A Life Lived
- An imagining of what happened after Disney's Beauty and the Beast ended.
I want adventure
In the great wide somewhere.
I want it more than I can tell.
And, for once, it might be grand,
To have someone understand
I want so much more than
They’ve got planned.
Promise or no promise, she couldn’t stay here. Not another minute. Belle rushed down the stairs, her fingers fumbling as she clawed at the necklace’s clasp. A gift. To celebrate the night.
It was the night of her and the prince’s coronation. As she hurried through the hallways, she could hear the servants bustle about, preparing for tonight’s ball. Cooks banging about the kitchen. Maids chattering as they cleaned. Servants shuffling furniture and knickknacks this way and that, to make room for yet more people, the hundreds of guests that would soon be invading the space. And, by the great hall, in the middle of the castle, so far away from the door and the world beyond this place, Belle felt like she couldn’t breathe.
The sound was so grating. A thousand separate voices were talking in a collective shout that filled her head. A thousand people breathed and walked and just were everywhere, making her quiet, peaceful, cavernous castle feel like anything but her home. It’d been months since it’d felt like her home.
When it’d been just her, her beast, and the magic. When life’s ordinary trivialities had felt phenomenal. When a brush sifting through her hair had felt wondrous as it flittered about in the air around her. Or when a tea cup giggling in her hand had felt like a miracle that made her smile. Or when the crooning call of a candlestick had felt like a welcome into another world.
But now that the spell had been broken, now that the magic was gone, life had become so…ordinary again.
Belle had been sitting in her room, surrounded by servants, being groomed and primped for almost an hour in preparation for the ball. People all around her. Everywhere. All the time. Turn your head. Sit still. Try this gown. Smile. Nod. Wave.
And for what?
She wasn’t a princess. Didn’t want to be a princess.
Maybe everyone was right, maybe she was odd. But she didn’t want this. Didn’t want any of it. Didn’t want to be kept in this castle while people twisted up her hair and dressed her up like a doll. Where her biggest decisions were place settings and dress fittings. Curtain colors and maid wages. If Cogsworth asked her one more time about the extra housing for all the servants the castle now accomodated, she swore she’d scream. It was so much easier to keep sixteen sets of enchanted silverware than it was the one-hundred and twenty-some servants they'd transformed back into.
And still, all that would still be tolerable, would have been worth getting through, if she’d still had her Beast. If she’d still had the one who'd marveled at the world like he were meeting it for the first time. Whose curiosity had sparked her own. Who made life feel new again. There was so very little she wouldn’t put up with for that.
But, somewhere in the loss of the spell, while her Beast became a man, he’d changed. The Beast who’d loved nothing more than learning and exploring with her had vanished inside some strange man who locked himself in governing negotiations and state meetings. The Beast who had proven his love by setting her free had become a man who posted guards and assigned attendants to keep her safe and on-schedule. The Beast who'd given her libraries—gave her worlds of words to explore—had turned into a man who sent servants with jewels—brilliant baubles that hung about her neck and wrists or weighed heavy on her head.
How could she’d have felt so much freer as his prisoner than she did now as his princess? This man she’d married might be her prince, but how did she settle for that when she’d fallen in love with a Beast?
So, yes, she’d left. She’d had to. Avoiding the servants milling about, she snuck out the palace doors and raced through the gardens and out into the forest. Just for a brief gasp of air, for a last grasp of what she’d almost had.
A life worth writing about.
“Princess?” she heard Lumière’s voice lilt. “Princess, where are you going?”
Where was she going?
For a moment, Belle slowed a bit as her thoughts stepped back and took stock.
She must look ridiculous.
Her hair done—twisted and tortured and coifed atop her head. Her body was cinched in glittering, gaudy gold, the massive skirts tangling about and tripping her feet. She was the embodiment of a kingdom's dreams.
And all she wanted was to tear it all down, to rip all the trapping fabric away.
Picking up speed again, she ran into the forest, letting the branches catch, scratch, at her skin and clothes as she heard more and more servants cry out her name—not even her name, that ridiculous title—the growing, panicked sound like a triggered alarm. The setting sun burned over the forest’s canopy, seeming to set fire to the leafless trees, like a light that would lead her away.
If she could just get to it.
She ran, racing toward the peeks of light she could see through the woods twisting trees.
“Belle!”
She turned at the voice. A voice that still sounded strange no matter how often she heard it. Distracted—even for that one moment—she screamed as her foot caught on a raised root, tripping her to the ground.
“Belle!”
She felt a hand grab her arm, pulling her up. She wrenched her arm back, crashing back into the leaf-cluttered ground.
“Shh,” she heard him coo as the forest litter crunched under his weight, “it’s all right, Belle. It’s me.”
Her prince come to rescue.
She closed her eyes as she felt his fingers sift through her messy hair that had fallen from the crown that teetered on her head.
“It’s me,” he promised her.
But it wasn’t.
He was different.
Even his touch was wrong. The soft sift of frail fingers felt weak and somehow less than the scrape of coarse fur and the gentle threat of contained claws she'd once known. Less powerful. Less impressive. Less special.
Ordinary.
Those hands could be anyone’s. She didn’t even recognize them.
She jerked her face away.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice a smooth murmur, worry whispering through its tone.
On a snarl, she turned back to him, ready to rail at him, only to stop.
Her eyes widened as she saw a gray wolf slink out from behind the trees. She turned again and saw another, brown this time, with fangs bared. More began to stalk around them, a pack descending on prey.
Belle pushed herself to her feet as the prince paced around, trying to keep himself between her and the wolves that’d effectively surrounded them. She stumbled back, trying to keep step with him as he turned, almost tumbling into the creatures.
But, as she accidentally approached, the wolves caught her scent. One whimpered as it scuttled back. Another let out a low growl as its ears turned back and its head searched around even as it stepped back.
It took her a moment, as she wondered at the wolves' reaction, but she realized that they recognized her. She looked around the woods and realized she knew this place. This wasn’t the first time she’d entered the wolves’ territory.
She’d been here before. She’d encountered this pack before. And they remembered.
They remembered her Beast and the way he’d defended her. Her Beast who’d fought for her. Who’d have killed for her. Who could kill for her. Her Beast who’d been so strong and fierce, these creatures still feared the mere memory of him. And, by association, her. Who, by being powerful, had given her power.
She looked at the prince, who stared back at the wolves, the Beast’s ferocity looking as out of place and unconvincing in his eyes as it would in a puppy’s. She backed away from the scowl that curved his soft, almost pretty lips to reveal flat, unthreatening teeth, wondering what her prince could give her. She felt the rough pelt of a wolf brush her fingertips as it skulked past her and toward him.
“Belle,” he said as she felt the wolf beneath her hand crouch and growl in warning. “Run.”
But she didn’t. She stood frozen as she watched the pack pounce.
“Belle!” she heard him yell as he stumbled back before sprinting back toward the castle. “Run back to the castle; we'll be safe there.”
But they wouldn’t.
They would never see the castle again.
She knew it—as certain as the sun rises in the east—while she watched the pack chase the man back through the forest. She knew beasts. She'd let one hold her heart once. And that part that still longed for her Beast knew her prince would never make it out of the wolves' home, much less make it back to his own.
She knew that she ought to feel sad.
He was her husband.
The happy end of her charmed fairy tale.
Belle stared into the icy gaze of a dusky wolf who’d lingered behind, wondering why the others in his pack had left her alone. He looked younger than his pack mates. Too young to know who she was.
A cry rang out—a gurgled scream—but was soon drowned out by a piercing howl. The young wolf turned at the sound. He spared her one last look before bounding through the thick and back into the hunt.
She ought to feel sad. Her husband was dying. Or dead.
But, as she turned to see the last of the sun’s light flash through the branches, all she could think was that she didn't even know that man.
Besides, she thought as she saw a curious cub scamper out from its mother's protective hiding spot to sniff her outstretched hand, that man killed my Beast first.
WANT MORE?
For more Twisted Disney fanfiction, check out
"Anything," my Princess & the Frog story.
Check out "Adoring Bull," my very NSFW
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