Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The rose lasted for 10 years. But ten years was not enough. No one had ever come near the beast’s cursed woods, and how could such a beast venture out and expect to be safe.

Ten years was not enough. So as the last petal fell and the castle fell silent, the beast left for the forest. A beast was not meant for a castle.

Twenty-one is a fairly young age to be thrust into the cruel world of the forest. But then, eleven had been a cruel age to be cursed and that hadn’t stopped the enchantress. As a prince even at a young age, he had been taught to hunt. While his hands could not handle a bow or a gun, his beastly eyes could spot the game trails and his nose could now track scents. 

Those first weeks were still hard though.

A beast prowled the forest. Everyone knew that. All the adults said it was a large bear or maybe a circus’s escaped lion. Whatever the beast was, there was a beast… and the adults were scared. Hunters never went out alone and traps were set everywhere. 

Each week, as the hunters found sprung traps but no beast, the fear grew. And the adults told their children stories of monsters in the woods and warned them not to go out alone or at night lest they be eaten.

But the children also liked to tell eachother stories of the beast; children are full of stories. The most adventurous liked to say it was a dragon in the woods. That it was a test. That someday they will be big enough to wield their fathers’ sword and be the one to slay it. The older children teased the younger children with scary monsters of their own invention, the details changing from day to day.

But the children also whisper some things that are not stories. Because children like to go where they are told they should not, even into scary woods at night. And some of them had seen things. They said it stood on two legs. It had a mane like a lion. They said it had tusks like a hog. They said not to lose your way in the woods or it would chase you home in order to eat you.

Chapter Text

Belle always loved stories whether they were written in a book or whispered quietly between children near the town fountain. So when the adults began to worry over a beast that was smart enough to avoid traps, and the children whispered over a monster that chased them in the woods, she listened carefully and drew some conclusions of her own.

The plot of a good book gives you just enough information to see where it’s going. If you are a very good reader, she had learned, you can know what a character will do by the actions they’ve taken in the past. This is why Belle thought she might like to see this beast for herself. And why, a few weeks later when she encountered The Beast on one of her rambles through the woods, she did not scream for help.

She had started taking these evening walks in the woods half jokingly to meet the beast. But one month in, she found she just liked the opportunity to get away from the bustle of town and watch the last rays of sunlight filter through the trees. At this point, two months after the start of the rumors, she didn’t actually believe she’d ever encounter it. And had in fact thought little of following the source of a faint whine she had heard a mile into her walk. As she rounded a particularly dense cluster of underbrush, she took in the creature before her. She noticed that everyone’s stories seemed to be correct; it was as large as a bear with a mane like a lion and tusks like a bore.

But, one fact appeared to suddenly be untrue: the beast could not avoid every trap set for it. As she looked it over, she could see that not only was it’s paw currently caught in a trap but there seemed to be other cuts indicating other traps that weren’t escaped wholey unscathed.

Her curiosity drew her closer for further inspection but the proximity seemed to alert the beast to her presence. It whipped its head toward her with a growl startling her backward; she tripped over a branch and landed with a thump on her rear and a small yelp from her mouth. Her own noises seemed to startle it further. Its eyes refused to look away from her as it yanked futilely at the trap in its efforts to escape. Her vantage point from the ground and its attention allowed her to more fully examine this creature.

Living in a small town, she was not unused to hunting animals for her and her father’s meals in lean years. She knew the eyes of a beast and there seemed to be something more to this one’s. Something in them made her ache and she sought to offer reassurance.

“I’m sorry to have startled you, beast,” she offered softly. It did not seem to help as it finally looked away from her face to fight further and more desperately with the trap. “While I admit to humorously thinking to cross your path on my walk, I fear I was just as startled to encounter you as you were by me.”

Belle finally shifted from resting on her butt to sitting on her knees as she attempted to crawl closer to the beast. It began to growl threateningly as she did so.

“I have no wish to see you come to harm,” she further assured as she drew closer. “I currently have no use for a beast skin rug in my home, and I don’t believe you have done any harm to me or mine that might necessitate violence.”

As she reached for the trap, the beast snapped at her. She tried very hard not to flinch but she did withdraw her hands to hold them up placatingly. “I’m just trying to help you free. I can see that paws do not make for an easy escape, and I happen to have two very useful thumbs.” She began to draw closer to the trap once again as she continued to speak slowly and softly. “I simply have to press down on this lever here as I pry on the side and…” The trap snapped back open and the beast lept backwards.

It continued to face her and growl as it limped away from her. Belle wondered at it being caught in a trap in the first place as it seemed rather smart to her. But now that the beast was moving away, she could finally spot the hare next to the trap and once again took in the beast’s sorry state. It must be becoming desperate for food with so many hunters on the look-out for it. She stepped toward the bate hoping to pick it up for him but her movements caused the beast to finally turn tail and flee entirely into the darkness of the woods.

“I only wanted to offer you your hard earned dinner,” she called into the darkness. “It seems rather a waste to have been hurt so without getting anything in return. I’ll leave it here for you shall I?!”

She had not, of course, expected a response but she felt it was okay if not at least a little funny to be miffed that the beast had not said thank you to its rescuer.

She turned to head back home in the dark but found herself turning around again. She grabbed a branch to once again trigger the trap, then pushed the hare closer to the area the beast had fled in.

“In case, you do come back for that meal.” She murmured into the dark. This time feeling quite a bit more silly as she finally started home as this time she had surely been talking to herself alone in the darkness and not to an uncommonly bright beast.

Chapter Text

The next day as Belle ran her errands in town, she listened for news of the beast and was not disappointed.

“Like a ghost.” She heard as she entered the library.

“Tracks even larger than a bear’s.” As she dropped off a letter at the post for her father.

“Gnawed its paw clean off to escape one of my traps.”

“What?!” Belle whipped her head around the butcher’s to see who had spoken as she entered.

As her eyes settled on the smith’s eldest son, she saw him preening with the attention of the crowd of young boys around him. He raised something in the air. “Got it with me right here. Found it next to the trap just last week.”

She tried to push a little closer through the crowd to focus better on the furry object he was waving around. “That’s hogwash,” cried one of the boys further up in the crowd. “I know for a fact you bought that bear paw off the trapper who passed through.”

She felt relief as she finally spotted the bear paw in the boy’s hand. It definitely didn’t belong to the beast. Her relief didn’t last as she felt someone large step up behind her. She didn’t need to turn around to know who it might be, but she reluctantly turned as they began to speak anyway.

“No need to worry about this beast, Belle. You know that I’m the greatest hunter in the country. I’ll have this beast caught in no time.”

“I think you’ve been promising that since these ridiculous rumors of a man-eating beast started, Gaston. I think you’re in serious trouble of proving my doubts in that statement correct.”

Gaston seemed to sputter a bit at her sarcasm, but his confidence quickly returned. “It’s the fault of these other amateurs laying so many useless traps in the woods,” He protested. “In fact, I nearly had him last night. There’s even blood on my trap and the hare I baited it with is gone.”

Belle’s heartbeat stuttered a bit and she focused in further on what Gaston was claiming.

Glorying in having caught her attention, Gaston continued his favorite activity: singing his own praise. “That’s right! All of these other so-called hunters don’t know what they’re doing. They place too many traps and all in the wrong places.” Fixing his gaze more fervently upon her, he continued. “The best hunters know to stalk their prey and what makes for good bait.”

Belle fought down her disgust as she feigned further interest for a bit of helpful information: how a great hunter like himself might hide his traps and what sort of locations to expect the best prey. Gaston was only too happy to continue telling her of his skills, how the best way to hide a trap was under a tree that drops a lot of leaves, how the best locations were along game trails heading toward water sources, how his best traps, meant for mighty beasts worthy of his skills, had to be well baited.

She could hear Gaston chuckling to the others still in the butcher shop as she left that “Belle has finally come to her senses” and she’d “surely accept his proposal soon”. She almost felt like warning him that that was about as likely as him actually catching the beast but decided it’d be far more satisfying to watch him get smacked with that realization later on. Instead, she decided, it was time for a walk.