A/N: Hey! Been a while, hasn't it? Well, let's just say I lost motivation to write for a while there, and the main inspiration for my stories kind of died off. But from it THIS was born, after a few months of me mulling over my emotions and then I had a thought, out of nowhere. I was talking to one of my best friends when I thought of it, so I'll thank him for that.
I'll be honest, I'm not really as into 9 as I used to be. But 7 is still my favorite character. My life has just changed a bit.. This fic is, in a vague but certain manner, archiving how I felt about a very major situation in my life. 7 goes through something very much like what I did, and symbolically, it is one and the same. I hope by sharing it with others, I gain some closure. And I hope you enjoy it, in all its AU, 7-centric and unrealistic entirety.
This fic is not related to any of my others, although it does branch mention Snow. Howl takes place in an entirely different universe where life has returned. Please keep that in mind when reading. 7x9 is still my favorite pairing and I still want to do stories with it- I just really felt in my heart I needed to write this.
Prologue
You know how when humans become stressed and feel as if they need to just 'get away from it all,' they take those things called vacations? Doesn't matter what the reason for the stress was- work, family, friends… Divorce..
They usually go to a warm, relaxing place, often tropical, or very out of the way. A cabin in the words or a beach house. Maybe even a bare-bones trip to the mountains, to be one with nature, as the saying goes.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong and the book I read was incorrectly labeled and should've been on the fiction shelf. No way to know, the last human vacationed a long time ago if they ever did.
Either way, there's no place like that for us stitchpunks. Or.. Should I say, for me. The world died long ago when I was born. When I get stressed, there's no way for me to vent that.
Not even seven decades after the war has the world grown back. The city could flood and you'd see tiny bits of green appear out of the ground, but they would die soon after. And after a while they just stopped appearing altogether.
Without life, there is no haven. No solace.
Even in sleep, there's no comfort. You spend hours searching for the next place to spend the night, finding a dry spot, and then it's dawn before you get to close your eyes. If you do get sleep, you're only just under and wake up to the tiniest sound.
No amount of target practice, weapon building, scavenging, or running ever chases the thoughts away. What could I have done different? What did I do wrong to deserve it? Would I be happier if it hadn't happened?
And always my thoughts circled like this, twirling and pulsating like a hurricane. I often went to sleep with headaches, or with tears in my eyes, simultaneously enraged and sorrowful. Enraged that I couldn't forget the arguments, the pain, the regrets.. And on the opposite side of the coin, sorrowful that it had happened. After all those years, all those memories, the laughs, the long talks… It all ended. Just like that.
Every single night, before I could sleep, I had to relive it. And it was his voice in my head. Telling me I was selfish. Telling me I was the one at fault. That I was the jerk. In a full blown argument, he was the one dealing the most insults. The roles reversed, I could hear myself now, asking for forgiveness, despite my growing anger and resentment for these accusations..
He never once thought about what he said, how it made me feel, but expected me to think about my words and actions.
I used to spend my nights thinking about the future. Now I just spent each night dwelling on the past.
Absolutely nothing could interrupt this cycle.