Disclaimer: I own nothing but the general plot and OCs

IMPORTANT AND ONLY WARNING:

This is not going to be an extremely dark story but nor is it all light hearted and fluffy. I have little to no clue where this is going to go yet and thus can't say for certain what it'll contain.

I will say this: If it can be perceived for a person to do something/have something happen to them it may well be in this story

This may or may not include: Pairings of all genders and ages. Non consensual and dubious consensual content. Violence. Abuse. Character deaths. Angst. Plot holes. discrimination and prejudice. excessive fluffiness and icky romance. Much more.

That's not to say it will definitely have all this in it, however I'm not too interested in skipping or brushing over something because it's uncomfortable if it's relevant to the plot. If it's included I will try to do the topic genuine credit and treat it with the seriousness it deserves as long as it's not a parody/comedy or a character being politically incorrect.

The plot and characters do not necessarily reflect my own views and so if you are horribly offended by what's coming out a characters mouth/mind or their actions, that's fine.

Okay, obligatory warning I'll probably end up using for all stories posted on this site over, a bit about what you can expect from me:

1. Super long notes at the start of chapters attempting to address complaints or concerns before they're thought of.

2. Yes, this is one of those dreaded SI stories I've read so many complaints about. A bit about that though - I seem to have had the incredible luck to have never come across a shitty SI story, and as such I've only read good ones and they have resultingly become some of my favourite types of fanfics.

3. There will be no Mary Sues in this story. Ever. This isn't even really me because I've changed significant aspects of her past, added in opinions/beliefs/habits and removed others, now this is more like a distorted mirror of a character, in order not to share too much info about myself.

4. This is not a serious fic for me and I won't dedicate a lot of time to making it high quality, because it's actually here to serve as me offloading emotional and creative baggage that's distracting me. It'll likely read more as a rambling stream of consciousness with little editing.

5. Naruto is an incredibly action packed universe. This will not be an action packed fic. I really like the Naruto characters and they're fun to play around with in terms of character development and emotional reasoning. That's what my focus will be- particularly Kakashi with the added responsibility of single fatherhood.

6. This is going to be an incredibly self indulgent fic that is basically me working through my shit a little, and grieving my dad a little, and exploring this SI writing a little.

7. My main character may not be likeable. That's because I'm not necessarily likeable to everyone, especially to someone who had fairly unfiltered access to my thoughts in a traumatic, stressful situation like this, which I genuinely think would bring out some of my worst characteristics; I'm selfish, sometimes incredibly cold and apathetic, I self analyse way too much, I'm incredibly prone to depression, I'm needy but also distant, I can be thoughtless and manipulative. Probably more.

8. This will be a slow moving fic, so don't expect growing up and kicking into action quickly. This is more of a Bildungsroman than anything else. I highly suggest you look that up if you don't know what it means so you have an idea of the sort of slow moving up close character inspection you'll be getting. It's not about the action or thick plot (there will be some but not for a while), it's about the internal journey, and maturation.

9. That's it for now but I'm sure I'll find more to say next time.

Chapter 1 - Realising Reality

I slept. I dreamt lucid dreams, like always. Something was settled in the back of my mind that I couldn't quite remember. Something important but not urgent, and so I left it for now.

I sank into the depths of my dreams and lost myself in the usual joyful insanity that they tended to contain. My dreams were always epic adventures that played out like a story from close to the beginning til the end. I could always tell when I was dreaming, because although I was myself, a character holding the greatest portion of my consciousness, I was also the other people, and the floor under my feet, and the walls of the buildings and the sky above me. All it took to control what was going on around me was to stretch my consciousness more into the thing I wanted to direct, a bit like having to focus more in order to practice moving a muscle that got used far less than others.

Occasionally that greater important knowledge in the back of my mind would return to my awareness, but stayed just out of reach. It never became urgent to me though, and so I was unbothered by it's elusive nature. For a long time I was content, barely noticing when my dreams gained greater clarity and depth, gradually reaching something close to what they had been before... before what?

I hadn't noticed they'd been different in any way until they were nearly the same again. This almost bothered me, but my dreams didn't wait for me and the adventure continued forward, sweeping me away again.

I almost pondered on the strangely prolonged nature of my sleep, but chose instead to sink even further into the eagerly awaiting, clutching arms of my mind.

On the edges of my thoughts I noticed after a while, that something wasn't quite right anymore. I was... cold. That was strange. I hadn't even realised I was so warm and comfortable until I wasn't anymore. There were vague sounds and the odd application of pressure over various areas of my body, but I was too quick to fall back into deep sleep to think more upon it.

It seemed like moments and an age later that the presence of a breeze made itself known to me, with the sense that it had been brushing across my face and the tops of my shoulders for a little while, and I had only just become cognisant enough to identify it.

Slowly, sluggishly, reluctantly, the clinging and comforting tendrils of my dream released me and rescinded back into the depths of my mind. Even before I considered opening my eyes, the knowing that had plagued me, but refused to become more solid than that during my sleep, dragged itself to the front of my thoughts.

I hadn't ever expected to wake up. My subconscious mind had been under the assumption that that was suppose to be the final sleep. Even having mostly reached consciousness, that certainty didn't dissipate; I was not supposed to have a body in order to feel a breeze and I was definitely not supposed to wake up.

Because... I was dead. Right? That felt right. I had died. And that wasn't the part that shocked or upset or discomfited me. No, I was pretty at peace with my demise. What I was not okay about, was that taking stock of my body (not mine somethings wrong here doesn't feel right), it was pretty fucking apparent that I was showing all the signs of being alive.

My immediate thought was that I was in the hospital and my life had somehow been saved. Except that just sat wrong with me in a way I couldn't explain. Most of the time I wouldn't make big jumps or dismiss conclusions without solid proof, but very occasionally my intuition blared so strongly, and although it didn't make any logical sense to me, I always listened to it.

I knew I had died successfully. So where the fuck was I? The thought was edged in a hint of hysteria, and so I carefully took a few deep breaths in order to calm myself down (somethings not right with my body why are my lungs so small why are my breaths so shallow) and considered the idea that this was the afterlife.

Heaven and Hell flashed through my mind for a few seconds before I easily dismissed them. I didn't entirely disbelieve in Heaven, or at least some form of it, but I firmly didn't believe in Hell. If my entire life had taught me one thing, it was that there was no universal right and wrong that could possibly be used since the beginning of humanity to judge each individual fairly.

What about other religions? To be honest, I wasn't very familiar with the differences in the various monotheistic religions (keep thinking keep thinking anything to distract me don't think about everything that's not right with this wrongwrong body).

I had never been particularly religious. I'd had a few brief bouts in which I'd reached out to religion in my desperate need for answers about the Great Questions of Life, all those Whys and What's the Points. Unfortunately the answers religion had given me had never been to a degree that satisfied me, and so I'd quickly lost interest.

So no, I wouldn't stretch what I was experiencing to try and fit those conclusions conveniently available to me without further thought.

But what about non monotheistic religion? I was a little bit familiar with Hinduism, and most familiar with Buddhism. There were others out there that I knew next to nothing about; Confucianism for example.

The only issue with Hinduism and Buddhism, was that I was fairly sure I hadn't been a particularly selfless person. In terms of Hinduism, as far as I understood- which wasn't very far to be honest- there was a level of accepting the sins and rewards of one's past life by accepting the position one had been born into in the present life. As for Buddhism -the religion I most connected with for all that I was still embarrassingly uninformed about it all- well... let's just say I wouldn't consider myself particularly enlightened, nor had I lived a life full of forgiveness, inner peace, selflessness, altruism and minimalism.

So basically, according to most religions I was familiar with, I should be pretty fucked.

Perhaps I had just gone insane. That could be a preferable option; I was in a sort of Matrix of my own creation.

Except if that was the case how would I go about proving it and then escaping what was essentially a false reality created by my own mind? Would I even want to? Any escape I did or didn't make ran the risk of just being a further creation of my mind. I'd go about trying to figure out if there was another level of escape to make, wondering if almost my entire existence was a complete fabrication. Did I want to add that burden to my psyche? That would lead to some Inception style shit right there, and I would likely go insane if I wasn't already, constantly doubting my reality like that.

Plus to be completely real, I'd be that safe boring asshole who took the blue pill, because to hell with giving up my creature comforts in order to live in threadbare clothing and fight for humanity, when I didn't particularly give a damn about humanity as a whole in the first place.

And that right there was another classic example of me not being selfless. Maybe I had been shoved into the body of an animal. That could explain why my body felt off (tiny weak wrong). I read a book once about a girl who's life had been saved after a car crash by having her mind implanted into a female monkey. I remember it because there had been implied monkey sex between her and a male monkey to produce little baby monkeys which had sort of scandalised me (not really I was super entertained and found it hilarious) at the time.

There was a massive environmentalism message in there too, but it had mostly been usurped by the monkey sex.

So that was a 'no, I can't bear to contemplate that being my truth or I'll go fucking nuts' on me having created my own Matrix to live happily and madly inside, until my real body died. At least not unless I began finding obvious glitches to exploit.

I wasn't dismissing reincarnation as of yet, even though it seemed pretty damn unlikely considering I was still, well, me - you know, memories and flaws and all, rather than an innocent drooling poop machine baby.

So that just left some of the more out there things, such as perhaps accidentally having had my soul (did they exist? I'd never really believed in them) kick someone or something else's soul out of their body and take up squatting, or perhaps flat sharing if we were both still here. Some scientific experiment messing with shit that probably shouldn't be messed with, and I was just the unlucky bitch that got the short end of the stick was also a possibility.

But really, I wouldn't know anything more without doing the one thing that frankly I had been avoiding even thinking about, with my mental rambling; opening my eyes. I was like that child that was convinced if they couldn't see others, others couldn't see them- yeah I was shitting my pants scared and refusing to admit it to myself.

My (tiny too fast too fragile whats wrong with it) heart was pounding fairly heavily as I psyched myself up to lift my eyelids and get a good look at my reality. I sucked in a deep (not deep enough) breath, released it slowly to calm my heart, and opened me eyes.

The first thing I saw was a blurry swathe of white directly above me, too far away to tell what it was. Well, at least that firmly axed any chances of non existent Hell, from what I could tell.

My eyes roved the expanse of white, hoping to spot any flaws or distinct markings, so that I could get a better idea of what I was looking at. Unfortunately my eyes wouldn't focus enough to make anything further out.

My attempt at turning my head to the side after that was jerky and difficult, and that was when I realised what had been quietly (not so quietly) freaking me out in the back of my mind. This fucking body I was in a was small piece of crap that wouldn't do anything I told it to do.

Holy Hell, was I in a severely disabled person's body or something? The sheer frustration I felt at trying to yank my clunky, fleshy feeling limbs one way or another overrode my fear, as I allowed anger to take precedence (not really I was still terrified, I just focussed on my rage).

What was going on with this stupid fucking body?! The eyes were piss poor, the limbs were useless sacks of over-sensitive garbage, my head was the fucking same (oh god oh god oh god what if I'm stuck like this. Helpless vulnerable stuck stuck get me out). I let out an involuntary noise of frustration and suddenly froze (what if I'm in a hostile environment better keep quiet don't catch attention).

Was that my voice? Seriously, what was that. It was like some squishy squealing high pitched... thing. Before attempting to make another noise, I surreptitiously (obviously jerkily uselessly) scanned my (blurry fuzzy incomprehensible) surroundings for any sign of someone else in the room (was it a room?) I was in. When I didn't spot anyone, I parted my lips and attempted to say the first thing that came to mind; wubba lubba dub dub.

Unfortunately it came out more like "Uah ah ah oh oh." Except even more incomprehensible, and definitely in babyish tones. (Oh God Oh God Oh God please no please no don't be what I think this is no no).

Before I could think more on that a dark blur suddenly made itself known to me, giving me a fright. My face crumpled slightly in displeasure, but fear and curiosity quickly overtook as they warred with each other.

If I was part of some sick experiment this was probably Not Good. However, if not, this was a chance for some answers.

I intently eyed the blur above me, trying to discern anything from it that might give me some clues. It stayed forebodingly silent, looming over me unnervingly.

My face crumpled once more, and I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. Alarmed, I attempted to suppress the building cries, however they forcefully made their way up my throat and out of my mouth.

It upset and bewildered me, being so out of control over something so simple as noisy cries. I had assumed that because I still had my mature mind (how did that work anyways), I would be able to stop myself from crying. Unfortunately my wails seemed to be as involuntary as most things were for a baby (if that was what I was).

The only bright side was that, for a babes cries, I was surprisingly quiet. Well, that and the dark scary blur moved back away from my sight.

It was pretty evident from the slightly hideous noises I was making and the lack of tears coming from my eyes, that I was either stuck in the body of a child likely less than four months old, or some other sort of small being with limbs and a mouth capable of noise.

I didn't know which I would prefer less.

Eventually my cries wound down, just as sounds somewhere in the direction of my feet warned me of someone (something?) approaching. At least my ears were working fairly well. Another blur appeared over me, this time a lighter one, making cooing noises and reaching for me.

As it got closer, it's arms came into focus (human looking, that was a good sign), and wrapped around me gently. Besides it's criminally cold hands, it was surprisingly gentle. As I was lifted upwards and into a cradled hold, I recognised the person holding me as a woman, wearing what I could only guess to be hospital scrubs.

I suddenly realised, in a moment of clarity, that I was a (Oh fuckfuckfuckfuck) baby in a hospital, being spoken to by a doctor or nurse, in an oriental sounding language I didn't understand at all. I had either, in a shitty version of a miracle, usurped this baby and stolen it's body, or gone through a completely messed up version of reincarnation.

I went silent and limp like my strings had been cut. Sure, a lot of people would probably be thrilled to be in the position I was in, and get a second chance. I wasn't one of them.

I held little to no curiosity about this new life I was in, I didn't want a new family, I didn't want an entire second go at fucking up. I just didn't. I was done. I had died and that was supposed to be that.

I was angry and scared. So scared. Terrified. I was upset, desolate, grieving. No part of me wanted to live out this second life, and the stigma or fear of death had left me now that I had gone through it once already.

So my mind latched onto the first and simplest solution I could think of; die again. And get it right this time. I didn't exactly have any emotional attachments in this life to hold me back, and babies died all the time didn't they? All it would probably take was some reckless management of my tiny fragile body for me to pop my clogs again.

And then a few words from the nurse pierced my miasma of negativity with a few words that I could understand "Hatake-san," and, "Tou-san."

I was fairly certain I'd misheard the first one- it wasn't like I spoke the language at all. She could have said one hundred and one things that sounded slightly similar but meant entirely different things, or otherwise meant something specific in the context it was being spoken in, if it was Hatake-san she'd said.

The foreboding dark blur reappeared as silently as it had before, and now that I was closer I saw it was a person dressed in dark blues, greens and blacks. To my dismay the woman holding me held me out to the person.

Seriously, my vision was completely crap but even I could tell Dark Foreboding Blur didn't want to hold me. After a brief, awkward, pause DFB reached out and took me. The hands dwarfed me, and after the woman's encouragement I was brought close to a slightly uncomfortable green material that felt almost nothing like a chest.

Through all this I was distracting myself from my deep distress by running various plans that would end in my death. And then DFB looked down at me more closely than before, allowing me to get a good look at his face- or more accurately the small portion of his face that wasn't covered by a dark blue mask covering his mouth and nose, or by his headband bearing a disturbingly familiar symbol.

Oh fuck. Seriously?

I prayed desperately that I was completely misreading this situation and I was looking at someone who just happened to resemble a real life version of Hatake Kakashi.

Except nope, there went the woman again, saying that damning name. Fuck you very much woman, I was happy in my river of denial.

I looked up at DFB (not my family not mine don't want him) in resentment. I didn't want to live my life out in an alien body, in an alien life, with an alien family, living on an alien land that was notorious for being embroiled in wars that didn't take place in a distant country.

But if I was correct, and I was this guy's kid (how the fuck did that happen? This wasn't part of the original story), I couldn't intentionally off myself. I couldn't do that to this person.

I had relied, when I came to that decision, on any family being complete strangers I knew nothing about. But I knew enough of Kakashi's history that he had lost his entire family. More importantly though, was that his father had killed himself.

There was no way even I was heartless enough to make Kakashi live through the suicide of both his dad and his child (was I sure I was his child and there wasn't something a little more complicated going on?). I might have just come into his life, and he might all but scream with discomfort whilst holding me, but I couldn't kid myself that he wouldn't give a shit if I killed myself.

With my one hopeful solution ripped from me so quickly, I mentally collapsed despondently. I had only felt so defeated a few times in my life, but never had I felt so alone and isolated at the same time.

I knew no one here. I couldn't talk or even communicate in any way. I was stuck in a completely useless body that did almost everything without my say so.

My face crumpled once more, but this time I didn't cry. I just sat mired in misery, feeling sick with my helplessness, and despaired.

I didn't pay much attention to DFB and the woman talking over my head, considering I didn't understand a word they were saying. However, it became apparent that whatever answers DFB was giving, weren't pleasing her.

With some concentration I listened as DFB seemed to become a little stressed, before I guessed - from the one word suggestions coming from his mouth -that he was trying to tell her a name for me - probably awful names with crappy meanings.

To be honest, I didn't particularly care what they called me. I had never been emotionally attached to my name, and beyond the convenience of specifying who was being referred to in a conversation or capturing someone's attention, I had never found names particularly useful or interesting. In fact, I was notorious for forgetting people's names when I had known them for years, yet being able to repeat ridiculously obscure details about them that I had heard slipped casually into a conversation ages ago.

So I was fairly certain I wouldn't give a shit, especially in the context of this entire fucked up situation. Except then that bastard DFB had to go and land on a name that was apparently acceptable to the woman. And thus I was named Subaru. Like the cars. Fuck this new life.

In case you're wondering. Yes the swearing is going to be frequent and quite likely worse. That's how I talk when I'm in informal situations because if I didn't I'd end up sounding like a posh English snob. I don't even know I ended up sounding so goddam posh, no one else in my family does and I grew up around working class farmers.

Also the past will be explored bit by bit to get a good idea of where this characters main problems come from.

I have absolutely no idea where this is going, so if there are any prompts as the story goes on, of things you'd like to see I'll do my best.