Spirited Away Fan Fiction ❯ After All ❯ After All ( One-Shot )

I do not own the characters or story of Spirited Away, I'm merely borrowing them to make an ending according to how I hope it would be.

After All

Chihiro had grown up.

She stepped outside one sunny day putting her hair up into a ponytail. She was often teased about this, for she never wore her hair any other way. Only she knew the reason, and she had never told anyone about the magical hair tie the good witch had given her, neither did she ever have it far from her, wearing it on her wrist when she absolutely had to have her hair down. It was the only thing she had kept close to her heart. She had never forgotten the witch, or Kohaku.

Chihiro was not a pretty woman, but her face had an unforgettable quality to it, particularly her eyes, with their far-seeing look that went beyond her years and hinted at mysteries that they concealed. She had never forgotten the time in which those eyes had become the eyes of a woman, and she never forgot Kohaku.

Chihiro had lived her life with a dexterity that few possessed, coming to this, now her twenty-fifth year. In high school she had begun a book, as soon as she had begun to acquire the words necessary to recount her story, and she kept writing it, through to her twenty-second year, while she was getting a degree in mythology and literature. The memories never faded from her mind, and as she wrote she thought of those she had left behind, those who had been so dear to her during that short span, her book was snapped up, and her story spread throughout the land. And still she never forgot Kohaku.

Chihiro took a part of the proceeds from her book and built a strange little house along what used to be the banks of the Kohaku river, a little stretch where the dry riverbed still remained.

Many said that this was because the name that she had used had made her so famous. But it wasn't that, it wasn't that at all. Because she had never forgotten Kohaku, and there, on the banks of the river where they had first met and had first been parted, she could almost feel him with her, his gentleness. She would remember his eyes when they had been brought back together, though neither could recall where they had met before, and she could see, still with the velvet clarity of immediacy, his eyes when she had given him back his name, her dragon, her love, her Kohaku.

Chihiro often wondered, as she sat on the stones of that river, if he thought of her as much, or as longingly as she still thought of him. She dreamed of him, and wished to hear the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand.

As she grew older, and she finally knew what she had been feeling, she almost despaired. Why had she left him? She wondered this so often, and every time she thought it, it would make her heart hurt. Sometimes she would go back, and travel through that long tunnel, but it never led to where it had the first time she had passed through. It had never led her back to Kohaku.

Chihiro began this day, much as she had all the others since she had moved into her simple stone cottage, which reminded her so much of Granny Zeniba's. She got up, she thought of him, she brushed her teeth, she thought of him, she stood in the doorway for long minutes, thinking of him. He was a part of her soul, and she had never felt complete since he had bid her to go on and not to look back. But she knew, in her heart, and in her incomplete soul, that he would keep his promise, and one day they would be together, she and Kohaku.

Chihiro took a pad of paper and a pen, a book on ancient gods, and her own memories, and went to her favorite spot, a broad flat stone with a curving crack along the surface. And if you looked just right, and squinted a little, it looked like a dragon. A ribbon floating through the air, she remembered him like that as well. She was just sketching a little picture of the turnip spirit when she thought she heard a step behind her. She flipped the page and turned to the next, knowing it was only her imagination, and began drawing what she had drawn so many times before, the figure of a long, graceful, silvery dragon, and the face of a boy, with intelligent hazel-colored eyes. The picture, in all its forms, from her clumsiest first sketches to the graceful painting she did now, all had places of honor in her home. She loved them all, and they were all Kohaku.

Chihiro thought she heard another step, and spun around on her rock, wondering if she really had been hearing things. Her eyes widened, and it seemed that her heart would stop. The pen and paper fell from nerveless fingers, and she bought her trembling hands to her mouth. He stood there, not the boy that she had remembered, but a form that suited her own age. It was him, though, she would have known him anywhere, and in any case. She had known him as a dragon, when she thought she only knew the boy, and now she saw him as the man. It was her Kohaku.

Chihiro stood as he took another step towards her. She murmured his name in a voice that had the sound of wishful joy. She was afraid she was dreaming. He had often been in her dreams, and in them, too had he aged. He stepped towards her again, and as soon as she heard him whisper her name in the same manner did she know that her heart had not lied to her, and that he was not some vague apparition. She ran forward, and was swept away again, this time into the arms of Kohaku.

"Never let me go."

"I promise."

Chihiro felt the air flow round her as they swept together through the skies. And he flowed beneath her like a living piece of silver ribbon. He had asked her, after the first joy of their meeting, if she still had anything to hold her back. She had answered no. Her parents had died in a car crash in her senior year of high school. She had her book and her house, but they had only been substitutions for Kohaku. He had asked her if she had seen all she wished to see in the human world, if she had done all she wished to do. She had answered yes.

She leaned forward and clasped her arms closely around his neck, and he turned his head slightly to look at her with his beautiful hazel eyes. She was with Kohaku.

He had told her that it was very different now, in the spirit world, in the bath house. He was more or less in charge now, and he had made changes. The train now ran both ways. The workers stayed because they wished to, not because they had to. And they all asked for Sen, continuously, even after the thirteen years had separated them. They recounted the tales on when she had been with them, with nostalgia in their eyes. Zubaba had felt her grip slipping not long after Chihiro had gone, and she had fled, taking her jewels and her money and the child, leaving the bathhouse nearly penniless. The workers, however, had pulled it through, with Kohaku as their leader.

And he had come to bring her if she would go, to have her as the lady to their lord. And she had not hesitated an instant before saying yes. He had transformed, and they took to the sky. She did not spare a single glance back.

They flew over the shallow sea, twisting among the clouds, skimming above the water. Then, the bathhouse came into view, more welcoming then she had remembered it. They landed at the foot of the bridge, and Kohaku changed back into a man, he took her hand and they walked across together.

"Sen! Sen!" They shouted and chanted. She saw Lin, and Komeji. She even saw granny. They waved at her. She turned to look at Kohaku, and found him smiling down at her, his eyes glowing. They both moved at one moment, their lips meeting in a most tender caress, and all present erupted in cheers.

"I'm home." She whispered as his arms tightened around her.

When folk speak of the lady, they always do so with admiration in their eyes. She is as comfortable with tackling the large pool as she is with dressing up and greeting the guests at the bridge, which she likes to do often. They comment on the devotion that she and her dragon lover share, evident in their every touch, look and movement. They speak of love. For these two share a love that could transcend everything, and everything, even the barrier between the land of man, and the land of the spirits. They are well loved and well respected, Chihiro and Kohaku.

In the human world it was a while before she was missed, owing to her solitary tendencies. But then, when they did notice she was gone, it caused quite an uproar for a month or so. She had vanished as completely as though she had been spirited away.

They had many theories on her disappearance, and as it often was, the one closest to the truth was the one most often ignored. For a young boy, not more than ten, one of her nearest neighbor's children, claimed he had seen her flying away, on a dragon like a twisting silver ribbon. His mother shook her head and laughed whenever he told this story, say he had read Chihiro's book once too often, and send him to sit in front of the television. After all, what could a child know.