(Final) final word count: 3,800+ words!! Longest chapter ever!!! XD
Disclaimer: If I owned the rights to this movie, or its characters, or even my own copy, do you think I'd have to keep placing holds on it in the library!? My point is, Spirited Away is not mine, so if you sue me you're not gonna get it from me. ...And I sincerely hope that just made sense.
Never Forget
Chapter Six: Memory
by Nereix
Both of them felt it. A blink, a slight disorientation; their world faltered for a nearly imperceptible fraction of a second before continuing on obliviously.
Yubaaba eyes were wide and bloodshot, her breath deliberately controlled, her voice low and harsh with barely restrained wrath.
"That girl...that girl! What did she do!? What did she just do!?"
Silence.
Chihiro was floating, drifting through the stark blackness of eternity. It was so cold. Surrounding her on all sides, empty and blank, was darkness. Exhaustion settled over her like a blanket of immobility, seeping into her limbs, until she had to remind herself to breathe. Her mind was moving sluggishly, thoughts grabbed up and eaten by the black depths that she could only stare into, too tired to reach out with her bloodstained hands to retrieve them.
Kohaku was dead.
But her emotions weren't moving. They had frozen over; there was a void replacing her soul. Fear was absent. Sorrow was nonexistent, even for the blood-soaked, pitifully lifeless body she held in her crimson-streaked arms. She could feel her movements slowing, her breath freezing over; but it was fine, she was so tired, she just wanted to sleep...For the sake of the sentiment she couldn't grasp, she hugged the body a bit closer, allowing her eyes to drift shut. Coaxed by the motion and the lack of gravity, his hair brushed against her face, enticing; like the touch of silk.
Unbidden, tears crept their way through closed eyelids and streaked down, tracing a warm path to her chin.
No, she didn't want to cry...she'd sworn she wouldn't cry...
Chihiro had cried, seven years ago, when she returned to a reality that left no room for faith in magic or spirits, particularly river spirits that took on the forms of dragons and came visiting to sweep you away. She had been only a little girl then, ten years old and still naïve, bawling over her own dashed dreams when she was forced to conform to a world that wouldn't accept her for what she believed in.
Honestly, Yuuko, that daughter of yours...
Ogino-san, I would like to talk to you about Chihiro's relations with her peers...
Hey, it's the spirit girl! Haha, better be nice to her or her dragon boyfriend's gonna come getcha! Bii, crazy girl, crazy girl...
Chihiro! What have I told you about lying!? Your homeroom teacher called me again today...
Spirit girl, crazy girl, go fly back to where you came from...
She had learned quickly and the hard way, from experience. Several lost friends and a few elementary schoolyard fights had taught her to keep her mouth shut. Most of the qualities she had learned in the Spirit World—forwardness, courage, speaking her mind—did her no good in the reality she was in. Only the strengthening of her will helped her, because it kept her from crying; and when she didn't cry, they left her alone.
She'd endured it for a year before it all amounted to too much. In the end, surrounded and restricted by walls on all sides but one, she turned back around and ran.
She had tried not to cry, as her feet pounded through the forest path, kicking up dust that was instantly muted by the mist of the rain. The cold downpour soaked right through her thin, oversized t-shirt, but she didn't care. Anger, restraint, frustration, had shifted; beneath them was left an underlying conviction, backed by her stubbornness—that she could get away from it all.
Faded red brick wall, shaded gray by the night. The tunnel—Haku—
The rhythm of the raindrops on her back was replaced by darkness, pressing down on her from all sides. She didn't pause, concentrating only on the dull thuds of her sneakers against the hard soil beneath her feet. If she kept running, she'd get to see Haku again—
Hard, brick wall, crashing against her shoulder. Her voice shrieked out in pain, echoing hollowly in the tunnel. She collapsed against the wall, drawing breath in short gasps, gritting her teeth against the waves of pain that stabbed through her right arm. A brick wall?
She pulled herself up, digging the fingers of her left hand into the ridges between the bricks. With smarting fingers, she felt around in the darkness, blindly reaching up as high as she could reach. The wall seemed to stretch up forever. It was in the way. She couldn't get past it.
No...
Losing control, she slid down to her knees, tears streaming freely down her cheeks, grasping futilely for a handhold on the rough brick, and screamed.
Swiftly, the shadows rose up and enveloped her. They offered no resistance to her panicked motions, but neither did they give away to light. As her movements weakened and her cries faded even from her own ringing ears, Chihiro felt so tired—tired, and cold, in the endless blackness—
I shouldn't have even come here—
And then, before her, the darkness tore open with a roar; and a bright twisting shape, glittering with a light that seemed to come from within it, darted towards her. She caught a glimpse of iridescent scales and unfathomable emerald-green eyes that locked with her own, before it turned away and disappeared, leaving her alone, reaching out her hand to the empty night air in front of her own blue-painted house.
Chihiro opened her eyes, ignoring her tears. Her memories were overlapping.
That night, eleven years old, she had resolved to go back to the Spirit World. But in the midst of sneaking out, her mother had woken up and caught her. Her resulting punishment—grounded for a month—had been enough to convince her to miserably give up the idea of running away. So in the end, she never went back to the tunnel.
Yet...she now distinctly remembered running through the rain, reaching the gaping mouth; finding the brick wall, and the darkness, and the light. It was bewildering, and confusing to have memories of two entirely different things that she had apparently done at the same time.
That night, what had really happened?
...But now, Chihiro realized, she wasn't tired anymore. The memories were inside her, warm and comfortable inside her heart: fueling her, so she could move and breathe and live. And as her thoughts collected, so did her emotions.
She looked down at Kohaku, drifting motionless in her arms, and let out her breath in a painful, wonderful, half-laugh, half-sob.
Burying her face in his hair, Chihiro held him close. Come back to me, Kohaku. Don't die, don't hurt, don't leave. I won't give you up...
She was whispering it, lips moving against his hair, her last tears dropping among the dark strands. Aware of her heart beating firmly within her own chest, she offered up the words like a prayer. Come back to me.
Another heartbeat joined hers.
Slowly, the blood streaks on her hands faded. The stains on her clothing lightened and disappeared. Little by little, warmth was suffusing through the body in her arms.
Come back to me—Kohaku...
He began to breathe.
Chihiro smiled through tears that welled up in joy. Hugging him tightly, feeling his warmth, she laid her head on his shoulder and breathed in his scent. He smelled of the sky: the mixture of the sun's bright rays and the calm drifting clouds, and the unmistakable fresh, clear feeling of a young river. She held him close as the darkness scattered into light, and the warmth glittered around them, and the gentle radiance led them back home.
The two sorceress twins watched the events unfold within the crystal orb in stunned silence.
The truck was heading straight for the boy. But Chihiro shouted a warning as soon as the truck's tampered mechanisms went out of control—giving Haku just enough time to scuttle out of the way. The front corner of the vehicle collided with his left shoulder, causing him to fall over on the side of the street; but he was unquestionably alive.
Yubaaba's eyes narrowed. "I am a fool," she muttered, resetting the connection with a curt gesture of her hand. The image scrambled, then settled into blurry, rapid movement as the input-output returned to its usual time-lapse ratio. "It was the girl all along..."
Standing before the desk, Zeniiba struggled to get her own thoughts in order. What she had just seen was...impossible. Chihiro was a human girl. Even by divine standards, this kind of use of power was rare. That one human could do...this...
If she didn't know any better, she would call it time manipulation.
But that wasn't possible...
Kuraya Souichi took another look at the other boy, sitting on the edge of the cot with a bandaged head and an arm in a sling, and sighed in exaggerated exasperation. "You know, I leave you alone for one day and you go and get hit by a truck. Honestly, when a big car is going towards you, you're supposed to run away."
Kohaku blew a lock of hair out of his eyes. "Of course," he said politely. "Just like when a soccer ball is going towards your head, you're supposed to duck."
Souichi laughed, rubbing his head a bit ruefully at the memory. "Alright, you win. Looks like neither of us are too smart, huh..." His expression grew more serious. "But hey, you're really okay, right?"
Kohaku looked up. "Huh?"
"I mean...you know...six years ago."
Gingerly moving his arm to a more comfortable position, Kohaku paused and bit his lip before answering. "...Yeah. I've only been here two days, so it's not—"
The door opened and Chihiro entered the hospital room, carefully carrying two cans of warm coffee. "Konnichiwa, Kohaku! They were out of decaf, so—ah, Kuraya-senpai, konnichiwa!"
"Konnichiwa, Ogino-san. So you're looking after this thick-headed idiot, huh?"
Chihiro raised her eyebrows, handing Kohaku his coffee. "Thick-headed? Getting hit by a truck like that, I'm certainly relieved that his skull is so hard to break."
Kohaku grumbled. "What, you're both against me now?"
"Sorry, Kuraya-senpai, I didn't know you were here so I didn't get you a coffee."
Souichi dismissed it with a quick smile and a wave of his hand, standing up and hoisting his bag to his shoulder. "Iie, I gotta leave now anyway. There's a test tomorrow that I really shouldn't fail. Dewa, Ogino-san, I'll see you in class. Kohaku, take care of yourself, man."
"Un, mata ne."
"See you tomorrow," Kohaku called after him.
As his footsteps retreated down the hall, Chihiro sipped at her coffee. "How's your shoulder?"
Kohaku gave her a wry grin. "Numb, as usual. I seriously think they're overdoing the painkillers."
Chihiro laughed and then quieted into a soft smile, both hands cradling the coffee on her lap. "I'm really glad they're letting you out today."
"Aa. Me too."
Chihiro caught the terse edge in his voice and looked up, surprised. "...What do you mean?"
Kohaku flushed a bit. "Oh, um. Sorry. I...it's just..." He hesitated, and finally confessed, "I'm uncomfortable in hospitals." Avoiding Chihiro's eyes, he continued on. "Before my family moved to Tokyo, we lived here, in the same house we live in now. Around the middle of August six years ago, when I was twelve, I got in an accident near the forest."
Chihiro started. He didn't notice.
"When my parents found me, I was...pretty much half-dead...It was four months before the hospital let me out. I was wounded, and feverish..." He looked down at his coffee. "We don't know what happened. The way my parents try to avoid the topic, it must have been serious, but...I don't remember it. The doctors say I may have shock-induced amnesia." He hunched his shoulders. "So I don't have any memories of before I was twelve. Everything that happened before it—before I woke up in the hospital—as far as I know, they never existed..."
Chihiro swallowed around a fist-sized lump that had formed in her throat. Six years ago, the middle of August: that was when she'd tried to run away—at least, according to one of the two correlated memories in her head. She'd gone to the tunnel, and in the constricting shadows, had met—Kohaku, as a dragon.
There had to be a connection. Did he remember? Could he remember?
"Kohaku," she said gently, carefully. "Do you remember anything about what happened during the accident?"
He looked up, searchingly, into her eyes before dropping his gaze and answering. "...Only a little. Just...strong emotions, and some random images. I remember it was dark. And..." He frowned, briefly. "I was, for some reason, telling myself not to look backwards as I walked. And then there was a person dressed in white, and..." He blinked. "That's funny. I was feeling very—protective—of that person, but I just remembered that. I never realized it before. After that..."
Chihiro's heart was refusing to slow down. "Not to look backwards"—then he was at the tunnel after all. And a person dressed in white—my t-shirt! My oversized white sleeping shirt. That was me, he saw me... ...Aw, he was protective of me!—Sternly reprimanding herself for falling in love all over again when she was supposed to be looking after Kohaku, Chihiro urged him forward gently. "After that...?"
Below creased eyebrows, Kohaku's eyes were trained to the floor. When he shook his head, the movement seemed labored, almost jerky. "That's it. Afterwards, I woke up at the hospital..." His voice became strained. "I only remember the white walls and the ceiling, and the tubes..." He flinched. His bangs fell over his eyes, hiding their expression. "And the smell, and how..." He clenched his teeth. "...how much it...hurt..."
He was shaking. Frantic with worry and a sudden stab of guilt, Chihiro touched his shoulder.
Kohaku's head jerked up with a sharp intake of breath. For a split second, Chihiro stared into wild, terrified eyes: dark emerald surrounding dilated pupils—pupils that were oddly elongated in an almost reptilian way—
Kohaku broke their eye contact, looking away and covering his face with his hand, panting slightly. "I'm sorry..."
Chihiro sat back down, hand clenched around her forgotten coffee. Her mind was racing, stumbling, to patch the pieces together. Six years ago in the tunnel, she had suddenly been stuck in the darkness—in the darkness! Just like before, after the car crash!?—but he had appeared, and he...he had ripped open the darkness and saved her. But he didn't remember it or anything about the Spirit World...but in the tunnel, she had encountered a brick wall. How had Kohaku gotten through it? Magic, it must have been magic—but by himself? Maybe Zeniiba obaa-chan helped him. Zeniiba, or Yubaaba—
She froze. Yubaaba would not have been happy about Kohaku leaving.
More likely she'd be furious. Kohaku was her only apprentice, and if there was one thing about the old woman that Chihiro had learned, it was that she hated to lose her possessions. How hard had she tried to stop Kohaku from leaving? Could she be trying to get him back even now? She was a powerful sorceress; in all probability, she could reach him even in the human world—
The car crash. When he died—was Yubaaba responsible for that!?
Amidst the sudden angry turn of her thoughts, Chihiro realized what she had to do.
—Well, apart from tearing through the brick wall to the Majou no Sekai to make that old baba pay, of course—
If Yubaaba could harm him like that, if the truck incident had been her doing, then Kohaku was in serious, no, lethal danger. He had already died once. Granted, Chihiro had managed to somehow save him—she hadn't yet figured out exactly how she'd done it—but that was no guarantee towards the future. Especially since Chihiro suspected that she herself would have died in there had she not started reminiscing.
And Kohaku...he seemed haunted, almost, that he couldn't remember his past.
She had to tell him about the Majou no Sekai. Even if he didn't believe her, she had to warn him—
When it came down to it, he deserved to know.
"Kohaku?"
He swallowed, then resolutely, almost defiantly, looked her in the eye. "Yeah?"
Her coffee had gone cold. She set it on the small bedside table with numb fingers.
"If you don't mind, I would like to tell you a story. And I ask you, please, listen to it..."
...Come on, did you really think I'd kill off Kohaku? ^_-
Hmm, I wonder why Kohaku's hair floats in the darkness thingy but Chihiro's tears still fall like normal...
Oh, that's right! ^_^ What do all of you prefer, shorter chapters and quicker updates, or longer chapters and slower updates? Please let me know ^_^
The specific movie they were watching in chapter 5 was Kaze no Tani no Naushikaa (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), another one of the great Miyazaki Hayao's work! As far as I know, it's the only movie to have an extensive manga version and involves caves ^_^;; If I'm mistaken, please let me know ^^
I wonder how many people actually read my rants at the ends of these chapters...
I got so many reviews for the last chapter! =D I wonder if it was the cliffhanger? ^_^;; In any case, thank you thank you to everyone! =D These reviews made me really really really happy. I hadn't checked for a few days or so, so when I finally got around to it, wow! XD People were starting to look at me funny because I was bouncing up and down a bit in my chair with this really giddy grin on my face. Pff, last time I check my email in the library...
Review responses! Whee! Look for your name!
DizAznAngel – Don't go too hard on Yubaaba ^_- I don't think she's completely evil...look at the way she looks after her son...and did you see the look on her face when Chihiro called her 'obaa-chan'!? Truly priceless. Thanks for reviewing!
Aria Zephyr – Eh...another cliffhanger. ^^;; The chapter was stretching out too long...Deepest apologies, and thank you for the review!
FluffyLuver4Eva – I'm so glad you liked the chapter! =D About YYH, unfortunately, I don't have cable!! ^_^;; I'd be grateful for a website. Thanks so much for reviewing. Now, now, no strangling the bishounen male lead...^^;;
RayRay – I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! gives RayRay a tissue But he's alive and better now, yes? ^^;; Of course, except for his amnesia and current state of trauma...hehe...I was gonna make Kohaku's hair long at first, but I couldn't get it to fit my mental image of "Kohaku with a normal childhood." So...-_-;; I'm not too good at this =P...But I loved your review! Thank you thank you! XD holds out hands for Pocky
silunifire – Cliffhangers abound. ^_^ Sorry I wasn't there on Saturday...I really hate weekend subway service...please don't torture my pencil and eraser ^^;;...and oi, leave my rabbit alone. But thank you for reviewing ^_^
Anime Fan26 – Here's the update =) I hope this answers a few questions, and doesn't pose too many more...^^;; Thank you for your review.
LeilahBert – Miyazaki-san is a genius! XD I'm happy you think my story is good. And hopefully this chapter answers your question! =D Thank you for reviewing!
Risa Rima – I'm so happy you read my fic out of the hundreds of other amazing Spirited Away fics out there! Too short, sorry...cliffhanger, sorry...no update, sorry...forgive me? thank you! ^_^ And for reviewing, thank you again!! And dreaming about Haku...ah, we've all got bits of fangirls in us...^_-
CheeseCake Special – Okay, please stand up ^^;; Here's another chapter up! I'm afraid it's another cliffhanger, sorry! Thank you for your review! Hmm, your pen name is making me hungry...cheesecake...drools....
Kalyana – I'm delighted that you're enjoying my story! Truly, thank you so much for reading and for your kind reviews on so many of my chapters. They make me so happy! ^_^ Thank you!
Melodylink – Yeah, I guess they do need some counciling...although it's kinda ironic and truly sad that my muse and my inspiration have more of a social life than me, hehe. Here's the answer to the old cliffhanger, and a new one to present! Aah! Lol. And I agree with you about his name ^_^ 'Haku' sounds so abrupt...but 'Kohaku' is nice ^^ Thank you for reviewing!
Fhulhi the Crazy – Nya! Thank you for reviewing so many times! _ Your reviews make me want to keep writing nonstop ^_^ Too bad I also have to eat and sleep...=P I'm sorry you think me evil, but I'm so happy you think me awesome! =:D Here's an extra-long chapter, please enjoy!
me, the invisible chainsaw massacre-er – Er, with a name like yours I don't think I'll be giving up this fic anytime soon ^^;; Thank for your review!
YueMichiruNaragisawaMiko – gives a tissue Don't cry! ^_^;; The one who planned the car crash was Yubaaba. I hope my writing isn't too confusing at times ^^;; I'm really glad you like the story. Here's the next chapter, and thank you for reviewing!
Stargirl-rebels – Your review really made my day! Lol, your enthusiasm is wonderful. Yup, she saves him! _ Isn't it a great movie!? I'm really really happy you like my fic! =D Thank you thank you for your review, it brings a smile to my face whenever I see it ^_^ I hope you enjoy the future chapters!
bakagrl79 – Isn't it cool how stories can have similar beginnings but take so different turns? ^_^ I'm glad you enjoyed my fic, and thank you for reviewing!
Cute But Psycho – Lol, your pen name's hilarious...a friend of mine has a t-shirt with that on it. I'm happy you like my story (favorites?? Waaai!! ^_^)! Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I hope this makes up for it ^_- Thank you for your review!
Goti-chan – I'm glad you like my story so much ^_^ Thank you for your interesting review ^_^ and I hope you enjoy this chapter.
wipes forehead Whew! Really, thank you to everyone for reading my story. These reviews make me feel so loved ^_^ Jaa...review onegaishimasu! You see that little button below, right there, right? Click it! Click it! ^_^
bows Minna, arigatou gozaimasu!!
*8/17: Revised this chapter ^_^ Some parts of it were just really really bothering me, so...^^;; gomen, gomen...Well, this entire thing would have been done a lot faster if it hadn't been for a little something we call a "blackout"...hrm...in any case...
Please review ^_^ Doumo arigatou gozaimasu!
