Chapter Text
"She's beautiful."
The Beast rolls his eyes and puts his back to the open window. "I have eyes. Beauty isn't my thing."
Cisco sighs, hopping across the floor. "Barry, my friend, can we entertain the notion that she could be the one? Your life isn't the only one on the line." Extending his metal arms, he indicates, "I would rather not live the rest of mine as a candelabra."
"You think I wish to live like this?" The Beast growls, turning to face him.
Cisco lifts his arms innocently. "Come, now. You used to be charming. The ladies loved you. What happened?"
"Women are all the same. I have no interest in them."
"If it was a gentleman you sought, why didn't you say so? I would've sent Cindy to fetch male suitors."
"None of us can leave the castle," The Beast reminds him, sitting back on his arched heels and facing the windows. "And it isn't her gender which upsets me."
"Then what? You wish for an eyesore?"
The Beast growls. "I wish to be alone."
"You chose the wrong castle, then," Caitlin says, sidling into view. "If you wanted to be left alone, you should have hired fewer hands." Swinging her clock hands, she adds, "Cisco's right. If you want to mope for eternity, that's your prerogative, but the rest of us would prefer to mope in human form."
The Beast rises and walks over, crouching in front of the accessories. "Let me be very clear," he says, "if I am to be a Beast for the rest of my life, then you," directing his ire at Caitlin, he snaps, "will be a clock, and you," at Cisco, "a candelabra." Straightening, he swings his cape around himself and prowls off towards the staircase, disappearing around the corner.
In the tower, Cisco and Caitlin linger. "He's so charming," Cisco murmurs, rubbing his forehead.
"It's been a tough week," Caitlin allows. "A petal fell last night."
Everyone in the castle knew: The Beast's furious roar awoke anyone who wasn't already awake. He nearly snapped a poor spoon in half for glinting in a friendly fashion. As it was, he shredded a dozen canvases before cooling off. Charming though he once may have been, The Beast was nothing if not temperamental now.
"How much time do we have?" Cisco asks, hopping over to the window and looking down at the frozen court.
"Eight petals."
Working his jaw, Cisco says, "A fortnight at this pace."
"No one can fall in love in a fortnight."
"I disagree," Cindy replies, floating down from the rafters. Cisco smiles, holding out his arms and accepting the swan feather-duster into them. "She doesn't need to marry him. She just needs to love him."
"I'm certain those goals are mutually exclusive," Cisco says, spinning her around. "You look ravishing."
"Do you mean to say you wouldn't marry me?" Cindy replies, resting a splayed wing against his metal arm.
"Not at all. I only mean for him that marriage is a business transaction. Love is fiction. I'm surprised his father never assigned him a wife. It would have simplified our predicament a great deal."
"The Witch would have set an equally awful curse on him," Caitlin points out, walking across the floor. Cisco lets go of Cindy and she floats back towards the ceiling. "'Raise a child, or remain a Beast forever.'"
Cisco shudders in mock horror. "Can you imagine a miniature version of that brute wandering around?"
"I thought you were friends," Caitlin replies, lifting her eyebrows.
Cisco laughs. "Unfortunately," he admits.
Cindy dusts him with her feathers in passing. "I'll speak with him."
"You'll talk some sense into him?"
"Is there any other way to talk to him?"
Cisco grins. "My future wife."
Cindy floats off, vanishing around the corner. Caitlin ambles to his side. "Do you really think she'll get through to him?"
Cisco hops over to the balcony. "I have no idea, truthfully."
"The passerby -- she was lovely. How could he ignore her?"
Cisco waves his arms in lieu of a shrug. "How does he do anything? Thoughtlessly."
"She may return."
"The moon may fall from the sky, too."
"Your optimism inspires."
"It tries." Turning to regard Caitlin, he says seriously, "She knows we're here. Or, at least, she knows something is amiss. Winter? In June? Perhaps she will return to investigate."
"You presume she possesses a curiosity that overrides common sense."
"What, you wouldn't explore a haunted castle locked in a perpetual winter, stocked with talking furniture and ruled by a hideous Beast?"
"When you say it like that," Caitlin drawls, "who wouldn't?"
Cisco laughs. "I hope to never lose my voice. Or you, yours. How lonely would this castle be without our humor?"
Caitlin idles off, leading the way. "Terribly."
Deep in the castle, the Beast is far from humored.
Storming down the stairs, he veers off into one of the guest rooms, slamming the door shut behind him. A full-length mirror against the opposite wall draws his attention. He dares to stalk up to it -- and immediately regrets his choice. The face in the silver is not his own.
Barry stares into his reflection and tries to find the man, but all he can see are the marks of the monster, claws and fangs and fur from tip to tail. He hates the view, and he hates the way his body moves, huge and preternatural. There is little he doesn't dislike about this whole affair.
Cursed by a witch -- could there be any more unlikely fate?
Evidently, yes.
He turns away from the mirror and surveys the empty room. A nostalgic ache tightens his chest. He remembers filling every room of his castle with guests. Beautiful guests, living a beautiful life, and all enjoying the company of the beautiful prince.
Now, the guests don't even remember that he exists, nor do they know about the monster in their midst. The witch ensured that no one would come to their rescue: she wiped the memory of their existence from every person within a hundred miles in any direction.
"Barry?" a familiar voice intrudes.
Straightening his shoulders, Barry commands, "Leave me."
Cindy huffs. "If you think I will not use the window, you are mistaken."
He thumps a paw against the wall. "I defy you," he snaps, "to be more of a nuisance. What part of leave me do you not understand?"
"For someone who dislikes his situation so much, you excel at extending it."
"You think I will charm this girl?" He spits the words. All of the royal courting in the world could not unfreeze his heart. How could some peasant girl unravel him? And why should he, an aspiring king, submit to such nonsense? No king ever needed his queen to conquer.
"I think you will, or you will spend a lot of lonely nights roaring at empty castle walls."
He tears open the door. "You listen to me!" he shouts at her as she hovers above him. "I have chosen my fate, and while I regret," his teeth click with the word; his servants were never half so unpleasant in human form, "that you are collateral, you will neither evoke my pity nor change my mind!"
"Feisty," Cindy says, brushing one of his horns -- and he hates these horns, these infernal claws, these monstrous feet that elevate him to an inhuman eight feet tall. "What's gotten your tail in a knot?"
Steaming, the Beast walks away. Cindy follows, keeping up effortlessly -- the perks of not needing to walk, he supposes. He doesn't say anything, refusing to give in to regret. He knows he has a temper, but he refuses to beg for such pittances as forgiveness.
"Entertain the idea that she comes to us," Cindy says. "We host her, she falls in love with our castle, she falls in love with you. Everyone wins."
"I'm so glad we've determined that it's so simple," Barry drawls. "Here I worried I might have to actually win this poor townswoman over. Now that I know I must only invite her to dinner, I shall send one of my servants to fetch her immediately."
"Your sarcasm has greatly lost its charm, Beast," Cindy remarks, flicking his horn. It can't hurt, but it's the equivalent of tweaking his nose. He swats at her, driving her just out of reach. "You begin to live up to the name."
"I did always enjoy a certain transparency. We princes hide nothing."
"You are not a prince. You're a spoiled little boy with a terrible temper."
He makes a successful snatch for her, holding the feather-duster tightly in his paw. "Little boys with terrible tempers snap birds for fun," he warns.
"It is lucky, then, that I am no bird," Cindy retorts, jerking to one side and slipping free. Before he can react, she strikes him hard on the forehead. He stumbles, putting a hand on a wall to catch his balance. A second knock to the side of the head puts him on the floor.
"You pack a more formidable punch than I formerly accredited you," he grunts, refusing to stand. He yowls when she stabs him in the back, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to drive him to his feet. "All right! Point made."
"But not taken." Another jab to the back of his shoulder. "Barry. You must entertain the idea that this girl -- this curious and beautiful girl -- could be the one."
"You and Cisco speak with one voice," he grunts, reaching back to rub his fur, paw spanning ten inches and still covering only a small swath of his back. "This is pointless. She won't come back. No sensible girl would explore such a haunted place."
Cindy glides over and brushes his horn again, making him swat at her. "Come, now. Have a little faith. She's the first visitor we've had in weeks."
"And she will be the last we'll have in months," Barry dismisses, stalking down the hall. He doesn't need to look to know Cindy follows. "Given how constrained our time is, I would consider us lucky to see the next visitor. Well. Lucky for you," he amends, turning to her.
She flicks his nose before flitting off.
Barry reaches up to rub a paw across his face. He won't admit the truth to any of them -- that he's terrified that all of them are right and this nightmare won't end and he will spend the rest of his life not a prince but a pariah, outcast at best, damned at worst. If any of the townspeople even knew he existed, they would slaughter him. It's what you did with monstrosities.
This girl -- this beautiful girl -- would be no exception. One look and she would flee into the forest forever.
Better to hold her at a distance, Barry decides, hand gliding down the railing as he descends the lonely staircase, than to subject himself to such disappointment.
Far below the Beast's view -- two-hundred-and-twenty-six-feet below, to be precise -- and nearly two miles down-road, Iris Ann West brings her white mare to a halt. "Strange," she murmurs, looking around the frosted forest and brushing a hand over an iced-over branch. "What place is this?"
Whinnying in alarm, Volo tugs her reins. "Easy," Iris urges, patting her neck. "Just a cold-snap. Nothing to be afraid of." Cracking the reins, she scarcely has to encourage the animal to take flight.
Together they canter away, oblivious to the castle just out of view.