February Breath

Disclaimer: Six months since I started this story, and yet somehow I still don't own Howl's Moving Castle. Huh. Funny how these things happen…

A/N: YES, I'm back! I have not in fact completely dropped off the face of this good earth! :D It's been, oh yeah— Four. Months. Since. The. Last. Update. …Oops? Sorry sorry sorry and sorry again my lovely people, I thought it had been waaay less time than that! What's that? You thought I dropped it! With an ending like that? I think not. So I spent about three hours in the car just writing and editing (really good way to kill time) and this is my result…I'm rather proud, actually, and everything should be clear by the end! Well…almost everything. This isn't actually the last chapter like I said it would be—waaaay too long of an ending-type-thing here already, never mind working out all the after-details. So I hope you enjoy the almost-conclusion to our dramatic tale, and review please! :)

Chapter 12

Sophie searched the dim sky frantically. Where had Howl gone all of a sudden? Damn, he was probably using some kind of invisibility thing that she couldn't see through much less know anything about. It didn't help that twilight was naturally the hardest time of day to see at. Oh, wait—there he was. He had abruptly switched directions.

Why was he running, or rather, flying, from her? Didn't he understand that she needed him? Of course, to protect her, that was all. Well, no; she didn't need protecting! She was perfectly fine all on her own, and he was a useless, selfish cheater of a brat anyway. But he had been around magic his whole life. So had she, supposedly, but it wasn't like she'd had any clue. Hello. Did he think he was helping by leaving? If the Witch was only after him anyways, then why had Sophie been pulled into it all in the first place? Maybe the Witch was trying to use Sophie to get to Howl…but how? That didn't make any sense. What were they to each other, really? Well, okay, so she had saved him from the Witch the first time, the very first time, but then (this was the killer, no pun intended) he had proceeded to repay her by tearing her heart out. O-kay then. That still confused her. After she had had the dream, Howl had practically been begging her to forgive him, saying that even now he had no idea what he had been thinking, and he couldn't actually remember any of that particular sequence of horrid events. Something didn't add up, and she intended to follow him now and shake the truth out of him no matter what.

She grimly increased her speed in a flurry of feathers the color of snow and started gaining on Howl, only to have him accelerate as well. She followed him, her annoyance and confusion growing, all the way to the grounds of the town festival. There were people everywhere—literally the entire town must be here! She remembered that she hadn't told anyone where she was. Oh, well. She was bound to find her family here, after she was done squeezing some answers out of Howl and dragging him with her if that was what it took. Heck, he could meet her family! She almost laughed at the thought of that, then stopped when she saw that Howl was losing altitude fast. She followed in his exact path as he landed lightly on the flat roof of a tall building at the very edge of the scene of the festivities. It looked like an apartment complex.

"You get back here and do some explaining, sir!" she snapped just as she hit the roof as well. He had paced off towards the other side and turned back to her halfway.

"Explain what?" he asked lazily.

"Um, excuse me? Flying off after saying you're leaving to protect me, out of nowhere?"

"What's to explain? I told you what my reasons are."

"You are so…so…gah! I just don't even know. Your reasons are dumb and your logic has obviously been seriously screwed with. Do I need more of a motive for tracking you down than that?"

"But what don't you understand? It all fits." He shifted a little bit more in her direction.

"Does not! In the first place, your leaving leaves me vulnerable, no matter what you say. In the second place, IF the Witch is only after you and IF I'll be completely safe, do you really think I could let you go off all alone like the idiot you are?" She was on a roll now. "And you should know that you can't just go waltzing off into the sunset without bothering to stick around to, I dunno, answer someone's questions about the lives they've already lived that they don't remember hardly anything of?"

"I said I would solve everything, and that's exactly what I intend on doing."

Sophie waited for him to elaborate and got only a simplistic look as a response. As she tried and failed to probe into the cerulean depths of his eyes, she sensed that something was just a little bit off about him. Something was slightly tweaked about the facial expression; the way he was holding himself. Maybe it was her imagination, but he didn't seem all too stable at the moment. It seemed like just a little shove would send him right off the edge into…what? Either way, when she attempted to infiltrate his mind, a solid wall blocked her path. A spiked wall, jeez! She had to subtly check to make sure that the mental impact hadn't actually physically damaged her.

"Well, how are you 'intending' on 'solving everything'?" she asked directly.

"That's simple enough, Sophie. Surely you could see that."

Well, what the hell with the enigmatic responses! Did he really have to do this?

Apparently sensing her irritation, he continued. "Any solution is found by eliminating the source of the problem, and therefore the problem itself." It sounded like a chant out of a textbook.

"And the problem is…?" she said slowly. Maybe he was talking about just going gallivanting off to 'slay the demon', or rather, the Witch. Well, supposedly she had a demon at her disposal as well, so that did work. Speaking of demons. She reached out and tried to contact Calcifer. Come on, Cal, I need help here… Back me up, buddy… But she was getting nothing in response. Not even a flicker of how the fire demon was feeling. That was odd enough in itself. Calcifer was always ready for her or Howl, at any time. Maybe he was occupied? Yet somehow that just didn't sound right.

"If you think," she went on, fuming, "you're going to go off to slay the dragon or whatever, you're not doing it without me."

He smiled, too coldly, taking another step toward her, with several yards still between them. This was all too much fun, he thought.

"Has it not occurred to you that I'm not going anywhere?" she continued, throwing her hands in the air.

Howl flicked a barely perceptible glance at the corner of the roof. Good. He was still there, and really, not putting up much of a fight. Disappointing. It was all about the drama, here. He would get riled up soon enough, and Howl could just stand there and laugh as he crashed and burned for once. He could hardly wait…

"What brought this on, anyhow? Bad timing?" Sophie was on a roll now.

As a matter of fact, it was all 'bad timing,' especially for the girl. Howl blinked slowly, languidly, checking the corner again. Well, to his credit, he was looking rather pained. Distraught and somehow furious. Not like it would make any difference. He would have to watch, have to see this, no matter what.

"You could have just told me: this is our problem and we need to go fix it, now let's go! But—"

"That, my dear, would be an inaccurate statement to make."

"—Huh?" was her ever-intelligent reply.

"Inaccurate. False. Erroneous."

"I know what that means, thanks," she snapped again. "What's so wrong?"

"…There is no problem to 'go' and fix." He stressed the one word.

"Why? Howl, just spit it out and get on with it already. You're acting so weird."

Howl's frosty smile grew slightly as a thrill radiated from the man in the corner when Sophie said Howl's name. Of course, Sophie couldn't see the man. No one could, for the moment. But the world was completely open to him, and he had to see it regardless.

"Sophie, dear—you are the problem." He was even closer to her, not two yards away.

"I—what? Howl, if you would just—"

"Shhhh. Why do you think things happen like they always have?" He had suddenly rematerialized right in front of her, one hand cupping her face delicately. "All these lifetimes…do you really not remember how it always ends?"

It hit her what he was trying to say. She felt her body wanting to submit to the urge to start shaking uncontrollably, to hyperventilate, out of the pure intuition that had been wired into her long ago and since only reinforced. But she refused and clenched her fists tight to keep from releasing the pent-up compulsion to panic. "I don't know what you're say—"

"Oh, you know perfectly well what I am saying." He stroked her face and tucked her hair behind her ear carefully.

As if, she thought venomously. Crap. Now what? She fought down the deep instinct to lose control, to bolt, and tried to think of a way to face him down. He wasn't acting right. Nothing was right about him. Her nostrils flared in anger and with the action she caught a whiff of the air around them. There was a musky smoke from firecrackers and sparklers far below on the fairgrounds. There was the cold clarity of winter and snow and night and darkness. But there was none of the hyacinth or warmth that filled the surrounding air when Howl was nearby. Another scent replaced it, oddly stifling and heavy. Almost sickly-sweet but polluted with something unidentifiable at the same time. And it was strangely, vaguely, barely familiar. She temporarily shoved down the pressing sense of wrongness and turned all—and absolutely all—her senses to the urgently impending feeling of, oh yeah: danger.

There seemed to be one 'solution' to this 'problem.' 'Eliminating' her would apparently be enough, and that was creepy-sounding enough to begin with.

What was the most overwhelming was the sense of betrayal. He'd been living with her, helping her as she helped him, saying he wanted to protect her. And now he was turning around and expressing the desire to kill her? She felt strangely calm as she digested the words in her mind. She didn't want it to happen like that, surely, but she felt like either the meaning hadn't fully sunk in or she had a death wish anyway. And she was pretty sure that she wanted to live.

The one thing she had at her disposal was her magic, really…which he knew more of, despite any claims he might have made to make her believe that she was the stronger one. For all she knew, it was an elaborate ploy for her to let her guard down around him, out of self-confidence. Had that just been his plan all along, to make her feel assured so he could tear it all down?

So she looked him straight in the (yet again peculiarly wrong) eye and stated, "You can kill me, but you can't control me."

This took him off guard and he drew back almost imperceptibly, a thin line appearing between his brows.

Then something appeared to click in his mind and he smiled.

And that was perhaps the most frightening thing of all.

"But now where's the fun in that?" he murmured after a few seconds of the frigid breeze tugging at their clothes and the sound of a crowd of conversations drifting up to the rooftop from the spaces below. And he lunged for her, so quickly that she thanked any available or listening higher power that she had had a spell for a wall of Power firing up since his first creepy statement. He met the wall and blasted it aside with something of his own, to which she muttered something and tried to paralyze him. He dodged and shot something else at her, a grim expression taking over his handsome face.

Sophie had to forget that she was fighting for her life against the one person in this world or any other who knew her better than anyone.

The two of them were battling back and forth, Sophie trying not to leave any openings and working with what she knew plus pure inborn instinct. But she still knew that he was holding back, just toying with her. They had both risen slightly into the air and were whizzing in endless circles of pursuit and evasion, casting illusions all over the place, each trying to distract or deceive the other. As they continued, a corner of Sophie's mind noticed that Howl's form, his very shape, wavered slightly each time he went to cast an illusion. Especially his eyes. They were turning more turquoise than cobalt by the second. It was a bit like a hologram. A millisecond was wasted dwelling on this, and then she saw that a huge ball of what she sensed as pure energy was gathering between them. It was huge and massively, painfully bright.

She was losing ground, too.

And then she thought that she might be having an out-of-body experience.

A part of her consciousness separated itself from the battle being fought and just flat-out analyzed the situation. Just like that. And this is what it had to say: I am fighting for my life against a more learned wizard who made me believe his lies and drew me in slowly, only to show his true colors and use me and try to destroy and kill me.

He was trying to kill her. He had been her savior, and she had been unable to see the warning signs that he was just the opposite. And now there was no escape, no mercy, and apparently no remorse.

She still remembered, abruptly, painfully, the smile he had worn when he tore her heart out how many lifetimes ago.

He had taken her heart, as much as she had tried to deny it, in a disguise as close to an angel as this world could provide. He had been deceiving her right from the beginning. He had shown her some of the better things in life after the low point she had sunk to; how to hope, how to dream, how to make it happen. She wished wistfully that maybe some of those dreams had been real. But in the end, it was all an elaborate plot, a scheme, to break a promise that he had made. The promise to protect her. Now she saw the lie. She saw that damned lie inside out, upside down, and backwards.

This was one angel that had fallen and she hoped would roast in hell forever. He had no right to do anything to her. He could have chosen any other life. Any other way to do things. Any way to enter her life, or better, to have not bothered at all.

And another lie that she realized through a random side thought: total bull that the Witch of the Waste was out to get them both. It was all him. All him. All the time. Every time.

This—this—demon—had been the one to kill her before she reached eighteen years of age, no matter the time or place. Even if she didn't remember each and every time, the scars were there, some hidden perhaps, but present all the same.

The tangent of mind ended and she pushed back against the flow of magic energy with new vigor, lacing it with unbridled anger. She let her emotions rule the streams of raw power sparking from her splayed fingertips, gritting her teeth and starting to squint against the growing globe of energy that seemed to be debating which way to implode. Or explode.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but Howl's form was growing hazier and hazier, flickering more and more, the greater the power he expended.

Those eyes were definitely green. They were emerald green.

His hair had turned back to that fiery shade that it had taken before going back to its natural raven black.

He was slightly shorter, and suddenly, it wasn't Howl at all.

That was unmistakably, impossibly, horribly, the Witch of the Waste: in the flesh.

Sophie gritted her teeth and decided to concentrate solely on staying alive. She was eighteen tomorrow, damn it all to hell! And she—was going—to make it! Illusions aside, she pushed harder.

She didn't see that only exactly three people in the crowds below had taken notice of the events on the rooftop. She didn't see one of the three take off running for the base of the building, banging on the front door desperately before trying to force open a window.

She didn't hear someone yelling her name in anguish from the corner of the roof. She didn't hear the confused murmurs of the two other people on the ground as they witnessed the spectacle by themselves, others unable to see it.

She didn't smell the buildup of sulfur and stinging smoke in the air, or the burnt crackles of electricity as a cable on the roof burst and sparked briefly.

She couldn't taste anything on the air except the now overpowering awful sickly sweet odor.

She could only feel the magic draining the energy from her, slowly, not enough to kill her, but enough to weaken her while she fought for her life. She could feel that she didn't have long until her reserves ran out. She could feel what used to be tingling traces become roaring flames of magic venting through her fingertips, like she wasn't able to expel it from herself fast enough.

And she had no idea what was happening when a third beam of light flashed explosively from the corner of the rooftop, a dark shape taking form behind it.

It was like slow motion, and later Sophie wasn't quite sure if time hadn't been in fact slowed down…as if by magic.

The figure that had become the Witch was knocked violently to the side, shrieking at a frequency that was inhumanly high and keening. The sound rode up higher and higher until it was too shrill to be heard but could be felt slicing through the air to replace the stream of magic that had been emanating to shoot towards Sophie only a fraction of a second earlier.

Sophie herself was so sharply shocked out of her state of acutely focused concentration that her own magic faltered, and she cut it off with some difficulty once she saw her enemy appearing to weaken. She kept her guard up, though, and was so painfully aware of everything around her all of a sudden that it was hard to stand when combined with the physical exhaustion.

Her vision blurred slightly and she shook her head to clear it, blinking rapidly and squinting. The noise from the subsequent explosion was racking her eardrums with every sound frequency imaginable. Pure white light was radiating up into the sky in something equivalent to a mushroom cloud, flashing and booming like the flare of a freshly lit fire. It cracked and blazed once more, rocketing ever skyward, then dissipated all at once into a shimmering shockwave that boomed deeply as it shot out in all directions. Sophie's hair and clothes whipped around her as she stumbled slightly before bracing herself again.

As her senses began to clear all over again, her attention snapped to the movement in the shadowed corner. Her vision was still spotted with blotches of dark blue and purple blindness, but she wasn't taking any chances. And the shape looked ominously familiar. What was she going to be put through now?

Sophie raised her hands aggressively. "Come on out, you cowardly bastard," she snarled. Her voice was still strong, and fueled by rage and adrenaline. She breathed deeply, centering herself and preparing herself for whatever was going to happen next. She didn't care that she was halfway drained from the emotional stress and pain and the physical exertion of using so much magic against a stronger opponent. Because she was going to be victorious. She was going to be the one to endure on forever. She was fully prepared for whatever was going to be thrown at her next.

"Sophie," rasped a hoarse yet unmistakable voice.

Except for that.

"You—just go away and forget I ever existed!" she fairly shrieked. "Ever! I don't care! Okay? I'll forget about magic and forget about you and forget about everything else, and lead a normal life! A normal…life!"

"No… No, wait—"

"For what?" she screeched, close to hysterics. She was extremely unstable in just about every way conceivable, and dangerously close to losing it completely. "For you to come kill me? I don't think so! Now just go away! Please—!"

"Oh, Sophie—you don't get it, do you? You don't understand what just happened. Or, let me rephrase that," he chuckled dryly, but not cruelly, "you don't fully understand. What did you see?"

"I saw you trying to fucking kill me!" she exploded. Literally, exploded. A flare escaped from her right palm but fizzed to a stop right in front of the other human on the rooftop. "You tried to kill me! You told me so! You said so! Now I'm going to kill you—!"

"No, Sophie, you're not." Why was he so damned calm? He should be running for the hills if he knew what was good for him! "You're not going to kill me. For one thing, you're not a killer. Tell me I don't know that much. And does this really look right to you?"

"I don't know! I don't know anymore! I just—I just—I—" she was beginning to hyperventilate, the air around her sparking with pent-up power all over again. Finally she could speak again. "I hate you, Howl Pendragon!"

"I— Of course you do. Of course you do. That's why I was trying to just leave you in peace…and…"

"No, no no no no no, we are not doing this again." Her eyes were wild and darting all over the place as she trembled in extreme volatility. "Just go. Just go. Do it. I don't know what just happened. But just go."

"Yes, you do know, Sophie."

"Will everyone stop trying to tell me what I think or don't think, what I know or don't know, what I want or don't want?" Another flash of magic, this time from her left hand. Her condition was amped up another notch when he said her name.

"I'm not, I'm not. Just think, okay? Think for me. Who did you just see over there?" He pointed to his right. "That wasn't me. It wasn't, and you saw that, Sophie. You saw who that was."

There was just a heap on the ground where he had pointed. Sophie hadn't even seen it when her vision had cleared. No one was there. It wasn't a person, or even actual material. Only a dark mass of what looked like a liquid had gathered in the spot where Sophie's dueling adversary had been standing.

"What?" The question barely escaped up her throat and past her lips, but it was enough to make her calm down, and her hands sank down just an inch closer to her sides.

She paced quickly to the spot, not taking her eyes off the man standing off to the right, keeping his distance carefully. Suddenly she reeled back, a hand subconsciously flung over her nose and mouth. It smelled horrible! Like something sickly sweet and acrid, and burning like some kind of unpleasant perfume—just like the incense that was burning in the Witch's castle—and now dissolved down to a…hang on.

The slightly ADD fragment of a memory had just crossed her mind without her realizing it. Of course. That was where she remembered that dreadful smell from. It wouldn't have made much sense, except that…

The weird threats.

The stone cold emotions and icy smile.

The sense of wrongness and unfamiliarity.

The odd manner of speaking and off tone of voice.

The desire to see Sophie perish in some painful, unnatural way.

The hologram-like lapses of the being into what seemed to be another person.

…And the smell of hyacinths was back.

"That wasn't you." The words were out before Sophie even realized that she had thought them, and it was too late to take them back.

"Right as usual, angel." There was no green glint in his eyes. No frozen undertone in his voice. No aggression in his posture. No ill emotion except regret that was unbelievably easy to read.

It didn't occur to Sophie that he could be acting. That he could be plotting even now. That he was going to turn the other cheek as soon as she blinked.

Only that she had really known the truth all along, and the only question was: "When did she make the switch?"

"In midair. Remember when I—"

"Disappeared. Yes…" she murmured, her hands having dropped to her sides long ago. Every piece of every event in every time was sliding into place neatly in a chart that was preset into her mind, and only a bit of tweaking was needed to make the occasional component fit perfectly. Well, scratch that. Nothing was actually perfect. But she could have been fooled right then.

"Sophie?"

She turned to him. "It makes sense. It all makes sense now…" The gray eyes were slightly out of focus.

"…And?" he asked tentatively, like she might break, or even explode, with no warning.

"I…I think I…"

"Yes?" he pressed.

"I…think…"

"Oh, damn it all, Sophie—" Howl crossed the remaining distance between them in three long strides and reached around Sophie with both arms, picking her up off the ground and crushing her to him tightly.

Something escaped her, making her twitch like a hiccup would. Something wet and warm was sliding down her face, slowing in its path once it met the cold air.

She shivered, and clung to him desperately.

"…Sophie? …Are you crying?"

"N-no…"

"Sophie…"

Don't say my name; I can't think straight as it is. "Howl?"

"Yes?"

"I…think I love you."

His breath caught in his throat. "…I think I love you, too."

A/N: AAAAHHHHHHHHH! Ahem. So, quite obviously, this can't be the legitimate end. We have loose ends to tie up yet ;) Hopefully everything makes sense—I've proofread for loopholes so many times—but message or review with questions. But just to clarify: (DON'T read this if you somehow skipped straight here without reading the above chapter! Spoiler alert!) the person in the corner on the roof that 'Howl' kept referring to was the real Howl. The person who is mentioned as 'Howl' for the first part is actually the Witch disguising herself as him through an illusion. So there ya go if that was confusing :) BUT you know what, you can review anyway just to make me happy! :D Yeah? Cool. Do it :) So I promise I'll tie up the loose ends (i.e. the three people who could see the magic battle…hint hint). In a little bit. Again, sorry it took, like four months…wow. But I hope you liked the 'dramatic conclusion'! XD Anyhoo. Thanks for reading and peace out til later!