February Breath

Disclaimer: It has been one year and three days since this story was published. Have I claimed ownership yet? Nope. Will I? Nope again!

A/N: Well, that was quite the gap, wasn't it! *dodges flying paraphernalia* I'M SORRY! Six months and-and-aaaahh! (I got absorbed in my other major story, what can I say? For those of you that are reading Fearless, come on, you have to admit that that's been plenty for me the handle over the past, what, ten months? If you haven't read it, and you're a FFVII fan...well, check it out ^^ but anyway.) It was four months since my last update before that, and, well... I finished this chapter just now, and I kind of like it a lot. Love it, actually. What, you thought I'd leave you with the declaration of love and that's it? Come on, people, give me some credit! *ignores voice saying that after six months after four months after regular weekly updates that's what people tend to think* But, here it is, and I apologize again, but I hope you enjoy it...because it's the conclusion. :)

Chapter 13

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

"Yo! Lovebirds! Cool it, would ya?" barked a crisp yet grating voice out of nowhere. "There's still a world out here, ya know!"

Howl gave a start, then smiled widely. "Calcifer?"

"Who the heck else would it be?"

"Calcifer!" Sophie cried. "Are you alright? I couldn't get through to you earlier."

"Yeah, well, someone had to protect the castle from the demon trying to get in!" Sophie could just imagine Cal fizzling irritably.

"I knew it," Howl muttered. "It's gone, though, isn't it?" he asked. "It has to be. Its host is dead."

The fire demon was silent for a second, then whooped delightedly. "I knew Sophie could do it! You've got quite a spark, after all! Oop, gotta go. Come back soon…!" And the crackley voice trailed off into the night.

Howl chuckled and gave Sophie a squeeze before releasing her. "You don't even realize how good I feel right now."

She smiled warmly. "Love will do that to you."

He returned it, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "I guess so—ah! Ow…" he muttered, stumbling back a step.

"Howl? What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Sophie rushed after him, supporting him with one arm while trying to get him to look at her.

"N-no, it's just my…agh…it's so…"

"Howl, what's going on?" She forced herself to stay calm. She didn't detect any kind of curse around, but that didn't mean much. There was a lot she had yet to learn.

"I'm fine…it's just…so heavy…"

She blinked. "What's heavy?"

"…My chest."

"What?" she whispered, then had a thought and pressed a hand to the front of his shirt. There was a second of silence, then a soft bump. A few seconds, and another one. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It became steadier and stronger.

"Oh, Howl… You got your heart back." A smile spread back over her face, and she hugged him tightly again.

"I…I did?" He looked down incredulously as he heard his own heartbeat for the first time in years. "…You really are amazing, you know that?"

She smiled into his shoulder and didn't say a word.

"Oh, and Sophie?" he murmured into her hair after a moment.

"Hm?"

"Before you kill me for this, too… I lied about something. Something tiny," he said quickly. "Insignificant, almost. But I think it'll be a lot less awkward for everybody if I tell you right now that I lied about my age the day we met."

"You're kidding, right? How old are you, really?" She pulled back and cocked her head to the side, frowning slightly.

Howl sighed melodramatically. "I'm not even twenty yet," he muttered.

There was a pause, then Sophie started shaking with laughter.

"Don't laugh, I know how much of an idiot I am, trust me—"

"Oh, shut up, you pompous teenage moron," she chuckled, latching onto him again and slapping him on the back with one hand. "Do yourself a favor and stop talking now."

There was a sudden smashing sound, and both the witch and the wizard jumped, ready for almost anything—

"Sophie! Soph, are you…" Someone tall and thin and blonde crashed through the rooftop door. "…What?"

"Justin!" Sophie exclaimed. "Uh… This might take a while to explain."

~Several hours later~

I looked around the living room and sighed. It was nearly midnight, and Howl and I had finally finished with our tale. A few hours since the incident on the rooftop, and was I sore. In fact, if it hadn't been for that, I would never have believed Howl when he had said how much a duel would tire a witch or wizard out. I fully believed him now.

Speaking of Howl. I could practically feel the emotions rolling off him, and I thought I was correct in attributing that to his recent regain of a heart. I kept throwing glances to my left, to make sure he wasn't going to spontaneously disappear or anything. I knew I was doing it – I couldn't help it, even when he pointedly met my eyes with a look that said I'm not going anywhere.

Oh. Just kidding. He was actually saying it in my head. That explained it.

I know. I'm just…on edge.

Still?

Aren't you?

Well, of course, but I'm not going to just vanish into thin air. Relax.

Hmph. I guess. Fine.

"Would you two quit talking like that?" Lettie gave a rather unladylike snort from the couch opposite the two of us. "Just because I haven't learned to do it yet…" The younger girl pouted, but her eyes still lit up with the recurring realization that she had the capability to learn how to do it.

The two people that had followed Justin onto the roof the previous night had been Lettie and our father. A good deal of explaining had passed (my best friend was not in fact dead; I'd been attacked by a witch from a parallel world; I was a witch and Howl was a wizard; no, Dad, he's not dangerous, at least not most of the time; I had rediscovered my past in a rather unorthodox manner; et cetera.) Howl chose to drop a bomb in the form of a 'suspicion' he had. I informed him that that was bull and to spit it out, so he revealed that I had likely inherited my witch powers from my dad, which made a little bit of sense. Lettie had also inherited the gene, and so had Martha; but hers was recessive and comparatively weak but still present.

Justin nudged her with his shoulder and smiled. "You'll learn soon enough."

Yep, those two sure had hit it off. There was absolutely no resentment in this conclusion of mine, because I felt like it was something that they both needed. The thing was, now we had to come up with a legitimate excuse why Justin was suddenly alive and well to present to the astonished general public. We had been lucky to get away unseen last night, but I for one didn't trust our luck to hold.

We had come back to the house, Mom and Martha having found us by then, and a lot more explaining was in order. (Howl and I had to skim over the little detail of his sleeping in my room for the past several nights, but that was a minor detail at this point.) Mom had fainted several times during the course of the few hours.

The look on everyone's faces when they had spotted a sniggering Calcifer in the fireplace was so priceless. He happily crunched down on some bits of charcoal like it was candy, and then said, "What?" That had elicited a few screams plus another instance of unconsciousness from Mom. So then of course we had to explain how the Witch's fire demon had gotten into Howl's castle when Cal was left alone, and the two of them had been battling it out as I blew up the Witch on the roof. That had rendered the evil demon temporarily incapacitated, and apparently just in time, or so said Calcifer, who had a tendency to embellish his epic tales rather flamboyantly. Well, once he had gotten over his indignation at being called an 'it' for several hysterical minutes, at least.

But now that we were all on the same page, the next question was: what now? Now that all the mysteries had been solved, how could any of us ever lead a normal life? How could we go back to the way things were before, when our biggest concerns were college applications and who would do the grocery shopping? How could we go on about our daily lives, hiding a secret that spanned time and worlds, and pretending it was all the same?

In the midst of all this, I realized something. I didn't belong to this world.

Who would have guessed it, but I honestly, literally did not belong here. None of my family did. But all the same, we had all grown here. Our family had expanded here. We had a past, a present, and a future here.

Then again, we had a past and a future in Ingary. We would have had a present, too, if not for those strange, almost cruel twists of fate. But it couldn't be cruel; not when fate had brought us everything else that it had. There was no way to tell how things could have been different. The only sure thing about destiny is that it's never set in stone; not even burned into wood, or even drawn out on slate. It isn't carved into ice that can melt, or painted on a canvas that can be bleached and rewritten over again.

It's traced into sand. The shifting sands of time.

The sand that people walk and run and leap across, leaving footprints twisting and sprawling across the surface, altering it forever but not at all in permanence. The sand that becomes suddenly vulnerable to earth that can crack it; wind that can blow it away and into a new pattern; and water that can erase it and make new tracks to follow. The sand that no one can even begin to comprehend, because no two people will ever see the same pattern in their lives, and no single grain of sand will ever see the same place again where it rests in the tracks of fate.

And that's how it's worked, through every twist and turn of the ages of the past, present and future.

But destiny aside, reality is tough.

I really had no definite future. Our world's idea of a future for me at this point in time would include a college, among other things. I had been accepted to several colleges and universities, but hadn't picked one. I hadn't declared a major. I hadn't decided on a career path.

Society's expectations aside, I had the entire world open before me. And I could easily forget about this one and move on to my second home.

Except for everyone here. Sure, I had made friends and kept a few up until now; but no one was a really close best-friend-for-life like Justin was. I could bear to only visit them at high school reunions and keep in touch through writing. Maria was an exception, and I was willing to take pains for her. But my family would be left behind, too. Sure, they belonged in Ingary as well; there was just no way for a well-established family of five to just disappear. Besides, my sisters would have to make the same choice themselves in a few years that I was lingering on now. I had a funny sort of feeling that they might just choose to follow me, and that wasn't helping with the pressure.

It would be almost too easy for me to disappear now…and something was screaming at me to do it.

Maybe it had something to do with the young man with the raven hair sitting next to me. We both knew he would have to return to his true home sooner or later, and I happened to be in love with him. It was weird, but I was pretty sure that every single person in that room knew it, too. Or demon.

And there lay my choice.

"I want to finish out the year," I stated out loud, surprising even myself. Everyone else went silent immediately, and I absently wondered if it was my actual power or the feeling that came from my power that gave me this strange, new sense of authority. "And then," I swallowed hard, "I want to go to Ingary."

Howl squeezed my hand, saying everything at once, as my parents fell upon me, saying that it was my choice and that I should have freedom and the trust to make good decisions and all that. I had almost reached the breaking point of shock in realizing that I wasn't coming back when Howl guessed my thoughts and pointed something extremely important out:

"You know we have the spell on record now, right? We can go back and forth as we please. Didn't I ever mention that the black portal in the castle goes to Wales? I have a sister in Wales," he rushed on. It sounded like a bunch of mostly-nonsense to my family, but it finally sank in what he had said.

"The connection doesn't—I don't know—close or anything?" I gaped at him, hardly daring to believe it.

"No…" he shook his head, looking slightly worried at my confusion. "I visit Megan all the time," he said slowly, realizing something.

"And if you do that by using a portal in the castle…" I gasped, catching on.

"Then there's no reason why I can't create a new one—" A grin began to spread over his handsome face.

"That leads straight to here!" I half-yelled, jumping up and grabbing his hands. "I can go back and forth whenever I want!"

"Wait, so you've been travelling to and from Wales for years?" Martha blinked. "We're talking about Wales, right? As in, next to England off the coast of northern Europe Wales?"

"Exactly," he grinned back.

"I can come back whenever I want," I laughed, in near hysterics, turning toward my parents. "Once I finish the year, I'm telling everyone I'm studying abroad and travelling a lot," I declared. "I'm going to Ingary then…and I'll start a future." I whispered the last part to myself. Howl heard me, though, and he smiled softly, just for me.

"We should probably go on weekends, when we can," he pointed out. "There's a lot to straighten out."

I sighed and blew some hair out of my face. "That's true—hang on." I looked at him suspiciously. "Who knows?" I demanded.

"Well, ah, the King happens to, because he keeps tabs on me because I'm so powerful—" He winced and backed up slightly.

"Oh, no, don't go all slitherer-outer on me, you sneaking wizard!" I poked him in the chest. ("Isn't it hilarious watching her push him around?" I heard Martha ask Lettie with evident delight.)

"Hey, it's not entirely my fault that I'm wanted by the Crown, and, er…" he began defensively, but trailed off and turned to Justin. "Come to think of it, why haven't you done anything?" he wanted to know. We had figured out in the midst of our story-telling that Justin was in fact Prince Justin of Ingary, who had been kidnapped by the Witch of the Waste over a year ago and was presumed dead. That was one of our added responsibilities: to get him back to his uncle, the king, as soon as possible.

Justin grinned mischievously. "I figure Uncle will let you off the hook through his undying gratitude for restoring the heir to the kingdom, as well as reawakening one of its most powerful up-and-coming witches, who happened to destroy the Witch of the Waste herself."

"Well, heck, when you put it that way…" I muttered. "So, um…I'm guessing we should make a quick trip this weekend?" I looked around the room for concurrence, and received it in enthusiasm. "My. This'll be quite the adventure."

"Don't worry about it," Howl advised me, squeezing my hand. "We've much more of history to make, yet. And all the time in the world to do it."

~*~The Beginning~*~

A/N: :) Yeah, so that really is it. Wow, this is the first time I've finished up with a long story like this, and...it's gratifying. Anyways, I hope you liked it (review!) and I'll leave a little bit to the imagination ^^ Thank you so much for keeping up with me this entire time and sticking out my silences, I thank you all for reading, reviewing, favoriting, alerting, and everything, and I welcome reviews for the end of the story! :') See you around!