@ofvanity
lefou was dead. of course he was, no one could have survived that fall. it would have been him - should have, a traitorous part of gaston’s mind supplied even as the castle began to repair itself around him. lefou was dead because he had failed. the hero had allowed an innocent to die in his place.
worse, he’d let his friend die. his ever constant companion.
he made his way down the castle slowly as if in a fog, carefully avoiding the townspeople swarming to see all those they had forgotten. to see adam. as it was, it seemed no one knew what had been lost - who had been lost.
he wasn’t hard to find. he stood there for a moment, staring at the broken body but not seeing it. a casualty of war. he picked lefou up easily, turning back towards where they had left the horses. he registered - vaguely - the gasps as villagers realized who (what) he was carrying. a hand touched his arm and he snarled, the beast within him rising to protect the man in his arms.
he doesn’t remember getting back to the village (stanley will tell him, later, that they’d managed to get him into a cart, that they’d driven lefou’s body back to the village so he could be buried there), doesn’t remember burying the friend.
he remembers the nights alone though, the constant reminders of his failure as he speaks and there is no response from just a step behind him. there is no calming hand when his anger rises, no one to intervene when the restlessness becomes too much.
there is no one.
