Two Children of Ice

I didn't enter the world with some stark realisation that I was in, what some may call, 'the Narutoverse'. My childhood was spent blissfully ignorant to such reality.

To start from the beginning, I entered this world as I had left the last: screaming.

The sound of the shrill morphed and pierced my ears, strained my throat, and the flash of a headlight seemed to turn into that of bright, blinding whiteness. It was a whir of movement which never quite came into focus. My lungs filled in a way which made them burn and the air was cold on my skin. I didn't know what was happening to me—everything was overwhelming and confusing—and for a moment I thought, perhaps, I'd survived.

(Fate is not so nice to us.)

And though hardly an enjoyable process, it was my grand entrance into this world; it was quite traumatic, really, being manhandled with no comprehension of what was happening nor autonomy over your body or senses. But it was the moment my new life began.

To be a baby, an infant, it was an odd sensation. My early years were an odd blur—whirs of movements and sounds which hardly made sense and were like an assault of my senses—despite my consciousness through it all. It felt like being entrapped in my own mind, as I could only watch from the inside out as my body reacted according to pure instinct rather than choice. And sleep! It was like I always slept.

My mind wasn't aligned with my body, and it was only as I grew older and they began to fall in-sync that I had any semblance of control. I never quite adjusted to the obscurity of such a feeling, and it made the first few months of my life horribly dull. To be left with your thoughts and only your thoughts for astronomical lengths of time is like a horrid living purgatory, and the only benefit of it was that it allowed for me to gain some understanding of what was happening to me: to theorise and speculate.

The most 'logical' explanation I could come up with, if such a thing existed, was that I was reincarnated with my soul and all my memories from my previous life intact, and that a God somewhere had horribly, inexplicably, messed up.

(Or they were mercilessly playing tricks.

What a mocking word is logic.)

I considered other things, like this all being some horrible dream and I was in fact trapped in a coma which would explain the feeling of the insufferable helplessness of being a baby, though I soon realised this wasn't the case as I began to grow older.

(As the memories of my previous life began to fade. As the memories of who I once was became dimmer.

Though I remembered my unhappiness, and my yearning for something more. I remembered how I wished for a greater life, something not so dull, something not so meaningless. I wished for a life like the ones I found myself escaping in. Like the stories. I wanted more than my own existence.

I wanted life to be more.

How silly a thing to want.)

My first few months of life weren't entirely wasted. I recognised my family's faces without realising. My mother existed as the most calming presence in the universe, and to be apart from her even with my older brother or father around felt like the world was collapsing. I was horribly dependent, but it eased me into this world, realising my body had made me familiar with it all far before my mind had. But even despite the familiarity of their voices, I had little prior knowledge of Japanese; I probably picked it up faster than a non-reincarnated-with-memories-attached child would, I still had to go through the process of learning a language all over again. I had to train my thought not to be in their original tongue, which was far easier said than done. But I got there, somehow.

It made the moment I said my first word all the more glorious. My mother had a tendency to sit by the window in our free moments, my body cradled against the warmth of her skin and my head leaning into her neck, and stare into the garden with me—and it was then that I learned our little town was nearly always encased in snow.

She'd point at things in the garden and say their name to me, to the point I grew utterly sick of the word 'tree'. But I never repeated the word back, despite my intelligence, as my attention span was that of a goldfish and I found myself in a trance when looking at the falling snow. Babyish tendencies and all.

(They seemed to dance across the sky, the snowflakes of perfect shape, swept by the gentle wind like the petals in spring. They scattered and settled silently, decorating what seemed to be an ice kingdom sitting outside our window.

It was beautiful.

It should've been an omen.)

But my first word came eventually, and still rather early. I saw a rabbit run across our garden, and my mother must've caught onto the fact it caught my attention as she quickly pointed to it. "Usagi!" She exclaimed hopefully. "Hey, Byaku-chan. U-SA-GI!" She drawled out the word in an exaggerated manner.

It seemed to do the trick. My tongue stumbled over each syllable, unused to such a complicated amalgamation of sounds, but in my babyish pronunciation, I managed it. "Ushagi!"

(Did the devil leave tips?

Does he forewarn?)

My mother cheered with glee and my brother, though not understanding why, joined in on the celebration. She picked him up in her free arm and spun us around happily.

"My beautiful, smart children!" She paused for a moment, turned to my brother and said, "You'll look after her, won't you, Haku?"

(His name should've given it away.

It should've told me where I was. It was the most obvious red flag.

But he didn't have a sister in the original.)

I obliviously smiled and clapped my hands.

. . .

Once I began to have some semblance of control over myself, though my smartness became apparent, I likely scared my parents at times purely from how little I cried. But I preferred to let my mother sleep, she was lovely and spent every hour of the day doting on me and my brother, which wasn't easy with a baby and a toddler and a father never at home. It was only when I desperately needed something I cried (screw this dependent body I was stuck in!) or when I couldn't control my emotions. They were a horribly fickle thing, even more so with the thrown off hormones that accompanied with an infant body desperately trying to align the mental state of a teenager to the toddler mind I should've had.

But I wasn't the only one—Haku seemed quiet and pensive, too. He had kind eyes and a soft smile. Were it not for his name, his long hair and the androgynous features which adorned his little toddler face would've had me confused of his gender, appearances alone certainly didn't make it clear whether he was a boy or girl. Though my parents didn't seem to care for such things, merely half-heartedly joking they should give him a haircut. They never did.

I was happy in this life.

My mother was a slightly stressed woman. My father was often far from home, travelling for money and bringing back bulks of food to get us through the long winter. Work where we lived was scarce, but there was a city not too far away. My father was a kind man, but not one we saw often. I wasn't close to him, though he tried. On the occasions he was home, he'd sing to me and Haku the same lullaby he'd always sing, pretending he wasn't tired. We'd sleep between him and kaasan.

I had slightly more of his features, whereas Haku was developing more of my mother's face. But they were both pretty, we were both pretty. At least this far along in life.

I was happy in this life. Even if I had no idea what time period I'd been born into. The food was canned and packaged, the lights were electric, and the water was warm, yet no cars, no TV and no radio seemed to exist. I assumed it was simply the area in which we lived.

(But, maybe, it should've been the first sign.

The first sign of something being amiss.)

It didn't seem like one where chakra or ninja existed and where animals could talk. Neither me nor my family had oddly coloured hair or eyes, just shades of brown and black. And the girl with purple hair in our village—she dyed it, clearly, she must've. No matter how good her roots. No matter how natural it looked.

(I didn't question it further.)

We weren't rich, but we were happy. It was a simple, peaceful existence.

I was happy in this life.

I was.

. . .

My father was home.

He'd be here for three evenings, and so my kaasan decided a large meal was in order; something to celebrate, but it was more for them than it was for my brother and me. The world was still somewhat blurry, and time didn't seem to move at a regular pace, but this came with being three years old. My brother was only five. For us, this was a family meal. For them, it was a display of love.

Despite everything, my parents were still in love. They were still young. Despite having children, the tiredness apparent from the darkness underneith my tousan's eyes and the soft laughter lines of my kaasan's face, the youth of their faces remained.

He'd hug her from behind as she cut the vegetables, offering to help her out. She'd insist 'no, it's my treat!' but my father always find a way to help out, whether it was setting up the table or getting me and my brother or cooking some part of the meal while she was distracted before she could tell him off.

'You're getting in the way!' She reprimanded. His shoulders shook as he laughed.

The conversation went as normal at the dinner. I couldn't understand it all, but my Japanese had developed substantially by this point, even if Kanji was a bitch to learn. I could comfortably hold a conversation, but Haku and I were sitting quietly as we listened to our father ramble on about his recent travels.

If there existed a moment which gave it away—which gave away that I in fact lived in some other dimension and not my own—it was when the god damned word 'ninja' arose.

"A group of shinobi from Kir—"

My mother cut him off with a harsh shush and a nod in our direction. The conversation wasn't allowed to continue. He simply shot back an apologetic look.

And this was not feudal japan. Ninjas weren't real. Not anymore.

(And I should've taken it as a sign, that the plot of my favourite anime sprung to my mind. That I could recall it all, despite the fading of my memory, despite the way I couldn't remember my old name. I remembered this world so vividly.

I should've taken it as a sign.)

Like the naïve child I was, I brushed it off. It was slang for something, I presumed. It could've been used in any context. And like any child, I was quickly distracted. I quickly forgot.

(I should've caught him referencing the Village Hidden in the Mist.)

. . .

My life continued in a calm, uneventful matter until the age of seven. Nothing truly noteworthy happened.

(Nothing which screamed 'ninja'.

Nothing which screamed 'you shouldn't be here'.

Nothing which told me this world was not my own.)

Until I was seven.

It was not a slow string of events which made me realise just where I was born; it wasn't intuition nor some theory I sought to prove true. It was a crashing sort of discovery, one which shattered your whole world and broke your soul.

It was merely an autumn morning, regular, different to no other. The snow was returning, so Haku and I did the usual of running into the garden and playing in it as our kaasan returned the clothing she realised she could no longer hang outside back into our home.

(The cold didn't bother me so much, but this I gave little thought. I was simply acclimatised, I told myself, it was simply what I was used to. It wasn't chakra, nor magic, nor a bloodline limit. It was nothing.)

Haku had already hit me twice with snowballs, and I was adamant to dodge the next. In an attempt to block the oncoming onslaught, I shielded my face with my arms and shut my eyes tight.

The snowballs never came.

I opened my eyes, cautiously, unsure if it was merely Haku attempting to catch me off-guard, but my view was blocked by the wall of ice that stood in front of me.

Both I and Haku fell silent. That wasn't normal. By any means. That was so, so—

"Cool! How did you do that? How do I do that too?!" Haku beamed. I blanched.

I didn't move. I only continued to stare, dumbfounded—and scared. Dread seemed to embed itself in my chest and halt my breath. Haku, in all his fascination, began to gently wave his hands above some unfrozen water, and the wall in front of me began to dissipate, until it was as though it had never been there at all. I still didn't move. It felt like I didn't know how—it felt like my limbs were frozen in place. My body was suddenly freezing cold.

"Look! Look! Byakuya, look!" And so, I did, only to see him manipulating the water. It hovered in front of his hands, in some odd moving sphere. He was controlling the water, bending it at his will. I was sure I was hallucinating; it had to be a dream I simply hadn't woken up from yet. But no attempt of pinching myself woke my mind up.

A gasp came from behind us, and we both turned. There stood my mother, a look of horror marring her face.

"Kaa-san, look! Look, look! Isn't it amazing?" Haku grinned.

The laundry she was holding dropped to the floor, spilling across the snow. She grabbed his arm, causing the water to fall back down.

"Why…? Why you too…?" My mother's voice broke as the words escaped her lips. Her eyes seemed to well with tears and her chest seemed to heave. I had still forgotten how to breathe, and silence constricted my throat. All I was focusing on was my mother—my lovely, gentle mother—grabbing my brother, gripping with her nails so tightly it seemed to draw blood. She took hold of his other arm and shook him with what could only be described as pure desperation mixed with sheer anger.

"Why?! Why do you have it too?!" She shrilled, "This can't be!"

Then there was the sound of a smack. I gasped, stumbling backwards.

She slapped Haku.

After a moment of silence, after a moment of a look of realisation dawned upon her face, and she pulled him into a hug, hysterically crying while apologies left her mouth.

"Forgive me, Haku!"

Haku.

My eyes widened, and my knees buckled beneath me.

Haku. Haku of the Ice Release.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.