Beauty & the Beast/Sleeping Beauty Femslash

[icarus_chained]

Written for the following comment_fic prompt: "any two couples, one partner from each couple dies and the remaining ones hook up in their grief". I am in an odd frame of mind, apparently, because grieving fairytale femslash was what suggested itself. Also, this is mostly the Disney versions, yes?

Title: Bella Rosa
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Beauty & the Beast, Sleeping Beauty
Characters/Pairings: Belle, Briar Rose. Past Belle/Beast and Briar Rose/Phillip, present Belle/Briar Rose
Summary: When her Beast is taken from her at last, after years together, Belle goes in search of something to take her back to him. What she finds, in an enchanted castle wreathed in thorns, is something else altogether. Two women reach out in grief, and take each other's hands
Wordcount: 3091
Warnings/Notes: Spells/curses, character deaths, skeletons, grief, deathwishes. Happy ending, though. Second loves.
Disclaimer: Not mine

Bella Rosa

Across the next hill, they said, on a rise beyond the edge of the woods, there lay an enchanted castle, where a great and terrible creature lay sleeping.

Of course there did. Oh, of course.

By all the powers of magic, what was she trying to do to herself? Did she wish to be tormented so badly? Every day was full of reminders, large and small, did she really yearn for more of them? And this ... oh, this. So much more than a reminder. A sleeping castle, enchanted by magic, with a monster at its heart. An echo so clarion-clear. Was she truly so desperate to wound herself?

But yes. Yes, she was. Perhaps not quite that way. Perhaps not with reminders. She wouldn't find him there, behind those thorn-wreathed walls. She wouldn't find him anywhere, not while her body still drew breath. They had parted, they had been torn in two, and this parting was the kind no kiss could cure. There were walls even love could not hope to breach.

But a monster. Oh, a monster, maybe. A tearing, twice for luck, and for following's sake. It would be fitting, wouldn't it? He'd understand, her Beast. He'd see the echo, a monster to save her from herself and send her back to him. He would. Of course he would.

... No. No, it didn't help to lie. He wouldn't understand at all. He'd never wanted her to follow, not for long years yet. When the sickness took him, the wasting of a body too long strained by magic, he'd fought for her not to follow him. He'd begged and roared and made demands of her, suddenly so much the beast once more, after twenty years a man. He'd given every last scrap of energy he'd possessed to ensuring that she would survive him. He'd wanted her to live, and even love again. He would hate her for following him. He'd hate her for giving in. She knew that.

But there wasn't anything else she could do. She couldn't bear this. Every breath she took felt a mockery, a blasphemy, an intolerable cruelty. She couldn't sustain it. She simply wasn't strong enough.

Which brought her ... which brought her here. To a castle wreathed in thorns, in bright, flowering brambles that twined up across the keep, ready to be hung with berries black as night. A strange, sleeping place, full of grief and dreaming, and the echoes of old love. She felt so strange, here. Still, and strangely empty. It didn't feel like the place of a monster. Despite all her hopes and fears, despite all the stories she'd been spun, it didn't feel like the castle of a beast.

It felt like a tomb, she thought. She crossed the courtyard, her feet whispering across cracked flagstones and brushing through small weeds, and she looked around her as she went. There was no life here. No sense of something coiled and waiting, no edge of fear or tension to announce the silent presence of its master. The magic in this place, it wasn't active. Not as the magic around her Beast had been. This magic was different, older and more tired. Something waiting ... waiting to be let go.

Or maybe that was simply her. Maybe she was waiting, and this place with its ancient magic simply knew it, and reflected it back at her. She was too tired now to care either way.

She followed the magic to its source. She'd gained a talent for that, across the years. Her husband had always retained a certain sensitivity to it, and she'd taught herself the same to match him. So wary, he'd been. So afraid of a second sorceress, or even the return of the first. Afraid that magic would take him from her once again. Rightly so, as it turned out. Just not in any way they could have fought against. There'd been no need for a second assault. The first curse had done for all, in the end.

It was the tower, here. The place where the magic, quiet and grieving, beat strongest against her senses. It stirred a little against her, as she drew close. It tugged and twisted, twining gently like a thread to pull her upwards, flight on flight of stairs passing almost without notice. Something was waking, she thought. Something had felt her coming, and woken itself to meet her.

Good. Just ... just good. She wanted that, yes. She needed it, very much so.

There was sunlight at the top. Diffuse, threaded through gauzy curtains, a strange, green-gold sort of light. Like a forest had been brought indoors, like a dream had been fixed onto the top of the tower to greet her. It didn't feel bad. Oddly, it felt like home.

The room was a bedroom. She wasn't sure what she'd expected. A sorcerer's den, perhaps? A study with a ruined painting and a rose under glass. No. No, of course not. Never that.

Though perhaps not so far from the truth. The woman on the bed sat up, slowly and carefully, and in the greenish light she almost did look like a thing in a jar. She looked as though she'd been encased in crystal, wavering like a dream as it bent the light around her. The magic clung to her. It seemed she was its source.

And beside her, maybe, lay its cause. A thing not frozen, not protected, not wreathed in golden magic. A thing made so small, so withered and crumbled by time. A thing that had been a man, once. A thing that was a man no longer. Nothing more than a ring and a crown, and the pale gleaming of bones to bear them up.

"Oh," said Belle, a hushed gasp of understanding, and the woman, the monster and the beast in her bed, brought a hand to her mouth against the welling of her tears.

"He wouldn't wake up," she whispered. She only barely managed it, a voice so soft it made almost no sound at all, but Belle heard her. She heard every word, and felt it too. "He went to sleep, and I couldn't wake him up. A kiss is supposed to break the curse, but I ... I couldn't ..."

Belle shook her head, her own hands pressed to her mouth, and drifted almost unconsciously closer. She moved to the bed, drew to a stop at its side. The side with the skeleton, the remains of a man, so desperately tiny when stripped of life. Her husband ... he'd looked small too. He'd been so large, once. So mighty. But bones could never look anything but fragile.

"It won't let me follow him," the woman continued, meeting Belle's eyes with a desperation and a grief so familiar it was like looking into a mirror. "He broke my curse. He woke me up. But now I can't sleep again. I can't lie down. It won't let me. Why won't it let me?"

Because magic takes its toll. Because it can be broken, but not beaten. Because in the end, the first curse does for all. Every time.

"I'm so sorry," Belle whispered, staring in flayed and desperate understanding. "I know. I'm so very sorry."

"Help me," the woman pleaded. She stirred, leaned towards Belle across the sad and grisly thing between them, and her motion tipped the bed. Bones shifted, oddly clean, and rolled apart with faint clatters. The expression that crossed that fair and golden face in response was unbearable. It could not be endured.

"Tell me how," Belle breathed, catching a hand that looked younger and less seamed than her own, but that felt infinitely more ancient, and ever more deeply drowned in grief. She brought it to her lips, feeling her own grief crest and claw within her. "Tell me how, and take me with you. Please, for both our sakes."

The woman stilled. Something moved in her eyes, something beyond her grief, and she looked at Belle more closely. More clearly. She looked, and Belle knew beyond doubt that she saw.

"... What was his name?" the woman asked her softly. "Yours. What was his name?"

Belle smiled at her, past the tears that had somehow begun to stream down her cheeks. "Beast," she answered, gladly. "Not before the curse. Not as a man. But in all the ways that mattered, he was my Beast, and I his Belle."

The woman smiled in turn, equally tremulous, and equally wet. "Phillip," she confided, with a light in her eyes like dawn. "He was my Phillip, and I was his Briar Rose."

The flower in the thorns. The magic that bound her still. Oh. Oh, Belle saw. She did see.

"I want to help you," she said, holding the woman's hand tightly. It wasn't why she'd come here. It wasn't what she'd hoped. But she could never leave the beast bound in its thorns. She'd never had the strength for that. "Tell me how to free you, and I will do it gladly."

Briar Rose looked away. Her hand trembled, her shoulders after it. A bone was resting against her hip. It had been a finger, once. It would have been Phillip's hand, to offer her comfort. The bed shook silently with the force of her weeping.

"I don't know," she said, between gasps. Belle held tight to her hand, and wished her strength to bear it out. "It should be done already. I don't understand. I was cursed to a sleep like death, and he broke that. I shouldn't be cursed still."

"How did he break it?" Belle asked her gently. She let go of Briar Rose's hand to move around the bed and sit herself silently at the other woman's side. "This curse ... I think the magic is from the first. It lingers. It never leaves, I think. My hus--- My Beast. It was the same. His curse wore him through. We had twenty years, but ... It's always the first curse. It doesn't ever go away. Until it does, and takes you with it."

Briar Rose struggled for calm, as best she could. Her chest heaved still, shuddering breaths, and her face was wet and swollen, but she controlled herself as best she was able. When she had it, she looked at Belle. Not hope, Belle thought. Never again. They were too worn for that.

"It was love," the woman answered. "The curse. It was true love. He kissed me, and the spell was broken. But he ... he didn't know me then. Not really. Our love was later. It was deeper, and brighter, the more we knew each other. I wondered ... I always wondered if ..."

"If that was why?" Belle asked, carefully. "If his kiss had only partly broken it, and by the time you realised it, he was already ...?"

"He wouldn't wake up," Rose whispered, and leaned shaking into Belle's shoulder. "I kissed him, but he wouldn't wake up. I couldn't follow him. I couldn't sleep. And he wasn't there to---"

"To free you after him," Belle finished, and oh, her heart was like a stone in her chest. She knew. She knew so well how that felt. To be left behind. To have no love left to let you follow after. She knew how that was. "Didn't he realise ... when you didn't age? Didn't you notice then?"

"No," Rose answered tiredly. "Because I did. I aged. Until he was gone, and then I ... I was just as I had been, all those years ago. As though he'd never woken me. As though it was all a dream. As if I had simply ... as if I'd never woken."

"You did," Belle said, soft and fierce. "I know you did. He loved you, and he woke you, and you lived a life together. This isn't a dream, Briar Rose. I'm real, and so was he. He lay down beside you, and he didn't wake up, and you didn't fall asleep. The curse was partly broken, and the magic changed. He loved you enough for that. I'm sure of it."

Briar Rose looked at her. The flower in the thorns, the beast in the enchanted castle. She met Belle's eyes, and there was something lost and deep and infinitely familiar about what Belle saw in hers.

"He loved me enough to change it," Rose said quietly, as she looked at Belle. "Enough to give me life and love, to make me want to follow him. But not enough to break it. I can't follow him, Belle. The magic won't let me. To break it, I'd have to ..."

"You'd have to love again."

Belle said it slowly. Carefully. Not only for Briar Rose's sake, but for hers. They were ... they were terrible words. She knew it even as she said them. They were a sentence, a curse, a reminder. They were a pledge, and as soon as they left her lips she knew she could not escape them. Not again.

She'd never been able to break a promise, once she'd made it. She'd never been able to leave the spell unbroken, or the beast alone to die.

He'd known, she realised dully. He must have. Her Beast, lying broken and fading in his bed, trying desperately to make her see. He'd known she couldn't just lie down and follow. He'd known that she had too much left to give.

Her heart was heavy in her chest. But it beat still, and it wasn't too old to love again. Not if she didn't want it to be.

"I ... I don't know that I can," Rose said, an echo of Belle's terror in her eyes. "Belle, I ... He was all I loved. It wasn't much to start with. Only enough to bend a curse. But by the time he ... I loved him. My Phillip. I loved him with everything I was. I don't think---"

"It won't be easy," Belle said, her voice odd and distant in her ears, but strong despite that. Despite everything. Her voice was calm, and very strong. "It won't be like it was. It can't be. And it has to be slow. It has to be learned, to be love. Real love. True love. But I ... I think I know you." She turned to look at her, to meet those eyes like mirrors, reflecting herself. "We've only met, Briar Rose, but I think that maybe we know each other. Our pain. Our grief. Our love. We know what curses feel like. We know what it's like for love to break them. We know what it's like to learn to love. The hard way. The slow way. I think ... I think maybe it could be enough. I think maybe I could ... maybe I could love you. If you wanted me to."

Rose stared at her. Hollow and aching, too empty to understand. Belle saw that. She understood it. All too well.

"... Why?" the woman asked, slow and stilted, and bleakly, terribly confused. "Why would you want to?"

Belle smiled at that. She looked down, smoothing an ancient coverlet with her hand, picking at threads of embroidery. Something moved in her chest. Her heart, she thought. Either breaking or awakening. Maybe both. She felt it, and she smiled.

"They would have wanted it," she said, and knew it for truth. "Not just to break a curse. But so that ... so that they could know we were loved, when they weren't here to love us themselves. So that they'd know we were happy, and taken care of, until we could join them again. I ... I came looking for a castle. An enchanted one, with a curse at its heart. He was ... It was to be in memory of him. To die, in memory of him. But he wouldn't want that. Even if you could give it. He wouldn't want me to die alone. Neither would Phillip want it for you. And you ... Oh, Rose. I want to help you. I want to free you. Love could break the spell, and love ... love is easy to learn, if the person is worth it. I think you would be. I think loving you wouldn't be hard at all."

There was silence for a second, then. A stillness and a hush, while the whole castle held its breath in waiting. She felt the magic eddy around them. She sensed the silence of the bones at their back, and something that might have been approval past walls no love could breach.

And then ... then a hand touched her cheek. Then Briar Rose was there, her ancient eyes wet with tears and with hope, and her lips light as petals over Belle's. The kiss was soft, and silent, and chaste. An acknowledgement made in innocence, and in the beginnings of hope.

"Nor you," Rose murmured, soft against her lips. "Loving you would not be hard either. Belle-in-waiting. Belle of mine."

Belle drew a breath. It felt light, if not yet happy. It felt easy, and it felt good. She returned the kiss, pressed it back soft and sweet, and gathered Rose's hands in hers. "Come downstairs," she instructed quietly. "Come away with me, Rose. He's not here. He's waiting where neither of us can see. My Beast is with him. They won't mind if you come with me, and lay your head without bones to keep you company."

Pain moved in Rose's eyes, a sharp shock of grief and of terror, an instinctive denial. And then, after a moment, it ebbed. It didn't vanish. Like curses, like magic, it never went away. But it ebbed, and it faded, and in its wake a woman stood, her hands in Belle's, and looked for the last time at where her husband had lain, and slept, and never woken.

"... Stay with me," she whispered, her hands white and desperate and strong. "Please, Belle. Promise me you'll stay."

"I promise," Belle answered. Soft and sure, to this second beast of hers, and this second spell to be broken. "When it's time, we'll go together, Briar Rose. We'll find them together. I won't leave you before then. I promise."

It wasn't true love. It wasn't the kiss that broke the spell. Not yet. But it was enough. For this moment, for the both of them, it was enough. Rose looked at her and, for the first time, she smiled. Slowly, and carefully, and like the dawn breaking.

It was, Belle thought, a truly beautiful thing. Hope, and light, and love.

It was perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world.