"Do I like her? I've spoken perhaps ten sentences to her and vice-versa. It takes me longer to like people than that unless they're truly exceptional."

"She fears that you don't," he says, sitting on the floor and resting his chin on her knee. "It troubles her."

"I don't say it's reasonable or it isn't," he says, "but that's how she feels, so I told her I'd ask."

Belle shrugs. "Are you getting along with her all right?"

"More or less," he says. "She's very snuggly."

"Is she anything else?"

He thinks it over, and the word he comes up with is, "Desperate."

"Desperate? For what? Why?"

"Well, gently desperate," he says. "Subtly desperate. But—she wants everyone to like her."

"...Literally?"

He nods his fluffy head.

"That's even stranger than it sounds, when I think about it," muses Belle. "Everyone in the world? She can't even meet everyone in the world."

"It may be that she only cares about the ones she has met, or will meet," he says. "I'm not sure."

"So she didn't tell you this outright - how can you tell?"

"What she said, how she said it, how she acted, how she seemed to feel."

"Huh. Ironically," says Belle, "I don't think I find that an appealing quality."

"I'm frightening?"

"Frightening like thunderstorms," he says affectionately.

"Is she also frightening like some kind of weather?"

"No," he says. "She's frightening like... I'm not sure. You can hurt me, but you won't, if I don't want you to. She can't, but I think she would."

"But the curse thinks you could fall in love with her. And vice versa."

"Sometimes I like frightening."

"If she wants to be liked so badly why would she hurt you even if you didn't agree to it, though? Does she know that you sometimes like to be frightened?"

"She wants to be liked so badly that she would force it if she could."

Belle shudders. "Ew."

"Yes."

"...Maybe I should keep the magic books written in Albish in my room and lock them up during the day. The Callian books don't have anything useful on that front, but she's got a heavy enough accent I bet she can read Albish and I haven't got those catalogued fully."

"Do that," he says.

Belle stacks up Albish books and takes them away. She requires three trips.

The Beast arrives on the heels of lunch, covered in scratches and grabbing food from the top of the tray as it skitters playfully away from him.

"She's ignoring me," Chelise murmurs under her breath to Beast. "I've been in here for an hour looking at the books and she hasn't even said hello. I told you she didn't like me."

"Shhh," he says, resting his chin on her shoulder and hugging her. "She's busy. Have some lunch, it's very good."

Chelise nibbles at some lunch disconsolately. "Too busy to say hello?"

He nuzzles his nose against her cheek.

She giggles and wraps her arms around his neck.

It is! Snuggle snuggle.

It is also more cuddly! And everything is better with purring.

"Do you think she'll ever like me?" asks Chelise after a few moments of silence apart from purring. "I don't know how long we'll be here. I don't think I could bear to be trapped in one place with someone who couldn't like me no matter what I did."

"Give her time," he murmurs. "I don't think she likes you or doesn't like you. I think she doesn't know you at all."

"But then why wouldn't she say hello and try to get to know me?"

"Because if someone doesn't break this curse one way or another, I will be trapped here alone forever," he sighs. "And there might not be time for her to learn all she'd need to learn to break it with magic."

"Oh, you poor thing, alone forever, I can't imagine anything more horrid - if there might not be time wouldn't it make more sense for her to do what I'm doing, then?"

"She does magic," he says, "you do belly rubs. Each to your own talents." And he nuzzles her cheek again.

Well, Chelise can certainly do belly rubs!

The Beast purrs and snuggles up affectionately.

"It's going to bother me if she just goes on not liking me. She likes you, doesn't she? How'd you do it?" Chelise asks after a long conversational lull.

"I don't know," he says with a fluffy shrug. "Maybe I didn't. Maybe it just is."

"Just is?"

"Maybe she likes me because I am who I am."

"Well - yes, but how did you demonstrate it, what did you do? If she only likes people because of who they are and not anything they do I might just be doomed, mightn't I?"

"I don't know," says the Beast.

"I don't think I could bear it! In a village I could just avoid anyone I didn't get along with, but there are only three of us here!"

"Would you?"

All right, all right. Off he goes.

Belle is, predictably, reading a book on magic.

"What do you want me to do about it?" sighs Belle, marking her spot in the book and closing it.

"I don't know," he says. "She wants me to find out how to get you to like her, I think."

"Do you really think I ought to be spending time on that when there's so much magic to learn? I suppose I can talk to her when I need a break, but as far as I can tell her only characteristic is that she wants to be liked."

"If it takes you time, then no," he says. "I think you should spend exactly as much time on it as you want to."

"I'd be perfectly content to avoid her, honestly."

He shrugs, and curls up on the floor with his head in her lap.

The Beast observes her!

The Beast sighs.

Belle also sighs.

He nuzzles her knee, and then picks himself up and goes after Chelise.

Chelise is curled up in a ball in the window seat in her room. She may or may not be crying.

She leans into him but does not lift her face away from her knees.

He nuzzles her shoulder comfortingly.

"Does she like anybody? She can't even like you that much, if she won't talk to me even a little if you asked her..."

"She likes me fine," says the Beast. "She is learning magic so she can help me. And she would rather you avoid each other than that she take time away from that to get to know you."

"But it could take so long for her to learn what she's trying to learn and we all have to live with each other in the meantime," says Chelise, a hint of a whine entering her voice.

"It's a big castle," says the Beast. "You don't need to be near her if you don't want to. And you could always try to leave. Maybe the forest will let you go."

"She said it wouldn't, that we were stuck here," says Chelise suspiciously.

"She is. I am. You might not be."

He follows after her to say, "I don't know that you can. But I don't know that you can't."

"Will you be terribly upset if I go - I don't want to leave you alone with only her, it's just I don't think I can take it -"

"I would rather you be with your friends and happy than here and miserable."

"Thank you," sighs Chelise, and she pecks the Beast on the shoulder - his face is out of reach when they're both standing - and she throws another stick of bread into her bag and makes for the exit.

He curls up outside next to a rosebush and waits to see if she comes back.

He wraps his arms around her and nuzzles her hair.

"All I want is to be around people who want me around, and I like you but there is only one of you," sobs Chelise.

"I'm sorry," he says, cuddling her.

Carefully, carefully, he straightens out the wrong-looking leg.

He touches his nose to Belle's cheek.

He finally lifts his head and looks at Chelise.

"Is she alive? I think I startled her -"

"Please don't be angry, that won't help, I was only at the top of the stairs when she came round the corner and she didn't expect me and she fell, she's so clumsy. Was? Is she alive?"

The Beast growls again, louder.

Chelise backs up a step, then another.

He goes back to ignoring her.

He curls up next to her and closes his eyes.

Nothing changes.

Belle manages to swallow a little of the water. She makes a soft noise and shifts position and winces briefly and then goes still again.

The Beast curls back up.

"Belle," he says, crouching over her. "Are you all right? I don't know what to do."

"I hurt," she whimpers.

"I know."

"Must be a spell - some kind of spell -"

"Should I take you to the library?"

"Don't think I'd better move." She swallows. "Water?"

The food tray scurries up to them. Beast fetches down a cup.

"I fear what will happen if I leave you alone," he says.

"Mm?"

"Do you remember falling?"

"...Vaguely."

"Chelise was there."

"...I don't remember that."

"She said she'd startled you."

"I don't remember." Pause. "You don't believe her."

"I think she pushed you," says the Beast.

"...Maybe. I can't remember. I don't even remember why I was on the staircase."

"I want to kill her," he growls.

Belle doesn't have a reply to that.

He sighs.

"You think she'll come back and finish me off if you leave me?"

"I don't know."

"Where did she go? Could she even tell if you went to the library?"

"Upstairs," he says. "I worry if she comes back."

One of Belle's arms is not broken. That one fumbles for Beast's paw and clasps it. "Can the kitchen bring - medicines, at all? Maybe if I were only a little better, I could move, and finish the job with magic..."

Belle closes her eyes and concentrates on breathing evenly. Her hand clutches at the Beast's paw; she's weak and trembly yet clearly holding on as hard as she can.

He nuzzles her forehead.

She squeaks. It's not a happy squeak. "My head hurts," she whimpers.

He sighs.

"Just - the one arm and that same leg, are fine - nothing else," says Belle, taking a shuddering breath, "anything else if I move at all, or if you touch me, it's worse."

The Beast rumbles unhappily.

"Is it figuring out medicine?" Belle asks after a silence.

"I don't know."

She squeezes his paw. "How long ago did I fall?"

"A day."

Beast helps bring the pills and the tea and Belle all into the appropriate conjunction.

"Mm?"

"If you're very, very careful with me I think you could take me to the library. I don't know about putting me in a chair, but I could lie near where the books are and you could hand them to me?"

"I could," says the Beast.

She lets his paw go so he'll have both free to lift her. "Careful of the knee," she murmurs, picking up her broken arm carefully and resting it on her stomach.

He scoops her up as gently as he can.

She sucks in a sharp breath and tenses but doesn't otherwise critique the positioning.

He's pretty good about keeping her steady as he carries her to the library, but he's not perfect.

Very carefully, he fetches her notebook.

She maneuvers it one handed - checking what page she's on, putting it down, turning pages, and picking it up again - till she gets where she needs to be. "There's a blue book with gold braid on the cover. That one," she says after a few minutes of this.

The Beast fetches it, too.

"I don't mind," he says fondly.

"Yes."

"Plenty," says the Beast.

"I'm fine," he purrs. "You?"

"I'm better. I may be shaky for a couple of days."

"Can I snuggle you now?"

"Yes."

He wraps his arms around her and nuzzles the side of her neck, still shivering a little with the aftershocks of the spell.

"What about her?" he murmurs back.

"I still can't remember if she pushed me or not."

"I still think she did," he says.

"Then - what? What do we do about her?"

"Kill her before she tries again," he suggests.

"...But how can we be sure if she did push me? I could have fallen. I do fall often enough."

"I don't know if she pushed you," he says slowly, "but I do know that she wanted you to be dead."

"...Surely she didn't say that. Even if it's true it would be a stupid thing to tell you; how do you know?"

"She kept asking if you were," he says, "and she—the way she stood, the way she spoke, the way she looked at you—she didn't want me to know it, but that's how she felt."

"I'm... not sure what to do with that. I don't think anyone has wished me dead before."

"I think we should kill her," he reiterates.

"If you've thought so all this time, why didn't you do it while I was unconscious?"

"Because I didn't know what you'd think of it," he says. "And I cared more about making you well than about making her dead."

"Mm. More spells," he purrs.

"Good!"

Belle nods. "It's only a little one. I can channel it myself just fine. Unless you'd like me to put it through you instead."

"Oh, well, if it's only little, I don't mind you doing it yourself," he says, nuzzling her shoulder.

"Want me to kill her?"

"We can hardly evict her; the curse won't let her get far. It's possible I could just wrap myself in enough wards to be safe, but..." Belle chews her lip. "Is there, do you suppose, any chance left you could fall in love with her?"

"...What?"

"If you had died," he says, "I would have made myself love her, and then if she loved me and I was free I would have killed her, and if she did not and I was not I would have killed her when the rose died."

"I - I cannot begin to understand why that would be. Any of it."

"I want to be free," he says. "But I hate her. But you can love someone and hate them. It's even easier, in some ways. But I don't want to if I have another chance. Because I hate her."

"I don't think I know how to love someone and hate them." She snorts softly. "But then - I don't even know how to do the first alone. Still. It sounds harder, not easier."

"Only in some ways."

"What are the other ways?"

"Sorry," murmurs Belle.

"So," he says. "I could love her, and it would hurt, and I would kill her. Or I could just kill her now and not have to worry about it."

"I might manage to love you soon, though," Belle whispers. "And then we could all go. I doubt she's dangerous to her friends, when she can go where she likes."

"...If you want to kill her I will not stop you."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I want to stay with you more than I want to go and kill her."

"She might come out of her room eventually," Belle points out.

"And if I still feel like killing her next time I see her, then I will."

He curls up with her and starts purring softly.

The Beast doesn't bother exiting his comfortable snuggle to chase after her.

Even with the personal ward on, the Beast hardly strays out of sight of Belle, and never farther than the other side of a door.

"I think she is probably dead."

"...Why do you think so?" asks Belle.

"Because I can't imagine her giving up but I can imagine her killing herself."

He shrugs. "Want to go find out?"

"No. Not really."

"If she's dead and in this castle somewhere, we'd best find her before she starts to rot," he points out.

"...And I suppose until you're sure she's dead you won't just leave me somewhere and go looking on your own."

He nods.

"All right. We'll look for her."

Off they go, then.

The Beast makes the effort to read it.

Belle heads for the library, now that he's got the confirmation he needs to let her out of his sight.

He returns some time later, without Chelise, all scratched to hell the way he is sometimes after he wrestles with rosebushes.

"So it's down to me, then," Belle murmurs.

"Yes," Belle murmurs, burying her hands in his mane.

"You're crying," murmurs Belle.

He nods.

"You hated her. You wanted to kill her. Why are you crying?"

"Because I hated her, but I'm still sad for her," he says.

"I wish she'd never come here. I wish she were back at home where she belonged. But she decided to die, and I don't understand that."

"Being alive hurt too much."

"Sometimes I wish I could read your mind. Maybe then I could understand more of what you say," sighs Belle.

"I wish that too," he says, nuzzling her.

"...Really? I could never tolerate it if someone read my mind. But if this is another strange thing you like there might actually be a spell for it." She pauses. "It might... help."

"Then you should certainly look for it."

"Are you sure? It might not be very selective. I might just see everything."

He purrs again.

"That's all right," says the Beast.

"And it's reasonably large, but I suppose you don't mind that either."

He laughs and bumps his nose playfully against her stomach.

"Oh," breathes Belle.

"I love you," he says, redundantly.

He purrs.

He keeps right on purring. He can feel her reading his mind, and her hands in his mane and the spell-pain still shivering its way through his body, and it's all just lovely.

"I love you too," he exclaims, burying his face against her stomach and nuzzling her affectionately.

She laughs and she presses a kiss to the top of his head.

"I love yooooooou," he croons. "You're my favourite person. Let's get married. Let's take all the magic books and walk across the country because we can. Let's go tell your father you didn't die in the forest. Let's go see if breaking the curse means you don't have a bed anymore, because if you do I want to kiss you in it."

"All of those things," laughs Belle. "Not in that order. Reverse order." And she pulls him to his feet and leads him through the significantly less alive castle to check the status of the furniture.

After some deliberation, Belle also approves of that!

Oh, good! He is glad. He likes it when Belle approves of things.

"Awww," he giggles, and wraps his arms around her and presses his face into her shoulder. Mmmmmmmmmmsnuggly.

Premarital snuggles are fine and welcome!

That is good, because he would be genuinely upset if he couldn't touch her anymore. The exact details of the touching are secondary.

"You're so tactile," Belle murmurs. "I was half-worried that after going around in fur for a century being without would be like losing a layer of skin." Pause. "Maybe it is and you just like it anyway."

He is extremely pettable! He lacks most of the fluff, but still gives a creditable purr when cuddled.

He snorts. "Where am I to get clothes? Your wardrobe? Fun, but I doubt you've much that will fit me."

"Well, it will presumably be necessary to wind up tearing something into a serviceable shape, but it will be better than walking out of the forest in your altogether, won't it? And then we can find Charlie and he can loan you something."

He laughs. "All right."

"I believe we're set," says the Beast.

Beast takes charge of hauling the bottomless bags, which are not nearly as heavy as they should be but are still pretty heavy.

He snarls at the wolves. Better to scare them off than fight them, isn't it?

It's not much of a contest; the Beast outweighs the wolf and as soon as it's clear that the pack has a fight on its hands, none of the others stay around to help. But the wolf does get one solid bite in on the Beast's forearm.

"...Mm," he says, peering at it. Then he shrugs.

"You're bleeding. Badly. Even if you don't care if it hurts you're still bleeding. And you've turned into a cat monster again."

"I noticed," he says dryly. "What do I do about it?"

"I can probably remember that healing spell, even if there's no hope of finding the book without unpacking half the library," Belle says. "It was only a few days ago I cast it. I have no idea about the transformation part, but we can manage that later - ready?"

He nods.

Belle drops into her mindscape and casts. This is the first time she's done the same spell more than once, and it's easier, like one of the rosepetals in her mindscape has the steps stored for her in their illegible private language.

At about the same time, the wound in his arm disappears and he turns human again with a happy little shiver.

"Well," she says when she opens her eyes, "there you go, human again - and I don't know why."

"Me neither," he says with a shrug, and snuggles up to her again.

Belle decides to worry about this matter in the morning. She snuggles up to him likewise and goes to sleep.

In the morning, he remains human. And cuddly. Always cuddly.

"The fact that it was a dress was bad enough. It is now significantly less than a dress."

He giggles.

"I have no idea if I will change again," he says. "Perhaps we should just carry around a spare pair of trousers and wait until I really need them."

Beast does not even slightly care.

Belle doesn't care as much as she would if this were her own village. She manages to extract directions to a vendor of clothing, and trades the first six things to hand in the food bag (a jar of preserves, a loaf of bread, a pecan pie, a round of cheese, a salted leg of lamb, and a bottle of honey) for two pairs of trousers that look likely to fit the Beast.

Does he have to put one on? He rather likes the questionable dress.

The dress is much too questionable. Belle points at the changing room in the shop with a raised eyebrow.

Beast just sort of... lurks.

He shrugs.

Beast grins.

"Do you want some sort of updated name, now that at least much of the time you are unbeastly, or do we just have the priest write 'Beast Cygne' in the church records?" Belle murmurs as they continue through town.

"It's all the same to me," he says cheerfully.