Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, but on Fanfiction, I am allowed to play with it.

AWOWK's cover was created by Syea. Thank you for your amazing artwork (^_^)

Author's Warning/Note (written 02/26/19)

It's been 5 years since I wrote this chapter and tbh I hate it. It's too cliche, too dramatic, and just unnecessary. Well, the first part is. I like Kinnara's part more. TBH, I find myself liking Kinnara's POV as I continue writing/reading this fanfic. Someone once reviewed that they didn't like Xenryuu POV and I am inclined to agree with them. One day I'll redo this chapter - maybe this whole fic- but I promise that later chapters get better mostly because my writing gets better/ideas get better.

Or so I hope (O_o). You can disagree and say this whole fanfic sucks, ahaha. I wouldn't blame you.

Thanks for giving this fanfic a try, though, and I hope it isn't a waste of your time. If it is, many apologies.

With that being said, welcome to a world only we know.

-NkG

"Once we are, we will always be." - Kao Kalia Yang

1 ~ Rebirth

(His Story)

I knew I was dying. It was a stupid mistake. The stupidest anyone can make in that field of work.

Get in, get out. Don't hesitate, don't stop. A momentary pause, a hesitation, doesn't take long, only a few milliseconds, but lives can change in milliseconds.

Death can happen in milliseconds.

It took milliseconds for my baby brothers and sisters. Babies because they're forever frozen into our childhood. As I aged, they remained young. As I moved on, they remained dead. As I mourned, they remained buried within the earth, far away from me. I won't be buried anywhere near them. I wondered what will happen to me now.

Growing up, I was told me that when I died, my spirit will be guided on a journey back to where I was born. That I will travel through the life I had lived, from the moment I died to the day of my birth, before resting in peace with my ancestors.

That was a long time ago, though, and I stopped believing in any gods or ancestors. Even if I believed in them, there will be no one to guide my spirit back to where I was born. I abandoned my clan long before I gave up my ancestors.

Blinking away the sudden darkness, I watched the boy who had shot me. He was a young. War turned anyone into a killer. The only protest I had was that the bullets might have destroyed the letters and the two photos I had left of everything: a family photo when I was sixteen and a photo of her and me back in our senior year. All I could think about before the ground met me, was that I couldn't even protect the inanimate things I loved and cherished.

I could feel everything grow cold even as I struggled to crawl to my side. I just wanted to feel them one last time. With bloody fingers, I grasped for the letters that I never replied to, but read enough to have memorized them. My eyes couldn't focus, but it didn't matter. The words escaped me and I remembered the few that were most important to me.

Dear Xen,

I hope this letter made it to you safely. I attached a photo of us back in high school. I hope that you're safe. They told me that you might not get this letter, but I'm writing it just in case you do.

I coughed up blood, the letters beginning to fall out of my grasp as I covered my mouth. Letters kept falling from my hand as I forced my broken body towards the wall.

Dear Xen,

I found a new anime to watch as I wait for Kishimoto to update Naruto. When you come back, we'll do a marathon. I know you'll like Naruto! Everyone in Naruto is striving for peace, just like you.

I couldn't help but pause as I coughed up more liquid, already feeling as the blood begin to fill my lungs.

Dear Xen,

I know that this is the twentieth letter that I've sent and you haven't replied. It's okay. I will write to you just in case you are getting these.

One bloody hand covered my mouth as the other dragged me forward to the wall. I pushed every part of my body with each drag, fighting the darkness and the cold.

Dear Xen,

I hate this war, I hate how you're not here, but there. Please, be safe Xen. Return soon.

I hated how I never fucking replied to those letters, so cowardly. So afraid of what she would think of me.

Dear Xen,

What is peace? I know you hate it when I make references to Naruto, but I can't just help question what you're doing, what everyone is doing. Nagato made some good points about peace and you would know what Nagato said if you had just watched Naruto with me...

I hated how I didn't join the marines for peace, but to run away from my own demons.

Dear Xen,

I hate the path you've chosen. It's taken you far from me and everyone else. I wish you had stayed. I wish that your family was still here. Sometimes, I find myself walking pass your house and I keep thinking that your younger siblings will be there…

I wished I had died with them that day. Maybe, maybe I could have saved them. I had spent so long, too much time, feeling sorry for surviving longer than they had.

Dear Xen,

Even if they're not here when you return, I will be.

Do you think they would hate me? I haven't visited them since I buried them all those years ago.

Dear Xen,

I visited their graves today. I told them that you'll visit them when you return. Will you, Xen?

I could never return back to that empty house, to that empty town. I just couldn't and now, I never will again.

Dear Xen,

Where are you?

I was dying in a place so far from where those I loved were buried.

Dear Xen…

I…

I've lived fifteen years without my family…

Xen…

…and ten without her.

Dear Xen…

I'm not the Xen they knew.

We…you…

I wasn't sure who I am anymore.

Dear Xen,

I stared at the wall, eyes closing and opening slowly.

I'm sorry for the argument we got into before I left. I know you didn't mean the words you said. I'm sorry for pushing you. I know you're just worried. I am too. Please, let's meet after your service to Japan and talk more. I'll be back soon from my study abroad…

I should have stayed with her, forced her to stay with me.

I finally reached the wall, with unsteady and weak arms, I propped myself up against the wall and finally took out the two pictures. I slowly tried to wipe the blood off of them, but the red marred them. I stared with unfocused eyes, but like the letters I've memorized them already.

I can still remember how she looked, the blue of her eyes and the gold in her hair, so fair sometimes that it was silver. I can remember how she felt. The warmth of her arms around me as she whispered, "love you more" each time she said goodbye to me, one arm around my torso and the other around my neck.

Love you more. That's how she always ended her letters, too. She's always said she loved me more even when I didn't say 'I love you.' She never needed me to say it. I wished I had said it more, though. I wished I had written to her when I could. I wished...for so many things.

In this moment, I would have been laughing if it did not hurt so much. I felt as the darkness finally consumed me, blood chocking my lungs, slowly stealing my last remaining oxygen. My fists clenched around the photos and the letters.

I did not want to die alone.

...but then I flew and I was no more.

Death is an eternal sleep, not just of the body, but the memories encompassing the body. But sometimes, memories are so embedded into us that they become a part of us, a part of our soul.

Maybe that is how reincarnation happens. Not that you are reborn, but that you are reborn with the memories that you couldn't forget.

(Her Story)

I remember floating when I finally heard his voice. I knew I was dead. I knew I had been dead for a while before I heard the voice.

I was a Christian, but it had not prepared me for this; this sense of an afterlife. Is this what they meant by eternity?

I remembering dying. One minute I was in a car, writing a letter to a certain someone, his name (how did I know it was a he?) eluded me, but I knew I was writing a letter. The process had been so familiar, so instinctual, as if I had written to him many times before.

But then there was a screech, a crash, and I remember feeling so much pain and then...I only felt the calmness of death as it embraced me.

I knew that I was supposed to move to the next "life". I remember that when I first flew away from my body, there was a silent urge for me to keep flying upwards and towards the unending light of darkness.

It was darkness as it was light. When people described the whole "Follow the Light," they were lying. It was not just light. There was also darkness.

However, I couldn't. I could feel the urge to go with it, to go towards that world of beautiful light and darkness, but something held me back.

So instead I floated between the stars, swam across universes, and simply existed within the cosmos. It sounds ridiculous, but that was how I existed for a long time. I was waiting for something…someone. I did not know who, just that I made a promise.

Then everything was broken and I knew that my time was starting again.

After seconds and hours, days, years of existing among everything and yet nothing, I felt the tug even as I heard the faint voice. It hurt and it was painful. My safe existence was suddenly being pulled and prodded.

I don't want to die alone...

It was the first sound I've heard since the darkness and light path closed for me. His voice was so sad and so tired. He sounded achingly familiar, like a waking up from a nightmare that was only a sad dream. I struggled towards where his voice came from, but then something pulled at me and I felt as a burst of light dragged me downwards.

Down…down…down, I fell.

I was no longer swimming in eternity, I no longer felt the comfort of the stars and the cosmos. Instead, I fell only into light. Not a darkness that was light or a light that was dark. No.

I fell into the light and I felt as something akin to tears fell from my existence. It hurt. It hurt so badly. Physically (when did I get a body) it hurt, but emotionally, I felt hurt too because once again, I had failed him. I could not reach him when he had called out to me, the voice I had been waiting for.

But as I fell into the light, the pain bursting and exploding into me and out of me, I remembered everything.

A reflection of who I was. Then a face with dark hair and brown eyes, a little boy who cried, a teenage adolescent who pulled me into a kiss, a man who shoved me away. Tears, I remember our tears that day as we buried seven coffins. Then the images spun faster and faster.

Images flashed across my vision as everything got brighter and brighter. I was becoming blind (I could see again?) as I heard screams (I could hear?) and then I screamed (I had a voice?!) and then the memories all escaped from the cosmos and into me—

And I remembered. Then…

…I was born.

The light was blurry, but it was a light and I kept crying. Crying and screaming because I had not felt so alive in so long.

My rebirth was filled with light and much, much, noise. However, the light was still so blurry and my vision could only see the murky outlines of people, but soft hands, warm hands cradled me even as I heard shouting and crying. There were two presences next to mine. I could hear voices in a foreign language.

It reminded me so much of him.

And then I realized that I could remember, I could think. I could see (a little), and hear. I heard my own voice, a cry only along with another crying, one louder than mine and right next to me. But most of all, I could feel.

I felt as soft hands cradled me, two warm bodies pressing against me. One was smaller than the other, the larger presence touched me and I heard her voice over the combined crying of me and the other smaller figure next to me. Her voice was…in awe and, I felt a tug at my heart, pain.

"They're so small, so feeble. My babies," she cried out softly, so softly, and I felt as she began to cry. "They're too small. No matter what happens, I will always protect the two of you…my Gaara, my Kinnara."

I couldn't understand the language, but the names...wait.

Gaara, Kinnara?…where—

And more memories filled me. Ninjas, mangas, anime. A boy with blonde hair and whiskers, a gourd of sand, and red eyes.

Naruto…

My crying only increased, mostly because even though a part of me was in disbelief, the other part of me, her daughter, cried because at that moment, I felt as she died. The warmth lingered even as her chest stopped, even as her gentle fingers fell away from my body.

"Karura!"

More shouting happened. Next to me, the other body—Gaara's?—cried even louder.

No way…

I felt as I was picked up and I cried even more because I did not want to leave her yet. I did not want to become separated from Gaara.

But that's the thing.

Gaara.

There was just no way had I just been reborn, much less into the Narutoverse…and as Gaara of the Sand's twin.

:::{AWOWK}:::

A/N - Dedicated to K.M.L and T.K, forever and a day of which you will be missed and loved.

Note(s)

- I chose Kinnara because of the kanji spelling: 緊那羅 (Kinnara). The last Kanji is the same one used in Gaara's and Karura's: 我愛羅 (Gaara) and 加流羅 (Karura)

- Kinnara, Gaara, and Karura derive from Buddhist mythology.