This series of stories will follow the evolution of Sophie and Howl as characters, both before and after the movie. This fan fiction takes place within the movieverse, though I will slip some details from the book. Thanks, as always, for reading.

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Your Heart is an Empty Room
Part I: Him

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He had only gotten a small sliver of an image of her before she tumbled out of existence, the ground swallowing her from view. A warning from the future. And his heart beat in his hands, and he was surprised, and he didn't really feel anything at all.

Everything changed.

And so he forgot. And remembered. There was something he was looking for, someone he was looking for, but he was indifferent. His heart wasn't in it, his heart wasn't in anything he did anymore. Matters of the heart, it seemed, would not concern him again. Except when said heart, with its cunning and fiery tongue, annoyed and amused him endlessly.

He grew up. He left. He didn't look back on the life he had led. After all, he had done it for power. And he had it now, he could feel it rush beneath his skin like electricity. There was a spark of powerful magic within him and he no longer needed anything else to fill his chest. He was a powerful wizard and he did not need to be taught anymore by stuck up women and men with royal expectations.

Years passed as he traveled the world, a fire to warm him always at hand. The only real irksome thing about not having a heart is that it kept his skin feeling cold, but luckily he had an ironic solution for that. Then there was that feeling he got, which was rather unpleasant, and which made him feel like he should run and hide and look and seek all at the same time.

But he was mostly happy. The world was a big place and although he easily grew bored, he was good at amusing himself. There was always a new place to go, people to meet, things to see.

And yet.

The curse grew burdensome. He began to feel its effect on him. He grew lonely, and so he tried to find comfort in others. Just like he hid his heart away in a hearth, he hid himself. He played with disguises until he found one that seemed to suit him. Dyes, spells, potions that enhanced his already handsome looks. Expensive clothes, jewels. He took pride in his appearance. He was beautiful, everyone told him so, and the dyes and potions made him feel very good about himself. And then he was obsessed.

The fire called him vain, and he laughed.

He spent hours bent over a fire, hatching plans and pulsating magic that made him feel useful. They devised and built, jointly creating a place where they could be alone. A place they could settle. And so they made something like a home, or a fortress, and the new walls suited them well. It kept others out. It fit them, because their fortress didn't sit still on any sort of foundation. It had legs and doors that led to many different places.

But his contentment didn't last long. Because it was too big, too empty, and the walls echoed when he murmured words to the fire.

So he looked to objects. There were so many pretty things in the world, besides himself. And with a steady supply of work thanks to a handful of aliases and residences, he had enough money to have his fair share of objects. He filled up the emptiness in his new home, his castle, with pretty things. And as the place grew cluttered, he felt more at easy. The filled shelves, with musky books and shiny baubles made the castle less empty. Spiders found residence on his ceilings and dust collected on things he would never pick up after setting down.

When his castle, in all its wonderful disarray, was complete he was happy for a short while. He felt clever and his demon kept him company. He felt like the whole world was at his fingertips. He could do anything, go anywhere. He didn't need rules, he didn't need restrictions, he didn't need anyone telling him what to do. He was Howl Jenkins, or Howl Pendragon, or just Howl, or whoever he wanted to be whenever he wanted to be them.

A heart, it seemed, was a useless instrument. He certainly didn't need one.

So he forged a life. His ramshackle castle with its legs and temperamental fire was just right. It was filled with things, it could take him anywhere he wanted to be. There was always a hot bath, lined with many potions and bottles. And he was surely clever, because his door was perhaps his best magic of all.

There were opportunities. He learned new magic every once and awhile and got bored and found amusement. He talked to his demon, had girls ceaselessly at his disposal, and he felt the ever present buzz of magic fluttering within him.

And he would be happy. And sad. And angry. And childish. And very, very proud. And greedy. And vain. And beautiful. And, most of all, indifferent.

But he couldn't escape it, not within the walls that he encased himself in or with the purple, curved bottles which made his hair shine gold. Not with a particularly pleasant woman or with a particularly hard spell he mastered.

Every time he went out, he couldn't help that feeling from bubbling up again. He felt like he was being followed, like he was never safe, like he was missing some obvious fact. He was constantly unsettled and that annoyed him. He began to think it was the curse, following him around and leeching onto him.

He didn't like it. The feeling would distract him in the most unpleasant and unnecessary of times. His satisfaction with his new coat, with its emerald buttons and gold stitching, was suddenly lessened by its return. Or it would cluster in his lungs and choke him, even when he was walking on air. And it would sneak in, occasionally, when he felt almost-hot blood in his veins and a soft body under him and frantic lips working with his.

It nagged him, this feeling. This feeling he couldn't escape forever, which sometimes occupied his entire world and other times just passed, fleetingly, through his mind before being brushed away by something pleasant.

Empty, he felt empty.

And when it bothered him more than usual, he started looking for her. The girl who slipped away and carried promises he wasn't sure he really heard. He was always looking for her, this solution, sometimes more than others. He found her, hope, in many things. Every day, he would catch a glimpse of her. In the pretty girl with the blue dress walking by, who he would turn on his heels to pursue. In the brown eyes that fluttered closed as his hands wound into light hair. In the passion of a fiery redhead, who had hair like fire and danced so well and whose laugh was contagious and who didn't need him anymore than he needed her.

At first, they were to ease his loneliness and make him feel special. But she always snuck in there. In that nagging voice in his head that sounded too much like Calcipher.

Is this her?

Her hair isn't right.

Why are you wasting your time here.

This isn't her.

Where is she?

And even the searching became irksome. Looking for her in others began to bore him. He lost patience with himself, ignored the thought of the woman who could help him, and started chasing after hearts for the pure satisfaction it brought him.

They loved him because he was beautiful and charming and clever and well-dressed and powerful. And that stroked his ego. Their bodies made him forget, their presence occupied his time, and they were lovely to look at.

If there was one thing he liked more than all else, it was lovely things.

But it was beginning to get a little old. A little too familiar. A little too easy to capture a heart. He knew all the right words to say now, it wasn't really a challenge to steal a heart or get into a girl's bed. It always got old, really. In the end they all bored him, or stopped making him feel good, or started hating him, or they let their true colors show. He always found that none of them were really special. And when he found that they weren't special, they stopped making him feel special.

He grew weary.

Then there was the boy. Dirty red hair on a child no older than five. He noticed him first because he was alone in a downpour in a town he soon had to flee – there were one too many angry women there and the rainy weather was horrendous for his hair. And then he noticed that spark, that aura of power that seemed to flicker off the skin of those that had magic. Barely noticeable, but he sensed it. Many people had magic clinging to them, he met a dozen a day who didn't even realize. It was no matter, really, most had no idea how to manipulate it for even the simplest of things.

And then he noticed that although the rain fell, the boy was not wet at all. His clothes were ragged but dry and when the boy looked at him through the window, he recognized the look. He had worn it too, back before he started watching shooting stars and when he had no gentle hands to tuck him in at night. The boy was an orphan. Even if he had no heart, he could sympathize. So with a sigh he left the shop with its blue velvet and scarlet satin for the ragged boy outside with eyes that made him remember.

Howl, in a surprising act of kindness, took the boy in. As his apprentice, he said, but Calcipher knew better. He held his beating heart and knew he was, occasionally, capable of kindness. An imprint of humanity and compassion was still locked in Howl's empty chest and when Howl felt, Calcipher felt.

Markl, he called him, because he heard his name wrong in the rain. The boy never corrected him and soon forgot it wasn't really his name at all.

Howl taught him magic with a new fervor and grew even more full of himself with a child's adoration thrust upon him. He was well suited to teaching, he thought. He was, after all, a very, very powerful wizard. The boy idolized him and did what he said and Howl soon noticed that he was beginning to rub off on the boy. Markl hated rules and scorned authority and didn't need anyone.

Howl was almost fond of him. He surely liked him more than the silly, beautiful girls he courted and the stuffy men who came for spells and potions. And he listened to him much better than Calcipher did.

Markl's childishness, which was both endearing and occasionally exhausting or rejuvenating, made him think about his own childhood. He was distanced from it. It was so long ago, everything was so long ago. A girl with starlight hair falling through the ground was ages ago. Perhaps it was just a dream. She occupied his dreams so often anyway, it was possible he had imagined it. But Calcipher remembered and Calcipher knew.

The years passed a bit slower with the redheaded boy following him around. He was fine with it. So he spent his days teaching Markl how to do spells and tend to customers and disguise himself. But the domestic routine was getting to be a bit constricting. He began to leave him alone more and more often. After all, he was a smart kid and Howl had better things to do than teach spells to a child.

He began whispering sweet words into giggling girls' ears again. It was very much the same thing, over and over, with very little variation. Some truly amused him, most just made him feel good about himself. So he continued until he broke their heart or they noticed his lack of one and broke things off. His ego would be hurt and he would throw a fit over his hurt pride and the loss he pretended to feel as he begged for sympathy from his demon heart and young apprentice.

He got into a little mess, eventually. A beautiful sorceress, perhaps one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, who actually made the chase fun again. He took great pleasure in her company, in her sly smiles and the graceful way her body moved and the soft purr of her voice. She drew him in, seduced him, made him think that maybe she was the solution to all his problems. The witch loved him, maybe he could love her too. Until then, he found contentment kissing trails of cold heat down her milky skin and delighting in her brilliant magic, witty mind, and clever hands. She was beautiful and enthralling and wonderful.

Then one day the enchantment broke. And although she was beautiful on the outside, he was aghast at her true character. Her heart was inky black, her magic cruel and unkind, and he was repulsed by the witch. She was a witch who cast curses on people, a witch who took joy in the suffering of others, who ruined lives of people who deserved better. He no longer found her beautiful, he shrunk away from her touch, and rejected all of her further advances.

She was furious she had not captured his heart, like he captured hers, and that he refused her. And her anger grew and could not be contained. Her anger manifested into magic and she swore she would get revenge. She went after him, her beauty falling away to reveal the hideousness of her corrupted temperament.

He realized he had made a mistake. Playing with hearts was a bit trickier than he thought. He was startled by the realization that his disgust with her cruelty was hypocritical. After all, did he not spread heartbreak and tears wherever he went because of his false proclamations of love? He realized he could be no better than her.

He had to do something about that.

That was when the rumors started. Rumors whose inception incurred upon his own lips. He had long been called a heart breaker, but when he set up shop in new towns and changed the colors on the dial on the door, he started letting whispers build about him being a heart stealer instead. He thought it was endlessly amusing and ironic and it was a fun game to play.

War came, out of nowhere.

Howl was annoyed that he got dragged into it.

His first time in a battle he saw things he had never imagined. Horror, blood, death. It left him gasping, shocked for the first time since he gave up his heart. And he saw great wizards fall prey to the darkness of war, saw men form into beasts.

Soon he saw himself turn into a beast too. He had always been able to fly, but now he took the shape of a bird. Dark, ink black feathers mimicked the clouds over head and the dark times that were sure to come. And when he returned back to his castle, he couldn't quite shake away his claws and feathers. He found himself truly affected, unable to abandon his problems as soon as he walked into his door. The feathers would fade eventually, falling back into his skin, but it began to go away slower than it had before.

He needed to get away from that. And he did so love a parade.

The girl in the hat and the ugly gown, he caught just a glimpse of her. Yet something intrigued him, and from the slight image he got of her she seemed to be one of those gentle beauties he so adored. She seemed to remind him of someone, but he couldn't figure out who. He would have to see her closer. He took a second to decide whether to follow her and, with a sigh, turned in the direction she had headed.

He caught another glimpse of her as she rounded a corner and it hit him.

He had been looking everywhere for her.