1Title: Uzuki-Who?
Canon Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me. Kishimoto has that honor. I do not have the imagination… or at least not the will to write it.
Rate: T for Teen, just in case…
Idea: I have seen a few fictional works out there that connect Uzumaki Kushina and Uzuki Yuugao together, whether they are old friends or some sort of shirt-tail relative, but I do not know if I have seen this. One-shot.
Note: I did not add this into "Konoha Underground" because it does not have anything really to do with Naruto, directly.
[This is very AU!]
[Uzuki Yuugao]
There is a world where a woman without a name wakes from a deep sleep. She does not remember her name or her past, but she holds a sword like her life depends on it made of swirling tides and an orange filigree. The Hokage is kind to her, and after seeing a number of mind specialists, she creates a new life for herself. For a family name, she likes the sound the "z" makes when running it over her tongue. It is almost familiar. For her personal name, there is a moon-flower on the sill of her long-term hospital ward. It is the first thing she sees.
Her hair is a dark red in tangles when she awakens and her eyes are an alluring green, but over the course of her physical therapy, her features darken to a strange tint of purple. It is a curious thing that even her doctors find odd, but truthfully she does not much care. The world feels void of something she cannot name. Uzuki thinks that maybe she is mourning.
Every night she dreams of things she awakens not remembering, though words on the tip of her tongue fight to come out only for nothing to be stated. It is like grasping for light in a dark room. It has to be there, somewhere, but hidden in the very essence of things.
After three months of totally healing within ANBU confines, she is given a new identity and a handle. A small apartment awaits her in a ninja-friendly sector and she spends a while cleaning it up. It takes her a while to realize that her body is completely flawless. She runs a small diagnostic on her form but immediately forgets the results as a small flash of blinding pain runs through her brain. There is something she does not want to know. When the moon rises along the sun, she sets out to change her form. She is claiming it as her own if her past has gone.
When asked what she wants, she things of maybe getting a leaf symbol of some sort, or of tree vines running like a cuff around her upper arm. A picture of water enters her mind, beating along shores and among high winds before swirling, turning around the deep darkness of the unknown and scooping her past inside of it.
Yuugao's new sempai, a swordsman by the name of Hayate with a permanent cough, notices the addition of a small read whirlpool with two receding ends. Neither line touches the other, but it is equal.
The first time she sees the Jinchuuriki boy in her duties, she almost feels a familiar sense of… something. Yuugao asks herself why he scrawled lines into his face, but forgets it as soon as her mission is complete. She dreams, afterwards, of a loving man, of blonde hair, of battlefields and red hair like bread crumbs. Little is remembered when dawn comes but tears roll down her face.
Later, she is close to her sempai, but ignores the glares and curious eyes that think she is more than just a friend to the other swordsman of Konoha. They are wrong and have no right to question it. Yuugao does not feel physical attraction. She thinks that maybe she had known it once, but this is a new life. There are times, she wonders of the first life that is unknown to her. She wonders if she had a loving husband, of children, of a family and a real name. But that causes pulses in her brain to fry her calm so she does her best not to think of it.
There are only a few things she does in the quiet of her apartment that she shares with no one and nothing. The first is that she gardens constantly on her roof. There is a menagerie of growing things that should not grow together but do anyway.
Her other secret is that twice a week, when she is feeling particularly low or tortured, she will cook a full pot of homemade ramen. Usually it is miso but she is not picky. Despite her average size and comfortably professional build, the whole pot is devoured in a feeling that is almost bliss and memory. Her eyes close and lights sparkle in the shapes of people she cannot quite define and voices in her ear of laughing days.
She is Uzuki Yuugao now, but there was a life before this one where she is a treasured ANBU swordswoman. She is quiet this life but feels the urge to scream. Because she is not Yuugao, not really. So she wonders who she is.
END
...just a little ditty. What did you think?
Happy late third birthday to Matthew Daniel Allen, my great-nephew. You don't know Naruto, but eventually, I'll make sure you do.