Beauty and the Beast

Gaston's Dark Plan

Winter deepened around the castle, and with it, the routines Belle and the Beast had built together grew warmer and more comfortable. They read in the library every afternoon — she aloud, he listening and occasionally asking questions that revealed how deeply he had absorbed every word. They walked the gardens in the mornings, following the same path along the frozen fountain and back, their breath rising in matching clouds. In the evenings, they played chess, a game the Beast had taught her and now regretted because she was alarmingly good at it.

The servants vibrated with cautious, fragile hope. Another petal had fallen from the rose. There were only five left.

One afternoon, the Beast came to find Belle in the library and asked her to follow him to a room she hadn't yet visited — a small, round chamber near the top of the central tower. On a velvet pedestal in the center of the room sat a hand mirror with an ornate golden frame. The Beast picked it up with surprising care and held it out to her.

"This was the enchantress's other gift," he said. "It shows you whatever you wish to see."

Belle took the mirror slowly. It felt warm in her hands, faintly alive, the way a coal stays warm long after the fire is gone. "Anything?"

"Anything." He hesitated. "I thought — if you wished to see your father..."

She looked up at him quickly. Something in her chest contracted. He had thought of her father. He had brought her here for her sake, not his own.

She looked into the mirror and said softly, "Show me my father."

The glass clouded, then cleared. Maurice appeared — not in the village, not safe by his fire, but in the forest, stumbling through deep snow, coat soaked through, lantern barely lit. He was searching. Calling her name. His face was grey with cold and desperate with love.

The mirror trembled in Belle's hands. A tear fell onto the glass and the image rippled.

"He's ill," she whispered. "He's lost." She looked up at the Beast, and the grief in her eyes was a physical thing.

The Beast said nothing. He stood very still, and something behind his eyes moved through several complicated stages of feeling that he had not experienced in a very long time.

He had known, of course, in the abstract way that one knows a fact without truly feeling it, that she had left someone behind. Everyone who had ever come to the castle had left someone behind. He had not thought about those people. He had not allowed himself to. It was easier, in the terrible logic of his enchanted life, to think of Belle as someone who existed only here, only in relation to him and his household and his dwindling rose. To think of her father — truly think of him, as a man, old and frightened and wading through snow and calling his daughter's name — was to understand something that the Beast had been carefully, almost professionally, avoiding.

She had not chosen to be here.

She had chosen to stay, which was different, and he had let himself believe that the distinction didn't matter. He saw now, watching her face, that it mattered enormously.

Belle was not crying. She was holding the mirror with both hands and staring into it with the particular stillness of someone marshalling themselves against an emotion that could, if given space, become catastrophic. He recognized this. He had done it himself, in the early years of the curse, when rage was the only feeling he could afford and grief was a door he kept shut by force of will alone.

"He went looking for me," she said. Her voice was very quiet and entirely steady. "He knew I would never leave willingly, so he went looking for me."

The Beast looked at her hands on the mirror. At the whiteness of her knuckles. "Yes."

"He'll die out there." She said it simply, as one states a fact. The simplicity of it was worse than weeping would have been. "He doesn't know these woods. He doesn't know how deep the cold gets, how quickly it comes." She finally looked up. "He'll die looking for me."

The Beast met her eyes and found that he could not look away. She was not asking him for anything. That was the thing that was undoing him — she wasn't demanding or pleading or bargaining. She was simply telling him the truth of her situation with the same directness she applied to everything, the same honest clarity that had, over these weeks, done something to him that he did not yet have words for. She had given him her grief to hold because there was no one else to hold it, and she trusted him enough to let it be real in front of him.

He felt the weight of the rose upstairs without meaning to. Five petals. He felt the enchantress's terms like a chain around his chest, as he always did, every hour of every day. He felt, beneath all of it, something that had been accumulating quietly for weeks — in the library, in the garden, over the chess board — pressing forward now with a force he couldn't ignore.

He reached out and, very carefully, took the mirror from her hands. He looked into it himself. Maurice was on his knees in the snow, the lantern extinguished. Still calling. Growing still.

The Beast handed the mirror back to her. He straightened to his full height, which was considerable, and when he spoke, his voice was low and rough but entirely certain.

"Go to him," he said. "Take the horse. Take the mirror." He paused. "Go."

Belle stared at him. "You're letting me go?"

He turned away before she could see his face. Outside the round tower's window, the winter sky had gone the deep, bruised violet of early dark. "I am."

"But the rose — "

"Go, Belle." His voice cracked on her name. Just slightly. "Please. Before I — " He stopped. Started again. "He needs you more than I do."

It was the most honest thing he had ever said to anyone in ten years, and they both knew it wasn't true.

The Beast spent a long night in the West Wing, alone with the dying rose and the echo of Belle's grief. He counted the remaining petals. He thought about the servants, about the years behind them and the finite number ahead. He thought about what breaking the curse would mean, and what it would cost him to try. Then he thought about her face in the mirror. The way her hands had shaken. He made his decision before morning. He found Belle at the library windows, the enchanted mirror in her lap, watching her father still wandering in the snow. She hadn't slept. Her eyes were red. "Go to him," the Beast said. She turned. "What?" "Take the mirror." He held it out. "So you can remember us." He paused. "Remember me." "But my promise—" "I release you from it." The words cost him visibly — each one seemed heavier than the last. "Your father needs you. Go." Belle stared at him. She had prepared herself for many things since arriving at the castle, but not this. Not generosity this complete and unguarded. She saw the cost of it clearly in his face — the way he held himself rigid against the pain of what he was offering. "Thank you," she said. She wanted to say more, but the words dissolved before she could find them. The servants gathered in the entrance hall to see her off — all of them, even the tiniest enchanted footstool. Mrs. Potts pressed a handkerchief she could no longer use into Belle's hand. Chip waved both handles. Lumiere bowed deeply, his flame guttering with emotion. Cogsworth ticked loudly and said nothing, which was how they knew he was most upset. Belle climbed onto Philippe and rode out through the castle gates. In the tower above, the Beast watched her go until she disappeared into the treeline, and then he turned away from the window and let himself feel every inch of the emptiness that flooded in to fill the space where she had been. Another petal fell. Then another.

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10:38 AM

Here is the scene expanded:

The Beast spent a long night in the West Wing, alone with the dying rose and the echo of Belle's grief. He counted the remaining petals. He thought about the servants, about the years behind them and the finite number ahead. He thought about what breaking the curse would mean, and what it would cost him to try.

Then he thought about her face in the mirror. The way her hands had shaken.

He made his decision before morning.

He had tried, in the small hours, to talk himself out of it. He was practiced at this — at the particular architecture of self-serving logic that the cursed and the lonely build around themselves like fortifications. He had told himself that her promise was binding. That she had given her word freely. That the servants deserved their chance. That five petals were still five petals, that there was still time, that the situation was not yet hopeless and hope was not yet cruelty.

He had stood at the West Wing window and watched the snow fall and tried to believe all of it.

Then Maurice had appeared again in the mirror — he had looked, alone, in the dark, when there was no one to see his face — and the old man had been lying still in the snow, no longer calling, and something inside the Beast had simply stopped arguing.

There were things, it turned out, that were worse than dying cursed.

He found Belle at the library windows, the enchanted mirror in her lap, watching her father still wandering in the snow. She hadn't slept. Her eyes were red, and there was a quality to her stillness that he recognized as the far shore of a long night spent making peace with an unbearable thing. She had been preparing herself to stay. He could see it in the set of her shoulders — the way she had drawn herself in, made herself smaller and quieter, as though she could seal the grief inside a smaller space and function around it.

It was, he thought, the bravest and most heartbreaking thing he had ever seen.

"Go to him," the Beast said.

She turned. "What?"

"Take the mirror." He held it out, and he kept his voice even with some effort. "So you can remember us." He paused. The word that came next was harder than the ones before it, in the way that small precise things are harder than large general ones. "Remember me."

"But my promise —"

"I release you from it." The words cost him visibly, each one seeming heavier than the last, like stones lifted from a great depth. "Your father needs you. Go."

Belle stared at him. She had prepared herself for many things since arriving at the castle — for isolation, for difficulty, for a strange captive life lived alongside an impossible creature she did not yet understand. She had prepared herself, over these last weeks, for feelings she had not anticipated and could not yet name. But not this. Not generosity this complete and unguarded. Not the sight of him standing in the grey winter light of the library, holding out with both enormous hands the one thing the enchantress had left him that was not defined by loss — giving it to her, because her need was greater, because he had decided in the night that her grief outweighed his own.

She saw the cost of it clearly in his face. The rigid set of his jaw. The careful blankness he was holding over his eyes like a hand pressed over a wound.

"Thank you," she said. She wanted to say more. There was more — she could feel it massed behind her sternum, a weight of words she didn't have time to sort into their proper shapes. She took the mirror, and her fingers brushed his, and she looked up at him and tried to let her face say what her voice couldn't. She didn't know if it reached him. She thought, from the way something briefly moved across his expression and then was still, that perhaps it did.

The servants had gathered in the entrance hall without being summoned. They always knew — they had always known, even before they were enchanted, even when they were simply people who loved the castle and lived in it and paid attention — when something important was happening. They stood in a quiet line: Lumiere holding himself very straight and bright, Cogsworth beside him with his hands clasped and his ticking unusually loud. Mrs. Potts on the table with Chip beside her, both of them watching Belle with the particular expression of people trying to memorize something.

Mrs. Potts pressed a handkerchief she could no longer use into Belle's hand. Her eyes were bright and said everything: we hoped, we still hope, come back to us if you can.

Chip waved both handles with an enthusiasm that wobbled dangerously close to tears. "Will you come back?" he asked, in the direct way of children who have not yet learned to protect themselves from honest questions.

"Chip," Mrs. Potts said softly.

"It's all right." Belle crouched to his level and looked at him steadily. She did not say yes. She did not say no. She said, "I won't forget you," and she meant it as a promise of the most serious kind.

Lumiere bowed deeply when she rose, his flame guttering with emotion, and said something gracious in French about the honour of her company that she only half-followed but understood completely.

Cogsworth ticked loudly and said nothing at all, which was, as everyone in the castle knew, how they could tell he was most affected. He looked at the ceiling. His mustache twitched. He cleared his throat twice.

Belle kissed him on the top of his case, which startled him profoundly and seemed to make everything worse.

She climbed onto Philippe and rode out through the castle gates as the morning light came pale and thin through the trees. Philippe moved without needing to be directed — he knew the way, or he knew what was needed, which amounted to the same thing.

In the tower above, the Beast watched her go. He stood at the window and watched the dark shape of her against the white and the grey, growing smaller, until the treeline took her and the forest closed and there was nothing left to watch. And then he stood there anyway. He was not sure how long. The cold came through the glass but he didn't move away from it.

He turned from the window eventually, because the servants needed him to, because the castle needed him to, because standing at windows was a young man's indulgence and he had spent too long already in that particular kind of suffering. He turned and faced the room, which was the same room it had always been, unchanged and indifferent, the way rooms always are when they have held something they now no longer hold.

He allowed himself to feel it. The full dimensions of the absence. He had promised himself, in the night, that he would not flinch from it — that whatever it cost him, he would feel it honestly and completely, because she had always been honest with him and that felt like the last thing he could offer her.

It was, he found, very large.

Another petal fell from the rose. Then another. The two remaining clung to their stem in the cold still air of the West Wing, and the Beast looked at them for a long time, and then he walked out of the room, and did not let himself go back.

Gaston did not take rejection well. He never had. As children, he had broken the toys he couldn't win. As a teenager, he had spread rumors about boys who beat him in competitions. As an adult, he had simply ensured that no one in the village dared cross him — not openly, not visibly. But Belle had crossed him, repeatedly and without apparent remorse, and the smile that stayed on his face while she closed the door in it was the most dangerous kind: the smile of a man deciding to stop being patient. He went to LeFou. He went to Monsieur D'Arque at the asylum. He made arrangements with both, crossing D'Arque's palm with enough gold to acquire the man's professional cooperation in labeling an old inventor unstable and a danger to himself. Then he went back to the tavern, ordered several rounds for the crowd, and began, quite casually, to tell a story. He told it well — he always had been a gifted storyteller, particularly when the story was designed to frighten. He described a monster in the forest. He described a Beast that had imprisoned a helpless old man and stolen a young woman from her home. He showed the enchanted mirror — which Belle had carelessly left on the kitchen table when she rushed to tend her father — and the crowd saw the large dark shape pacing in the castle tower. Fear is the oldest and most efficient fuel, and Gaston was expert at lighting it. By midnight, the tavern was ringing with outrage. By morning, men were sharpening pitchforks and loading muskets. Gaston watched it all with the satisfaction of a man who has maneuvered events exactly where he wanted them. Belle had the castle. Well. He would take it from her. And when the monster was dead, she would have nowhere left to run.

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10:40 AM

Here is the scene expanded:

Gaston did not take rejection well. He never had. As children, he had broken the toys he couldn't win. As a teenager, he had spread rumors about boys who beat him in competitions. As an adult, he had simply ensured that no one in the village dared cross him — not openly, not visibly. It was a long, slow, patient project, the domination of a small place, and he had carried it out with the instinctive expertise of someone who had never needed to be taught that other people were resources.

But Belle had crossed him, repeatedly and without apparent remorse, and the smile that stayed on his face while she closed the door in it was the most dangerous kind: the smile of a man deciding to stop being patient.

He sat with it for a day. This was unusual for him — Gaston was not, by temperament, a man who sat with things — but he had learned, somewhere between boyhood and now, that the first shape of an anger was rarely the most useful one. Raw fury was a bludgeon. Shaped fury was a scalpel. He let the thing cool just enough to handle, and then he picked it up and turned it over and looked at all its edges.

Belle had refused him. This was the wound. But wounds, in Gaston's experience, were only useful when they were understood precisely, because then they could be leveraged. The question was not how she had made him feel — that was a question for lesser men, for men who had no outlets for their feelings beyond feeling them — but what she had cost him, and what it would take to collect.

She had cost him his standing. That was the real injury, the one beneath the insult. He had proposed in front of the village. He had proposed publicly, with all the ceremony of a man who considers the answer a formality, and she had shut the door on him as though he were a peddler of something she didn't need. Every person in the village had heard the music stop. Every person in the village was waiting, with the careful neutral faces of people pretending not to watch, to see what Gaston would do next.

That was the cost. And the collection, therefore, was straightforward: she had to be diminished. Not simply refused and moved on from — that would read as acceptance, as absorbing the blow quietly, which was the same as admitting it had landed. She had to be made small, and wrong, and the sort of woman a man like Gaston could not reasonably have been expected to want in the first place.

By the time he rose from his chair, the shape of the thing was already clear.

He went to LeFou first, because LeFou was useful in the way that a good tool is useful — reliable, familiar, requiring no explanation. LeFou absorbed the situation with his customary combination of genuine loyalty and carefully unexamined moral flexibility, and agreed to everything before Gaston had finished asking.

Then he went to Monsieur D'Arque at the asylum, which was a different kind of errand. D'Arque was not loyal. D'Arque was not fond of him. D'Arque was, however, a man of expensive tastes and modest income, which was all the foundation that was needed. Gaston crossed his palm with enough gold to acquire the man's professional cooperation — his willingness to label an old inventor unstable, a danger to himself, a man whose family could not be trusted to care for him — and D'Arque took the money with the detached efficiency of a man who has made this kind of transaction before and sees no reason to perform discomfort about it.

The asylum carriage would be ready when needed. That was all that was required.

Then he went back to the tavern, ordered several rounds for the crowd, and began, quite casually, to tell a story.

He told it well. He had always been a gifted storyteller, and his gifts ran strongest in a particular direction: he understood how fear moved through a crowd, how it jumped from person to person like fire along a fuse, how to feed it just enough without overfilling it, how to leave the right spaces for the imagination to fill in worse than he could say. He described a monster in the forest. He described a Beast — enormous, savage, barely contained — that had imprisoned a helpless old man and stolen a young woman from her home. He did not say Belle by name, at first. He let them get there on their own, because conclusions reached independently are always held more firmly than conclusions handed over.

He showed them the enchanted mirror, which Belle had left behind on the kitchen table in her rush to reach her father, and the crowd pressed forward and saw the large dark shape pacing in the castle tower — restless, enormous, unmistakably inhuman — and the sound that moved through the tavern was low and collective and very old. It was the sound people make when their oldest fears are given a specific address.

Fear is the oldest and most efficient fuel, and Gaston was expert at lighting it. He knew how to use his own face — how to let just the right amount of barely-controlled urgency show through the courage, so that the watching men felt that if even Gaston was troubled, then the threat was serious indeed. He knew how to use silence. He knew how to let a question hang in the air — and what does it want with her, do you think, a creature like that — and let the crowd's imagination answer it in the worst possible terms.

He did not have to lie, precisely. The Beast was real. The castle was real. The enchanted mirror showed something undeniably monstrous. All Gaston had to do was remove every frame of context — the books, the dinners, the careful wary kindness he had no way of knowing about and would not have used even if he had — and present the bare uncontextualized shape of the thing, and let human nature do the rest.

By midnight, the tavern was ringing with outrage. By morning, men were sharpening pitchforks and loading muskets, their breath fogging in the cold, their faces set with the particular righteousness of people who have been frightened and found something to do about it. Gaston moved among them with a torch in his hand and magnanimity in his bearing — their hero, their protector, the man brave enough to lead them into the dark.

He watched it all with the satisfaction of a man who has maneuvered events exactly where he wanted them, every piece placed and every variable accounted for.

Belle had the castle. She had chosen it over him, which meant she valued it — valued the creature in it — more than she had valued his offer. There was something in that thought that he turned away from quickly, because it was the kind of thought that, if examined, had an unpleasant texture.

Well. He would take the castle from her.

And when the monster was dead, and the enchanted walls were cold, and there was nothing left of her strange stubborn choice but ash and memory, she would have nowhere left to run. She would come back to the village with her grief and her humility, and she would look at him, and she would finally, finally understand what she should have chosen.

He had always gotten what he wanted, in the end. He had broken the toys he couldn't win.

This was no different.