Title: An Awful Thing Chapter 6

By: Jedishampoo (Jedishampoo at aol dot com)

Rating: PG-13 overall, but I'm considering other things. ;)

Summary: Howl and Sophie get mixed up in magical and dimensional doings, and Sophie is just mixed up. Humor/Adventure/Romance thingie. Crossover between Howl's Moving Castle and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Author's Notes: This is movieverse!Howl and company. I've read the books by Diana Wynne Jones, and so a little bookishness may creep in here and there, but the movie is what made me fall in love with the characters. Comments, constructive criticism eagerly welcomed.

A silly part. And phew, I'm at least two chapters ahead of posting. I'm not used to writing this way! If you catch any continuity errors, I will blush and then thank you kindly.

xxx

Sophie didn't go far. She sat just outside, on the steps, debating whether or not to bang her head against the iron railings. Why had she behaved like such a-- such a child? She'd rivaled her sister Lettie at her worst. When Lettie had been ten. And here she'd thought Howl would be the one throwing tantrums in this particular household.

There had been no real reason for her to be angry. It was just… everything. The purse. This morning, she'd so looked forward to giving it to Howl, and seeing him laugh. Except he hadn't. It had only caused trouble. Then the visit to Madame Suliman, occasion enough to make anyone angry. Except she'd gotten angry at Howl. And then he'd just grinned at her and tried to kiss her out of her bad humor. And it had worked. How sickening was that?

It was not like he'd never kissed her before. But today-- all that emotion, and those weird melty feelings, all wound up in there. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

That was the problem. It seemed that all she could do these days was stare at him, thinking the most outrageous things. And he would turn and see her, and look so-- so-- smug. Like he knew what she was thinking. But he never did anything about it.

And just now! She'd almost said, "think I'm going to let you go to other places alone?" Sophie held her hot face in her hands and tried to shiver out her embarrassment. Why shouldn't Howl go somewhere alone, if he had to? He'd run about as he pleased before she came along. True, he'd been in a lot of trouble and in the end, only Sophie had been able to help him. But that didn't mean she had to be glued to him.

And he was being so responsible right now. Taking care of the situation himself. Sophie needed to take care of herself before she tried to tell everyone else what to do.

When one was at one's lowest, one had no choice but to be truthful. Facing the facts was hard. But Sophie had to face the sad fact that she had become insecure. She had all these feelings jumping about inside of her, and she hadn't done anything about them. It was the waiting, her decision, which had been the wrong one. She'd treated the last few months like it was a test of Howl's loyalty. Had it been really fair of her, to force her new-found stubbornness upon him, and see if he passed?

The naked answer to that was no.

Sophie sat up, and let the fall breezes cool her cheeks. She needed to apologize. She heard voices. They were coming from inside, through the cracked window.

Inside, they obviously hadn't turned the dial back to Kingsbury, because she could hear almost everything if she scooted a little closer. She wondered if they were talking about her, and felt her cheeks heat again at the thought.

"'Er name's Mary Lynn Monner, is what I heard," Dibbler was saying. "Bit o' all right, ain't she?"

"Mary Lynn Monner," Howl repeated. "Doesn't sound familiar. It's not helping. Besides, that's not where you're from. Sit still for a moment and let me draw this circle--"

They weren't talking about her at all, Sophie realized with either relief or ire, she couldn't decide. Probably a bit of both. They were talking about the purse, and Howl was working magic. Then she realized she'd come to her first realization too soon.

"Yer girlfriend, she's awful pretty, too," Dibbler continued. "Sweet little thing. Bags o' spirit."

Sophie heard Granny laugh, and Markl said, "what?"

"Girlfriend?" Howl asked.

"What else are you gonna call her, lover?" That was Granny.

"I call her Sophie," Howl replied, sounding distracted.

"If you're talking about Sophie, then of course she's pretty," Markl said. Sophie felt a wave of affection for the boy. It was quickly superceded. "I think she's prettier even than that other girl, Howl. The blonde one you brought here that one time. Boy, was she surprised when I came downstairs."

"I don't know what girl you're talking about, Markl," Sophie heard Howl say. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"Of course. But you remember." Markl sounded exasperated. "The one who barged in and started screaming and yelling? The one who said she couldn't believe she'd let you sample her womanly charms? The one with the long blonde hair?"

"Oh, her. I need to concentrate, Markl. I don't want to talk about her right now."

"I'll just bet you don't," Calcifer interjected.

Howl snickered.

Sophie didn't want to listen to any more of this, but it was almost impossible not to. The pigs.

Granny was speaking. "I think I know that girl. She came to me, all the way out to the Wastes. She begged me to teach her how to hex you or something silly like that. She was a tramp."

"Uh huh huh," said Howl, in a shuddering sort of way, as if the thought of that girl after him with magic had terrified him beyond belief.

"I said, Honey, I do all my own curses. That's how I met your girlfriend there. Though I may have taught that girl something. A drink might help me remember."

"Hmph. Almost done," Howl said. Sophie heard a poof of something magical working. "What a horrible old woman you are."

"Don't I know it."

"Sophie is too nice. She let you off easy," he continued.

"That, too." Granny laughed. Calcifer laughed. Dibbler laughed. Markl just said 'what?' again.

Sophie couldn't take any more of this. Now she had a reason to be angry. They weren't only laughing at her-- that, that tramp girl-- they were laughing at Sophie. And all the young women who'd ever had their hearts cut out and eaten by callous young men.

And Sophie was not nice. Nice is what the old Sophie had been, the Sophie who'd stayed late at the shop and let all the other girls have fun. Nice Sophie was the one who cleaned that man's castle and put up with his moods just because she couldn't bear to leave his side, couldn't bear not to look at his pretty face all the livelong day. And who told herself that she was being a good girl, waiting for just the right moment. What if that moment had already come and gone? Howl certainly never asked anything of her, just took her for granted.

And that thought made absolutely no sense at all.

Sophie didn't care. She stood, and whipped around to face the door. She knew she still couldn't bear to ever leave him, but now at least she had a good excuse to go back in there and give him a whopping piece of her mind. Clarity. It would feel really good. And after that, she'd-- well, she'd see.

She opened the door. Howl, his back to her, was kneeling just outside a chalk circle drawn around 'Throat' Dibbler's chair. As she marched up the entryway, Howl began to stand, arms held out to his sides, blue shirtsleeves billowing.

"Howl!" she said.

He turned and looked at her and a myriad of emotions flitted across his eyes-- confusion, joy, and then dawning horror.

"Sophie-- you're back! I wanted to say-- wait-- Give me a moment-- No! So--"

Too late, Sophie realized that they had been in the middle of the location spell for Ankh-Morpork. Howl's hair was flying, and Calcifer in his grate was flaring blue. She tried to halt but she'd been stomping so hard she couldn't lose her momentum.

And Heen chose that moment to leap in front of her. The poor thing had probably been trying to help her to stop, but she tripped over him, falling right onto Howl and knocking them both into the circle and onto Dibbler's lap.

My, he smells, Sophie thought, and then everything went black and her stomach dropped to her feet.

An instant later, light returned-- a grubby grey light-- and she was sprawled on top of Dibbler and Howl, and they were all sprawled among the debris of a dirty alleyway.

"--Phie!" Howl said in a muffled voice. His face was buried in Dibbler's greasy shirt.

Ooops, Sophie thought, as she smacked Dibbler's groping hand from her bottom and scooted back into a sitting position on the cobbled ground.

Howl crawled next out of the pile and sat across from her, propped back on his hands, staring at her with wide eyes peeping from beneath his mussed black hair. Neither of them spoke. They both turned as one to watch as Dibbler righted himself. He sniffed the air. From somewhere nearby Sophie heard an aged voice cackle, Buggrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!

Tears formed in Dibbler's eyes. "Home!" he said, and leaned over to kiss the ground.

Sophie couldn't help it. The emotion would come out of her, involuntary as a sneeze, whether she wanted it to or not. She laughed, and laughed, until tears trickled out of her own eyes.

Howl just stared at her, mouth agape.

"I'm sorry-- snort-- Howl," she said between wracking giggles that made her stomach hurt. "But it-- snort-- looks like I forced you to take me along after all!"

"You frighten me sometimes," Howl told her after a moment.

"Good," Sophie said, and laughed and laughed.

xxx

End Chapter 6

Thanks muchly muchly for any comments:)

Disclaimer: HMC characters owned by Diana Wynne Jones and/or Studio Ghibli; Discworld characters owned by Terry Pratchett. I made no money writing this, it is purely for fun.