Author's Notes: This is a SI in the style of favorites of mine like Dream of Sunshine or Catch Your Breath, but focused on something other than Konoha and the rookies, and also has the SI unaware that they are an SI. I will say that this story takes place during Part 1 and Shippuuden, but we truly won't rejoin the main plot of Naruto for a very long time. This is a slow story, slice of like-like, intent on showing a Naruto world beyond Konoha, beyond the shinobi system. Chapters will stay around 4k to 5k, and unlike my earlier hopes for this story, it is like this story will probably be around 30 or more chapters, and somewhere from 150,000 to 200,000 with several chapters worth of side stories. The story goes in arcs, Chapters 1-3 are an introduction to Heiwa. The SI herself is writing this story, treat it like a memoir.

Edit: 12/12/15, fixed some grammatical/spelling issues, added some details.

Seeking Peace

Chapter I

I do not claim to be the authority on what human is, but a constant fixture in my life has been the phrase that to 'Err is Human.' Before I even turned ten, I discovered that every person you pass is the sum of successes and failures, of mistakes. Some people more than others, as I discovered about myself.

You see, I am the product of many mistakes. My mere existence is one. This sounds rather bitter, does it not? I am not complaining about the mistakes that led to my existence, rather I am grateful as one could be for such a life as mine. Instead, I am relieved at the amount of errors that led to me. For example, take my conception. Product of many mistakes, some from my mother but even more from my father. My father was a man who made many mistakes in his life. His family was quite prone to error, actually. But there was another error in my conception, one that was neither my mother's nor my father's.

In truth, I do not know what exactly caused this error. In times where I can relax and give into whimsical thoughts, I attribute this error to some spirit world bureaucrat, neglectful in their duties to make sure a clean soul got sent into a child. Or maybe it was not a mistake and I was meant to be able to know of things I shouldn't, to have a future in my mind that didn't belong there. That thought frightens me, that my actions were meant. I dislike the idea of actions being scripted, however much I am aware of external forces. I've come face to face with gods, both self-proclaimed and true. I've even seen TIME, a frightening, otherworldly thing.

Nevertheless, I was born with knowledge of years that had not happened yet and of things in the past that happened way before even my mother was born. And perhaps, if my theory about the bureaucrat in the spirit world is correct, that is why my vocal cords are underdeveloped. It is a nicer thought than just admitting that my mother's prenatal consumption of opiates caused my premature birth and birth defects. I am therefore mute. I have never spoken a word in my entire life.

I don't shed tears over my inability to speak verbally with others, not in years. In fact, I think I would be a woman of very few words if I did. My face certainly has been chided for the frequent lack of expression that it gives off, and besides that, many are of the opinion that it is a frighting one indeed, but that is another matter entirely. The mistakes I make are generally that it seems I am more apathetic than I truly am.

Back to the theme of mistakes, many people have said that my name was very much a mistake. That my mother should have named me after something cold or hard or, once when such a term applied to me, maybe something about beauty. I disagree with this.

I am named after a wish, a desire, and a concept. Something countless people strive for, died for. I have seen lifeblood shed over this wish, shed some myself. And after living through a war, I can only say that I have personally achieved this wish and it is truly a worthy one.

What an idea!

I do not know if everlasting piece is a child's dream or a possibility, but peace with one's own self, one's own actions, that is achievable but very hard to gain. And I like to think that after many years of reflection, I have found it. As I write this, I am no more than twenty summers, but yet have lived a life well-worth writing down. And because I am unsure of my immediate future, it has occurred to me leave a true record of my life behind, so those to come will be aware of my past, my present, and my concerns for the future.

My name is Uchiha Heiwa, and this the story of how I became the Prophet of the Six Paths.

With strange images and words behind my eyes, I entered this world a sick baby, watching everything with grey eyes that would later darken into coal. I did not cry nor attempt to.

I didn't grow up in the place I was born, I couldn't, but I shall explain that in a minute.

My childhood home, as brief as it was, is in the rocky border of Wind and Lakes. The villages of Ame and Suna routinely fight over this small border, so the people on it truly have to change the name of the country they belong to each time a war happens. Regionally, we may be referred to as the 'Land of Dust' or the 'Land of Canyons'. Small skirmishes between the shinobi happen often but we common folk ignored it. There were many ways to die in this world, and getting involved with shinobi happened to lead quickly to the most painful ones.

There was one 'decent' town on the border. Saboten, the town I was conceived in. Cactus. Decent by population size, not by anyone's moral values. The region itself was a 'rain-shadow', rocky and dry as the rain that filled up the rest of country fell on the other side of the mountain and not on us. But though dry heat was common, we were nowhere as bad off as the people who lived beyond our canyon, in Kaze no Kuni. There the rocky dry ground turned into harsh desert.

Several days' travel from Saboten along the border was a tiny hamlet, not even a village, that had been set up on a drying creek bed when the creek still held water. There were maybe seven houses that still had people. Due to the isolation of the settlement, we had neither running water (except in one home) nor electricity. We collected what we could in our wells and survived off the livestock we could spare. My home was a harsh and poor place, filled with people who had lived through too much, but even among such prickly people one could see a sort of camaraderie.

Some of us also had a sense of humor. It was such a small place that we escaped any census or taxman that would call on us and thus the hamlet had no name. Truthfully, each house and the land I recognized as belonging to the hamlet belonged to the oldest resident of the hamlet, who had bought it all dirt cheap after the Second Shinobi war. The man in question, a man to this day I refer to as my 'Shishou', referred to it as the 'Hovel' and so we did as well.

The house I grew up in had two bedrooms, one for my mother's friend and renter of the house, and one for my mother and myself.

We came to live in the Hovel when my mother was thrown out from her brothel and then couldn't find work in the rest of the yukaku, or the pleasure district, because of me. Brothels were certainly no place for a newborn, especially one that looked like it would need as much care as I. By coincidence, another woman from the yukaku, a prostitute past her prime from a far less classy brothel named Rei, was intent on retiring. Shishou didn't understand why exactly Rei picked the Hovel to retire of all places, besides the fact it was cheap, but Rei took to living in the Hovel well. Like my mother, she had been born from peasants who worked the land, which is why I guess they took to each other.

My mother accepted and 'retired' as well, despite legally being nineteen. Legally I say, because she in fact had me at the age of sixteen, and had begun working her trade at the age of thirteen. She didn't fully retire; while she still could, she would disappear for periods of a month or two to go back to Saboten and work in the yukaku. She would send money and things to Rei and me, and then return with a cart full of gifts, ready to tell me stories and whisper gossip to Rei.

The Hovel wasn't the worst place to retire. Two miles away, a field of poppies dotted the countryside which is why I believe my mother moved there. Easy and free access to what she needed, as well a quiet and hidden place to raise me, far from prying eyes.

I do not know the name of the particular affliction that caused my mother to need the concoction she'd make for herself, or opium when she could get it, but I do know occasionally she would have tremors and her joints wouldn't move. It was easy to tell my mother was in pain. With such sickly people, Rei wasn't expecting much of us.

Rei told me that when she first saw me bundled up in my mother's arms, silent as the grave, she told my mother that I wouldn't live to see a month. This was, of course, a mistake.

I would never speak a word despite what my mother had hoped, and the doctor she had visited before setting off to the Hovel assured her of this. I was mute and nothing could be done. My mother was upset, she had wished that, unlike her, I would live to the fullest of my potential. Still, she never dissuaded me from trying things despite my inability to speak. My mother was one of those people who believed in thriving despite adversity and in spite of it. Rei was the same.

And it was with these two world-weary woman in a hamlet full of other broken people that I, Heiwa, grew up.

"Heiwa! Teeth!"

I am three and reach my hands for my tooth brush and the small bucket of water my mother has procured for me. Kaa-san has a fixation with teeth.

I suppose I should describe my mother. She was not the biggest beauty in the world, but pretty could certainly describe her. What she did have striking about her was her skin. My mother was near translucent in the dark, like I. Think of someone pale and then bleach them and you would have my mother and me. Such looks were generally uncommon in this part of Mizumi no Kuni, especially since my mother was indeed from the rainy region of the country.

With the sun shining often, my mother and I would have our faces dotted with freckles. Sunscreen was not a priority; toothpaste was. Besides her pale skin, my mother's hair and eyes were dark. Her hair would hang down limply on her shoulders, curling lightly. From far away, and if the freckles were covered with enough makeup, my mother had a noble look about her, as if she was the daughter of some daimyo. It was an impression that was not made to last. My mother trained herself to smile and talk with barely opening her mouth, ashamed of her rotted teeth and the stumps left behind. She holds her sleeve in front of her mouth while eating and forces me to brush twice a day. Rei finds it funny that we can't afford electricity but my mother stacks up on toothpaste with chemicals in it that will stop the rotting of my teeth.

"I won't have my daughter face the same kind of fate I have, Rei." Kaa-san replies to the teasing.

I brush my teeth as told. I was an obedient child, then, reserved and thoughtful. My mother worried little about me running off as there is no one but the Hovel for miles. Still, I explore, curious about the world around me.

Rei chortles and rubs my hair, darker than even my mother's. Rei was once a true beauty, as she likes to say, but the Rei I grew up with had a sour and puckered face. Rei is tawny, her face all angles and cheekbones. Her hair and eyes are dun-brown and her teeth are in worse condition than my mother's. She has had her 4 top front teeth removed and when I once wrote her a question asking why, she laughed and said, "For better insertion!"

Growing up with two prostitutes ensured that I was not only not 'unaware' about sexual matters, even at a young age, I viewed them as interesting as one views the weather. I still do to this day. However, the full gravity of that statement wouldn't hit me until I was older.

Today is a special day. Rei is barely literate, unlike my mother, but my mother is one again setting off to bring us money home. It is the old man who owns the Hovel, Kojiro, who will teach me letters and writing so I may actually learn to communicate with others beyond bare hand gestures and the few facial expressions I am able to muster. Rei-san says they don't work anyways as I am afflicted with something called "resting-bitch-face-syndrome" which I obviously must have gotten from my father.

"You'll be alright with Kojiro-jii." My mother says, pulling me into her lap so she can run a comb through my locks. I close my eyes and enjoy the feeling of my scalp being scratched and my mother's flowery scent. Her lips press on the back of my head as I lean back, calm in my mother's arms.

"She'll be fine. That old geezer complained when we decided he'd teach her." Rei entered a tirade filled with exaggerated hand gestures. "He said he didn't want to be bothered with no brat and left alone to his peace and quiet. As if Heiwa can be anything but quiet. Or peaceful." I open my eyes to acknowledge my name being spoken by Rei. Kojiro is a crotchety old man in his late sixties, with red-flecked white hair and a slightly ruddy beard. He is an imposing figure at the weekly meetings we hold at the hamlet, especially when you realize his left leg is wooden.

There are many broken people in the Hovel. Kojiro was just the first.

As the only child in the Hovel, I am looked upon with fondness by most, not because of my muteness, but because I was a precocious three year-old capable of things older children could be and I did errands well and without complaint. When it came to educating me, many people were quite insistent on that it was done properly, as I was the 'future' of the settlement. Kojiro was too old to work, despite being very able-bodied, and had obviously received formal education the extent of none of us knew or accurately guessed at, so it was his duty.

Kojiro was a mystery to the Hovel. He had invited several people to buy up the land because he had nothing to do with the empty houses but other than that, it was like he came from the sky. Due to the scars we could glimpse on his body and the wooden leg, it was whispered amongst the hamlet that he was a mercenary, perhaps even a ronin, though the actual former ronin in the Hovel would argue against this.

Whatever Kojiro had done before he founded the Hovel, he was no samurai.

Even more mysterious was his house. He didn't let the hamlet inside, instead going out to the few benches we put in the middle of the hamlet as a common ground when he needed human interaction, no matter how much he swore he didn't. But he was furious when anyone came near it. And yet, here he was opening the doors to me.

It spoke of how isolated the common folk of the Hovel were that none recognized the fluidity of his movement, so agile for a man past sixty-five summers, or how he would tense at the slightest movement or noise askew. I, at three, had yet to encounter one of his creed so I had no name for those like him. But I watched him eagerly.

I didn't understand he was watching me right back.

"He also told me to tell you that if she's an idiot, he's not dealing with her."

My mother laughs at this, a soft and airy thing.

"Also something I don't think Heiwa will have a problem with. Look at her, restless at three."

I am not squirming in my mother's grasp, so it makes little sense to me that I am 'restless'. I do not yet understand it is my hunger for knowledge that my mother is referring to.

We stand up and my mother, despite not feeling that well this morning, takes me by the hand to walk me to Kojiro's. We are greeted along the way by several neighbors. Despite my mother and Rei's occupations, they are well-liked by the hamlet. Mostly because everyone knows that if someone spoke "shit" as Rei would say, she'd probably take our shovel and dig them an early grave.

Kojiro meets us in front of the house, unshaven face looking completely unhappy with this situation. My mother gives her wide, close-lipped smile before ushering me on to him.

"Ohaiyo, Kojiro-san."

He gives my mother a stack of papers and a bag full of money.

"Purchases and things I need sent in Saboten. You're going there soon, yes?" He asks gruffly.

My mother nods.

"Kiminori-kun is riding off with his wares tonight and will take me most of the way. I'll send what you need at first opportunity." She takes his papers and bows to him, eyeing me. "Take care of my Heiwa, Kojiro-san."

Kojiro grunts. My mother smiles before waving goodbye at me and leaves. My new teacher turns to look at me and searches my face. He seems not to find whatever he is looking for and limps back to his house.

Kojiro's house is nowhere as mysterious as I thought it would be. From first glance, it is devoid of personal artifacts. Unlike the personal trinkets that litter my home, Kojiro's home seems to have little of those. What it does have is scrolls, and drawn ones at that. Scrolls filled with calligraphy are hung up over the house and I can see why I would want to learn to write from Kojiro. It is neater than everyone expected, with Kojiro being an old bachelor. Things look quite orderly.

"Had to loosen my traps so you don't get slaughtered. You better be grateful, little girl."

I blink. Traps?

My attention is called away from the strangeness of that statement by a woodcarving in the living room, one that looks quite old. It shows several people surrounding what seems to be a circle and my eyes are immediately drawn to it. Kojiro's as well, and his gaze hardens.

"I'd tell you not to ask me many questions, but I'm sure you can't really do that anyway, so just sit down."

I do as he asks, unsure of how to react to his prickly nature. Kojiro's personality resembles a cactus, or some dry brush. After a moment, he passes me a scroll with figures on it.

"Hiragana." He saya.

I nod and look over them.

I have noticed that the people who proclaim wanting to be alone the most are usually the ones most desperate in need of company. Perhaps unnerved by my silence, even as a mute girl, Kojiro would talk even while not specifically instructing me. Mostly about calligraphy.

It became apparent in the first few hours of instruction that not only was this coming easy to me, that I picked up things very quickly. This was not news to me. Rei had last month exclaimed over how nice my stitching had gotten, and how quick. My fingers were far more nimble than those of other three year olds, she had exclaimed. However, being good at things just gave incentive to study me further.

His eyes traced over my features often in those early days. It took me a while to realize he was trying to pry my ancestry from them. At that point, I didn't particularly who care my father was. I knew I had one but I also knew enough to figure out he was a customer, and thus had little place in my life. This would change the moment I was thrust into my father's world, into our family's path.

"You're a clever child." Kojiro told me at the end of the first week. I looked to him and focused my eyes, not responding physically. People repeated that to me often, but it was the first time I had heard that statement meant as a question. My eyes were drawn to what Kojiro was doing. His brush trailed a scroll, drawing a beautiful pattern that was unreadable to me. The ink swirled until there was little scroll to paint, and, knowing I was watching, perhaps anticipating it, he made the scroll glow.

Not many things can make my eyes widen or give me a shocked look on my face. My first encounter with chakra was one of the things that could, and did. The brush strokes glowed orange and then faded back to black. Kojiro's reddish-brown eyes looked at me, to see if I had any reaction. I was deeply fascinated and gestured so by pointing to scroll and shrugging. I wanted to see what that glowing meant, what it did.

Kojiro chuckled and took the brush, placing it on the scroll. He then touched it once more, causing the brush strokes to glow once more and suddenly the brush disappeared into the scroll, and the scroll rolled itself up. Another touch and it unrolled itself, with the brush appearing back with a poof of smoke.

It took me a minute to analyze what I seen and I fixed Kojiro with a new light in my eyes, with understanding. I knew what he was, even having only heard bedtime stories about people like him. And so I mouthed the words I'd speak if I could.

"Please teach me."

Kojiro must have read my lips because he nodded.

And that is how I became a kunoichi.

He didn't fully train me at first. I was, after all, only three and there to learn how to read and write, which I definitely learned how to do on my own time as well as his. But once lessons were finished, and with me lessons were always finished quickly, he would take out books that hadn't seen the light of day in decades and use the pictures to show me small exercises. He started small, describing what chakra was and how it functioned. But Kojiro was so well versed in chakra and how it worked that his explanations would outdo any others I would hear later in life.

Every afternoon before Rei would come and walk me back home, he'd have me practice controlling it. And that was the third week, because it became apparently I not only had good reserves but had some talent at controlling them.

As the playing card stuck to my forehead, Kojiro paced around his living room, muttering as usual.

"I could tell, see, that you came from shinobi stock. I might even have a hunch or two about what family you come from, with those facial features."

At my inquisitive look, he elaborated.

"Your mother's eyes are a dark brown. Your eyes are black. Your hair is darker than hers and it spikes, rather than curls. And the feel of your chakra. You might think your features common, but I've seen looks like that of yours' on the battlefield, and if you happen to be from that wretched clan, your life won't have a moment of peace."

It was then that my interest in my father awoke. Kojiro seemed nervous about the subject, muttering "It's been four years, there's plenty of chance it happened before...", but I got nothing straight out of him as to who my father might be.

By the beginning of the second month, my literacy skills were building faster each day and I was able to stick several objects on me with my chakra control. Not only that, but I'd sit around and practice my hiragana drawings while having the cards stick to me, drawing sighs from Kojiro. He tended to observe me working and filled the silence with talk. Perhaps my muteness unnerved him or maybe he realized that even If I could talk I tended to not say much about anything.

"Just my luck, you're probably a genius."

I cock my head as if asking a question.

"You know what's bad about being a genius? Your type doesn't live long, or lives in such a way that living isn't worth it. You burn out before twenty, or end up dead because people expect so much of you that end up taking it all in and expecting more from yourself than you can actually handle."

And then my master sighed, sitting down.

"And you, little genius girl, are going to have to fight to live because once the world figures you out, everyone will be out for your flesh. People stronger than me are going to try their hardest, and not only with kunai but with words. You think you'll still be here in ten years? I'm sure you'll be running for your life from some hunter unit somewhere."

"You'll end up like me, girl." He said, staring off.

I looked down, unsure of how to react to my teacher's ranting. I could tell that something happened to him but the prospect of having a home destroyed felt alien to me. I briefly closed my eyes to picture our house on fire, or rubble in place of the Hovel, but I could only see people doing their jobs as always. The weary faces, some lined with dirt, cracking smiles at our meetings. The way we'd vote every on every major decision. The few times we decided to make music at the meetings. This was all I knew.

Kojiro cracked his knuckles before continuing.

"Can't decide if it is best thing or the worst thing you're not blind. On one hand you wouldn't have to struggle for life, on the other; a blind Uchiha."

And then it happened. The moment the word 'Uchiha' came from his lips, my world descended into a torrent of colors and shapes, ones that completely obscured everything, to the point where I could only see the vision.

'Uchiha.'

'But brother, that clan is cursed!'

'To test my capacity...'

I saw images and sound, strewn together like a film. It would be years before I understood where the images exactly came from, but it felt like I had watched them at some point, though not as a presence in them. Odd. I was puzzled over the significance of this and whether I should try and mention it to Kojiro through writing. But something stopped me inside, and that's because I knew even at three years old what had just happened to me was not normal, not even by shinobi standards.

I set aside the clips for later analyzing, when Kojiro wasn't watching my reactions like a hawk and looked up with him with wide eyes.

"How do you write it?" I wrote, referring the word he had written.

"Put a line here, and there you go. Uchiha, clan name." He took the pen and paper from me and wrote the name out, and with some afterthought added my own.

"Uchiha Heiwa"

My mother had no clan name or surname. Many people would make up their own. It felt strange seeing that name, as I knew that I would be what Rei called 'a bastard'. But there was something comforting in the idea I had a family, a place beyond the Hovel. I never hoped or wanted, before then, for anything more than the Hovel, nothing more than the comfort of my mother's arms. But perhaps there was something for me outside the Hovel. It was a nice thought, thinking I'd have family along the way.

If only I'd known.

Let me know what you think please!