This is based on my full-length AU Dropping Eaves. Basically, Belle overhears a conversation between the servants and finds out about the curse (Beast fills in the details afterwards, but she knows enough to make it interesting, lol), and the fic explores how that impacts on the story. That's all you need to know to get this fic, which is just a little one-shot exploring Belle's thoughts as their relationship develops in a different way to the movie. I'm really not sure I captured Belle's voice (OK, I didn't!), but I hope I've at least captured the "essence" of the awkwardness involved, if you like.

Hmm... that was pretentious! Sorry!

It's not that I don't trust him. In a strange way, he's one of the best friends I've ever had. I feel... sure of him, somehow. I suppose it's being a prisoner here – we're both trapped, one way or another – I know he's always there. I can talk to him without having anything to say, because we're both so glad to find someone to share our thoughts with. He's funny – even if he doesn't always realise why – and, in his own way, he's far more gentle than I could have expected. More than that, he's interested in me. I can tell him things, things nobody knows even though I've never meant to keep them secret, because I've never found anyone to tell.

But that's just the problem. He is interested in me. It's in every gesture he makes, every time he looks carefully into my eyes while I'm talking, every time the corner of his mouth turns up in a kind of half-smile or his soft hand accidentally brushes mine. I feel it, something... something that makes me feel a little warmer, a little happier. And when he moves away I try to put it out of my mind.

I remind myself now and then that it could be any girl here. Anyone would have made the bargain I did. You surely don't have to be a storybook heroine to offer your life to save someone you love. And that isn't how it's supposed to be, I'm sure of it. When you meet the one you're destined to love, you feel it. It courses through your blood, races through your heart, makes everything clear. I know, somehow. I know.

But of course we aren't destined to be together. I hate to think that if I hadn't found out, he might have been successful. I mean... I hardly notice it any more, the fangs, the fur, the claws. And for so long, I loathed him for what he wanted me for. Without that... I'm ashamed to think that it might have worked.

And that would be awful. I suppose... I suppose if I were completely unaware, I'd be thrilled for him when the curse broke and I discovered the truth. And we'd be happy together to begin with. But it isn't meant to be. He could be looking so attentively at anyone, it has nothing to do with who I am, it's what I represent. I can't argue with what I am to him, or what I could have been. I think he still hopes... I think he still thinks I can save him. But I can't. Not with what I know.

This isn't supposed to be how it works. The Enchantress he told me about, I've read about those. All the stories call them forces of good, practising white magic to change the world by changing people. All their teachings are good ones, punishments to match the crime. But all the victims are told what their crimes were. What have I done to deserve to be the only one who can save a dear friend, but at the cost of something I cannot give away – no matter how much I want to.

Yet his interest continues. Was I so alone that I needed to be trapped in a castle with a stranger before I found someone to care what I think? I think I was.

So I tell myself that's why I think about him all the time, why I try to imagine things that might amuse him, why I wonder what our next conversation will be made of, why I smile uncontrollably when he makes me happy, why I boil with fury when he's even slightly unkind, why I expect the best from him, why I walk around the castle hoping at every turn for a chance encounter.

I tell myself, and I try very hard to be convincing.