Title: Towards the Sun

Summary: Life is not fair, life is not easy, even less for a Hyuga. Self insertion

Note from author: inspired in Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen.

I don't own Naruto or anything that you may recognize. They belong to their respective owners

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Chapter 1: Prologue

Every death is the principle of a life.

Jose Marti

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The last thing I remember was the screams.

I was comfortably reading a book while waiting for the bus when the world seemed to stop, at least my world did. I stared like a deer in headlights when I saw it. I could not tell if I felt fear. I was just there gapping with morbid fascination as it approached. Everything was too fast and yet, that moment seemed to last an eternity. I do not remember pain, not even the blow or impact, only someone screaming. Maybe, it was me.

My next memory is not a picture, nor sound, but a feeling. The same as those winter mornings when you can stay in bed under the covers knowing how cold it is outside, a familiar warmth and security. I do not know how long I was suspended in that comforting darkness. Sometimes my mind wandered into a comfortable drowsiness, sometimes I felt a little more awake and restless. I lived in a little world of whispers, movement, and vibration.

I was pulled out of it too fast. Dragged and pushed out of my shelter. I felt the cold when I was lifted by something or someone grabbing me by the ankles. I was terrified. I did not know was happening. It was obvious that I had had an accident. The truck came directly at me, nothing and nobody could have stopped it. For a while, I thought that soothing darkness was death. In this case it is not so bad, I thought. But, the cold and the pain were clear evidence that It was not the case. I was not dead. Oh, no! I was very much alive, and the idea was something even more terrifying.

I only could see a blur. Unable to see beyond shadows or diffuse forms and make sense of the situation in front of me. I tried to talk, but my throat only made inarticulate sounds which quickly turned into screams of pure agony and terror. I cried and wailed. Shadows around me seemed to shift and move. There were voices. Someone was talking, but I could not understand. What was happening? What the hell happened? What was wrong with me?

Someone picked me up and tried to shush with reassuring murmurs. It was impossible to silence me until I fell from exhaustion. It was too strange, so terribly foreign. It took me a long time to even glimpse the meaning of the situation.

I've never been a religious person. Even as a child, I believed in gods like people who believes in fairies. For me, after death likely there was nothing. The idea of reincarnation was ... I don't know, something simply linked to other beliefs. I know that it existed in Egyptian religion, Greek or Roman and in most Eastern religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism, but certainly not as something real, at least for me. The realization that I was not I, that I was in the body of a baby only a few weeks old rather than an adult woman´s was ... shocking, so to speak.

It would have been exciting if life as a child were not so boring. The only contact I had with the world were the two adults who took care of me. My routine was basically sleep, eat, go back to the crib, go back to eating, napping, bathing, sleeping ... and so on Day. After. Day. It was frustrating and annoying to say the least.

I did not know the language, my sight was worse than when I was alive, I could not go anywhere by myself, and most of the time was spent staring at the ceiling from my crib. Summer was ending and yet the days were terribly hot, but the worst part was the itching. It was constant throughout the body, under the skin, it was something you could not scratch. If you did not think much of it remitted, but in the long hours that I had nothing to do or think about It was becoming almost unbearable. So for me to heed, I did the only thing I could: I cried.

I must have been a nightmare for my parents and, as It was repeated many times since, a disgrace to the family. Failing to find any explanation for such weeping, they were alarmed and afraid that there was something wrong with me. I was taken to hospital where I was diagnosed with hypersensitivity to chakra. Although at that time I did not know it, my family belonged to a ninja clan. One of the most important clans in the village, but with my condition it would be impossible for me to follow that path. I would not even be able to activate our kekkei genkai. It was unthinkable, and it shattered all the hopes of my caregivers. A girl belonging to the branch house who was unable to use chakra, something useless, devoid of function and value in the eyes of the clan.

Ignorant of all this, life went on as usual for me. Although I did notice the woman´s behavior growing colder towards me.

When I finally could see beyond the tip of my fingers I realized I was not alone in my new existence. I had a brother. In my past life I had been an only child and maybe because of this I was selfish and egocentric. It's not something I'm proud of.

Sharing my living space with other people was never one of my strengths and, by the child's expression when we were face to face, the feeling was mutual. It was animosity at first sight. Older siblings tend to have a certain envy for the younger ones, and I was not ready to lose the attention of my only sources of knowledge available in favor of a one year-old kid. Thus began my personal war with Ne-chan.

Maybe my behavior and thinking were childish. I realized that I was fighting with a child about a year old by... pure stubbornness? Infantilism? But at the moment I could not help it, my brother had always the talent to make my blood boil.

Since day one, everything turned into a competition. To my dismay, there was not much of a challenge. Because he was bigger and stronger, he always won. And the woman, whatever the subject of dispute was she always took his side. In fact, over time, I realized that the attitude of the two adults began to change significantly. As she became more distant, turning to my brother. My father, whenever he was at home, spent time with both of us. In the evenings, after dinner, he usually read to us, sitting on the floor with me in his arms and Ne-chan cuddled beside him. I began to treasure those moments, the only part of the day where we were not at each other throats.

Little by little, without me realizing it, he went from being "the man" to "my father" in my head. I guess it's impossible to spend so much time with someone and not care for him, but, I never opened up entirely to the woman.

After two months even the strange itching due to chakra began to subside, not my perception of it, but the discomfort. From day one it felt like something alien, a new limb to which you are not used to but with time, it became normal. Although I was aware of its presence within me and outside, in the air, food ... everywhere, the sensation was part of me. It's like having a second set of veins and arteries through which something happens to move all the time, an energy that you can feel and, if you concentrate, even direct. Not at that point, then I did not even know what it was.

I felt it. I had just turned two months, but I remember it clearly. That chakra was ... Evil. I do not like to label things good or bad, but that was the only way to describe it. It was thick, dark, and full of hate.

It was monstrous.

I lived on terror until the end of the attack . It was something that I never felt before orever again. It was nameless, faceless, without explanation, and therefore, much worse. My father, the only safe and warm presence that was a constant in my life was gone, and my mother was too busy rocking Ne-chan to deal with his crippled daughter.

It was the first of the horrors I had to face in this life and, and as with many others, I did it alone. I think because of that memory I started really to loathe my mother.

Perhaps it was not fair to her. She was never deliberately cruel to me, I just was not that important to her as her Ne-chan. In retrospect, I can understand and not hold grudges, but at the moment, those small gestures stung.

It wasn't until my father came to get me out of my crib, did I feel safe. I remember the exhaustion and concern reflected in his silver eyes. As always, for comfort, I took a lock of his hair in my grip. His long hair, usually dark and silky, was matted and dirty. Specks of dust lanes obscured his cheeks and there were indefinite stains on his clothes, if they were mud or worse I would rather not think about it.

He looked at me and smiled..

"Ssh. It´s alright. It´s all right now," he whispered, "Hikai, my little lotus." He kissed my head and I sighed softly. He smelled of smoke and something metallic that I couldn't identify.

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My first words were neither father nor mother, nor anything similar.

"Neji-baka!" I shouted, exasperated, when the idiot tried to take my picture book. I was laying on the carpet quietly leafing through one of those children books whenhe took it out of my hands

"MINE!" He cried.

I was six months old now. I could finally able to see past my two feet and crawl my way through the house. With this new development, Neji found it hard to bully me.

The two of us began to pull on each side.

My father laughed as he quickly made his way to make peace between us before the situation could get worse. He grabbed the book from our hands and then sat down with us. With the book in his hands, he turned the pages so both of us could see.

Most of the stories were about warriors who fought gallantly to protect their village and their pretty drawings inscribed in the book had people who wore yukatas and kimonos, much like my mother and father wore. In that moment I realized I was in Japan, and all we had seen so far from home to my parents' clothes, was strictly traditional. Oddly I had never set a foot beyond our house and the yard itself, and I only had human contact with my family.

That was going to end.

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NOTE: The nickname Ne-chan is an abbreviation for Neji: Ne with the suffix: -chan, not the form nee-chan "big sister". The similarity is intended though.

If you are interested, this is some fan art I did for this fic:

lucife56 . deviantart art / Safe - at- last - 303955774

t t p : / / lucife56. deviantart # / d4zdlx0

Sources used for this fan fiction are: Wikipedia and naruto-Wikipedia.