Chapter Text
He had never ventured this far before. Not since the curse, anyway. But prey was becoming scarce, and every week the Beast was forced to roam further afield to locate food. He had absolutely no way of knowing by this point how long winter had covered his grounds, but he knew that it had certainly been long enough to force most of the woodland creatures to relocate to warmer climes.
Time was measured in rose petals instead of days now.
His nose to the hard ground, the Beast followed the scent of deer that was inevitably tied up with the scent of the local wolf pack--the scarcity of food had been a source of great competition between them, but a full stomach was worth the occasional scrap. The Beast had taken to rubbing his scruff in foul-smelling things to cover the thick scent of his fur. This had seemed to lessen the conflicts between him and the pack, but the scars from old wolf bites still marred his coat.
The life of the foppish, prodigal prince seemed so far away from him now that he could not help but think of him as an entirely different person--if what he was now could even be considered a person.
This time, there was a new scent in the mix--new, and yet familiar. The Beast cocked his head in interest. Part of him instinctively knew that the best course of action would be to stay well away from this foreign element, but a larger part of him could not help but be overcome by curiosity. So little broke up the monotonous days of this depressive life that curiosity could be piqued by the smallest of things.
As he loped towards the smell, it suddenly became obvious what he was tracking: humans. He could hear their voices as he neared, and his heart leapt in his chest with something he hadn’t felt in quite a while: joy. Of course, he could have seeked out humans a long time ago through the enchanted book, or even just taken a trip to the nearest village. He knew, however, that his appearance would utterly horrify any human he came across, and so he had elected to remain sequestered in his lonely tower. But seeking out humans and coming across humans on his grounds felt like two wildly different situations, and he felt justified in revealing himself to them in the latter case.
Idly, he wondered when he had started to think of other humans as them .
He broke into a fully fledged gallop, stopping just out of sight of the party and lifting himself back onto two legs. The position was becoming more and more uncomfortable with every fallen petal, but even he had to admit that it was necessary in this situation. Giving himself a once-over, he realized just how shockingly unlike a prince he appeared--and that wasn’t even taking into account the horns and tail. He wore only a pair of loose breeches, having forgone shirts what must have been several weeks ago. He had not even brought along his winter cloak, as it only hindered him during the hunt; besides, that was becoming worn and hardly of any use anymore anyways. His fur, which even after all of these months the Beast cringed to look at, was matted and covered in dried blood and mud.
The Beast started at the sound of barking. Peering through the underbrush, it became clear that this was not just any band of humans--it was a hunting party. It was a rather small one, consisting of only three people: a portly man, a man in an old military uniform who looked strangely familiar, and--the Beast started--his own younger brother, the Comte Edgar-Narcisse.
It had been only a few months before the curse had set in that the Beast, then Adam, had last seen his half-brother--and an awkward reunion it had been. Adam’s father had married the young countess who had been his mistress shortly after the death of Adam’s mother. The countess had died not a year later giving birth to Narcisse. Due to age and heritage difference, Adam and Narcisse had not spent nearly as much time together in their youth as one would expect of brothers. Adam had been raised in the cursed castle that had once served as the family’s summer grounds, while Narcisse had been raised near Paris. As such, there had never been much love between the two, but neither had there been an undue amount of strife. The Beast wondered what Narcisse was doing here--the Enchantress had expressly mentioned that all of the inhabitants of his castle-turned-prison were forgotten in the minds of those outside. It dawned on him, though, that the castle itself may not have been forgotten by the family that owned it.
This changed the situation. Dare he reveal himself in this form to a brother that had no recollection of him? The Beast could not believe that, if Narcisse was reminded of his own brother, he would not remember him at all.
“A bit blustery even for early fall, isn’t it?” Narcisse said, reining his horse in.
“You’d be surprised how cold it can get in these parts,” the soldier said, his voice booming through the quiet forest.
“I must thank you again for welcoming me into your household,” continued the count. “There was simply no possibility of reaching the chateau before sunset. Besides, this gives us a chance to catch up, eh, Gaston?”
Ah, yes. The decorated war veteran who had killed enough Portuguese pirates to earn himself a fair-sized manor and a fringe spot in high society. Enough that his hospitality could be taken advantage of by lesser nobles.
It mattered not. Narcisse would know that his brother was nearby, that he was imprisoned in his own castle, regardless of who else was present. He moved into the forest path just slightly, hoping to ease the party into his presence.
It was then that everything went awry.
The portly man pointed in the Beast’s direction with a shout of “ ours !” and his companions immediately turned about with their muskets raised. It took the Beast a few moments to process what was happening, a few moments that cost him dearly. He turned tail and dropped to all fours, crashing through the forest with hounds at his heels.
With the exception of that fateful night upon which the Enchantress had paid him a visit, the Beast had never felt such pure terror. His blood pounded in his ears as his paws pounded against the ground. He was being hunted. He was being hunted.
They thought he was a bear. Oh, what a fool he had been! Even through the gripping fear, there was still enough room left in the Beast’s heart to be devastated by the fact that his own brother had mistaken him for a bear . What was even more devastating, though, was that he wasn’t that far off. The carcasses littered around the castle grounds proved that the resemblance no longer stopped at appearance.
He could stop. He could turn around now and call out for Narcisse to halt before he murdered his own brother.
The Beast’s steps faltered for just a moment as this option crossed his mind, and immediately a fiery pain ripped through his hide. He fell to the ground in a heap, his thick horns clattering against the frosted soil. Pure adrenaline pulled him to his feet again. He had been shot . And he would be shot again if he did not keep moving. Although not quite as all-consuming as his agonizing transformation, the pain of the gunshot was beyond comprehension. He pulled himself into a denser part of the forest, one that the horses would not be keen to follow. His right hind-quarter dragged behind him. Making every effort to move as quickly yet as quietly as possible, the Beast listened for signs that the party still followed him.
“Are you sure that was a bear? It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Narcisse’s voice issued from a dozen yards away. The Beast listened with bated breath. “I could have sworn I saw horns…”
“What I do see is snow in early October,” came the soldier’s booming voice. “And it quite abruptly begins on what I believe to be your grounds, monsieur le comte . What has happened to this place?”
“I don’t know; that’s why I returned,” Narcisse replied. “I’ve seen neither hide nor tail of le prince de Beaumont since this past summer. He has not returned any correspondence. Our father is becoming worried that he will not answer the annual summons to Versailles, which would lose our family favor with His Royal Majesty. He sent me to fetch my brother directly.”
So. He was remembered in the outside world. What had the Enchantress said? You will be forgotten in the minds of your loved ones . Well, that explained it: the Beast had no loved ones to forget him.
After a few moments, Narcisse spoke up again. “Let us return to your manor. This puts me ill at ease and I would like to prepare before holding an audience with my brother.”
With a clatter of hooves the party moved away, leaving the Beast with no distraction against the pain of the gunshot wound. He grit his teeth and allowed a whimper to escape his throat. He had to get back to the castle. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to see Lumière, Cogsworth, and, of course, Mrs. Potts. He wanted to throw himself into Mrs. Potts’s arms again like a little boy, he wanted her to brush away the pain and the tears. Never mind that she had nothing resembling arms anymore.
She must hate him. They must all hate him. The servants that he had grown up with, the servants that he had been taught not to speak to, the servants who had glanced away when his father beat him and ridiculed him. Of course they would hate him. He had ruined their lives. If it weren’t for the fact that he was needed to break the curse, they would rejoice in his death, the Beast was sure.
He wondered if his death would free them from their fate.
Of course, he could not take that chance. If he was wrong, it would spell disaster for them all. He dragged himself to all fours and began limping home. The fire in his hindquarter blossomed up his spine and reached every corner of his brain. Tears stung at his eyes and dampened his fur as he made his way laboriously through the underbrush.
He nearly wept with relief when the castle came into view. Crawling up to the double front doors, he slumped unceremoniously at their base. The doors were at once welcoming and foreboding, and as the Beast looked up at them, working up the energy to pull the heavy doors open, he was struck with the imagery of the Enchantress looking up at these doors with the same hope and helplessness that flooded his heart now. Of course, she hadn’t been helpless, he knew that now, but he hadn’t known that when he had turned her away.
Groaning with pain and regret, the Beast butted his large, twisted horns against the doors, hoping desperately that someone would hear him. His prayers were answered when the stoic coat rack that had once been his valet opened the door.
There was a commotion that the Beast barely registered as Chapeau alerted the rest of the staff of the situation.
“Oh, mon prince , what happened?” came Lumière’s voice.
“I was--I was shot,” the Beast gasped.
“What?”
“By whom?
“Hunters. Narcisse. They mistook me for a bear.” The Beast’s voice choked on the last few words.
The staff muttered at this.
Finally Mrs. Potts said, “Do you think you can get yourself up to your chambers, dearie? None of us can support you.” Turning around, she leapt immediately into action with all the fervor of a general commanding his men. “Plumette, we’ll need warm, wet towels. Lumière, light the fireplace in the West Wing. Chapeau, go with him and help the Master into bed, and get those trousers off. I’ll fetch whiskey from the cellars.”
With encouragement from Chapeau and Lumière, the Beast lifted himself to his paws again and crawled up the stairs. He faded in and out of consciousness on the way, and when at last he found himself lying with his head against the bed, he was not entirely sure how he had come to be there.
Chapeau and Lumière did as they had been ordered to by Mrs. Potts, working his bloodied breeches off of him and pushing him into bed. It was quite an ordeal due to the fact that Lumière was less than a foot tall and neither of them had any hands. The Beast was in far too much pain to feel the sting of humiliation at being so revealed to his servants in his monstrous form, but he was lucid enough to feel the jolt of unease as he was handled by animate household objects. He immediately felt a pang of regret at this reaction; it was not their fault the servants had been trapped in such uncanny forms.
In his semi-delirious state, the Beast mumbled a short apology. The two servants stopped in surprise. Then Lumière said quietly, “It wasn’t your fault you were shot, Master. And it is not something to apologize to us for, certainly, excepting that it has caused us to worry about you so.”
The Beast wanted to specify that that had not been what he had been referring to, but he was too caught off guard by his maître d’s gentle words.
At that moment Mrs. Potts rattled in on her cart with Plumette close behind, bearing hot water, towels, and--thank God--whiskey. The Beast wondered where she had managed to unearth it from. In the first week after the curse had set in, the Beast had tried drinking away his despair, slobbering through stores of port wine with a mouth that did not move the way he had remembered. But it had not worked at all--this form was so large and beastly that it was very difficult for him to become inebriated, and his new stomach that could so easily digest raw meat did not digest alcohol very well. Not soon after that it had occurred to the Beast that his servants could not drink away their woes, anyways, and he had guiltily closed the cellars and had not returned. Perhaps Mrs. Potts had hidden away the strongest drink during this period, with her uncanny ability to always be prepared for any situation that might arise. There was a searing sensation as the whiskey was poured onto his bleeding hind leg, and he could not suppress a roar of agony. He bucked without thinking, only just keeping himself from throwing his porcelain housemaid off of the bed. Mrs. Potts muttered some soothing words and moved to pour the rest of the whiskey down his throat as Plumette washed away the worst of the wound.
He wanted to weep. He wanted to sob to Mrs. Potts that they had mistaken him for a bear, that he had been hunted like a lowly animal, that he had been shot down like a dog in the forest and left to bleed to death. He wanted to be comforted, he wanted to be assured that, even if he had died, his horns wouldn’t have ended up above his brother’s hearth and his pelt wouldn’t have been trod upon by any guest the soldier chose to entertain.
But men, especially noblemen, did not show such emotion, least of all to their servants. And God damn it, he was still a man.
Eventually he drifted off, not really to sleep, but into a painful lack of consciousness. Into dreams of red and deepest black.