1.

/because someone decided that dying once just wasn't enough/

It was dark.

A darkness so heavy it threatened to press its thumbs into my eye sockets and suffocate my airway. I didn't know if my eyes were open or closed. It was just my body and an endlessly growing dark space where no light could pierce through. At least it was quiet, I thought.

Then -

A sparkle of a million and one pale caramel white grains. A ripple of breathtakingly cool and salty ocean water in rock pools. A flash of a small clump of tall palm trees ripe with juicy coconuts squeezed against each other as if seeking shade. The nurturing breath of warm sunlight on my face. Seagulls squawking as waves crashed onto the glittering shoreline. The scuttle of a stray crab.

I looked down at my feet. A mistake. Black tar had set my feet into stone, chaining me back. Tendrils of a viscous dark substance latched onto my legs. My eyes widened. Nonononono letmegoletmego I'mscared pleasenojustleavemealoneimtired-

Then -

The image of an ordinary girl wearing a pair of not so ordinary striped grey tights. Grey wasn't a good colour to wear that day, the grey skinned dead girl thought. She'd be a cool person to get to know if her grey eyes weren't so lifeless. She'd also be a cool person to get to know if she wasn't choking on her own blood at that moment. But most importantly, she'd be a cool person to get to know if her face didn't seem so horrifyingly similar to her own.

Car accidents are always a tragedy. No one thinks that they're going to be next. The jaywalkers think that they're above that. Drivers will slow down because they don't want to have their hands tainted with their blood. The stickler rule abiders think the law will save them. Drivers will follow the law and won't mow down a crossing filled with pedestrians.

But accidents happen.

Then -

Then finally, there was light.

A piercing, fluorescent light. I covered my eyes tightly with my hands but the light still found its way to burn my eyes. My thoughts were ripped out of my mind, my body rigid and unyielding as I tried to gasp for air. Then, then I couldn't breathe. It was as if someone had just reached a hand through my chest cavities to squeeze my lungs. I felt myself tiring, yet my panic still bubbled to the surface and threatened to spill, my heartbeat thumping in my ears (wait, do the dead still have hearts?) so I did the only thing I thought reasonable, doubled over, my hands grasping at nothing as I screamed and screamed and screamed soundlessly into the void.

.

.

Then there was air.

.

.

I greedily gulped down lungfuls of crisp, clean air, sobbing hysterically. And you've always wondered why babies cried when they were born. Honestly, it was no wonder that they did. I desparately wanted to hold something, I was spiralling, my world spinning from my dramatic entrance. But my fingers were hardly more than small nubs. Bright shafts of light blinded my sight, my own cries bounced off the wooden floorboards and plaster walls, and the only thing that soothed me was the sudden feeling of a soft, heated towel being wrapped around me. It never did occur to me until much later on that I had just undergone one of the most humane, exquisite and pure experiences of birth. Not giving birth, and on second thought, not even birth.

But rebirth.

A soft shift in my positioning and I was transferred over to the warm embrace of a woman. Her tired arms pulled me into her chest as she pressed her lips gently against my forehead. I noticed that she had the most beautiful brown eyes. Her creased almond shaped eyes showed relief and love and just the subtlest trace of happy tears. I was so captivated I didn't notice that my cries had subsided. A large hand stroked the thinned mop of hair on my head. It was comforting and I felt safe. My eyes shifted to the man beside the bed. His other hand was wrapped around the woman, rubbing slow circles into her shoulder with his thumb.

"Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Furukawa, it's a baby girl."

I spend the next few days immersed in darkness.

I was sleepy, all the damned time. My energy reserves were diminished with the simple acts of eating, drinking, and going to the bathroom – I really had the energy reserves of an ant. My reactions to sound and touch were getting much better, but my sight was still significantly clouded, and everything around me was a blur, with distinct contrasts between bright lights and dark shadows.

But that was alright.

I spent my time lost in thoughts. With every ounce of strength a baby had, I gathered information. I listened, and pondered, and dreamed. I listened to the clink of dishes as my 'mother' washed them after dinner, the flips of pages as my 'father' read. Moving my pudgy fingers to the edge of the cot, I tried to pull myself upwards into a standing position. I didn't move. I strained, heaved and panted, but all I succeeded in doing was realise that my arm was probably composed of more fat than muscle. And so, I browsed through my memories bank, where the more I thought, the more I remembered the life I previously had.

I had grown up in a toxic family in the city of Sydney.

The city of nameless faces and faceless names.

A city so categorical yet so scattered. You could be completely surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city, but you could feel so alone. A city of abundance, boom and growth but numbers of homeless people on the streets only increased exponentially. My parents were migrants and of Asian lineage, and like all good parents do, pushed me into the direction of their definition of success. They educated me, pushed me into doing extra-curriculars, involved me into music, art, tutoring.

The thing with pushing your children like that is that they start to look for avenues to escape to. I escaped into the world of animation and reality TV. I escaped into sitting in front of a mirror for hours, doing and redoing my makeup with no intention of going out. I escaped under the covers of my bed, where only a crack of light revealed that had my smartphone screen switched on – discussing the meaning of life with my likeminded peers. I escaped into books and literature. I escaped into the sin of gluttony, stuffing my face with crisps I bought on the way home from school with my left hand, and solving math equations with my right. And you wonder why other young adults disappear into their own world of drinking and drugs.

By the time I was 21, I was holding a Bachelor's degree and on my way to starting a job with one of the big four investment banking companies in Australia. I was successful and unhappy. With a life under scrutiny like that, it's hard to make your own decisions. I didn't know what I wanted to make of my life.

Before I could even get onto thinking about my future, it was ripped away from me.

Until now.

As the days and months passed, the memories became dimmer and duller. Think about the person you were 5 years ago, already fuzzy right? And then imagine yourself slipping away from your identity, piece by piece, fragment by fragment; gaps begin to form in your existential timeline, black blotches clouding your clarity, until what you previously knew as fact now becomes fiction.

As my mental clarity diminished, my sight incrementally improved. Black and grey blotches were now interesting objects and artefacts in my small field of vision. Every turn of my head, I was piecing this together, like trying to put together an endless jigsaw.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

Soon, the language in this world became my own. My renewed brain was absorbing information at an alarming rate. Everywhere I looked; the house was choking with life anew, a bumbling and fussy mother, a protective father, an aged piano, a small succulent pot plant dangling off a nail.

I came to realise that my given name was Elizabeth. This took some getting used to, and I almost never responded to being called. Perhaps, Mother and Father shortened it "Lily" for the sole reason that it was short, sharp and caught my attention. Aren't babies just so foolish? They blindly trust their two parents with no idea who they were. From an adult's eye, they could have been anyone -a pair of hardened criminals, the president and first lady of the United States, or just two warm, humble souls who loved their daughter unconditionally. I regarded my looming parents with a healthy dose of scepticism as Mother flicked water at Father's face after she finished washing the dishes.

Was it any wonder that I wanted to be indifferent to their care, their unconditional love?

At the age of one, small things became oddly familiar. It was hard to explain, I had never physically been here, but I was aware of these synonymous sights. I had seen this place before. Definitely. I had seen it on a small screen, in another world, in the form of pixels.

In fact, a boy named Eren Yeager visited today. I prayed that it was just an inane coincidence.

But when Mother tied my small body to her back with thin cloths and linen, so that I was gurgling and lounging in her makeshift baby carrier, hand in hand with Father down the streets of Shiganshina District, with the colossal "Wall Maria" in the distance, I could deny it no more.

I had been reborn in the Shingeki-no-Kyojin universe.

The tolling of bells could be heard in the distance as the sun inked the sky a salmon colour, but above it all, a baby girl began to wail.

A/N: Revamped chapter 1. Have a very merry christmas everyone!