Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, though I wish I did. All I own is Alexander/Mizuki, and the plot :D.
Note: Larger A/N at the bottom.
Anything you are confused about, don't hesitate to send me a PM.
Yuuhi Mizuki, or Alexander Leblanc?
That is a question that plagues my mind, haunting my every waking moment, a question that I don't think I will ever be able to answer.
I'm old, yet I'm young.
I'm tired, yet exuberant.
I'm worn, despite my youth
When I died, I was happy. Content. I had done all that I wanted with my life. Survived the Great War, lived through the Somme, purged Auschwitz. I had met many people, some good, some bad and I had met her.
She was the love of my life. She was bold where I was timid. She was tough where I was not. She was beautiful, whilst I was scarred.
We were a mismatch but I suppose that was why we worked. We met, we talked, we were happy – we were perfect. But perfection never lasts in the world, and despite our lengthy tenure in this (no that world, the world he was in now was a world drenched in death and deceit), she died first.
She left me.
I tried, I really did. I tried to live life, I tried to be happy, I tried to be me.
But she left me behind, and I too soon followed.
Yet I was happy, because we would be together again. Together like in the old days, those halcyon days, and we would live together once again. But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.
My dream was an empty dream, and I woke up in a world that was too bright, a world that was too bright with pain to be where she had been. I woke up tired and afraid and alone and I couldn't help but to cry.
I was alone again. I was alone when I thought I would see her again. The sobs wracked through me, the pain lingering on the horizon and the sorrow of a past life suffocating me.
I soon found that I was a glitch in the system. An anomaly. A fallacy.
I had heard of reincarnation. Who hadn't? My wife would talk about it, finding it curious and intriguing and filled with so many second chances. I didn't care. I wasn't bothered by it. In the end, I'm rather simple.
I lived the simple life, the life that every other man woman and child did, and the only way I've heard of reincarnation was from the news. You'd always the hear them – the less than believable (to put it politely) stories of people who were the 'second coming'.
They always ended up in prison for drug use soon enough.
But I was the exception, it seemed. I woke up on day, weak and helpless and alone and in pain, to an all too familiar scene. The clinical white of the wall, the hustle-and-bustle of nurses, the heavy breathing of men and women as they aided in the event that started the adventure. I was all too familiar to these scenes.
Before I died I was a grandfather, after all.
It's strange, watching from an inside perspective. The all-too-bright lights that I shouldn't be able to see, the human giants that flittered to and fro as if will-o-wisps hunted for something to lead, the face of a woman that wasn't her.
The woman was old.
Tired.
Like me.
Her eyes held a tapestry of jaded-happiness, the kind you see on old war veterans who are content with their lives (I should know, I have worn that expression countless times), and her smile was worn. In her eyes I could see myself.
I was a child. A youth. A baby.
At that point, it hadn't set in. I had just died, why would it have? My brain was addled, my mind was tired and the memory of what had just happened had yet to crash into me. Death was tiring in an invigorating way, a logical paradox, and its effects had done a number on me.
So I slept the world away, numb in the way only babies can be, and feeling the sharp sing of betrayal as she wasn't there.
When I next woke up, it was to frantic screams, and burning fire.
I was hoisted up, quickly but gently, and the man holding me muttered something unintelligible in my ear.
The words 'Yuuhi Mizuki' stood out. And I realised, with a rather detached acceptance, that this was my new name.
I could only watch, as the man turned and ran. Leaping out the window of the hospital (for a moment I wondered where mama was) he flew, a drifting leaf in the wind, as th ground blow was scorched by an unholy fire and a mountainous fox wreaked havoc in the distance.
It roared, and glimmered, and I felt fear for the first time in my new existence.
I blacked out.
The next time I woke up, I found myself hear. In this room.
It wasn't a particularly bad room. It was a lilac nursery, and looked like every other nursery out there. There was the small, wooden crib, the slowly spinning ring of fanciful nothings, a stuffed teddy bear (though this one held a blade of some sort in its comforting hands, and weird symbols were emblazoned on the little creature's belly).
But once more, I was alone.
Left alone to think about who I am.
The question of who am I?
Am I the old, tired man who wants to see his beloved again? Or am I 'Yuuhi Mizuki', a youth that may never be?
The answer to this I doubt I'll ever know.
So I can only cry. Cry and cry and cry. Cry for the family I've left behind, my precious daughters and my gullible sons and my beautiful grandchildren who will ask 'where did Grandy go?'. Cry for the mundane existence that I left behind. And most of all, cry for my wife, my beautiful beautiful beautiful wife who I'll never get to see again.
She left me alone.
And till Death do we part.
I didn't realise how much truth rung in that statement. I always assumed that we would be together until we die. I didn't realise it meant that we'd never get to see each other in the afterlife.
I never even got to say goodbye.
My tears, my cries, must have resounded throughout the household, as it didn't take long for a young teen to enter the doorway. Her black, shoulder-length hair looked dishevelled, her red eyes (my mother red eyes) staring at my tiny form with fear and confusion dancing in her eyes. I didn't know how I knew this, and it doesn't really matter.
All that matter is that I was alone.
Gingerly, I felt my light body be lifted up with a frozen-tenderness, before she started to speak to me in a strange lyrical tongue that the man before spoke with. I didn't understand. Couldn't understand. So I cried. I cried with fear and loneliness and sadness and something seemed to click in her youthful eyes as soon she too started to cry.
That night we cried together, crying together for the people that we will never see again.
It was then that I made a promise to never cry again. I would be strong.
For both my wife and this little girl that was holding me like a lifeline as we cried our sorrows away.
I kept that promise for a week. One measly week.
Staring through the tears, Nai-chan (that was what she called herself, so I'll abide to it no matter how strange it sounds) looked helplessly on as I had my first nappy change. It's a surreal event, getting changed, and throughout the other times I had been asleep.
The first time that I was awake I realised that I was no longer a man, but instead a young baby girl.
I felt like ranting and screaming and raving and dying. I was a girl.
Shit.
My mother always said 'don't swear', but I find myself caring very little for that. It was hard enough living as an infant, how was he going to live now that he knew that he was a female? And how would this girl react when she finds out (I know it is only a matter of time before she figures something out, girls are perceptive in ways that I have never understood) and finds that her precious little sisterwas a 67 year old war veterancalledAlexander LeBlanc,who had memories of a place that wasn't here?
I felt the light tap of her hand on my waist, before I was hoisted up into the air. She cradled me against her chest, my head resting on her shoulders as she slowly tried to soothe whatever was bothering me. It felt odd, being consoled. I was essentially an adult in a baby's body, and I was being consoled by a teenager.
There was a saying in the military: 'FUBAR'. It's used in a situation that seems hopeless, and is in no way repairable.
It also most accurately describes my life.
Calming down, I felt a spark flutter into existence in my chest. I don't know where it came from, only that it was there. And it gave me strength. I realised, right then and there, that I can do this. I may be old, I may be alone and I am certainly in a place that is foreign in its familiarity.
But I was a soldier, a husband and a father.
And I can do anything, no matter what life throws at me.
I'll see you someday Claire. I'll find a way.
Prologue, Fin~
Prologue's complete, so I just need to say this. As this is is my first time writing a fanfiction, I am open to CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, on areas where I can improve the story, and I am also willing to take in story ideas. I have the plot sorted out, mostly, but I mean in terms of pairings (if there is any). I also aim to have at least 4000 words per chapter, and this only has less because it's the prologue. So, if you can leave a review, I'd be grateful - and I hope I can see you on the next chapter~
As I've seen some other writers doing this, I might as well ask you a few questions. Build a rapports and all.
Serious Question Time: If you had the choice of passing on to the afterlife with the love of your life, or living in a anime world of your choice, which would you choose?
Fun Question Time: If you could live with one anime character, who would it be, and why?
Until next time: Ja ne~
The Stygian Sparrow.