Work Text:
Despite what the village and its elders would have the Dark One believe, the maiden they sent was not unwilling.
“Belle.”
Exasperation usually laces her name when it is said - not because the people find her a nuisance, but because she is usually too brave for her own good - and this whisper is no exception.
The elders had convened in private to discuss the fate of the town - this much anyone from the stony shore to Cliffside Tavern knows - but only a select few have heard of the offer made to the Dark One by their disease-swept village.
“Everyone holds tight to their children now,” she tells the aged features of Josef, one of the older men who had gathered yesterday.
“Just because your father isn’t well-”
“He won’t understand. He won’t miss me.” She gives a faint, tight smile. “Not really. Not like everyone else will miss their daughters.”
He runs a hand through his untidy silvered hair as they sit by candlelight at his kitchen table. Belle had woken him to make her offer, to ask to put herself in the seat of the carriage that waits across the town, hidden in the stables with the horses that shy from its grim and gilt grandeur.
“How did you hear?” Josef asks, his dark blue eyes meeting hers, and a true smile crosses Belle’s face.
“You must know by now that everyone has their price.” A laugh, constricted only by the thought of never seeing these people - hers - again, meets her lips, soft and sad. “And people do love my roses.”
His smile matches hers. “Yes, they do.” This smile wavers. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want to think on it, Belle? Sleep, and come back tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you offer everyone in the town the same fate. Many will accept because they feel they have to. I choose it.”
His hand, large and wizened, comes, haltingly, to cover hers. He isn’t someone who often shows much tenderness, but with Belle he has always been a doting man. She finds she brings out this side in men, whether by her small town beauty or her rose-scented touch, but she often wishes it could also be as it is with Josef, that he listens to her because her voice is worth hearing.
"I will see that your father is cared for, Belle. Have no fear of that.” He takes his hand away and fits it back neatly with the other, his knuckles as pale as the nightgown he sits in. “I will come for you at first light-”
“No,” Belle interrupts. “I’m sorry, Josef. We both know the town will hear of this before then and stop me from leaving, as they will with whoever is chosen. You mean well, so just…let me go. I’m ready.”
He looks at her, eyes bright, his expression grave and unforgettable. “Ready, Belle? Truly? You understand the bargain we made with him, don’t you? That you must bear him children.”
“I understand.”
And she does. Perhaps not the exact specifics - she could never find someone willing to tell her that without wanting to show her, and the books were never very clear - but she knows that she must accept the Dark One’s body into her own.
It seems like such a small price to pay to give the town new life, new health, and her sacrifice will save those poor babies offered and chosen each year, sent off in the arms of that hooded man, never to be seen again.
Josef nods, and it seems as though he finally sees her newly scrubbed skin, the dress she’d bargained for and wears now, the small stack of tattered books tied up and sat in her lap, and the small jar of fresh rose seeds clasped in the hand that doesn’t lie upon the rough table.
“You could have already left,” he says, and Belle gives a watery-eyed nod.
“I wanted to say goodbye.”
He breathes deep, the same as she. “You have all you need, then.”
“All I own or can be spared.” She pauses. “Am I acceptable? I know he needs to want me.”
Josef closes his eyes for the briefest moment, and in the candlelight, Belle can see his years in the shadows that deepen the lines of his face.
His voice is rough when he speaks again, but it stays steady and firm as he asserts, “He does not deserve you, Belle. I’m not sure anyone does.”
There is quiet for a moment, only the slight wind outside making itself known, and then descends the vaguest sense of urgency, one that comes with the approaching dawn.
They stand.
“Do not tell him it was your choice, Belle,” Josef advises in all seriousness. “Let him only think he has power over you. Keep it for yourself. He has no time for heroes.”
“Or heroines either, I suppose,” Belle says, a breath as she turns for the door, wondering how terrible this faceless nightmare will be when she finally looks upon him.
They are both surprised to find the dark carriage upon Josef’s doorstep, waiting without horse or any obvious means of getting anywhere. Its golden wheels shining in the dark, under the light of the moon.
“Did you call it?” Belle asks quietly.
“No,” the man at her back replies. “You must have.”
With only her will, her determination to depart? Seeing this sort of magic at work, Belle thinks, may even ease her leaving.
She steps towards the door and watches as it slowly opens, giving the softest creak as it shows her a comfortable interior, the likes of which she has never seen before. Money and magic buy all, and she and her father have never had either.
Belle puts her foot upon the gilt step, reaching into the carriage to set down her precious little pile of belongings on the plush seat. She doesn’t realise that Josef, his gait awkward with age, has left and returned, until she is half inside the carriage.
“Belle, take this.” She turns to see him proffering a worn shawl, and she remembers how it had been his grandchild to be offered one year, that the umber blanket had been especially made for that sweet, tufty-haired babe. “I don’t know where he lives, but it might be cold. I’ve often seen snow on his boots.”
She reaches for it, her fingers brushing the soft frayed edge of the woven fabric, and then she is pulled back inside, pushed away, the door snapping shut like a maw and trapping the shawl in its tight, toothless mouth.
“I wasn’t trying to get back out!”
The wheels roll, and there is nothing she can do but be thrown back into the corner with her belongings and watch as Josef shrinks out of sight along the worn sea-road.
Belle tugs at the shawl, desperate to care for it and keep it pristine, perhaps even swaddle her own child in the gift, but it stays caught, and she must watch from the window, which stays tightly shut, as the fabric is muddied by the road, torn and caught in brambles, and weathered by the world that passes by.
Hand steadfastly curled about the end of the blanket, ready to save it at a moment’s notice, and her faced turned from the window, Belle feels the first tear fall.