“ I fear that soon you’ll reveal your dangerous mind. ”
sentence starters. | accepting.
The little Rose was honest to an excruciating degree. Being so liberal about thoughts and feelings—this was a reality the Beast could not comprehend, one that allowed her to place her glass globe fears betwixt hands brutal enough they could be referred to as claws without fear of them shattering. Their merry band had made a fine juggler of him, constantly cradling fragile cargo. Ruby’s reckless optimisms and anxieties, the cursed feline Blake’s bouts of indecision and desire for closeness even as she pushed them away. Adam had no desire to cater to these delicacies, but given the alternative… What choice had he?
Already there had been too many close calls.
He could still taste it if he closed his eyes and tried to remember. The flavor of copper and nausea as his chest heaved from agony—blood, hers and his, mingled in his mouth as she laid above him. Trying to save him. Condemning him with her agony. How it had burned! Blinding pain, wilting rose marked scars burning red hot beneath his shirt, across his back. Madness. Pure, sweet madness. Pain to the point where it wasn’t pain anymore. There was no thought, no desire to be more than what the witch’s curse had made him.
For a moment, he’d forgotten who he was.
Of course, he’d woken up—staring up now at the girl, the damned tears in her eyes. I fear, she said, and of all the things to now make her afraid—that he would lose himself! She’d not feared for her life when he’d come for her head, now had she? She’d bargained and bargained well, fumbling logic and intuition buying his loyalty for a time. Foolish girl, the Beast thought. Stupid, stupid girl. You cling to a monster because you fear the dark it dwells in. You’re no knight—you are not my shield.
Yet he said none of it, and perhaps that was a lesson his wards had taught him. The kindness found in silence. He watched the way her fingers curled into the blanket—red, he realized belatedly, and not a blanket at all. She’d wrapped him in her cloak. Despite the color, the bloodstains were plain as day upon it. Dried yet recent. A lance of fear pierced him, jerking his inert limbs into hypertension.
No more of the blood had touched him while he’d… slept… had it? The dark spaces in his mind, once peaceful, were now instead a myriad of unanswered questions. Moments of time he could no longer recollect. His hand jerked away from the soft material, reaching up to touch the mask. The flesh it rooted into ached from the recent expansion, and as his fingers explored, a feeling that could only be relief overwhelmed everything else. Whatever the state he’d been in, it had reverted. At the very least, he was not so changed that it was too noticeable. Yet…
I fear, Ruby Rose had cried.
He had so rarely seen her fearful.
The Beast hesitated, then reached out to rest his hand upon the young girl’s head. Her hair was soft to the touch and easily mussed, yet he ruffled it regardless. He tried not to think about the fact he’d not touched her without his gloves before this. He tried very hard not to wonder why his gloves were now gone when he remembered wearing them before. All the little changes within him that he had still not noticed.
How ill-suited he was to this, Adam mused, inexplicably tired. Being powerless was not something that suited him at all.
“Whatever I was,” he said, words steady even through the rasp in his voice. “I am not that anymore. There is nothing to fear.”
This, too, was something they had taught him.
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