AN: So this is something I couldn't get out of my head and I've been working on it off and on for a while. It was actually supposed to just be a quick 10k one-shot and then, well- you know how it is. Things got away from me. In anycase, it's a stand alone story (unrelated to my other fics) I hope you enjoy, please read and review.
For everyone waiting on my update for Sliding Sideways, I'm sorry, I got distracted. Please don't eat me.
P.S. I don't speak fluent Japanese, I apologize if there are any mistakes, I did my best.

Summary: She couldn't remember if she was a little girl, a grown woman, or maybe some kind of wild beast. All she wanted was what everyone wants- a purpose, a reason to be. The day she meets the man who embodies the ocean, is the day she chooses the path she will take in this life. Because it wasn't about her. Maybe it never was.

"Japanese words the main character doesn't understand(or immediately understand)"
"Words the main character does understand."
(Subconscious thoughts)

I currently have no Beta, I don't own Naruto.

Chapter One: Who I Was (Who Am I?)

"You don't drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there." –Lewis Cole

This wasn't what she'd been expecting at all.

Not that she'd ever really stopped to think about it before, but you know; the thought had vaguely crossed her mind once or twice that there may or may not be something after death.

She'd always been more interested in living in the moment, a kind of go-with-the-flow type person. She spent most of her days outside, camping, hiking, going on adventures. There was a whole big beautiful world out there and she had always promised herself that she would see it all. She did too, she went all sorts of places exploring cultures and terrains and generally just not worrying about existential things like life and death.

So, no. There really hadn't been a whole lot of 'I wonder what will happen after I die' because honestly she just wasn't that type of girl.

Maybe she should have though. Maybe she would have been more prepared for this. Then again probably not.

The ocean had swelled full of life and a sense of peace, lapping at the white sand beach like they were age old lovers. She loved the sound of it rushing forward to greet her toes; the way it roared and hushed at the same time. She loved the smell of it; all brine and salt, the kind of smell that got in your hair and stuck to you for days reminding you of the vastness of life beneath the waves.

It had been dawn she recalled, and she'd slept on that beach full of contentment and imaginings that all was right with the world. Her brother had come with her on this particular trip and it was good to spend some time with him after her six month stint in Germany. The Black Forest had really been something to see.

It had never crossed her mind that this would be her last day on earth. Why would it?

The sun broke the horizon, painting big fluffy clouds in stark pink and red hues. It made her brother's blond hair tinge an orange color. She imagined her own hair had probably sported the same look; there was never any question in anyone's mind that the two were related when seen together. (He was her best friend, her only friend.)

She remembered it had been a beautiful morning, a tranquil morning. She had felt such contentment. (She would look back later, and think maybe it had been a good day to die.)

She couldn't remember the details of how it had happened, and that was probably for the best. She did however remember the ocean's embrace. It had been icy cold, it made her skin pucker and shivers slide down her spine. And then the light dimmed, the cold receded and somehow she'd lost sight of which way had been 'up.' Her small frame lost in the soft tumble of water that spun her head over heels.

She couldn't remember if there had been panic, or any sense of urgency. Knowing herself she'd probably just accepted it like she had everything else. There was a kind of freedom in death she supposed, and that's all she had ever wanted in her life- freedom. (This is what she told herself, when she wandered aimlessly and alone for miles across countries) Besides, there were worse ways to go and she always had loved the sea, she'd seen every one the world had to offer her. At least all the major ones, she'd never seen the Dead Sea; there simply hadn't been enough time.

She took the whole thing pretty easily, actually. Maybe it was the shock, or the lack of emotional details she could remember. Or maybe it's just because that's who she was. (Maybe she just didn't like to think about it.)

Carefree to a fault, a bit naive, wholly accepting. That's who she'd always been.

It didn't really matter now anyways, did it? She'd lived that life exactly how she wanted to and now she's here.

Her brother always had complained that she was too easy going- that she didn't concern herself enough with the reality of things. He'd been one of the many people to tell her that traipsing across the world alone was a bad idea, not that she had listened- and she didn't regret it either. People called her whimsical with her vague, wispy personality. She didn't pay them much mind. She did love her brother though, he'd always been around to offer a helping hand or guide her in the right direction. She sure did miss his smiles, his carefree laugh so like her own. Maybe she even missed his nagging a little.

There wasn't anyone to nag her anymore.

She couldn't remember what her name had been in that life; but she tried not to dwell on the loss because dwelling just wasn't like her. (Expect, maybe she dwelled on her brother some. Her sweet, kind beautiful brother- oh, how she missed him.) Her name was Nanami now, and the irony of having a name that meant 'seven oceans' wasn't lost on her. She liked it though; it was as good a name as any, and it was hers.

It was the only thing she had- and wasn't that an interesting idea; to have your name be the only thing that's truly yours. (Because she was alone now, so very alone.)

Some things in this new life though, were not as easy to accept. Which in its own way was strange if she had ever stopped to think about it, but she supposed sometimes things in life were harder to understand than death. Death was pretty straight forward.

This world was very different from her last one, and Nanami was very young when she first realized that reality was not something she could ignore here. It had come on the back of a beast called indigence, and the realization that nowhere was safe had been jarring, a sudden painful kind of realization. Many days and nights spent trailing after the fluttering end of a dirty kimono. No place to sleep, hunger eating away at her. Dangerous people everywhere- and here she was, with stubby little legs caked in mud and grabby, chubby hands so unlike the smooth elegant ones she was used to.

All she'd ever wanted was freedom, to make her own choices, to go where she pleased, say and do as she liked.

And that was something she wasn't born with the opportunity to have in this world. At least- not inherently.

'The time will come.' Her mantra during these first years, because she knew how to survive, she knew how to crawl through the woods with nothing on her back, how to trap a beast for food and forage the wilds for sustenance. Nanami could do it. She knew she could. She'd spent a lifetime (albeit a short one) around perfecting the concept.

She was born in a place called Water country, on an island called Wave. (An unimaginative name if ever she'd heard one.)

At first, this didn't really mean much to her outside of the immediate concerns; the search for shelter, the desperate scramble for food. Her poor attempts at learning the language that no one would speak to her with. Her mother was her only caretaker, her foremost reason for sticking around (the other being her age, she was so very young.) But her mother never spoke, and Nanami wondered if the horrible burn scars around the woman's mouth had something to do with it. She had no teeth, and when she ate solid things she had to mash them with rocks first. It was a startling thing to watch, but Nanami became accustomed to it after a year or two.

Her mother hummed a lot though, soft birdlike sounds that she made with her lips closed, Nanami liked to follow along with her soft flowing tunes, it was something they did to fill the space between them when they had no words to offer each other. Her little hand held tight in her mother's bone thin one (she wasn't much better off) who would guide her through back alleys, through the ditches and slums of this island. (mother was safety, mother was home when they didn't have one)

It was often the only sound from another person she'd hear for days. It was during one of these occasions that her mother seemed to want to comfort her during a moonless night that she had a new startling discovery about her life as Nanami.

She could… feel... something. She wasn't sure how to describe such a thing in words from her last language or her new one, as it was a strange sensation. It was in the air, the trees, it swirled around her- from within her. It lived inside her mother too, calm and flowing. Each sense has its own tinge of… uniqueness to it. Her mother for example who she had more contact with than any other human felt like comfort, and cool spring air.

Yea, it didn't make a lot of sense to her either- but there it was.

Her mother, this woman, whom she had never learned the name of, was the only human being who was a constant fixture in her life- but it was a sad, distant sort of permanence. Sometimes, the woman whose eyes were so much like hers would look down at her small filthy figure with this expression of absolute devastation and apology. Like she was sorry she'd brought Nanami into the world at all. Nanami would give the woman who couldn't be past her teens a gentle pat with tiny hands, and a soft reassuring smile as if to say, 'It's okay. I would never blame you.'

Her mother couldn't even give her a name. That had been courtesy of the kind old lady at a fish stand who felt like kindness and sunlight who had taken pity on the filthy child of a mute beggar.

"What's your name?" The little girl looked up at her with wide, doe brown eyes, as if surprised she had bothered to ask. The poor thing shook her head gently side to side, filthy mud crusted hair swaying with the movement.

"Mou, Sōdesu ka..." The old woman gave her a kind smile, and reached down with gnarled old hands to gently place a fish into her chubby little ones. It was cold, with pretty silver scales and a tail like a mermaid's fin. It couldn't have been any larger than her forearm and yet… she was so grateful. She didn't know this fish's name in this world, but she knew its name in her last. She had swam with it in the deep oceans, watched its beautiful glide through the water as it stuck close to it's protector. She liked this fish.

"Omō Nanami-chan is a good name, no? Tanoshimimasu the kobanzame." And with a slightly tentative, gentle pat the woman sent her on her way.

They were the first things she'd ever been given here in exchange for nothing. She cherished the name as much as she had the fish that she and her mother shared that night. When the next day had dawned, the old woman had returned to her stall to find a little hay doll, lashed together with bits of threadbare twine- the only gift Nanami could give to her in return for her kindness.