"There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief." - Aeschylus
Re-in-car-na-tion:
noun
The rebirth of a soul in a new body.
Death is something that most people don't like to think about. They don't like to think about the possibility of how they could lose everything earned through hard work in one fell swoop.
She was one of those people.
She didn't want to die(who did, really?).
But she did.
A desperate longing for her family, her real family,swelled up, reminding her of what she had lost. Her throat suddenly felt smaller and a burning sensation behind her eyes caused everything to become blurry. At least, blurrier then her already fuzzy welled up again and uncontrollable racking sobs overtook her body as she desperately tried to suppress the onslaught of memories that threatened to drown her. Memories she shouldn't have, ranging from building snowmen to blowing dandelions during a summer heat wave.
The funny thing about a crying baby is that once one starts crying, all nearby infants join in. So, Karin accompanies her twin in the waterworks. The resulting sound was terrifying to their father, to say the least.
"Kaida-chan, Karin-chan o shizumemasu,(1)" Haruki panicked, arms waving around. Trying desperately to console his new infants, he reminded Kaida of a headless chicken, as sight that she would have laughed at if she wasn't so distracted by one repeating thought.
"I wanna go home," the child (woman?) mentally whimpered while being nestled in a crib (a freaking crib for god's sake!). Home, where everything made sense and people didn't go around being reverted back into an infant.
But she can't.
When the emotions started to overwhelm her, Kaida (that wasn't her real name, she was- ) cut off her emotions and her logical side took over, lest her already fragile pysche break. God only knows how many times she's done that in her previous life (she never thought that she would ever say those words).
Haruki sighed in relief when Kaida stopped crying. The sudden outburst from his daughters was unexpected, and he had no idea what caused it. Either way now, the sobbing had ceased. He'd like to think that he was doing at least a decent job for a new parent. His eyes brimmed with an unnamed emotion as he gazed upon his two daughters, silently gushing at the sight of Karin snuggling up to Kaida.
Kami, he loved those two.
"First off, who, what, when, where, and why," the familiar cold feeling washed through her panic, pushing away any emotions it deemed unnecessary and categorizing everything into orderly files.
Starting with the what portion, Kaida slowly pieced through all of her jumbled memories. Apparently, she had died, (a delirious giggle rose up at the thought, which was immediately squashed by the logical side) and she was, dare she say it, reincarnated. As in, hey-guess-what-you're-back-from-the-dead (does that make her a zombie or something?).
Why and when she was here was something that lacked current evidence to solve. She filed that question away until there was further information. Though it suspiciously felt like she was just there as a sick form of entertainment for some deities that had way too much time on their hands.
Where and who was she was something that Kaida dreaded thinking about. Judging from the brief snippet of words that her (not) parents shared, it seemed like she was somewhere in Japan. Or she was just in a Japanese household. However, she distinctly recalled hearing those damned words "Uzumaki" and "Karin." The feeling of her womb mate(another hysterical giggle was stifled) shifting around inside the womb (god, that sounded weird.) was an experience that she couldn't exactly get out of her head. There was also the glimpse of obnoxiously bright red hair(how was that even natural?). Which, haha, sounded just like the long extinct Uzumaki clan from Naruto. That one fictional story about fire breathing ninja.
She ran through the other possibilities(abducted by a mad scientist who created some anti-aging thing gone wrong, coma with a hyperactive imagination, hallucinogenic drug that somehow slipped past her paranoid checks, etc.), before finally going back to her first thought. Back Before, (mom, dad, Chris, oh god what about Oliv-) she had read plenty of SI fanfiction where some unlucky person (it's her now, oh god, it's not just a nightmare) had been reborn/dropped into the Narutoverse.
She just never expected it to be real (she still doesn't want to believe it).
Desperately flashing through any last minuscule chance that this wasn't real, that she could still go home, Kaida reluctantly swallowed the painful truth. She glanced to her right, where Karin was sleeping peacefully next to her, drooling, before succumbing to the darkness with a final thought in mind.
She had been reincarnated as Uzumaki Kaida, twin sister to Karin and there was no chance of going back home.
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" - Arthur Conan Doyle
AN:
Uh, this is the second chapter here. I wanted to make Kaida's realization of where she is as realistic as possible. Or at least, what I would do if I was in that position. Because I've read too many stories where the SI just went "Oh look, I'm in the Narutoverse, and I'm going to forget all about my family and friends. Yay!" Uh, no. I'd cry my eyes out before finally accepting it. I know it seems that Kaida accepted that she's in the Narutoverse too easily, but all evidence pointed toward that conclusion. She accepts it, but that doesn't mean she likes it. The bold italicized words in the parenthesis are her emotions leaking through. I don't plan on revealing Kaida's previous name until much later in the story. It's longer than the first chapter, but it's heavily unedited. Reviews will be welcomed with open arms and a happy squeal.
Google translate was used.
(1) calm down Kaida and Karin