Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. What I do own is my OC and any derivative of the normal time-line.

Status: Incomplete.

A/N: I absolutely adored Catch your Breath by Lang Noi and I've been super inspired and voila, here we are.

I don't want to remember how I died. I don't want to remember—and yet, I do. The technicalities of my death are unimportant. I don't want to talk about it, not now, not ever. It's not necessary for me to tell that tale when all I want is to put it out of mind forever.

Here's what you need to know:

I was a girl.

I was twenty-three.

It was cold and dark and smelled of burn plastic and fermenting garbage.

That's all.

The details after that are unnecessary and frankly, unmentionable. I am not the first person who has died, and even if I was, I would not be telling you that story.

What I'll be telling you is what happened after. After I died, that is.

Dying, in itself, was a horrifying experience. I had prepared myself to fade away into nothingness. My consciousness was fading and erratic as I took in my last, gasping breaths and, in the midst of it all, I'd come to the forced realization that I'd die soon. A tentative peace settled over my mind despite…the brutality of it. I'd go to heaven or hell or in between or neither.

Maybe, if I got a hitch to Angel Town, I'd see glorious winged creatures sitting on clouds, and playing sweet, sweet melodies on golden lyres. Maybe if I crashed all the way down to Hell I'd see a fiery pit or a river of lava or a flaming lake. Maybe, I would just see darkness.

What happens after you die Is a question posed through the centuries, the millennia. "Death is a depressingly inevitable consequence of life," the telegraph once wrote, and I find that it is entirely true. What people don't know—or forget—is that…after death, you are…aware, of a sort.

A strange sort of limbo, a…I have no way to describe it.

The truth is, no one knows where you go after you die, after those first few seconds of consciousness, of awareness. No one knows what happens—if it stops, if you stay in that awareness or don't. No one knows—except you.

When I died—well.

When I died, I…frankly, I did not know what I expected. Those horrifying seconds of floating on the edge of something…they never leave. That feeling will seep back into your bones, crawl and inch their way into your mind and hunker down and wait until you've put your guard down to pounce—

I didn't expect much, after I died.

What I did not foresee was waking up afterwards.

For all that I had prepared myself for in those last, tenuous seconds—be it heaven or hell or a gaping void of nothing—waking up was not an idea I had even remotely entertained.

But, I did.

Wake up, I mean.

I came into being when I heard the sounds of a beating heart. The slow push and release of cavernous walls flexed around me. Vaguely, I could hear muted, choked sounds. It sounded a lot like screaming.

I couldn't smell or hear or see very well but here are the things I remember: The sound of the warm, wet cave clenching around me. The sound of a heart.

Two hearts, I later realized.

And then I woke. I was wet and bloody; I could smell the iron on my skin and taste the bitterness of coppery pennies on my tongue. I could feel things around me, vaguely; a heightened sense of situational awareness. Everything itched and crawled. I was as weak as a newborn, and later, I'd laugh at that unfortunate comparison.

I was scared out of my mind.

I don't think I'll ever be able to describe that sort of terror—the kind that people have talked about, that makes your eyes go wide, your hair turn white and your breathing stop.

I couldn't open my eyes properly, and when I did, the light was so bright it burned. For a couple of seconds, I'd thought I'd really gone to hell. The air itched with power so concentrated it rose the hair on my neck and threatened nausea. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into that warm, flexing warmth and never come out again.

I'd been safe there—I didn't know how I knew that, but I did.

Later, I'd realize that I'd given my new parents quite a scare. I wasn't breathing or moving or screaming. I was just small, and wet, and bloody, and still. My chest did not even rise. Later, Dad would tell me that they were scared I wouldn't be able to make it—that I was so small and blue, the doctors nearly gave up on me.

What happened was this:

In my shock, I couldn't breathe.

Someone pressed down on my slick chest. Their fingers were waxy (hospital gloves), but warm and firm, and they splayed over my collarbones and stomach and I thought—for a microsecond—how the hell is their hand large enough to cover my entire torso—and then they pushed down, down, down. The confusion of it caused my mouth to open and—what should have been instinct for a newborn—came rushing to me like a pressing, breath-taking need.

I sucked cold, freezing air into my lungs, and to this day, I still don't know how they made me scream that loudly.

I was swept up into warm arms and blankets and tiny hats and slowly, exhausted, I drifted to sleep.

A niggling thought in the back of my mind whispered something about the bizarreness of it all but I was so tired from it all, that it barely had a chance to form.

~.~

Waking up was like dying all over again.

The world was blurred and gray, all smooth edges and rounded smudges that were unable to be distinguished by weak, newborn eyes. It had been weeks since they'd brought me—us—home. I won't say I wasn't surprised. When I realized that I'd been reborn, I'd gone silent with shock. I was in complete and utter emotional chaos—this was cataclysmic to me.

I still don't know, even now, how I realized that I'd been reborn. There was just some part of me that knew, instinctually, that I wasn't dead—not how I was supposed to be.

Maybe it had been when I'd heard the sound of the two heartbeats, or the cavern walls (And oh, ew, I'd witnessed my own birth and lived through passing out of a vagina) flexing around me, but I noticed.

I grieved. My old life, while not a…pleasant one, was something that had been mine—completely and utterly. Death, I'd been prepared for. A new life—as a motherfucking baby—was not what I'd signed up for.

My eyesight had cleared enough to be able to see my parents' faces. Which—well. That was an…experience, to say the least.

My father was dark; his skin was leathery and cracked, as if he'd spent his entire life on a farm working through the high sun and siestas. He had—I fucking shit you not—pink hair pulled in a high ponytail that fell to his middle back. It was smooth and soft and I developed a love to tangle my pudgy fingers in it. His eyes were a dark forest green, slanted and almond shaped; and smiling. He was always smiling, perpetually cheerful, his lips always pulled in a beaming grin.

My mother, instead, was pale, like the snowcaps on high, winding mountains, with ice so thick you couldn't see underneath. She had thick, blonde ringlets that fell to her shoulders, more often than not pulled up in a frilly red scrunchie. Her eyes were blue and wide—long lashed and shining with emotion. Her cheeks were perpetually red and slowly, I came to realize that she wasn't…well, she wasn't well.

She couldn't pick us up very well, and she had to rest a lot, her hands trembling on the stove when she had to catch her breath. I worried about her a lot—my parents back then hadn't been very much of parents, but these ones were.

They loved and took care of us. Dad sung lullabies and brushed back hair off our forehead and pressed kisses to our chubby cheeks. Mum, instead, took care of us briskly. She was always moving, always doing something; never still. There was a certain fragility to her movements that made me think that anyone of them could be her last—it made the fear taste like bitter lemon on my tongue, and I tried very hard not to think of anything at all when I saw her struggle.

The most surprising discovery of it all—I had a twin sister.

She was small, like me, with pudgy cheeks and wide, blue-gray eyes, still shifting from that of a baby's to a toddler's. Her hair, however, was our father's. A brilliant petal-pink, like the sea urchins I used to dive for in clear, tropical waters, or the color of crushed seashells at the blush of a gentle dawn.

She was bloody adorable.

My twin was what kept me sane. She giggled happily at me and patted my cheeks and made sure I didn't get too lost in my head. Sometimes, we'd just watch each other and stare for hours, my eyes boring directly into her fluctuating blue-gray-green ones, riveted.

What I hated about being a child was that I was weak. I was dependent on my parents to an almost unnatural extent. My sister, she helped with that. While I loathed having to rely on them to pick me up, to feed me, to bathe me and change me, I was reminded that I was not the only one who had to undergo this. I had her too. And she was just as weak and dependent as I was. At twenty-three I'd finally managed to become self-reliant. I had a steady job. My university degree was not one I particularly loved, but neither was it one I hated either.

The kicker was that I'd been a gymnast. At four, I'd begun gymnastics and I had loved it. My body, back then, had been built for strength and flexibility and movement and—this body…well it just wasn't.

I missed being able to do the splits, saltos and roundhouses with ease. I wanted, desperately, to be able to feel the strain of training on my muscles, to work out until I was sweaty and gross but ultimately satisfied.

The only thing I could do now was wave my tiny fists around and wiggle my feet. Even making facial expressions was difficult.

But I measured my success by my sister's. Even though I knew I could train my muscles to move how I wanted, I knew someone would eventually notice. I didn't know where I was or who I was supposed to be (I still hadn't learned my name or my sister's and the language they spoke here was thick, jabbing—almost Germanic—although I was trying my best to learn it as well I could) and so I was quiet. I did not do anything out of the ordinary. I was, in fact, the most perfectly average child you would ever meet. Whenever she lisped out words, I copied her. When she began to crawl, I did too. When she could lift her head, I did too.

It was during one of these struggles that I learned our names.

Mother often picked me up and sat me on her hip as she cooked. She hummed softly, as she prepared the sauce and meat, and babbled to me softly. My sister was sitting at the table, propped up in a high chair, palming her broccoli paste.

Yeah, I thought pitifully, glancing back at her grimace, I feel you—that thing's bloody disgusting.

"Sakura-chan, eat your greens please." My mother said absently, her brow furrowing as she stirred the sauce.

"No," Sakura—my sister and no, I still hadn't gotten over that novelty—whined. Her face had gone red in anger, and her cheeks puffed out. I was delighted to say that she looked like an adorable chipmunk.

My mother, whose name I still didn't know, turned back to face her. Her blue eyes glimmered with steel and her jaw was set sternly. Immediately, I could feel myself straightening in her arms; my Mum meant business here.

"Sakura-chan." She said sternly. She held me tighter to my chest and I fought the instinct to wriggle in her grip. Her breathing had changed, and I could tell that there was the beginnings of a wheeze that gripped her lungs.

"N-O." Sakura banged her spoon on the table and kicked at the underside. "No. No."

"Yes, Sakura."

Oh, Sakura. So that was my sister's names.

And just where had I heard this name before…?

"NO." Sakura yelped, her dark pink (yes, and wasn't that the fucking strangest thing ever? Bloody fucking pink hair?) eyebrows coming together in a furious knot.

My mother set me down at the table, slender hands trembling as she did so, and sat across my sister. Her blue eyes were firm, unyielding, in the bright midday sun.

"Sakura," Mum said softly. "Please eat your vegetables for me. They're good for you. Haruna-chan ate hers."

Haruna. I wanted to shout to the skies and thank the gods for giving me some frame of reference.

My name is Haruna.

Sakura looked at me (and wasn't it just so amazing to put faces to names?) and I had to hold back my own whimper as I saw the tears filling her pretty green eyes. Her lip trembled and I felt my own fill with tears, and goddamnit why are baby moods affecting me so bloody much?

And then my mum said those damned words and everything shot to hell.

"Haruno Sakura," she hissed, "Eat. Your. Vegetables."

I had a single moment of breath-taking shock. A moment when reality slammed into me. A moment when I realized just what that name meant oh my bloody god—

The world careened out of focus and all I could see was my mother scrambling out of the chair, her face a picture of panic, and the sound of my sister's screaming cries.

!Ihopeyouenjoyitomg

I'm super stressed about this story. BUt I've been thinking about it for a while, and I sort of know where this is going and well, sometimes you just get that urge. The urge to write. So!Here we are.

Tell me what you think :)