February Breath

Disclaimer: If I owned Howl's Moving Castle, I'd be the one clinging to Howl. But I don't. So I'm not. However sad that may be.

A/N: Alright. Here we've got less of the shattering pain but still more epiphanies. Howl realizes some things and eventually Sophie goes into another flashback…like, waaaay back. Enjoy and comment :)

You take the breath right out of me

And left a hole where my heart should be

You gotta fight just to make it through

Cause I will be the death of you

Breath – Breaking Benjamin

Chapter 6:

Howl

I blinked in shock before bringing my arms up to hold her to me, feeling her tears soak through onto my chest. "Shh. It's alright. You're safe now," I murmured, stroking her hair while trying to sort out what had happened.

I remembered a year back myself. I had begun watching Sophie, and none too soon, because the Witch of the Waste had found her too. She was still after Sophie because I loved Sophie instead of her in every life. I knew how close Sophie and Justin were as friends. Now I understood that she was trying to save him, instead of kill herself with him. She was hurt badly, but Justin had only had seconds left. He had whispered something and closed his eyes, so close to death. Then she had screamed, a sound that shook me to my core. It was all I could do not to run to her. I had had to work the spells to preserve her life while staying hidden in the crowd. And then I had seen the Witch of the Waste, watching as well, but with a look of rage on her face that stood out in the shocked and frantic crowd.

I was doing my best to put it all together and made some lame attempts at some lame theories.

One: Justin had killed himself because Sophie didn't love him back. Somewhat logical but a bit extreme, and it didn't explain the Witch's role in it all.

Two: Justin was a depressed child who one day couldn't take it anymore. A depressing thought, but also highly unlikely if what I'd seen of him through Sophie's thoughts was true.

Three: The Witch had possessed Justin with magic and made him kill himself just to torture Sophie. Now that was Witch-of-the-Waste-level cruelty. Also a rather grim prospect, but it was the closest I'd come so far to something she could do to get inside Sophie's life and cause her pain—

Suddenly something clicked for me and I knew that the thing that struck me was the beginning, a fragment, of the truth.

The Witch had been taunting me for weeks through scorch-mark messages that she knew I could read all too easily. I have an advantage. I have someone on the inside, to put the beginning of my doings into motion. Someone on the inside, to get close to her only to cause her pain. But the day Justin killed himself, the Witch had looked…angry, almost. A little off-balance, like she had been knowing everything that was to come and had suddenly been blindfolded and had the rug yanked from under her.

Oh, crap. Here's another guess, I thought grimly.

Four: Justin had been working for the Witch.

It made perfect, horrible sense. I had looked at some of Sophie's memories before and had been watching her for a while back in her world, so I could see the relationship between her and Justin. And it was good—full of laughter, of hope, of the discovery of a friend who you could automatically connect with. Apparently he'd felt that way, too.

"Really, it's fine. I can talk about it. It's not like I haven't before," Sophie took another, less shaky breath as I watched her carefully. She looked so frail and delicate, so easily breakable, despite the quietly strong young woman she had become. I had wrapped her in a blanket when she started shivering walking slowly down the stairs a minute ago, and she held it around her as she sat by Calcifer.

"You don't need to run through it all," I said hastily. "I, uh, saw your dream."

"Magic?"

I nodded. "But there's a bit that you don't know."

She cocked her head to the side, looking a little more stable, both physically and emotionally. "What don't I know by now? I mean," she suddenly gave me a shrewd look, "What else don't I know."

I squirmed uncomfortably. I had kept from her what I needed to at the time. What a great way to earn her trust. Then again, she never had trusted me. Ever. "Well, I was, um… I was there. I saw everything in person. I've been watching you for just over a year, not a couple days. But I wasn't the only one--!"

"Over a year?!" she nearly yelled, her pupils shrinking in her unusual gray eyes. Ah. It looked like she was more recovered, thank goodness. However, that didn't mean I had to like her outbursts at me that took place all too often.

"I was only protecting you—"

"What, and you come out and say this now?!"

"You're lucky that nothing—"

"—happened?! Something sure as hell did happen, Howl!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that wasn't what I—!"

"How am I supposed to trust you? I'm not surprised I've never given in to you before! Enough with the secrets and tell me something straight!"

"What I'm trying to say is—"

"—And I swear, if you were even thinking about—"

"I kept you alive!" I practically had to shout over her. She screeched to a halt and stared at me, taken aback. I took advantage of her silence. "Didn't it ever occur to you that no one, witch or not, could ever survive that fall, let alone get off with a broken arm at the worst? I was standing there putting magic on you so you wouldn't die yet unable to show myself. Do you know how hard it was for me to continue to hide from you?"

Her face took on a look of vague recognition as I kept talking. "The Witch of the Waste was there, too, you know. You're lucky that she was distracted as she was, else she might have come after me and you'd be in much worse condition, believe me."

"You…why didn't she kill me?" Sophie asked, her lips barely moving.

"That would have been too easy," I said tightly. "She goes for the drama."

She woke up a little. "What, that wasn't dramatic enough, flinging myself off a building?"

I sighed. "You did that yourself. It wouldn't have been as good as the alternative." Not like I was going to tell her what the alternative always ended up being before. I'd let her think the obvious.

"Oh…oh…" the color drained from her face.

"I'm so sorry and I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but there's something else you need to know about that day." I could almost feel remorse stirring within me, minus my heart. Speaking of which, how could she ever return it to me? She knew so much so soon, how could I know that she wouldn't even bother to try out of revulsion for me? The idea of Sophie truly, deeply hating me so sent a stronger shockwave through my core. I didn't want her to hate me, especially not after I told her about Justin. "Look, all I know is that Justin was your best friend. I don't want to say this but…" I licked my dry lips. "Part of the reason the Witch was there, the reason Justin did what he did… It was because he was working for the Witch." Her eyes went all unfocused all of a sudden and she looked ready to pass out again, but not before she shot me. "Calm down, though, let me finish. Give me a second." I steadied her and held up a thin finger. I had just had an epiphany and took a moment to think.

Something hadn't seemed right when I realized her friend was all buddy-buddy with the Witch. I could tell an awful lot about Justin from my various means, and there were two things that stood out to me. One was how caring of a person he was. The other was how conflicted he was, deep down inside himself. Considering these developments… The plot thickens, I thought sarcastically. So that was why he did it. After defying the Witch in what seemed like the most extreme way possible and giving her a good shock, he got blindsighted himself. I would bet anything (even my beautiful hair) that he hadn't expected Sophie to follow him. How like her—to be so unpredictable and out of character at the most dramatic times.

Justin had never actually died. My eyes weren't fooling me in the Witch's hall, and neither were Sophie's.

Alright, well, I had to tell Sophie sometime, and besides, technically it was good news. "She somehow tricked him into her service and she wanted him to get close to you, to spy on you," the words came tumbling out in a rush now, "but, I don't think he ever truly wanted to be in league with her because if he was as good as I can tell he was from your memories, then I'm almost positive that he was trying to kill himself in an effort to save you from himself."

I looked from the floor back up to her tentatively. A single tear welled in the corner of her eye and spilled over onto her cheekbone. Before it could trace its path any farther down her face I reached for her carefully and brushed it away with my finger, surprising even myself. She swayed slightly and I gathered her into my arms protectively. However, she wasn't shuddering with tears now.

"Oh, Justin. Of course," she whispered, her arms coming up to hold me seemingly subconsciously. "I knew he was good, deep down. I could never believe otherwise."

Was that the slightest twinge of jealousy I felt? Justin had no doubt loved her too; any guy would be crazy not too. I was envious of the time they had gotten to spend together, how close they'd become. And then came a flicker of resentment. Why couldn't she think of me that way, speak of me that way? Oh, right. Because I was an untrustworthy idiot of a wizard who'd done nothing but bring tragedy and confusion into her life since day one. And I really did mean day one. So many years had passed but it always ended up the same. Not this time. No, this time I was going to break the cycle. I wouldn't kill her like I had before.

"Not this time," Howl muttered, almost feverishly.

"What did you say?" Sophie had barely heard the words but was immediately and without warning sent spiraling into semiconsciousness as his words struck a chord deep within her. Not again… She didn't know how much more of this she could take in a day… The thought flitted through the back of her mind before she was immersed in the past.

She had been sitting outside her tent, dutifully stoking the fire when a commotion from just outside the village's magical boundaries startled her. What startled her more were the two figures that broke through the intangible barrier as though it had never existed. It looked, she peered through the dusky light, it looked like a woman chasing after a man. How strange. They both had magic; she could simply sense it.

"You won't get away from me! Not this time!" the woman was screeching after the dark-haired man. She had wildly curly, red hair that looked like a flaming halo in the fading light, and she might have been very beautiful if she hadn't been acting like a demon.

Sophie suddenly gasped. Except no one called her Sophie. Her nickname in her village was Little Mouse, a name that everyone said fit the quiet brunette perfectly. Her shock had come from her thoughts: maybe the woman was a demon! The poor man. Magic or not, he wasn't doing too well, so she stood, abandoning the fire, and jogging toward the sprinting pair, she let loose a spell that caused the equivalent of an invisible brick wall to come up in front of the demon-woman. The enraged woman slammed to a halt as the man looked relieved but continued running toward Sophie. Now that he was closer, she could see that he was rather handsome, even in his panicked state.

"No! Not this time! Get back here! You're not escaping me!" the woman was apparently back on her feet and even more irate than before.

The last clear thing Sophie saw was the man casting a particularly potent spell that drove the woman away from the village. Then he looked at her with something unfamiliar to her in his abnormally bright blue eyes.

For the next minute—or it might have been hours—Sophie caught glimpses of her first life. She looked eerily similar to how she did now, only with distinctly indigenous American features. She was oh-so-shy and it was betrayed in her large gray eyes. They were her most unusual quality, unheard of in a region full of dark-haired, dark-eyed people.

And the handsome man from that day was constantly and without reason, it seemed to her, trying to win her heart. She had never realized how literal that was until one night, when she had grudgingly agreed to meet him by the riverbank.

Through her limited tidbits of memory Sophie caught, she saw that she had stood by the river, reveling in the clear light of the moon and the many stars. She had heard a noise and turned to see the man, who called himself Howell, emerge from a grove of trees. He had his usual confident smile on, although there was something colder lying beneath it that she didn't quite understand. The memories broke up like a fading radio signal and the last thing Sophie could make out was a girl's dying body—her body—lying on the bank of the river, a pool of her crimson blood mingling with the running water. Howell had torn her heart out.

Sophie slept through the night and well into the next day, tossing and turning the entire time. Howl stayed by her, both when he was awake and when he slept. She awoke just after noon and her gray eyes immediately met sapphire blue ones. The resemblance from her memory, from her death, was terrifying and she screamed before quickly clapping a hand over her own mouth.

"Sophie? Are you alright? Please answer me," Howl's voice penetrated through her wall of shocked silence.

"No…no…no…" her agitated murmurs increased slightly in volume. Her pupils had shrunk to mere pinpoints in utter fear, like those of a trapped animal. "You—you—you monster! Get away from me!" she finally found her voice, yelling at him.

Howl reeled back as though she had shot him. "…What did you see? Sophie, please tell me! I…I never…I don't remember," he finished weakly, guessing at the general nature of what she had dreamed about. But he wasn't sure what had brought the surge of memory back to her.

"The river…at the river…my heart—my heart!" her breath was coming faster and she clutched a hand to her chest to feel her heart beating erratically within her. She closed her eyes and sighed in relief.

Howl felt sick. "The first time…" That had begun the curse of Howl's heart being taken in every life. It was how he paid for what he had done to Sophie. And the worst past was, try as he might, even under the influence of magic, he remembered none of Sophie's death.

Half an hour later, both Sophie and Howl had calmed down and come to terms with each other. Calcifer had decided to be a helpful demon for once and had talked some sense into them both, especially considering that Sophie looked both fearful of and furious with Howl, and the vain wizard himself was looking vaguely self-hating. That was a frightening enough development on its own.

"Well, considering it's Sunday afternoon, I supposed we only have one option," Howl ran a hand through his hair wearily.

Sophie muttered something under her breath, which Howl deliberately ignored. "You need to be home and I'm coming with you."

Her head snapped up. "Whaaat? Howl, that's a horrible idea, do you have any idea what could go wrong—"

"Horrible is my middle name. Listen to logic, Sophie." Saying her name still sent little shivers through him. "Your aura is by now entirely of magic and sadly that makes you just that much easier to find. You've experienced firsthand how powerful the Witch of the Waste is. I have to protect you. And," he spoke over her when she opened her mouth angrily, "I'll stay visible to your eyes only. I have to always be with you."

Sophie considered this and sighed resignedly. It did in fact look like their only choice. "All I have to say is, I'm looking forward to watching you suffer through high school," she snickered after the thought of an utterly confused Howl sitting in her pre-calc class crossed her mind.

A/N: A funny prospect, yes? Anyway. Personally I liked my idea of the heart-torn-out thing (don't worry—I assure you I stay away from exceptionally gory details 95% of the time) but maybe that's just me :) So the next chapter, I'm still editing it. Funny/good stuff happens!!