Days in the Sun

Chapter 5

Gradually, these happy and bright soul-landscapes of hers transformed into darker tones.

"Adam...what if he was right? Gaston."

Belle rose to sit again and faced the confused look of her soulmate. She had barely had time to end her sentence, when Adam shook his head, and wrapped his hands around her, shocked by her deduction.

"I understand that this day brings you all kinds of feelings, but you cannot blame yourself. Whatever happened to him wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault."

His quiet words fell out reassuringly and loosened the knot in Belle's chest, but couldn't completely erase her uncertainty. "But..."

"You rejected him, yes, but you did it appropriately, directly and in a friendly way, and tried to do what was best for both of you. His obsession got the best of him and it destroyed him." Adam kept a little pause, looked away and told more dimly: "Karma has its way to harvest."

The change in man's behavior confused Belle for a moment, but eventually the pieces of the puzzle started to click and she understood that he didn't talk about Gaston anymore. This was about something more personal.

She didn't know what she could say, so she settled to watch how he stood up and walked slowly around the room. "The truth is... I wasn't very different from Gaston yet sometime ago."

"What?" Disbelief filled Belle and she couldn't hold a shocked sigh. At first she thought she had misheard him and hoped that the man would explain himself somehow, but he stayed completely silent. After realizing he was serious, her confusion turned into something else, into some undefined feeling.

"How can you even say something like that?" While talking she realized how furious she had sounded and softened her voice. "You rescued me from the wolves, sacrificed your happiness for my freedom and sent me to help my father. You helped me to see my past and get over it. Deeply bad person wouldn't do such things. You could never be like him!"

He suddenly stopped and shook his head. "Belle, you don't understand."

"Then help me to understand!"

Her determination impressed the youngster and he sighed, resigned. "In some ways I was even worse than him. Even if his deeds were questionable, he endangered his life when he was at war. I lived in my castle my whole childhood and knew nothing about the sufferings of the outside world. I was extremely selfish, shallow and cold. I taxed people unreasonably only to take over the kingdom's most beautiful objects. I wanted to organize a ball just so that I could get a pretty wife. The only thing that mattered to me was appearance."

Unbelief and disgust towards himself echoed in his words more and more, so that he seemed to drown in them. "Just like Gaston."

Adam's hopelessness awoke the ablaze urge in Belle to relieve the burden that he piled up to himself. It was her duty - after all, she was the reason why they had started to cut open these past's wounds.

"What happened...wasn't entirely your fault", she reminded quietly and stood up. "Your father made you that way."

Amazed, Adam turned around, like a whip had struck him, and stared at her, pain and grudge reflecting from his eyes. Even though they had been honest to each other, youngster's father had always been a sensitive subject: Belle had heard about him only surreptitiously from the castle's residents. She stepped forward, signaling him that she would be there as long as it was needed, ready if he wanted to share something.

After the moment of silence he sighed deeply and looked around the room, avoiding of facing her look. "When my mother died, I promised myself I wouldn't let anyone get separated from their loved ones, like I was."