Hanazawa found the Beast on the rooftop that night. It was rare for it to go out into the open like that – it had been proven that neither sunlight nor clean air could do it any harm, but it kept away from those elements anyway. Usually, at least.
Tonight the Beast sat on the rooftop, watching the clouds gather at a corner of its piece of sky. It was destined to be a stormy night.
“You bring your staff,” it said – sounds like scratches on wooden doors grated on Hanazawa’s ears, even more tangled and undecipherable than usual.
Hanazawa just pushed his steps.
“It’s been half a year,” he said.
The Beast looked up at the moon, more and more obscured by grim clouds. “It has. It has. Days are counted, day after day after day. It’s all noted down. Noted down.”
Hanazawa came to stand behind it. The crystal on his staff glowed a hazy blue. “I have this feeling,” he said, light as a breath, “that only a fruitless plan brings.”
If the Beast could laugh, maybe it would have. Instead, Hanazawa could only see its shoulders tremble and its head duck down. No sound came from it for a minute. “Aren’t you in love?” It said, long after the trembles had stopped. “Aren’t you? Didn’t you say…” it huffed a burst of broken branches, “didn’t you say he was fascinating?”
Hanazawa’s grip on his staff tightened.
“That,” he said, “can never become love.”
The Beast looked up at the sky again. Maybe it would have howled if it could.
“One can’t love a stranger one has never talked to.”
With a swift movement, the Beast stood up, just as Hanazawa raised his staff. “So that’s your answer,” it rasped, “so that’s it. You– won’t try. You won’t try. You won’t…”
“You pushed me to it,” Hanazawa said, amidst the wind and the crunches of branches broken off of their trees. They masked the crack in his voice, enough for him too to ignore it. “It’s all on you! I know it. The things I said, the things I did, the things I–we– the things we create… none of it reached him.”
The sound of shattered wood swept through them both. “I am him!” The Beast cried, swung its head back. “Your efforts just aren’t enough yet! Not yet! You haven’t loved him strongly enough yet! You haven’t loved us–”
“Then I am not the one,” Hanazawa said, quietly, and even the wind couldn’t mask the tears in his voice. “I am not the hero.”
The Beast was quiet for a moment. Hanazawa fancied seeing disbelief in its eyes, but all trace of that illusion soon disappeared. When it crawled towards him, its back curved down, back mist curling around its limbs, its stare was blank.
“You are crying,” it whispered, like grasses singing on a meadow, “you are crying. You are regretting. You won’t leave.”
Hanazawa let the tears fall.
“You want a hero,” he said, staff in a crushing grip, the metal almost vibrating. His feet were planted firmly on the ground.
Rain started to fall.
The Beast pounced.
—
this request
came in just as I thought of this dastardly AU I named Hero and the Beast, in which it goes very slightly like the Beauty and the Beast fairytale, but Teru is a sorcerer hired to defeat the dark being inside this abandoned castle, and the Beast is kinda like ???% except it’s also singled-minded on trying to bring its core (the Prince/Mob) back online by making him feel wanted/loved/safe enough to come out again. The Beast has been asking sorcerers and knights coming to kill it to become friends instead (it kills anyone who doesn’t agree, of course), and thus far it has only succeeded in goading Teru into it by building up on his hero complex and insisting on his so-called duty to save everyone in distress. That ficlet above is kinda the fallout of that.
¯_(ツ)_/¯ 
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