BETA: Cmedina1

YEAR ZERO

The body beside me was warm and soft.

Hm, really good as a pillow.

—Wait, what?!

Startled, I opened my eyes wide. I hadn't brought anyone home with me after the party. At least, I didn't think so. Racking my brain, I tried to remember as I struggled to raise my head to peer at whoever it was that was lying beside me, but the task proved to be almost impossible. I hadn't drunk that much yesterday; not that I recalled, anyway.

But how the heck did I get home?

—Did I even make it home?

God, don't tell me I had left with some dude? No, no, that couldn't be it. I distinctly remember leaving alone and getting in my car and —

— the rest was a blank.

Try as I may, I couldn't come up with how I gotten to be where I was.

Where was I anyway?

Moving my eyes around (since that was the only thing I seemed to be able to do), I realized I was in a crib not even a normal, full sized bed. How the heck had I been able to fit in it?

There was no possible explanation for that, unless I had shrunk overnight, which I found ridiculous.

The opening of a door brought me out of my panicked musings. Finally, someone would be able to tell me what happened… if it wasn't some robber… or worse. Nope, nope, don't think about that. Everything is fine. You have not been kidnapped, you're just in some stranger's house not knowing how you got here.

Yeah, that sounded like the definition of kidnapped to me.

The woman who opened the door made her way to the wooden crib that represented my captivity. She was beautiful with long, raven black hair; pale, alabaster skin; and big, dark eyes framed by equally long and dark lashes. There was no way she could be a kidnapper; she looked so young (maybe a few years older than my twenty) and happy, there was just no way. She kind of reminded me of someone, but I couldn't recall who.

I tried to ask her what the in the seven hells was going on, but only gurgle sounds left my mouth. For some reason that made her smile. Not to be rude or anything, but she was creeping me out.

"Are you done with your nap, Kana?"

Kana? Who the hell was that? That was certainly not my name. Shit, what if they had sold me and this woman had bought me and given me a new name? Was I supposed to be her servant now? Oh Lord, please no, I promise I'll go to church every Sunday and will never again use your name in vain.

With practiced easy, she swooped down and pick me up in one smooth motion.

What. The. Hell?

"Sh, sh, Kana, Okaa-san is here now. I'll take care of you, my baby."

Just who the hell are you calling a baby, woman?! I wanted to scream at her to let me go this instant, but my vocal cords weren't cooperating with me; instead, more gurgling sounds came out. This was beyond frustrating, how was I supposed to communicate?

Seeing no other way, I turned my small, chubby hands towards the crib, making grabbing motions towards it…

Small, chubby hands?

Wide eyed, I noted that yes, my hands were the exact same as my older sister's baby. That couldn't be, I had to be hallucinating.

The woman cooed at me, "You want to go back to your brother, eh? Okay, let's put you back on your bed."

As smoothly as she lifted me, she put me back, side by side of the dark-haired baby that occupied the other side of the crib.

Did she just call him my brother?

That couldn't be right. I didn't have any brothers, much less one that was a baby. Then again, so was I by the looks of my arms. Was I dreaming of the time when I was one? That wouldn't explain the woman that I had never seen before in my life, though I did remember her from somewhere, I just didn't know where. Jesus, was I adopted and this was my memory telling me so? No, that couldn't be. I was the middle child out of the three daughters my parents had and we had a clear family resemblance; this woman was in no way related and neither was the baby beside me.

I couldn't take it anymore. I screamed. It was too much, I didn't know what the hell was going on and I didn't like it.

The woman immediately picked me up, hugging me close to her chest, which only made me scream and cry all the harder. A second round of screaming accompanied my own, telling me the boy woke up. Panicking, the woman did her best to calm both of us, but neither settled down until we were both spent, passing out.

YEAR ONE

I was not in my world.

That was the conclusion I had come to after a few long months of denial. In fact, I had been reincarnated and, guess where?

The Naruto Universe.

Pretty freaky, huh?

How did I arrive to this conclusion? Well, when my brain decided it had enough of the screaming, crying, and sleeping I did every day, it started to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

I had died, that was for sure. How? That was one of the question I still didn't have an answer to. My guess was that I had either fallen asleep while driving or just plain old crashed while driving. Brilliant, right? It still didn't explain how or why I had been reborn into the Uchiha main family.

Yes, I was the younger twin sister of dearest Itachi Uchiha, or should I say Uchiha Itachi. That was something I needed to get used to, saying the last name before the first.

Anyway, I was one year old now — again — and was learning how to pronounce words. It was a pain to be honest, but there was no worse pain than teething. Ugh, thank God I didn't remember that experience from my last life.

Mikoto, the woman who had given birth to me, was an angel. Seriously, I didn't know how she had managed to not go crazy from all the sleepless nights I made her go through. It was a miracle, really, that she hadn't decided to smother me with a pillow in my sleep and be done with it; or it could be Itachi for all I knew since we slept on the same bed.

That was something I still had trouble believing: Itachi was my older brother; by a few minutes, but older nonetheless.

The kid who grew up to give everything for his village was my twin. I think my brain fried after trying to wrap itself around that piece of information. It could only mean that I was destined to die again around the time I was thirteen. I hoped and prayed against that with all my might; if Itachi loved Sasuke enough to keep him alive, wouldn't he do the same for me? I sincerely hoped so, though a part of me doubted it. If the weasel was able to kill his parents, he could certainly kill me, too.

God, it was a lot to take in and think about, good thing I had the time, if not the energy; I never realized just how much babies needed to sleep.

Another thing I should have expected, but completely caught me off guard, was Uzumaki Kushina.

Itachi and I had been playing in the living room when the redhead arrived, making herself right at home. I had forgotten Mikoto and she were supposed to be friends. From preconceived ideas, I had thought I would dislike the woman, but Kushina turned out to be really likable, if a little loud sometimes. She had brought Itachi and I gifts, a plush toy for each. I really liked the stuffed teddy she had gotten me, it was a soft pink with a white belly and had blue eyes; I never went to sleep without it, it was comforting. Itachi had received a similar bear, his was a baby blue with the white belly and black eyes.

We met Namikaze Minato a few days later, not that Itachi would remember it, though I had my doubts — the kid was too smart even if he was one year old. It seemed that Minato had recently come back from a mission, if Kushina's babbling about him being gone for too long was any indication. The man left an impression on me, I had to say; with his sunny blond hair, height, and bright blue eyes, he just exuded charisma and I could clearly see how and why anyone would follow him. It really was no wonder he became the Yondaime Hokage, he just was the kind of person who took care of his comrades.

As the days and months passed, it felt as if we spent more time in the company of the Uzumaki than that of our father, or Tou-sama as Okaa-san had instructed us to call him. He was always busy and didn't have time to waste on watching his kids take their first steps or say their first word. Unsurprisingly, Itachi had started walking before I did. I was too lazy to move and it was really convenient that Mikoto could just passed me whatever it was that I wanted, but I did win at saying the first word (could you blame me? I was sick and tired of not being able to communicate what I wanted, let them think I was just a small prodigy).

"O-Okaa," I had started, testing out the word, not wanting to be too perfect either, "Okaa-san"

Mikoto had gushed at me, calling me her baby girl; she had been so happy. Itachi, not wanting to be left behind, opened his mouth from the floor where he was sitting, playing with a rubber kunai, and uttered the same word, making the woman pick both of us up for a tight hug.

YEAR FOUR

Four years had passed since my waking up in this world. I had come to accept the fact that this was my new reality and would not be able to return home, not that I had a way to begin with.

The relationship I had with my parents was not the greatest one, thought I got along much better with Mikoto than Fugaku, who really was a stern man and hardly ever smiled. The Uchiha Matriarch was such a gentle person I couldn't really hate her, even though she was strict; Fugaku, on the other hand, I could barely stand. He didn't pay much attention to either of his children, preferring to spend his days in his study or at the Uchiha Military Police Headquarters. However, it was what he did after Itachi and I turned four that made me hate him.

Bodies could be seen littering the ground for as far as the eye could reach, the blood that had stained the forest floor being washed away by the heavy rain that poured down on us. It was not the place a father should have taken his two young children.

"Remember, this is a battlefield." Fugaku's voice commanded to be heard above any other sound, his words cutting through the roar of the rain.

I resisted the urge to turn around and run away as fast as I could, swallowing the bile that threatened to come out of my mouth. The taste of vomit was the only thing that kept me from fainting at the sight in front of me. It was one thing to watch war movies and another thing entirely to be exposed to the real deal.

As if he hadn't traumatized us enough with just showing us the horrible cadavers with the pain of their deaths still etched on their faces like masks, he pushed the knife in a little deeper.

"In a few years, you both will be a ninja too. This war might end, but the reality of the ninja does not change. This is the world you will step into."

No, no, no, no. I wouldn't die like that. I refused to be thrown into ninja training and die as if my life had no other purpose than dying. Unasked for, the image of Itachi a few seconds before he died, thick lines of blood coming out from his mouth, burns on his arm, his clothes and body dirty, and a soft smile on his face as he reached to poke Sasuke's forehead with bloody fingers took the front of my mind. Without thinking, my eyes moved to look at the child on the other side of the Uchiha clan head. He was shaking and I couldn't tell if it was from the cold of the rain or the horror of the battlefield, but it was in that moment that I knew I would do anything in my power to prevent that future from happening.

"Father." It was the first word he had uttered since we came here, "Why did you bring us here…"

Fugaku took a while to respond and I could barely quench the rage that begun burning like a roaring inferno in the pit of my stomach at the man who called himself our father. "You are clever boy."

Silently, Fugaku moved his hands to rest on the top of our heads. I flinched slightly at the touch, while Itachi didn't give any kind of reaction.

"I wanted to make sure the both of you saw this reality."

I bit down on my lip harshly to keep from scoffing out loud. So, what if this was the world we lived in? If no one did anything to change it, the cycle would just continue and more innocent (and maybe not so innocent as ninja couldn't really be counted as such) people would continue dying and for what? What was the point of all the needless death? I didn't understand how the shinobi world worked, but I wasn't going to stick around it and watch the brother I had grown to love be used and thrown away as if his life didn't matter one bit, not to mention my life; the life that I had come to slowly accept and get used to, I was not about to let it end like that. The resolved burned brightly inside of me, like a slow spark that had been given life and was being stocked to become a campfire.

"This is the world Kana and I live in…"

I didn't know how to react to the fact that Itachi had — consciously or not — grouped me in with him.

"That's right, Itachi. Ninja are creatures that fight. Never forget what you've seen here today. Neither do you, Kana."

How could I? There was no way I would be able to sleep after witnessing this horror. It would be what fueled me to do better, to be better so that I would become untouchable to anyone trying to do me harm — to do me and my brother harm. I would never forget the lesson that Fugaku wanted to teach us: to become powerful enough to make it out alive from this hell. Become powerful enough that everyone would know my name and become scared at the sound of it.

Survival. That's what it came down to. Survive until the day when Uzumaki Naruto, the child of the prophesy brought peace to the world.

Something unlike anything I'd ever felt like burnt into my eyes, making me gasp in slight pain and I welcomed the distraction by biting the inside of my mouth. Soon, a coppery, tangy taste filled it and I knew I had drawn blood.

Itachi rubbed his eyes, putting soon a hand to his chest, making me panic. Was he okay? Was he going to pass out? Had he awakened his Sharingan? No, that couldn't be it. The Sharingan could only be awakened in a life or death scenario and this — as macabre as it was — was definitely not it.

"What's wrong?" Tou-sama asked, but my brother didn't respond.

It wasn't long after that we left, not sparing a backward glance at what we left behind.

Neither Itachi nor I were the same after that.

My older brother took his ninja training to a whole new level, spending any possible amount of free time he had honing his skills. Not one to be left behind, I did the same; however, I also decided to look into Fuuinjutsu. There were some scrolls in the library about the art and Uzumaki Kushina being Okaa-sama's friend helped a lot, but I wanted to know about the seals that could only be activated with the Sharingan — mine, to be precise. Though I didn't have it just yet, I knew it would be only a matter of time before I experienced something that would awaken the Dojutsu.

Chakra had been somewhat easier for me to access than it had been for Itachi, even though he had gotten the hang of it a little faster than I did. See, I had more spiritual chakra than I had physical, making it a little bit harder for me to balance out he needed amount to make the leaf stick to my forehead. Once I got the exact measurement down, though, it became easier to control the flow of what I needed to build up without wasting anything in the process. One thing I had learned from reading the manga was that you didn't waste chakra; especially not during a fight against stronger opponents. I didn't want to be one of those cases where the ninja couldn't flee from a fight because he or she didn't have enough chakra to enhance the muscles to run faster or to perform a Kawarimi or Shunshin to get away. During any fight, I wanted to be the last one standing and so, I trained till I dropped, right next to my genius of a brother.

The war didn't last that much longer.

The Third Hokage, though the war had been going greatly in our favor, decided — against a lot of people's wishes — to not demand reparations from Iwagakure in a show of goodwill. In exchange of this last rule, Sarutobi Hiruzen stepped down, allowing for the next Hokage to be chosen. None other than Namikaze Minato, hailed hero of Konohagakure, became the Yondaime.

It was a time of peace. The village was slowly, but surely, building itself back up from the tumult it had fallen into during the war. Nevertheless, I continued training diligently, pestering Kushina at the same time. She ended up giving me some of her scrolls on beginning Fuuin, which I later returned (after I copied everything into my own scrolls).

Days passed and I saw less and less of Itachi. Both of us, in our own little bubbles, kept missing each other and, to be honest, I started to miss my twin. No, we weren't joined at the hip. Each of us did our own thing when we wanted to, but the ache in my chest whenever I spent too long without him pestered me to the point that I sought him out.

"Okaa-sama?" I called into the kitchen where I knew she spent most of her time, even though she was heavily pregnant, as I come back into the house from the garden where I had been practicing how to make explosive tags. So far, I was looking forward to making huge explosions happen.

"Yes, Kana?" She inquired, stirring the contents in a pot.

"Is onii-sama home?" I could send out my chakra to check but wasn't feeling like it at the moment.

"He just went to your Tou-sama's study."

The tone she used had me frowning. What could be so bad about going to bother Fugaku? I ended using my chakra to sense where he was. It turned out he was in his room, but the other signatures in father's study left me uneasy; what could they want with Fugaku?

Not wanting to intrude, I went straight up and to my brother's room. Knocking before entering, I closed the door silently behind me.

Itachi was on his bed, reading through some scrolls on shurikenjutsu.

Without waiting for him to acknowledge my presence, I sat next to him, making him shift to give me some space and placed my head on his shoulder, reading alongside him.

After a few minutes, though, I was bored.

"Do you think it'll be a boy or a girl?" I commented out of the blue.

Even though I couldn't see his expression, I could tell I caught him by surprise.

"I don't mind, as long as it's healthy." Was his response after a moment.

I rolled my eyes at the non-answer, "That's not what I meant, you know."

"I know." There was a smirk in his voice.

"I think it's going to be a boy." I declared. Yeah, right. I already know who our little brother was going to be. "And he'll cling to you and you'll love him above everyone else." I couldn't resist adding.

"What makes you think he'll cling to me instead of you?"

I made a frustrated sound in the back of my throat, "You're the elder and a boy, too. It's normal he'll be more interested in spending time with you than with his sister."

That brought a chuckle out of him. The sound warmed my heart; it had been too long since I heard Itachi laugh.

"Are you jealous?"

I let out a snort, "Of the pain in the butt it'll be having a snotty little brat following me around, demanding attention? I don't think so."

A comfortable silence enveloped us. My brother continued reading about the best ways to throw shuriken while I stared at his graceful, but deadly hands unrolling the scroll.

"He won't be like us." I whispered. Itachi's hands stopped. There was no need for me to explain what I meant with that remark. One thing Itachi and I had in common besides our soft raven black hair, big dark eyes, ivory skin, and training regimen was the fact that we could understand what the other one meant, even if we talked in cryptic words.

"He won't go through a war." He'll be innocent, was what he meant. Sasuke wouldn't see the corpses of the fallen ninja like we had. He would never have that image imprinted in his brain, following him around with every step he took. But, he would. His clan's massacre would make sure that he never forgot the lesson to survive, to become stronger, and do everything in his power to avenge their deaths.