Thaw

"𝐢 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫, 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐞; 𝐢 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐝, 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭."

❅

Several minutes later, Belle finds herself alone in a room with a now-sleeping wardrobe and a lot of fancy fabrics strewn across the floor.

Ignoring Wanda's soft snoring, Belle quickly rushes to the window at the other side of the room, grimacing when it slowly opens with a loud creaking noise.

To her dismay, as Belle gazes down the ice and snow-covered tower, she realizes that she must be more than 100 feet in the air--not optimal for a quick escape.

Damn it, she thinks to herself, desperately looking around the room for anything to aid her in her escape.

"Hey!" Belle whips around to see what inanimate object is interacting with her, but she quickly fails to see anything that could've sourced the whisper from moments ago. "Over here, by the fire."

Tentatively approaching the small fireplace in the corner of the room, Belle asks, "who are you? Or, I mean, what are you?"

"You see the hairbrush over there?" The voice rings out after a minute.

"Uh...yes," Belle says, gingerly picking up the hairbrush before saying, "er- hello?"

To her surprise, laughter rings out from behind her that definitely is not coming from the hairbrush in her hands.

"HAHAHA....you look....so dumb.....right now...." the voice wheezes out, pausing every few words as a new burst of laughter overtakes it. "Yeah, no, I'm not the hairbrush; I just wanted to see if you'd actually believe me right."

Belle scoffs, dropping the hairbrush back on the shelf where she found it before turning back to the fireplace. To her surprise, she sees a heavily animated fire poker twitching around in laughter, still unable to form a coherent sentence from his laughter.

"So you're the fire poker..." she confirms to herself. "What's your name?"

After finally seeming to calm himself down enough to engage in civil conversation once more, the fire poker turns his attention to the girl in front of him. "I'm Bucky. And you are?"

"Belle," she replies, shocked when she realizes that this is the first person/object/whatever the hell you call them to actually ask for her name.

"Belle," he repeats to himself. "A beautiful name, and not just because that's literally what it means."

"Uh, thanks?" She says, unsure of the motives behind his seemingly backhanded compliment.

"Say, you haven't been by the common area recently, have you?" Bucky asks, changing the subject before Belle can put too much thought into his previous words.

"Only briefly, before I found my father and was locked up by a Frost Giant."

"Damn it," he sighs, snapping Belle out of her self-pitying thoughts just long enough to listen to the man's words.

"Why? Is the something you need down there?"

"More like is there someone I need down there," he mutters. "My husband, Steve, was turned into a compass when all of this," he says, gesturing to his fire poker body, "happened. He can't walk up the tower stairs and I can't walk down, so I haven't seen him in ages."

"I'm sorry," Belle says quietly, truly pitying the man in front of her. "So, you were an actual... person before all of this happened?"

"Yes," he chuckles, "And quite a handsome one for that matter."

"That's horrible. How did all of this hap-"

"Say, if you see him, could you give him a message for me?" Bucky interrupts, and Belle pushes aside his unintentional rudeness; after all, if she lost a lover, she would be quite eager to get a message to them as well.

"Of course; although I feel that I should tell you, I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to leave this room, much less wander around the castle."

"Oh, nonsense. Knowing Thor, he's probably working on a plan to smuggle you out of the room as we speak," he muses, laughing at his friend's activities. "Anyways, if you see Steve, just... tell him I miss him, alright? Oh, and that I love him, obviously."

"Of course," Belle smiles, turning around to examine the room once more as her conversation with Bucky comes to a natural end.

❅

Elsewhere, back in Villeneuve, John sulks in the local tavern, pitying himself after his latest rejection at the hands of Belle.

However, as the reliable and trustworthy narrator that I am, I have decided to spare you from his pathetic monologuing, since I find it to be quite unnecessary (and, for lack of better words, I think that he's an arrogant asshole).

Basically, to summarize, he forces Lemar to hype him up and make him feel like a main character, when in reality the closest thing he resembles in this story is the antagonist (although I despise labelling him even as that, since it gives him way more credit and importance than he deserves).

Suddenly, however, his self-obsessive tendencies are abruptly interrupted as Phil staggers into the taven, looking more distraught than Gen-Z when Harambe died.

"Please, please! You must help me," he shouts to anyone who will listen. "It's Belle; he's got Belle. She's locked in a dungeon, and..."

Now this piques John's attention. A dungeon? Well, perhaps he can play the role of the knight in shining armor, and rescue Belle!

"Who's got her?" John asks, standing up slowly and making his way over to the crazed man.

"A beast! A huge, horrid, enormous beast!" He shouts, not helping his "I'm not crazy" case that he's trying to present to the patrons of the tavern. "His castle is hidden in the woods; it's already winter there!"

"Winter in June?" Vision asks incredulously from a nearby table.

"Crazy old Phil, you know how he is," Sif adds, shaking her head.

"The beast is real; you've got to believe me," Phil gasps, practically shaking at the adrenaline rushing through his veins. "Will nobody help me?"

"I'll help you, Phil," John cuts in, smiling. "Everybody, stop making fun of this man at once!"

"Thank you, John. Thank you," the older man says, relieved that someone is finally listening to him.

"Don't thank me, Phil," John says, flashing his trademark smile (that I, as your unbiased and trustworthy narrator, wish I could smack off his face in an instant), "lead us to the beast."

❅

"Mother, mother!" A young boy's voice echoes in the palace kitchens. "There's a girl in the castle!"

"Yes, Peter, we know!" Another voice, this one belonging to a middle-aged female, replies.

"What kind of tea does she like? Herbal, oolong, chamomile...? Oh, I'm just too excited!"

"Slow down, before you break your handle!"

"Heads up, Mrs. Potts!" A third voice rings out.

"Thor!" The evidently-angry voice of the Frost Giant rings out, followed by a loud crash than can easily be deducted as that as silverware being knocked off of the table.

"Be calm; let me do the talking," Thor quickly whispers to Clint, turning towards the approaching Giant with a theatric smile plastered on his candelabra-equivalent of a face.

"You're making her dinner!" He shouts angrily, bursting into the adjacent room that housed the two friends.

"Well, Brother, we thought that you might appreciate the company," Thor says, laughing nervously at the Giant's demeanor.

"Master, I just want to assure you that I had no part in this hopeless plan," Clint quickly adds. "Preparing a meal for her, designing a gown for her, giving her a suite in the East Wing..."

"You gave her a bedroom?!"

"No, no, no, Thor gave her a bedroom," Clint corrects.

"Well, this is true," Thor starts, certainly not helping his case. "But if this is the girl who can break the spell, then maybe you could start by using the dinner to charm her. You haven't even asked her for her name."

"That's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard!" the Giant scoffs.

"But you must try, Brother, for every passing day, we become less and less human."

"She's the daughter of a common thief. What kind of person do you think that makes her?"

"I dunno, probably someone with daddy issu-" Clint says, but is quickly cut off.

"Oh, you can't judge people by who their father is, now can you?" Mrs. Potts says. "Just look at Peter, for example. His father, Tony, is quite an asshole, and yet-"

"Hey! I can hear you, you know!" A particularly-worn bourbon glass shouts from the other room.

Although the Frost Giant absolutely detests what his servants are telling him, he finds himself knocking harshly on the bedroom door of Belle just minutes later.

"You'll join me for dinner," he announces harshly. "That's not a request."

"Gently, Master; the girl lost her father and her freedom in just one day," Mrs. Potts remarks sympathetically.

"Yes, the poor thing is probably in there, scared to death," Thor adds.

Well, for starters, Belle actually is currently quite scared to death, but not for the reasons that Thor and Mrs. Potts had in mind.

"How the hell are you so good at checkers?" Belle cries out, having lost to Bucky for the thousandth time. "A literal fire poker is beating me."

More knocks sound on the door, noticeably softer this time.

"Just a minute," Belle says, hastily rushing to clean up the board before walking to the door.

"You see, there she is. Now, remember: be gentle," Thor advises.

"Kind," Mrs. Potts adds.

"Charming," Nat says.

"Sweet," Clint offers.

"And when she opens the door," Thor says, "give her a dashing smile!"

"Will you join me for dinner?" The giant says through the door once more.

"You've taken me as your prisoner and now you want to have dinner with me?" Belle asks without opening the door. "Are you insane?"

"I told you to join me for dinner!" He angrily yells, pounding on the closed door once more.

"And I told you no," Belle says (fucking queen, telling a man no as she absolutely should -narrator). "I'd starve before I ever ate with you."

"Well, be my guest! Go ahead and starve," he announces, stomping angrily away from the door like a child whose parents just refused to give them dessert. "If she doesn't eat with me, she doesn't eat."

By the time the giant is clearly out of sight and hearing distance, Clint jumps out from his hiding place in the vent.

"You can't talk to us like that, I forbid it!" He says halfheartedly, raising his small clock fists in a fighting stance. "Oh, dear, is he gone...?"

"Oh, Master, you've returned!" Thor announces, and Clint jumps and cries out in fright as he turns to see nobody there.

"Oh, very funny, Thor."

❅

Unbeknownst to anyone, as the Frost Giant marches off angrily, his footsteps lead him right to the West Wing.

"Show me the girl," he demands, picking up a small mirror and gazing into it.

Almost instantly, his own reflection is replaced with that of Belle, gazing out the window of her bedroom sadly.

The Frost Giant lets out a small sigh as the girl vanishes, leaving him alone with his hideous self once more. He gazes longingly at the ocean-blue rose sitting before him, enclosed in glass.

As another blue petal falls off the rose and turns to ice, the self-proclaimed "monster" feels a small pang in his heart that had been deemed to be void of any love so long ago.

❅ ❅ ❅