Chapter Text
The baroness was speaking. About what, Prince Paul-Pierre Adam-François de Beaumont was wholly unaware. He smiled and nodded periodically throughout the dance, his mind leagues away. Well, not really leagues away—the baroness’s younger sister was standing on the edge of the ballroom, eying her elder sister wearily with a carefully stifled look of jealousy. Yes, she would do nicely. The prince had already decided that she would be the one to return to his chambers tonight rather than the baroness—though rather air-headed, she at least wouldn’t talk her way through a night during which conversation was the very last activity in which he planned to employ his mouth. Before the dance had even finished, the prince had begun drifting in the young woman’s direction, ignoring the flustered confusion of the slighted baroness behind him.
He smirked at the way the young girl’s eyes lighted at his approach, at the way her face flushed with anticipation. He would never grow tired of observing the effect he had on the fairer sex—it was no fault of theirs that they lacked the willpower to resist the triple threat of wealth, power, and dashing features he teasingly offered.
It was as he was tenderly taking the young maiden’s hand in his that the knock resonated throughout the ballroom. The music halted along with the dancers and the prince suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He looked sidelong at the maître d’, Lumiére, and grabbed the candelabra out of the surprised man’s hand when it seemed he wasn’t going to do anything. With a huff he made his way towards the grand double doors.
A beggar woman stumbled her way into the room. The prince stepped back on instinct. She was filthy, and old. She reeked the way that all poor do, and the prince wrinkled his nose at the wholly foreign scent. He could, of course, just have her thrown out, but he was intrigued. What kind of creature would have the nerve to walk up to a castle, to nobility, to beg? Perhaps the guests could at least derive some entertainment out the embarrassing scene this peasant was creating. The prince cocked a brow and asked mockingly, “And how, pray tell, may I be of service to you, my lady?”
“Please, sir,” the beggar woman asked in an accent completely untouched by any semblance of education, “It’s frightfully cold outside. I fear I won’t make it through the night if I have to spend it out there. Could you find it in your heart to spare me lodgings for just one night?” She turned her eyes, milky with age, to his face.
Whatever the prince had expected, it had certainly not been this. He did not even have one of his famous retorts to respond with, so caught off his guard was he. Stay the night? Was she mad? He rarely ventured far enough into the populated areas of the peasantry to know what a beggar looked like, much less entertain the idea of giving lodgings to one.
In answer to his silence, the woman brought a withered hand out from beneath her rags, drawing a single rose into view. “Please, sir, take this as a token of my gratitude,” she mumbled.
Still mute, the prince gently plucked the rose from her hand, careful not to touch her withered flesh. Studying the flower, he finally came to his senses and gave a mocking laugh. The debutantes, who had remained silent up until this point, took his cue and joined his laughter with their own, some with abandon, some uncomfortably. Sneering, he dropped the rose at the woman’s feet, taking satisfaction from the pained look that crossed her face.
The prince turned to his maître d’, who had skillfully kept his face expressionless throughout the entire exchange. He was about to gesture for Lumiére to toss the woman out when the flame atop the candelabra was snuffed out. The prince turned to the candelabra in confusion; he had not felt any breeze. Then an eerie golden light began to grope into his vision, a light that would haunt his dreams for years to come.
His mind could hardly process what was happening before his eyes. The beggar woman had lifted, not just off of her ancient knees, but into midair—and she wasn’t a beggar woman, not anymore. She was beautiful, terrifyingly so. Her wrinkled features had smoothed under the golden light into a stern and regal visage with a piercing gaze that was trained on him. For the first time during the whole affair, the prince felt the first stirrings of real fear.
He dropped to his knees, bowing to her as he had only ever bowed to the King, for how could he not in the face of such power?
A voice reverberated through the hall, though the being’s mouth did not move. “Woe unto you, ye of such little compassion…” Her voice was raspy and musical simultaneously, soft and powerful.
The prince genuflected before her, suddenly aware of his peril. The debutantes seemed to grasp it, too, as their shrieks filled the air and they tripped over each other on their way to the door. The prince looked around him wildly; he was utterly alone, with the exception of the few servants that had been with him the longest. He turned back to the mystical creature in sheer terror, babbling now with a lack of grasp on the French language that he had hitherto never exhibited. “Please, I’m so sorry, please stay as long as you like, my home is yours, oh God, please have mercy…”
But the being did not hear him, or, if she did, did not listen. “Heed my words, princeling. While you may appear beautiful to the outward eye, nothing can hide your true nature, you hideous beast. Let the flesh reveal what lies beneath!”
With that, the light brightened, and the prince felt an agony rip through his being the likes of which he had never felt before.
There was nothing, no sensation outside of the pain that tore through his senses, senses that melded together in a fury of light and sound and smell as they desperately tried to comprehend what was happening. The prince fell on all fours, grinding his teeth together, teeth that were pushing slowly out of his gums, arms that were stretching, bending, locking into place. Everything was on fire, oh God, how could such pain exist…? Dimly, he heard screaming, dimly he realized it was his own, a figure stood near him, he reached out a foreign hand in desperation, oh God, someone help, but the man darted away, a look of terror etched across his features. He could feel something pushing through his scalp, past his wig, slowly, oh too slowly, why couldn’t it all be over? There was a fiery pain at his lower back, and a tearing and ripping sound as the fine, expensive clothes that had adorned him slipped off his altering body, as the shoes broke beneath his growing feet, and there he lay, naked, moaning and gasping on the cold, unfeeling marble floor, his mind fading, unwilling to process what had just taken place.
As if from far away, he heard the Enchantress’s voice, for that was what she must be. “I will offer you this rose once more, and I daresay that this time you will not refuse. For, you see, this rose will represent your one chance at salvation, my prince. As long as you can learn to love another and to earn that person’s love in return before the last petal falls from this rose, you will be able to regain your humanity. Be warned, beast, that this love must be genuine. And that those who have given their love to you freely before this cannot break that curse with their continuing loyalty. You must prove that you are capable of love now, in this form, lest you remain a rough beast for all time.”
The prince looked blearily up at her, hardly taking in her words. Vaguely he heard some protest, and, oh, there were Lumiére and Cogsworth and Mrs. Potts, pleading for her mercy on his behalf.
“Mon dieu, is this really necessary? All this for a rose?” came Lumiére’s voice, laced with shock.
Mrs. Potts fell tearfully before the Enchantress, crying that she had known the boy all his life, protesting and babbling about the cruelty of his father, insisting that nobody had intervened and it wasn’t the prince’s fault, and, oh, even through the pain Adam-François felt a wave of affection rise up for his once-nursemaid as he lay there on the cold marble, his skin feeling strange and unfamiliar against the floor.
The admission, however, did not have its intended effect. The Enchantress drew herself up. “Very well, then you may share in his suffering. Why, if what you say is true, then you are as useless as houseware!” The light brightened once more amid the gasping and choking of the servants, and the prince clenched his eyes, now watery with tears, against whatever fresh hell was taking place.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the light was gone, along with the Enchantress. The prince found he could fight off oblivion no longer, and sank into a troubled sleep within moments.