Being reborn is… confusing. And limiting. And very painful.
Having clear and conscious throughout the process while only being able to respond with a body's most primitive of instincts is straight up terrifying. The complete lack of control and the total inability to do a single damn thing for herself is something she would never wish on someone else no matter how horrible they were.
That being said, it's not as though she has much of a choice.
This new life of hers starts much like the way her previous one ended – with a lot of screaming and ridiculously bright lights that make her eyes hurt and her head pound. Or maybe the pounding in her head has something to do with the vivid red filling her vision.
For a reborn newborn, already confused, scared and more than a little disoriented, it's too much and she begins to wail. She wails as she's taken from her mother and wrapped in a blanket. She wails while the nurses try to calm her down. She wails despite every attempt at pacification but it's all she can do when the pounding in her head is accompanied by a screaming crimson that's so full of malice she can practically feel it clawing at her skin.
But then the pounding is gone and in its place is a soft gold that envelops her like a blanket that's been left in the sun to dry. She coos at it, seeing as this is the only response she's capable of at the moment, glad for the reprieve when another red, a warmer one, fills her senses.
The screaming crimson isn't quite gone. She can still hear it in the back of her mind, but nestled between warm red and gold she feels safe and is content to push it aside and bask in their combined warmth. Distantly she registers that this must be her father and mother but the thought seems strange and vague like smoke in the wind. It's barely there before drifting away once more.
In this moment of quiet, the stress of rebirth and the ache in her head and body catches up to her and the newborn drifts into a fitful sleep.
As she sleeps she's unaware of what goes on around her.
She's unaware of the fact that she now has a brother and that said brother has been laid beside her.
She's unaware of the fact that right now, her parents are fighting tooth and nail for their lives and for the lives of their children against a man and a demon.
She's unaware of the tears streaming down her parents' face as they come to terms with making the worst decision a parent can make in this new world she's been born into.
She's even unaware when her brother starts screaming.
But then she's awake and very much aware when she's the one screaming. She's aware when she's the one feeling like she's stuffed to the brim and that her skin is going to tear apart at the seams from being so full.
She screams until her throat is raw and then screams some more.
On the tenth of October, Uzumaki Natsuki ushers in her first night of her confusing new existence with screams and tears.
Greetings new friends and old ones. This story is largely self indulgent writing meant to get the author's brain juices flowing and to allow her to experiment with new things while she's stuck on her other stories. Like tenses. What even is a present tense? I don't know but I'm writing in it. Also, can we say hello to your latest unreliable narrator? yay *muffled applause*
I haven't read Naruto in a long while yet I've been sucked back into the fandom since I started reading a lot of Self-Insert fics. They're my guilty pleasure so I decided to try my hand at writing a character who has the potential to mess up a lot of things. So far my favourites are Dreaming of Sunshine (I think every SI author's favourite to be honest) by Silver Queen and Of the River and the Sea by Aleycat4eva. Both are fantastic reads that I'd recommend to anyone any day.
Feel free to point out inconsistencies and errors. I'm trying to make things readable but, as I said, I'm very much experimenting with several different things in this story. I'm also discovering, time lines in Naruto are screwy at best which means head canons are going to be plentiful and I'm definitely going to be fudging a few things to make them easier to work with.
I'm always open to suggestions and accept constructive criticism. It's all for the sake of improvement.
-Rayne