N/A: Holy moley, I'm actually back. After a whole year off. Can I get a 'HELL YEAH!'? :D :D :D

So believe or not, I haven't been completely slacking off since the last time I posted; I've been rewriting this chapter about once a month, and hating every version of it until this one. The reason I know I don't hate this one is because it's taken me three days to write - as in, three whole, consecutive days where I reread what I'd written the previous day and didn't feel like I wanted to die of embarrassment. This story has certainly been a frustrating little bugger, but in the end I'm happy I kept at it, because here we are.

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto (not that there's any actual Naruto in this chapter, but whatever)

Warnings: more crappy Google Translate Japanese, sorry. It's almost done!

Chapter 2

In the past, Sara had been many things - a gymnast, a violinist, a bookworm, a dancer, a public speaker, a history buff, and a taekwondo student, to name a few. She wasn't always the best at what she did (in fact, most often not), but what successes she could claim, she had earned, and she was proud of them.

Naturally, all of these things were now irrelevant.

As a baby, she had very little independence. Her parents decided what she wore, what she ate, where she went, what she did. They were watchful and easily frightened the way all new parents were, with only the best of intentions, but - reasonably - with very little thought to the opinions of their young daughter, who, nevertheless, very much chafed at the lack of freedom. And, as bad situations were wont to do, this state of affairs seemed set to go on and on and on, with no end in sight.

Patience, Sara was unsurprised to learn, was not a virtue one magically acquired via reincarnation.

...

Time crawled like a great-great grandfather snail.

In comparison, Sara had become quite adept at crawling with speed - and climbing, and walking, and generally doing many things a six month old had no business doing. There was very little else to do; it was, in fact, entirely possible to become bored of sleeping. And eating. And unwillingly soiling her nappy, which was every bit as disgusting as she'd ever imagined. None of the soft, too-big-to-swallow toys her parents gave her could hold her attention for long, even when she was occasionally overwhelmed by the bizarre urge to stick them in her mouth and chew on them like a dog... without teeth.

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that she turned to more cognitive pursuits.

There was meditation, for one. The idea felt appropriately profound and grown up enough that it appealed to her battered pride. In reality though, she knew nothing of proper technique and so it mostly boiled down to sitting very still and 'clearing her mind' - and in the background, wondering whether she was supposed to be breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, or in through the mouth and out through the nose...

Well, meditation was a bit of a bust. Still, she kept at it, if only for something to pass the time.

More significantly, she had chosen to dedicate a large chunk of her energy to learning Japanese as fast as possible. This was made easier, for once, by her parents.

"Anata wa kuuu-fukudesu ka, Sara-chan?" Her mother cooed, squeezing out a portion of orange baby food."Haaai, kaa-chan!" She answered herself in a high pitched imitation of a young voice."Watashi wa hiiiijō ni kūfukudesu!"

Are you hungry, Sara-chan? Sara translated from her high chair. Yes, mummy, I'm very hungry! She clapped her hands a little clumsily and beamed. "Hai, kaa-tan!"

It was a phenomenon Sara had read about once, the way adults unconsciously modified their speech patterns when communicating with young children. The concept of 'baby talk' was universal, apparently, but there was also more to it than just being 'cute' or a simplification of normal speech. The higher pitch allowed for a greater range of emotional expression, and coupled with the dragged-out emphasis on certain words and over-exaggerated body language, baby talk took the significance and connotations of normal conversation and blew them up under a magnifying glass for easy reading. Perfect for a baby - or an adult not yet fluent in the language.

Over time, some of her former vocabulary had returned to her. It had been added to by a growing collection of common words and phrases she had begun to pick up, and even - eventually - recall without prompting. Things like a sing-songed, "shūshin jikan!" before bed each night, and a gentle, "kichōna on'nanoko," accompanied by a kiss to the forehead. She didn't always know what they translated as, but she knew what they meant, which was nearly as good.

As she opened her mouth for the spoon, Sara daydreamed.

The future was so wide and open. One day soon, she'd be able to start building a personality for herself, in a way that other people could recognise – introversion or extroversion, confidence, intelligence, compassion, curiosity, amenability. She, unlike any other, possessed the unique providence of being aware of her own potential… and her flaws.

But shortcomings could be improved upon. Talents could be polished. This time, she could choose who she was going to be.

What a thought!

It was like writing the first, exhilarating pages of a new story – taking the base idea of an ordinary girl and beginning to carve out the shape of her, transforming a standard model into something unforgettable… a main character that people would remember for generations after she passed.

She needed to be- more than a girl. More than what she'd been.

Outside of her head, she finished the last spoonful, and kaa-chan lifted her gently from the chair. She was deposited on a blanket on the floor, but hardly noticed, she was so lost in thought.

The thing was: for all her ambition, Sara had never been more than slightly above-average. She'd had ability in spades – or so she'd been told again and again ("You have so much potential, but-") – but she'd also had laziness in bucketfuls and inconsistency in wheelbarrows. Her brief flashes of brilliance had been overwhelmingly drowned out by an excess of mediocrity.

So that had to be the first thing to change.

Just at the thought, a thread of reluctance began to wind its way through the back of her mind. That future sounded… hard. And lonely. And un-fun. So full of burgeoning determination and inspiration right in the moment, she nearly forced it down, the way she normally did… but then she stopped.

Just froze her thoughts for a beat.

Took a breath.

No. If she did everything the same way she'd been doing it her whole life, there was no reason to expect anything to change. And if she just pushed that thread away now, it would be back soon enough – that jovial little voice in the back of her mind that excused her when she took an extra break, when she procrastinated on assignments until the last second, when she broke her diet with a cup of chicken salted chips, when- when she let her determination slip- just once! – and then it didn't kill me last time, and I'll work it off later, I'll train harder tomorrow, I'm too tired right now, it's not like anyone will notice if I-

BUT.

But, it wasn't about other people noticing, was it? Sara noticed. She knew.

And the guilty pleasure of cheating herself would slowly fade to just guilt. And then frustration. Determination. A single day or two days of motivation, and then- then it would start all over again.

And again and again and again.

'Unless something changes a whole awful lot,' murmured a knowing voice that sounded awfully like her mum – her first mum – 'NOTHING is going to get better. It's not.'

And like the little boy in The Lorax, if she wanted to make a real, long-lasting, positive difference, the first seed had better be a truffula tree, not just another weed. So…

She closed her eyes and took another deep breath.

What am I so afraid of?

Because - reluctance, guilt, frustration, determination – they all had one thing in common. Fear. Reluctance to change for fear of the unknown, guilt for fear of consequences or judgement, frustration for fear of failure, determination… for fear of being stuck.

And she was stuck, really, so everything she'd been terrified of her whole life was true. There were no monsters under the bed, they were in her head. They'd made themselves quite at home there, like the tar in a smoker's lungs, and every minute she breathed in fear of them, they grew a little stronger. A little heavier.

And suddenly, she could feel the weight of them, a leaden band across her chest, in her throat. She tried to draw in a breath, and her lungs shuddered and shook. Her eyes watered, wide open. She wheezed.

"Daijōbudesuka?Kichōna? Sara-chan?" She was picked up, cradled against someone's chest, and she could barely see – tears, or black spots on her vision, or both. Her throat worked. "Can'… bweathe, kaa-t…" English. Japanese. Her head spun. She couldn't see or hear right. Couldn't cry. Not enough air.

"Sara-chan?" She sounded scared. Sara was scared too. "Joru! Hayaku kite! Nanika ga machigatte iru!"

There was a blur of sound and colour. A hand to her forehead, jostled movement, the sudden impression of space and blue-grey sky, shouting, and all through it all, a sense of overwhelming terror in the air.

She blacked out.

…

Zensoku, the doctor, a greying man with an old, silvery scar along his jaw, said, but Sara didn't need a translation.

Asthma.

She felt like a bit of a fool.

She'd assumed, being born again, that she wouldn't have to deal with asthma this time. With everything that had happened, and then six months without a single wheeze, the thought hadn't even crossed her mind. Perhaps it should have – after all, she'd kept her name, and her mind, and, now that she thought about it, her hair had been this same shade of pale blonde for years before it darkened to brown. So chances were, she'd come with the whole damn package.

Well, at least there were some advantages to that, assuming it wasn't just a series of coincidences. She knew her health was relatively stable up to seventeen years of age. She knew she had a family history of lymphoma, bowel cancer, and gluten intolerance to watch out for. She knew she had pale skin that would burn easily and needed to be protected. She knew she wouldn't have to worry about acne, but that she'd probably need glasses by the age of thirty.

She knew asthma – that panicking, laughing too much or cold air could trigger it just as easily as dust, pollen or the flu. She knew to take her preventer every morning and every night, and to go to the doctor if the dose stopped working. She knew how much Ventolin she could take during an attack before she'd get lightheaded.

In a strange way, it was almost reassuring. This, she knew. This, she could deal with.

She didn't want to think about the cause of this attack. Panicking about not having packed her inhaler for a three day camp was one thing – panicking about a little psychological examination was entirely another. She'd almost be embarrassed, if she wasn't so past the point of resignation about her asthma and all the ways it liked to interfere with her life.

These things happened. It was best to just learn from it and move on.

…

Sara spent the night in hospital under observation, wide awake while her parents dosed in uncomfortable-looking chairs on either side, neither having convinced the other to go home and rest. The room she was in reminded her of the maternity ward, save that it smelt more strongly of cleaning product than nappy powder, which honestly was not much of an improvement.

Somewhere around one in the morning, she gave up on sleep entirely. Sitting up, she scooted to the edge of the cot and let her legs dangle, hugging the bars and staring wistfully into space. There seemed to be so much to think about, and yet, she was so sick of thinking.

Planning had never been her forte. The extent of her caution was usually peering warily at the water for a few seconds, then jumping in feet first, instead of head first. She liked to think, but she didn't like to wait, and really, she deserved a sticker for making it this far already.

It was just that- well, she was scared. She was still scared. At the start of this whole thing she'd been overwhelmed by the idea of it all- the potential of getting to take the test a second time, having already seen the answer sheet. It seemed inevitable that she would succeed at all her goals, simply by virtue of having the opportunity.

And yet, she was the same person she'd been before. And it would be so easy to fall into the same traps.

And it would break her, she realized. If she'd been afraid of dying with regrets last time, now it was twice as bad. To have had two shots at life, when everyone had only ever had one, and to still fail? The agony would unbearable.

I can't fail, she thought, with more certainty than she'd ever held in her life. It settled within her like a fact: the universe is made of atoms, I am a gymnast, and I cannot fail.

I refuse.

N/A: This would be the perfect place for a gymnastics quote, but unfortunately I already have one quote in this chapter and I'm trying SO HARD not to turn this story into my character just sprouting off all the awesome quotes I know. But- but- but- this isn't technically part of the chapter now so I can tell you now! :D There's this gymnast called Nastia Liukin (she's an Olympic champ and she's awesome, that's all you really have to know) who was my idol for pretty much my entire gymnasthood, and she said:

"I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run towards it, because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet."

*sighs happily* So cool.

Anyway, I very much hope you enjoyed this chapter and hopefully the next one won't take me another year. :O Please leave reviews! I'd love to hear what you think. See you next time!

EDIT: OMG OMG OMG, I made a mistake! It was actually Nadia Comaneci who said that quote! I'm really bad with names! (In my defense, she is also an Olympic champ and very very awesome.) Oh well, I like them both!