(1 Month Later)
The sound of my fist pounding into the ball of dough on the wooden counter echoes through the kitchen. My muscles ache and my knuckles feel bruised but I don't care and continue to pound my frustration away on the poor and helpless dough in front of me. The repetitive motion allows my mind to free itself which I used to enjoy as it would give me the chance to plan any future hunts. This time is different. There are no future hunts, no future plans to train, no plans whatsoever. The only thing swarming my mind is the image of Henry... Beast looking down at me with pain and betrayal in his baby-blue eyes. I can hear his voice filled with so much pain and feel the figurative knife slice into my back and the hot feeling of betrayal burning into my heart.
How dare he think I would use him to steal from them! How dare he believe her over me! How dare he throw our friendship away like it was nothing like I never trusted him with my deepest secrets or showed him sides of me that not even my family got to see! I chose to help him even after all his hostility and trying to kill me and he allowed our foundation to crumble with one simple sentence. He threw us away like our relationship wasn't real. He gave up and now I must live with a broken heart because of it.
"Valerie, are you okay?" Adrien's voice cuts through the self-loathing flooding the air, and I turn to face him with a gasp. My cheeks suddenly feel wet and my fingertips instinctively reach up and brush a single tear away before it can run further away from its cage.
"What are you doing here," I snap but my voice comes out so broken and mangled that it doesn't go anywhere near the effect I wanted to give off. I don't scare him away like I wanted to. He doesn't turn around and walk out the door like I've made him do so many times over this past month, instead, he remains frozen in place with his arms outstretched silently inviting me into his arms.
I want to deny him. I want to push his arms away and storm out of the room and run into the woods where I can only hope the trees and nature will swallow me whole and give me an escape from this blinding pain.
"Stop being so tough and come here," he says, and with those seven simple words everything inside me breaks and I rush into his arms with a river of tears pouring down my cheeks onto the floor below me.
My arms wrap tighter and tighter around him as the tears that have been locked up for weeks continue to crawl out of me. Loud sobs that could bring even the toughest person to their knees erupt from within me and my body starts to tremble as all the sadness that I have kept bottled up for days and days on end is allowed to come sprinting out.
"Please tell me what's going on," Adrien begs as he guides me toward two chairs positioned side by side and forces me to sit beside him.
With my arms still furiously wrapped around his waist, I shake my head earning a sigh from him. I know he's trying his best to hide all his frustration. I've slowly been watching it build more and more over the past month. Ever since he found me curled up into a ball crying my eyes out the night arrived back from the castle he has been trying to get me to confess what happened, but every time he tries, I do all I can to shut him out and every time he allows me too.
Today is different. Using all his strength he unwraps my arms from his waist and all while keeping my hands gripped tightly in his he forces me to look him in his eyes. I can just make out the pure determination shining in his doe-like eyes and it fills me with both the feeling of relief that I might finally be able to open myself up to him and the crippling fear that always comes with the idea that I'll have to open myself up to him. To me that's always been the worst part about feeling not fully okay on the inside, you know you have to get it out but speaking is the hardest thing you can do.
"Valerie, for weeks now I have given you the space that you needed. I've done everything I could to try and make you feel better and not once when you pushed me away did I complain nor say what was on my mind," he stops and takes a deep breath, "That all stops today."
My instincts kick in and I try to get off the chair and rush out of the room but his grip on my hands is so tight that I don't even make it off the chair let alone out of the room.
"No, you are not going anyway because you need to talk," he snaps at me as he tightens his grip on my hands making me wince.
"Why do you want me to talk so badly?" I ask through another loud sob.
"Because I can't spend another month watching someone who means so much to me suffer. You have helped me through so much so now it's my turn to help you." A moment of silence washes over us as he waits for my answer and I contemplate his words all while also battling my inner desire to stay quiet and handle my pain alone. As much as I desire to stay quiet at the end of the day he is right, I can't spend another month suffering alone.
"He... he broke me in a way that nobody has ever done before," I whisper my heart feeling like it's being ripped apart with every word. Little by little I manage to tell Adrien my story. A tale of how I opened my heart to the most unlikely of things and t took my kindness and burnt it, it took my soul and crumbled it, and he took my love and ripped it apart like paper. I know I should have never let him in the first place. But how was I supposed to know that he would break me? How could I have foreseen the day when my soul would be ripped away and thrown to the floor like it was a useless item no longer wanted? How could I have seen it? How could I have known that one person could cause so much damage?
The castle has never been darker than it has been this past month. For ninety years not a drop of sunlight has touched these walls and while we have come to accept the shadows as our new home this is the first time they have truly felt like home. Never before has the true darkness of this castle bothered me. Not once have the shadows felt like the only place I truly belong, and not for a long time has any choice I have made bothered me as much as the choice I made that fateful night. Ever since the night that Valerie... since that voleuse left there has been a hole in my heart that refuses to refill itself. A hole that she created when she betrayed everyone in this castle. When she betrayed me.
How dare she use our desperate need for help as a way to make a quick steal. How dare she try to tell me that she wasn't trying to steal from us when the evidence was right there in her pocket. How dare she look all of us in the eye and tell us that she was coming here to help. For all I know there was nothing useful in that bloody purple book she kept bringing here in that damn satchel bag of hers. How dare she pretend to be a good person when she was a snake. How dare she allow me to open myself up to her about some of my pains. How dare she permit me to show her my special places like they meant something to her as well. How dare she take my trust and rip it apart. How dare she pretend to be happy for me when the rose petals fell or when my eyes turned blue once more. And how bloody dare she make me open my heart to her and crush it under her boot.
With a mighty roar, I swing my clenched paw across my table knocking all the contents, including the rose, to the floor. The glass casing that has surrounded the flower for over ninety years shattered the second it touched the floor sprinkling the dusty ground with hundreds of small shards of glass. I gaze long and hard at the shards twinkling like stars from the small ball of light emitted from my candle each one a symbol of my rage and sadness.
"Bloody hell," I mumble under my breath as I bend down to start picking up some of the scattered contents. I try my best to dodge the fragments of glass but I fail miserably and howl as multiple bits and pieces bury themselves into the soft flesh on my feet.
The door to the room bursts open and Maurie rushes in with the same look of concern that has been gracing his face for the past month. His gaze drifts from me to the shards on the floor and the droplets of blood trickling from my injured foot.
"What did you do?" he asks as he carefully walks toward me doing a much better job than me of dodging the glass.
"It was an accident," I say.
He leads me over to the bed where he forces me to sit down so that he can remove the glass.
"An accident?" He looks up at me and I nod. He raises his one eyebrow as he pulls one of the larger shards out causing me to hiss. "Accident like a few days ago when you punched the wall?"
"There was a dangerous spider on the wall, and I was trying to kill it."
"What about last week when you broke the dinner table and multiple items of cutlery?"
"I tripped and fell and landed on the table which broke it."
"And what about yesterday when you cut your arm?" he asks and twists my right arm so that the jagged cut that stretches from the middle of my arm to the point just before my wrist.
I jerk my arm out of his grasp and tuck it against me. "That doesn't matter," I mumble with my head cast down.
"Henry," he says through a sigh. He grabs a handkerchief from one of his inside jacket pockets and lays the shards of glass he had removed from my foot onto the piece of fabric.
"I'm fine, Maurie. I don't know how many times I have to keep telling you that."
"I am pulling glass out of your foot one day after helping you clean up a very obviously self-inflicted cut."
"You don't have to help me then!" I yell and I get up off the bed, or at least I try to but the bits of glass still buried in my flesh prohibit me from moving far away.
I fall to the floor and scream in frustration. I lean forward allowing my forehead to touch the floor as tears start to squeeze out of my eyes and collapse to the floor. Small sobs echo from me and it isn't long until I feel a hand rest on my shoulder and give me a gentle squeeze.
"You need to talk about what you're feeling or else it will swallow you whole. You can't keep suffering in silence, Henry. If you don't want to talk to me then that's fine but please I'm begging you at least talk to someone before you end up doing something you can't come back from."
Silence fills the room only to be briefly interrupted by the occasional sob from me or wince whenever he removes a particularly painful bit of glass from my foot.
As soon as all glass is taken out I push myself into a seated position and with wet and puffy eyes I look up at Maurie.
"She broke in a way I didn't think was possible," I say my voice showing every bit of pain I'm feeling. Soon after the dreaded words left my mouth another river of tears begins to flow from me as I slowly but surely express everything that has been raging within me for the past month. I tell him about all my sadness and that hollow feeling that creeps into my chest when I try to fall asleep. I tell him about the tears I shed every night and the overwhelming feeling of betrayal that burns deep within my soul. But most importantly I tell him about the way my heart feels like it has been ripped into a million pieces. Shredded by the woman I thought cared for me. A woman who came into my life and singlehandedly managed to break me in a way that nobody has ever managed to do. And at the end of the day, I was the one who never saw it coming. How could I have seen it? How could I have known that one person could cause so much damage?
Footsteps echo through the seeping darkness of the cold passageway as Maurie frantically rushes down to the servants' counters in the basement.
Fabienne, Amelie, Miss Potts, and Charles who were all engaged in an old card game immediately fell silent and shifted every bit of their attention toward Maurie the second he stepped into the room. Silently, they watch as he paces back and forth, back and forth, back and forth over and over and over again until even their feet start to feel sore just from watching him.
Fabienne, concerned for her lover, leaps off of her bed and hurries towards him with her arms outstretched. But just as she's about to wrap him in her arms she notices small pools of blood on his white shirt and gasps.
"Mon cher, what happened to you?" she asks in a panic immediately beginning her search for cuts.
Maurie chuckles at his lover and gently jerks his arm out of her grip.
"Don't worry, my darling, this is not my blood."
"What did he do this time?" Miss Potts quickly asks concerned for the man she had raised like her son.
"He stepped on some glass. He's fine now just resting upstairs. He talked to me today about everything that's been bothering him." All of their eyes widen in surprise. Each of them had tried their best to get Henry to open up about his troubles but none were successful.
"What did he say?" Amelie asks.
Maurie shakes his head and sighs. "He's in pain and it's worse than ever before. He wasn't even this bad when the curse was placed on him. Sure he was upset but he never harmed himself."
"Well, how can we help him?" Fabienne asks.
"I have a plan, it's risky but I think it could work," Maurie says, his voice full of uncertainty.
"Well... go on what is it," Miss Potts commands.
Maurie looks out at his lover and friends and after taking several deep breaths he says, "I'm going to send Valerie a letter and try and convince her to come back to the castle."
A loud collective gasp echoes through the cold and damp room and Maurie stands quietly as voices fill the air.
"You can't do that!"
"He said he would kill her if she ever came back you'd be putting her life in danger!"
"That's a preposterous idea."
"Mon cher, are you sure there isn't anything we can do?"
Maurie holds out his hand signalling for them all to be silent and much to his surprise they listen to his plea.
"It's the only way to help him. He's only like this because he misses Valerie."
"She tried to steal from Belle."
"Oh please, Charles. We all know that was staged."
"Well, that threat he gave her certainly wasn't."
"And who is to say that she even wants to come back? We all saw her face when Henry spoke to her. She was hurt beyond belief and not just by him we all hurt her too when we all stood there like a bunch of cowards." Miss Potts stops and wipes away rogue tears that are starting to pool in her eyes. "We were her friends and we did nothing to stop that little snake from attacking her. Why would she ever want to come back?"
"We have to at least try, Potsy. I can live with her rejecting my request but I can't go on without at least trying."
The room falls into a pit of silence and Maurie takes this as an opportunity to start drafting his letter. He rushes to his bed where he grabs a blank piece of paper and quill with ink from his small bedside table.
The group remain silent as they watch him scribble words onto the paper before eventually folding it and stuffing it into an envelope. The group quickly rush out of their room and toward the garden where they search and search until they find the messenger bird that they haven't used in decades.
"I hope this plan of yours works," Amelie says as she watches the bird with the envelope tied to its leg fly toward the village.
"Me too, 'cause I don't know what we're going to do if it doesn't."