"One day, I plan to love so loudly, my body abandons every demon harvesting me." Arati Warrier

---- 

XII.

Safe. Safe. Safe.

Such was the chant that was flowing through Belle's mind in that moment. Her heart was thundering. Her limbs were shaking. It was as though her body was determined to be afraid, but her mind wasn't. Belle didn't want to be afraid of Peter, and she knew in the deepest parts of her soul that she didn't need to be. Such certainty was another sort of terrifying.

Belle was too busy in that moment reminding herself that Peter was safe to remember that she had meant to avoid him. In fact, she was not at all certain how she had come to be in such close proximity with him, but she was glad that she had done. To hear what he had said in her defence filled her with a sort of security that she had never felt before.

Thoughts of any sort of residual or underlying prejudices, anxieties or doubts about her appearance and what it would mean to stand up with her, all vanished. Belle knew that Peter was proud to stand up with her, and he would put anyone who had anything nasty to say in their place. Belle had not heard what those women had been saying about her, but she had heard it all before. She did not need to imagine. But nobody had ever spoken for her like that before.

Not even Belle, herself, had spoken for herself like that before.

Looking up at Peter, whose gaze was focussed ahead as he led them through the crowd to the dance floor, made her want to cry. All resolve to spare him from the burdens she carried had vanished, and Belle knew that she would punish herself for it later.

But she wanted to dance with Peter. She wanted to dance with him like normal young women danced with young men. She wanted to be spun about a dance floor and pretend like her nightmares were not realities, and that her burdens did not exist, and that she might have what Susanna had been blessed with today.

But there was something else inside of her burgeoning. It was like the truth was more at the forefront of her mind than it had ever been before. It was bubbling to her lips and she wanted to speak. She had been very careful to keep much of herself a secret from everyone.

Nobody knew even from whence she came, and yet she felt the first secret spill out of her mouth with no sense of control at all.

Just as Peter delicately left her in the line of ladies and took his place opposite her in the line of gentlemen, Belle uttered, "Saint-Martin."

Peter's brows furrowed slightly at her confession. "I beg your pardon?"

The music started and Belle realised suddenly that she had quite no idea of the steps. Her eyes widened as she froze. But Peter stepped forward and claimed Belle with an elegant sense of gallantry. He claimed her hand and placed his other on the small of her back. Belle took a breath as she reached up her other arm to place her hand on his shoulder. She allowed him to lead as they broke away from the line of dancers.

"I wanted to dance a waltz anyway," he murmured with a wry smile.

Peter had saved her. It was a different kind of saving, but it was one that she enjoyed. It was one that she was certain that she could quite easily get swept up in if she allowed herself. But Belle was quickly learning that her resolve was far weaker than it ought to have been.

She really took no notice of the other dancers as she kept her eyes on Peter, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see that several other couples had paired off as they had and were dancing together rather than in the line.

"Saint-Martin?" he prompted quietly as they turned. "Is that what you said?"

Belle nodded. She had certainly said it. She had practically shot the information at him as thought it had desperately escaped the confines of its prison inside of her mind.

"It where I was born," she returned. "It is where I am from."

Belle wondered how the colour blue could ever be seen as warm, but it was when she looked into Peter's eyes. They were warm and caring and safe. What pleasurable oceans they would be to get lost in.

"You have come a long way, haven't you?" he said softly.

Belle could hear the layers to that observation, and she knew what he was meaning, and Peter really had no idea.

The musicians continued to play their romantic strings as Peter effortlessly led Belle, who really was like a newborn fawn with her inexperience. But no matter what she looked like, Belle was entirely swept up in the moment, and she experienced a kind of peace for those three minutes. It was the sort of piece that one could only dream of.

The hand that held hers was clasped around her tightly, and the other on the small of her back, with only a few layers of fabric separating it from the scars that so many like her bore, held her close.

And she didn't look down, nor away, nor anywhere that was not his gaze.

Those three minutes were perfect.

But they ended when the music did, and Peter released her, though he did not step away, as he applauded the musicians like everyone else. Belle snapped herself out of her trance as she took in the ballroom for the first time, and she, too, clapped. There was certainly more than one pair of eyes on them. Dozens in fact. Eyes that were curious, eyes that were disapproving, and there were certainly eyes that were green.

Belle's immediate, instinctive thought was that they ought not to be jealous, for nothing could ever come of this. But that pain, the pain that had been plaguing her stomach these last weeks, reared its ugly head, and Belle seemed to move a few inches closer to Peter without even realising it.

Belle didn't want to say goodbye. She didn't want to move away. Would there be anything that anyone could say in this moment to make her want to do the right thing? What she wanted to do was talk, and be heard, and be listened to, and be understood. She wanted somebody to know her. Was that allowed? Was she allowed one good person to know who she was?

Peter looked back to Belle, and he smiled when he found her eyes, which had not left him. His smile was one that quickly set her at ease. It was the wide one that she liked.

"People will ask you questions now," Belle commented nervously, "now that you have stood up with me." She did not mean for it to sound like a warning, but then she realised that perhaps that was sensible.

"What answers shall I give them?" Peter replied.

Belle really didn't know. Her conviction was nowhere to be found tonight. But there was something that she would need to guard, and she would now have him guard it, too. "Tell them what you will," she murmured. "But please, please don't tell them where I have come from."

Peter smile vanished as he peered at her intently. "And break your trust? Never," he promised.

Belle's heart swelled. She might have cried. She might have cried for the beauty of the night, and for the beauty that was Peter, and for the beauty of what might have been. But she knew that when this night was over, she would cry for her reality.

"I want to talk to you," Belle continued softly, "if you will listen to me."

Peter nodded, a sympathetic expression on his face, as he offered Belle his arm once more. She did not hesitate in taking it. Peter led her once more through the crowd, taking no notice of the stares of the onlookers. Belle was not at all certain where his family were, but she was quite sure that they would be looking on at Peter and his companion also.

Peter expertly led Belle down a hallway in Ashwood House, and the sound of the instruments muffled. Shortly after, he seemed to find what he was looking for as he found a set of doors that opened out onto a small stone balcony that overlooked the gardens below. The air was fresh with a slight bite to it as the brief English summer faded. Belle almost found it laughable that this weather was considered summer.

Regardless of their little sun, there was great beauty here, and Belle would not have wanted to be anywhere else. Belle leaned against the stone banister and Peter casually sat on top of it, a foot or two away from her. His hands rested on his knees as he waited, never pushing.

"I am sorry that I have been ..." Belle's mind went blank as she tried to search for the word in English. "Dédaigneux ... do you know this word?" She frowned.

Peter subtly shook his head, but he did not speak.

Belle thought hard, searching amongst all the vocabulary she had memorised. "Not talking," she continued. "Not talking. Rude. You are nothing but kind and I must be horrible to you sometimes."

"You are not rude. I have never thought you rude," Peter assured her quietly. "I don't want you to apologise for things that are not your fault. You wanted to talk to me. What did you want to tell me?"

What did Belle want to tell Peter? She wanted someone to know everything, and to tell her that it would be alright. She wanted to be comforted like a child was after a bad dream, and to be promised that her fears weren't real.

"There was a hurricane last year." Belle hadn't thought of where to begin, but she had begun somewhere. It certainly wasn't the beginning of her story, but it was already more than she had told anyone. "It was a bad one, and people were not careful, they made mistakes."

Belle could vividly remember the chaos that was the preparations for the storm. People running about, shouting orders, and neglecting things like locks and keys.

"I had waited for a long time," years, in fact, "to have a chance to escape. People had tried before me. But they were hunted. With the hurricane I had a chance to escape, a chance not to be followed, and I took it."

Just speaking the world, reliving the memory, made Belle's heart thunder in her chest at such a pace that it made her feel nauseous. She leant down on her elbows, nestling her forehead in the palms of her hands as she closed her eyes and breathed.

"You were so very brave," uttered Peter delicately.

Belle could hear that he was on tenterhooks. He didn't know the right thing to say, or if what he had said was the right thing. But he was trying.

"I knew it was a possibility that I could have died in that storm, and I was willing to die rather than go back. I wished for death so many times." As she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of Peter flinching at her words. Belle immediately bit down on her lip.

"I'm sorry," he apologised immediately. "I'm so sorry you ever had to feel that way."

Belle had lost count of the number of times she had prayed for death. Every time it happened, every time he came near, every time any one of the unsafe men came near, she wished to die, to leave her abused body behind.

"I didn't know where I was going, but I wanted to get as far away from Saint-Martin as possible. I stowed away on a ship and I made it to a country called Portugal."

The very fact that she had reached Portugal, that she had put so many miles between her and that life, made Belle believe that the danger was over. She was free. It was over. She couldn't be hurt anymore.

"My freedom was brief, and my fate was cruel." Belle shuddered as the memories came flooding back, the ones that she had tucked away into a place where they could only haunt her in her nightmares.

Belle heard Peter step down off of the banister. "May I touch you?" he asked tenderly. "May I hold you?"

Belle couldn't look at him. If she did, she knew that she would cry and lose all resolve. But she nodded. Thinking these thoughts, she felt unsafe. She wanted safe.

She felt Peter's arm around her then, resting gently on her upper arm, rubbing it softly, comfortingly.

As she vividly remembered being discovered, captured, corralled and herded like an animal by the smugglers who had found her in Portugal, she focussed her energy on the sensation of Peter's arm around her. What they did to her in that alleyway ...

Belle turned into Peter's chest and she cried, no longer able to hold it in, or hold her resolve together. Peter immediately wrapped his arms around her tightly. The tightness of his embrace was what she needed to feel as though she was not about to fall apart of go everywhere at once. She needed it to feel safe. She needed him to feel safe.

Belle didn't know for how long she cried. "They caught me," she whispered after a long time. "And they ... they hurt me." Her voice was shaky and broken.

Peter's already tight embrace grew even more so.

"And when they were done, they put me back in chains on a ship with others they had caught and stolen." To be back on a ship after she had tasted freedom briefly had been devastating. Everything had been devastating, but bright lights had been difficult to find in her life, and to have one snuffed so quickly and so cruelly, had broken her. The smugglers had taken what little she had left and had broken it.

The men she had known, every one of them to that point, had used her and ruined her and had taken whatever they had wanted from her.

It was a little while later that Alex had been captured as well and brought down into the hold, and Belle, for the first time, met a man who would not take anything from her.

Belle couldn't share anything more. Not right now. While she had not said the words, she had insinuated, and Peter now knew what had happened to her. Rather, Peter now knew one of the days in Belle's life that haunted her nightmares. What would he think? "It was my fault that time," she whispered. "I was alone. I wasn't careful. I –"

"It was not your fault," Peter interjected forcefully. He leaned away from her only so that he could angle his face down, before lifting her chin so that she could look at him. As soon as she saw the conviction in his eyes, she lost whatever composure she had found. "What evil men do is never the fault of their victims. You bear no guilt. You owe nothing. Lord –" he hissed, and swore under his breath, "– it is not your fault," he emphasised again. But he softened, and he lifted his hand to gently brush away one of her tears with the back of his knuckle. "You don't have to be afraid. I promise you that nobody will ever hurt you again. You are safe. It will be alright."

Peter had uttered those words that Belle had wanted to hear. But it didn't settle her in the way that she had hoped. And she knew it was because everything wouldn't be alright. How could it be?

----

This was an emotional rollercoaster to write. I'm so proud of my Belle. She's begun to trust.  She's picked a good one to trust. 

What an emotional few days. Have you all been like me and feeling everything by listening to Red (Taylor's Version)? I'm currently listening to the ten minute All Too Well for like the 10,000th time. The short film omg. The whole album got me remembering, in my feels, crying, and just ugh, it's stunning. 

And then I've been crying all day for a different reason. I saw on Instagram last night that Winter the Dolphin died. When I tell you I was weeping. And I've just started again. First introduced to her through the Dolphin Tale movies, and have followed ever since. I have been so upset today, the poor, beautiful creature. I watched both the movies today and wept through them. 

RIP Winter <3