mon ennemi

[beheld_beauty]

With the party concluded, Belle wants to go back and investigate the wicked enchanter and find out who it is she killed.

Does her husband wish to accompany her?

Comments

[pythbox]

Well, apparently he was a marquis.

The Marquis Étienne des Landes, to be exact, son of another Étienne, who himself was the son of yet a third. All of the portraits of these men look suspiciously identical.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle herself does not look twenty-two. And she knows that he was an enchanter.

Are there other clues here?

Or - no. In fact she does not need other clues.

She now has an arsenal of wishes, and one of the wishes will let her look into the past, and find out whether they were in fact all the same Étienne, and what could possibly have led the dead man to believe that her husband belonged to him.

[pythbox]

They were all the same Étienne, going back a hundred and fifty years, to when he was still an apprentice.

Before he was an apprentice, he had a family - a castle - a brother.

[beheld_beauty]

Lord above.

A brother.

Belle watches these brothers, especially the one who looks so achingly like a certain laughing face she once spied with a past-watching spell.

[pythbox]

They did not live a happy life.

The elder brother caught the worst of it, but Étienne wasn't spared much. Their father was cruel; their mother, mostly absent.

One day Étienne's brother burned the castle to the ground.

He knew the enchantress already; that was when he went to her to become her apprentice. She taught him many things. He inherited his father's title, since his brother disappeared the day of the fire. He wasn't there; he didn't know whether his brother had escaped or not. Either way seemed as likely as the other.

It took a few years for him to stop looking.

It took decades, well past the end of his apprenticeship, for the enchantress to tell him about that chance meeting and the curse she cast.

She told him that all things belonged to him, his brother included. She told him that the curse was just and fair, that his brother would make a monster of a Marquis, that it was a good thing for everyone that she had erased the name of Modeste des Landes forever.

He came to believe her, eventually.

[beheld_beauty]

And no wonder that if he chanced upon Beast he'd take him as he did.

Belle cannot much regret Étienne's death.

She is done here.

She teleports home to her husband, sober-faced.

[deslandes]

"What is it, my love?"

[beheld_beauty]

"There is a reason that enchanter felt entitled to take you as he did."

[deslandes]

"...What is it?" he repeats.

[beheld_beauty]

"The enchantress who made you forget so many things included in this a younger brother."

[deslandes]

"Oh, my love," he breathes, shivering.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle holds out her arms to him, and peers into his mental castle, unsure if she should say more.

[deslandes]

He hugs her and presses his face into her shoulder and cries.

He doesn't know if she should say more. He's confused and sad and a little afraid.

[beheld_beauty]

She holds him and waits for his desires to resolve into something solid.

[deslandes]

Well, he quite solidly wants her to hold him while he cries.

[beheld_beauty]

Belle can do that. She can do admirably at that task.

[deslandes]

"I love you," he mumbles into her shoulder.

"Who... what... I don't know what I want to know," he admits.

[beheld_beauty]

"I will go on knowing it. I can tell you later when you are sure you want to know, if you would rather not right now," murmurs Belle.

[deslandes]

"I love you," he sighs. "I love you so much."

[beheld_beauty]

"I love you too, mon cœur."

[deslandes]

Cuddles.

He really wants cuddles.

[beheld_beauty]

He can have all the cuddles he likes.

[deslandes]

Oh, good.