A/N: I'm baaaaaaaack! So for all you crazy fans out there, I have a question: Will you be my Valentine? I love all of you so much! So this is my Valentine's gift to you! Hope you enjoy it!

I'm only saying this once: I own nothing but my characters ands my imagination.

Also the title is a Japanese proverb meaning: wake from death and return to life. That basically means to come out of a desperate situation and make a complete return in one sudden burst.

There's no poem for this chappy since it's the prologue.

Prologue

I watch as the landscape flashes by.

To most, it would seemed beautiful. Almost angelic. But to me, it is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.

The color...

Everything here is some shade of brown. The ground, the vegetation, the animals, even the sky is tinted brown.

The people are no different. Even if you are blonde, your hair is tinted brown. If you have blue eyes, they turn brown over time.

I hate it.

The way people look at me. The way their eyes harden. It cuts through me like a knife.

My grey eyes mark me as different.

An outsider.

Someone I never asked to be.

Oh, how I long for those comforting eyes! Those warm honey colored eyes that I see in my dreams. They welcome me. Accept me, even.

I long for a place that is not all brown. A place that isn't surrounded by mountains, by cities around every corner.

Who am I?

I don't know.

Do I belong here?

No.

Will I leave someday?

I can't answer that.

My parents hate me. They wonder why I am so different.

Why am I different?

Why do I have to pretend?

Why am I a normal girl by day and an object of abuse at night?
It's almost like a bad joke.

Except this time there's no punch line.

It's like the story where the prince comes to save the princess from her abusive stepmother.

Except this time there isn't a prince to save me.

And even if there was, I'm sure as hell no Cinderella.

Instead, I am the master of my own fate. The only one who can make things better is me.

Five years. Only five more years until I can take my sister and leave this hell.

Five more years.

Will I even be alive then?

The way things are going now, I very well might be dead.

Perhaps it would be better that way.

If I was dead.

I could leave this world. This terrible, terrible world.

But then who would protect my sister?

Worthless.

That's what they call me.

I care about no one except my sister.

But then...why do I wake up screaming for a person I don't even know?

It's the same name each time.

A beautiful name.

I scream for him.

I cry out for him.

I love him.

Ichigo!