Chapter Text
The French countryside is a lovely place, characterized by charming architecture, charming people, and generally charming weather. Apart from the occasional (and not very charming) plague, not much ever happens in the French countryside.
Usually. There are, of course, exceptions. For example, twenty years ago things became very interesting for a whole castle of people. This was the work of a fairy. One very vengeful fairy.
On a dark and stormy night, all those years ago, Agatha flitted down to the windowsill of a castle, tucking translucent wings into the folds if her being. Through the glass, she could see a thriving party. Not far from here villagers sat huddled in their ramshackle houses, cold and miserable. The children ate meager broth from chipped bowls while the adults toiled to circulate what little money they had. Pathetic little things.
Yet here, safe from the storm, aristocrats stuffed themselves gluttonously and spun like peacocks in their ridiculous dress.
Humans, oh how she hated humans. Impudent wretches, defying the natural order. It was their fault that she'd been banished by her kind for the rest of eternity and she would have her revenge. She buzzed with excitement, drops of rain evaporating on contact with her skin, glowing with magic. She had planned this for years now, from the moment that damnable king and his wife brought their mewling babe into the world.
Dropping from the windowsill, Agatha stretched her form into that of a bent old woman. As she approached the door, she stopped to pluck a single rose from the garden. She twirled it in her leathery hand. The wood in the door sensed her approach and, though weak from spending years away from the Earth, bent to her will, swinging open.
She was noticed immediately. The young prince strode up and Agatha found herself staring at his ridiculous shoes as he walked. They were leather (disgusting) and had obtuse silver buckles sewn to the front. Only when the heels of those shoes stopped and clicked together did Agatha look the prince in the face. Her nose wrinkled at his stench, far more punjent than any other in the room: the smell of greed and entitlement. Under all that makeup the boy couldn't have been more than eleven. So young and yet so far gone.
Agatha's hand shook with age as presented the rose, her gift, to the prince. He only scoffed.
Again she implored him to take it, but he slapped her hand away.
The prince turned to leave and a wicked grin split Agatha's face. She grabbed his wrist and pushed the rose into his hand, hard, the thorns pricked his skin and Drew blood. He gasped. Before letting go Agatha infused the rose with a single drop of her immortality. It would last two decades at most before all them magic had been she'd and the flower would die.
The prince stumbled back and Agatha grinned more. All the magic she'd saved up over the years was buzzing under her skin. It exploded.
A multiple-voiced shriek, part scream, part laugh, tore from Agatha as she drained herself. The entire castle was engu!fed with light. But somehow, through the glare, Agatha managed to catch the young boy's eyes. They were wide and terrified and full of pain. He was only a child after all. His lip was quivering and he had begun to cry.
Something tugged at Agatha's heart and for a single moment she had second thoughts. What if she spared he child?
Then cruel memories seared her mind. She remembered being caught and beaten by humans while in the form of a deer when she was young and inexperienced. She'd taken the form of a human child, hoping to receive some mercy from her captors. Instead it made them more cruel. She'd spent years in a freak show, beaten and malnourished and displayed for the humans' entertainment: the Beast Girl. When she finially amassed the strength to kill her captors and return home she had been turned away. Her kind said she was tainted by sin and unfit to live on their land.
She'd received no mercy as a child, and neither would this boy; it was time for a human to know what it felt like to be a beast.
And so it was done.
•0•0•0•
At present Agatha was perched on top of one of the castle's plentiful gargoyles. She swung her feet over the edge and waved a pale hand over the balcony down below, where two figures were huddled in the rain. The rain sizzled and popped as her magic turned into bright streams of sparkling light.
Adam turned back into a human.
Agatha was surprised at how different he looked, deep down she had been expecting the same child from so long ago. Instead she saw a changed man. Although, his eyes were the same: still as blue and young as they had been. That almost made her smile.
But Agatha was not yet satisfied. Her wrath had been aimed at humans for nearly a century now and it would be longer than that before she forgave them for her pain. She would need to move on soon, to find a new victim.
It took an incredible amount of magic to transform a whole castle of people; so much magic that, until the curse was lifted, Agatha was limited to small, boring spells (like turning apples to oranges and vice versa). The mass expenditure of magic had also limited her mobility and bound her to the castle. She had spent the last twenty years hiding in mirrors and between cobblestones, watching Adam.
She was, overall, pleased with Adam's results. At first, she had resigned to having to spend two decades watching him sulk, but then Belle had shown up. Agatha would be sad to see this new Adam go.
It was true that Agatha despised humanity. However, any human that managed to undo a curse of hers held a special place in her heart. To her, those humans weren't really humans anymore; they were something else, something a little magic.
Something wiggled in the back of Agatha's mind and she remembered raven hair. Her gaze turned South to the castle bridge and the river under it. Perhaps there she would find a new human.
Agatha rose from her perch and glided down to the riverbed. There lay a corpse. She'd hoped he had survived the fall. Although, that was probably too much to ask of a human, even a human like Gaston. They were, for all their powers of destruction, themselves fragile and breakable. Agatha had half the mind to leave him dead, after all, what was one more dead human? But then, much could come from this.
Perhaps as a beast Gaston would go wild, killing the entire village. Or—far less likely but just as, if not more interesting—he would succeed.
Mortality meant nothing to fae. Agatha flicked her wrist and Gaston gasped. She took another human form.
"Now then," Agatha knelt down to look more closely at the hunter, "What would you give for a second chance?"
Gaston whined. Agatha scowled.
"What's the matter?" She prodded his arm, earning another pitchy squeal. It was then that she realized that, although her powers had restored Gaston's soul, is body was still very much broken. Practically shattered. Oh.
Agatha quickly mended him, annoyed, and tried again, "Human."
Gaston spat at her.
•0•0•0•
Gaston woke up in agony. Every single bone, every muscle, even his mind was screaming out in utter devastation.
Everything was somehow, completely, undeniably wrong. Wrong. Wrong! It felt like his insides were trying to rip through his skin. His organs felt ready to explode. There was nothing but pain.
Then a smooth voice was speaking his body tried to call back.
The next few seconds of pain dragged on until, with a bright flash, it ended.
The voice was speaking again and Gaston looked up at the speaker.
A beautiful woman stared down at him, she was elegantly adorned in white silks and her golden hair billowed down to her hips.
She had asked him a question, but Gaston hadn't been listening. One look at the woman and Gaston knew, 'she did this'. She had one hand held out to him, pale skin glinting like snow in the moonlight; Gaston spat on it.
Unexpectedly, the woman gave him a twisted, toothy smile and said, "Perfect."
A brilliant golden light burst from her fingertips and wrapped around his neck. It blinded and suffocated him, seeped into his blood stream. The witch gave him a searing look and disappeared, leaving Gaston to his transformation.
He grabbed at his chest as his bones contorted and cracked painfully. First his back bent in two. Then his knees snapped inside out. Next his ribcage blew out, his heart seizing wildly. After that came his jaw and neck, both dislocating themselves and solidifying into new, twisted shapes. Overcome, Gaston fell to the ground, writhing. His mouth and eyes filled with dirt but he had no control of his convulsing body.
It took forever, each cracking bone, each tearing muscle seemed to turn one by one.
When Gaston's vision finially cleared and he could move again he stood to find he was wearing only his trousers. The shredded remains of his shirt were scattered off to the sides. With immense difficulty, Gaston stood, aching all over. Then he limped away, not quite understanding what had happened or knowing exactly where he was going.
•0•0•0•
Though no longer on the verge of death–or rather, returned from death–Gaston's life was still flashing before his eyes. Every memory he could remember was playing in succession, one after another, until.... There! One moment out of trillions, Gaston's mind snagged on an image of the village tavern, his tavern. It was empty of people and almost empty of furniture; Gaston had just bought the building, not a week after his father's death. Over the years he would decorate the place with hunting trophies and little nick-nacks from patrons. The memory felt.... Warm. Warm and safe.
Gaston couldn't thave stopped his body if he'd wanted to. His heart longed to be somewhere safe.
Dawn was still hours away and there was little light from the waning moon. In the darkness Gaston krept unseen behind houses and shops until the tavern's swinging sign came into view. He approached quickly and was surprised when the sign knocked into his forehead as he passed. Sure, Gaston was tall, usually he was the tallest man in the village. Only a few other villagers even came close, though the town got travelers from up North, where people were of larger stock, and, from time to time, one would be a few centimeters taller. But even with his large size, Gaston's head had always passed safely under the swinging sign.
Turning to look at the sign, Gaston caught sight of something in the tavern window. A huge creature: a bear! No, not a bear, something larger. It had a sloping forhead, draped in fur so black that at first all Gaston could see were the eyes. It's eyes peeled through the void, bright blue and feral.
A horrified gasp came from behind and Gaston whipped around. There stood Isabella, the baker's wife, frozen with fear. On the ground by her feet lay a basket of bread, food her husband had forgotten to bring home after closing shop. She began stumbling back, he hands visible quaked. Her foot hit a fallen loaf of bread and Isabella went crashing down. She screamed.
At the sound, something in Gaston's brain clicked into place. She was in danger, he needed to protect her from the beast. Gaston ran for her.