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lumiereswig · 6 years

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what if. an amnesia fic. where they. ALL. Got. A m n e s I a

fuck. you

State dinners never put Cogsworth in a good mood. Oh, he liked them afterward, when everything was going smoothly, and he could smile and make polite compliments to the diplomats’ wives, and down congratulatory bits of brandy from the sideboard, and bask in the praise of a job well done, but the beforehand bits? With everyone fussing and carousing, and Lumiere flirting with somebody in the closet when he ought to be working, and Belle being grumpy because she had to dress in something beyond cottons and calicoes, and Adam informing him that he wanted it to be “a simple affair, really,” all the while secretly picturing champagnes and party favors—well, it was enough to put anybody off their carefully-calculated stride. And that was before the table linens got involved.

“How dare you call my napkins so, you ticking time bomb?!”

“And what do you think of calling THAT, you, you, you, you perturbed piece of paraffin?! I’ve seen better displays of kitchen linen in rubbish-bins!” Cogsworth throws the napkin down with all the spirit of a furious wombat. His cheeks bulge; his eyes start; somewhere, he is sure, a blood vessel bids its last adieu. And here stands Lumiere—all forty feet of him, in all his prodigiously lanky height, dressed to the nines and tens in golden satin, having the nerve to argue with him about table settings. Even if the man hadn’t been a candelabra earlier, Cogsworth would still assume his brains to be about as abundant as a drop of wax. “If you call this party planning, I call you an Englishman! I could have done this better myself if I were half mad!”

“Than you must have been dwelling in the asylum when you taught it to me, fifteen years ago,” Lumiere retorts. “Or have you forgotten that, too, as well as I am the master of napkin-folding?”

“You’re not the master of much, if this is your example of it. Master indeed! Master, look at what this besotted fellow calls a table arrangement, and see if you can call it much of anything.”

“Is everyone in a quarrel today?” cries Adam, rubbing his head. He has a headache brewing, but nobody seems to mind; Mrs Potts is in an awful fuss about the state of the tea-pantry, and Cuisinier is haranguing her about it, and he would go hide with Belle if she wasn’t currently arguing down the joined attacks of Madame de Garderobe and Plumette on her choice of evening wear.

He hates state dinners. He really, truly hates them. He wonders if his life would be easier if he were only a servant, with the only concern on his plate being, well, the plates.

“Do I look as though I know napkins?” he says in despair. “Work it out between yourselves, please. You’ve had enough quarrels to work through this one.”

“Don’t remind me how many times I have had to listen to this fool jabber on,” says Lumiere warningly. “I cannot bear a history with so much tension to it!”

“And I cannot bear a memory of you fawning and flouncing and forgetting how to fold a napkin because you’re chasing down a girl in a cupboard!”

“Cogsworth, be fair! The girl WAS the cupboard, at the time.”

“Don’t you go bringing up the curse at a time like this!” cries Cogsworth, wagging his finger.

“Don’t you go mentioning time, when I can tell you where that second hand pointed not too long ago! Up your forehead, wasn’t it? Or did it wind around and pat your own back for you, when the occasion warranted?”

“MY HANDS WERE MY MUSTACHE, AND YOU KNOW IT,” Cogsworth explodes, and Adam flees down the hall.

Everywhere, chaos. Maids angry at footmen for putting ladders where they shouldn’t; footmen furious with maids for putting buckets where they should have known they would step. Belle bursts from her room, ribbons all stuck in her hair, shouting at Plumette to “leave me alone, leave me alone, I don’t want to wear a gown and be a lady!”; Garderobe comes after, dressed in a new creation of hers, crying out that la princessa must submit to being royal if that was what was required. Adam sighs, and beats back his hair from his face, and sits on the only clean set of stairs in the palace with his head between his hands.

After a moment, he realizes someone is sitting next to him.

“You’re not running frantic,” he says.

“No, I’m not,” says the woman. “But I see that everyone else is.”

“State dinners are such a terrible affair,” groans Adam. “Everyone has to put on a mask, and restate their identity ten fold. Oh, I’m an Englishman! I’m a Frenchman! I’m a king, you’re a lady, you’re a gentleman, who outranks who, what is the history between nations; there’s such a fraud-filled game to play, where everyone has to be his most decided self—or how he decides to be seen—in front of everyone else.”

“And that doesn’t suit you, face-changing one?”

Adam is too exhausted to notice the shift in her voice. “When I was a monster, I was still me, and I was free to change. In front of that assembly, with all the history and petty feuds, I feel I must be one unchanging character, with my whole self hanging in the balance. I’m the Prince, and Belle’s the Princess, and we’re not allowed to be anything else.”

“Such a weight for you to bear,” says the woman, laying a consoling hand upon his knee. “To wear history on your sleeve for all to see! To feel so confined to one self—”

“Yes, yes,” says Adam, “and—what’s that you’re doing with your hand?”

Gold light pulses from the woman’s hand, rippling against his blue-silk leg in concentric rings like the surface of a pond disturbed by a dropped stone. He feels sunlight blinding him, and sees the green and blue of reflected river-plants beating against his eyes, and the sound of the water rushing in his ears.

“Be blind if you would like,” says the woman, her hand very hot against him. “Be free, if you would like.”

The sunshine grows too hot. The pond grows cold. Adam feels the beat of the stone dropping, dropping down—and drops down too, sunshine clouding both his eyes.

Chandeliers are the first thing that swan into their view. Then the dazzling ceiling, all painted cloud and sky; and then the brooms, abandoned, and the leaking mops, and the marble steps still soaked with soap-suds.

The room they’re in is sparklingly clean: as bright and airy as they feel.

They sit up. They feel their knees and bones. All right; that’s all right. They stand, and slip, and stand again. Water glitters on the floor. The reflection in the mirror—someone unknown, and dressed in blue silk, and still looking dazzled by the sun—feels the smooth expanse of the floor, as if looking for some particular stone sitting in a river that nobody can see.

It takes them a while to reckon they ought to be doing something.

“I’m sure I had something to do,” they murmur, but that’s been taken away, so they toddle off to see if somebody else has an idea.

They look in the mirror, and see the unfamiliar face again, and carry on.

More unfamiliar faces stare out of mirrors, and also windows, and sometimes doors. They find an unfamiliar face in one of the rooms, ribbon curling through her hair, looking in a mirror.

“Is it supposed to do that?” she asks.

“The ribbon? I suppose so.”

“No, the face. Why does the eyebrow quirk up like that? Who put a pinch between those brows?” She looks at him suddenly. “Do you know what you look like?”

“No, not really,” they admit.

“Now that’s strange. Because there are mirrors all over this place, and you’re in it.”

“I’m sure I knew once,” they protest. “But I lost my name on my way to finding a face, so I thought I should look for one before the other.”

“A sensible plan. Well, I can tell you part of it: that you’re good-looking; and a man; and that you have nice hair, and good teeth; and that you’re horribly under-dressed.”

“Me? Underdressed?” He points to his white shirt, his clean blue silk breeches, so clean they still have soap suds from the stair on them. “But you’re dressed in only a petticoat, and a white shift, with a ribbon falling out of your hair!”

“Ah, but I’m sure I’m meant to look that way,” she says. “Let’s stick together, us two. I think we should get along.”

They haven’t ventured far before they find other faces, though no other names. Everyone seems to have dropped one—but instead of dropping the usual ones, such as the names of famous persons, or mutual acquaintances, or other names that could afford to be lost, everyone had dropped their own and let it roll away across the floor.

“There must be a proper order to this,” insists one of them. Wombat, thinks another, and has nowhere to put the thought. “We should all line up and present, and that would make things easier.”

“Would it?” says a second, picking up a dropped napkin and gently rubbing the other’s buttons to a shine with it. “I don’t know about you, stranger, but I think we should all say at once who we might be, and drop right into it. C'est vrai, non?”

“Don’t speak German, it doesn’t help matters.” But the wombat pats his hand indulgently, and turns to survey the assembled crowd of faces. “I say we work from the known, and then work to the point this fine, finely-satined gentleman suggests. We know we are in a palace; therefore, someone must be King or Queen.”

“It must be me, then,” says one. “I am dressed fine, as regal as la princessa; my gown is twice your size, and my hair towers over this little man with the blue silk breeches!”

“Very well.” He nods; she nods; they nod. Progress has been made. The grand lady, her hands full with a confused-looking dog, bows graciously and takes a dining room table as her throne. The wombat nods. “And if there is a Queen, there must be servants, staff. Surely that is the rest of us.”

“I wish I could remember what I did,” cries the girl, her fingers lacing through the blue-silk boy’s.

“There are hints in your dress,” says another, white feathers drifting from her exquisite hair. “You have ribbons in your hand; you are dressed simply, like a maid. Perhaps you are the lady’s maid!”

“Then I must be the footman,” says the blue-silk boy, “because we belong together. And I have soap on my clothes—so I must have been cleaning the stairs.”

“And all this mess,” says the wombat—picking up a mess of napkins, and depositing them in his lanky companion’s hands to take care of (for he really looked the sort to understand such things)—"must be caused by a grand affair. A dinner, perhaps! A ceremony!“

“For the Diplomat from England,” reads the girl with the feathered wig, looking at the place setting. “For the Diplomat of France. For the Diplomat of Germany.”

“Why, that must be us!” cries the lanky one. “We have noticed already that I speak German—trés bien, I accept—and you speak French so well, my newest friend, you must be the diplomat from here.”

“I speak with a slight accent, true,” admits the wombat, “but I firmly believe I have always had a distinct liking for the French character, if I could only remember it. And that, my dear, leaves you to be the English ambassador.”

“How neatly we are seated together!” The Diplomat from the Emerald Isle offers her hand to Germany. “I’m sure we shall be great friends, in time.”

“In time!” The wombat starts. (He knows it isn’t truly French to be so tense, but sometimes he likes to break the expectation.) “That reminds me—though I don’t know why—this dinner of state likely begins soon, if the state of this table has anything to say about it. What a tremendous job you have done with those napkins, my Saxon friend.”

“Thank you! I don’t remember how, but I believe a dear friend of mine may have taught me how to do them. They look good, do they not? Servants, what do you think?”

“I don’t look as though I know napkins,” says the blue-silk footman, glancing uncertainly at his face in the mirror, “but I’m sure they’re fine, if you agree. Mistress Maid? Miss Ribbon? Beauty? Should we prepare ourselves in the kitchens?”

“I may have lost my name,” says the maid, the ribbon curling in her hair, “but at least I’ve picked up you. Let’s go, Vincente—or Charming—or Adam, or Eve, or whatever your name might be. At least I’ve got you straight.”

The dinner goes off without a hitch. Nobody from the palace remembers what they are supposed to do; if there is etiquette to these dinners, it must be guessed at. The lady in charge—the regal lady with the great gown—guesses at names, and alliances, and who should speak to whom; and the maid and the footman, unsure of due process, indulge each guest with the same broad smile and lack of notice for rank. The diplomats themselves are surprised to find new faces in the crowd; an enchanting emissary from England—a German native who speaks such good French he heals the wounds of offended Belgians, who had nearly quarreled their way with the previous diplomat into a war—a French chancellor whose fastidiousness wins over representatives long tired of the usual laissez-faire attitude of the French embassy. They talk, and skip over parts they can’t remember, and laugh and toast and sign treaties they can’t recall the advantages of; and the servants smile, and sip tea in the back—there is an awful lot of tea at this dinner, for the cook sends more and more, and the housekeeper (a man in black-checked pants, wearing a chef’s hat for a joke) can’t bear to turn her down—and they have a jolly good time, cleaning the plates and meeting each other and finding, in the other’s half-blank mind, things strikingly like their own.

The guests depart. The table rests, a mess, napkins on the floor, wine cups spilled sideways. Her highness picks up her pup and retires to the drawing room, to rest in her chair and toast her toes by the fire. The servants cuddle on the stairs, forgetting their beds, or where those beds ought to be, and falling asleep against the marble. The diplomats, lingering long over their wine, settle for sleep against crushed table linens.

As he breathes in the scent of the maid’s sweet, soap-stained hair on the palace steps, the boy thinks he hears water rushing in his ears.

He wakes, she wakes, they wake. Adam knows where he is. Belle takes a minute—”why are we on the back kitchen stairs?”—then remembers, and remembers, and gasps until her eyebrows pinch. There’s a loud crash from the dining room, and the frantic barking of Frou-Frou—the dog, the dog, of course Frou-Frou is the name of the dog—and Madame de Garderobe having a laugh in Adam’s best chair.

“Did it go horribly?!” Adam demands, skidding into the dining room. Plumette is half-crying from laughter into Lumiere’s cravat. Lumiere is using Cogsworth’s handkerchief to wipe away his own merry tears.

“We’ve probably ruined everything,” Belle cries. “That was an important dinner! We were supposed to sort out the treaty between Portugal and Rome—and, oh no, we were supposed to not put Spain near Austria—and, oh, I know we put the Turkish diplomat by the Polish, and you’re never supposed to do that—”

Cogsworth doesn’t hear a word. While they all slept, the messenger stopped by, and dropped note after note after note across the dining table of the sleeping palace; letters from across Europe, from every invited diplomat. He reads them with widened eyes.

“I don’t believe it,” he says at last, “I won’t believe it! After all my planning, all my calculating—this diplomat says they were delighted, this one that they’ve never had a better time. Poland is half in love with Turkey, after the introduction supplied last night by ‘the Queen in the grand dress’—what Queen?; and Spain tells me they’re so glad they had a chance to finally work things out with Austria, thanks to the comfort of the tea we supplied—what tea?! And here’s the Portuguese, about to become trading partners and more, and write a better treaty with Rome, modeling it on that drafted by the English emissary from last night! What are they talking about, the English ambassador wasn’t supposed to be there last night, he wrote to tell us he was ill— can’t fathom it! After all my planning, a bunch of amnesiatic idiots resolved it all!”

“And resolved more than that,” says Lumiere. “You finally admitted my napkin display was all right.”

“And you admitted I’m the friend who taught you to do them.”

“I admitted so from the first!”

“How dare you! I remember it quite clearly, and you never mentioned it.”

“Did I mention you forget many things, even when you’re not enchanted to?”

“You sputtering gaslamp, I’ll beg you to remember—”

Adam pulls Belle aside. “I’m glad I’ve got your name back,” he says, “though I wasn’t too far off with Beauty.”

“And I’m glad I know your face again,” says Belle. “I really do miss it when I’m not sure what it looks like.”

“Though it wasn’t too bad to not be ourselves, was it, and find out we’re much more than Prince and Princess?”

“Didn’t you know? We’ve always been.” Belle takes the ribbon from her hair, and uses it to tie up Adam’s messy ends. “It was a break to be someone else for a bit, but I’m glad you’re still Adam.”

“Me too,” he says. “Or at least until the next state dinner.”

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