Disclaimer: I do not own the series Naruto.
When I first came to awareness the world was dark and I was weak.
I don't remember the first few months (was it a year? Two?) that I found myself in this new predicament. I don't remember anything except the things I'm not supposed to. Things I couldn't have experienced, things I never could have done.
I remember long limbs that moved on command and long nights wrapped up with a book.
I remember laughter and coherent thoughts with conversations based upon those thoughts and debates that followed.
I remember the color blue, the color green. I remember colors. I remember light.
But this didn't make any sort of sense at the time, my head felt sluggish, and I went back to my sleeping and to being oblivious.
*
I often woke up from my slumber to be fed and would wonder lazily where I was. I knew I should be worried, I knew that what was happening should be terrifying but I couldn't bring myself to care. There were no thoughts in my head and I didn't question the hand that fed me. I was sleepy so I slept.
*
The dark was persistent and my keeping of time lacking. My limbs wouldn't obey my will and I felt frustrated at my own boredom and uselessness. I recognized I often woke and went back to sleep almost immediately. My life becoming a series of naps.
*
I was cared for and played with regularly, in some part of my thoughts I could recognize this as a routine and gladly went along with it. I loved the order, I loved the routine.
There were two voices in my world who would often talk to me in words I didn't understand. That was okay though, they didn't understand me either. (My tongue felt too thick, my lips wouldn't form the words.)
My world was still dark but these voices made it more real, confirmed that this was reality and not the dreams of swirling colors that became more and more dull with time. When I reached out my hands theirs would meet mine and hold me. (When did I get so small? When did it get so dark?) One of the voices was a deep male's with a strict undertone, his hands felt rough and calloused, and the other voice was more feminine and gentle, it was more comfortable when she was the one to hold me and I was grateful for her hands which held me more often compared to the male's. The male appeared rarely and would only visit me when it seemed he was on the edge of my own forgetfulness. The woman was around more often and talked to me in her strange but familiar language, I was happy with the attention.
*
This was my life for many months and I quickly tried to absorb every word she told me. Tried to understand what was happening and why it was so dark but I was so sleepy and my mind so full of cotton. I couldn't figure out why I should care.
*
The day I learned her name was the day I came to my terrifying realization. I was in my box (a softly padded thing that seemed to have bars surrounding it. I've tried crawling out but my muscles still wouldn't cooperate with me and my arms would flap about uselessly more often than not.) She had been talking to me in a loving tone like she usually would when I fussed. Her words of comfort holding me still, holding me calm. "shh, Yuki, shh. It's okay." These words were familiar. I knew these words. She'd said them often enough. I tried to copy them but butchered them with my babbles instead. My babbling must've convinced her of my now soothed nerves and her talking stopped. I didn't like this and I showed her as much when my fussing came back with a vengeance. She giggled amusedly at this and her talking continued.
She sounds so pretty, I thought. I wanted to see this kind woman who had cared for me these long hours in all of my moments of weakness and dependence. I reached for her voice because I couldn't see where her face shown. Her face felt soft and round and I quickly appreciated the features I imagined her with as I felt out their shapes. A small nose and mouth with wide eyes, the features of a doll. This discovery satisfied me as I was now sure that this woman was as pretty as she sounded.
I was still feeling her face when her hold on me shifted and one of her hands came to lightly grasp mine. With my hand she patted her face and said in a distinctly slow voice, "mom" She did this several times and I recognized this as a gesture of greeting. She was giving me her name. A name I recognized and one I had used often before and had once been called, too long ago to clearly remember. I felt my heart sink. She was mom. She was mom. The woman who had taken care of me through my struggling awareness and the eternal dark I found myself in. The one who brought food to me and kept me entertained in the near constant boredom of being solely dependent and unable to move freely on my own. She wasn't just mom. She was my mom. I was her child. No, not a child. I was a baby, maybe a toddler. I couldn't tell because I couldn't see. I I could only assume by the length of my limbs and torso and the oh so frustrating lack of dexterity I had with them. It was this moment all of the pieces in my head clicked and I came to full awareness. I was a baby, reborn, and I was blind.
*
With this new awareness came the feeling of terror and a level of nervousness my infant mind had yet to experience. Tears quickly followed my revelation and the woman, my mother, panicked at this outburst. Looking back on it now I realize this was my first full blown tantrum as a child. I was not happy and I was going to let her know as much. At a loss of how to comfort me, the woman bounced me up and down softly cooing for me to calm down.
It was also at this moment, the moment I clearly remembered having lived a life before, that I felt my tentative awareness invaded with a sense alien to me. My mind seemingly now adjusted well enough to get me out of whatever lethargic shock I had been in assaulted me with this new information as a new sense made itself known to me. It wasn't a sense of seeing as much as feeling without directly touching all the pieces to a blurry puzzle. This was an awareness of how the woman who held me was positioned and how she felt at that moment. Despite being in her arms and clearly in contact with her my sense went further and I knew how she had her legs crossed one over the other as she sat on what I assumed to be a chair and how her head tilted towards me in concern. I sensed myself relative to her positioning and felt how small I was compared. She felt like a gentle breeze that was now blowing and spiking worriedly as I, her daughter, cried out on this new realization of my situation and the onslaught of this new sense.
This continued on for more than a few minutes, what felt like hours to me, until finally I felt a pressure in my head and a strain in my limbs. My lids grew heavy and I fell asleep crying in this woman's, my mother's, arms.
*
My new awareness was both a boon and a bane. A boon in that the cotton had finally cleared my mind and my sense of self and time grew. A bane that I now knew these things and had an overwhelming sense of presence that my infantile mind could hardly handle the complexity of. I estimated that I was around a year (and maybe a half) years old but my assumption was still shaky at best. Laying in what I now recognized as my crib I lost myself in my thoughts and considered myself to the best of my newfound abilities.
I knew I had lived before, that I had grown old and understood that I had died, but I didn't understand how I had ended up here. I never held any stock in the belief of reincarnation and definitely never expected to remember my past life if I were to have one. Was this some fault of the universe?
My memories were incomplete, I could only remember the bare minimum. I knew that I knew the words my mother spoke, I had heard them before and recognized them as such but the memories were passive at best and I couldn't recall them or their meanings at my will. It was only the impression of things with a surety of them having had happened that pushed me to my conclusions. Not only that but the sixth sense I was now experiencing was overwhelming and settling as a feeling of fullness within me.
It made me feel slow in my movements and I struggled to lift my limbs as I had previously done. It seemed easier to do when I didn't focus on the weight of this new sense within me. My knowledge of its existence was hindering me now and I quickly came to the conclusion that I had to act as if it wasn't there. I'd never considered myself spiritual but the feeling was akin to having an extra spirit lying behind my skin and I could feel the subtle thrum of energy it tried to give me and my actions. My knowledge of it being there added weight to it, for certainly a weight should exist there if something extra was within my body. My mother's own energy quickly put a stop to those thoughts though as I noticed her wind like presence seemed to flutter around what I assumed was our household. She moved so easily and I couldn't help but wonder how it was so easy for her to move around when I felt the same kind of fluttering energy within me as well. I couldn't seem to sense her when she reached a certain distance away from me and I struggled to stay awake after having focused on her specific energy for more than a few minutes. Whatever this new sense was it seemed to be muscle like and my own energy dimmed after following my mother's for any semblance of time. Even with its limited effects I was grateful as it gave me some form of sight and awareness that I could make sense of. My feeling of uselessness diminished slightly and my sense of vulnerability increased as I realized my exact situation.
I was afraid and so I slept until the next time mother would wake me.
*
I was sitting up in my crib pulling at a stuffed animal my mother had given me days ago the next time the male visited me. The toy was soft and gave me something to do besides messing with the tiring energy within me. I could sense the man's apathy as he walked in and a thinly veiled relief at seeing me so active. His energy was different than my mother's and seemed to fill whatever room he was in, bigger and more active.
"She's made progress then?" his voice was gruff as he asked my mother.
Her energy fluttered in excitement and relief as she replied to him, "It happened a week ago, one day she just seemed so much more awake and alert. I took her to the doctor and they said whatever had been affecting her doesn't seem to be now."
"And they never found out what was wrong with her in the first place?" his voice was laced with accusing disapproval.
"They think because of her blindness she may not have been as.. present as she should have been." My mother's voice was hesitant and nervous and I felt the urge to reach out for her. She always seemed more content and reassured when she held me. "They said if any further issues press that we should take her to a Yamanaka for further evaluation."
The man's energy thrummed in heavy disapproval and I felt his calculating gaze on me, "I'll give you enough money for the month to care for the infant. I want to be updated on any further signs of progress in the future."
"You don't want to hold her?" My mother's energy fluttered hopelessly and her voice reflected it in desperation.
The man's energy felt completely walled off from me and his emotions unreadable, "No, I'll take my leave now."
"But she's your daughter!" My breath held at my mother's exclamation and I lifted my head to the man's presence. I couldn't see him but I could better focus my sixth sense this way. This man was my father and it appeared he wanted nothing to do with me.
"She's a bastard of my clan and has no future as a ninja." I blinked slowly at his terminology. Clan? Ninja? What was that? I got the vague sense of people dressed in all black and throwing knives at each other.
So I was a bastard who couldn't follow his dream career for me because of a disability I had no control over and his solution was to practically leave raising me to my mother. Father of the year, surely.
"She's still your child!" My mother's voice was angry now and I winced. Angry mothers were never a good thing.
"And I've taken responsibility for that but don't bother to think she'll ever be a part of my clan."
"The clan isn't everything! You can still be a father!"
The man's, my father's, energy flared at this and seemed to sharpen for a second. My own energy was feeling drained at this point and I had no idea how much longer I'd be able to stay awake. "I am a prideful man, Mizu, you know this. I will not allow you to discredit me further. My place is within my clan and I will not have this girl become a dishonor." And with that he was gone and my mother still buzzing with an anger rare of her and a hollowness I couldn't place.
Huffing, my mother swept towards me and lifted me into her arms, "That stubborn, stubborn man," She grouched. "Well, we don't need him, Yuki. Your mother has friends in some pretty high places and I don't mind pulling a few strings to keep that prideful man and clan of his out of our lives if they don't want us anyways." She was talking from anger that much I could tell but the conviction in her voice threw me through a loop. How long had this argument been going on between the two? Was it truly at this point of separation and could my mom even support us on her own? Nothing in my memory reassured me that she had a job of sorts and she was almost always in my range of sensing. I would trust her though. She was my caregiver after all and I would have to trust her judgment.
Slowly I lifted my hand to pat her face in what I thought would be considered a reassuring way. Her energy felt amused at my childish actions and I gave her my biggest, sleepiest, smile.
Yes, I would trust this woman with my future.
A/N: Well, this isn't my first fanfiction but the first one of mine on this site. I had this idea for an original character for a few weeks and now I'm putting it to life. To clear things up, Yuki doesn't know her exact age at the moment and is only guessing her way through things at the moment. She's probably as confused as you are. She is a Chakra sensor but since she's so young it wears her out to be focusing her Chakra so much so early on in her life. And another thing, I'm not going to religiously keep things canon because doing the homework for that is just silly with how big the Naruto series is. I will keep the events mostly the same I think but dialogue will be mostly out the window and up for my own interpretation. Don't worry, the overall plot of Naruto will be kept. I am of the opinion that throwing an original character in the mix will automatically make the story an alternate universe so expect things to become different.