame all of the sordid scenes to which this portrait had been privy; all of the drunkenness, the debauchery, the various noblewomen and occasionally noblemen who had adorned his bed, and now…this. A growl, so strange and new in his throat, leaped past his crooked teeth as he locked eyes with his father’s likeness. He saw himself in the cold grey eyes of the man who had ruled his province, his household and his son with an iron fist, the man who had punished weakness and praised cruelty, and he realized he had no desire to see himself in his father’s face ever again. He turned back to the mirror. Of all of the traits he could have kept in this monstrous form, it had to be his father’s eyes. Lumbering over to the portrait, he traced a clawed finger along his father’s brow before abruptly slashing downwards.
There might be benefits to having claws.
Adam began raking his claws against the thin material, this work of art that had taken such time and money, this portrait that was a constant reminder of everything he hated about his father and everything he hated within himself. He felt a vicious satisfaction as he worked at tearing away his own image, an image which he did not own anymore and that could lay in tatters with the rest of his life.
God damn his father! Damn him for taking him from his mother, damn him for mistreating them both all their lives! Damn him for turning him…turning him into something of which his Maman would be utterly ashamed.
He stopped just short of tearing into the only image he had left of his mother. Balking in horror at what he had nearly done, he gazed remorsefully into his mother’s deep brown eyes.
“I’ve made a real hash of everything, haven’t I Maman?” he whispered to her memory.
The layers of oil on the tattered canvas did not reply, as Adam knew they wouldn’t. He sank to the ground, tears running down his face and dampening his fur.
Would she love him, even as this—this beast? Shakespeare had commented that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But Adam hadn’t been a rose—far from it. And suddenly, horribly, Adam wasn’t sure whether his mother would have loved him as the man he had been a few nights ago, much less the monster he was now.
It was then that a bright shimmer, warped through the water of his tears, caught Adam’s eye. He turned his weighty head to find something glowing on the stone plinth in the center of his private balcony. Curious and slightly afraid, he crept toward the source of the light on awkward paws. He sucked in a harsh breath as he realized what it was.
It was a rose. It was the rose, the rose that had damned him, the rose that held his life and very soul within its petals. Oh…oh, if only he had known. He glanced back at the bed to which only a few nights ago he had planned to guide the baroness’s young sister and his mind reeled with the knowledge of how drastically his life had changed within the past few nights.
“Icarus, you flew too close to the Sun,” he muttered, returning his gaze to the rose.
Even as he watched, the first petal dulled and withered before his eyes. As if in response to this event, a rumble shook through the castle. And he could feel something else—he groaned as his body fell slightly forward as if to pressure him further still to fall on all fours. Immediately a myriad of odors assaulted him: the sickly sweet scent of the rose, the bitter winter air, the musk of his own fur. It occurred to him that his sense of smell must have sharpened. Beastly, I’m becoming more beastly, he thought, his throat tightening in fear. Mon dieu, it was real.
This was it. This was his life now.
What was he to do?