Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Prince of the Silver Rose lived in shining Arosagentum. The alchemical space-castle roamed the Etherium like a rogue planet, freeing the royal family to explore their massive empire without leaving their home.

Ah, Arosagentum. The labyrinthine gardens hiding villages of trusted servants and estates of nobles. The luminous towers fingering the purified air. The wild forests filled with untamed beasts. The glassy sky gently pierced with golden docks. Here, in one of the Nine Ancient Wonders, the Prince lived in peace and tranquility, his every whim tended to by a minimum of 200 servants, nobles, and serfs.

But even though the Prince had everything his heart desired, he was spoiled, selfish, and unkind; a tyrant like his parents, and their parents, and further back into the dust of history.

But then, on the clearest of nights, when the bitterly cold slipstreams whipped around the tranquil space-station, the royal ships ferried guests to Arosagentum, to celebrate the young prince’s birthday. For his special delight, each guest hid behind the mask of their choice – something they felt most described them.

The rumor passed down from father to child says that the prince wore a dragon skull rather than a mask, a trophy from a beast he killed in merry hunt.

At the height of the feasting, an old beggar landed at a port in a decrepit ship. The guards dragged her to the banquet hall for the Prince to pass judgement. She offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the storm.

Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at her gift. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within. Again, he dismissed her. A third time she pleaded, this time to the guests as well. For a third time the Prince refused, hurling his golden cup at her.

And when the cup landed, the old woman's ugliness melted in blinding light, revealing a beautiful enchantress in emerald-green with glowing gold eyes.

The prince tried to apologize. But it was too late; for she had seen that there was no love in his heart.

And as punishment, she caste a powerful spell in Arosagentum and all those within. All the guests transformed into their dead masks, never to be buried, their souls left to the mercy of the Ethereum winds. All servants became the objects they tended, from those in the castle to the less-favored ones partying in their villages. And the Prince?

~

“Belle Libra James Hawkins!”

With a jump, the child closes her book and shoves it under her blankets.

“I though you returned that book to the library years ago!” Paige looms in the doorway, staring down at her daughter.

The nine-year-old sets her chin as they make eye-contact. “They were going to throw it away. It’s unlicensed now.”

An old volume of fairy tales and legends. These days, it seems to Paige, anything older than her is being unlicensed. The rapid disconnect from the past is disconcerting.

“Oh.” Paige walks to the messy table and begins, stacking the books back on their shelves: when did her baby get this messy and irritable? “Okay.” She chews her lip as she abandons the mess to drop on the bed beside her daughter. “Scooch over.” And then she opens the book.

“And the prince?

“Slowly, agonizingly, he became the beast he was at heart and, that day, in mask.

“And then, satisfied that the villainous line of the Silver Rose was finally at an end, the enchantress vanishes without a trace.”

Belle snorts.

Paige shoots her daughter a confused glance.

“Arosagentum has never been rediscovered. Though many have looked – from treasure seekers to pirates, to historians and archeologists. Despite the failures of hundreds, even thousands, stories have persisted that Arosagentum still remains hidden somewhere at the farthest reaches of the universe, stowed with riches beyond imagination – the final relics of the Silver Rose Dynasty …”

“Treasure Planet.” Paige echoes solemnly, feeling the giddy weight in her chest where her heart should be.

“Although, future treasure-seekers should be warned. Some few say the beast still roams his palace. A handful say that if he learns to love and be loved he might – just maybe – become a man again.

“But then again, who could ever learn to love a monster?”

Belle closes the book, her eyes fixed into the middle distance, her fingers twist round and round each other. “A beast.”

“Hm?” Paige ruffles her daughter’s hair – it’s still soft and silky and perfect – and sighs at the new bruise hiding under it.

“It takes a beast to love a beast.”

Paige pauses and chews her lip. “Maybe.”

Belle flops back on her bed, staring at the stars glowing on the ceiling. “Do you think somebody’ll ever find Treasure Planet?”

“It’s only a matter of time.” Paige laughs and kisses her. “Now you need to sleep.”

“Okay Mama.” Belle scoots under her quilt.

Paige draws the curtains. “Love you.” She blows out the lamp.

“I love you too.” Belle yawns, curling up around her three pillows. “See you in the morning.”

Paige freezes in the middle of closing the door. “I love you. I love you so much.”

"I know Mama." Belle smiles and closes her eyes.

She stands a long moment, listening to the soft breathing, interspersed with convincing snoring. She turns woodenly. She walks away. She open's their bedroom door.

She feels like a puppet: someone else is pulling the strings. Someone else is making her do this.

(No one else. She is the only one responsible for her actions. Some days, that knowledge is the only thing she has.)

Maurice...

Don't.

This has to happen.

Why?

Don’t.

Note under the family portrait.

Captain's coat on hook.

Bag from under the bed.

Clothes from the closet.

Door opened quietly.

Door almost closed. Left open.

Food from kitchen - bread, apples, cans, can-opener.

Pistols from hook beside door.

Hand over doorknob.

Anything else?

Paige turns.

There’s a family portrait over the fireplace. From the last time she was home.

Belle is curled up in Ben’s arms beaming like a little lightbulb. Ben isn’t looking at the camera –he’s too busy trying to keep Belle from wriggling out of his arms. Maurice is laughing at them, his arms around her. The perfect – though tiny – family.

(There should be so many children that the camera can’t capture them all in one photo. Her family should be huge. How can one be so fertile and almost barren?)

Don’t think about it.

She realizes she is standing in front of the portrait, tears in her eyes. When did she take those few steps? Hours ago?

The clock says five minutes. It lies. It’s been years.

Don’t.

She shakes her head sharply. “Fool.”

With a swift jerk, she breaks the fragile clasp on her holo-locket, leaving a thin cut on the back of her neck.

A firm nod, and she places the gold thing under that family portrait. That little Belle turning eight and testing out of sixth grade.

One final time - she presses her ear against her daughter's bedroom door.

She smiles, one tear trailing from her eye only to be savagely wiped away. She shakes her head sharply, then the heel of her hand hits her temple.

What were those words from her daughter’s book – the one the library never got back – again?

(They echo in her ears for the rest of her life.)

“There are nights when the winds of the Etherium, so inviting in their promise of flight and freedom, made one's spirit soar!”

Chapter Text

Ripway Canyon

Late night, 12/27/0370

The full moon and Crescentia’s grin glow over the desert landscape, an enormous watcher winking at the unsuspecting performers on the world stage. Belle glares at them as she slams on her headphones. The heavy beats thud between her eyes, threatening a headache.

Good.

But not good enough. Not today. Not after…

She reties her ponytail as she leans over the edge of the blistering cliff-face splintering over a roiling river.

Ripway Canyon – how uncreatively named.

Papa has lots of mining and the cave-ins stories from the past three centuries. Fables, tall tales, bed-time stories, whispered horrors: Montressor is in his blood.

Not hers.

Right now, it serves no function to the villagers. All the remaining sunstone is worthless for solarpower. And working with the silver-blue burning of moonstone costs more money than it's worth. But the moonstone still lights up the ancient scar that cuts from plains of Ettenmoor to the docks of Eden. She had been told that on a clear night, you could see it from space, a demented grin to welcome travelers to the last civilized planet in the rim of the galaxy.

Belle flicks up the solar-sail, the bright oranges and yellows start rippling, charging on the burning moonstone. It’s much dimmer than during the day – despite her modifications. She throws the thin, used batteries into the compartment at the root of the sail. 

“Yo Belle!”

She pulls her headphones off – pretending she didn’t jump at the sudden intrusion – and stared at a beaming Sciurus girl who’s squirrel tail and black-tipped, fuzzy ears quivered with anticipation.

“Penny.”

The red-head waves before throwing her surfer down, screaming off into the depths of Ripway.

The night-scene is going to wrap up soon. Most people's batteries are finally running out of juice. And there are very few people like her, who brought extra batteries.

You don’t solar-surf at night alone.

And the surfers of Ripway police themselves. She’d already chased off three brats who’d only surfed three times in the sun.

The sail glows an acceptable brightness.

She snarls a feral half-grin, teeth glinting sharply in sunlight. Hurls her solar-surfer into the air and jumps. Shrieks around sunstone-needles piercing through the muddy water.

Winged reptiles glide out of nest-holes looming in the grayed-out shadows. They scream, eyes same color as her solar-sail.

Belle kicks into the next gear, pivoting her toe, dropping sail.

(Old miner’s tales said the dragonets lived off the thready sunstone. That's why their eyes are the same luminous yellow-and-orange of solar clothe. Belle believes it's a story worth remembering.)

She rips closer and closer to the tattered crags of the deepest mine. Moonstone beams bright enough she almost can’t look at it.

One wrong move and she will tumble to freezing-water and rock-smashed death.

She doesn’t think about it. One doesn’t come to the Ripway to think.

She’s stupid to do this. She knows it. she doesn’t care. Not when her heart beats, beats, beats, beats so loud it drowns out everything bad from the day.

She right-angles in a dizzy turn. Her scream is adrenaline and anguish and joy.

23, invincible in her own might, powerful in her own intellect, mechanic in her own right.

Dead ahead, giant cogs of a water mill still turn and crunch earth – still turning years after the last miner quit, still powered by the river, and it will be turning years and years after she’s dead and buried she just hope’s that’s not happening right now…

“Come on!” a challenge, a dare, a prayer even…

She slides straight through the collapsing gaps.

Belle cackles and whoops as she drops low and rounds the impossible corner.

She flings into the air, up, violent as a blaster-shot, whooping at the top of her lungs. Hazel eyes bright with adrenaline – the only drug she is addicted to – higher higher higher higher until her lungs explode and the air is cold.

The craft stalls…

… it stalls …

… drops …

… spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning …

Her eyes close.

This? This is peace. This is rest.

And then it isn’t.

Then it’s the sharp, piercing siren.

Hazel eyes snap open, glint in the moon- and moonstone-light.

“Scatter!” someone yells and she think’s it’s Leone.

Swearing violently, Belle whips her head around, watching the red-and-purple lights of the cop-craft blazing at the edge of Ripway.

“Would you idiots please evacuate this very dangerous butt-crack of nature?!” booms over a speakerphone.

“Yo. Who gave Officer Hazel mic-privileges?” Biggs grumbles. He stalls beside Belle as they fall closer and closer to Ripway.

She shrugs. “Time to play hide-and-seek.” She slams open the patchwork solar sails, gripping handlebars as the craft slices off, glowing sail bleeding into the glowing cliffs. 

You don’t sail Ripway alone until the cops come.

Then a new noise rips through the night.

An explosion. A crashing. A crackling of fire.

She skims closer and closer to the ground, turning her sail to slow down.

Then the round ship thumps earth and splinters rocks with a deafening crash.

Belle twists her surfer to the side, stopping much to fast and nearly falling off despite her magnetic boots. The surfer creaks where the sail meets the board. She flicks the sail down and with a quick twist disconnects the magnets.

Her eyes snap to the crashed ship.

“Hey Mx? Hey Mx, you okay in there, right?” Belle bangs on the hatch, blowing hair out of her face. “Stupid question. Of course, you’re not okay, you fell out of the sky how is that supposed to be okay?!”

A claws hand slams the window.

Belle yelps and jumps back, which allows the door to open.

A tortoise staggers out, coughing horribly. “He’s a-comin’.” The spacer grabs Belle by her jacket. “Can ya hear ‘im?” The long, thin neck stretches until the scaly beak is in Belle’s face. “Those gears and gyros clickin’ and whirrin’ like the devil ‘self! Ha!” The alien drops Belle and spits.

Belle takes a nervous step back. “Uh, hit your head there pretty hard, didn’t ya?” She glances cautiously the pocket the tortle keeps patting. A weapon’s check?

“They’re gonna be after this. That fiendish cyborg an’ band of cutthroats…!” The tortle staggers but stays standing. “Cutthroats!” The tortle coughs, and this time bloody flecks splatter the rusted sand beside him. “But they'll have to pry it from me cold, dead fingers afore I—” The tortle falls backwards, rocking on his shell, eyes staring up at the winking sky.

She helps him sit up, leaned against the surface of a wind-blasted stone. The entire landscape is fill of these rocks, thrust through the sand like the desperate arms of drowned people.

Belle palms her com from her belt. “Hey, just give me a moment. I’ll call for help. Okay? Just stay with me.”

“NO!” He grabs and twists her hand away from the com.

She punches the arm and pulls away, but the tortle is far, far stronger than she is.

“Don’t…” he hisses and coughs. “Don’t. They’ll kill ya.” He falls back against the rocky outcrop, coughing more blood as he squints at her. “Jimmy? Little Jimmy?”

Belle blinks at him – How does he know …

“Jimmy, ya remember old Billy?”

She glares a long moment. “Aren’t you the tortle that broke Uncle Ben’s heart?”

Billy laughs and coughs. “Peh. Ya lass. That I did. And he still wouldn’t save himself. Damn idiot.” He releases her hand to cover his mouth. Blood trickles over his thick fingers as he coughs again. “Yer … the spittin’ image of her. Course you are.” He rubs his chest, opening his bulging pocket to pull out a small sphere and a cracked teacup. “Heh. They’ll be coming soon. Don’t let them find this.” He holds it out, smiling, lips curling at the corners of his beak.

“Who’s coming?” Belle whispers.

“Ya be careful lass. Trust no one. Or ya’ll be joining me in damnation.” He shoves both the teacup and the sphere into her hands as he starts hacking again. “Tell. No. One. Else. Or they will kill you.”

She hears the sirens coming. Just distant – the lights still out of sight.

“I … who? Who did this? Why …”

But Billy pulls her close again: his beak scratches her ear. “The cyborg! Beware the cyborg!” Then he pushes her away.

Her feet are rooted in the sand and rock. 

“Run.” He hisses. Then screams “RUN!” hurling a rock at her. It bounces off her shoulder painfully. 

And then he’s still.

Chapter Text

Observatory,

Near midnight, 12/27/0370

Run run run run run run run run run run run

The final word dogged her heels all the way home as he solar surfer went dead, as she picked it up and ran with it tucked under her arm, as she fell again and again, as her legs and sides burned.

Run run run run run run run run run run run run run

As she turned on the light in the shed and checked the surfer – no sign of the crash. As she threw off her boots and unbuckled the magnets. As she washed the magnets and hung them by the surfer. As she climbed up the third story to her bedroom window and flopped into her room her entire body aching.

Run run run run …

She stops, staring blankly at her room. Her eyes drift down to blood-stained hands. Dry. They’re dry now.

I should have tried to save him.

Like I could have done anything.

She steps into the bathroom. Looks into the mirror. Blue-silver moon-dust and orange sun-dust and rust-normal sand smear her face in a bruise-like patchwork. She throws her clothes in the shower and turns on the cold water.

She’s not sure how long she washed her hands. Long after the blood was gone. When the soap bottle that she filled this morning is half empty. When her hands are raw and her nail-beds are to the brink of bleeding from her scrubbing.

She turns on the hot water and wills the nightmare to end.

When the hot water is gone, she’s still not awake. No. She is awake, and it wasn’t a nightmare. Someone – no. Billy. Billy died. That faded spot of memory of a man that hurt her uncle. Why is she upset?

She rings out her clothes. No blood. No stain. But what if there’s evidence still?

That’s a problem for tomorrow.

She freezes at the sink – the sphere gleams in the flickering light. She stuck it in the cup so it wouldn’t roll around. The entire situation is… Why were these trivial curios worth dying for?

Then the light cuts out.

She yelps then shakily laughs. It’s just the power dying. It happens nearly every night. The sun will recharge everything tomorrow.

Belle towels her hair dry and hangs up her Mama’s coat – hopefully it’ll be dry in the morning – and slinks into her bed, clutching the strange sphere.

She’s pulled on the pair of linen pants and tattered shirt that’s served as her pajama’s for the past year. The hole over her belly has gotten steadily bigger – she’ll need to stitch it closed soon but she keeps putting it off. What had she even snagged it on?

As she rolls on her back, she stares at the gleaming map of glow-in-the-dark stars over her head. It’s nearly 14 years old now.

She tightens her grip on the sphere.

It’s warm. She keeps her eyes on the distant childhood glow and loosens her grip, fingers tracing the many lines bisecting the sphere.

She blinks and turns to the side. Mama smiles as she slides a book into the shelves.

“Mama."

She stops and smiles, spacer's tales sliding back between a book on spaceships and one on the flora and fauna of Etherium slipstreams.

"Do you think somebody’ll ever find Treasure Planet?” Belle blurts.

“It’s only a matter of time.” Mama laughs – flickers in and out like a broken hologram – and kisses her. “Now you need to sleep.”

“Okay.” Belle yawns. “Night Mama.”

Mama draws the curtains. “Goodnight sweetheart.”

Then the world goes black. Mama’s voice becomes hollow and deep as she says, “I love you.” 

Belle jumps to her feet, staring. As the woman turns around, half her face burns off in bubbling acidic smoke, turning into stained bone and pealing black muscle and a glowing eyeball. Her voice cuts in and out as the invisible acid stains her neck and shoulder. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“Mama.” Belle wraps her arms around herself. Her voice is ash and glass in her throat. “No. No, then why did you leave me…”

Mama walks out the door.

“Mama!”

Belle follows the figure. Watches as a muscle slowly disintegrates and melts.

This is just a dream. All of this is just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you. It’s just a dream.

Belle wraps her hand tightly around her wrist, holding them over her heart. “Mama! I’m talking to you. MAMA!”

The endless black hallway warps. Mama – or the thing wearing her face – vanish into the shadows. And fire blooms at Belle’s feet. 

No, she is not stopping here. Not this time. Not again.

“It’s just a dream. That’s it. Just that dream again. Dreams can’t hurt you. Dreams can’t hurt you. It’s just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you.”

She stalks forward down the hall, hands clutched to her chest as the fire creates longer and longer shadows and devours the walls behind her. 

Run run run run run run run run run 

"Dreams can't hurt you. It's just a dream. Dreams can't hurt you." 

Mama - it's probably Mama - doesn't slow, doesn't look back, moves with the same determined stride Belle used to practice on rainy days with a tricorne "Captain's" hat perched on her frizzy curls.

Mama is shadow and the pungent odor of burnt flesh and foul acid and smoke and roses always roses.

But Belle keeps going. As the fire gets bigger and breathing gets harder, she keeps going. 

Mama opens a door glass panes that show a deep, black night sky looms beyond. A door. A door! A door with a darkened window to the outside! That's new. But the night started out with new, it might as well end so. 

She lunges, fire nipping at her heels, and slides through just as it closes, the heavy wood nearly catching her bare heel. 

Blackness. Emptiness.

Then a new fire blooms. No. No, a rose, burning and living, blooms at her feet. And then light blinks and ripples through the darkness transforming everything.

She had never seen a garden so beautiful. But the roses. Oh the roses! Long, trailing, deep-green, lush vines with thorns the size of her thumbnail the points vivid oranges, yellows, and reds. Broad blooms in gradient tones: reds, oranges, yellows, the occasional blues and whites. And like the first one that heralded the changing world, each flower burns without being consumed. They overwhelm a dark-gray arbor - how much of the color is soot?

Belle brushes a petal tentatively and it falls into her hand. As she coos over it, more petals unfurl. She sees her own hand glow. 

"Hello?"

Belle whirls around – It’s just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you. – to see a man walking from the other side – the darker, mysterious side – of the garden.

"Who are you? How did you get here?" A mask shadows his face, two sets of horns splitting up from it and through his hazelnut-colored hair.

"Oh. Ah." She is strangely truthful. "I opened a door."

"Oh. Another one." The man glances around. "Strange. You look very like her." He rubs his chin. Then shrugs. "This is my home. My name is Adam. What may I call you?"

"Belle." He asked what her name is, not if he could have it.

... Wait. Why is that important?!

Careful. Careful. Careful. Belle shakes her head. "How long have you been here?" She rolls the not-burning petal around her fingers.

"Centuries." Adam murmurs.

"Alone?!"

"No. My family is here." He makes a face. "And many others I would rather be rid of. But, it keeps things fun." He waves a hand to encompass the garden. "This is where I hide when they are too much."

Belle looks around. "I've never seen a place like this."

The sky is black and star-littered beyond even the clearest skies in Montressor. The gardens are highly manicured to the right and terrifying wild to the left. There is more beauty in the terror – she longs to explore the left.

It's where Adam came from... from the other side of the trailing-rose arbor...

"What are these roses? Why are they burning?"

"Ember roses. And... they aren't?" He plucks a rose and holds it out to her. "It is a bioluminescent that mimics fire. See?" 

When he turns, Belle realizes that half his mask is much longer, covering most of that side of his face but not all the scars threading across the bridge of his nose.

The left eye glows royal purple.

He hands her the rose - which she takes with a smile. As her eyes trail down, she realizes that his leg is a prosthetic: he's barefoot, one normal, one ... not. It's too shadowy to figure out the materials.

"Careful of the thorns. The poison in them does burn." His voice is deep, rich, and makes her think of warm nights by the fireplace with a book and hot chocolate and bitter winds howling outside unable to touch you. 

"It's beautiful."

"Yes. Yes it is." Both his eyes meet hers. The right eye is her Mama's favorite shade of blue. 

"Can you leave?"

Belle starts, then glares.

Adam raises his hands peaceably. "I've only met one person who could. Everyone else is stuck." He makes a face. "Like me."

"Oh.” It’s just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you. “Um. I think so." Belle twirls the rose carefully.

"Well, I hope you're right. It seems to me you have ... somewhere to belong." Adam rubs the back of his neck.

A bell starts tolling. 1. 2. 3. ...

"Will I see you again?" Belle wraps her hand around the rose as a sudden warning ripples through the fabric of reality. Don't be dramatic. It's just a dream.

... 8. 9. ...

"I would love that very much." Adam smiles. Then sighs. “But right now, I have to look for my scamp brothers.”

Belle smiles back...

... 12.

~

Her eyes snap open.

“It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you. It’s just a dream.”

She sits up, and finds …

… the sphere, still clenched between her hands. A very real sphere. 

She grits her teeth and slams it on her nightstand. Then glances at the clock.

“Ugh.” It’s three in the morning. And she is far to wired to fall back sleep.

She holds up her hand, staring at it. She can still feel the soft texture of the rose-petals.

“It’s just a dream. Dreams can’t hurt you.”

Except when they do. the burn scar around her wrist seems to say.

“Dreams can’t hurt you. Dreams can’t hurt you.”

“Dreams can’t hurt you.”

Chapter Text

Back-alley near Pomegranate Repair Shop, Eden Village,

Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Early morning, 12/28/0370

Dreams can’t hurt you.

Belle wraps these words around her like a cloak and they shield her from nothing. Every shadow is a long, clawed hand and every sound is a gunshot and every breathe is a scream – RUN! – and Belle ignores the gibbering paranoia by tightening her grip on her messenger bag until the metal buckle and her clipped short nails cut into her palms.

Dreams can’t hurt you. Run. Run. It was just a dream. Run. RUN!

She takes a deep breath and looks up. The rust-glow of dawn peeks so low on the horizon, that you’d have to be outside of Eden-proper, on the flatland, to see it.

But even as Belle’s thinking that, the cool-light creeps higher and higher up the darkness, a fire in slow-motion, nibbling at a black curtain.

As she walks down to Eden proper, the winds howl in from the Etherium – for once strong enough to rip away the blanket of fog and smoke choking the hazy lamplight. She slouches in the worn jacket, brass buttons sullying whatever fragments of light they snag. Belle turns up the collar against the wind’s bitter teeth.

“Storm’s comin’.” She slowly drags her fingers over the rough brick. The colorful graffiti shouts a variety of poetic sayings or fonts or images. “LOVE” in bubbly pink. “God is dead, and we have killed him” in vivid black. A child in black-and-white with a bright red balloon. “If you think this is bad, you should see what our government is up too.” perches over the shuttered window in Leone’s signature blocky font.

She smirked a little, remembered that night, about 8 years ago. The owner of the place had busted them and decided he actually liked the quote. He won’t let anyone cover it up until Leone came to ask if he could "please redo it in a better font. I can do so much better now and that is hideous..."

She tugs a mask over her nose, shaking a spray-can in her hand, eyes darting to double-check the openings of the alley (no one).

She shakes her head and tags a sweeping quote over the red silhouette of a nude woman with pointed ears. The font is sloppy. But the words hold power, prophesy even.

Those who burn books burn people next…

As Belle exits the alley, she smirks at her art from last week, splattered on a Pomegranate device-repair shop: neon-green and poisonous just under the eaves of the three-story building.

If you kick me when I’m down, pray I don’t get up.

If the cops asked her, it was a lot politer than what the owner had scrawled over the Benbow: she hadn’t cussed.

“Never make a threat you’re not willing to go through with.”

I know Papa, I know.

Run. Belle tosses the mostly-empty spray-paint can into the Pomegranate trash (because why not add insult to injury?) and shoving her plastic gloves and mask into her pocket.

She looks up: the sky is still shrouded in muddy clouds. But the distant and dying sun glooms a roiling red on the horizon, beams locked in combat with the flying winds.

She breaths out a cloud of steam, feels twitchy as the stray cat that Paulette still hadn’t lured home yet. Twitchy, scared, cold. The wind burns her lungs down to their roots. A violence in the very air of Eden that hasn’t yet stained her pale blue blouse. It’s like a peace offering, wearing something so easy to stain. A promise. 

Maybe she could be peaceful. Maybe she could be a good daughter.

And maybe you could drive yourself crazy.

The villagers and nomads bustle about, some heading to work (like Belle herself), others opening stalls or stands or shops, and still others patronizing the merchants.

She pulls a small book out of one of her secret pockets – an old, unlicensed book in the wrong dust jacket with almost no holograms or even pictures.

With reckless mischief, Belle vaults over an unintentional obstacle-course of supply boxes and barrels. As her feet hit cobblestones, she slouches in Mama’s jacket, squinting at her book, flipping pages rapidly.

A woman across the street is looking her up and down with that calculating eye she knows so well. Then she resumes talking to her companion.

“Well, she’ll never fit in. Poor thing is going to be so lonely now that her friends have straightened out.”

Gaston is a pirate hunter – which is, especially in Eden, mostly straightened out.

Leone is an accountant – a really good one, though that might just be because he knows all the right people.

But Belle the pirate’s daughter … Ignore them. Ignore them. Ignore them.

It’s hard to ignore Mrs. Dunwoody. She’s on her daily walk to the Benbow. And Belle did spill coffee on her yesterday after reading over her shoulder.

Just. Just focus.

“Oh, good-morning Belle!”

“Morning Mr. Baker!” Belle raises her voice as a large cart trundles past, the oxen protesting their burden loudly. “Any new products?”

“Nope!” Baker pops the ‘p’ with great satisfaction. “Why mess with perfection?”

“Oh, just figured you might like a change.” Belle eyes the steaming rolls as her stomach rumbles.

“Naw. Had ‘nough change to last me a lifetime. Off to the bookshop?” He sets out another pan of steaming rolls and drips a cream-cheese frosting in long, sugary, slow strands over them.

Belle tucks her book in her pocket and counts her change. “Yeah, yeah, I just finished the most wonderful story, about a beanstalk and an ogre and...”

“That’s nice.” Mr. Baker stares at his rolls while handing Belle the biggest one – the size of both her fists together. “3 silvers please.”

As they trade, he frowns, turns, and bellows, “Marie! Where are my baguettes!?”

Belle shakes her head, slouching away, fingers digging into the warm, puffy roll. The first bite melts in her mouth with an explosion of freshly milled wheat, burning cinnamon, and sweet glaze. She might eat free at the Benbow, but nothing beats Mr. Baker’s fresh cinnamon rolls on a cold morning and that’s a hill she is willing to die on!

In between the riot of market noises … [“You call this bacon?” … “What lovely grapes!” … “Some cheese!” … “Ten yards!”] … Mr. Baker snares another customer. He’s a genuinely nice man…

“Eh, she’s a funny girl. Clean, sweet, nice. And then one day – poof – all up in smoke over some accident.”

And honest. And talkative. Very talkative. Not really gossip – his blunt opinions are based on the facts he has, and he will change his opinion based on new data.

She passes by merchants at stalls – one sells solar-cloth. She almost stops …

“Behind that fair mask is a very twisted mind.” The city councilor says and the merchant unrolls a spool of cloth. “How else can she be so tame – like right now, don’t look but she’s behind you – and then rioting in the streets with the rest of the anarchists?”

“I heard it’s ‘cause she went mad like her father.”

Belle turns away.

“… her mother ran off to the Etherium. Left Maurice a single father with that old observatory to take care off as well. Heh, that drive me insane too.”

That’s SIX people talking about me. Did they find Bones’s body? Have they put it together? The map and cracked teacup burn in her pocket. Run run run run run run

Belle storms along, her shoulders creeping higher, the collar of her mother’s jacket now hides the lobes of her ears. She looks up at Crescentia’s persisting sickle grin. They’re all watching you.

NO! Calm down. You had a public fight with Gaston like an idiot. And went to Ripway last night.

She bites her lip and takes another bite of her cinnamon roll. It’s quickly disappearing. Logic. Cold, brutal logic dictates that you are a great item for gossip. If you want people to stop talking about you, stop getting in trouble. And stop helping Gaston chase pirates or picking fights with the Bean.

It’d be easier to chop of her legs or pluck out her eyes.

“There must be more than this!” she whispers as she ducks into Bimbette’s Books.

Then freezes as Paulette storms up, all four arms folded. "And where have you been?!”

“Eh, around.” Belle waves her hand and shoves the last of the cinnamon roll into her mouth.

Paulette’s feathery antenna flatten against her scalp. “Don’t get yourself arrested again!”

"I’m ‘ot, I'm ‘ot!" Belle huffs around her bite.

“Ah, Belle! I was wondering where you were!” Laurette whisks in from the kitchen, turns the sign on the door to ‘open’ and spins out, still humming an annoyingly upbeat song.

“I finished reading the book I borrowed!” Belle throws the rolls on the counter – Paulette runs out, grabs it, then vanishes into the kitchen again – and runs after Claudette.

“I’m gonna assume that means you didn’t sleep at all.” The lepidoptera complains.

“Oh, I couldn't put it down!  Did we get a new shipment yet?” Belle chases the triplet – she’s still a good half-foot taller with stride-length shows it.

Claudette, on the other end of the room, scoffs. “Not yet. But Captain D’Arque is supposed to arrive within the week so we have some hope!”

She’s heard that line before…

“All right.” Belle rolls her eyes and grabs a box of books left by a bean-bag chair: remnants of last night.

The honey-colored shelves gleam in the sunlight streaming from the windows. 

“Hey, can I set this one aside for tonight?” She shifts the stack in her hand to wave a very nice book: clothe-bound classics with gold-gilt pages. 

Claudette aimlessly waves one of her four arms and Belle puts the book in her hand. She holds it too her face and squints at the title, “A Century’s Rest? Again!”

Belle balances the box on her hip like a strangely well-behaved toddler - it's nice to have such an empty box. To know people are reading the books. “It’s one of my favorites.” Belle swings onto the ladder, rolling it down the railing. “Far off star-systems, daring blaster-fights, biologic transformations, a PRINCE in disguise!” She stops and slides the first book into its proper place.

Claudette sighs and shakes her head. “Look. Just keep it.”

Belle freezes. “But…”

“Claudie so help me if you are giving books away again!” Paulette screams from the kitchen. Something drops and shatters.

Belle turns and looks through the open doorway to see Laurette trip on an open box while trying to clean a table.

Laurette throws the rag down and starts waving all four arms. “Why did we open a bookshop again?! I thought we were supposed to be a coffee shop!”

“In all fairness, this is my favorite coffee shop.” Belle laughs.

“Belle you are not getting a raise!” Paulette hollers again.

Belle and Claudette exchange glances then giggle.

“Look, just take it.” Claudette waves the book at Belle while using her other three hands to rummage through the open box at her feet. “It’s unlicensed anyway – don’t know what it’s still doing on the shelf!”

“Well, thank-you.” Belle accepts the book with a genuine smile. “Thank you very much!” She drops it into her messanger bag with a smile.

“Claudie are you taking those books off the shelf?!”

Claudette groans and throws her head back. “Paulie…”

Belle sighs. “Is there another great unlicensing?”

Laurette flits in, shoves a piece of paper in Belle’s hands, and leaves.

“Today?!?!” She shrieks. “All of them!?!?!?” She scans the sheet filled with tiny print. “Don’t we legally have a few days?”

“I forgot it.” Claudette blithely flips (one-handed) through the fantasy novel she’d gushed over the other night.

Belle groans. “You can’t keep doing that. We’ll actually get in trouble.”

Claudette raises an eyebrow. “I rather think we won’t.”

Belle darts up a ladder with several of the romances. “Alright then.” She grumbles.

“Don’t forget, we still have another printing to do this week.” Claudette closes the book and tucks it under her arm.

Belle smiles crookedly. “And a gov’ner to appease.”

Claudette sighs. “I’d rather just shoot him.”

Paulette screams from the kitchen: “Claudie he’s our second-best customer!”

“I’d still rather just shoot him.”

Staring at the enormous list crammed onto this paper, Belle is almost inclined to agree.

Public Service Announcement from Yensid Publishing Corporation:

The following books are now UNLICENSED. Destroy if found. Do no sell. Do not print.

Violation of our terms of service, will …

Blah, blah, blah aren’t they far enough from Yensid’s headquarters to pretend they never see when a book’s license expires or is revoked?

She grits her teeth, growls, and shoves the list in her apron pocket.

Time to start pulling.

Chapter Text

Eden Village, Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Early Morning, 12/28/0370

Gaston yawns as he finally puts the old brick police station behind him. With its bad coffee and smoke-thick air and cells full of drunks and boarded-up windows and the stench of body odor.

He shades his eyes from the blazing Montressor sun … and blinks as the dark hair and shiny gunmetal-gray skin darts across the street.

Leone, bright-eyed and beaming with Officer Hazel hot on his heels, her tail lashing furiously right and left.

“Give that back NOW!”

Leone runs in the opposite direction, laughing manically.

Barely anyone notices.

"The rewards of being considered a fool," Belle once laughed, "must be that you truly can get away with any whim."

Gaston yawns again, ignoring the poisonous burning in his chest while watching the wagons trundling down the streets. Really, of all the times Leone could make a scene…

“Leone!” Gaston jumps forward and grabs him by the arm. Then jerks back out of the path of a cart loaded with barrels.

“Wow!” Leone laughs as the driver curses them out.

Officer Hazel – with her own choice words about the driver and Leone – snatches her radio back, hisses "fiend," slaps Leone's butt, and marches away.

The short metalloid splutters. "Fine!" he shouts. Then turns around. “Gaston!” He waves as he runs over. “You don’t miss a thing!”

“I know!” Gaston smiles softly as the shorter man’s hair tumbles out of its ponytail again in liquid waves of brown – almost black – curls. The metalloid holds more charm in him today, under rare blue sky and white clouds. He pulls Leone firmly onto the sidewalk, listening to the hollow thump of his boots on the wooden planks.

Leone squints up at Gaston. “Say! Didja hear about that pirate? That crash-landed in Ripway?”

Gaston winces. “I was the one that called it in. Now I’ve got to round up Dr. Hawkins and see if he can ID the body. If that fails – and it’s already a shot in the dark – then I’m off to visit the Guild and look through the records.” And pick up his better pack hopefully. That’s probably where it wandered off too…hopefully.

Hopefully.

“Sheesh. That sounds fun.” Leone raises an eyebrow. “Wait. Did you and Izumi sleep at all last night?”

“Not exactly. And you don’t have a leg to stand on. Officer Hazel saw you at Ripway.”

Leone growls and starts running his fingers through his hair. Then he sighs. “You really think you can ID the body?”

“We’re just shooting in the dark at this point.”

A few women walk past them. One turns around and waves.

Leone waves back enthusiastically, and she smiles broadly, mouthing “call me” as she mimes the request.

Gaston feels a bitter heat in his chest and marches off, his boots thumping clouds of dust up from the cobblestone road.

The streetcleaners do their job. And Nature undoes it.

And perhaps, Gaston amends as he wove between wagons, perhaps the people living here as well.

Leone scrambles to keep up with Gaston’s long stride.

“Another conquest?” Gaston keeps his voice light, playful – the exact tone his father taught him while the man was campaigning for governor.

“Another good time.” Leone rolls his eyes. “Sheesh Gaston. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

“True.” It’s not. “But frankly, I want something more permanent.”

“Eh. To each his own.” With a teasing smile, Leone nudges him: a prodding elbow in the ribs. “So. Who’ya like?”

Gaston raises an eyebrow, but instead says, “I've got my sights set on that one!” He points down the street: at Benbow’s Books. At Belle thumping a stack of books on a table in the outdoor eating area, laughing along with several of the customers.

Leone winces. “Yeah, I don’t think Belle’d laugh at that joke…”

“She's the one!” Gaston continues with calculated carelessness, “The lucky girl I'm going to marry.”

“But she's…”

“The most beautiful girl in town.” Gaston interrupts smoothly.

Oh, their relationship has more fire and oil than his parents ever had (at least to his memory) but that is the foundation of a healthy relationship.

Or so his father says.

(He also says “Communication is king. And you have yet to master that. A failure of communication is the failure of a relationship.”)

Maybe Gaston shouldn’t be taking dating advice from someone who brings a new person home every week, but…

Well, he’s not talking to Mr. Hawkins about this. The man’s still single.

“I know but…”

“And that makes her the best!” Gaston frowns. “And,” he adds imperiously, “Don’t I deserve the best?”

They must cross the busiest section of the marketplace to get to the bookshop. (It actually looked closer when they were on the hill, when Belle was a bright speck, than it did now.)

“Well, of course you do, but I mean…”

“I knew she was the one the first day I met her.” Gaston strides ahead confidently, knowing his determined stride always clears a path.

“It was a wonderful picnic.” One that Leone can easily follow him with. “Despite that broken nose, that is.”

Gaston shrugs. “What? You said a human couldn’t throw a punch. We proved you wrong.”

“You’re half-human.” Leone deadpans, pulling at Gaston’s feathers pointedly.

“Well, Belle isn’t.” Gaston preens at his passing reflection in a shop window, running his fingers through his feathers and hair, admiring the scattered patches of feathers gleaming on his bare arms like thick hair. “Anyway, that was also the first time we made rockets.” (Dr. Hawkins firmly believed in the bonding powers of explosives. And they haven't cured him of that yet.)

“I remember – but we were nine. A lot can change in.” He pauses to count on his fingers. “8 years.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s been longer than that.” Gaston grumbles as they slip between more wagons and some carts.

“No seriously. We’re 25…” Leone waves his hands, almost dropping the gamebag.

“You’re 25. I’m 22.” Gaston corrects.

“So we were nine. And now we’re twenty-five. So that’s like 8 years…”

Gaston throws his hands up in frustration. “No it isn’t. You carry the 1, makes 15 so that’s 6 and then there’s still 10 so it makes 16 years.”

“That’s beside the point!” Leone screams in exasperation. “A lot can change in almost 10 years. I don’t think Belle has a crush on you anymore.” He hesitates. “In fact, I don’t think she ever did.”

“Well Leone, she’s the only one who is beautiful like me.” Gaston says as they slip between more wagons and some carts. "So, after a bit of gentle wooing…”

“You? Gentle?!”

Gaston splutters. “Yes! I can be gentle.”

“With Belle?! You got in a fistfight last week!” Leone protests. “The cops had to be called!”

“No, the cops were called because we found a common enemy.” Gaston corrects. “He got away, and that is why we were fighting.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Leone nods mock-knowingly.

They finally reach the Benbow. Gaston grabs the doorknob. “Just watch.” he mutters. “I'm going to make Belle my wife!”

Chapter Text

Bimbette’s Books

Nowhereisastreetname Street,

Eden Village, Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Midmorning, 12/28/0370

Belle reenters the café with a stack of books: the recommendations the triplets can pair with customer orders. A few of these are beat-up and well-read. Oddly enough, it seems like customers prefer the worn books. 

“Hey Belle.” Laurette pauses in scrubbing a table. “Can you please put these books back up?” She points to a box full of returns.

“Yeah, sure.” Belle grabs the box and returns to the bookshop.

Most people didn’t buy with their coffee –instead they treat the bookstore like a library, requesting their beverage and one specific book. Several have a subscription, paying a nominal monthly fee to take home any book if they bring it back. The result – however profitable – is a lot of random stacks of books that need reshelving.

Out of the bookshop and into the storage room – and surely, she doesn’t need a lamp to drop a box on a shelf. Not with the light spilling down the stairs…

Her foot catches as she crosses the threshold, and she nearly lands on her face. With muttered swears she limps to the metal shelving, pushes the box in, and glares at the odious, soon-to-be-in-the-garbage tripping hazard.

“Gaston.” She hisses.

Belle growls savagely and snatches it, about to hurl it across the room when a much, much better idea crosses her mind.

She throws the pack – how did it even get in here?! – on a table and starts unloading and stacking books. It’s all the unlicensed ones – she and Claudette spend three. Full. Months. last year persuading Paulette to try and sell them at half-price on Purge Day. (“Soon to be a Banned Book! Read now!”)

Idiot should stop making people clean up after him.

"Hm. So, Dignity and Disadvantage and, uh, Janice Airre. Yeah Gaston. Hope you suddenly acquired a taste for romances." She slides those two under a smelly shirt – Gaston I may murder you – and buckles the latch with neat efficiency. Then pats the side pocket and counts out the exact amount of change for those books. At full price.

She storms back into the sunny bookstore and throws the pack on the table. Then she straightens her Mama's jacket. Papa had found her in the closet about a year after Uncle Ben and Mama left. He'd sat down beside her and pulled out his locket and they'd flipped through the holographic pictures in it. He'd stopped at one with Mama wearing this jacket at the steering wheel of her ship. 

Belle blinks - but she is still alone with the books and the lazy, quiet morning. The weekend starts tomorrow: which means Empire Week is really going to kick off. Reconstruction Day was only two days ago …

… Belle makes a face, remembering the very nasty, very public fight she and Gaston got into. No wonder there were cops so close to Ripway yesterday. She … is pretty predictable.

It’s a cool today too…

Through the open window, she can see Claudette cleaning tables in the outdoor eating area. She stops to top off a customer’s coffee then goes back to applying massive elbow grease on that one table with a substance Belle’s given up trying to identify. Claudette straightens suddenly, with that bouncy step as her four hands start twisting the two rags around and around.

Gaston’s here then.

Belle rolls her eyes. Frankly, she doesn’t think that relationship would work either – mostly because Claudette’s middle-name is a tie between “Chaos” and “Clumsy.” The first would mesh … too well with Gaston. The second he doesn’t have the patience for.

And frankly, Claudette can do so. Much. Better.

Belle goes to the window with a stack of nonfiction.

“Isn’t he dreamy?” Claudette giggles bashfully. She probably doesn't think anyone can hear her.

Unfortunately, Laurette does and leans out the window to guarantee she is heard. “Oh, I can’t breathe he’s so beautiful.” She says with an exaggerated, sugary tone.

Paulette – from the counter – calls “What a tall, dark, and handsome brute! Rrrrurr!”

Claudette glares, all hands on her hips. “I hate you two! So much! I really do!”

One of the customers laughs while shaking his head. He stops when all three triplets glare at him.

Belle rolls her eyes – just in time for Claudette to see her.

“What’s your problem? He’s a nice guy.” She flushes green. “And handsome.”

Belle pinches the bridge of her nose. “Nobody is that handsome. Or that nice.” She abandons the window, drops the box at her feet, and climbs the ladder again.

The doorbell tinkles.

“Ladies.” She turns to see Gaston throw a sloppy salute towards the triplets – not that they can even see it with him in the bookstore. He then catches her eye. “Who’s handsome?”

“Nobody.” She punctuates the word by waving the book in her hand. “That’s the point. Nobody is that handsome. Or nice.”

“Oh really …” he drawls with a grin.

“Leave it.” Laurette calls, standing in the café doorway. “She’s in a mood.”

Leone, standing in Gaston’ shadow once again, giggles. “I know what will help with that!” Gaston quickly claps a hand over the metalloid’s mouth while seizing her book.

“Gaston, may I have my book. Please?”

He raises an eyebrow, scanning the pages. “You read this? But there’s no holograms! No pictures!”

Belle frowns and grabs at it, nearly falling off the ladder and the box of books threatening to fall. “Well, some people use their imaginations.”

Gaston quickly rights her and snags the box as Belle snags the book.

“And there are holograms. Just not as many. It’s an older book. And those are the best.” Belle slides the book into the shelf.

Gaston rolls his eyes. “Really Belle, why the taste for outdated books? We’re better than them!”

Belle pulls books from the box Gaston is now reluctantly holding and tucks the shelves behind her. “Funny, that’s exactly what they said about their ancestors.”

Leone sighs heavily behind them. “Guys, can we come off it already?”

“No.” they chorus.

“Belle? it's about time you got your head out of those books and paid attention to more important things.” He tries to snatch the book again, almost dropping the box. 

“Like you.” Belle leans away, just barely on the ladder. 

“Exactly!” Gaston beams, then frowns as he glances over before a more genuine smile lights his face. “Ah! There’s my pack!” He drops be box and slings the pack over his shoulder.

“Gaston, you are positively primeval.” The ladder creaks on its wheels and she grabs another book – oh wait. That one’s unlicensed too.

“Why thank-you Belle.” He slings his arm around her shoulders while taking great glee in thoroughly messing up Leone’s hair, enduring the flurry of slaps and protests.

“Hey, whaddya say you and me and Leone take a walk over to the tavern for lunch. I hear Wayfarer Inn is letting some nomads cook in exchange for boarding.”

“Gaston…” Leone pulls his ponytail out and attempts to retie it. “Always thinking with your stomach.”

“What do you say … we don’t?” Belle shakes her head, pulling free and kicking the ladder off to the left.

Gaston huffs follows her, having picked up the box again. “Come on Belle, I’ve barely seen you all week.” He grabs her again.

Belle groans. “Please, Gaston. I can't. I have to do my job.” She waves a paper in his face. “We have a whole list of books that have to come off the shelves. Today!”

Belle watches the flash of irritation smooth off Gaston’s face in the space of heartbeats. “Well then, what if we just hung out tonight. After hours…”

“Hint. Hint. Hint.” Leone hisses, making a side-winder motion with his hand.

 “Ooooh. Absolutely.” Belle quietly shoves her hands in her dress pockets. “5 o’clock?”

“Hm. Maybe about 6.” Gaston says. “That will give us the best … view.”

Leone bounces on his heels, grinning manically. “Yes!” he fist pumps. “I’m gonna…”

Gaston claps a hand over his mouth again. “… be very well behaved while we enjoy …fireworks. Perfectly legal fireworks.” Gaston fumbles over a few more words.

“Hey does Belle have…”

“SH!”

Belle laughs. Gaston looks a little red – he should spend less time in the sun.

With a cheerful ringing of the bell, the door opens.

Belle turns to see Papa … and a short, red-haired boy with green eyes puffing under the weight of several, very heavy boxes.

“Papa!” Belle folds her arms and raises an eyebrow.

Papa ignores her. “Thank-you, young man, for your help.” He ‘limps’ in, thumping his old cane with each step. “If you could just set those down here.”

“Sure thing Dr. Hawkins.” The boy whistles a strange set of notes as he plops the boxes on the table. This is when Belle realizes the boy was not struggling under the weight, just the awkward size of the boxes.

Papa slaps the boy on the back, motioning him to the café. “Now go get your free cup of coffee. On me.”

“Good morning, Dr. Hawkins!” Leone chirps waving.

“Good morning, Leone. Good morning, Rhodes.”

Gaston makes a face. “Morning Dr. Hawkins…”

“Papa!” Belle rubs her temples as the old man continues his ‘limp’, while ‘subtly’ rubbing his back, to a rocking chair and pulls a book off the shelves.

Only when he is thoroughly settled does he look up at her. “Ah, Belle. Just dropping off some of the books we found in the attic yesterday.”

“You …” She waves towards the vanished boy. “He…”

He ignores her, turning towards his next victim. “Leone, do you think you could help me …”

Leone jumps like he stuck his finger in an electric socket and the generator is fully charged. “Sorry. I’ve got to get back to crunching numbers.” He babbles, waving his hands as he scoots towards the door. “Tax season’s going to start next week.”

“Ah. That sounds very dull. Are you sure…?”

“Quite!” Leone squeak.

Belle sighs and continues messaging her growing headache.

“Have a nice day!” Leone makes it to the door. “See you later Belle!”

With an exasperated laugh, Belle says, “Later Leone. Don’t run into anything.”

“Who? Me?” He raises and eyebrow with unconvincing innocence. “When have I ever?”

The bell jangles loudly as the door closes.

Belle and Gaston exchange glances. Gaston just shakes his head.

“Belle, my little starburst…”

She just sighs.

“Well Belle,” Gaston cuts in louder than necessary. “I’ll leave you to wrangle your books. I have to borrow a moment of your old man’s time.”

Papa pointedly flipping through his book. “Speak up young man. These old ears can’t hear you.”

Gaston and Belle exchange pointed glares.

“Papa.” Belle deadpans.

Papa looks at her all innocence and smiles. “Yes Jimbo?”

And he resurrects the old nickname.

Gaston scoffs. “Dr. Hawkins. I need your help IDing a body. Again.”

Belle chews her lip, teeth slotting into the old, oft-reopened scar.

“A body?” Papa closes the book. His eyes shift from the benign, grandfatherly smile to the razor sharp and cunning squint. “How recent?”

“Found it last night.”

Belle bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.

“Well little starburst, I’ll try to be back before lunch.” Papa stands and kisses her cheek.

She returns the gesture, calm and still as ice. “Good bye, Papa! Good luck!

“Take care while I'm gone!” He says – his cheery tone wraps around a core of steel.

Every time. Every time there’s a pirate. Every time the tense worry. The anticipation. The fear. And very much the hope.

This time? Is there someone from the Charlierose this time?

As the door closes with that friendly bell ringing, Belle bites back rising panic – they found him they found him run run run they found him they’ll find me run run run run run run run – and closes her eyes.

I watched someone die.

It's a thought that nearly bowls her over: she trips on air and barely catches herself. She leans on the table, panting as her arms tremble. She picks up more books and continues shelving.

Now that she’s thought it, she can’t ignore it.

She watched someone die. It’s not the first time. Old Abigale stayed at their place during her final days. Slipped away in her sleep. And that horrible wreck a few years ago – Mr. Baker’s uncle died while she was helping dig someone else out of the wreckage. It’s Montressor. It happens.

She slaps herself across the cheek. “Stop. Just stop. No more ruminating thoughts. That won’t help.”

She takes a shaky breath, stares at her hands. The dirt and ash and blood are gone. But they still feel dirty. She feels dirty.

Maybe Gaston is right. Maybe I do think too much.

Chapter Text

Morgue, Hangman’s Hill,

Eden Village, Everwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Midmorning, 12/28/0370

The dead pirate’s face is still twisted in pain. Or at least, that’s how it seems to Gaston. Maybe others would think him at rest. Maybe he would, if he hadn’t found the body. The chart in his hand listing cause of death – probably blood loss from a bullet in his back, but several other wounds would have killed him too. Plus inhaling the evaporating coolant …

The chart is heavy. Gaston hates how heavy it is.

He knows. He knows this person was a pirate. Knows that he did evil, evil things.

But does anyone deserve to die like that?

Dr. Hawkins has stared at the body for a full minute. Wordlessly, he pats his vest pocket and removes a battered flask with a skull that has two stars to the right. Gaston’s only seen that on a pirate ship from the Neverland fleet.

Dr. Hawkins never talked about his captivity. Father didn’t either. They talk about before – pirate hunting, sailing the Black, misadventures in port… Father talks about his solo adventures. But Dr. Hawkins’s story doesn’t resume until he’s back in Eden with a wife, brother-in-law, and a tiny baby. A near twenty-year gap.

The old man caps his flask and puts it away. He turns the tortle’s head to the side, tracing a thick finger over a thick scar that twisted the scales apart.

He steps back and shoves his hands in his pockets. Takes a deep breathe.

But there is silence.

He drinks from his flask again.

Gaston waits. This will be a positive ID then. And Father and Dr. Hawkins might be hitting the bar again tonight.

“Billy Bones. Probably 100 years old.” Dr. Hawkins states – cold and matter-a-fact. “He-he was the navigator for the Charlierose.”

Captain Hawkins’s ship.

“You’re crewmate?”

Dr. Hawkins nods shortly. “For a while. Hated the man. He was Ben’s matelot.”

“What’s a …”

“Lover.” Dr. Hawkins examines the flask, rubbing his thumb over the imprint in the leather. “Committed lover.”

“Oh.” Mr. Webster’s lover… “Oooh I am so sorry…”

Dr. Hawkins shakes his head. “No, I actually hated Billy. He never treated Ben right. We had … Doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. And we still don’t know what happened to the Charlierose.” He nods to the mortician. “You can cover him up now.”

She does. “Do you want to see his personal affects too?”

Gaston passes the clipboard too her. “Yes. Please.”

It’s a cardboard box. A small one. She drops it on the table beside them. “This was everything in his pockets.”

Dr. Hawkins picks through them – a wallet with newfangled paper bills and Mwambia script and traditional silvers. A set of knives, including a very nice pocketknife that will likely disappear from the evidence locker as soon as it hits it.

He stops at a beat-up knife with a leather cord hilt. He carefully pulls it out, weighing it in his hand. “I gave that to Ben for his birthday. Not that either of us knew his birthday…”

He sets it to the side and continues pilfering through the many small bags, the scattered currencies from across the seven galaxies, the bits and bobs, one wooden turtle that Dr. Hawkins furrows his brow at before he tosses it.

Gaston picks it up. A silly little pendant with a heart and “BJ” and “B2” carved in the shell. It’s cheesy. He’d never give Belle or Leone something like this.

But maybe that’s why it’s so overdone. To help you say those magic words. Because he still hasn’t talked to either of them properly. Idiot. Stupid, love-sick idiot. If something happens to him, they won’t get his life insurance. Because he’s too cowardly to look them in the eye and…

Gaston tosses the pendant back in the box. And ignores the rings burning a hole in his pocket.

“The past always comes back I swear.” Dr. Hawkins finally mutters.

Gaston startles: after the minutes of silence with only scraping and tinkling stirring the air, the soft words are a thunderclap. “What?”

Dr. Hawkins nods politely to the mortician. “Are you sure that’s everything?”

She nods accepting the box. “Yes sir. And you can look at all other items from the site in the evidence locker. I’m running a final analysis on his clothes, but you can see them when it’s done.”

“Thank-you. But I think this is all I need…” Dr. Hawkins drinks from his flask again. “Last I heard of Billy, he’d thrown lots with the Neverland Armada, but loyalty means nothing to him and everyone knows it. I’d have to ask Thunder which pirate alliances are in Eden right now, but like as not, it was his own crewmates that offed him.”

For a long moment, Gaston tries to find something to say to that. Finally, he settles on: “Does the Neverland Armada have a habit of killing their own?”

Dr. Hawkins laughed. “They govern their own.” He smiles – a thin, bitter but also real smile. “Their laws are fairer than the ones we live under actually.”

That sounds like treason. But Dr. Hawkins hasn’t been considered part of respectable society in decades. Not even his friendship with Father could bring him back.

Was it worth surviving if you could never actually return home? if your children were always outcastes?

Gaston fingered the rings in his pocket. Then accidentally made eye-contact with the man: hazel eyes that he says are the only thing Belle inherited from him. And some tiny part of him thinks “He knows.”

“Well son, I think it’s about time for lunch. Don’t you?”

When they pass the front desk, Gaston pauses to stare at an enormous chimera ducking through the door. The man must be seven feet high, with draconic horns dripping in silver jewelry and thick, trimmed fur. A pierced ear flicks his direction, a ruby crescent moon swinging and catching the light, but otherwise the chimera ignores him.

“I’m looking for a pirate that stole an old family heirloom…”

Gaston shakes his head as the door closes behind them. “Is it just me, or is the world getting more dangerous?”

Dr. Hawkins grunts. “Need to visit Thunder soon. Haven’t listened to some good scuttlebutt in a week.” He stares up at the blue sky, slowly fading into the normal gray.

Crescentia sits up there, faded and small behind the fog of atmosphere.

Chapter Text

Bimbette’s Books

Nowhereisastreetname Street,

Eden Village, Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Noon, 12/28/0370

The open kitchen is a bustle of activity and smells: roasted coffee beans, sugars, fresh milk, syrups, jellies and jams, cookies, muffins, pies… A riot of cozy delicious humming over the clanking of dishes and gurgling of boiling water. The oven bakes the entire room. The windows and doors are wide open, exchanging the steaming air of the kitchen for the scents and sounds of the village. Flies buzz towards a blinking light and get stuck on the sticky paper. Wasps and yellow jackets crawl through a hole in a mason jar only to be trapped inside, drowning in sugar water.

It's homely. That’s the important thing. Homely and holding no secrets.

Belle sits on the service side of the coffee bar, sucking the pain out of her thumb as she glares at the coffee mill. After a moment, she glances at her thumb: it’s stopped bleeding.

Good enough.

She pries off the front and pulls out a small box.

A tea-pot sings. Paulette swiftly takes it off a stovetop and puts another on. She drops the teabag in as she puts it on a tray with a small strainer.

The turning wheel just … fell completely off in the middle of rush hour. The outer burr had disappeared again – among other problems like the broken cup fragment she’d just discovered – and she’d just grabbed a box of parts from the shed to Frankenstein it back to life.

Studiously ignoring two children running past her, merrily chanting a nursery rhyme, Belle prods the machine with her screwdriver, trying to pop out the other half of the stupid rod.

“Jill and Jack sailed in the Black, off on a great adventure. Jill’s cut down, abandons her crown, and Jack comes falling after…”

Her eye starts twitching again. There go those boys again. Over. And over. And over…

“Ah, Belle. I’m here for my regular.”

Ugh. LeGume Gaston, their dear governor. Who spends way too much time in this building.

“Of course. I’ll see if it’s out of the oven.” Belle pushes away from the coffee mill, wiping her hands on the grease-rag.

The bristly avian stares down his long nose, crest and cheek feathers raised, tapping a thick, brown claw at the black streaks smearing her hands. “Goodness child! Aren’t you supposed to be serving customers?”

“But I have to fix this … thing…” Belle cuts out the accurate but inappropriate descriptions.

“Well. If you must.” The governor scoffs. “You … Claudette. Your hands are clean. Correct?”

“Half a second!”

Belle goes back to her headache. The half-a-rod finally comes out – oh there’s the outer burr! – and she begins the delightful process of putting this piece of junk back together.

“There we go.” She quickly assembles the pieces: metal rod, outer burr, ornate turning wheel, the wood-handle. Appropriate application of her wrench and choice descriptions of the mothers of the product makers… And done!

Claudette drops the plate beside LeGume and bustles off.

“Thanks?” He shoots Belle a mildly irritated glance.

“It’s your fault this many people come for lunch.” She grumbles, double-checking her work. She turns the wheel and listens to the smooth sounds. That should be the correct tension, but Paulie’s gonna have to adjust for grain size. “Paulie, I fixed it!”

“Oh thank goodness.” Paulette calls over the melancholy but triumphant orchestra playing over the radio. She is currently bent over the oven, balancing a tray of raw cookies balanced in one hand while two other hands pull out gooey, ugly, homemade chocolate chip goodness that sell-out before they’ve even gone into the oven.

Belle licks her lips and leans back to better watch. Claudette stops at the coffee bar. LeGume taps his plate and cocks his head, his crest feathers lifting. Several customers have mysteriously arrived.

“Would you be patient?!” Paulette yells. “They have to cool first!”

With many sad mutters and grumbles some of the audience leaves.

A tea-pot sings. Paulette swiftly takes it off a stovetop and puts another on. She drops the tea in the pot as she puts it on a tray with a cup-sized strainer.

Claudette sights, turns the radio down, and grabs the tray with the teapot.

“Hey!” Paulette yells, “Turn that back up!”

“Then put on something happy!” Claudette stuffs an entire muffin in her mouth as she passes.

Paulette growls, her antenna lifting. “Technically …”

“We don’t need technicalities!” Laurette flies past with an empty coffee pot. Her antenna bounce as she stops. “The tempo is slow and the tone is cry and we don’t need that kinda negativity here!” She leaves with a full coffee pot, stuffing her mouth with a crescent roll melting in butter.

Belle snorts as she winks at Paulette and innocently flicks a switch on the radio.

Drums rip through the air almost blasting Paulette back and definitely attracting the attention of customers. Belle laughs hard enough she almost drops her toolkit.

“Belle I’m going to murder you!” Claudette shrieks. “In your sleep!”

Belle continues to cackle as LeGume slowly unruffles his feathers and shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

The bell rings and Izumi and her rookie partner - Officer Murphey - enter. Belle pointedly does not tense up. Officer Murphey pauses and holds the door open. 

Papa enters. He laughs, claps a few people on the back as he passes them, and doesn’t actually stop to talk to anyone and barely gives his thanks to Officer Murphey.

It’s Bones. He saw Bones.

Run.

Her breath catches in her throat. For an instant, she is absolutely positive he knows. He can see the blood under her fingernails and knows who it actually belongs too.

Officer Murphy slides to the coffee bar, snagging a cup of coffee and scanning the book that goes with it. “Ma'am. This is another one you’re selling without license.”

“Which one is it.” Laurette stops at the table and leans towards the book. 

Belle feels sweat dripping down her back: this is something she pulled out of the soon-to-be-unlicensed box sitting at her feet. 

“Okay, one, I was pulling your leg. Two, the universe is literally ending if the powers-that-be pull the license for Charlie’s Web.” The officer drops the book and steals a muffin.

“Well, they just pulled the plug on half the Dr. Zeus’s so consider the universe ending.” Claudette is saying.

Belle laughs and sighs.

Papa points at the muffin in Officer Murphey’s hand. “You are paying for those, right?”

“Put it on my tab. I’ll settle …” He checks his watch. “Friday. When we finally get paid.”

Officer Murphey snags another muffin. “Paulette – no, you’re Laurette.”

“Yes sir. Another to the tab?”

“You got it. See you soon.” He mock glares as Belle. “She’ll make sure of it.”

Papa frowns at her. 

Run. Belle rolls her eyes. “Aye, somebody’s gotta keep you lazies on your toes.”

Izumi tips her hat. “You take care now.”

Officer Murphey waves they leave. “Let's motor.”

Papa stares at her with a bland, genial expression. 

How much does he know? How much had he just never thought to tell her? And how much - a poisonous voice in her mind whispers - has he been hiding?

“Papa?” She manages a tired smile, brushing back the hair tickling her nose – she’d lost the clip pinning it back and hasn’t had the time or energy to find a new one.

“Ah my little starburst.” He drops into the seat beside LeGume. “There’s grease on your nose.”

Eh…?

Belle goes to rub her nose and LeGume sighs.

“Belle, just …” Laurette pushes her away with her free hand. “Go clean off.”

Belle twists around to see if little moth scales are smeared on her blouse. “But…”

“Out of my kitchen you grubby … why does our coffee mill have grease?” Paulette frowns, running all four hands over the favored machine.

“Um. That would be my tools …” Belle blushes. “For my solar surfer…”

Paulette’s face makes many expressions, and she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Belle get that filth out of my café.”

This is a threat.

Belle twists around, grabs her toolbox and grease rag, and hot-foots it to the shed.

She inhales deeply. The garden is a sparse affair of wildflowers – none of them in bloom. So instead of fresh green, the air is permeated with the stench from the street.

The splinters in the shed door bite her fingers. She closes her eyes and hangs her head, tightening her grip on the world with both hands as her heart continues it’s frantic pattering.

He doesn’t know.

It was fourteen years today.

She squeezes past the printing press and shoves her toolbox in its shelf. Her solar surfer takes up a corner, the leather strap keeping it in place needs replacing or repair.

She stops at the sink and it’s cracked mirror, carefully washing her hands and face. Her cup of tea is still balanced on the empty printing press, cracked but usable.

It’s still smeared in blood.

She jerks back and blinks. No. That was just her guilty imagination. It’s a clean cup with a floral pattern and a gold rim. That’s it. Cracked. Too be used and, by being used, safely hidden from its grim origins.

She exhales – grief tastes like poison. Sweet and bitter at the same time.

She realizes she’s scrubbed her hands red and turns off the water. Her nailbeds hurt from where she tried to wash the blood out… Grease! She was trying to wash the grease off!

Tell no one…

Bones’s voice has hissed in her ears all day.

Papa would know. The instant he starts talking about it – and he will. Ever since Uncle Ben and Mama left, he’s so careful to make sure he talks to her… And he’ll know. Because she is an open book to her family and friends. Doesn’t matter how she tries to hide things, keep her face blank. Somehow they always know.

The only reason they don’t know now is because it’s the anniversary.

She looks up – her reflection is a wild, shattered thing. Curly hair frizzed out of its ponytail. Eyes burdened with dark circles like bruises. The thick, splotchy freckles from long days in the sun that darken her skin. The cracks in the mirror all seem to focus around her right eye – a shattered star lighting a broken soul. The air shimmers green and fire crackles in the mirror as her hazel eyes turn blood red.

She takes a step back from the beast in the mirror and inhales. Stupid, overactive imagination. That’s all this is. Stupid, stupid brain from reading too much speculative fiction. Ghostfire isn't real. Dreams aren't dangerous. 

“What’s wrong with me?” she slaps her cheek hard enough to leave a red imprint. Then turns on her heel sharply, grabbing her cracked teacup.

Her eye stops at the scar on her wrist – the burn that just keeps burning. Just another trick of her mind.

“I’m going to end up in the looney bin if this keeps happening.”

You’re fey.

I’m human. I’m only human.

She takes a sip of her tea. It’s lukewarm but her mouth is so dry that it’s irrelevant. She stops to grab Mama’s jacket and shrug it on. Then walks onto the low roof – the slope and many stacked boxes make it a thoughtless few steps. And she didn’t spill a drop of her tea.

She sits cross-legged on the hot terracotta and winces as a sharp fragment from a broken tile digs into her thigh. As she shifts, the mystery sphere falls into her hand... glowing like a tiny, dim star.

Apathetically, Belle runs her fingers through the glow, watching it behave like the "fire" on the roses. Growing bigger and bigger the more she plays with it.

She lets her mind drift as she plays with the sphere – circles overlapping circles within circles etched all over it.

“These markings are baffling.” She grumbles as she scoots over the vent – it leads to the kitchen and she hears the triplets bickering as they clean up. The lunch rush is ending. Finally. She isn’t leaving them in too much of a lurch.

But she can’t see Papa right now. Not when he’s seen Bones.

How could he have sounded so affectionate? He hated her. Does dying just change how you remember things? Or had he changed?

She presses her ear to the warm metal as she continues to examine the sphere. Circles overlap circles and within circles. Etched patterns like planetary orbits on the star charts she used to stare at. Solar systems and slipstreams and freedom she can’t grasp because who would take care of Papa…?

“Hey. You good?”

She jumps and looks over the edge of the roof. Papa and LeGume in the crummy town garden hiding under the thick flowering vines and passing a pocket flask.

“I…” Papa. “Yeah. Mostly. It’s … shocking but inevitable. Right?”

Belle wraps her arms tightly around herself.

“It’s just … too close?” To close to when Mama left…

“Yeah. I guess it’s just too close.”

Belle takes a breath. Eyes fixed on the sullied sky, she starts rolling the sphere in her hands. The innocent teacup perches in her periphery, dimmly glowing.

She expects to hear the door closed and be alone with her thoughts again. Instead there’s muttering. More quiet words – Belle’s more interested in her glowing magic objects then eavesdropping, but she hears: “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

[click] Focus on something else .

“Yes. It’s … he was dead to me years ago. And good riddance!" 

[twist] Something else.

"If your sure." LeGume, rightfully dubious. "I’m more worried about Belle.”

[hiss] Stop being rude...

“I’m worried too.”

Belle freezes.

"She’s been a real hellion lately. And this is only going to make it worse.” Papa…?

“I really don’t know how you handle it.”

LeGume’s always been critical of her, with cryptic cliches and sayings about pirates and generational curses and crap like that.

“Handle it? I'm at the end of my rope.”

Papa…

Belle hunches her shoulders, starts chewing her lip, hiding under Mama’s jacket.

“Ever since they left… well ... Belle’s just never recovered.” Her father’s voice is soft – she almost can’t hear him.

There’s something bitter and hot in her gut: she’s not the only one devastated…

“And you know how smart she is!”

He says that like he’s recovered. But she’s seen those long nights he just stares at the fire.

“And you know how smart she is! And yet, she is constantly in trouble, she picks fights with strangers and friends alike…" A heavy thump. "Lately, whenever I talk to her, she's like a stranger!”

Belle suffocates the scream filling her throat.

“I don't know, Gume. I've tried everything.”

Oh Papa.

“I am sure you have.”

LeGume. Unusually calm and steady. As critical as he is of the family Papa made and married, he’s always been there. Belle can’t think of a single week he didn’t show up and just casually spend time with Papa. A beer and a song, stories – not just of the ‘good ol’ days’ but also of what was going on in Eden or what nonsense their children were up too.

“It’s just… I keep dreaming one day, she’ll just knock down those walls she’s built… and there she’ll be just the way she was. A smiling happy little kid holding a new pet and begging me to let her keep it.”

A soft chuckle. “Ladies dancing, that was so long ago. Remember the spiders?”

“Do NOT remind me.”

Belle presses the palms of her hands flat against her thighs until they stop shaking.

Maybe she should ... She wants ... It hurts...

Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think…

“Ah. She really is her mother’s daughter.”

Papa sounds so fond. So wistful.

“No.” LeGume has a cutting edge to his wistfulness. “She’s her uncle’s niece.”

Belle bites her lip until it starts bleeding. Doesn’t know what to do with that assessment. Hates that in a very real way, it was Uncle Ben she had the closes relationship with.

He broke every promise he made that day. And yet, he’d only made her two promises that she remembers. To teach her to fight. To come back.

Maybe that’s why they were so close.

He only made two promises he couldn’t keep.

Chapter Text

Belle blinks and turns to inspect the world around her. It’s the garden again?

Hesitantly, she reaches towards the roses – brushes the petals carefully, carefully, mindful of Adam’s warning of poison. They are soft and make her fingers tingle. Like electricity from a strip of broken solar-clothe. She spins around: everything is still glowing – but dimmer. Maybe Adam made them glow brighter?

Overhead is a clear sky filled with so many stars.

I’m dreaming again. How am I dreaming? She steps towards the garden path. There. There’s the dark, tangled, wild side.

A stepping-stone forms in front of her foot. And then a series as far as she can see – which isn’t far. It takes a sharp bend a few yards ahead. She walks to the path. The thicket of ember roses coils over her head as her foot lands on the steppingstone.

She walks carefully, lightly stepping from stone to stone until she stops at the heavily manicured garden.

What?

She continues down the path: Stonecrop pushes up between her toes, overflowing the path until she can barely see it. She stops a moment to stare at the deep pink, succulent leaves. How did she get barefoot when she was wearing her boots? Whatever, dream-logic.

A child stands on the path – those paving stones are overgrown with moss. The child is overgrown too: hair covers their face, moss creeps up their legs and sprouts on the shoulders of an old- fashioned night-shirt that bags around their slim figure. They hide their hands in their pockets and keep their eyes on the ground. Their face is still obscured behind dirty-blond hair.

“Who are you?”

She just barely sees the faintest quick of their lip. “You can call me Chip.” They say. “Cause I broke my tooth, see?” they raise their head and she sees that half the buck tooth is indeed missing. “I don’t like dentists. And anyway, it adds character.” Chip seems mischievous.

“Ooooh okay.” Belle dries her hands on her pants. “Um. You can call me …”

“You shouldn’t use your real name.” Chip rocks back on their heels. “She’s listening.” “Who?”

Chip smiles – their teetharealittletoolong.“Sheshouldn’tbenamed.”

Belle glances back at the bushes. “What’s that?”

“A maze. Don’t go in there. I’m waiting for someone to find their way out.”

“Who?”

“Me.” The child sits on one of the larger paving stones. “You’re closer than you realize.”

“Closer to what?”

“The truth.” The child – Chip – curls around their legs and hides their face behind their knees. “You should leave now. She’s hunting.”

“Leave? Where… oh.” Belle watches the moss and stonecrop shrivel in front of her, revealing a new set of paving stones. The path slowly forms but then stops right in the middle of the open space.

“Here goes nothing.” Belle takes her first step.

“Don’t believe her.” Chip says. “She doesn’t want what’s best for you.”

Belle takes another step. “Okay. Good luck with your … uh, thing.” But when she turns around, the maze – and the child – are gone.

Belle shivers.

The path only forms about ten steps in front of her. When she looks back, there are only ten steps behind her.

Eerie…

She looks up to see a bird with a clock in its chest. It cocks its head, fixing her with a beady, brilliantly red eye, then flies off.

She takes a deep breath and reenters the thicket. After about forty steps, she sees another opening. Keeping her feet firmly on the path, she turns and looks out.

In a little oasis around a large fountain, a cluster of naked women sleep tangled in each other’s arms. She tips her head but grinds her heels into the paving stone.

Then one stands up and waves to her. She starts singing – no words, just a wonderful sound and lilting vocalizations.

Belle listens. Another woman stirs and starts singing. But the time the tenth woman has woken up, she is ready to ignore the warning and step off the path, just to see who they are, why they are, what their purpose is and what they want with her. She instead drops into a crouch, fingertips still on the path. Don’t go closer.

When the song is over, she claps, stands and continues down the path. The ember-roses are so thick, she is in a tunnel – she can’t see the stars anymore. But the roses light the way.

The vines shift and move around her.

One suddenly thrusts towards her, sharp as a spear and fast as a whip. It dissolves a foot from her face, around the invisible barrier over the path.

Belleshivers–butnothingwillhurther,ifshestaysonthepath.That’stherule.

A break in the thorns. She stops (once again checking her position on the path) to look out. A statue, eyes glowing bright red, sits cross-legged, a fire licking its feet.

It looks up at her, from the fire. Then looks back down. “Leave me.”

“Who are you?”

“It does not matter. You are protected.” The statue grins, eyes flaring like the fire. “But soon you won’t be!”

Belle tips her head, looking at the statue. But this time, she isn’t tempted to leave the path. “Then why tell me to leave?”

The statue’s grin grows. “Because something worse waits for you.”

Belle shakes her head. “I feel sorry for you.” She does not know why.

She doesn’t know how long she walks after that. But eventually, she finds a dark archway, off the path. The thorns hiss and spit around it – they writhe and reach but something keeps them a good foot away from the archway.

She watches as a vine with rose blossoms strikes. It is rebuffed and the blossoms melt like candlewax. Drip drip drip drip.

When she looks, she sees paving stones that lead to the archway. She had initially missed them due to the residue of the roses slathering the path.

She takes a step – A vine turns to attack her but bounces off. More come but each bounce in a full arch from her to the archway.

“Then it’s safe to look.” She strides forward confidentially. Everything beyond the arch is pitch black. She sees nothing.

“Lass.”

She looks back. Bones. For some reason Bones stands on the sure path.

“There’s nothing for you there.”

Belle looks back at the archway.

“That’s where the path ends.”

“What is it?” Belle reaches towards the emptiness: the darkness coils around her hand and when she drags her fingers back, the inky blackness slowly drips onto the steppingstones.

Bones shakes his head. “Lass, that’s not for you to know right now.”

“Why?”

“Ya can’t do ‘rythmatic ‘til ya done addition and subtraction.” Bones walks away. “’Course, you have to decide for ya’self. Like yer mom. Like Jackie-boy.” He smiles. “And we know how that ended for them, don’t we lass?”

“You!” Irrational anger fills her and Belle stalks after him. “I don’t! I don’t know what happened! Where are you going!? Talk to me!”

Bones keeps stalking forward and Belle keeps pace with him, still shouting, until the tunnel of ember roses ends.

Belle gasps as she enters an ancient lab.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

She looks to her right to see a beautiful woman in green at a spinning wheel. Glowing fire winds from her night-black fingers. Fire that seems to brighten, bleach even, her pale palms.

Without looking, the woman grabs a vine and pulls off a rosebud which she feeds it into the glowing basket beside her.

Belle leans close to the spindle, stares at the fiery yarn twisting around it.

“You were nine, I believe, when I last saw you.” The woman says as her foot steadily turns the wheel.

Belle stares at the woman, desperately wracking her memory. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you.”

“You do.” The woman puts another rose into her basket.

Belle kneels and leans over the basket. All she sees is fire, licking up – looking just like the flames from her strange trove and the ember roses and her Mama’s eyes before she left.

“Don’t touch.” The woman says.

Belle nods. “I think I know now. I was reading the book on Treasure Planet and when I fell asleep I dreamed that Nathanial Flint was a woman.” And then Mama was gone…

“I am she.” The woman never takes her dark eyes off her task. “Tell me daughter, why are you here?”

Belle leans back on her heels and considers. “I don’t know. I woke up here.”

Nathanial nods. “Hm. Your veil is finally about to fall. It’s been a long time coming.”

“What veil?”

“Everyone has a veil that blinds them from truths they can’t yet receive.” Nathanial nods to Belle. “Like the truth of my womanhood. After so many historical accounts of me being a man, you were reluctant to accept the truth.”

“That’s bad.” Belle says.

“No. What is wrong is for the teachers and guardians to shroud the truth from those that deserve it.” Nathanial stops spinning and stands. “What is wrong is not accepting the truth when it comes.”

Belle stands with her. “Then what am I supposed to learn now?”

“Your birthright.” Nathanial takes Belle’s left hand and uncurls her fingers with gentle strength. Belle doesn’t want this touch but she can’t resist it either. I have no power here…

… Shit. I’m not on the path anymore.

Belle tries to pull her hand free, taking a step back. Then yells as vines wrap around her ankles, locking her in place. Thorns prick her bare skin and dig deep. She grabs her knife only to have it disappear in her hand and more vines

Nathanial’s long fingers caress Belle’s palm. “A strong destiny. You will sail the Black and claim your birthright.”

She drags her nail over Belle’s scar.

“You did that.” Belle suddenly remembers.

“I broke your shield.”

A strong hand seizes her waist from behind. A thunderous roar makes Belle’s bones quiver. Nathanial cries out and then stands even taller, her emerald-green dress no longer sweeping the floor, but now dancing around her ankles. Belle is scared to look up and see how much larger the woman has grown.

“You.” Nathanial’s voice drips with venom. “How dare you come here.”

The hand around Belle’s waist moves to take hers and forcefully pulls her down the path and away.

“Ad…” Belle stops.

Adam looks at her through his mask, the one eye glowing yellow. He puts a finger to his lips. Then a deep, throbbing echo shakes the maze of thorns, rattling her down to her bones.

“Oh dear.” Nathanial’s voice is strangely calm behind her. “I’ll see you soon then.”

Belle shoots Adam a panicked look.

“Don’t …” he begins…

Belle jerks awake with a cry. Her heart pounds and she runs a shaking hand through her hair.

The map rests in her lap, glowing a faint green. Then it fades back into the magical fire. Belle glances to her side to see the chipped teacup tipped over and the last dregs of tea drying on the roof tiles.

What …

Her ankles throb. She pulls off her boot and stares at the beginnings of bruises.

Your birthright.

The dark archway looms in her mind. And Bones who distracted her.

You will sail the Black.

Belle rubs her wrist. The scar burns like it did when she first got it. She bites her lip and swallows the throbbing scream.

“Belle?”

She jumps off the roof – which makes Paulette scream – and stands, the chipped cup in her hand. she shoves her hands (and the cup) into her pockets and stalks inside.

Paulette tries to say something, but Belle ignores her.

Yes. I’ll find Treasure Planet. And find out what actually happened to Mama.

Even though it will take a lifetime.

Chapter Text

Benbow’s Books

Nowhereisastreetname Street,

Eden Village, Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Evening, 12/28/0370

Sundown.

It’s one of Belle’s favorite times of day. The world is actually calm.

The sky blazes orange and red and purple and pink. Clouds drift lazily overhead, thickening for a possible night-rain. The chilling evening air slaps the boiling buildings, creating a wonderful windstorm, kicking up sand, making some folks grab their hats to keep them on their heads.

The streets are full of pleasant chatter. Merchants close up shops and go upstairs to home. Nomads close stalls and trudge to their inn or campsite or friend’s house. Children race through the streets from the schoolhouse, shrieking in delight at the temporary freedom or patiently waiting for supper. A few policemen wander the streets, more interested in chatting with passers-by than watching passively.

Belle slides the last books onto the shelves then folds the empty bag.

She’s alone. Bimbette’s Books closes in an hour.

With a deep sigh, Belle drops back in a seat. Her hand - almost without her input - drifts into her jacket pocket. Then she’s looking at the strange sphere, twisting it under the light, squinting at the round buttons flush with the golden metal. Her fingers caress the flickering not-fire – the trembling reds and oranges and yellows. The more she plays with it the brighter, 'hotter' it gets until the 'flames' are white and blue.

“Like those roses in my dream.” she murmurs.

Her forgotten coffee grows cold on the table beside her. In that chipped teacup.

She runs a finger over a seem bisecting the sphere. A puzzle. But to what? Why would someone die for this? Why would someone kill for this?

Beware the cyborg. Run. Run. Run. Dreams can't hurt you. Tell no one. Run.

The doorknob turns. As it does, Belle drops the sphere in her pocket and picks up the open book beside her - a single, smooth, practiced motion. As the door swings open, she finds her place and turns the page.

She hears Papa pause. Then he sits across from her and pulls out his own book.

There’s a long moment of peaceful silence. It’s nice.

It’s doomed.

Papa – after copious and noisy flipping of pages – clears his throat. “So, did you have a good morning?”

“I got a new book.” She shrugs.

“You do love those books.”

“He says, holding a book.”

He chuckles. “True. True. All that delicious adventure and mystery and romance and…” His hand rubs his locket as his smile fades. “… happy endings.”

Belle chews her lip again. Last night burns a hole in her head and heart. “Papa, do you think I'm odd?

“My daughter? Odd? Where would you get an idea like that?” he splutters.

“Oh, I don't know. It's just I'm not sure a pirates’ daughter can fit in a place run by the Bean.” Belle loads her voice with as much sarcasm as she thinks she can get away with.

Papa raises an eyebrow. “You are also the daughter of a pirate hunter.” Belle shrugs and diverts. “There's no one I can really talk to.”

“What about Rhodes and Leone?”

“Gaston’s changed ever since his dad … started paying attention to him.”

She can hear Papa make a face. “But his name’s Rhodes.”

“Well, he wants to go by his last name.” Belle hunches her shoulders until her jacket hides her ears. “And he humored me when I only went by my middle name for … was it three years?” It weighs heavily at her side like guilt.

“That was cute.” Papa chuckles. “Your Mama was so determined to have a James in the family.”

“Yeah. Mama.” She says tonelessly, chewing her lip.

Papa sighs heavily. He takes off his locket thumbs it open and Belle sees an image of herself at age 3.

“This was your mothers.” Papa whispers. “She left it under the picture frame the last time she left.”

Belle cups the locket in her hand, watching the tiny video of her waving a baby rattle. She clicks it and sees another image. And another. And another. All the way up until an image from yesterday.

As she flashes through the videos, her father continues.

“You have so much of your mother in you. Her spirit, her passion. You have that same hunger.” He laughs. “Only you turned your hunger to books and knowledge instead of experiences. Paige wanted to do everything that could be done.”

Belle flicks through more images. These of her mother and father – hidden deep in the memory of the locket.

“Heh, look at that. Our ship – Charlierose.” Papa spins the image with his finger. Belle stares with hungry eyes.

They both stare as the holographic image of Mama and him start dancing barefoot in rough, holey shirts and pants. 

It flickers to another image: her and Uncle Ben. She’s in his lap and he holds a collection of fairytales. Uncle Ben was always reading to her.

That morning she’d pulled the only book Mama had ever read to her: a spacer story about Davy Jones and the Jolene. Mama had stopped in the middle, shaken her head, and said, “Well, that is not how I heard it.” And – despite insistent pleading – never elaborated.

Mama holding … holding the puzzle sphere.

Mama holding the puzzle sphere. The weight of that realization almost bowls her over. 

Mama staring at it intently her fingers flying over the buttons and her hair falling into her face.

Her hand tightens around the locket, and she blinks rapidly.

"Such a beauty. I really miss her."

"Mama or the Legacy?"

"Both - I guess both. And the crew. I kinda miss them too."

14 years. Run. They know. 14 years. Promise of flight and freedom. 14 years.

She snaps the locket shut. "Do you even know why she left?"

Papa is quiet for a long, long beat.

"I need answers Papa. And ... I'm not going to get them here, am I?"

"Asking questions ... it can be dangerous Belle." Papa carefully accepts the locket. "You might get the answers you are looking for.

Belle groans and slams her book closed. Loudly. Then grabs her coffee.

Papa startles then frowns before sighing and taking off his glasses. “It’s a bit late to be drinking coffee, don’t you think?”

 “Not if I’m going to be hanging out with Leone and Gaston tonight.” Belle’s grip on the paperback is so tight that the pages cut into her palm.

“And what will you be doing?”

“Fireworks.” Belle downs a bitter gulp – ugh, lukewarm. “It’s still Empire Week.”

“And where exactly, are they setting these likely illegal fireworks?”

Say nothing. 

“Also, isn’t ‘fireworks’ solar-surfer slang for night surfing off of moonstone light?”

Craaaaaaaaap.

“Belle…”

She jumps up, slamming her cup on the table. Coffee sloshes over the chip. “Papa it’s no big deal. Solar batteries are so much more efficient now…”

“Belle, I have had it. Do you want to be a wet spot on a canyon wall? Is that it?”

Belle looks away, pulling on her jacket.

“Belle?” Papa tries to stand between her and the door. “Belle, look at me. It's been hard enough without you go-

“Papa, is no big deal!” She pushes past him, ignoring the curling gross feeling in her gut. It’s just the coffee. She shouldn’t drink lukewarm coffee.

“No big deal!” He waves his hands as she hunches her shoulders. “I’m picking you up out of the clinker once a month! You’re on first-name basis with every cop in Eden!”

“I’m just … it’s …”

Belle’s voice dies behind a lump in her throat. Run. Run. Run. He’s lying to you. He’s worried about you.

Papa stares at her.

“Forget it.” She shakes her head. Kills the guilt coiling at the base of her spine. Ignores the gross curdling in her gut.

It’s just a fun night out.

And I needs to act especially normal for the next few weeks.

“Belle,” Desperation bleeds from Papa’s voice. “I just don't want to see you throw away your entire future!”

Belle rolls her eyes, slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder.

“Belle. Don’t you dare walk out that door!”

She slams it closed, stalking down the hall and to the storage shed.

~

Nomad’s Market

Nowhereisastreetname Street,

Eden Village, Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Evening, 12/28/0370

The nomads arrival is always random – despite following certain patterns. Slipstreams and planetary currents. Interplanetary politics. An uptick in pirate activity. Or whatever. Gaston barely cares right now. He’s more interested in his empty stomach than in the ebb and flow of nomads.

It’s worth it! He knows it is. This is the only moment he can steal. The nomads are only here for so long. But it seems wrong, too, to not spend this bit of time with Belle today.

Especially when she shows up every year for him. Her and Leone.

His fingers run over the thick solar-sails. It tingles and pricks his skin as the sun hits it. Glows that special orange yellow neon of liquid sunlight.

“This is really nice.”

The seller nods distractedly. “Yeah. Ma’s real good with the sails. That’s gotta be one of her best ones yet.” Unblinking, he turns a page.

Gaston shakes his head – yet another bookworm. He just can’t get away from them! He strokes his chin – hm. He needs to shave and pluck those feathers. Or maybe just skip all that nonsense and grow a beard. A feathery beard wouldn’t look too weird, right?

Focus.

“So, how much?”

“Eh. 100 silvers.” The seller finally looks up from his book. “Solar-cloth’s gotten more expensive.”

“Unfortunately.” Gaston says. “Run an empire on one fuel and eventually it will run out.”

“Right?” The seller laughs, marking his place in the book with a thick finger. “Ma’s gotten real mad at the factories though. Thinks they’re hiking the prices and withholding the stores.”

Running his hands over the solar-sails, Gaston reflects on his history with major corporations and shrugs. “Likely.” He considers a moment. “How much?”

“Hm.” The seller slides a bookmark in place. “500 silvers.”

Gaston nods and pulls out his wallet.

“Gaston?”

He smiles. Belle.

Oh wait!

“Why hello there Belle!” Gaston feels sweat pooling on the back of his neck. How does this woman always wander over when he’s plotting a surprise for her?!

“Looking at solar surfers?” She’s wanders over, hands clutching the strap to her messenger bag, her knuckles a bloody mess.

“What happened?” Gaston points.

“Punched a brick wall.” Belle looks away.

“What it do to you?” Gaston grabs his solar surfer, smiling as flyaway's frame Belle's face and tickle her cheeks. Now what do I do?

"Gaston." Belle growls. Despite the pleasant chill, her olive skin glows with sweat.

She's charming and delightful.

They walk in a brooding silence between the two-story business-homes. Little shop fronts peer from under multi-story buildings. Several have different stores on the second or third levels. Mr. Baker’s place, for example, is under Jolene’s Knick-Knacks. The nomads bustle around them with little stalls sitting at the storefronts.

Well, most. The Pomegranate Repair Shop – megacorporation supreme – as empty sidewalk…

…. And a new tag in the ally wall.

“Belle…”

“No one saw me.” She murmurs but she’s smirking.

I love you. It dies on his throat. It always does – at first because he hadn’t really decided what that meant. Now that he does… Gaston tightens his grip on the cart handles – his palms are slick with sweat that now coats the smooth wood. His heart his hammering and he curses himself for a fool and a coward. “Did you and your dad fight too?”

Crap.

“Too?”

“Why do you always focus on the one word …” Gaston groans.

“We could just drop it.”

“We could…”

They do. And the walk is quiet.

The street is rank: rank with the consequence of animals as transportation, rank with the odor of a wide variety of people who spent all day in the burning heat, rank with smoke steaming from the Ripway mines carried over the evening breeze.

The street is loud: loud with the wagons trundling home and the animals protesting this final labor, loud with the calls of mothers and fathers and family for their children, loud with boys chanting a skipping rhyme. “Jack and Jill sailed in the Black…”

Standing outside his home, Gaston screws up his courage again. “Belle. Can we talk?”

"About what?" Her shoulders are still hunched defensively. But her soft hazel eyes are filled with curiosity. Hunger. She's always hungry for something he can't give. One day, he'll find out what she wants and how to give it to her.

Isn't that what marriage is?

"I've got my sights set on Leone." Please be okay with this. Please.

Belle snorts. "Yeah, I think he'd find that funny."

"No." Gaston says seriously. "He's the lucky guy I'm going to marry."

“But he's…”

“The biggest disaster in town.” Gaston interrupts smoothly. "I know."

His father says the foundation of a healthy relationship is fire and oil. Two disasters making a disaster so big, it cancels out.

(He also says “Communication is king. And you have yet to master that. A failure of communication is the failure of a relationship.”)

Maybe Gaston should be taking dating advice from someone who brings a new person home every week, when he wants someone does the same thing.

“That won't make you happy…”

“But he makes me happy now!” Gaston frowns.

“Yeah, cause we’re friends. But. I don’t know Gaston. That sounds like a bad idea.” Belle stares into his eyes then looks away. "Are you going to hunt more pirates?"

Gaston bites his lip. "What does that have to do with Leone?"

“You really want to put him through that? A relationship-relationship with a pirate hunter? In a pirate hotspot?” Belle chews her lip. “You can disappear on us for a month easily. Then come back like nothing happened.” She jabs his arm. “Or come back hurt.”

"This has nothing to do with that!" Gaston pulls back, holding his arm. The old scars and close calls haunt him, sure. But if not him, then who?

"It has everything to do with it!" Belle stops walking, her fists shaking by her sides. "You're always running off into danger! You almost got yourself killed!"

"Pot, kettle?" He crosses his arms and glares down at her.

Belle looks away.

“And anyway, it’s not like I’m leaving the system.” Gaston shifts the solar surfer to his other side. “And I can always come back home if he needs me.

Belle chews her lip. “Leone hates violence. He is always begging for the peaceful resolution. Don’t you see? Who we are inherently is already a strain on our friendship. Do you really want to wreck the entire thing?”

Gaston runs his fingers through his feathers and hair. “I know.”

She folds her arms. “If your idea of a happy life is wedded bliss, don’t shoot yourself in the foot like this. Find a partner who’ll go with you or one you’ll stay home for.”

“Well Belle, he’s the only one who I feel at peace with.” Gaston walks past her, bumping his shoulder against hers. “So, after a bit of gentle wooing…”

“You? Gentle?! Reeeeeeaally…”

Gaston splutters. “Yes!”

She sobers, staring off in the middle distances. “I don’t think that will make you happy.” Belle says quietly. “And you do, you really do deserve to be happy.”

“But he makes me happy now.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Isn’t what enough?”

Gaston jumps and Belle swears. Then she groans.

“I am going to tie a bell on you!”

Leone rolls his eyes like that isn’t a serious threat.

“Hello, Lefou.” Gaston smirks.

Leone glances up, eyes twinkling. “Hello Gaston.”

Gaston beams. And then he sighs. “Is that a book?”

Leone glances down at his hand in mock surprise. “Well how did that get there?!”

Belle snorts.

Gaston rolls his eyes before trying to seize his book.

Why is he cursed to fall in love with bookworms who insist on wandering around blatantly reading unlicenced books?!

“Yet another on without holograms.” Gaston grumbles. “Really you two, why the taste for this crap?”

Leone sighs heavily. “Gastooooooon it’s just a book.”

Gaston feels a sharp pain of gladness.

This friendship is good. But it’s not enough. He wants them. He wants everything about them. One day. One day, he'll be brave enough to tell both of them. He swears on his mother's empty grave. One day.

“Now are you gonna give Belle that surfer or …”

“Leone!”

Chapter Text

The wind howls over Ripway, that blue-silver splash in red-orange earth under black-twinkle sky. It smacks Belle's face and whips her hair around. Belle laughs as she sails over the gleaming deeps, over the glowing blue and silver and midnight purple and the very, very occasional splash of pink. A peacock’s tail of glory with a scent so icy and sharp that Belle tastes it, a delicious poison slicing her tongue and chilling her sinuses.

Moonstone. Frequently found with sunstone but largely useless to society. Its bitter cold combined with the burning heat of sunstone made the infamous winds of Ripway the most dangerous to enjoy. This beautiful and treacherous combination attracted all the daredevils.

Riding this wind. Harnessing its fury. Taking her mind off her own.

“I’m gonna beat you wimps!”

“Not if I beat you first!”

Belle cackles as she slides in the gap between Gaston and the cliff wall, nearly cutting in front of Leone. He slides right and gives her the finger, grinning wildly.

And that’s – of course – when the sirens go off.

Belle’s smile melts into a frown. “Oh, Great.”

“Scatter!” screams a surfer in a different crevasse.

Leone whoops and fist pumps, leaning away from the gleaming sail. “It’s all fun and games til the cops come.”

“Then it’s hide and seek!” Gaston and Belle chorus. He catches her eye and grins.

She smirks back. “Follow me!”

~

The cave is deep, sharp, and cold with moonstone glowing in silvers, blues and whites. There’s no smell like moonstone – and it’s overpowering here, so strong she can taste the bitter, thick, pearl-smooth cold. They only just cut into here, Gaston nearly hit a wall and they’re still smothering laughter, bobbing behind the entrance.

Belle peers out of the cave mouth and overbalances as Gaston’s surfer bumps hers. As she falls forward - nearly out into the open - Leone and Gaston pull her back.

“Shh!” Leone giggles as they pull themselves deeper into the cave.

“Shh!” Belle giggles, grabbing Gaston's hand as she wobbles.

As they snicker, Gaston groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Children. The both of you.”

“But we’re both older than you.” Leone beams.

As Gaston splutters, Leone and Belle fist-bump. Then all three still as sirens pass the cave mouth. After several hundred heartbeats, the sounds die away, leaving only the ‘plink, plink, plink’ of water dripping, casting prismed rainbows on the moon- and sunstone.

Belle pops her magnets and jumps off her surfboard.

“What’s that in your pocket?” Leone thumps down beside her.

“What’s what?” Belle stretches, her fingertips brushing the cold ceiling.

“This?”

Leone carelessly holds out the sphere. Its dull golden sheen sullies the lights of the moonstone, a sun stealing light.

With calculated casualness, she plucks the sphere from Leone’s blunt fingers, shrugging as she says, “I don’t know.” She start tapping buttons again as the not-fire flickers around it. “Just some stupid puzzle I found. Still haven’t solved it.” She instantly finds the rhythm and smirks. Huh. I might actually solve it soon…

“Uh, Belle.”

She looks up: Gaston sounds genuinely concerned.

“When did your eyes start glowing in the dark?”

“Eh?”

Her finger twists the section, and her thumb presses the button.

A whooshing sound fills the cavern. Followed by a hiss and clicks.

Then green fireflies with long tails streak out as darkens descends. The long tails rapidly become lines, then orbits. The trio freeze as they stare at the stars and planets and galaxies surrounding them, all tinted green.

“It's a map!” Belle whispers in awe. Why? To where?

Leone’s shoulders slump as his jaw drops. Then he blinks.

“This is us, the Planet Montressor.” He presses the planet – stares as the map starts moving. “That's the Magellanic Cloud!”  

It skates through his hand, coiling green and scattering in bright twinkles.

Belle doesn’t know why dread suddenly pools in her gut. Maybe it’s that particular shade of green – the false-fire the sphere – map – had when she woke up from her nightmare.

“The Coral Galaxy!” Gaston watches the green shape scatter through his hand. “Cygnus Cross. Kerian Abyss.”

The same color Mama’s eyes had when she left. Dismissed as shadows of a bad dream she woke up from.

Somehow.

Somehow Belle knows what’s about to appear. The nightmares, the storybook, Bones, the map, the holograph in Papa’s locket, what little she remembers of Mama. The stupid simple question: What map would people kill for?

“Treasure Planet.” Belle breaths.

Which is where the map stops seconds after she says it.

The legend, the myth, the impossible reality.

“Flint's Trove? The loot of a thousand worlds?” Gaston laughs.

Leone grabs his arm, shaking him excitedly. “Do you know what this means?”

The map falls from her hand and bounces on the ground, ringing metal echoes through the air.

“Belle?”

Blood roars in her ears and the world tilts – or maybe finally rights itself after fourteen years of lies and secrecy. She takes a step back, the magnets strapped to her boots clunking against the stone in a way she usually found satisfying. Grounding.

They are anything but right now.

 “Mama … opened it.” Belle says slowly, weighing those impossible, those logical words. “That’s why she left.” 14 years ago today. “That’s why …” They left fourteen years ago today… Her voice hitches around the tears. “Uncle Ben…” She covers her face with her hands.

“This was your mom’s?” Leone picks it up.

With a whir and a click, the map disengages. The moonstone light fills the cave as the darkness and green spirals back into the map.

Belle nods tightly.

Gaston rests a strong, firm hand on her should. “Belle, please. Where did you find this?”

Belle sucks in a deep breath and flinches as sirens sound outside the cave. Everyone stands rigid and silent until they fade away.

As the last notes die out of their ringing ears, Belle stares at the map, the not-fire leaping and twisting into a sick green.

It’s … ill.

“Belle?” Leone goes to pocket the map.

She darts forward and snatches it from him. Frightened, he takes a step back.

The map is sick. It’s cursed. “It’s a cursed journey child.” LeGume had said, words slurred as he waved his drink. “Took Mary from us. My poor Mary.” He was right. Of all the people to be right…

“It’s cursed.”

Treasure Planet. Treasure Planet. Mama left me for Treasure Planet...

“Don’t you see… Everyone who handled it is dead. Bones. Mama. Uncle Ben.”

“Tell. No. One. Else. Or they will kill you.”

Of course ...

“They left me for this…” She feels distant, pulling together the pieces – a vessel of pain. “That’s what he meant.”

“Who?”

“Your father. I saw him once, drunk after… He said Treasure Planet took your mom from us.” Belle leans against the cave wall and examines the map. “’It’s a cursed journey child.’ Um. He said that’s why he and Papa got separated…”

Gaston shakes his head. “Father isn’t the most reliable source when he’s drunk, Belle. He gets all these crazy conspiracy theories.”

“Mama had this. Papa has a holograph of her playing with it.” Belle stares at it.

Leone frowns at her. “If your mother did have this, then she took it with her. So how did you get it?”

Gaston frowns, a series of emotions playing across his face so quickly Belle can’t even begin to decipher them. “You … you were there.”

“I… where?” Run. Run. Run. Run run run

Gaston grabs her arm, snatching the map from her hand. “You were there.”

She wrenches herself free with a vicious snarl. “What?”

“You were there!”

The green fire springs up from the map, burning so bright and big and sudden Belle almost screams.

Leone pushes between them and she tears her eyes from the false-fire. “What are you talking about?”

“Billy Bones. A murdered pirate with a stolen ‘family heirloom’.” Gaston holds up the sphere, the fire so big his arm has vanished into it. “This map.”

Belle snatches the map out of his hand – it doesn’t burn her because it isn’t real she’s just dreaming again. “Stop being stupid…” She doesn’t know what lie is about to pass her lips.

Gaston stretches to his full height, pushing past Leone, towering over the both of them. “Don’t. You. Dare. Lie! Bones is dead! And you have the map to Treasure Planet!”

Leone stands between them again, holding his arms out like that will keep them apart, hands shaking. “Calm. Down. Just calm down.” He locks eyes with Belle. “What really happened?”

“When the pirate – uh, Bones? – crashed. He said I look like Mama and gave it to me.”

Leone purses his lips and shakes his head. “He just gave this too you?” Leone’s skeptical. Rightfully so. Belle knows she’s the least honest person in their friend group.

“I … didn’t realize he was dying.” I failed. And now they know. She starts pacing, wrapping her arms around herself.

Leone groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Which hurts, coming from Leone. “Were you scared of getting in trouble?”

“Scared? I’m terrified. He … He …”

RUN! Belle shoves the map into her pocket, taking a deep, measured breathe. Treasure Planet. She left me. Run. Run. Run. She left me for Treasure Planet.

“Stop lying!” Gaston stomps across the cave floor, boots kicking up sand. “You’re not scared. You’re excited. You’re finally getting answers about what happened to your mother.”

Her hands ball into tight fists. “You’re jealous.” You'll leave me too.

“Shh!!!!” Leone hisses.

Silence reigns as the patrol slides past the cave again. The lights wink and sirens blare. They’re not really out to catch people, just drive them away. Also, scaring someone in the air might kill them.

As the last of the sound dies away, leaving their ears ringing, Leone steps back between them. “Guys. This doesn’t need to be a fight.”

Belle watches Gaston visibly grinding his teeth. “Bones, Belle, why did you not tell anyone about Bones? Even an anonymous tip …”

“Unlike you, Gaston, some of us aren’t strong.” She hurls fury like a javelin. “You’ve seen how big he is. And once he’s dead, what’s the point?”

“What’s the… Not letting me just find a dead body!? Not letting a crime scene fall apart so that we could find out who killed him!? Self-preservation!? You know that little thing that keeps you alive!?”

She grinds her teeth.

He misinterprets her pause, stopping his pacing to grab her by the shoulders. “Hello, he was murdered. If you didn’t do it, then you’re the next victim.”

“If I didn’t …” She shoves free - he lets her. He's stronger than her. By a lot.

Once again, Leone attempts to be the voice of reason. “It’s a fair assumption that at some point you might kill a guy. You did say he was a lot bigger than you and scared you. It’s not like anyone’s gonna be upset you offed a pirate.”

“I didn’t …”

Gaston shoves in front of Leone. “Which means that whoever did is hunting for you. And the map.”

She wants to scream and laugh and cry. She settles for throwing her hands in the air. “That’s why I didn’t tell anyone! I cleared out, left no signs, dead-ended every trail.”

Gaston points out the cave mouth. “Then you would have thrown the map into …”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” Belle hisses.

She pauses as Leone just stares at her, sheer horror on his face. He thought she might have killed someone and just … dismissed it. So, why is he upset now?

“You’re going to leave.” His voice is tiny, soft, hurt.

Belle freezes. That sick, black mess in her gut resurfaces, ten times worse than before when she slammed the door shut on Papa.

Why should I feel guilty for following my parent's examples?

“You-you’re going to run away. On some stupid treasure hunt. Aren’t you?”

“There are nights when the winds of the Etherium, so inviting in their promise of flight and freedom, made one's spirit soar!”

She’s stuck – again staring out into a world that’s more alien to her than the tiny fishbowl she’s trapped in. Her tongue freezes to the roof of her mouth.

“Aren’t you?!” Leone snarls.

“I’m NOT going to be stuck in Loserville my whole life!” Don’t yell at Leone. That won’t help.

“Belle?” Gaston’s voice is suddenly unguarded, fragile - a slap in the face that makes her even more angry.

“The stars are my birthright. I’m supposed to be up there.”

Gaston is like Belle. Vulnerability is a threat and violence is the answer. “Birthright?! What? Do you own the stars? Are you that crazy?”

“Crazy?” A sharp, bitter laugh escapes her. “Yeah. Sure. ‘Crazy as her father.’ ‘Mad pirate’s kid.’ ‘Strange girl.’” She stands, anger painting the world red. “Do you really think I can’t hear everything they say?!”

“Belle…”

“Forget it.” Belle shoves past Leone, kicking her solar surfer to face the cave mouth.

Gaston tries to grab her arm but misses as she sidesteps.

“Don’t you dare run away.”

Belle gestures rudely without looking back.

“Stop running away!” Gaston tries to grab her hand. She shoves him away.

“I’m trying to stop fighting you!” She continues walking.

Gaston growls. “Could you just stop being so blind to the people worrying about you?”

Belle tastes blood and stops chewing her lip. “I don’t know, can you, Mr. Run-Headlong-Into-Every-Fight?!”

“Guys!”

They ignore Leone.

“I fight to protect Eden.” Gaston growls, his feathers rising in anger and aggression. “To protect you and Leone.” His hands curl into fists. “What? You want me to stop? To abandon everything? Like your mom?”

“Shut.” Belle shoves him. “Up.”

Next thing she knows, his fist is flying.

She ducks and socks him under the chin.

Gaston’s father says they always were fire and oil – consuming each other and then burning out to the destruction of anything around them.

It’s times like these she reluctantly agrees with the jerk.

Belle finds herself on the ground. Her mistake – she’s not strong, especially when paired against a man like Gaston.

Gaston takes a step away, his hands shaking despite his sneer, his eyes haunted before the shutters slam down.

I messed up.

Belle staggers back to her feet.

“Hypocritical witch.” Gaston swears, spitting blood onto the sand.

“Right back atcha.” Belle growls.

“Good.” Clap. “Job.” Clap. “You. Clap. “Guys.” Clap.

Belle and Gaston turn and wince.

Izumi glares down at them from her hovercraft, uniform hazy in the sparking lights of the police hovercraft humming behind her.

Belle wipes the blood from her nose, commenting dryly, “Papa’s gonna love this.”

“Oh for the love of… What’s the Hawkins’s girl doing here again?!” Officer Murphy groans as he jumps from the hovercraft.

Gaston laughs hesitantly. “Officer Hazel. I can explain.”

“Save it for someone who cares.” She jumps from the craft. “Now do I need to get the cuffs out or not?”

Chapter Text

Eden Village,

Neverwinter Continent, Montressor Planet

Night, 12/26/0370

Thick cigarette smoke permeates the hover-car – Officer Murphey’s habit clings around him like a black cloud. The only thing that cuts through the stale tobacco is the stench of the day – animal refuse and rotten food and thick, sunstone-laden sand.

The streetlights flicker every few yards down the streets, casting light into the hover-car, each tamed flame a testament to how difficult progress is. How expensive. How burdensome.

Fireworks crack overhead: blue and green sparkles rain down. The boom sounds again and red sparks splatter and fall. There’s a crowd in the village green, and Belle can hear their cheering. It’s still Empire Week, not that anyone’s very patriotic here. Or, more accurately, they love their planet despite the ruling core worlds that crush them under their heels.

That being said, any excuse to set off illegal fireworks…

Someone limping past, hidden in dark alleys as they shuffle away, hands buried in their thick jacket. A sword dangles at their side, tarnished by the thin tongues of fire. They look up, a metallic eye flickering red as it scans the cop-car. Then they keep walking.

Beware the cyborg.

Her eye’s flick to Officer Murphy’s hands – the metallic seam barely hidden under blackleather gloves that he insists make him look cool.

Leone is still ranting. “’It’s just some harmless fun, Leone. No one will get hurt, Leone. We won’t fight tonight, Leone!’”

Belle and Gaston – sitting on either side – wince.

“And like a fool, I believed you!” Leone laughs, slumping back in his seat. “Anastasia was right. You two do nothing but get me in trouble.”

Belle hasn’t heard Leone say the Tremaine girl’s name in nearly 10 years…

“Oof.” Izumi says, her bushy tail twitching as she pulls it out of the crack in her seat. Again.

“Shut up.” Gaston snarls.

“Actually, we should be thanking you guys. We’re off Ripway duty now.” Officer Murphey turns right at the stop sign, never taking his eyes off the road.

“Con.grad.u.la.tions.”  Belle leans against the window, staring out into the streets. She frowns as they pass Mr. Baker’s store. They’re pointed towards the residential areas.

“No need to be that sarcastic.” Izumi grumbles, tucking her hair back into her cap. The Montressor-police logo – a sword through an anvil and stone – twinkles in the lamp light.

Belle sits up. “Um. That’s not the …”

“Oh, you are not cooling down in a cell sweetheart.” Izumi’s long, fluffy tail twitches again. “You’re poor, worried, devastated uncle and father need to know you’re alright.”

Gaston’s eyes widen as he sits up straight. “You wouldn’t…”

“Oh, you’re next. You’re father’s quite distressed.” Izumi chuckles darkly.

Officer Murphy laughs. “It’s your fault, anyway, that all the cells are full.”

“Mm-hm.” Izumi looks back at them through the rear-view mirror. “So dedicated to pirate hunting.”

Officer Murphey grins, bright teeth flashing in the rear-view mirror, as he parks the hovercar in front of the Observatory.

“Aaaand we’re here!”

“Kill me now.” Belle whispers.

Gaston shrugs helplessly.

At least this time, Papa isn’t standing at the fence waiting for her.

~

“Dr. Hawkins?”

Belle strategically stands behind the cops when they open the door.

She still gets a good look at the expression on Papa’s face.

Belle hunches her shoulders, burrowing deeper into Mama’s black jacket. She’s burning up – is it the weather or her embarrassment?

“Belle James Libra Hawkins!” Papa jumps up from his seat, slamming his hands on the table.

Belle casually steps over the threshold, one booted foot firmly planted on the brown tile. “Okay, thanks for the lift, guys!”

“Not so fast.” Officer Murphy rests his hand on her shoulder.

She winces as he hits the molted bruises. He doesn’t know they’re there and that means he can’t tattle on them but still…

“We apprehended your daughter operating a solar vehicle in a restricted area.” Izumi side-eyes her. “Ripway Canyon, to be specific.”

“Belle!”

She quietly wishes the floor would swallow her whole. It worked in the novel she read this afternoon! But, unfortunately, wishes don’t work in her universe.

“Moving Violation 9-0-4, Section 15, Paragraph... um...”

“Six?” Belle rubs her bruised cheek – which, she notes, has Papa’s attention.

“Yes, six. Thank-you.” The rookie says.

“Don’t mention it.” Belle shrugs.

“Belle!” Papa sighs, thing cups her chin, tipping her head into the light. “What did you even do to yourself?”

Belle hunches her shoulders, burrowing deeper in Mama’s jacket. “Nothing?”

Izumi glares down at her. “’Nothing?’” She repeats, voice dripping with enough caustic sarcasm to burn a hole through the stone floor.

She shrugs, feeling the blush climb from her neck to her cheeks.

“Due to repeated violations of statute 15-C, we have impounded her vehicle.” Officer Murphey says.

Papa sighs.

Izumi pushes Officer Murphey out of the way, jolting Belle to the side as well. Officer Murphey’s hand brushes her arm in the shoving. She blinks, trying to banish the weird tightness in her chest and even out her breathing.

“Beware the cyborg.”

Impulsively, Belle pushes free, straightening her Mama’s jacket. She about-faces and walks outside into the garden.

Izumi gives her a confused look, but Papa is talking.

She leans against the wall, numbly listening to Papa convince Izumi and Officer Murphy to stay long enough for books and coffee. (Of course he has. They haven’t told him everything yet.)

She is not hiding behind the flowering tree. The small garden faces the residential streets, the greenery nearly overflowing onto the sidewalk until the streetcleaners come this weekend to trim back all encroaching growth.

Someone walks past, looming over the short, white picket-fence. Belle holds her breathe, her heartbeat drowning out all nighttime sounds and the sharp crack of fireworks.

Run, run, run. Beware the cyborg. Tell no one ‘sept Jackie. Run. Run.

They continue walking, not even glancing her direction.

She takes a shaky breath, sliding down the rough stone wall, staring at her hands. Sunstone and sand and earth stain her fingers. Blood oozes from cracked scabs on her knuckles. Still dirty. Dirty as …

It hasn’t even been 24 hours yet.

Her breath hitches in her throat and her eyes sting.

She stares up at winking stars, listening to the popping and booming of fireworks far out of sight, and waits for the ache to go away.

It won’t.

Footsteps crunch in the gravel. Belle flinches.

“Hey.”

Gaston.

He ducks under the tree, hitting his head on one of the branches. Flowers show around them, a wash of bleeding red and blinding white. Leone sits on her other side and leans his head against the wall. They’re silent until the last timid flower drifts between them.

“Are you seeing things again?”

“NO!” Belle grabs her wrist, the old scar burning as she touches it.

Leone watches. He’s always been too observant. “Belle. Stop pretending you’re something you’re not. We know you are a Seer. Let’s deal with it instead of you blowing up and getting in legal trouble on loop.”

“I’m not. Seeing. Things.” 14 years. Run. They know. 14 years. Promise of flight and freedom. 14 years. “I’m not seeing things.”

A massive “BOOM!” rips through the air. Not a firework – that deep, shuddering boom

Leone jumps up and Gaston swears as his head hits the flowering tree. Belle scrambles for her pistol but fails to find it.

Right. Izumi hasn’t given it back yet.

“Inside now!” Gaston pushes her and Leone forward as Izumi and Murphey dart out.

People in the streets run around like frightened bees looking for who dared stab their nest. An electronic shriek slices cuts through the panic. The radio, buzzing in the corner nearest the door, fulfilling its dire duty:

“Alert. Incoming unregistered ships. Weapons discharged. Threat level: Red. Please seek shelter in a calm and orderly manner. This is not a drill…”

Chapter Text

“Alert. Incoming unregistered ships. Weapons discharged. Threat level: Red. Please seek shelter in a calm and orderly manner. This is not a drill…”

 A roaring boom echoes down the streets, a laser cannon with its frantic whirring increasing in pitch until the next shot obliterates more of Eden. Wood and stone crack and splinter. Belle tastes the bitter smoke, hears the frightened screams, feels the booming, shuddering gunfire and blaster shots.

Shuddering, screaming explosion.

Belle yelps, as the earthquake tries to knock her off her feet.

“To the bomb shelter!” Papa shoves her preferred rifle – Manic Revival – and several boxes of ammunition into her hands.

A ship bobs over the street, a flag waving so high up she can’t make out the details. The laser cannon fires and the lethal light reveals the skull with a feathered, tricornered hat and crossbones. A skiff drops from the ship, overflowing with pirates.

The bomb shelter barely fits all of them. The men take up positions close to the door.

Belle leans against the concrete wall, fingers flying as she loads her rifle. While blowing hair out of her eyes, she slides the extra ammo into her belt-pouch. And her hand freezes as fingers brush porcelain. The chipped teacup…? How?

“Did anyone see the flag?” Gaston whispers.

“Hook’s.” Belle will consider the mystery of the teacup later.

Izumi sits with her. Triple-checking her weapons. She hands Belle her formally confiscated pistols.

“Thanks.” Belle straps the belt on, then clasps the buckle around her thigh, balancing the rifle in the crook of her arm, muzzle pointed to the ground. She peers outside.

Papa raises his hand, signaling for a silence.

A breath.

Gunshots stab her ears. Booms from a laser cannon shake the world. Glass shatters, ripping through the cold night air. Crackling, seething fire spreads under the deafening battle. Louder than all that is the screaming. So much screaming.

Belle tightly grips the worn wood and polished metal.

Izumi and Leone glance at each other.

Gaston’s hand squeezes hers. She squeezes back, cold and quiet.

“Promise me you’ll won’t get hurt again.” Belle breathes the words before she even realizes she’s speaking.

“Okay.” Gaston says simply, still holding her hand, his warm calluses scrapping hers.

“Promise.”

Gaston looks in her eyes. “I promise I won’t get hurt.”

She feels a snap, like a thin thread breaking. It’s a relief and a freedom. She nods numbly.

“Find the map! And find the girl!” A voice booms far, far too close – the words clear through the concrete and sounds of battle.

“Map?” Papa mouths.

Leone’s face twists in horror and he points at Belle.

Her hand flies to her pocket and the heavy sphere.

“Belle. Is there something you need to tell me?” Papa whispers with glacial calmness.

Wait.

An incessant whirring cuts under the noise of battle.

That’s a laser hand-held cannon.

She can see it in her mind’s eye – the majorly oversized rifle, the glowing purple mouth that spits neon death, the clicking gears and shifting mechanisms. If she can hear it, it’s aimed at them.

Where?

Vwhir! Belle’s head snaps up, to the ceiling. The sound gets louder.

“On the roof!” she screams.

Leone shouts and pulls Izumi back as rubble falls and a hole opens up. Papa fires.

A sword flashes as Belle staggers back, almost knocking Gaston off his feet. Leone screams.

Officer Murphey falls and doesn’t get back up.

Gaston roars and leaps, sword flashing. But the pirate captain simply steps back, snapping his fingers. A pirate drops between them, dropping dead as Gaston’s sword slices through his neck.

Belle fires at the pirate captain. But a pirate behind him drops.

“Ah. Her daughter.” The captain grins, a white crescent grin – the only thing she can see clearly under the shadows of his hat.

He darts forward – striking like a snake.

She staggers back, trips, twisting the rifle to catch the sword about to cleave her skull. The captain cuts through steel and wood like butter and she hits the ground, concrete rubble digging through her Mama’s jacket. Blood coats her hands.

He takes down her defense with three blows – brutal strength and decades of fighting easily outmatches six years of training and a slim body. She barely feels the blow thunder down on her head.

The world goes foggy and dim. Someone grabs her. Blood fills her mouth as her chin throbs. The only thing she hears with any clarity is Gaston screaming her name. (She’d never heard him so terrified.)

She blinks – how much time did she loose? Hook carries her over this shoulder, the ground gets more and more distant, a rope ladder swings below. Her blood roars in her ears.

Still. Wait. Wait until he can’t drop you.

Maybe it would be better to be dropped.

Her head pounds and she remains limp. There’s a knife in her boot and pistol in her belt. She’s been snatched and grabbed like a doll.

He’s panicking. He’s in a rush.

The captain throws her down onto the skiff. She remains limp, peering under her lashes. The world is blurry and full of wood. A pair of boots thud past her line of sight.

“To the ship.”

“But sir! The map and girl!”

“I’ve got the girl. Smee will get the map.”

The map is still in her pocket.

She was thrown on her side and fell towards her stomach, sheltering an arm out of sight. She inches it towards her pistol, still watching under her lashes.

Her fingers tighten around the grip. She silently takes a deep breath, tensing.

Steady. Steady. Steady.

Those bloodstained boots stop in front of her.

Years of practicing a quick draw pay off. The pirate drops.

Wrong pirate.

Drawing her knife with her free hand, she staggers to her feet, slashing a nearby pirate as she fires at another.

Someone grabs her hair and she screams as she falls back down, slicing the bladed. It hits something – someone – and she flies forward as her hair comes free.

A ship looms over her, the belly of the beast practically on top of them, the articulated scaffolds open to the landing bay still empty of skiffs and long-boats.

Belle – barely taking the nano-second to observe her coming doom – spins, firing.

Another pirate falls.

But this is a losing battle.

And the captain, leering from the other end of the skiff, knows it.

I could jump. I might not die.

She would be helpless, wishing she was dead, though.

She grinds her teeth. None of these pirates have drawn weapons and she killed and wounded them – you killed someone. You killed. You looked them in the eye and killed them. They want her alive.

They want her alive. “The girl and the map.”

They want her alive.

She lunges towards the edge, stabbing one of the pirates in the throat. Blood splatters her face as she nearly, nearly, almost so close goes over the edge.

Someone grabbed her jacket. She screams, firing behind her, and hears the skiff thunk as it hits the landing bays.

But it’s not too late. Not yet.

Someone grabs her hair and another her arm. She bites the nearest man, swinging with the free arm, trying to get them off her.

“Gentlemen.”

A gravelly voice fills the landing bay. Thick with danger and smooth with absolute self-assurance.

The fight goes out of all them as all five pirates and Belle turn to face him. A tall, whip-thin man with golden skin and knife-sharp features. Drying blood covers his hairy chest and splatters over his right eye. He walks barefoot, each step as graceful as a dancer. Belle’s insides freeze as she makes eye-contact with poison-green irises ringed in blood-red.

He holds up a burning fist, fire licking harmlessly over his knuckles. Like the map still tucked away in her pocket.

Unlike the map, she thinks that fire is very real and very dangerous.

“Step away from the belladonna.” He says, smiling with teeth that are too sharp, too long and waving a metal arm, each finger perfectly articulated.

“Beware the cyborg.”

“Lumiere.” The captain stands on the edge of the skiff. “Are any of my crew alive?”

How dare this murderer and rapist sound vulnerable.

Lumiere sneers, looking down a long, hooked nose. “Come up and see.”

Hook snaps his fingers. The pirates lunge. Belle instantly fires – last bullet – and jumps out of their range.

She takes a calculated risk, vaulting onto the ship. If Lumiere’s that dangerous, she’ll survive this.

Or be killed by Lumiere.

She makes the mistake of looking at this Lumiere. He snarls, kicking a pirate over the edge and falling, falling, falling. He then releases another pirate who drops, burning and screaming and twisting on the wooden floor. A wooden floor that is littered with bodies – more than the five pirates on the skiff.

Something pops and Belle yelps as she jumps away from a sudden heat. Fire.

Fire licks up the walls and races over ropes, white-hot and too bright to look at. Fire races over the ceiling, sifting through the cracks. Fire spreading from the dead pirate to a dying pirate. The stench of burnt meat and ship-fuel fills the air. She shields her eyes and says it’s because of the fire and only because of the fire.

He rigged this place to go up. He rigged the ship to burn up.

Belle feels her jaw drop and she glances at the single skiff bobbing in the landing bay. Then back at the fight. The captain dodges the flames and fist. Lumiere tanks a blow on his cybernetic arm, the sound of metal striking metal rings through the air.

The captain parries and dances back a step, and jumps out of the landing bay, his hand slamming into the controls of the skiff before he hits its floor. The ship drops.

The skiff stutters, then flares to life, shooting into the dark night and glowing firelight.

“Pirate!” She stands on the edge of the deadly drop and roars. “Come back and fight! Coward!”

Before she can step back, Lumiere grabs her by the waist and pulls her behind him. “Belledonna we need to go!”

The scaffolding creaks ominously – how long has it been doing that? – and then the thick metal bars start falling.

Lumiere drags her up the stairs, past more bodies and around fire and through suffocating heat. She lets him, she doesn’t know where to go and still aspires to survive the night. Thick smoke, toxic with the odor of burning flesh and fuel and plastics, shrouds anything not directly touched by fire. At one point, they walk over a floor so hot Belle thinks her soles melt.

It’s barely a minute, but it’s one of the longest minutes of her life.

Then they’re in the open air, smoke billowing behind them but the decks still mostly intact.

There are more bodies that Belle doesn’t have the presence of mind to truly register.

Maybe that’s because she can only see the strangely non-descript ship that slowly sails closer and closer. It warps in her vision – the probable concussion or the dark of night or the smoke, she can’t tell. Each detail pleads to not be noticed. She can’t even define the figurehead – but it does have one. But her gut screams ‘danger’ and her mind agrees.

But Lumiere pulls her towards the ship, that mere shape and nothing more.

Something is very wrong.

No shoot.

Wait. Lumiere is pulling her to that ship.

“Hey!” she digs in her heels. “What…”

“Belladonna, the fire!” He is much, much stronger and this is NOT how she wanted that demonstrated.

“Are you crazy?! We can’t fight a whole ship!”

“The engine room will blow soon.” In the space of a nano-second, Lumiere pulls her to the deck edge and wraps his arm around her waist, and jumps.

She shrieks. But they aren’t falling for long, barely a second, before they rise.

Belle shouts and clings to Lumiere. His metal hand grips the deck railing, creaking ominously. His flesh arm tightens around her waist, and he pulls, heaving them both onto the deck.

“Lumiere!” A shout from the steering wheel.

Belle locks eyes with a massive chimera with two sets of dragon horns and a violent red cape.

He’s huge.

“Gogogogogo!” Lumiere is shouting.

The chimera jumps and spins the steering wheel. “Punch it Potts!”

The ship jerks and leaps through the air. Engines roar, shaking the entire ship. There’s a cracking, breaking, sound. Lumiere suddenly pulls her down so that they nearly lay flat on the deck.

The pirate ship explodes. Debris flies everywhere. Fire leaps through the sky in billowing clouds of white, red, orange. Smoke coils thick and black, replacing all clouds in the area.

Twisted, useless metal plummets. It’s a manmade thunderstorm, short-lived and beautiful and deadly.

Belle whistles, impressed. She can’t wait to tell Gaston and Leone…

… which requires getting back to them…

Punching the wooden floor, Belle pushes herself to her feet.

Footsteps thunder and the portly silvaite who wanted banned books staggers onto the deck from the shadowed staircase, practically careening into the wall, skidding to a stop, hand outstretched. His thin mustache seems burned, and his plump cheek definitely is.

“Captain! We need to leave. Now!”

“But the belladonna…” Lumiere gestures to her.

“She can open the map!” The man pants, moping his face with an unnecessarily-lacy handkerchief. “She can open the map!”

Lumiere looks between her and the new stranger. “But…”

The chimera blinks owlishly. “Cogsworth…” he rumbles.

“Lumiere trust me!”

The tall man’s eyes dart between Cogs-something and her, his face frighteningly blank as his posture drops into a loose, easy stance.

Belle runs. To the landing bay. Where’s the ship’s landing bay? She needs a skiff she needs to escape she needs Papa and Gaston and Leone she wasn’t meant to fight alone but she can run

She’s thrown against the wall hard enough to see stars. She blinks, staggering to her feet. Her hand is empty, pain stabs through her wrist and arm. Her knife is gone. She bumps into the wall again as she backs up, yanking her pistol from her belt, aiming with shaking hands.

That’s twice she’s hit her head in a very short amount of time.

Lumiere just stares at her impassively, showing no emotion, moving with that loose, easy, predatory gait. It’s too alive for a dead face like that.

She blinks and the man is inches from her face, her wrists caught in his impossibly strong grip. She shrieks as he twists, the pistol falling from her fingers. Doesn’t matter – she hadn’t had time to reload it.

Belle struggles, her heel kicked something – her knife! So close and so incomprehensibly far away.

Lumiere spins her around and shoves. She falls, catching herself on her hands, pain jolting up her arms. She jumps to her feet only to hear the click of a lock.

No.

No. This is not happening.

She screams, hurling herself at the door. Grabs the handle and pulls, bends, kicks, fails to break it.

Stop.

Use your head.

In the time it will take her to find a way out – to escape this stupid room and find the landing bay and steal a skiff, they’ll… they’ll probably have already exited the atmosphere.

And when she’s in the Black, there’s nowhere to go.

I’ve been kidnapped.